Speaking of Musk, the first thing that China people think of is definitely Tesla! This auto company, which was established less than 20 years ago, directly defeated all the traditional auto companies in the world, and the gap continues to widen.
It is natural for Musk to become the richest man in the world, but what is even more surprising is that Tesla is just one of Mr. Ma's many projects. He also has projects such as Star Chain Company, Spacex Rocket Company, Solar Energy Company and Artificial Intelligence. Every project is constantly striving for Musk's dream of dying on Mars, leading the development of earth science and technology in these fields.
Today, I mainly talk about his educational philosophy. Musk has seven children and five children have reached the age of going to school. As the most decisive and creative person on earth, Musk will naturally have different ideas from others in education! He set up a secret school for children!
Ad Astra
Ad Astra comes from the Latin proverb Per aspera ad astra, which means: Follow this arduous journey to the sky!
This school is located in the headquarters park of Musk's space exploration company, Space Exploration Technology Company. It is a non-profit experimental school. It mainly enrolls children aged 7- 14, and the school has been operating since 20 14. Musk's five children go to school here, as well as some children of employees of space exploration technology companies and some parents and children who come here from Los Angeles.
Everything in the school, from tuition fees to Apple notebooks for students, is funded by Musk.
For Musk's educational philosophy, this school has something worthy of our admiration:
This is almost the primary and junior high school stage in China. In Musk's view, this learning stage is linked together, not separated into two stages. Of course, this has something to do with his own experience.
This school focuses on education in mathematics, science, engineering and ethics.
No music class, no physical education class. Music is a hobby and amateur sentiment, and sports is just physical exercise. People who fail to reach the level of professional sports do not need to take physical education courses at school.
The language class was solved by AI for Musk, and no need to learn.
In 7- 14 years, students can choose interesting projects at school and work as a team in the projects they choose. There are few formal assignments and no grades, so they can not study projects that they are not interested in!
Children can choose their own courses, and teachers rarely evaluate students' grades and will not grade them.
This model has returned to the most basic state of education, and the children in a project group have more or less knowledge reserves, which is also the reason why the group atmosphere can return to the essence of education.
There was a similar model before Montessori kindergarten in Shanghai, and we also experienced it. Children aged 3-6 are in the same class. This kind of educational experience is better than the domestic peer grading model!
The children designed various courses: artificial intelligence, robotics, environmental policy, space exploration and North Korea. The school also requires students to conduct in-depth research on a topic every week. For example, last week's theme was cruising, and next week's theme was slavery.
This inquiry-based curriculum design enables students to stimulate their interest in learning, think about solutions in the historical and social background, and grow and understand in the process of solutions.
This course design process is the process of learning this course, just like domestic teachers preparing lessons, the depth of preparing lessons is definitely much better than classroom learning.
Practical ability is also one of the core abilities that this school pays attention to. In this school, children can easily assemble weather balloons, fighting robots, use flame throwers and use electromagnetic pulse technology!
In addition, writing, physics, chemistry, mathematics, and some computer science can be easily done by children on the computer.
In addition, the school has set up its own digital currency system, where children can make their own products and make profits through online trading.
This has also been tried in domestic schools, such as Shanghai Fuyuan and Qingdao Aizhifan. We are fortunate to be involved.
For example, if you want to take an architectural course, all the students will work together to design drawings, buy bricks, lay the foundation and build a real house. Although only a house less than 15 square meters was built on the school playground, the children learned how to do it, cooperate, measure, draw, design, build and so on.
For example, learning to plant and trade, the whole class came to a farm to dig potatoes and collect beans; After coming back, with the help of the local master, I made tofu and potatoes into snacks such as potato chips and potato balls. After returning to school, turn these snacks and tofu into commodities and measure the cost they pay in the process. Students divide their work, some pack, some transport, some keep accounts, some sell, and sell these snacks to school teachers and parents. .......
The courses we have participated in before are all unpopular in China, but we believe that these educational concepts of Musk will have more and more fans in the near future.
The low-key Ad Astra has always been considered a secret school. However, eager parents in Los Angeles have pushed this threshold. In 20 17, Ad Astra received nearly 400 applications for admission, only to compete for the opening of 15.