Our education manifesto.
The greatest untapped resource on the planet isn’t nuclear energy or deep-sea minerals, genetic engineering or outer space exploration; it’s human potential. And what human has more potential than a child?
You’d think we’d pour our best effort into educating them, exhausting all possible options. But we don’t. Most parents know more about the difference between the oat milk from Trader Joe’s and the oat milk from Whole Foods than they know about their own kids’ education. (Not an insult, just a fact.) And it’s why I’m writing to you today.
To be clear, I don’t enjoy harping on the fact that conventional education is broken. There are too many rage-baiters and doomsdayers out there: “public school sucks!” or “save your kid from public school while you still can!” I am not one of them. That’s coming at the problem from the wrong angle. Parents shouldn’t have to ask, “What’s wrong with my kids’ school?” They should be asking, excitedly, “How good can my kids’ school really get? How high is high?”
But to answer that, we have to first understand where we are. And to be honest, it’s not pretty.
My goal is to give you the unvarnished truth of our education system as a whole, so you can start building your own opinion and making the best possible decision for your family.
Let’s start from the beginning.
400 BCE: The golden age of personalized education
For over 1,000 years, education was a deeply personalized experience. It was the golden age of tutors: Socrates tutored Plato, who tutored Aristotle, who tutored Alexander the Great.
You get the picture.
The problem was, only the wealthy could afford high-quality tutors. Personalized learning may have been the pinnacle of education, but it was far from accessible. Naturally, alternative solutions were born.
