After a year and a half of disruption, it's back to school for thousands of young people. But is the education system serving them well? In this episode of the Reimagining the World podcast, Michael Strong, co-founder of the virtual secondary school, SocraticExperience.com argues that school is cruel, boring and not fit for purpose.
He is an experienced school creator whose projects include Moreno Valley High School, a charter school in New Mexico ranked the 36th best public school in the U.S. by Newsweek; Winston Academy, a school for highly gifted students in Florida who successfully completed AP exams; and The Academy of Thought and Industry, the high school model for the largest U.S. Montessori network. He is the author of The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice and Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World’s Problems.
We talk about:
- How school prepares people for a world of Dilbert-style misery
- How teenage suicide increases at the start of the school year and that since more people started going to high school, there's been a 300% increase in suicide.
- The misery of school leading to children both being highly medicated and abusing drugs
- Lifelong anxiety and depression being attributed to experiences of school
- How schools is humiliating for people who aren't academic
- How within a few days, a depressed, anxious child recovers once they are engaged in an education context that is more suited to their needs
- How he tries to identify every child's genius and crank it up
- That school doesn't help you figure out who you are and what you care about
- The key to wellbeing is living in a healthy, purpose-driven community
- How he helps children to identify, 'What do you love, what does the world need, what are you good at and what can you get paid for?'
