Kids proving how “School” was holding them back. A preview to the future of education?

What happens when teenagers find out there is a way to master academic subjects 3x faster and deeper than in traditional school:

Toan graduated at 16 and is getting his bachelor’s at 18. He is not a child genius. He just convinced his parents to take him out of traditional school and allow him to become a homeschooler. He showed how school was not efficient in teaching him. Toan writes about Learning Science – a meta cognition skill where you learn how learning happens best. Here is his Learning science 101.

Austin, a teenager from Texas, goes to a “2-hour learning” school. Here, kids do academics 2 hours a day using a suite of adaptive learning apps, leaving the rest of the time to pursue their “Masterpieces” – big, real-life, personal projects they chose and spend 400+ hours a year on. Some are running profitable businesses, one girl is professionally working on cancer prevention. Austin is crushing her SATs, spends a third of the usual time kids spend in schools, deeply mastering academic subjects, and is having a lot more fun. She has been admitted to Oxford and writes about her unusual (for now) journey in her insightful blog.

There are thousands of kids like Austin and Toan getting out of school because they and their parents are learning how traditional school is slowing down their potential. I am going to describe the path how this is happens more oftne now and the implications for private and public schools. I will also briefly speak about kids who are considered as not able/ not motivated to do “that”.

How a teenager would break out of school “responsibly”

Here are the steps other kids might soon apply, followed by a more detailed description of how it works in practice:

1. Question the effectiveness of how you are taught and find out about Learning Science. Learn to Learn.

2. Check out of non-effective school and check-in to a school like Alpha (described further on) or homeschool yourself.

3.  Spend 2 hours a day on academia, master the subjects deeper and ace your exams in 2-3x less time than your peers in traditional school.

4.   Spend the freed up time on a Masterpiece . A self-chosen project aligned with own passion and purpose on which kids spend 400+ hours a year.

5. Enjoy your time, graduate with relative ease, better grades and 1000’s of hours of real world experience.

Let’s dive in how this works in practice:

First you uncover that for 60 years we have known a method that allows kids to learn two standard deviations faster. Benjamin Bloom was a renowned education psychologist who developed the theory of mastery learning. It turns out the material doesn’t really get absorbed well if you don’t apply, analyse, evaluate, and create with your new knowledge.

“Bloom’s ideas along with ideas such as spaced repetition, forced recall, and active learning, are core parts of learning science, which is a field that “combines research, data, and practices to help educators teach better and students learn more.”” – Austin Scholar

Why is Learning Science not being applied ? The method is impossible to implement in standard schools because it involves personalized tutoring. However, today things are changing as we have AI tutors and a suite of apps that make adoptive and customized learning possible.

Austin joined Alpha School - The school with no teachers, only “learning coaches” for motivation and making sure kids stay on track. The annual fee in Alpha School is for now 40k $, not particulatly cheap (yet!). How do they do that and are opening campuses in new cities? Because their results speak for themselves. The students score in Maps tests past the 99th percentile numbers in all four core subjects: math, reading, language, and science. At the same time, MAPS data shows that in the U.S., in 50% of government schools the kids who are graduating know as much math as a 3rd grader.

What is done differently at Alpha School? The main thing is Online, Adaptive Learning software. A suite of Ai tutors and apps allow each student to learn at their own pace.

They have custom evaluated apps for each level, that provide the best experience. There are guides to support the process, help with goal setting, and ensure kids are motivated and excited about challenging themselves. The rest happens in these apps:

Image from https://alpha.school/

For those who can quickly understand the material, the app challenges them. For those who are confused, the apps help you really master the basics, before piling on new material on top of a shaky foundation.

In traditional school the foundation often remains shaky because ‘passing exams’ is prioritized. The knowledge that was rushed in with the main prupose of “passing exams” is mostly stored in your short-term memory and not your long-term memory. Apps work because they move through content in child’s own pace (achieving deep understanding, not just memorization). They keep reoffering same stuff multiple times to ensure real mastery through knowledge checks and quizzes. Austin goes through her app usage experience here.

There is a campus in Austin where kids can go, socialize, and work on their “passion projects” called Masterpieces. Because kids work on things that are interesting to them and they chose them, they really don’t need motivators, ‘guards’ and ‘instructors”. They love it.

It is not a secret that kids learn better when the lessons are at the correct level of difficulty and when they are motivated. The first one is achieved through customized apps and online tutoring.  The second is achieved because getting more free time is very motivating:

‘The mission of the Alpha High Masterpiece program is to help students build a project that's aligned with their passion and purpose. The program gives the students time, structure, and resources to develop expertise and build a challenging project. 

Each student sets an ambitious, long-term goal.. Each Masterpiece has to have an insanely high bar: each student’s Masterpiece must be the equivalent of being an Olympian.

Being an Olympian means being the best in the world.. The time commitment for any Masterpiece project should be around 400 hours/year (1600+ hours across a high school career).’

Examples of kids masterpieces can be read here . By the time these kids are finished high school they will have 1000’s of hours of real world experience.

“Just looking for problem-solvers who get things done with a high sense of urgency. Don’t care if or where they went to school.” - Elon Musk

Where is this all going:

The traditional model of education is quickly becoming outdated as it hasn’t really evolved since the industrial age, whilst our world is changing rapidly. I could write at length about everything that is wrong with it, but plenty of others have already done it. I will do it another time anyway, with my own slant.

There are several other schools that are offering similar interesting concepts like Alpha School, for example Acton Academy , Synthesis, Sora Schools . Alpha has 9 years of results, soon we will have more. The excuse of ‘experimenting on kids’ is going to lose potency soon.

If it becomes common knowledge that customised personal AI tutoring gets kids to learn better and faster, is the teacher function going to evolve to motivator and inspiration source, as opposed to the distributor of knowledge ?

I think this is the approximate model how a lot of secondary education will look in the West 10-20 years from now:

1. A suite of online AI apps

2. Campus for doing masterpieces, science experiments, workshops, and socializing.

3. Teachers turned into guides who motivate and make sure child is inspired and is having fun learning.

4. Teacher in front of the classroom model will go. This is already a generation of confident app users, and this will only increase. No teacher who teaches 20 kids can compete on personalisation and adaptive learning pace with AI, unless he/she has plenty of unique real life experience.

5. The time and freedom gained by kids rushes in a creative renaissaince . Youthful powers and enthusiasm are actually applied productively in their best years, as opposed to kids’ soul and individuality being stamped out of them by the standardized system.

A lot of government schools will likely be resisting the change and not participating initially, first concern being that most of the teachers will lose their jobs. I don’t think any teachers need to lose their jobs. The tech innovations will just give them the necessary brain space to re-imagine their function and re-discover why they went into education in the first place .

What about the kids who are not self-motivated and driven?

It is true: there are plenty of kids who are not like Austin or Toan. A lot of them are just following along without much questioning. Some encounter anxiety from the pace of how everything is moving and think they have lost before they have even started.. They are overwhelmed with the demands placed on them and don’t feel prepared for life. Some have never really had any responsibility or never had to take risky decisions.  I might be proven wrong, but High Agency, confident, questioning, motivated kids will win in learning and in life, even more so in the future. It is the job of the adults to get up to speed and get as many of them to the place where they feel they can take ownership of their learning.

Let’s look at things that could impact the outcome:

The comfort of “Traditional education is the way majority does it.”

Being part of the herd is safe, until it’s not. Many traditional models of what guarantees happiness, success and wealth in life are collapsing fast. Questioning if what’s on offer is truly the most effective for your ultimate end goal doesn’t sound like a bad idea.

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Some parents might believe from the get-go that their kids are ‘just not able to do X and are just not like that”, leading to their kids also adopting the beliefs of what they can and cannot do. This is one of the reasons I started writing, to explore how confident free motivated kids naturally arise from parents who have done a certain amount of work on their own conditioning and beliefs. Getting as many kids as possible to the place of Confident, Competent High Agency is what interests me and I will be pursuing it through creative writing and through Rimastery.com in the future.

School as daycare

Some might worry that giving kids more free time would involve more work for the parents. School rightly or wrongly has been given the function of daycare, whether some admit it or not. I don’t think day care is particulary necessary for age 11+ , if certain understanding is in place, but it is a big separate subject and article for another day. Another question to ponder: Is it good enough to consider the main function of school being daycare , hoping that additionally some useful knowledge is imparted there?

The information the kids consume online and the chatter from other kids.

If the results and time freedom that kids like Austin get go ‘viral’, more kids will start examining what is possible in their own lives. They will compare their current schooling and try and replicate best practices with free apps like Khan or paid ones. They might take full ownership and drop out if they feel like the traditional model sucks up too much of their time on what they don’t perceive as being important. (Hint: traditonal schools should regularly re-evaluate the relevance of the things on offer and whether it’s presented as relevant).

Different parents will deal with this differently. I would caution jumping to conclusions before spending the time researching the topics your child starts advocating. They might actually have a point.

Employers, Funders, and the professional sphere.

The high opportunity ones in this arena already are actively hunting and tempting those who show Initiative, Unique Agency & Problem-Solving Skills, Confidence, Ability to Self-Learn, Leadership, Creativity. Go to any top tech firms or start up incubator and you will see the requests: they want those who think out of the box, who can break out of conventional thinking patterns and those who have pursued something real. Of course, they want competency in academic subjects, but if that can be obtained in less hours, whilst other life skills have been developed – they will take that any day. The kids who have done something worthwhile and took risks during their school time do not need to pitch themselves as hard. They have already put their work out there and their life is their CV.

What about ‘Normal’ private schools?

I think it depends which ones. A lot of them are just government schools in fancy packaging and with better facilities. The key is to see 1) how much “free” time the kids have to pursue own interest and real life projects and 2) how academic subjects are taught.

Is the teaching and learning in accordance to how kids really master subjects?  How personalized, engaging, and adaptive is it? Based on these metrics, most private schools are far from the cutting-edge options out there.

Just because you are paying a lot for the school doesn’t mean your child is getting the best possible education.

I would even argue that parents who believe that just because they can pay up, their kids will outcompete the “non-payers”, may find themselves disappointed in the future. New tech will further iron out the opportunity set benefiting the motivated “non-payers”, especially as the cost of these apps is going down fast. The most interesting trends in education are broadly the following:

• Adaptive and Personalised Learning with AI

• Project based Learning

• Collaborative Learning

• AI Tutors and apps

• Socrative type methods and Self-Directed Learning

• Metacognition development and Inquiry-Based Learning

• Gamification

• Facilitating Learning vs Teaching

In some of my future writing, I will go through these in more detail and delve into parts which I think help kids flourish in a rapidly evolving environment. Next article will be something else: Feeling the Illusion of Control: Insights from Trading as a Religious Activity. I am stoked to be in David Perells Writes of Passage Cohort this month, so my writing should become more readable and maybe more frequent :)

~ Anna