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Jessica Hannan writes at I4U that Elon Musk pulled his children out of an established school after discovering they weren't receiving the quality of education that catered to their abilities and built his own school with only 14 students whose parents are primarily SpaceX employees. Musk wants to eliminate grades so there's no distinction between students in 1st grade and 3rd and students focus on the important elements of each subject. By integrating the thinking process to include a progressive step-by-step approach, children will be challenged and able to understand result through a systemic pattern. "Let's say you're trying to teach people about how engines work. A more traditional approach would be saying, 'we're going to teach all about screwdrivers and wrenches.' This is a very difficult way to do it." Instead, Musk says it makes more sense to give students an engine and then work to disassemble it. "How are we going to take it apart? You need a screwdriver." When you show "what the screwdriver is for," Musk explains "a very important thing happens" because students then witness the relevancy of task, tool, and solution in a long term application."
According to Hannan, Musk's approach to delete grade level numbers and focus on aptitude may take the pressure off non-linear students and creates a more balanced assessment of ingenuity. Admitting books were "comforting" to him as a child and to reading everything from science fiction to the encyclopedia and philosophers from "morning to night," Musk points out that not everyone will be strong in every subject, or be able to retain regurgitated standardized aptitude facts beyond the test. "It makes more sense to cater the education to match their aptitudes and abilities." So far, Ad Astra "seems to be going pretty well," according to Musk. "The kids really love going to school."
[Editor's Comment: Original Submission]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bradley13 on Wednesday May 27 2015, @08:17PM
Teacher pay is actually not bad in most places (since most of SN is in the US, this is true in most States [teacherportal.com]), compared to other professions with similar demands. Whatever teachers say, in most places they do get a lot of time off, and during the school year they don't work more overtime than other professions. Class size is also pretty reasonable, ranging anywhere from 20 to 35 - and the larger sizes actually tend to be in places with better school performance (stereotypically, more rural locations). The problems lie elsewhere.
First, "everyone in education" does not know how to produce amazing results. The education majors are, let's be honest here, far from the best and brightest. Individual exceptions, sure, but on average they're not exactly rocket scientists.
Second, it would be fine that education majors aren't brilliant, if they only taught through early primary school. By 5th or 6th grade, a teacher needs solid knowledge of the subject matter being taught - and needs to be better at it that than even the good students. That means that teachers must have degrees in their subject material, with a few courses on the side in pedagogy. That's how it is in most countries that do well on things like PISA. However, in the USA and the UK, you can have a education major who barely passed a couple of math courses teaching calculus - and that's just pathetic.
Anecdote: I went to school in the US, and I was better at math than my public school teachers, starting around 6th grade. I'm good at math, but I'm no genius - the teachers were just that bad. Now I'm in Switzerland, and my kids' teachers are good at what they teach; mostly, they have masters' degrees in their subjects. Wow, what a difference!
Finally, culture and family play a huge role. HairyFeet pointed out in another post that American black urban culture is poisonous, and that education is not even on the radar of that culture. In Europe, I can tell you that there are also poorly integrated subcultures here that have the same problem. You cannot educate someone who doesn't want to be educated. What, exactly, you are supposed to do with them? Well, that's a difficult question, but pouring extra time, effort and money down a black hole is probably not the answer.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.