Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

Starting to think we're approaching a real breaking point in education. 15+ years of reform efforts have netted no gains in test scores, the only thing we seem to care about. On a cost-per-point basis, the US has the least cost-effective education system in the world.

It's incredibly silly to think the US can beat cram cultures like China or South Korea at the test score game, and parents watching their kids drag themselves through hours of soulless homework are starting to question whether that's the game we should care about winning.

I think if parents get more chances to see kids being generative — building real things, starting real companies, reading & theorizing w/o prompting, defining their own projects — they'll want that for their kids, despite the fear of losing the test score/college admissions race

JT Gatto has a throwaway line in one of his books — I forget which— where he asserts you could teach everything (that matters) that a kid learns in grades 1-6 in about sixty contact hours if you stripped out all the fluff and busywork. I tend to agree.