Sporcle was THE way to waste time back when I was in college. (Don’t worry, we’ll get to the Elon Musk quotes in a minute.) I loved pitting my wits against others in the time-tested intellectual arenas of “Which super-villain goes with each hero?” or “What is the 7th word of each Beatles song?” Recently, in a fit of nostalgia, my friend and I sat down and took the “Name the 50 state capitals” quiz. (Go ahead, take the quiz, I’ll wait.) I’m American, she’s Canadian. I should have been a shoe-in for victory. I got 6 right. SIX. Of the 50 state capitals. I guessed Gettysburg for almost all of the eastern states, figuring it HAD to be the capital of one of them. Spoiler alert: it’s not.
Obviously I lost. I know I learned these in school, but past that Friday’s test over 20 years ago, I hadn’t remembered a thing. My Canadian friend, on the other hand, had spent much of her childhood driving the 50 states with her family. They would regularly take round-trips in a car from Alberta all the way to Arizona to visit her grandparents. She’d driven down the west coast from Vancouver to Los Angeles, and had regularly traversed the northern states on her way to visit more family. In short, she had an actual real-world reason to know the capitals. She had been to many of them.
How we learn
Humans are wired to think this way, to remember stories and experiences, not dates and facts. So why do we grit our teeth and march on, cramming information into our kids’ heads that they won’t remember in a week’s time? Because that’s how we learned.
So how should we approach education? That’s a huge question with a huge answer. Well, answers. Not every kid is the same, and not every situation is the same. There are many thought leaders in education who we often go to for advice; Charlotte Mason, Susan Wise Bauer, John Dewey, Ben Kenobi. Today, however, I wanted to take a look at someone not normally considered a leader in the education field.
In 2014, Elon Musk decided he didn’t like the approach traditional schools were taking to education. So during a parent-teacher conference one day, he—being the eccentric billionaire he is—hired the teacher to come start a school for his and a few other SpaceX employees’ kids.
I’ve assembled 5 Elon Musk quotes that illustrate the philosophy that this school, Ad Astra, is founded on for you to think through for your own school situation. I shouldn’t need to say it, but just in case you’re wondering, I don’t believe Elon Musk is all-knowing about education or rockets or anything else. I do believe (and agree with him or not, it’s pretty hard to argue against this) that he’s uniquely gifted and highly successful (in a worldly sense <- very important point) and so his ideas are worth thinking about.
5 Elon Musk quotes about education
Don’t focus on grade level. Like, at all.
“There aren’t any grades… making all the children go in the same grade at the same time like an assembly line, because some people love English or languages. Some people love math. Some people love music. Different abilities, different times. It makes more sense to cater the education to match their aptitudes and abilities.”
-Elon Musk
This was actually how schools largely operated before the 19th century. It changed not because it was ineffective in general, but because of the demands on the federal government for providing free education to millions of kids. When dealing with a problem that big, there is little choice but to establish public schools that work sort of like an assembly line. It works, but not for everyone, and not optimally so.
Try it: Whether your child is educated inside or outside the home, try focusing less on where they are in comparison with other students. Are they great at writing? Let them write! If school isn’t nurturing that talent, have your child write to a real investigative journalist or help them start their own family newspaper. If they hate math, it might be because they’re a bit behind the other students, and that’s ok! Let them really nail down the math from last year, or the year before; that might just give them the encouragement they need to feel like they can do it. That would be far more effective than pushing them further in a subject they’re just not ready for. It’s not unnatural for your child to be a bit behind, but it IS unnatural to expect all children to be at the exact same level in every thing they do.
Find the intersection of talent and interest
“Read broadly in many different subject areas, and then try to find something where there’s an overlap of your talents and what you’re interested in…people may have skill at a particular thing but don’t like doing it.”
-Elon Musk
Elon even went so far as to read the encyclopedia when he was a kid. If you’re an engineer, you should understand me when I say we need to find a nice balance between depth- and breadth-first search. Explore what they’re interested in deeply (see the last point), but make time to keep finding new fields, new subjects. I was completely focused on being an engineer for most of my schooling over a decade ago, and only found out that I love art during the quarantine, and only found out that I love writing last week.
Try it: Pay attention both when your child is talented at something, and when they like something. They often go together, but not always.
Teach to the problem, not the tool
In the spirit of going against the norms, I’ve saved the best for the middle.
“It’s important to teach problem solving, or teach to the problem and not the tools. Let’s say you’re trying to teach people about how engines work. A more traditional approach would be to say, ‘we’re going to teach all about screwdrivers and wrenches’… and you’re going to have a course on screwdrivers and a course on wrenches. This is a very difficult way to do it. A much better way would be like, ‘here’s the engine. Now let’s take it apart. How are we going to take it apart? Ah! You need a screwdriver. That’s what the screwdriver is for. You need a wrench, that’s what the wrench is for.’ And then a very important thing happens: The relevance of the tools becomes apparent.”
-Elon Musk
This is my FAVORITE of the Elon Musk quotes. We as humans are wired to solve problems, not learn random facts whose relevance is not immediately important. We just don’t learn as well, its unnatural. Didn’t we all wish we knew why we were learning that math in school?
Try it: Try to add context to what your child is already studying, either in your home or in school. This can be as simple as encouraging your kids to set up a shop in your living-room if they’re learning to count money to having them create blueprints for their dream house if they’re learning how to compute the area of a shape. Or, take Elon’s quote literally and take apart an engine! I actually believe Charlotte Mason’s concept of living books was an answer to this as well, and they are the backbone of our homeschool history.
Gamify your learning
“Generally you want education to be like as close to a video game as possible… like a good video game. You do not need to tell your kid to play video games, they will play video games on autopilot all day. So, if you can make it interactive and engaging…then you can make education far more compelling and far easier to do.”
-Elon Musk
Ok, bear with me here. I know this site is all about screen-free learning, but you don’t need a screen to gamify your learning. My family and I play board games. Like all the time. We love it. It has served as a way for our kids to think critically, use strategy, work together, do math, and learn diplomacy, to name a few.
Try it: Of course you could get into board games. Highly recommended. You can also apply these concepts on a more fundamental level, though. Working towards a goal, getting rewards, freedom to explore creative solutions, freedom to choose their problems. All of these ingredients make video games so enticing, and you can apply them outside of the “video game” context. Salt and Lightspeed will be rolling out screen-free games and simulations in the near future. I will intend these games to help your kids think through open-ended, sandbox-type problems using critical thinking. Subscribe to stay up to date about when these will be released!
Make more pie
“You really want to make sure that you’re not operating without realizing it from a zero-sum mindset, where the only way to get ahead is to take things from others, then that’s going to result with you trying to take things from others which is not good. It’s much better to work on adding to the economic pie. You know, creating more than you consume.”
-Elon Musk
When kids really internalize this concept, it will show up in their problem-solving. It will both help them become a more thoughtful person as well as help them find the actual best solution. It’s not me vs. you; rather, which solutions result in everyone benefitting?
Try it: Next time your children argue, try to put it in these terms and make them understand that everyone benefits when they work together for a good solution. Sometimes, giving ground will result in both having more. The other day, my kids were at the park and couldn’t decide who should go down the slide first. They both just sat there at an impasse and neither used the slide or had any fun. If even one of them had realized that losing that particular battle would help them both win the war, they would have both been much happier. Of course, teaching our kids to be self sacrificial with no hope of worldly gain is even more important. Both thought processes have their time and place.
Conclusion
These 5 Elon Musk quotes have really shaped how I approach both raising my children and creating resources for Salt and Lightspeed. I want my kids to be kind, thoughtful problem solvers. I want them to love learning. To do both what they’re good at and what they’re interested in. To see a problem as a whole system and think creatively about solutions. It’s simple, but if you would like somewhere to get started, check out Salt and Lightspeed’s first product! These Color by Code coloring books, along with the rest of the resources that Salt and Lightspeed creates, try to approach coding from a different perspective. There is storytelling, nature, art, and programming variables all wrapped in a color-by-numbers format. Subscribe if you would like to see more resources like this!