Transcription
There's no need even to have a college degree at all, or even high school. The, I mean, if somebody graduated from a great university, that may be an indication that they will be capable of great things, but it's not necessarily the case. You know, if you look at say, people like Bill Gates, or Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, these guys didn't graduate from college. But if you had a chance to hire them, of course, that would be a good idea. So, you know, just looking just for evidence of exceptional ability, and if there's a track record of exceptional achievement, then it's likely that that will continue into the future.
Well, first of all, you don't need college learning. Learn stuff, okay? Everything is available basically for free. You can learn anything you want for free. It is not a question of learning. Um, there is a value that colleges have, which is like, you know, seeing whether somebody's is can somebody work hard at something, including a bunch of sort of annoying homework assignments, and still do their homework assignments, uh, and and kind of soldier through and and get it done. You know, that's that's like the main value of college. And then also, you know, if you you if you probably want to hang around with a bunch of people your own age for a while instead of going right into the workforce. So I think colleges are basically for fun and to prove you can do your chores, but they're not for learning.
I want to make sure Tesla recruiting does not have anything that says requires university, because that's absurd. But there is a requirement of evidence of exceptional ability. Like, you just can't, if you're trying to do something exceptional, they must have evidence of exceptional ability. I don't consider going to college evidence of exceptional ability. In fact, ideally, you dropped out and did something. I mean, obviously, you know, you look at like, you know, Gates is a pretty smart guy, he dropped out. Uh, Jobs, pretty smart, he dropped out. You know, Larry Ellison, smart guy, he dropped out. Like, obviously not needed. Did Shakespeare even go to college? Probably not.
So how would you educate your five boys? Actually, I created a little school. Yeah. What kind of school? Could you subscribe to us? Sure. It's, I mean, it's small. It's only got 14 kids now, and it'll have 20 kids in in September. It's called Ad Astra, which means "to the stars." That's maybe a bit different from from most other schools. Is that there aren't any grades? There's no, there's no like, not grade one, grade two, grade three type of thing. And making all the children go and in the same grade at the same time, like an assembly line. Um, you know, because some people love English or languages, some people love math, some people love music, and uh, and different abilities, different times. It makes more sense to cater the education to match their aptitudes and abilities. I think that's one principle. Another is that it's important to teach, teach problem-solving, or teach to the problem, not to the tools. So this would be like, let's say, um, you're trying to teach people about, uh, how engines work. Or, you know, you could start by a more traditional approach would be to say, we're going to teach you all about screwdrivers and wrenches, and and you're gonna have a course on screwdrivers, or caution wrenches, and all these things. And it's this is a very difficult way to do it. A much better way would be like, here's the engine. Now, let's take it apart. How are we gonna take it apart? Oh, you need a screwdriver. That's what the screwdriver is for. You need a wrench. That's what the wrench is for. And then a very important thing happens, which is that the relevance of the tools becomes apparent. So we are five boys in that school? Yes. Until when? This is from pre-school so far. It's only one year old. They like it. They like it. Yeah. And you want to keep them away from regular schools? No, I just didn't see that the regular schools just, they weren't doing the things that I thought should be done. Like, you know, those two principles, they weren't, uh, adhering to those principles. So I thought, well, let's see what we can do. Maybe creating a school will be better. And I actually hired a teacher from the school they were at, who also agreed with me that there was a better way to do it. Seems to be going pretty well. I mean, the kids really love going to school. I think that's a, a good sign. You know, I mean, I hated going to school when I was a kid. It was torture. So the fact that they like, they actually think vacations are too long. Like they want to go back to school. Wow. Yeah. Exactly.
I mean, it's actually kind of funny. Like, like, um, you know, if you think you're like, what is education? Like, you're basically downloading data and algorithms into your brain. And it's, it's actually amazingly bad in conventional education because like, it shouldn't be like this huge chore. Like the more you can gamify the, uh, the process of learning, the better. Like for my kids, I do not have to encourage them to play video games. Yeah. Okay. I have to like pry them from their hands. Like, like crack. And I think unfortunately, like, a lot of education is very bored. Brilliant. Um, you've got, uh, you know, someone's standing up there, kind of lecturing at people, and they've done the same lecture 20 years in a row, and they're not very excited about it. And that lack of enthusiasm, you know, is conveyed to the students. They're not very excited about it. They don't know why they're there. Like, why are we learning this stuff? We don't even know why. Um, in fact, I think a lot of things people learn, probably there's no point in learning them, because they never use them in the future. Well, we have to say, like, people, I think don't stand back and say, well, why are we teaching people these things? And we should tell them probably why we're teaching these things. Because a lot of kids just in school, kind of puzzled as to why they're there. And I think if you can explain the why of things, then that makes a huge difference to people's motivation. And they understand, they understand purpose. So I think that's pretty important. Uh, and just make it entertaining. But I think just in general, like conventional education should be massively overhauled. And I'm sure you very much agree with that. But it's a, it's like, I mean, the analogy I, I sometimes use is like, you've seen like Batman, like, like the Chris Nolan movie, like the recent one, and it's pretty freaking awesome, right? Um, and you've got incredible special effects, great script, multiple takes, amazing actors, and great sound, and it's very, it's very engaging. Um, but if, if you were to instead say, okay, that even if you had the same script, so at least it's the same script, and you said, okay, now that script, instead of having movies, where we're gonna have that script performed by the local town troop, okay? And and so every, in every small town America, if movies didn't exist, they would have to then recreate the Dark Knight, right? You know, with like, home, like home-sewn costumes, and like, you know, jumping across the stage, and not, not getting their lines quite right, and not really looking like, you know, the people in, in, in the movie, and and no special effects. I mean, that would suck.
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Generally, you want education to be like as close to a video game as possible, like a good video game. Like, you do not need to tell your kid to play video games. They will play video games on autopilot all day. So if you can make it interactive and engaging, then then you can make education far more compelling and far easier to do. So you really want to disconnect the whole grade level through the thing from the subjects. Allow people to progress at the fastest pace that they can or interested in in each subject.
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It seems like a really obvious thing. Um, I mean, I think like most teaching today is is a lot like vaudeville, where, um, and and as a result, just not not that compelling. It's like somebody's standing up there and lecturing to you, and they've done the same lecture several years in a row. They're not necessarily all that engaged or in doing it. A university education is often unnecessary. That's not to say it's unnecessary for all people, but, um, I, I think you probably learn about as much, or the vast majority, what you're gonna learn there, in the first two years. And most of it is from your classmates. Now, for a lot of companies, they, they do want to see the completion of the degree because they're looking for, um, someone who's going to persevere and see it through to the end. And and that's actually what what's important to them. So it really depends on what somebody's goal is. If the goal is to start a company, I would say no point in finishing college. So I think that's how it should be. And it shouldn't be that you've got like these grades where people move in lockstep. And so everyone goes through, you know, goes like normally, you know, we'll go through English, math, uh, science, and so forth, from like fifth grade to sixth grade to seventh grade, like it's an assembly line. But but people are not objects on an assembly line. That's a ridiculous notion. They're definitely some good schools out there. But I think the some of the mistakes, at least in my opinion, that I see being made in education is that the teachers do not explain why kids are being taught a subject. Um, you know, just sort of get dumped into math and like, well, why are you learning math? What's the point of this? It seems like some, you know, for some people, like maybe it's like, I don't know why I'm being asked to do these strange problems. But, you know, the why of things is extremely important because, you know, our brain has evolved to not to discard information that it thinks is has no relevance. So then if on the one hand, you you're being asked to memorize or learn say, formulas, but you don't not know why this is the case, then you have this cognitive dissonance of it seems irrelevant, but I'm being told to remember it, so I'll be punished. So so I better remember it. But so the why of things is very important. And picking kind of a problem, and then using various educational tools to solve that problem, like using math or physics or economics to solve that problem, is far more engaging than teaching the tools.