Hey everyone, Im thinking about starting a new and exciting high school. Here a few ideas I’m thinking about about:
(1) A school with totally self directed learning and tutors.
(2) A school where students can learn how to start companies and build the skills necessary to do that well while starting companies
(3) A fully personalized school that adjusts the curriculum with you each week, use AI and large data sets to provide continually recommended and updated curriculum based on students’ perfomance
(4) A metaverse school where students learn in a fully virtual classroom with Oculus glasses and tools
Why would students need to learn how to start companies in HS? What about teaching history, literature, trigonometry?
I know many successful entrepreneurs. Their success is all about being critical thinkers and having high emotional intelligence (we can knock Elon Musk off that list, but I don’t know him…) None of them studied “starting companies” at any point in their careers!
I don;t think the idea of an entrepreneur focused HS precludes the idea that your aren’t still teaching the basics. While folks like Elon and Zuckerberg might not have needed it, there are 10’s of thousands of people out there with great ideas that need guidance on how to go from Idea to reality. It’s a field of study in colleges, why not HS.
You see the rise in specialty Magnet Schools that are focused on subjects like BioTech or Computers, with the change in the economy and the shift to more of a Jobbing (side hustle) work force a Entrepreneur HS sounds like a great concept (I just filled for the EHS copyright )
Only so many hours in the day. As it is, traditional HS’s struggle with the basics due to state mandates on phys ed, sex ed, and all the other non-academic subjects. I’m trying to envision a HS focusing on yet another sub-area…
I learned Entrepreneurship in an MBA program, not as an undergrad. At that point, everyone in the program had work experience (they did not admit directly from college) so there were points of connectivity between the classroom, the projects, and one’s prior experience. I was on a team doing product development for a large industrial company’s “skunk works”. Hard to imagine someone adding value there without having actually worked previously.
The “conceptual” part of entrepreneurship is the easy piece!
Good points mentioned above, and that is why I guessed that the OP is a high schooler brainstorming ideas. (Possibly looking to work an educational technology angle for their college app?)
Because OP seems to miss the fundamental purpose/goal of high schools.
I take it this is all more of a hypothetical thought experiment, but this option sounds a lot of the “Netflix” of HS. And if so, Netflix should perhaps be a cautionary tale, since people widely deride the way it cancels shows prematurely based on “the algorithm.”
Whenever I’ve read articles or studies about learning programs that have succeeded, when you scratch beneath the surface you find years of hard work and commitment to the change – retraining teachers, adjusting student and parent expectations, staying the course despite lots of early push back before the inevitably delayed reaction of positive momentum becomes clear. I can’t imagine a system that (over)reacts to any early negative signs would ultimately be helpful for students. Which is not to say that big data analysis couldn’t be helpful in crafting better outcomes – just not constantly adjusting AI changes to curriculum.
Having, as your primary goal, “starting a new and exciting high school” is absolutely meaningless. I do not believe that there is anybody out there who wants to found a high school which is old and boring.
The first, and most important question that I would ask anybody who wants to establish a new school is “why?”.
From the fact that you really do not even know what this “new and exciting” high school should look like, how it would be new, why it would be exciting, tells me that you do not have an answer to that question.
Starting a school is a massive undertaking, which requires an enormous amount f time, effort, and commitment. The only way that it would ever work is if you had an idea of what you want this school to do, and are passionate and committed to this idea.
If you are asking strangers on the internet to choose between four different, separate, and unrelated ideas for this high school, that tells me that you do not really have any idea of what you really want in this “new and exciting school”.
So I will ask you a second, and very important question:
For any learning, one can’t do advanced courses in it without first knowing the ABC’s. You can’t write a word, paragraph, or essay without knowing the basics of how to put it all together.
The same goes in high school. It’s good for our country when essentially everyone has been exposed to the basics of life (Bio/Health/Chem), direct problem solving (higher level Math/Physics/Personal Finance), philosophical problem solving (English), and of course, one is doomed to repeat History if they don’t know about it (in depth). Add in languages to communicate with more of the world and you’re set.
ps More classes can fit into the parentheses above, but going without any of them has students missing a ton of their adult ABCs. Our country and world would not be a better place. Self-directed sounds great, but how can one know to learn about things they don’t know exist? And just because a student doesn’t like a type of classes doesn’t mean they should remain clueless about it for the rest of their lives.
Well, I am bored so I will play… Can you explain #3 more? How would that work. Give an example.
#4 - not 100%but I do believe it can be integrated with success such as having your desktop at school and home be the same. But in reality many can’t do Mixed Reality for an 8 hour day. Integration, depending on how it’s used couple actually be cool. But… Some people get dizzy /tired with headsets in Augmented Reality…
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