Elon Musk - Education does not work

i i think there's maybe um there're definitely some good schools out there um but i think the some of the mistakes at least in my opinion that i see being made in education is um that um people the 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 some people like maybe it's 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 essay formulas but you do 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 i better remember it but so the why of things is very important and then uh being able to edit and then picking kind of a a problem and then using various educational tools to solve that problem um like using math or physics or economics to to solve that problem is far more engaging than teaching the tools you know it's difference between if you say well we're going to take apart this this engine and and see how it works and put it back together again and then in order to take the engine apart we need you know wrenches and screwdrivers and a winch and allen keys and whatnot and and said that and then in the course of solving the problem of taking the engine apart and putting it back together you learn about branches and screwdrivers and all the tools that you need and then now you understand the relevance ah this is why branches are important i you know whereas if you had a cl a class on wrenches why is this does not seem that great you know um so tying it to solving a problem is i think very powerful for establishing relevance and getting kids excited about what they're working on and then and uh and having the knowledge stick i think like things like cubesats uh like what is a solar panel how does orbital dynamics work how do we um you know how do we power this thing you know how do batteries work electronics control systems um and you you need to then you're like oh we want to make our satellite work that's why we need to understand all these disciplines um so i think it's like like cubesats student code staffs are great like things like design build fly for model airplanes or formula sae we've got a design builder kind of a race car and and you know race start against other people that i think those things are very powerful for learning as learning tools actually i created a little school 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 you know because some people love english or languages some people love math some people love music and different abilities different times it makes more sense to to cater the education to match their aptitudes and abilities i think that's one principle another is that it's important to teach uh teach problem solving or teach to the problem not to the tools um and then a very important thing happens which is that the relevance of the tools becomes apparent 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 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 um 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 they want to go back to school there's no need even to have a college degree or even high school but i mean if somebody graduated from a great university that may be indeed that may be an indication that they will be capable of great things but it's not necessarily the case um you know if you look at um 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

Channel: DB Business

Views: 563,554

Keywords: Elon Musk, elon musk interview, elon musk speech, elon, musk, elon musk today, elon musk genius, elon musk success, elon musk motivational, elon musk opinion, elon musk children, elon musk family, elon musk about education, elon musk college degree, elon musk college

Id: Io3TiuJsfLc

Length: 5min 16sec (316 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 01 2021