The world-famous inventor, businessman and owner of a multibillion-dollar fortune that allows him to play space games, a couple of years ago enriched the world with his own educational institution. In this place, where the own children of the founder of the space private giant SpaceX and Tesla study, there are no special classes and a program. Why would he do that? Read and be surprised!
How did Musk's school come about?
She was born in 2015, when Musk had a desire and need to attach his own children somewhere. He has five sons: a pair of twin boys and triplets, the first born in 2004 and the second two years later.
At first, they attended the Mirman School for gifted children in Los Angeles, but Musk was not satisfied with the quality of education, so he took offspring from there and broke out with a series of critical publications about the national education system in the United States. After that, he acquired a special in the southern part of the state, lured one teacher from the previous school and opened his own closed gymnasium.
This happened three years ago, but there is still no information about the school in the media. It doesn't have a web page or even a phone number – it's replaced by a confidentiality agreement signed with parents, making the school the most private and secret in Los Angeles.
Along with Ilona's children, other children are also trained there, there are about 20 of them in total. Surely these are employees of the corporation. Ad Astra employs three teachers, and children are not divided into age classes, classes are joint. And there is no program, because children independently choose what and when they would like to learn.
The school is completely experimental, so Musk does not know how long the interest of children, and himself, in this project will persist.
But what is taught there and how does it happen?
What and how they teach there, there is almost no information, because Elon told very little about his brainchild. The largest amount of information can be gleaned from an interview with a Chinese state television channel. To their correspondent, Musk said that the main idea is to allow children to learn in those areas in which they are interested, which will allow them to learn to solve various problems that arise before a person.
This is extremely important, because a person should receive a problem - and not ways and mechanisms for solving it. So he can find his own or create new ones - or come to existing ones, but on a fundamentally different level. Instead of studying the variety of tools to solve a problem – for example, fixing a broken thing – you can disassemble it to find out the causes of the breakdown, and only then come to a screwdriver or other tool necessary to solve the problem.
The choice is up to the child: someone likes mathematics, someone likes foreign languages or dances, and if possible, it is better to associate the program with what attracts the child at the moment. But one subject is a must for all to study – ethical and moral imperatives. Lessons are held in the format of a free conversation, where scenarios of real events from human life are discussed. According to the billionaire, these are quite difficult situations, and children under the supervision of a teacher understand them.
One of the tasks looks like this: there is a village, people live in it. Almost all of them work in a factory that pollutes the lake with its emissions. If you close the plant, people will be out of work. And if not, the lake will eventually disappear, and the result will be almost the same, but much later. What to choose?
Why all this?
Musk is convinced that in the future, labor with a low level of intellectual involvement will disappear – it will be replaced by robots, and the range of human problems will be radically different from the one we are dealing with today. Creativity and flight of fancy will be crucial in the strategy of personal success. That is why the school should become a reflection of the real universe. Studying within the framework of the projects will develop in children creative thinking, curiosity, the ability to work teamwork, will cause an increase in self-confidence, which will allow them to deal with the same problems without difficulty and special problems in the future, in adulthood.
This is the main difference between Musk's school and adapted systemic educational institutions.
