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n a groundbreaking exploration of education, Elon Musk challenges conventional paradigms, illuminating the limitations inherent in traditional models.

Musk advocates for a dynamic shift, steering away from the rigidity of traditional education and towards a more engaging and personalized learning experience.

His views, as expressed in the transcript, underscore the need for a transformative approach that fosters individual growth and curiosity.

Musk's vision for education transcends established norms, inviting us to reconsider the very foundations of how we impart knowledge and nurture intellectual development.

Join us on this journey through Musk's compelling perspectives on reshaping the future of education. Here is a script from his interviews and opinions

"There's no need even to have a college degree at all or even high school. 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.

If you look at, say, people like Bill Gates or Larry Allison, 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 we're 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 to learn stuff, okay? Everything is available basically for free. You can learn anything you want for free.

It is not a question of learning. There is a value that colleges have, which is like seeing whether somebody can work hard at something, including a bunch of annoying homework assignments and still do their homework assignments and soldier through and get it done.

That's the main value of college. And then also, 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.

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, you 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, we look at like, Gates is a pretty smart guy. He dropped out.

Jobs was pretty smart. He dropped out. Larry Ellison, a smart guy. He dropped out. I'm like, obviously not needed. Did Shakespeare even go to college? Probably not. 

I created a little school. It's only got 14 kids now, and it'll have 20 kids in September. It's called Ad Astra, which means to the stars. That's maybe a bit different from most other schools, is that there aren't any grades.

There's no Grade 1, grade two, Grade 3 type of thing. Its not like making all the children go in the same grade at the same time like an assembly line. Because some people love English or languages, some people love math, some people love music, and different abilities at 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 problem-solving or teach to the problem, not to the tools.

This would be like, let's say you're trying to teach people about how engines work. You could start by a more traditional approach would be to say, well, we're going to teach you all about screwdrivers and wrenches, and you're going to have a course on screwdrivers, a course on wrenches and all these things.

And 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 going to 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.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's actually funny. If you think like what is education? You're basically downloading data and algorithms into your brain. And it's actually amazingly bad in conventional education because it shouldn't be like this huge chore.

The more you can gamify the process of learning, the better. For my kids, I do not have to encourage them to play video games.

In Traditional eduction you got someone standing up, they're lecturing to 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 is conveyed to the students that 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. In fact, I think a lot of things people learn probably there's no point in running them because they never use them in the future.

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 puzzled as to why they're there.

I think if you can explain the why of things, then that makes a huge difference to people's motivation and they understand purpose. So I think that's pretty important and just make it entertaining.

But I think just in general, conventional education should be massively overhauled, and I'm sure you very much agree with that. I mean, the analogy I sometimes use is, you've seen Batman, the Chris Nolen movie, the recent one, and it's pretty freaking awesome, right?

Generally, you want education to be as close to a video game as possible, like a good video game.

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 you can make education far more compelling and far easier to do.

So you really want to disconnect the whole grade level thing from the subjects, allow people to progress at the fastest pace that they can or are interested in, in each subject. It seems like a really obvious thing.

I think most teaching today is a lot like Fordville, and as a result, just not that compelling. It's like somebody 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 in doing it. A university education is often unnecessary. That's not to say it's unnecessary for all people, but I think you probably learn about as much, the vast majority of what you're going to learn there in the first two years, and most of it is from your classmates.

Now for a lot of companies, they do want to see the completion of the degree because they're looking for someone who's going to persevere and see it through to the end, and that's actually what's important to them.

A university education is often unnecessary. 

That's not to say it's unnecessary for all people, but I think you've probably learned about as much for the vast majority what you're gonna learn there in the first two years, and most of it is from your classmates.

So it really depends on what your goal is to start a company. I wouldn't say no point in finishing college, something like that. 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 normally go through English, math, science and so forth from like fifth grade to sixth grade to seventh grade, like assembly line. 

But people are not objects on an assembly line. That's a ridiculous notion. 

The good schools out there, but I think at least in my opinion, that I see the mistake being made in education is that you just cannot explain why kids are being taught a subject."

Posted 
Jan 3, 2024
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