How Elon Musk is Changing Education and What You Can Learn from Him

Elon Musk is often referred to as a real-life Tony Stark. His work in revolutionizing the automobile, space exploration, and green energy industries makes him a leading technological icon of our era. Yet, Musk has not just focused on disrupting traditional industries, he has also set his sights on education, recently designing his own school to improve education for his own children. While not everyone can build their own school or hire personalized teachers, there are three key takeaways from Elon Musk’s education philosophy that anyone can use to improve their own learning experience.

1. Teach to the Problem, Not to the Tools

As Musk recognizes, teaching students by giving them answers to problems that they have yet to explore destroys creativity, narrows the mind, and leads to boredom. Instead, he has introduced a “problem focus” into his Ad Astra school’s principles. The Goldilocks Principle, as one might call it, is to give oneself a question or set of answers that are neither too easy nor too difficult. If the problem is too easy, one will become bored. If it is too complex or difficult, one will become overwhelmed. However, if the problem is challenging enough and one can ultimately solve it, they will be motivated to find the answer.

This problem-solving approach to learning is not new, as it has been employed by great thinkers, such as Socrates, for many years. Instead of just memorizing answers to problems, students should be encouraged to ask intelligent questions, as this is where true discovery happens. Employing this approach can help students unlock endless motivation that can greatly improve their learning experience.

2. Cater to Individual Abilities and Interests

The complexities of the human mind mean that students do not fit into a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all mold when it comes to learning. Different students learn at different paces and have different interests. Elon Musk recognizes this fact and believes that catering education to match individual aptitudes and abilities makes more sense than offering a standardized one-size-fits-all model.

While this might seem like a daunting task within the context of traditional grade school and college education, there are now more flexible learning arrangements available, such as YouTube and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), that make it easier to customize learning experiences to individual abilities and interests. For example, if one is interested in a particular field of study, they can pursue it by watching relevant videos or enrolling in online courses. Likewise, one can skip over topics that do not interest them without feeling pressured to learn them.

3. Make Learning Enjoyable

Musk’s Ad Astra school has a model that ensures pupils enjoy their educational experience. The school’s atmosphere is one where kids ask their parents to take them to school, and they sprint into class brimming with energy for the day’s activities. This model can also work for adults, as it turns out that people learn much faster when they are enjoying themselves than when they are feeling bored or disengaged.

The more one can focus on interesting problems to solve and cater the process to their interests, the more exciting one will find their learning, and the more productive they will be. A person should be able to enjoy what they are learning and not feel forced or pressured into it. By making learning enjoyable, one is more likely to retain information and apply the knowledge in the future.

Conclusion

Elon Musk’s approach to education highlights the importance of teaching to the problem, catering to individual abilities and interests, and making learning enjoyable. While not everyone can build their own school and customize their educational experience, everyone can positively impact their learning by employing these principles to their studies. By adopting more problem-solving approaches and focusing on individual abilities and interests, learning can become more enjoyable and productive.