August 19, 2025 • 48 mins
The rapidly accelerating capabilities of artificial intelligence are creating an urgent need to rethink how we prepare young people for a world where machines will soon outperform humans in many cognitive tasks.
• Schools train students in what ChatGPT already does best
• AI power doubles yearly, reshaping the workforce
• The “school-to-career” escalator model is collapsing
• Content delivery dominates, but agency and values matter most
• Don’t trade kids’ mental health and relationships for small GPA gains
• Students need entrepreneurial skills to solve real problems
• Hands-on, career-focused learning deserves equal respect with academics
• Families should explore AI tools as “curiosity machines”
• Future success depends more on AI collaboration than college prestige
About our guests
Ted Dintersmith is a change agent focused on the impact of education and innovation. His professional background spans technology, entrepreneurship, and public policy. He has been the executive producer of several films that have premiered at Sundance, including the acclaimed Most Likely to Succeed. Ted’s most recent book What School Could Be: Insights and Inspiration from Teachers Across America is based on a trip he took to all 50 U.S. states during a single school year. In 2018, he received NEA’s prestigious “Friend of Education” Award.
Garrett Smiley is the Co-Founder of Sora Schools, an education startup. Sora is a virtual, project-based high school where students explore their interests, learn however is best for them, and gain exposure to future careers and fields of work. Prior to Sora, Garrett co-founded a charity which built wells in developing nations called Drops of Love. Garret also directed a university startup incubator called Core Founders at Georgia Tech, and started an education non-profit that worked with foster kids to develop financial literacy called Flip. Garrett worked as a Venture Partner at Contrary Capital where he scouted, invested in, and mentored startups in the Atlanta area.
Connect with Ted and Garrett
Sora Schools
Ted Dintersmith
Most Likely to Succeed
What School Could Be
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About the podcast
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments.
Powered by Prenda Microschools, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle young learners' curiosity, motivation, and well-being.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The bad news and I think it's quite bad is that
school trains that out of kids.
If you think about the highwatermark in education, we push
kids to be good at exactly whatchat GPT does perfectly.
So I think simply marchingalong and trusting it will all
work out is a huge mistake.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Hello, welcome to the Kindled Podcast.
I'm your host, kelly Smith.
Today we're going to be talkingto Ted Denturesmith and Garrett
Smiley.
These two have been involved inrethinking education in a
number of ways, both within andwithout the system.
Today, we're going to befocusing on advice we'd give to
(00:37):
kids and parents as they thinkabout the end of high school and
moving on to the great beyond,in the real world.
It's an exciting conversation.
We'll have talking about allkinds of things, from the role
of AI and transforming thefuture, what types of jobs are
available, what skills andabilities kids should be working
on and developing, and howschool as we know it and the
institutions themselves aretrying to and, in some cases,
(01:00):
falling short from succeeding inmeeting these needs.
So I'm excited for theconversation.
Before we jump in, let me tellyou a little bit about Ted and
Garrett.
Ted Dintersmith is a changeagent focused on the impact of
education and innovation in thefuture of civil society.
His professional backgroundspans technology,
entrepreneurship and publicpolicy.
(01:21):
He was ranked by Business 2.0as the top performing us venture
capitalist for 1995 through1999.
In 2012, president obamaappointed him to represent our
country at the united nationsgeneral assembly.
He's been the executiveproducer of several films that
have premiered at sundance,including the acclaimed most
likely to succeed.
Ted's most recent book, whatschool could be?
(01:41):
Insights and inspiration fromTeachers Across America, is
based on an immersive trip hetook to all 50 states during a
single school year.
In 2018, he received NEA'sprestigious Friend of Education
Award.
Ted earned a PhD in engineeringfrom Stanford and an
undergraduate degree from theCollege of William Mary, with
high honors in physics andEnglish.
When he's not visiting schools,he lives in Charleston, south
(02:03):
Carolina, and Garrett Smiley.
Garrett Smiley is the co-founderof Sora Schools, an education
startup based in Atlanta.
Sora is a virtual project-basedhigh school where students
explore their interests learn,however, is best for them and
gain exposure to future careersand fields of work.
Prior to Sora, garrettco-founded a charity which built
wells in developing nations,called Drops of Love.
(02:24):
Garrett also directed auniversity startup incubator
called Core Founders at GeorgiaTech and started an education
nonprofit that worked withfoster children to develop
financial literacy, called Flip.
Garrett studied computerscience at Georgia Tech.
Garrett also worked as aventure partner at Contrary
Capital, where he scouted,invested in and mentored
startups in the Atlantic area.
(02:44):
Okay, I'm excited to start.
Let's jump in.
Okay, welcome to the Prendapodcast.
We're excited to be talkinghere with Garrett Smiley and Ted
Dintersmith.
Thanks guys for being here.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Fantastic to be here, yeah thanks.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Well, I want to just dive right in.
So we're going to be talkingtoday about people women at
roughly the age 17.
At this moment in the historyof the world, I mean, you're
experiencing a you know, avastly different beyond as you
leave what we've known as highschool.
Many kids are experiencing apretty similar past right up
(03:18):
until that point, and so nowyou're in this moment where I
think there's lots of reallygood questions and really good
discussions we can have.
Ted, I pulled this off yourwebsite and I just want to read
this back to you.
I have insights into the worldour children will live in as
adults and how educationpriorities can foster or
diminish the skills and mindsetskids will need as adults.
(03:39):
So can you talk a little bitabout those insights and just
share thoughts about what areyou seeing in the world beyond?
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Well, first I'd say I'd credit the insights to the
people I was surrounded with for25, 30 years in my technology
business, and that was reallybold entrepreneurs, and the
lesson they taught me is thereis an unlimited number of paths
forward.
Is there is an unlimited numberof paths forward If you have an
entrepreneurial mindset, keenmotivation to learn what you
(04:07):
need to learn and justincredible determination to
accomplish something.
I'd say everything going ontoday works in the favor of bold
, entrepreneurial young adultsand when they read about or hear
about jobs going away and Italk a lot about that they
should understand that there isno shortage of jobs fulfilling
paths they can create.
That's the good news.
(04:27):
The bad news and I think it'squite bad is that school trains
that out of kids.
If you think about the highwatermark in education, we push
kids to be good at exactly whatchat GPT does perfectly.
So I think simply marchingalong and trusting it will all
work out is a huge mistake.
So I think it's really thatpath A versus path B, and
(04:48):
everything I do is directedtoward the goal of opening
people's eyes up Students, youknow, kids, parents, teachers to
path A, because path A is noteven a dead end, far worse than
a dead end.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Garrett, you talk to a lot of parents.
I mean, path A soundsterrifying.
Can you talk a little bit aboutjust what I know Ted's kind of
giving this?
There's sort of a tried andtrue Path B that everybody's
become accustomed to and Path Areally says be this some sort of
entity and then go out andsolve the problems or identify
your own curriculum and makeyour own.
(05:23):
You know, can you talk a littlebit about you?
Guys are doing this at ayounger age with SOAR schools
and I just want to share whatyou're seeing from parents and
how they're facing that realityas they think about this.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
Yeah, absolutely.
I think parents are in variousstages of waking up to this
insight.
Ted and I were talking a coupleof weeks ago.
Just look at the perfectexample of people who followed
the prescribed path in front ofthem, went all the way to
Harvard Business School in thiscase and they're.
They have the it's at least alocal minima, historically low
(05:56):
job placement rates, right.
And if these students who whotrusted that path, that social
contract we thought we had, andare not getting anywhere close
to what they thought waspromised them, imagine the
student who is a couple degreesfrom that level of academic
success.
And I think a lot of parentsare realizing this.
We're hearing with our ownstudents the importance they
(06:19):
find of just going and creatingyour own opportunities, your own
internships, your own whateverit may be.
Just go find opportunitieslocally.
They're really starting to feelthe essential nature of this,
as the jobs that they used towork in the summer or the
opportunities they thought theyhad locally are just drying up
in front of their very eyes.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
It's interesting because I've been watching this
as well and I'm reminded, by theway, of just to throw a book
recommendation in here I don'tknow if you guys have read.
It's called the Startup of you.
This is Reid Hoffman, theLinkedIn founder, and Ben
Kuznetsha, and together theysaid look, there's this idea
that you get on this escalatorwhen you're five years old and
the escalator takes you to notonly you know high school
(07:01):
graduation, but collegegraduation, job placement and a
stable, steady career.
That's sort of like all of it'shanded to you.
You just have to get on theescalator and people fight.
I mean, you heard these storiesa few years ago parents sort of
jockeying in position andpaying hefty down payments at
age two to get their kid intothe right prep you know,
preschool in Manhattan at agefour, so that then that leads to
(07:24):
the right.
I mean it's very much anescalator mentality and it does,
by the way, seem to be I don'tknow if you agree with this.
It seems to be particularly badfor the people who are in like
are better off, like the wayyou're talking about Garrett,
where you need these Harvard MBAtypes.
You know, sometimes you wouldthink that those would be maybe
the most willing to take risksor the most willing to do things
(07:45):
differently.
But you know, you almost seethe opposite.
You see those people kind ofdoubling down on the status and
safety of the safety net ofthese escalators.
Any thoughts about who thesepeople are and who are the
people?
Ted, that will do what you'retalking about.
That will look at path A andsay, sure, there's some
uncertainty there, but let's doit.
You know, let's go for it.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Yeah, gary, you want to go first.
You want me to?
Speaker 4 (08:09):
Go ahead.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Okay.
Well, you know, if you want tolook for inspiring points, you
know, just look at Montessorischools.
And there was an article thisgoes back a ways, but it was in
the Wall Street Journal,probably quite Google-able.
But the Montessori mafia, youknow it was Jimmy Wales and
Sergi, you know Brennan, larryPage, and you know I don't know
I mean like, and they all said,despite years of formal
(08:30):
education, by far the bestexperience was Montessori, where
they were supported to go deepwith their passions and learn,
retain what they're learning,master skills.
I mean, this isn't a mystery.
I mean, maria Montessori goesback quite some time.
I think that two things.
One is parents often look atwhat worked for them and assume
(08:52):
that that's what will work fortheir kids.
And everything that I saidabout jumping through hoops I
would not have said that 40years ago.
40 years ago, jumping throughhoops was really a good way to
move forward.
It's not that it was badforever in time.
It worked for a long period,but that period is over and
what's hard for parents to do isto say wait a minute.
(09:12):
It's a totally different world,because not only is that period
over, but the stakes we put onhoop jumping have actually
escalated, and so you findparents just obsessing about you
know which.
You know you look at the VarsityBlues scandal.
I mean like parents going tocrazy lengths to try to get
their kid into USC or somethingyou know it's like what are you
(09:35):
doing?
Have you totally lost your mind?
And I give a lot of talks toparents and I always say to them
you can, you know like you cando this.
You can wage a 12-, 14-,16-year war with your kid to get
them to be the perfect kid andwhat you're going to end up with
is a kid with a lot of mentalhealth challenges, a broken
parent-child relationship and,most likely these days, a kid
(09:59):
that walks into a dead end.
Do you still want to do that,just to be able to go to the
cocktail party and say, well, mykid got into X and I don't
think their kid did so well.
In that it's like thecompetition breeds competition,
right, the people that areinvestment bankers and
consultants and everything.
It's an uber competitive group,and so they gravitate toward
(10:19):
competing on whatever is attheir fingertips and kids and
their success in school is avery compelling and attractive
competitive metric for thatcrowd.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Well, we've put it on a single dimensional track
right, which we love, and givenit a scorecard, which we also
love, and so then it's very easy, easy to see.
Now, what's interesting is Ithink you made this point
already, ted that not only doesschool, as the traditional
structures and institutional Iknow there are great people
trying to push back on this butthe traditional structures not
(10:49):
only don't, you know, encouragepeople to develop the path, a
sort of approach, but it almosthampers it.
I'm reminded of this researcherfrom Boston College that did a
longitudinal study over decadesand she tracked valedictorians
and salutatorians from highschool and what like.
I cracked up because I was thesalutatorian of my high school,
(11:09):
I definitely like, played thegame, you know, and I did it
with cynicism but neverthelessright.
What I was being trained to dowas exactly what you're saying.
I jumped through hoops and Iwas really, really good at
jumping through hoops.
She said those people aren'tthe ones that make life, you
know, world alteringcontributions like they do find,
like, demographically, theirincomes are high, they're able
(11:31):
to, kind of, and this, you mayargue, is going away, right, but
they've had stable, steadylives.
But they, you know, as you lookat the people who you know
start some sort of social causeand change lives for thousands
and millions of people, andentrepreneurs and the people who
are kind of shaping the world.
It oftentimes that crowd isabsent is what she found in this
(11:52):
research, and I thought thatwas.
It's an interesting kind oftouch on what you're saying and
how you're approaching this.
I want, before we dive into whatdo we give people as far as
recommendations, I want to talka little bit about the pace of
change, the speed.
So this is again from yourwebsite, ted, and sorry to be
such a website stalker.
Here we need this is what yousay.
We need to equip our childrenwith skill sets and mindsets
(12:16):
that are essential in a world ofinnovation.
I can't overstate how fastmachine intelligence is
accelerating and you saysomething about please don't be
complacent about this.
The world is changing fasterand faster and faster.
Can you just elaborate on thisa little bit for our listeners?
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Yeah, I feel like I've broken record on this for
quite some time.
Let's take two different wavesof disruption.
So robotics and outsourcingevolved relatively slowly, I'd
say the improvement rate was,you know, 10, 15% a year and
over three to four decades itwiped out thousands of
communities and displacedmillions of people.
Really, they had no fallback,you know, I mean, they don't
(12:55):
just sit at home and they'llscramble to try to keep food on
the table.
But the impact of that whichwe're living with right now was
considerable, widespread andvery consequential.
Ai it's exploding, right.
Things are happening, and youexperts will say I knew this
would happen.
I thought and these are theexperts, these are the people
closest to it will say Ianticipated this happening, but
(13:17):
I thought it would be 10 yearsfrom now, not today.
And I don't think Sam Altman'sright when he says 10x per year
in improvement.
I mean that's, that's stunningbut, I think, it would be fair
to say it's kind of doubling peryear and you know, if you
double per year you're athousand times more capable in a
decade.
So back to what a 17 year old isgoing to deal with.
Without any doubt I mean like Iam not going out on a limb when
(13:41):
I say that when a 17 year oldis 27 years old, machines will
be smarter than the smartesthuman.
So I look at that and I say isthis not something of a signal
to schools that say maybe weshould do something different,
that maybe preparing kids forthe industrial age might not be
our best move, but I thinkthat's fair to say.
(14:02):
Doubling every year our bestmove?
But I think that's fair to saydoubling every year.
And you just look at it.
I mean like you know two years.
You know if we want to get itwe can.
But I started writing a book twoyears ago on math which I'm
almost done with.
Two years ago, chat GPT, yougive it like add four plus six
plus seven.
You know it didn't often didn'tget that right.
It sort of begged for aninterface to Wolfram Alpha of
(14:23):
photomath or something.
Now you can invoke mathematicalreasoning and you know I can
show it a complex proof and itwill critique that proof or
offer something better.
You know like that's in twoyears.
In four months, it went frombeing the bottom 10% on the
universal bar to the top 10%.
That test was done two yearsago.
If they did that benchmark today, it would be better than
(14:45):
essentially any human on theuniversal bar exam given to
people after four years of highschool, four years of college,
three years of law school, often750K or so of expenses and a
machine's better than what theywere told they needed to be good
at.
And I think that's the keything.
When we hold schools andstudents and teachers
accountable to something that'swhat they will do in school, we
(15:06):
hold them accountable to thesehigh-stakes exams that are
expressly designed to be gradedby a computer, and if a computer
can grade it, a computer can doit.
So essentially, we're futilelychasing what machine
intelligence already does betterthan any human and crushing out
of kids' creativity, curiosity,audacity, leadership agency.
I look at this.
(15:27):
I say why is it?
You know, like it's a podcast,so I will tone down my language,
but this ought to be sounbelievably obvious that
schools would change today asfast as they did in March of
2020.
When COVID hit.
This is way more disruptivethan COVID and they're not.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Do you get a response that's like no, we disagree.
Or do you just get sort of ablank stare?
I mean, so you've worked withthe late Sir Ken Robinson who's
like famous for this right.
He's been saying these messages, and I think he's like schools
would show his video, right?
They would say here, this iswhat should matter, and yet you
know the big changes don'thappen.
So what is it?
Speaker 1 (16:06):
It's actually worse than blank stares or
disagreement.
I actually wish that they weredisagreeing, then we'd have the
basis for a discussion.
They nod their heads, they say,oh, you're so right, but they
don't change.
Right If I've taken away a fewthings from all this time in the
world of education.
But I feel like people in theworld of education and that's
teachers and administrators andlegislators, and you know, on
(16:29):
and on and on they love to talkabout change.
They love to say, yeah, thiswould be really great.
It's very difficult to changeand there's just a whole set of
constraints, including collegeadmissions, including the high
stakes exams that states use todetermine who can graduate from
high school, including parentexpectations, teacher training,
embedded lessons, purchasetextbooks.
(16:51):
All these things are like onegigantic black hole, sucking the
whole system back intosomething that I think has quite
tragic ramifications.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Fascinating, garrett, let's talk about.
You know it wasn't that longago you were in high school and
college and in this age groupWill you talk about just?
You know what you see as thereal world and even you know you
could make comparisons betweenhow that world has changed since
the world that you encountered.
I would also love you don'ttalk publicly very much about
your sort of pre-Sora story, butyou've.
(17:24):
You've been entrepreneurial,you've been this you know, go
out, figure it out.
I think you studied computerscience.
You've done these things thatyou know.
I think Ted would have said belike Garrett, you know that
that's one example of how toapproach life after high school.
Can you just kind of talk alittle bit about your path and
then maybe reflect on how that's?
(17:44):
You know, that world that youencountered is changing around
you?
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Okay deal, you give me too much credit, but I'll
share a few thoughts.
I went to high school in areally interesting moment in the
twenties, right when laptopswere entering the classroom.
We were the first kids to getyou know all of our textbooks
online.
But what came with that is arealization that, oh my goodness
, I have YouTube and KhanAcademy and Coursera and all
(18:07):
these things at my fingertipsand for some reason, the
teachers and the administratorsand everyone are showing up and
doing the exact same thing theydid for the last 30, 40 years in
some case.
But to me, even as a youngperson, it was unbelievably
clear Okay, if the world's bestlectures are online, what is the
purpose of school?
(18:28):
Like, my teacher is clearlyacting as if education was a
content problem, but I have aproof right here that it's not
right.
So what is the purpose ofeducation?
And as a young person, thisradicalized me in interesting
directions.
I've certainly evolved sincethen, but the immediate takeaway
of this was was so now I moveschools a lot and I did not
respect my high school much, soI just said, okay, I'm going to
(18:50):
completely blow this off, andthey're silly enough to give me
a laptop in the classroom, soI'm just going to do whatever
the heck I want on that.
That was mostly coding andstudying physics when I was a
teenager.
I'm going to do whatever theheck I want during the school
day because I'm just going tocram Khan Academy and stuff
right before midterms, whateverright.
So I fell into this cadence andI absolutely could study much,
(19:11):
much, much faster using thesetools, and you can imagine how a
student like Garrett would feelwith these AI tools.
And then this continued atGeorgia Tech.
I went to this tech school.
I was told it was an amazingprogram.
I thought I finally made it outof the old world education
system and I was greeted withperhaps an even I love Georgia
(19:32):
Tech, I love, you know butperhaps even less thoughtful
system.
Pedagogically.
They, despite being a techschool, were not leveraging any
of these tools.
Professors were showing uplecturing, and it was that right
.
So I just had this realization.
I was always this sci-fi kid.
I was always, you know, verybookish.
I love thinking about how theworld ought to move, and this
(19:53):
just kind of disillusioned me,if I, you know, there's no
secret sauce here that I don'talready have in my back pocket
that I need to wait to acquirebefore I really make the changes
that I want to see in the world.
So I started treating collegelike I was on scholarship, so
like a free room and free,amazing friends and lifestyle
(20:13):
and as long as I got good enoughgrades to keep my scholarship.
This is kind of my junior andsenior year.
I was just going to try to makea change.
I was going to try to do thesethings and treat this as a
socially acceptable on-ramp todoing things, and I was quickly
confronted with the reality thatit's kind of like that joke no
(20:34):
one knows that you're a dog onthe internet Like that's kind of
how solving problems feels.
So I was this super small,skinny, 19 year old, 20 year old
, showing up talking abouteducation.
I first did this educationnon-profit and parents if you
really try to understand theirproblem, leverage technology,
lead with a lot of empathy.
(20:54):
They don't.
You are also a child.
You just solve a problem andyou'll see the world kind of
open up to you.
Long story short, that's whatled to Sora and I think that
sort of mindset.
You already have all the toolsthat you need to become top
0.01% in whatever interests you.
(21:15):
What you now need is agencyright.
So cultivating agency is aquestion about motivation and
accountability and value systemsand worldview, and that's the
question that I really think weought to be talking about as
educators, not content delivery,which is important and those
things are imbued in contentdelivery but it is a consequence
(21:35):
of much more importantquestions ahead of that.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
So I expected you to go in a modern direction with
that agency.
I mean you're talking this isancient wisdom kind of stuff.
I mean I quote Plutarch all thetime right, and this idea that
if you take a paradigm oflighting a fire and the paradigm
of pouring water into a cup,the actions that you would do
for each of those paradigms arelike mutually exclusive.
Like pouring water on the firekills the fire, it's the worst
(22:02):
thing you could possibly do andthat's basically you know
systemically happening.
And I think what you're sayingis, if you want kids to take
agency, definitely don't likemake them sit down quietly and
still and just keep talking atthem and giving them homework
assignments that they don't careabout, like for years and years
and years.
I mean you talk aboutradicalization.
I mean it sounds like you sawthis really as a student, first
(22:24):
in high school and then and thenin college.
Speaker 4 (22:26):
Yeah, absolutely, and we still see this with.
I was actually having thisconversation with some
entrepreneur friends last night,but it feels like there is this
subtle change in your mindbecoming an entrepreneur and,
honestly, this is what this iskind of.
What separates a lot of thesuccessful kind of pre-seed
stage founders and theunsuccessful.
(22:48):
There's a lot of market forcesand luck, to be clear, but what
seems to be a difference is thislike rubric mentality that
people bring, rather than thisauthenticity, and I certainly
had to unlearn this in my firstfew years of entrepreneurship.
But what I mean by rubricfollowing, it's almost like you
are like what would anentrepreneur do in this moment?
(23:10):
Right, it's like you're tryingto get a four out of four on the
rubric.
Oh, I think they would.
You know, what would Zuckerbergdo, right Versus what is the
real problem in front of me?
It's like it's like a bar, thereal world, like a bar fight,
right.
Like what do I grab this chairleg?
Do I?
I don't know, but like whatshould I actually do in this
moment that helps the person infront of me?
(23:31):
That's the mindset and that'ssomething that kids just simply
do not practice in traditionalschools.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Do you think it's because they don't feel like
they're allowed to, or is itbecause they don't know how to?
Or some combination of thosetwo things?
Speaker 4 (23:45):
I'm curious what Tess say about this, but I just
think it's a total, a totallydifferent frame from what
students feel.
The project of education islike you alluded to this, this
hopping through the hoops orwhatever you said, versus make
something awesome, right, followinstructions.
Jump through hoops becauseadults said so and it's the
broccoli you need to eat.
Versus here's a nebulousproblem in front of you and do
(24:07):
something cool with it.
It's just a totally differentapproach and mentality.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
We expressly train kids to be followers.
I mean that's the whole pointof the education model.
I mean in the industrial erawhat you wanted was a workforce
of followers, and so think aboutit.
I mean that's the entirety ofschool.
Here is your assignment, do it.
And that's why educators are soparanoid about AI is because
you can take that assignment andput it in ChatGPT and you'll
(24:36):
get something.
But you look at deep researchwith chat GPT.
I mean if anybody hasn't playedaround with that, you know you
can take any assignment ofschool, give it to chat GPT and
it will in, you know, no longer12 seconds.
I mean deep research can take10 minutes or so, but it'll come
back with something better thanthan an Ivy League magna cum
laude could produce, right, andand so.
(24:57):
So think about it.
Put yourself in the shoes of akid.
So the teacher says here's yourassignment.
How does it go for the kid thatsays you know, I don't think
that makes any sense.
Here's what I think we shoulddo.
I mean that's not going to giveyou an A, that's going to be a
troublemaker, right, and it'snot.
I want to be sympathetic to theplight of the teacher.
I think teachers, given trustand support, would actually love
(25:20):
to have more kids.
That would say, you know, Idon't really, tactfully,
politely, I think we could dosomething more interesting.
The problem is when you're heldaccountable to test scores.
You know, think about teachingan AP course, right, you want
those kids to take that exam andto get the highest possible
scores.
And so you'll see things likeyou know, the sprint through AP
(25:40):
US history, where these teachers, you know, not by their choice
essentially say no time forquestions in this course.
You know, if we have I mean,you know, I wish I were laughing
this is true.
You know, we don't have timefor questions.
We can't go down anythingyou're really interested in,
because we've got to get from1491 to the present day in 180
(26:01):
class periods.
And if we don't, not only mightthe kids score worse, I
actually think they wouldprobably score better if they
were occasionally taking deepdives into things.
But if they don't covereverything I've seen this too
many times if I don't covereverything and the kid gets a
bad score, what do they say totheir parents?
There were things on the testwe didn't cover.
(26:23):
What do the parents do?
They go to the school and sayhow can you let my kid down?
You didn't cover what was onthe test, so they're caught in
this vicious trap that sayscover content, sprint through it
.
Knowing that kids won't retainit.
Knowing kids will find itimmensely boring.
Knowing it's the mostsuperficial of all courses and
(26:47):
in the process, it is.
Here's what you need to study.
Here's what you need tomemorize.
Here are the formulaic essaysyou need to be able to write to
get a good grade to get a four,get a five, and so it's just
baked in.
But as I say, I mean think aboutthe people you've worked with,
people in your family, people inyour community.
We admire the people who willsay you know, here's what I
(27:09):
think we could do.
I mean, that's who you want towork with.
I mean, assuming that they layout something sensible, here's
what I think we should do andit's really well thought out.
That is 0% of school.
And when we create an entiregeneration of give me my
assignment and I will carry itout, and at the same time,
machine intelligence is alreadybetter than the best human at
(27:30):
that, and getting better by theminute.
To me that spells titanic levelcatastrophe.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
I'm reminded of.
Maybe we take a historicaldetour for just a minute, but
for me, you know, garrett hadKhan Academy, I had calculators,
right.
The TI-85 calculator was thislike powerhouse thing that could
graph, you know complexfunctions and you could even
program it a little bit.
There were things you could do,but I mean, I would say 90% of
what I was given on tests and ofcourse the tests were no
(27:58):
calculator and I'm an honestperson, so I like obeyed the
rules, but it was like you'rejust asking me to like be a
better calculator and it seemedkind of pointless to you know,
if it really is about computingthings, I'm really thrilled to
see math evolving over time.
Like, I think the response tothat, that insight, was that,
okay, what should we be asking?
(28:18):
And you know, I think you seethis over decades Maybe we could
ask the student to think aboutthe logical steps or apply these
concepts, mathematical concepts, to the world around them,
maybe get some deeperunderstanding.
I know parents complain aboutthis and you know that all
happens, but I think overall, ifyou're asking a human to be
(28:40):
better than a machine, uh, youknow it's, it's like kind of a
losing battle for everybody andpointless, I think we, we just
feel that in our bones.
So I'd love to hear yeah, Idon't know if you guys, you know
, had insights from the, thecalculator days, or you could
even go to the oh, I, I can, Ican one-up everybody, because I
go back to the slide rule days.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Oh, let's do it.
You know, but education when Iwent to school was relatively
low stakes.
There was less of an obsessionand chase for colleges.
The acceptance rates at eventhe most exclusive colleges were
often more than 50%.
You know, like we had no testprep.
I don't even remember doing muchhomework in high school, but we
(29:19):
did have slide rules and theslide rules weren't baked into
high stakes exams.
Had they been, kids wouldprobably still be using slide
rules today, but the problemwith it, you know, it's really.
I think it's fair to say thestory of US education is we
teach what's easy to test, notwhat's important to learn.
And so these one right answer,little math micro tidbits are
(29:42):
like the perfect questions foran ABCD exam.
And if you let somebody usephoto math on their phone, you
know game over, right.
You just show your camera overevery problem in the SAT and it
gives you the answer.
Or put it into chat GPT, itgives you the answer.
So we keep testing this stuffbecause it can be scored by a
computer and ignore the factthat it can be done by a
(30:03):
computer.
So I've got this new book.
I'll be brief on it, but thisbook on the math ideas that
matter, comma, which are nevertaught in school, and over and
over again I'll talk to thesepeople.
How many people reallyunderstand the difference
between correlation andcausation?
How many people reallyunderstand the difference
between correlation andcausation?
How many people reallyunderstand what a margin of
(30:25):
error is and when it's grosslyoverstated.
So today, good example.
I'll date this a bit, but thejobs report came out.
It was like 229,000 jobs.
I have a section in my book itwasn't quite 229,000.
I picked another, more recentjobs report.
But let's just stick with that229,000 plus or minus 1.2
million.
But nobody writes a story thatsays the error bars on this are
(30:47):
massive, right, because you know, think about that, this massive
sprawling US economy.
And they're reporting thenumber of jobs, the net jobs, by
the way, right?
So millions of new jobs created, millions of jobs go away.
You're subtracting them and nowyou're presenting the nearest
1,000.
Yeah, you know it'spreposterous, right, but the
(31:09):
markets you know like, and theseare not dumb people, these are
financial traders, these arereporters who lock in and assume
229,000 must be fairly precisebecause it's reported to the
nearest 1,000.
That sounds precise.
When you actually look for thestory behind the number, you
realize the error bars aregigantic Wow.
And I just look at this and Isay the ideas are.
(31:30):
You know every single chapterhas something done with
elementary school kids.
If young kids, old kids, youknow age 10 to 100, you can
understand.
The ideas Define our lives andthey're used to manipulate and
persuade us, take us in thewrong directions.
We spend 0% of our time on theideas in school and 100% on the
low-level rope crap that yourphone does perfectly in a way
(31:55):
that punishes millions.
I think math is a poster childfor failed priorities in the
United States of America.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Well, ted, I'm excited to read the book.
It sounds fascinating.
I know you guys have both kindof done, you've been involved in
innovative work and I would saythere's two pieces Everybody
I've met that's trying toinnovate in education whether
they do like me and Garrett,where we sort of start something
that's an alternative toregular school or they're inside
of regular school and they're,you know, fighting the good
(32:24):
fight.
They're out there, you know,pushing for things.
There's kind of two things thatyou have to deal with, and
we've been talking a lot aboutone of them, which is the actual
pedagogy.
Like what do you do instead?
How do you adapt?
How can you make sure thatthese skills that actually are
going to help, you know, arecarried forward?
And then, how does that?
You know, garrett, in my casewe don't have to deal with this
(32:45):
as much because we're operatingprivately outside.
But how does that interfacewith what statute says?
You know the state legislatorsand the department of education
and these different regulationsand the tests that you have to
report?
So there's the educationinnovation side of it and that
friction.
I want to kind of swing it backaround and say I don't know
(33:05):
what your estimate is on this.
My estimate from talking toinnovators that are trying to do
this from inside.
They say as much as theycomplain about their internal
friction and having to convincethe assistant superintendent to
let them do something innovative.
They also have to convince theparents, and it's almost equal
in magnitude.
It really brings me back to thisneed for a rethink, a change of
(33:28):
hearts and minds.
Can you talk a little bit aboutjust how do we, how do we do
that?
How do we change parents'hearts and minds?
I mean, you guys are bothheavily involved in writing and
speaking and communicating.
I would love to see your voicesamplified and that's part of
the goal that we're even havingthis conversation.
But what do we do to helpparents?
Just shake out of some?
I don't think it'smalintentioned, I think it's
(33:49):
just.
This is what I know.
Anyway, give me, give methoughts on that.
Speaker 4 (33:57):
I think just super quickly I'll question the
premise a little bit.
I think it's an inappropriategrouping of different desires.
The traditional educationsystem is, definitionally, one
size fits all and there areadvantages of that, and you know
the importance of securing ahigh quality education for
everyone, extremely sympatheticto this.
It's the backbone of ourcivilization.
However, education, especiallyas you get into the older years,
(34:19):
it's downstream values,worldview, community relevance,
proclivities of the individualchild, relevance proclivities of
the individual child, like it'sjust.
You cannot design the perfecteducation on paper because it's
the interface of like sixdifferent human things.
So I think what you're reallyhearing in these classrooms is
(34:44):
the 30% of noisiest families whoare against any given decision,
and that's not predictably thesame 30% of families.
And that's because we don'tallow parents to have any agency
in aligning their educationalpreferences with funding right.
So not to make this a politicalopinion, you actually would not
be able to extrapolate that andprobably understand my politics
(35:05):
around education.
But we have to let parents optinto things that they feel
culturally aligned with andwilling to valorize it and
celebrate success for theirchild, embodying the values
implicit in that education.
I think that is hugely missingnow and you probably won't fix
that problem until we allow moreopt-in aspects of education.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
So it all goes back to agency, you're saying, but in
this case now we're talkingabout the parents' agency.
Well, it's like learning.
Speaker 4 (35:34):
education is like going to the gym, and if I don't
really feel the value of thisand this extreme effort, if I
just feel like it's somethingsomeone told me to do, I'm
probably not going to give myall and push through those final
three reps of the set.
I'm sorry I'm beating theanalogy a bit, but I'm not going
(35:54):
to do the thing that actuallymakes me get out what I'm
supposed to get out right.
Education is very similar, soyou have to align it with values
.
You have to make people feel byit.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
You know, having spent a dozen years throwing my
body and a bunch of other thingsat this to try to convince
parents, I now know I can'tconvince parents.
Sir Ken couldn't convinceparents.
I think the very sobering butpowerful thing that will
convince parents is that overthe next five years, all the
kids that did everything right,that jumped through every hoop,
that are graduating fromselective colleges, are going to
(36:28):
find themselves unable to get ajob, and it pains me to say
that.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
I hope I'm wrong.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
I am completely certain I'm right, and we're
already seeing who wants to hirea college graduate to do what
Chachi Piti does for $20 a month, and you know it's not that the
job goes away entirely, butwhat used to take 20 interns is
now done by a couple peopleusing AI, and know it's not that
the job goes away entirely, butwhat used to take 20 interns is
now done by a couple peopleusing AI, and so it's massive.
It's like a 10x compression inthe class of jobs that college
(36:58):
grads used to just flood, and soyou're going to see the career
services offices having skinnierand skinnier books.
You're going to see more andmore kids saying I don't get, I
did everything.
Families say we did everythingright.
You know, we spent a ton ofmoney, we broke our relationship
with our kid, we pushed them todo everything right, and that
word gets around.
Do I wish we had anticipated?
(37:19):
Do we wish that we had realizedthat was going to happen
instead of dealt with the factthat it is happening?
Absolutely, I've tried, and I'mnot the only one.
Like Ken bless his heart, youknow, as you know, he died in
2020, would share the same thing.
You know they all nod.
They all think this may.
Yes, of course schools killcreativity, of course we
shouldn't do that.
(37:39):
But I think parents and I'm aparent right, and so when we
started the school journey yearsago, I was risk averse,
trusting the system, thinking itwould do good things for my
kids.
And fortunately I came to therealization it's not only not
going to do good things, it'sgoing to, it's going to do quite
damaging things.
And so I was able to, with thatperspective, go rogue with them
(38:01):
, kind of get the most of thegood things out of school.
I didn't know, you know SOARdidn't exist.
Then I have to put in a bit of aplug, because two things here.
One, garrett is incredibly, youknow, I mean, he's inspiring to
me, he's an outlier beyond alloutliers, you know, like the
number of 26-year-olds thatwould take on this mission and
(38:21):
do the kinds of things he'sdoing.
But also he's thought thisthrough incredibly well.
You know, we were trading notesthe other day and I said, like
Sora is, like you know, afull-featured iPhone 16, and
schools are still clunky,landlines with switchboard
operators.
And so I think you're seeing andit's the story of education,
it's the story of my book whatSchool Could Be Pockets, you
(38:43):
know, nooks and crannies wherepeople are doing incredible
things in a universe where toomuch of what's going on is
obsolete, and what I worry aboutfrom a civil society point of
view is that balance will tellthe tale.
The more kids that are on theright side of AI, the more
educators are following in thefootsteps of Sora, the better we
(39:03):
have a chance of preservingholding things together, and the
more we are playing out in fiveyears what played out in 30 to
40 years, with robots replacingphysical labor jobs.
It's a chilling prospect.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Yeah Well, let's use that as a chance to change gears
here for our last littlesegment of our conversation.
This has been amazing and I'mreally impressed with both of
you, the passion and energy youbring to this cause and speaking
truth.
I mean, I think you, you areright that sometimes we're going
to say it and say it untilwe're blue in the face and, um,
you know, eventually there mightbe a sense that you know like,
(39:38):
oh, I wish I had listened to Ted, but let's, let's do the, uh,
let's do the final segment,which is advice.
So I've got kids that are 20,17, 15, and 13.
So those are the ages of myfour children, and I want this
as practical as you can.
I give them my advice, but Iwant advice from each of you.
(39:58):
What would you be telling thosekids as you look ahead at this
rapidly evolving world that'sgoing to help them be?
You know, and you don't knowthem, so it's hard to give
anything personal, but I thinkthat's actually useful in this
construct, because there's a lotof people listening that you
don't know either.
And so what are the generalizedbits that you can take out of
what you would tell a youngperson that's preparing to enter
(40:18):
the world.
And, garrett, I'll have you gofirst on this one, and then, and
then ted, and we'll, we'll wrapup sure I'll be intentionally
crude and hopefully this doesn'tcome across as overly cynical.
Speaker 4 (40:27):
I think kids should try to make money.
I think there's somethingsobering about you're not just
trying to go solve a problem,you are trying to solve a
problem.
Well enough that another humanopens their wallet and gives you
their hard-earned money as ashow and a sign that you improve
their life right.
And I think, circling back tomy comment about agency, it
(40:51):
comes down to looking around theworld, leading with your
empathy, understanding humansand their plight, and
understanding the humancondition, especially for those
you love, and try to make animpact, whatever tools you have
at your disposal.
And I like the frame that Iread recently, which I think is
more accurate than most takes,that what AI is going to let you
(41:12):
do is do any job decently wellas an individual right.
It's going to become likesingle-player innovation a bit,
where you have an infinite deckof mid-stage designers and
engineers, yada, yada, at yourdisposal.
So I just encourage people withthat mindset, with the mindset
of agency just go out there.
Try to make a big enoughdifference that someone wants to
(41:35):
give you money to say thank you.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
Such a clear, beautiful frame.
I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
You know I build on that.
I think America's locked in onthis false choice career versus
academics.
And we have a new film comingout It'll be out in a couple of
months called Multiple Choice,where we feature a school,
public school that's elevatedhands-on skills, elevated
career-based education, so thatkids at a high school are
spending about a third of theirtime over the four years so not
(42:03):
a little bit, but about a thirdof their time over four years
diving into career-basededucation.
Traditional economy of skills,new economy skills, but also in
some ways, a mini version ofnational service, because
instead of the AP kids onlyinteracting with the AP kids and
the mainstream kids onlyinteracting with the mainstream
kids, and the last chance careerand technical education kids
(42:24):
sent off on a bus, everybodycomes together, respects each
other's skills.
So I'm with Garrett.
You know like it's.
You know we can't look down ournose at the ability to support
yourself, doing something you'repassionate about and being able
to make ends meet.
I mean like, is that the onlything?
And I know Garrett's not sayingthat's the only thing, but
(42:44):
should that be something aboutit?
You know like I give this.
I'm a guest lecturer at awell-known college with seniors
and every year I ask seniors ifschools shut down tomorrow
morning and career servicesoffices disappeared everywhere,
how many of you are already sogood at something you know you
could create your own careerpath, doing something you enjoy
and support yourself?
(43:05):
Out of 100 kids it's typicallytwo or three, not 70 or 80.
And that's after 16 years ofschool.
But back to the advice forparents.
The main thing I put in frontof any parent is think five
times from Sunday before youwage war on your kid to make
them try to do whatever it takesto get a slightly better GPA.
(43:26):
I see that over and over andover again and I can tell
parents the GPA doesn't change.
The relationship goes to heckand your kid will feel terrible
about what they're doing and youknow so.
Take a deep breath right.
You know like sometimes the kidthat goes rogue actually is the
one who gets into the moreselective college, because
(43:48):
college admissions officers arepretty darn good at sniffing out
the micromanaged kid.
So you could be doing the wholething.
I love this one so many times.
After I give a talk, parentwill come up with a child in the
spring.
They will say, ted, you knowwe'd love your advice.
You know we did everything right.
We took 12 AP courses.
Our GPA was 4.91.
(44:09):
We did all theseextracurricular activities, blah
, blah, blah, blah blah, and wedidn't get into any of our top
choice colleges.
And I say, you know, I thinkone of the problems is you were
applying to colleges that werejust accepting your child and
not both of you.
You need to look for a collegethat takes, because clearly
you're a team, right.
You need a college that takesboth the parent and child, and
(44:36):
that was your mistake.
But that kid is always lookingso unhappy.
You know.
The other thing is justwhatever.
Push, encourage, co-learn withyour kid, dive into artificial
intelligence.
You know we use this.
Will sound crazy, right, but mywife and I, when we have dinner
, almost always have chat gpt onthe table with the voice
activated and we'll just turnand say you know like, instead
(44:58):
of debating for 20 minutes.
You know when did the vikingsfirst come to north america?
You know like, whatever whichis hey, by the way you know like
, when did this happen?
Tell me more about this.
I had a friend this, I thought,was telling one of my best
friends is a total tech techhead.
I mean, he's really, reallysmart.
He's on the, the originaldigital shopping cart patent.
He called me one day.
He's driving, he grew up in andhas family in West Virginia.
(45:19):
He calls me going from WestVirginia to Boston.
He said you know, I just had aseven hour conversation with
chat GPT just went on and onBecause you know, artificial
intelligence is the ultimatecuriosity machine.
Ask it a question, it tells yousomething.
Ask a follow-up, ask afollow-up, ask a follow.
You know it will.
It brings out so manyinteresting things.
(45:41):
So I just said your kids, youknow like you could either do,
you know, like this activity youhave no interest in doing
because somebody thinks it wouldlook better to do a college
admissions officer, or do KhanAcademy or Kaplan test prep or
some other baloney to try to geta better test score.
Or, hey, what would you like tocreate and invent this month
Using AI?
Do something cool.
What would be a great thing todo.
(46:02):
And, to Garrett's point, findan organization in your
community where you can identifyan opportunity to help them be
better.
Use AI, create something, giveit to them, Get them to give you
a customer testimonial and thenspend your summer being
entrepreneurial and approachingother organizations and say I
can do this for you for $250.
Like, that's what I do.
(46:23):
You know, like that, if I werea parent I'd be like, hey,
school may not change.
I could be.
I beat my head against thatcinder block wall a long time.
My head is beaten tosmithereens.
The cinder block wall doesn'tchange, unless you're willing to
move to Sora, which I'drecommend.
You know you've got these extrahours.
(46:44):
You can just say to your kidyou need to pile more of the
same on, hoping they'll have anincrementally better chance to
get into college as you destroytheir mental health and ruin
your relationship.
Or you can just take a deepbreath and say you know, like 10
years from now people are goingto be asking how good are you
at AI, not where you went tocollege.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
Well, you heard it here first.
This is amazing insights andadvice and I appreciate you both
.
Thanks for sharing ideas forparents and kids and thanks for
the conversation.
It's been illuminating to me.
Thanks for the great work youguys are doing.
We'll put links to Ted'supcoming book and movie in the
notes, if I can get them fromyou, ted, and then Garrett,
(47:24):
we'll put a link to Sora Schoolso people know what we're
talking about.
We'll also link back to theprevious episode.
This is the Garrett's the firstrepeat visitor on the Prenda
podcast.
So congratulations on beingback again and, ted, thanks for
being here with us.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
By the way, appropriately, it's the first
repeat, but also, by the way,thanks for what you're doing.
It's really inspiring, so Ithink we're all grateful for
your fantastic work.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
It's a great time to be changing things for kids and
just really appreciate knowingyou both.
So, thank you and, with that,have a great day everybody.
Speaker 3 (47:55):
The Kindled podcast is brought to you by Prenda.
Prenda makes it easy to startand run an amazing micro school
based on all the ideas we talkabout here on the Kindled
podcast.
Don't forget to follow us onsocial media at Prenda Learn,
and if you'd like moreinformation about starting a
micro school, just go toPrendacom.
The bad news and I think it's quite bad is that
school trains that out of kids.
If you think about the highwatermark in education, we push
kids to be good at exactly whatchat GPT does perfectly.
So I think simply marchingalong and trusting it will all
work out is a huge mistake.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Hello, welcome to the Kindled Podcast.
I'm your host, kelly Smith.
Today we're going to be talkingto Ted Denturesmith and Garrett
Smiley.
These two have been involved inrethinking education in a
number of ways, both within andwithout the system.
Today, we're going to befocusing on advice we'd give to
(00:37):
kids and parents as they thinkabout the end of high school and
moving on to the great beyond,in the real world.
It's an exciting conversation.
We'll have talking about allkinds of things, from the role
of AI and transforming thefuture, what types of jobs are
available, what skills andabilities kids should be working
on and developing, and howschool as we know it and the
institutions themselves aretrying to and, in some cases,
(01:00):
falling short from succeeding inmeeting these needs.
So I'm excited for theconversation.
Before we jump in, let me tellyou a little bit about Ted and
Garrett.
Ted Dintersmith is a changeagent focused on the impact of
education and innovation in thefuture of civil society.
His professional backgroundspans technology,
entrepreneurship and publicpolicy.
(01:21):
He was ranked by Business 2.0as the top performing us venture
capitalist for 1995 through1999.
In 2012, president obamaappointed him to represent our
country at the united nationsgeneral assembly.
He's been the executiveproducer of several films that
have premiered at sundance,including the acclaimed most
likely to succeed.
Ted's most recent book, whatschool could be?
(01:41):
Insights and inspiration fromTeachers Across America, is
based on an immersive trip hetook to all 50 states during a
single school year.
In 2018, he received NEA'sprestigious Friend of Education
Award.
Ted earned a PhD in engineeringfrom Stanford and an
undergraduate degree from theCollege of William Mary, with
high honors in physics andEnglish.
When he's not visiting schools,he lives in Charleston, south
(02:03):
Carolina, and Garrett Smiley.
Garrett Smiley is the co-founderof Sora Schools, an education
startup based in Atlanta.
Sora is a virtual project-basedhigh school where students
explore their interests learn,however, is best for them and
gain exposure to future careersand fields of work.
Prior to Sora, garrettco-founded a charity which built
wells in developing nations,called Drops of Love.
(02:24):
Garrett also directed auniversity startup incubator
called Core Founders at GeorgiaTech and started an education
nonprofit that worked withfoster children to develop
financial literacy, called Flip.
Garrett studied computerscience at Georgia Tech.
Garrett also worked as aventure partner at Contrary
Capital, where he scouted,invested in and mentored
startups in the Atlantic area.
(02:44):
Okay, I'm excited to start.
Let's jump in.
Okay, welcome to the Prendapodcast.
We're excited to be talkinghere with Garrett Smiley and Ted
Dintersmith.
Thanks guys for being here.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Fantastic to be here, yeah thanks.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Well, I want to just dive right in.
So we're going to be talkingtoday about people women at
roughly the age 17.
At this moment in the historyof the world, I mean, you're
experiencing a you know, avastly different beyond as you
leave what we've known as highschool.
Many kids are experiencing apretty similar past right up
(03:18):
until that point, and so nowyou're in this moment where I
think there's lots of reallygood questions and really good
discussions we can have.
Ted, I pulled this off yourwebsite and I just want to read
this back to you.
I have insights into the worldour children will live in as
adults and how educationpriorities can foster or
diminish the skills and mindsetskids will need as adults.
(03:39):
So can you talk a little bitabout those insights and just
share thoughts about what areyou seeing in the world beyond?
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Well, first I'd say I'd credit the insights to the
people I was surrounded with for25, 30 years in my technology
business, and that was reallybold entrepreneurs, and the
lesson they taught me is thereis an unlimited number of paths
forward.
Is there is an unlimited numberof paths forward If you have an
entrepreneurial mindset, keenmotivation to learn what you
(04:07):
need to learn and justincredible determination to
accomplish something.
I'd say everything going ontoday works in the favor of bold
, entrepreneurial young adultsand when they read about or hear
about jobs going away and Italk a lot about that they
should understand that there isno shortage of jobs fulfilling
paths they can create.
That's the good news.
(04:27):
The bad news and I think it'squite bad is that school trains
that out of kids.
If you think about the highwatermark in education, we push
kids to be good at exactly whatchat GPT does perfectly.
So I think simply marchingalong and trusting it will all
work out is a huge mistake.
So I think it's really thatpath A versus path B, and
(04:48):
everything I do is directedtoward the goal of opening
people's eyes up Students, youknow, kids, parents, teachers to
path A, because path A is noteven a dead end, far worse than
a dead end.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Garrett, you talk to a lot of parents.
I mean, path A soundsterrifying.
Can you talk a little bit aboutjust what I know Ted's kind of
giving this?
There's sort of a tried andtrue Path B that everybody's
become accustomed to and Path Areally says be this some sort of
entity and then go out andsolve the problems or identify
your own curriculum and makeyour own.
(05:23):
You know, can you talk a littlebit about you?
Guys are doing this at ayounger age with SOAR schools
and I just want to share whatyou're seeing from parents and
how they're facing that realityas they think about this.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
Yeah, absolutely.
I think parents are in variousstages of waking up to this
insight.
Ted and I were talking a coupleof weeks ago.
Just look at the perfectexample of people who followed
the prescribed path in front ofthem, went all the way to
Harvard Business School in thiscase and they're.
They have the it's at least alocal minima, historically low
(05:56):
job placement rates, right.
And if these students who whotrusted that path, that social
contract we thought we had, andare not getting anywhere close
to what they thought waspromised them, imagine the
student who is a couple degreesfrom that level of academic
success.
And I think a lot of parentsare realizing this.
We're hearing with our ownstudents the importance they
(06:19):
find of just going and creatingyour own opportunities, your own
internships, your own whateverit may be.
Just go find opportunitieslocally.
They're really starting to feelthe essential nature of this,
as the jobs that they used towork in the summer or the
opportunities they thought theyhad locally are just drying up
in front of their very eyes.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
It's interesting because I've been watching this
as well and I'm reminded, by theway, of just to throw a book
recommendation in here I don'tknow if you guys have read.
It's called the Startup of you.
This is Reid Hoffman, theLinkedIn founder, and Ben
Kuznetsha, and together theysaid look, there's this idea
that you get on this escalatorwhen you're five years old and
the escalator takes you to notonly you know high school
(07:01):
graduation, but collegegraduation, job placement and a
stable, steady career.
That's sort of like all of it'shanded to you.
You just have to get on theescalator and people fight.
I mean, you heard these storiesa few years ago parents sort of
jockeying in position andpaying hefty down payments at
age two to get their kid intothe right prep you know,
preschool in Manhattan at agefour, so that then that leads to
(07:24):
the right.
I mean it's very much anescalator mentality and it does,
by the way, seem to be I don'tknow if you agree with this.
It seems to be particularly badfor the people who are in like
are better off, like the wayyou're talking about Garrett,
where you need these Harvard MBAtypes.
You know, sometimes you wouldthink that those would be maybe
the most willing to take risksor the most willing to do things
(07:45):
differently.
But you know, you almost seethe opposite.
You see those people kind ofdoubling down on the status and
safety of the safety net ofthese escalators.
Any thoughts about who thesepeople are and who are the
people?
Ted, that will do what you'retalking about.
That will look at path A andsay, sure, there's some
uncertainty there, but let's doit.
You know, let's go for it.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Yeah, gary, you want to go first.
You want me to?
Speaker 4 (08:09):
Go ahead.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Okay.
Well, you know, if you want tolook for inspiring points, you
know, just look at Montessorischools.
And there was an article thisgoes back a ways, but it was in
the Wall Street Journal,probably quite Google-able.
But the Montessori mafia, youknow it was Jimmy Wales and
Sergi, you know Brennan, larryPage, and you know I don't know
I mean like, and they all said,despite years of formal
(08:30):
education, by far the bestexperience was Montessori, where
they were supported to go deepwith their passions and learn,
retain what they're learning,master skills.
I mean, this isn't a mystery.
I mean, maria Montessori goesback quite some time.
I think that two things.
One is parents often look atwhat worked for them and assume
(08:52):
that that's what will work fortheir kids.
And everything that I saidabout jumping through hoops I
would not have said that 40years ago.
40 years ago, jumping throughhoops was really a good way to
move forward.
It's not that it was badforever in time.
It worked for a long period,but that period is over and
what's hard for parents to do isto say wait a minute.
(09:12):
It's a totally different world,because not only is that period
over, but the stakes we put onhoop jumping have actually
escalated, and so you findparents just obsessing about you
know which.
You know you look at the VarsityBlues scandal.
I mean like parents going tocrazy lengths to try to get
their kid into USC or somethingyou know it's like what are you
(09:35):
doing?
Have you totally lost your mind?
And I give a lot of talks toparents and I always say to them
you can, you know like you cando this.
You can wage a 12-, 14-,16-year war with your kid to get
them to be the perfect kid andwhat you're going to end up with
is a kid with a lot of mentalhealth challenges, a broken
parent-child relationship and,most likely these days, a kid
(09:59):
that walks into a dead end.
Do you still want to do that,just to be able to go to the
cocktail party and say, well, mykid got into X and I don't
think their kid did so well.
In that it's like thecompetition breeds competition,
right, the people that areinvestment bankers and
consultants and everything.
It's an uber competitive group,and so they gravitate toward
(10:19):
competing on whatever is attheir fingertips and kids and
their success in school is avery compelling and attractive
competitive metric for thatcrowd.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Well, we've put it on a single dimensional track
right, which we love, and givenit a scorecard, which we also
love, and so then it's very easy, easy to see.
Now, what's interesting is Ithink you made this point
already, ted that not only doesschool, as the traditional
structures and institutional Iknow there are great people
trying to push back on this butthe traditional structures not
(10:49):
only don't, you know, encouragepeople to develop the path, a
sort of approach, but it almosthampers it.
I'm reminded of this researcherfrom Boston College that did a
longitudinal study over decadesand she tracked valedictorians
and salutatorians from highschool and what like.
I cracked up because I was thesalutatorian of my high school,
(11:09):
I definitely like, played thegame, you know, and I did it
with cynicism but neverthelessright.
What I was being trained to dowas exactly what you're saying.
I jumped through hoops and Iwas really, really good at
jumping through hoops.
She said those people aren'tthe ones that make life, you
know, world alteringcontributions like they do find,
like, demographically, theirincomes are high, they're able
(11:31):
to, kind of, and this, you mayargue, is going away, right, but
they've had stable, steadylives.
But they, you know, as you lookat the people who you know
start some sort of social causeand change lives for thousands
and millions of people, andentrepreneurs and the people who
are kind of shaping the world.
It oftentimes that crowd isabsent is what she found in this
(11:52):
research, and I thought thatwas.
It's an interesting kind oftouch on what you're saying and
how you're approaching this.
I want, before we dive into whatdo we give people as far as
recommendations, I want to talka little bit about the pace of
change, the speed.
So this is again from yourwebsite, ted, and sorry to be
such a website stalker.
Here we need this is what yousay.
We need to equip our childrenwith skill sets and mindsets
(12:16):
that are essential in a world ofinnovation.
I can't overstate how fastmachine intelligence is
accelerating and you saysomething about please don't be
complacent about this.
The world is changing fasterand faster and faster.
Can you just elaborate on thisa little bit for our listeners?
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Yeah, I feel like I've broken record on this for
quite some time.
Let's take two different wavesof disruption.
So robotics and outsourcingevolved relatively slowly, I'd
say the improvement rate was,you know, 10, 15% a year and
over three to four decades itwiped out thousands of
communities and displacedmillions of people.
Really, they had no fallback,you know, I mean, they don't
(12:55):
just sit at home and they'llscramble to try to keep food on
the table.
But the impact of that whichwe're living with right now was
considerable, widespread andvery consequential.
Ai it's exploding, right.
Things are happening, and youexperts will say I knew this
would happen.
I thought and these are theexperts, these are the people
closest to it will say Ianticipated this happening, but
(13:17):
I thought it would be 10 yearsfrom now, not today.
And I don't think Sam Altman'sright when he says 10x per year
in improvement.
I mean that's, that's stunningbut, I think, it would be fair
to say it's kind of doubling peryear and you know, if you
double per year you're athousand times more capable in a
decade.
So back to what a 17 year old isgoing to deal with.
Without any doubt I mean like Iam not going out on a limb when
(13:41):
I say that when a 17 year oldis 27 years old, machines will
be smarter than the smartesthuman.
So I look at that and I say isthis not something of a signal
to schools that say maybe weshould do something different,
that maybe preparing kids forthe industrial age might not be
our best move, but I thinkthat's fair to say.
(14:02):
Doubling every year our bestmove?
But I think that's fair to saydoubling every year.
And you just look at it.
I mean like you know two years.
You know if we want to get itwe can.
But I started writing a book twoyears ago on math which I'm
almost done with.
Two years ago, chat GPT, yougive it like add four plus six
plus seven.
You know it didn't often didn'tget that right.
It sort of begged for aninterface to Wolfram Alpha of
(14:23):
photomath or something.
Now you can invoke mathematicalreasoning and you know I can
show it a complex proof and itwill critique that proof or
offer something better.
You know like that's in twoyears.
In four months, it went frombeing the bottom 10% on the
universal bar to the top 10%.
That test was done two yearsago.
If they did that benchmark today, it would be better than
(14:45):
essentially any human on theuniversal bar exam given to
people after four years of highschool, four years of college,
three years of law school, often750K or so of expenses and a
machine's better than what theywere told they needed to be good
at.
And I think that's the keything.
When we hold schools andstudents and teachers
accountable to something that'swhat they will do in school, we
(15:06):
hold them accountable to thesehigh-stakes exams that are
expressly designed to be gradedby a computer, and if a computer
can grade it, a computer can doit.
So essentially, we're futilelychasing what machine
intelligence already does betterthan any human and crushing out
of kids' creativity, curiosity,audacity, leadership agency.
I look at this.
(15:27):
I say why is it?
You know, like it's a podcast,so I will tone down my language,
but this ought to be sounbelievably obvious that
schools would change today asfast as they did in March of
2020.
When COVID hit.
This is way more disruptivethan COVID and they're not.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Do you get a response that's like no, we disagree.
Or do you just get sort of ablank stare?
I mean, so you've worked withthe late Sir Ken Robinson who's
like famous for this right.
He's been saying these messages, and I think he's like schools
would show his video, right?
They would say here, this iswhat should matter, and yet you
know the big changes don'thappen.
So what is it?
Speaker 1 (16:06):
It's actually worse than blank stares or
disagreement.
I actually wish that they weredisagreeing, then we'd have the
basis for a discussion.
They nod their heads, they say,oh, you're so right, but they
don't change.
Right If I've taken away a fewthings from all this time in the
world of education.
But I feel like people in theworld of education and that's
teachers and administrators andlegislators, and you know, on
(16:29):
and on and on they love to talkabout change.
They love to say, yeah, thiswould be really great.
It's very difficult to changeand there's just a whole set of
constraints, including collegeadmissions, including the high
stakes exams that states use todetermine who can graduate from
high school, including parentexpectations, teacher training,
embedded lessons, purchasetextbooks.
(16:51):
All these things are like onegigantic black hole, sucking the
whole system back intosomething that I think has quite
tragic ramifications.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Fascinating, garrett, let's talk about.
You know it wasn't that longago you were in high school and
college and in this age groupWill you talk about just?
You know what you see as thereal world and even you know you
could make comparisons betweenhow that world has changed since
the world that you encountered.
I would also love you don'ttalk publicly very much about
your sort of pre-Sora story, butyou've.
(17:24):
You've been entrepreneurial,you've been this you know, go
out, figure it out.
I think you studied computerscience.
You've done these things thatyou know.
I think Ted would have said belike Garrett, you know that
that's one example of how toapproach life after high school.
Can you just kind of talk alittle bit about your path and
then maybe reflect on how that's?
(17:44):
You know, that world that youencountered is changing around
you?
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Okay deal, you give me too much credit, but I'll
share a few thoughts.
I went to high school in areally interesting moment in the
twenties, right when laptopswere entering the classroom.
We were the first kids to getyou know all of our textbooks
online.
But what came with that is arealization that, oh my goodness
, I have YouTube and KhanAcademy and Coursera and all
(18:07):
these things at my fingertipsand for some reason, the
teachers and the administratorsand everyone are showing up and
doing the exact same thing theydid for the last 30, 40 years in
some case.
But to me, even as a youngperson, it was unbelievably
clear Okay, if the world's bestlectures are online, what is the
purpose of school?
(18:28):
Like, my teacher is clearlyacting as if education was a
content problem, but I have aproof right here that it's not
right.
So what is the purpose ofeducation?
And as a young person, thisradicalized me in interesting
directions.
I've certainly evolved sincethen, but the immediate takeaway
of this was was so now I moveschools a lot and I did not
respect my high school much, soI just said, okay, I'm going to
(18:50):
completely blow this off, andthey're silly enough to give me
a laptop in the classroom, soI'm just going to do whatever
the heck I want on that.
That was mostly coding andstudying physics when I was a
teenager.
I'm going to do whatever theheck I want during the school
day because I'm just going tocram Khan Academy and stuff
right before midterms, whateverright.
So I fell into this cadence andI absolutely could study much,
(19:11):
much, much faster using thesetools, and you can imagine how a
student like Garrett would feelwith these AI tools.
And then this continued atGeorgia Tech.
I went to this tech school.
I was told it was an amazingprogram.
I thought I finally made it outof the old world education
system and I was greeted withperhaps an even I love Georgia
(19:32):
Tech, I love, you know butperhaps even less thoughtful
system.
Pedagogically.
They, despite being a techschool, were not leveraging any
of these tools.
Professors were showing uplecturing, and it was that right
.
So I just had this realization.
I was always this sci-fi kid.
I was always, you know, verybookish.
I love thinking about how theworld ought to move, and this
(19:53):
just kind of disillusioned me,if I, you know, there's no
secret sauce here that I don'talready have in my back pocket
that I need to wait to acquirebefore I really make the changes
that I want to see in the world.
So I started treating collegelike I was on scholarship, so
like a free room and free,amazing friends and lifestyle
(20:13):
and as long as I got good enoughgrades to keep my scholarship.
This is kind of my junior andsenior year.
I was just going to try to makea change.
I was going to try to do thesethings and treat this as a
socially acceptable on-ramp todoing things, and I was quickly
confronted with the reality thatit's kind of like that joke no
(20:34):
one knows that you're a dog onthe internet Like that's kind of
how solving problems feels.
So I was this super small,skinny, 19 year old, 20 year old
, showing up talking abouteducation.
I first did this educationnon-profit and parents if you
really try to understand theirproblem, leverage technology,
lead with a lot of empathy.
(20:54):
They don't.
You are also a child.
You just solve a problem andyou'll see the world kind of
open up to you.
Long story short, that's whatled to Sora and I think that
sort of mindset.
You already have all the toolsthat you need to become top
0.01% in whatever interests you.
(21:15):
What you now need is agencyright.
So cultivating agency is aquestion about motivation and
accountability and value systemsand worldview, and that's the
question that I really think weought to be talking about as
educators, not content delivery,which is important and those
things are imbued in contentdelivery but it is a consequence
(21:35):
of much more importantquestions ahead of that.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
So I expected you to go in a modern direction with
that agency.
I mean you're talking this isancient wisdom kind of stuff.
I mean I quote Plutarch all thetime right, and this idea that
if you take a paradigm oflighting a fire and the paradigm
of pouring water into a cup,the actions that you would do
for each of those paradigms arelike mutually exclusive.
Like pouring water on the firekills the fire, it's the worst
(22:02):
thing you could possibly do andthat's basically you know
systemically happening.
And I think what you're sayingis, if you want kids to take
agency, definitely don't likemake them sit down quietly and
still and just keep talking atthem and giving them homework
assignments that they don't careabout, like for years and years
and years.
I mean you talk aboutradicalization.
I mean it sounds like you sawthis really as a student, first
(22:24):
in high school and then and thenin college.
Speaker 4 (22:26):
Yeah, absolutely, and we still see this with.
I was actually having thisconversation with some
entrepreneur friends last night,but it feels like there is this
subtle change in your mindbecoming an entrepreneur and,
honestly, this is what this iskind of.
What separates a lot of thesuccessful kind of pre-seed
stage founders and theunsuccessful.
(22:48):
There's a lot of market forcesand luck, to be clear, but what
seems to be a difference is thislike rubric mentality that
people bring, rather than thisauthenticity, and I certainly
had to unlearn this in my firstfew years of entrepreneurship.
But what I mean by rubricfollowing, it's almost like you
are like what would anentrepreneur do in this moment?
(23:10):
Right, it's like you're tryingto get a four out of four on the
rubric.
Oh, I think they would.
You know, what would Zuckerbergdo, right Versus what is the
real problem in front of me?
It's like it's like a bar, thereal world, like a bar fight,
right.
Like what do I grab this chairleg?
Do I?
I don't know, but like whatshould I actually do in this
moment that helps the person infront of me?
(23:31):
That's the mindset and that'ssomething that kids just simply
do not practice in traditionalschools.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Do you think it's because they don't feel like
they're allowed to, or is itbecause they don't know how to?
Or some combination of thosetwo things?
Speaker 4 (23:45):
I'm curious what Tess say about this, but I just
think it's a total, a totallydifferent frame from what
students feel.
The project of education islike you alluded to this, this
hopping through the hoops orwhatever you said, versus make
something awesome, right, followinstructions.
Jump through hoops becauseadults said so and it's the
broccoli you need to eat.
Versus here's a nebulousproblem in front of you and do
(24:07):
something cool with it.
It's just a totally differentapproach and mentality.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
We expressly train kids to be followers.
I mean that's the whole pointof the education model.
I mean in the industrial erawhat you wanted was a workforce
of followers, and so think aboutit.
I mean that's the entirety ofschool.
Here is your assignment, do it.
And that's why educators are soparanoid about AI is because
you can take that assignment andput it in ChatGPT and you'll
(24:36):
get something.
But you look at deep researchwith chat GPT.
I mean if anybody hasn't playedaround with that, you know you
can take any assignment ofschool, give it to chat GPT and
it will in, you know, no longer12 seconds.
I mean deep research can take10 minutes or so, but it'll come
back with something better thanthan an Ivy League magna cum
laude could produce, right, andand so.
(24:57):
So think about it.
Put yourself in the shoes of akid.
So the teacher says here's yourassignment.
How does it go for the kid thatsays you know, I don't think
that makes any sense.
Here's what I think we shoulddo.
I mean that's not going to giveyou an A, that's going to be a
troublemaker, right, and it'snot.
I want to be sympathetic to theplight of the teacher.
I think teachers, given trustand support, would actually love
(25:20):
to have more kids.
That would say, you know, Idon't really, tactfully,
politely, I think we could dosomething more interesting.
The problem is when you're heldaccountable to test scores.
You know, think about teachingan AP course, right, you want
those kids to take that exam andto get the highest possible
scores.
And so you'll see things likeyou know, the sprint through AP
(25:40):
US history, where these teachers, you know, not by their choice
essentially say no time forquestions in this course.
You know, if we have I mean,you know, I wish I were laughing
this is true.
You know, we don't have timefor questions.
We can't go down anythingyou're really interested in,
because we've got to get from1491 to the present day in 180
(26:01):
class periods.
And if we don't, not only mightthe kids score worse, I
actually think they wouldprobably score better if they
were occasionally taking deepdives into things.
But if they don't covereverything I've seen this too
many times if I don't covereverything and the kid gets a
bad score, what do they say totheir parents?
There were things on the testwe didn't cover.
(26:23):
What do the parents do?
They go to the school and sayhow can you let my kid down?
You didn't cover what was onthe test, so they're caught in
this vicious trap that sayscover content, sprint through it
.
Knowing that kids won't retainit.
Knowing kids will find itimmensely boring.
Knowing it's the mostsuperficial of all courses and
(26:47):
in the process, it is.
Here's what you need to study.
Here's what you need tomemorize.
Here are the formulaic essaysyou need to be able to write to
get a good grade to get a four,get a five, and so it's just
baked in.
But as I say, I mean think aboutthe people you've worked with,
people in your family, people inyour community.
We admire the people who willsay you know, here's what I
(27:09):
think we could do.
I mean, that's who you want towork with.
I mean, assuming that they layout something sensible, here's
what I think we should do andit's really well thought out.
That is 0% of school.
And when we create an entiregeneration of give me my
assignment and I will carry itout, and at the same time,
machine intelligence is alreadybetter than the best human at
(27:30):
that, and getting better by theminute.
To me that spells titanic levelcatastrophe.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
I'm reminded of.
Maybe we take a historicaldetour for just a minute, but
for me, you know, garrett hadKhan Academy, I had calculators,
right.
The TI-85 calculator was thislike powerhouse thing that could
graph, you know complexfunctions and you could even
program it a little bit.
There were things you could do,but I mean, I would say 90% of
what I was given on tests and ofcourse the tests were no
(27:58):
calculator and I'm an honestperson, so I like obeyed the
rules, but it was like you'rejust asking me to like be a
better calculator and it seemedkind of pointless to you know,
if it really is about computingthings, I'm really thrilled to
see math evolving over time.
Like, I think the response tothat, that insight, was that,
okay, what should we be asking?
(28:18):
And you know, I think you seethis over decades Maybe we could
ask the student to think aboutthe logical steps or apply these
concepts, mathematical concepts, to the world around them,
maybe get some deeperunderstanding.
I know parents complain aboutthis and you know that all
happens, but I think overall, ifyou're asking a human to be
(28:40):
better than a machine, uh, youknow it's, it's like kind of a
losing battle for everybody andpointless, I think we, we just
feel that in our bones.
So I'd love to hear yeah, Idon't know if you guys, you know
, had insights from the, thecalculator days, or you could
even go to the oh, I, I can, Ican one-up everybody, because I
go back to the slide rule days.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Oh, let's do it.
You know, but education when Iwent to school was relatively
low stakes.
There was less of an obsessionand chase for colleges.
The acceptance rates at eventhe most exclusive colleges were
often more than 50%.
You know, like we had no testprep.
I don't even remember doing muchhomework in high school, but we
(29:19):
did have slide rules and theslide rules weren't baked into
high stakes exams.
Had they been, kids wouldprobably still be using slide
rules today, but the problemwith it, you know, it's really.
I think it's fair to say thestory of US education is we
teach what's easy to test, notwhat's important to learn.
And so these one right answer,little math micro tidbits are
(29:42):
like the perfect questions foran ABCD exam.
And if you let somebody usephoto math on their phone, you
know game over, right.
You just show your camera overevery problem in the SAT and it
gives you the answer.
Or put it into chat GPT, itgives you the answer.
So we keep testing this stuffbecause it can be scored by a
computer and ignore the factthat it can be done by a
(30:03):
computer.
So I've got this new book.
I'll be brief on it, but thisbook on the math ideas that
matter, comma, which are nevertaught in school, and over and
over again I'll talk to thesepeople.
How many people reallyunderstand the difference
between correlation andcausation?
How many people reallyunderstand the difference
between correlation andcausation?
How many people reallyunderstand what a margin of
(30:25):
error is and when it's grosslyoverstated.
So today, good example.
I'll date this a bit, but thejobs report came out.
It was like 229,000 jobs.
I have a section in my book itwasn't quite 229,000.
I picked another, more recentjobs report.
But let's just stick with that229,000 plus or minus 1.2
million.
But nobody writes a story thatsays the error bars on this are
(30:47):
massive, right, because you know, think about that, this massive
sprawling US economy.
And they're reporting thenumber of jobs, the net jobs, by
the way, right?
So millions of new jobs created, millions of jobs go away.
You're subtracting them and nowyou're presenting the nearest
1,000.
Yeah, you know it'spreposterous, right, but the
(31:09):
markets you know like, and theseare not dumb people, these are
financial traders, these arereporters who lock in and assume
229,000 must be fairly precisebecause it's reported to the
nearest 1,000.
That sounds precise.
When you actually look for thestory behind the number, you
realize the error bars aregigantic Wow.
And I just look at this and Isay the ideas are.
(31:30):
You know every single chapterhas something done with
elementary school kids.
If young kids, old kids, youknow age 10 to 100, you can
understand.
The ideas Define our lives andthey're used to manipulate and
persuade us, take us in thewrong directions.
We spend 0% of our time on theideas in school and 100% on the
low-level rope crap that yourphone does perfectly in a way
(31:55):
that punishes millions.
I think math is a poster childfor failed priorities in the
United States of America.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Well, ted, I'm excited to read the book.
It sounds fascinating.
I know you guys have both kindof done, you've been involved in
innovative work and I would saythere's two pieces Everybody
I've met that's trying toinnovate in education whether
they do like me and Garrett,where we sort of start something
that's an alternative toregular school or they're inside
of regular school and they're,you know, fighting the good
(32:24):
fight.
They're out there, you know,pushing for things.
There's kind of two things thatyou have to deal with, and
we've been talking a lot aboutone of them, which is the actual
pedagogy.
Like what do you do instead?
How do you adapt?
How can you make sure thatthese skills that actually are
going to help, you know, arecarried forward?
And then, how does that?
You know, garrett, in my casewe don't have to deal with this
(32:45):
as much because we're operatingprivately outside.
But how does that interfacewith what statute says?
You know the state legislatorsand the department of education
and these different regulationsand the tests that you have to
report?
So there's the educationinnovation side of it and that
friction.
I want to kind of swing it backaround and say I don't know
(33:05):
what your estimate is on this.
My estimate from talking toinnovators that are trying to do
this from inside.
They say as much as theycomplain about their internal
friction and having to convincethe assistant superintendent to
let them do something innovative.
They also have to convince theparents, and it's almost equal
in magnitude.
It really brings me back to thisneed for a rethink, a change of
(33:28):
hearts and minds.
Can you talk a little bit aboutjust how do we, how do we do
that?
How do we change parents'hearts and minds?
I mean, you guys are bothheavily involved in writing and
speaking and communicating.
I would love to see your voicesamplified and that's part of
the goal that we're even havingthis conversation.
But what do we do to helpparents?
Just shake out of some?
I don't think it'smalintentioned, I think it's
(33:49):
just.
This is what I know.
Anyway, give me, give methoughts on that.
Speaker 4 (33:57):
I think just super quickly I'll question the
premise a little bit.
I think it's an inappropriategrouping of different desires.
The traditional educationsystem is, definitionally, one
size fits all and there areadvantages of that, and you know
the importance of securing ahigh quality education for
everyone, extremely sympatheticto this.
It's the backbone of ourcivilization.
However, education, especiallyas you get into the older years,
(34:19):
it's downstream values,worldview, community relevance,
proclivities of the individualchild, relevance proclivities of
the individual child, like it'sjust.
You cannot design the perfecteducation on paper because it's
the interface of like sixdifferent human things.
So I think what you're reallyhearing in these classrooms is
(34:44):
the 30% of noisiest families whoare against any given decision,
and that's not predictably thesame 30% of families.
And that's because we don'tallow parents to have any agency
in aligning their educationalpreferences with funding right.
So not to make this a politicalopinion, you actually would not
be able to extrapolate that andprobably understand my politics
(35:05):
around education.
But we have to let parents optinto things that they feel
culturally aligned with andwilling to valorize it and
celebrate success for theirchild, embodying the values
implicit in that education.
I think that is hugely missingnow and you probably won't fix
that problem until we allow moreopt-in aspects of education.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
So it all goes back to agency, you're saying, but in
this case now we're talkingabout the parents' agency.
Well, it's like learning.
Speaker 4 (35:34):
education is like going to the gym, and if I don't
really feel the value of thisand this extreme effort, if I
just feel like it's somethingsomeone told me to do, I'm
probably not going to give myall and push through those final
three reps of the set.
I'm sorry I'm beating theanalogy a bit, but I'm not going
(35:54):
to do the thing that actuallymakes me get out what I'm
supposed to get out right.
Education is very similar, soyou have to align it with values
.
You have to make people feel byit.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
You know, having spent a dozen years throwing my
body and a bunch of other thingsat this to try to convince
parents, I now know I can'tconvince parents.
Sir Ken couldn't convinceparents.
I think the very sobering butpowerful thing that will
convince parents is that overthe next five years, all the
kids that did everything right,that jumped through every hoop,
that are graduating fromselective colleges, are going to
(36:28):
find themselves unable to get ajob, and it pains me to say
that.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
I hope I'm wrong.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
I am completely certain I'm right, and we're
already seeing who wants to hirea college graduate to do what
Chachi Piti does for $20 a month, and you know it's not that the
job goes away entirely, butwhat used to take 20 interns is
now done by a couple peopleusing AI, and know it's not that
the job goes away entirely, butwhat used to take 20 interns is
now done by a couple peopleusing AI, and so it's massive.
It's like a 10x compression inthe class of jobs that college
(36:58):
grads used to just flood, and soyou're going to see the career
services offices having skinnierand skinnier books.
You're going to see more andmore kids saying I don't get, I
did everything.
Families say we did everythingright.
You know, we spent a ton ofmoney, we broke our relationship
with our kid, we pushed them todo everything right, and that
word gets around.
Do I wish we had anticipated?
(37:19):
Do we wish that we had realizedthat was going to happen
instead of dealt with the factthat it is happening?
Absolutely, I've tried, and I'mnot the only one.
Like Ken bless his heart, youknow, as you know, he died in
2020, would share the same thing.
You know they all nod.
They all think this may.
Yes, of course schools killcreativity, of course we
shouldn't do that.
(37:39):
But I think parents and I'm aparent right, and so when we
started the school journey yearsago, I was risk averse,
trusting the system, thinking itwould do good things for my
kids.
And fortunately I came to therealization it's not only not
going to do good things, it'sgoing to, it's going to do quite
damaging things.
And so I was able to, with thatperspective, go rogue with them
(38:01):
, kind of get the most of thegood things out of school.
I didn't know, you know SOARdidn't exist.
Then I have to put in a bit of aplug, because two things here.
One, garrett is incredibly, youknow, I mean, he's inspiring to
me, he's an outlier beyond alloutliers, you know, like the
number of 26-year-olds thatwould take on this mission and
(38:21):
do the kinds of things he'sdoing.
But also he's thought thisthrough incredibly well.
You know, we were trading notesthe other day and I said, like
Sora is, like you know, afull-featured iPhone 16, and
schools are still clunky,landlines with switchboard
operators.
And so I think you're seeing andit's the story of education,
it's the story of my book whatSchool Could Be Pockets, you
(38:43):
know, nooks and crannies wherepeople are doing incredible
things in a universe where toomuch of what's going on is
obsolete, and what I worry aboutfrom a civil society point of
view is that balance will tellthe tale.
The more kids that are on theright side of AI, the more
educators are following in thefootsteps of Sora, the better we
(39:03):
have a chance of preservingholding things together, and the
more we are playing out in fiveyears what played out in 30 to
40 years, with robots replacingphysical labor jobs.
It's a chilling prospect.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Yeah Well, let's use that as a chance to change gears
here for our last littlesegment of our conversation.
This has been amazing and I'mreally impressed with both of
you, the passion and energy youbring to this cause and speaking
truth.
I mean, I think you, you areright that sometimes we're going
to say it and say it untilwe're blue in the face and, um,
you know, eventually there mightbe a sense that you know like,
(39:38):
oh, I wish I had listened to Ted, but let's, let's do the, uh,
let's do the final segment,which is advice.
So I've got kids that are 20,17, 15, and 13.
So those are the ages of myfour children, and I want this
as practical as you can.
I give them my advice, but Iwant advice from each of you.
(39:58):
What would you be telling thosekids as you look ahead at this
rapidly evolving world that'sgoing to help them be?
You know, and you don't knowthem, so it's hard to give
anything personal, but I thinkthat's actually useful in this
construct, because there's a lotof people listening that you
don't know either.
And so what are the generalizedbits that you can take out of
what you would tell a youngperson that's preparing to enter
(40:18):
the world.
And, garrett, I'll have you gofirst on this one, and then, and
then ted, and we'll, we'll wrapup sure I'll be intentionally
crude and hopefully this doesn'tcome across as overly cynical.
Speaker 4 (40:27):
I think kids should try to make money.
I think there's somethingsobering about you're not just
trying to go solve a problem,you are trying to solve a
problem.
Well enough that another humanopens their wallet and gives you
their hard-earned money as ashow and a sign that you improve
their life right.
And I think, circling back tomy comment about agency, it
(40:51):
comes down to looking around theworld, leading with your
empathy, understanding humansand their plight, and
understanding the humancondition, especially for those
you love, and try to make animpact, whatever tools you have
at your disposal.
And I like the frame that Iread recently, which I think is
more accurate than most takes,that what AI is going to let you
(41:12):
do is do any job decently wellas an individual right.
It's going to become likesingle-player innovation a bit,
where you have an infinite deckof mid-stage designers and
engineers, yada, yada, at yourdisposal.
So I just encourage people withthat mindset, with the mindset
of agency just go out there.
Try to make a big enoughdifference that someone wants to
(41:35):
give you money to say thank you.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
Such a clear, beautiful frame.
I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
You know I build on that.
I think America's locked in onthis false choice career versus
academics.
And we have a new film comingout It'll be out in a couple of
months called Multiple Choice,where we feature a school,
public school that's elevatedhands-on skills, elevated
career-based education, so thatkids at a high school are
spending about a third of theirtime over the four years so not
(42:03):
a little bit, but about a thirdof their time over four years
diving into career-basededucation.
Traditional economy of skills,new economy skills, but also in
some ways, a mini version ofnational service, because
instead of the AP kids onlyinteracting with the AP kids and
the mainstream kids onlyinteracting with the mainstream
kids, and the last chance careerand technical education kids
(42:24):
sent off on a bus, everybodycomes together, respects each
other's skills.
So I'm with Garrett.
You know like it's.
You know we can't look down ournose at the ability to support
yourself, doing something you'repassionate about and being able
to make ends meet.
I mean like, is that the onlything?
And I know Garrett's not sayingthat's the only thing, but
(42:44):
should that be something aboutit?
You know like I give this.
I'm a guest lecturer at awell-known college with seniors
and every year I ask seniors ifschools shut down tomorrow
morning and career servicesoffices disappeared everywhere,
how many of you are already sogood at something you know you
could create your own careerpath, doing something you enjoy
and support yourself?
(43:05):
Out of 100 kids it's typicallytwo or three, not 70 or 80.
And that's after 16 years ofschool.
But back to the advice forparents.
The main thing I put in frontof any parent is think five
times from Sunday before youwage war on your kid to make
them try to do whatever it takesto get a slightly better GPA.
(43:26):
I see that over and over andover again and I can tell
parents the GPA doesn't change.
The relationship goes to heckand your kid will feel terrible
about what they're doing and youknow so.
Take a deep breath right.
You know like sometimes the kidthat goes rogue actually is the
one who gets into the moreselective college, because
(43:48):
college admissions officers arepretty darn good at sniffing out
the micromanaged kid.
So you could be doing the wholething.
I love this one so many times.
After I give a talk, parentwill come up with a child in the
spring.
They will say, ted, you knowwe'd love your advice.
You know we did everything right.
We took 12 AP courses.
Our GPA was 4.91.
(44:09):
We did all theseextracurricular activities, blah
, blah, blah, blah blah, and wedidn't get into any of our top
choice colleges.
And I say, you know, I thinkone of the problems is you were
applying to colleges that werejust accepting your child and
not both of you.
You need to look for a collegethat takes, because clearly
you're a team, right.
You need a college that takesboth the parent and child, and
(44:36):
that was your mistake.
But that kid is always lookingso unhappy.
You know.
The other thing is justwhatever.
Push, encourage, co-learn withyour kid, dive into artificial
intelligence.
You know we use this.
Will sound crazy, right, but mywife and I, when we have dinner
, almost always have chat gpt onthe table with the voice
activated and we'll just turnand say you know like, instead
(44:58):
of debating for 20 minutes.
You know when did the vikingsfirst come to north america?
You know like, whatever whichis hey, by the way you know like
, when did this happen?
Tell me more about this.
I had a friend this, I thought,was telling one of my best
friends is a total tech techhead.
I mean, he's really, reallysmart.
He's on the, the originaldigital shopping cart patent.
He called me one day.
He's driving, he grew up in andhas family in West Virginia.
(45:19):
He calls me going from WestVirginia to Boston.
He said you know, I just had aseven hour conversation with
chat GPT just went on and onBecause you know, artificial
intelligence is the ultimatecuriosity machine.
Ask it a question, it tells yousomething.
Ask a follow-up, ask afollow-up, ask a follow.
You know it will.
It brings out so manyinteresting things.
(45:41):
So I just said your kids, youknow like you could either do,
you know, like this activity youhave no interest in doing
because somebody thinks it wouldlook better to do a college
admissions officer, or do KhanAcademy or Kaplan test prep or
some other baloney to try to geta better test score.
Or, hey, what would you like tocreate and invent this month
Using AI?
Do something cool.
What would be a great thing todo.
(46:02):
And, to Garrett's point, findan organization in your
community where you can identifyan opportunity to help them be
better.
Use AI, create something, giveit to them, Get them to give you
a customer testimonial and thenspend your summer being
entrepreneurial and approachingother organizations and say I
can do this for you for $250.
Like, that's what I do.
(46:23):
You know, like that, if I werea parent I'd be like, hey,
school may not change.
I could be.
I beat my head against thatcinder block wall a long time.
My head is beaten tosmithereens.
The cinder block wall doesn'tchange, unless you're willing to
move to Sora, which I'drecommend.
You know you've got these extrahours.
(46:44):
You can just say to your kidyou need to pile more of the
same on, hoping they'll have anincrementally better chance to
get into college as you destroytheir mental health and ruin
your relationship.
Or you can just take a deepbreath and say you know, like 10
years from now people are goingto be asking how good are you
at AI, not where you went tocollege.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
Well, you heard it here first.
This is amazing insights andadvice and I appreciate you both
.
Thanks for sharing ideas forparents and kids and thanks for
the conversation.
It's been illuminating to me.
Thanks for the great work youguys are doing.
We'll put links to Ted'supcoming book and movie in the
notes, if I can get them fromyou, ted, and then Garrett,
(47:24):
we'll put a link to Sora Schoolso people know what we're
talking about.
We'll also link back to theprevious episode.
This is the Garrett's the firstrepeat visitor on the Prenda
podcast.
So congratulations on beingback again and, ted, thanks for
being here with us.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
By the way, appropriately, it's the first
repeat, but also, by the way,thanks for what you're doing.
It's really inspiring, so Ithink we're all grateful for
your fantastic work.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
It's a great time to be changing things for kids and
just really appreciate knowingyou both.
So, thank you and, with that,have a great day everybody.
Speaker 3 (47:55):
The Kindled podcast is brought to you by Prenda.
Prenda makes it easy to startand run an amazing micro school
based on all the ideas we talkabout here on the Kindled
podcast.
Don't forget to follow us onsocial media at Prenda Learn,
and if you'd like moreinformation about starting a
micro school, just go toPrendacom.
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