The U.S. education system was built by industrialists like the Rockefellers to produce factory workers, a model that no longer works. The speaker proposes gamifying learning with micro-scholarships and level-ups, and reinventing the federal Department of Education to push technology adoption in schools instead of devolving power to states.
Chapters
The current public education system was really inspired by the Rockefellers to mass produce an educated workforce for the factory. We end up as society doing is fighting about yesterday's problems. So right now the big battle in Texas, for example, is vouchers. Let's do vouchers. Okay, but what are you gonna do with the other schools that the kids don't wanna go to? What are we gonna do about those? And so no one is stepping back going, oh wait a minute, the current public education system was really inspired by the Rockefellers and others to mass produce mass-produce an educated workforce for the factories. Right. Okay, well, that worked 100 years ago. Yeah. We're in the information age. Yeah. And why are we still using books and blackboards in little classrooms and not lighting up these kids? If you wonder why they like to use social media and play video games, it's way more engaging. Yeah. But school can be just as engaging. Way more engaging. Can be way more engaging. We can have incentives. You can have micro-scholarships. You pass an exam and you get points. You level up. I mean, it's ancient the way it is today. It's ancient, but it can be done. So what it takes— I've just written an op-ed, I'm going to try to get it published in the New York Times, we'll see. But my suggestion is instead of eliminating the Department of Education, because if you push it down to the states, then technology would be 50 years before we ever invest in it, right? So instead, reinvent the Department of Education, bring technology in, create a DOJ-like team that can say, all right, let's light it up. How do we make classrooms as exciting as any video game that was ever built. Right.