Just because your education was exceptionally average doesn’t mean your kids’ has to be.
“I went to traditional school and I turned out fine” is perhaps the most ludicrous defense that exists for education, and I’ll tell you why.
“Fine” is the pasta primavera you’ll never order again. “Fine” is the lukewarm compliment from your husband that sends you racing back to your closet to change your outfit. In all other areas of life, “fine” is not good enough. But for whatever reason, “fine” is the apex of our educational expectations. I myself am a product of public school education (and yes, look, I turned out fine!), but that doesn’t mean I can’t ask questions, can’t raise my expectations.
That’s why I’m writing to you today. To raise your expectations. Because “fine” is not the summit. It is the unremarkable plateau where we’ve set up camp and have forgotten there is an entire mountain left to climb.
Just because something is normal doesn’t mean it’s optimal
First, a question: why do we defend systems we know to be flawed? Simple. Because we grew up inside them. This is what cognitive scientist Dan Lortie calls the “apprenticeship of observation.” Thousands of hours spent in a classroom, absorbing the squeak of an expo marker, the clamor of lockers, the fluorescent glare of buzzing overhead lights. These experiences taught us more than just algebra or grammar — they taught us what school looks like, what education itself is meant to embody.
But just because something is normal doesn’t mean it’s optimal.
For example, homework. Believe it or not, homework is not an essential part of education — understanding a concept is. Homework is simply one mechanism to help students understand a concept. The tool, not the essence, if you will. But because homework was embedded so deeply into our school experience, we believe it to be an indispensable part of education. This is the trap of the familiar: believing what’s normal is what’s best. And that, my friends, simply isn’t true. Students at Alpha don’t do hours of homework each day. Why? They spend their afternoons applying what they’ve learned in real-time. It makes the knowledge stick better than a worksheet ever could.
See? There are countless mechanisms to success.
Aren’t you curious to know them?
The mythology of school
The tricky thing about school is that it’s not just a system, it’s a mythology. Think of all the movies that act as educational lore in American culture: The Breakfast Club, Mean Girls, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Dead Poets Society. Myths, as we know, are sticky. They cling to us, not because they are accurate, but because they are nostalgic and evocative.
If I close my eyes right now, I can smell the hallways of my childhood — some strange concoction of lemon cleaning solution and sweaty gym shoes. I can hear the shrill squeal of the whistle at P.E., feel the splintery ridges beneath my desk where another student carved their name into the wood — permanent proof that TYLER WAS HERE. These are not memories of an efficient system. They are simply the relics of growing up. Beautiful relics, maybe. But mile-markers of a high-quality education? Certainly not.
Nostalgia is a powerful force, but it tends to romanticize the past. Education isn’t a rite of passage or a test of resilience. It is not trauma-bonding lore like the movies say. It is a tool to unlock our kids’ potential. And it’s time to start trying. The past is not a blueprint for the future. It is a culmination of valuable lessons — but what is a lesson worth if we don’t learn from it?
I’ll let you answer that one.
Status Quo Bias
