Schools Are Teaching Kids the Wrong Things — with Ted Dintersmith

You can tell a lot about a person by their accent. I really do say I poked my cat in Havid Yad. Everyone around here says like a coffee and dog. We're so attached to the way that we sound because it tells a part of the story of who we are. Your accent? Decoded? That's this week on Explanate To Me. Find new episode Sundays wherever you get your podcasts. Support for the show comes from Hostinger. Ever had an idea for a business or side hustle but never actually launched it? With Hostinger you can turn that idea into something real in minutes instead of weeks. Hostinger is an all-in-one platform that brings everything into one place. Your domain, website, email marketing, AI tools and AI agents. Increase websites, online stores and custom apps with simple prompts then. Use AI agents to automate tedious tasks and grow your business. Go to Hostinger.com/TheProvG20 to bring your ideas online for under $3 a month. Use promo code TheProvG20 for an extra 20% off. Wharton professor Ethan Mollick says that with AI, his students are doing a semester's worth of work in just a couple of days. In Mollick's classroom, AI is required. I'm Henry Blodgett and this week on Solutions. I talk to Professor Mollick about how he's radically transformed how he teaches and how he continues to test the boundaries of what AI can and cannot do. Follow Solutions with Henry Blodgett to hear our conversation. Episode 399 is the country code for calling Italy from abroad in 1990. Home Alone was released in theaters. You know, there's nothing more joyous than the sound of a baby laughing. Unless, of course, it's 3 AM, your home alone and you don't have children. Go, go, go! Welcome to the 390th episode of TheProvG pod. What's happening? In today's episode, we speak with Ted Dentersmith, an education advocate and author focused on how schools can better prepare students for the future of work. So we're obviously fascinated with education, specifically higher education, for several reasons. One, it changed my life. It's important. I think it's a really decent exercise if you feel blessed to try and reverse engineer your blessings to the things that aren't your fault. And that is we have a tendency to reverse engineer to all the wonderful attributes that made us successful. It's my grid, it's my character, it's my relationships, you know, all that stuff. And we have a tendency to overlook the things that aren't your fault. And for me, as I've gotten older, I spent a lot more time thinking about the things that aren't my fault and then trying to reinvest in those things, such that a bunch of other people can be accidentally prosperous and then credit their character and their success. But anyways, first and foremost, the thing that I reverse engineer to is the irrational passion for my well-being of my mother who lived in the Dytro Secretary, Rizmian, our own. I think I'm a confident person and I think she gave me that anchor every day in implicit and explicit ways, verbal and nonverbal, making me believe that I had value. And then two, it was the generosity and vision of California taxpayers in the regions of the University of California, respectively, who built this amazing system, this incredible gift. I would argue the crown jewel of the greatest state in the Union, California, and that is the University of California, where when I applied, there was a 74% admissions rate. And basically if you got bees in high school and you wanted to go to college, you could go to the University of California in exchange for $1,200 in tuition a year, which is what I paid. So I think a lot about higher education and how we continue to bet on unremarkable kids. And I think that's the whole point of higher education and it shouldn't be an argument around the argument around who gets in, which has been a vicious argument for 30, 40 years around affirmative action is a false flag. It's a distraction. It's not about who gets in. It should be about how many? Letting more gay kids, more trans kids, more black kids, more white Republicans from red states. Just letting more kids and all this bullshit is going to go away. You know who doesn't have huge fights over D.I. and affirmative action, junior colleges? Because if you show up and you're willing to pay, you get in. And so they don't have this enormous amount of anxiety and dissent at the university level because again, we have decided to create a false argument around who gets in as opposed to how many. I believe in affirmative action. However, I think a key transformation in education needs to be that we embrace or re-embrace affirmative action, but it should be based on color. What color? Money. You're any additional help you get should be a function of you coming from, say, the lowest quintile or the lowest two quintiles. If you're in the upper quintile, you do not need any help. Trevor knows kids. Tyler Perry's kids do not eat help getting into college, letting in the daughter of a private equity time when he's billionaires, not diversity. But if we had a drug that we could give to people that would make them less likely to kill themselves, kill other people, less likely to be obese, less likely to engage in self-harm, less likely to get divorced, more likely to run for office, more likely to make double the amount of income they would make if they didn't take that pill, would we hoard that drug? That's what we're doing. We're hoarding the drug because once we're cured, once our cancer has gone away, once we no longer have the measles, we've decided, isn't it cool to not have measles? So I'd rather more people have measles because it makes me stand out being a graduate of Dartmouth or Cornell or the University of California Berkeley. And some, it's bullshit and it needs to stop. So anyways, we hope you enjoy our conversation with Ted Dentor Smith. Ted works as a podcast finder. I am in Charleston, South Carolina. Let's post-part into it. Yeah. So you have a Stanford PhD in engineering. You were a top ranked venture capitalist in the late 90s and you spent the last 15 years immersed in the world of education. Give us a state of play or how you would describe American education right now. Yeah, people will say it's not working. It actually is working really well. It's just with an obsolete model. So we still adhere to the model that goes back to 1893. And so that model was designed to equip young kids with road skills and intentionally erode their creativity and curiosity and audacity and agency. And our decision, which I think was quite faithful, was as technology started to really shift things and move us out of the, you know, the industrial era to the innovation era. We just doubled down on obsolete. And so, you know, so it's working in terms of its goal. It just has a wrong goal. Why was that the right goal then and the wrong goal now? Well, when I'm older than you are, but when I got out of school, I say 99% of the jobs in the economy were road jobs. You know, you worked on a factory line for the rest of your life, for you were handling insurance claims or something like that. So it was largely a road job economy with fairly simple citizenship demands, you know, watch NBC or CBS or whatever. And so that model was actually a great fit. I mean, that model is what helped America do so well for decade after decade and build a really strong middle class. It's just as, you know, an area, you know, really well as technology got better and better and better following its exponential growth curve. Things changed, right? And now, you know, if you are an adult, particularly a young adult just good at doing whatever you're assigned, we're already seeing that. Those young adults are struggling to find their way forward, you know, because that's what AI does perfectly. And so when you think about what the school model tries to eliminate and what is really needed today, you know, they're a complete oppositance of the spectrum, you know, so who's rewarded, you know, if you're creative, if you're entrepreneurial, if you're bold, you know, if you're a proactive problem solver or opportunity creator, that's what we need. And I admire schools. I write about schools that where a teacher will do that or even a school will do that. But it goes against a model that says we're going to define success with these high stakes math and reading scores. So I was a bit surprised that you would say that it's been working. I mean, everything I hear about education, and it might be, I was for like experts and papers have a vested interest in catastrophizing a bit because it just makes it sound more compelling and more of a call to action. But nearly half of American high school seniors are testing it below basic levels in math and reading. Historical loads across all of K through 12th grade reading scores today are 10 points lower than a 1992. And not a single state improved in eighth grade math from 2019 to 2024. How do you interpret these numbers? What's behind this decline? Yeah. And what's being tested and how do we interpret the decline? Right? Let's talk about that. But to the first point, I feel like it worked really well from 1893 to about 60 years ago. So there was a glorious period where America's more or less soared, not for everybody, but as a nation, those were glory years. You know, today you go back to a nation at risk report 1983, sounded alarm bells about our ledger. education system, that's part more test prep, more drills, more worksheets, no child left behind in 2002, even more drills and worksheets, you know, race to the top, take it up another level. It's been all consuming goal of our schools. Get better math and reading scores, and as you say, they've been flat to down. And so why is that happy? I think it's happening because teachers are to moralize, kids are bored, and we've dumbed it down so that the reading is, you know, take on some boring passage and train for a multiple choice question about signs of author bias. So you look at the data on high school kids. I mean, most high school kids hate to read. You know, it's like, how are you going to get great reading scores with kids feeling like reading is about the same as cleaning the toilet or something? And then with math, and I wrote this book after math to go right at the issue, you know, everything about the math, where the math has changed in the last 50 years. And what I go back to, you know, in high school, I was with the last wave of kids using the slide rule. I go back to when people in the workplace needed to do things like factor polynomials by hand. Well, now that's all subsumed by computers. And we still do that in school. We not only still do it. It's mandatory. It's multiple years of kids' time in school. It's super high stakes. It largely serves to rank in sort kids and punish millions. And it's all towards skills that computers do. Excellent. Tied to math that adults just don't use. And I could rip through most of what's covered in high school. And if there are any listeners who say, oh, yeah, I'm this morning, I needed to take the cube root of minus 27 or, you know, like, I'm going to do well today because I can sort through a piecewise linear function. Or, yeah, the chain rule was going to make my day. And I was like, wait a minute. And I think that's a gross mismatch between what we not only insist on in school, but devote thousands of hours to versus a world that doesn't care about that anymore. But cares about all these really powerful, interesting math ideas. Ideas that absolutely shape our lives. The more we do that, the longer we persist. The more kids leave school with really dismal prospects and how it outensets a purpose. I read that there's been a lot of attention around, I think it's a state of Mississippi that have seen a huge assent in their test scores. Can you speak more about what they appear to be doing right? Well, one of the drivers, and they're there are several. I mean, first, they got an immediate boost because they put a gate after third grade. You know, so you couldn't go to fourth grade unless you could pass reading test at third grade. You could basically strip out the bottom 10% of test scores and then your fourth grade scores get a boost and that happened. And I'm looking at the data. They kind of flatlined against the standard of the test. They've increased in state rankings because many states have actually declined. And I think they're probably doing, you know, I visited every state on a trip I took but that was 10 years ago. I suspect two things. I suspect they figured out some things like, you know, the science of reading before other schools figured that out. But also like if you make one thing you're all in focus, if you get all sorts of paths on the back for reading score boost for fourth graders, then that's what you're going to do. And if you just direct all in focus on those two measures, you know, you would hope you get some improvement and they've gotten some. But I actually think, and this, this sparked me to write the book, is, you know, I feel like there's a general sense of utility and the way people deal with these scores. You know, because it's a cardinal scale that comes from the National Center of Education of Statistics and the scale runs from 0 to 500. And so we'll see swings of like three or four points on a scale of 0 to 500. And we impute the most significant of consequence to that. And when I interviewed the people who designed those tests, you know, it's like you realize, I think a lot of the people in these positions of authority and power are pretty math confused themselves. And I think the people who report on it don't know how to make sense of it. And then you'll see, and this is something most people are familiar with. You say kind of a cheap data visualization trick. So if you have a four point swing on a scale of 0 to 500, show on a compressed scale, is it, you know, 10 range, 10 point range or 20 point, you can make three points look catastrophic or miraculous if you show three points on a 10 point range instead of a 0 to 500 point range. So I pay attention to the scores. I feel like our testing, if we used it thoughtfully and diagnostically would yield some information. But that's what we chase. And that's how we measure the success of a school or a district or a state or even a kid. And my issue with that is, look at what's happened. You know, like nationally those scores have been flat for years. These hard to find teachers wanting to enter the profession. So we've made that profession, you know, a real torture chamber. And kids are bored. And when you look at what we would really love, I mean, don't we want kids who come out of high school just loving to read, you know, picking up a book like your book and saying, like, I can't put it down. And when you ask these kids, whether it's on a, you know, sample study basis or anecdotally when I travel over the country, they say, no, I don't really like reading. A lot of kids in high school don't read a book, cover to cover. So speaking of books after math, the life changing math that schools want to teach you, the book, your most recent book, you argue that math school's teaching is almost entirely useless in adult life. And I relate to this because while my kids can do integers and calculus, they can't, they understand the interest rate on their credit card. What you propose solution is it's some sort of adulting class or specific types of math. Well, you think about how many hours? How many of your kids, my kids are older, but my kids when they were in high school, anybody's kids, you know, it's not an elective or a course, you know, basically all kids in America are spending three to four full time years on math. So it's just say 25, that 100 hours. Think about what we could do with that 25, 100 hours. I mean, one of the things about my book that's been gratifying, you know, some of the people who got advanced copies sent me a note back saying, I want to read more of your book, but I can't get away from my 13 year old. You know, like, like these math ideas, like how you estimate something or what an algorithm is or what does it mean to optimize or how do you think about decisions in a creative and logical way. I mean, they're not graduate school topics. These are things that get young kids excited about math and, and yet schools don't get to it. And the reason they don't get to it is those are complex nuanced things that beg for creativity that don't lend themselves to multiple choice, one right answer standardize exams. And so I think it's fair to say it's one of my criticisms is that the story of American education is we teach what's easy to test. Not what's important to learn. We'll be right back after a quick break. 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No coordination, no effort to see what they would do, no effort to support them to provide resources, money, arms, if that's what they wanted, telecommunications, just no coercion. ordination at all and they don't seem prepared for. How Trump lost the Republican Party's biggest around war hawk. Today explain every weekday and on Saturdays too. We talk a lot about, I mean, K through 12 education, it's just a subject that keeps coming up. I want to talk about one that divide between rich and poor, public and private. I went to a high school, university high school, public school and when I went it was about a third, a third, a third, a third white, a third black, a third Latina. And now it's about 90 plus percent Latina. Basically anyone with any money seems to have a band in the public school system in certain parts of the country. And my understanding is it's more than just economics and funding that Democrats have been accused of throwing a lot of money at the problem and the problem continues to get worse. And then a lot of the data I've seen is that it's more about parental involvement than it is or engagement in the school than it is about resources. Can you talk a little bit about the socioeconomic impact as it relates to public schools and the public private dynamic over the last several decades? Yeah, you know, I visit a lot of schools. As I mentioned in 2015 and 2016, I went to every state and visited 200 schools and that ended up in my book What School Could Be. An example that sort of makes the broader point is in Mississippi, I visit one school in near high in Jackson. The building should be condemned. I mean, the ceiling is falling apart. The playground has broken glass all over. And then you go like 12 miles away to Richfield and it's like three football, a major football stadium, two practices. A lazy river. Yeah. And so I do think that while we put a lot of focus on Brown versus Board as a major Supreme Court decision, maybe more important was Rodriguez versus San Antonio where we basically said local property taxes can be the main driver for school funding. And so the kids that need the least get the most, the kids that get the most are the ones that are least needy. And then the parents do weigh in and so it's sort of reinforces. And so you look at the overall flow and it's very hard to see how kids in more challenging circumstances might look at this as a fair shake. Now the thing I find right is that one of the things that I think amplifies the differences is that we have made schools so darn boring. You got to do this just because you're assigned to do it. And when that's the case, the rich families get tutors and they bribe their kid with an iPhone and they've got schools that have really compelling teachers to do it. And it's very difficult for the kids in poor circumstances to keep up. What I do find Scott is that when you flip it and when you actually ask kids to take on open to the challenges, amazing things happen because by and large, the well off micromanaged kids sort of like frees up like like you're not making it clear what I've got to do to get an A or their parents will call it like lay out the steps. I need to know what my kids got to do to get an A. And these kids in tougher circumstances just rise to the challenge. And so I feel like of all the levers we could pull, if we shifted more of the focus in schools to things that kids believe are important and can articulate why help them go deep and fast on that help them develop skills in the process that help them accomplish something they're proud of. You would do a lot more to close the achievement gap than we've done in, you know, 40 years of chasing data where the scores are flat and the achievement gap doesn't close. We talk a lot about the show about the gap, the educational gap between boys and girls. The boys, the ones we level the playing field, um, perfectly just girls is blue by boys and seven and ten high school valectarians are girls. Some of that has been assigned to just the biological difference that boys mature faster than girls. But also that there's just a predominant number of people who are girls in women and K through 12. Talk a little bit about the gender disparity in K through 12. And if it's a stark, I've been led to believe. And if you have any ideas on how to close that gap. Well, when I went to school, there wasn't a lot of angst over when you started reading. You know, a lot of, I'm not even sure when I read, you know, I may have been second grade or third grade. Um, there's a study that I think was called the Pigmarilyan Effect Study that's worth noting here, which is that they did this and replicated it. So it's been verified, but they would take kids at random and they go to teachers and say, you know, you've got this kid in your classroom. And even though their past academic performance has been pretty ordinary, they actually have unbelievable talent. And we think you're going to unleash it. And that bum bum bum over the course of the year, that kid just soars. Now, of course those kids were picked at random, but because there were different perceptions, different views built in in terms of the adult perspective on the kid that rippled through, you know, young boys brains delivered develop at a slower pace, right? And we do this testing from the very early stages. You know, you can go to Manhattan and parents are paying for westerner test tutors so they can get their kid in the right pre-k school. You know, it's not, right? But you'll start to get this message early where the boys aren't doing as well on the drills and worksheets. They get this sort of sense of like, yeah, you're not as gifted as the girl in the desk next to you. And that just ripples on through the system. And it said, I think that it's, there, nobody wins in this, right? I think girls are more responsible. They're more vigilant about their assignments. They, they do far better in school. You know, all this angst about diversity and equity in colleges. You know, if you ask a college admissions officer, if you were gender blind and your admissions, what would your inner and class look like? Nobody's willing to say, but they tell me 75% female. So we may go after race or ethnicity or something, but that gender difference is enormous but I'd also say that boys have different ways to react. And some just peel out and they are in a world of hurt going forward. But others just say, screw it, right? They go rogue. And they don't take school that seriously and they sort of dodge the me grinders school that erases that creativity and that entrepreneurial aspect, you know, initiative. And so you look at girls do way better in school. Girls ought to be three quarters of our college, you know, student bodies. And then you look at the world of entrepreneurship. And I think that's for a lot of reasons. I don't want to oversimplify it, but it is heavily male dominated. And most of the guys that do really well and I backed a lot and you'd be a perfect example, kind of just chucked it in school. They just said, like, I'm not into this, right? And I've got enough self confidence to feel like I can come through. But I don't like being told I've got to do something I don't see a point to. And how many of them, you know, that's the irony, right? How many of the people that dropped out of school are the same ones that want more kids to, you know, to take calculus in high school? It's like, wait a minute. Like you sort of went rogue. I think that actually proved to your advantage. You know, like, why don't we begin to think about what conditions led you to run with your entrepreneurial nature? How can we foster and develop that in kids? Because, you know, it's there in every kid. It's not a girl or a boy thing. You know, you hang around with five year olds. They are like bursting with, you know, curiosity and creativity and they'll do almost anything that reminds failing and failing and failing. It's just the more we say buckle down and do what school tells you to do, the more we drive out of kids certain characteristics and reinforce others. And as I say, that model made all sorts of sense in 1950. And I think we're in very difficult times now. And I think, differentially because of that latency and the development of the brains among boys and girls, there's a differential impact that does a lot of damage. I think in both cases, right? I think we're losing a lot of great female entrepreneurs because of this. And I think we're losing a lot of boys through the system that they just don't finish. You know, and it's just like, it's heartbreaking. What's interesting is your view is a little bit different than the public discourse I'm hearing. Let's talk about going back to the basics. Look at Mississippi and Louisiana. Let's return to the basics. And what you're saying is there needs to be an evolution, not a devolution, not a return to the basics, but we need to kind of unlock the beast. And I say the beast in a positive way. We need to unlock the creative animal. How do you do that? How do you, especially at scale, recognize that not everyone is going to go to Stanford and get a master's in engineering? Two-thirds of our kids are not going to end up with traditional liberal arts, college degrees. There's a path for the kid going to college, right? You get a college, you get a degree, you interview with one of the 50 firms that come to the career services center and you think, oh, my roommate wants to be an investment banker, so I'll be an investment banker. I don't like it. I go to business. I had a path. And what you're suggesting is that especially on entrepreneurship, there is an alternative path for the rogue. And what's interesting, we used that about, you know, the rebel has a role in this world. I think it reads somewhere that the Baker scholars, the top performing academic scholars at Harvard actually 20, 30 years on, weren't doing as well as everyone else. I guess the question is, how do you institute? institutionalized and scale this ability to unlock the creative beasts in our educational institutions. You know, too, and that study was verified and I have to say it's a venture guy for years I loved to back people who had gone rogue on school You know, I avoid it. You know like somebody said to me exit or Princeton Harvard Business School I'd say like go get a job at McKinsey You know because again, it's it's not that they're not talented. It's not that they're not hardworking. They are But but going through that process and jumping through the hoops put in front of you Isn't conducive to a mindset that says I'm gonna go rogue and change the world. So how do you do it? I'd say three things one is you don't have to change I mean I spent 15 years hoping that schools would be very innovative and it's it's proven to be difficult But I said you don't have to change everything But what if we said each kid coming through school by the end of their school year would create a capstone project That shows them at their best, you know something that they viewed that would be an important problem to solve or opportunity to create Where they would be learning important skills in the process trying it failing trying it failing trying it failing but by May Damn it all they have something they could display and the school doesn't entire display and we show that in our in my first film Most likely to succeed where these kids are bursting with pride and the adults are coming and saying like wow you did that Like if we did that we'd start to at least nourish the entrepreneurial aspect of all of our kids Some will do really well some won't but I think they would all benefit from that That that would be the first point the second thing is to really rethink accountability and we talked about that a few minutes ago When we obsess about these very narrow measures of math and reading scores it and I I see this over and over and over again It pushes aside innovation, you know like we were like our kid to do X but that may take some hours away from drilling on you know Irrational numbers or something and then we have a film out so I've been busy But I've got the new book out after math, but I also have a film out called multiple choice That shows and it's faster. I mean I do these films that they're not cheap to do But I visited this school at public school in Winchester, Virginia. I just love what they were doing I just when when I get left there I said we're gonna make a film about this because mainstream public school that brilliantly they create something they call the innovation center career-based learning Across a whole range of skills, you know from plumbing to carpentry to welding to cyber security to healthcare to AI to digital media But the key and the reason I made the film is this is important for all kids to do not those kids and So you had this center that almost serves like a microcosm of national service So you might be really good at 10 things and I might be bad or all those 10 things But maybe I'm good at one thing you're not good at and we're side-by-side and suddenly we both developed some appreciation For the ways were talented the quite distinctive ways were talented and they built those skills by the way based on what the local economy needs So suddenly they're developing a pipeline of kids that come into their community some go away to college because All kids have to do it. They're not penalized for welding instead of a p chemistry So the college kids actually benefit But the ones that go directly to the workforce which in their cases have Have explored kill careers develop skills and they're off to a running start and I think we've sort of convinced ourselves And it's been a colossal mistake that there's either the college academic path or the career workforce path Not only are they different, but one is way better than the other, you know, and you look at the college signing days and the penance and the you know, I mean I Was a big supporter no Brock and Michelle Obama well, but I used to just almost Break my heart when it would be college signing day. You know you can do it every kid You know and a lot of kids just they're not academically inclined or they find their passion in different ways And it's like if we respected all these paths and if kids I give this I use this video on my talks We didn't do it in the video production quality is terrible But a guy named Woody Flowers. I don't know if you met Woody But he co-founded first robotics with Dean Kamen and he taught it MIT for 45 years and became convinced I have to say this slowly because if people don't believe me Woody became convinced that MIT graduates had learned very little science in engineering and To make his point graduation day caps and gowns World's most prestigious engineering institution in the world. We're proud graduates They go off to all these grads and they hand him a light bulb wire and battery and say can you light up the light bulb and These kids are like of course like wait a minute. Why are you Fathering me with something so pedestrian on this big day and then they can't light up the light bulb and And the point I make is had those kids along the way Shatter electrician or done a summer internship with an electrician They'd be way better MIT engineering students and other kids might go on to be electricians that do incredibly important work to hold their community together and Everybody else would at least know when the power goes out at their house. Here's what we do about it, right? And so that that sense of career Over there get on a bus your stigmatized this is a consolation prize college. Yes, Bingo. You did it I think that's been very Destructive to the way our nation moves ahead and I think quite frankly incredibly destructive to the Democratic party Because that Democratic party has been for years of course you need a college degree to be a first class citizen And of course if it doesn't work out taxpayers should cover the cost and I'm not a dense college I'm just in favor of exposing kids during those precious free years of high school to gain experience across a range of career Areas to understand what it means to learn things that are tied to real world impact and to make better choices as 18 year olds It's not like a big proponent of occasional programming. I Would say well first I love calling you the innovation. Yeah, you know, but casualized such a stigma I think I think it's important for all kids and I think I think because that's where the learning gets real now in my case You know It's a personal thing for me. So I grew up my dad dropped out of high school to fight in World War 2 Discharge with the nervous breakdown never went back to high school kept us afloat as a carpenter Was always kind of looked down on is like, you know, no high school degree no college degree But you know, I do still go back to that neighborhood He did all the work for the local church content. He built family rooms and porches for you a great citizen Hardworking dad, you know doing an honorable profession when I was in high school back then We still had to take shop. Here's what saved me like had my shop grade counted my class rate would have just dropped through the floor I did not get any of those genes for my dad. I am terrible at that But being around him I really appreciated the fact that the way he was really talented Had nothing to do with school had nothing to do with standardized tests But it was impressive. It wasn't something I was good at But it certainly wasn't something I should look down on and having seen other people around who mood did I feel like we're Just being grossly unfair to people who's talentless lie more in a hands-on profession and So yes, I'm a fan of it and it's not to say schools should be all about career But I feel like if a kid spends 18 years, you know, well 12 years of school or 14 years 16 Whatever how many years of school if they leave and they don't have the sense of purpose and in a higherable skill I think we've sort of let them down That's a lot of years to make sure they feel some sense of purpose in their life and at least have that Safety and knowing I'm really good at something that could help me move forward with the career I find for the loan We'll be right back Hi, I'm Bernabé Brown and I'm Adam Grant and we're here to invite you to the Curiosity shop a podcast That's a place for listening wondering thinking feeling and questioning. It's gonna be fun. We rarely agree But we almost never disagree and we're always learning that's true You can subscribe to the Curiosity shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday Support for the show comes from hosting her the biggest priority entry for most entrepreneurs is in a lack of capital It's the friction of starting you can spend months in the strategizing phase Which is precious time that could instead be spent actually making moves But these days the rules have changed AI is redefining who gets to build a business So when you're building the next big thing go live in minutes not weeks with hosting her Hosting is an all-in-platform that brings everything into one place your domain website email marketing AI tools and AI agents So you can launch online without stitching together five different subscriptions Start with a prompt and add your personal touch You can create websites online stores and custom maps without coding or designing skills then use AI agents to automate tedious tasks and grow your business Hosting her powers over 10 million websites and there's a reason it earned a CNET Editor's Choice Award Turn your one day into day one go to hosting her dot com slash the prof g 20 to bring your ID online for under three dollars a month Plus get an extra 20% off with promo code the prop g 20 that's less than the price of a cup of coffee per month That's hosting her dot com slash the prof g 20 promo code the prof g 20 for an extra 20% off In 1984 Apple launched maybe the most consequential computer ever. It was not a good computer, particularly that was actually a lot wrong with it, but the Macintosh had all of the right ideas about what computers would become, and it kind of changed everything. This week on version history, our chat show about the best and worst and most interesting products in tech history were telling the story of the Macintosh, and why, again, despite not being very good, it managed to change everything anyway. That's version history on YouTube and wherever you get podcasts. We're back with more from Ted Dentersmith. Ever since I've been in education, we've been predicting the end of higher education or a massive disruption, and every year the industrial higher education complex gets stronger. What any thoughts about, is there enough coming disruption, and if there is, is it from may I or something else? You go back to, and I had a high opinion of Clayton Christensen, but what was it 20 years ago when he predicted the demise of higher ed and it's rolling, yeah, he was wrong. I think a few things. I would love to see higher ed be more innovative. I go back, I mean, I got a lot out of college. I went to a public college in Virginia, but when I got my senior year, the tuition for the year was 250 bucks. My summer job, we both worked at grocery stores for summer jobs, but my summer job, I made enough to cover tuition room and board for my last year of college. That ratio is really unfavorable now. You can no longer, even for a public college, a kid can't in a summer job, unless they're an AI consultant or something. If you just work a standard summer job, you're going to still be way underwater. I think you're going to see a lot of the, we tend to just say higher ed, as though it's one universal basket of schools offering similar experiences for their kids. I'm a big fan. I don't know if you read any of Paul Tufts books, but Paul is a very thoughtful guy and wrote a book called The Inequality Machine. Where you teach or the Ivy League schools, their budget per student year to take care of and educate those students is six digits. They charge 80K and they spend 100 to 110, 120K. There are a lot of colleges where that budget per student year is like 2,500 bucks. I think those are very vulnerable today. What I'd love to see for the colleges that really do a great job for their kids, I'd love to see them expand the student body size. Why is selectivity such an important factor other than it flows into the US News and World Report? Wouldn't it be great if these colleges set over the next five years we're going to accept 10X and number of students? I think that would be interesting. They certainly could hire great faculty for and they've got the money. I do like when I first started working in Boston, to be really direct, Northeastern was sort of like a third tier college. Now it's unbelievably hard to get into. I just love what they're doing. Five years instead of four, two to two and a half years out in the real world in co-ops where you're often making money and kids leave with a real sense of what they want to do and a great job path. But they also have a really strong liberal arts program. So it's not again career only, but it's sort of like that connecting learning to the real world. And so I think there are real opportunities there. But I do feel like we sense such a bad message. You know, you walk around college campuses, right? And they are like, kids will complain because they have to share a bathroom with three other kids. I mean, when I went to college, you're like, there were an entire hallway all went to one bathroom. You know, like, and it wasn't plush and it wasn't cushy. And I think we send them a message to these kids. You made it, you know, school I visited and wrote about is in Washington State, Evergreen College. I mean, it's bare bones. So, you know, laying there campus is not. You sell in the 80s. Yeah. The whole place should have been condemned. It was, but it was $400 a quarter. I'll take it. As long as it was bare, I mean, food or fire. Evergreen does a great job with its kids and they produced a number of outstanding, you know, graduates and it's very affordable and also it's very easy to get into. And so I think that we need to make some changes, but I think I do think and you know, and I think we're mostly in agreement on this. I mean, if you can go to college, not going to a enormous debt, you know, actually have a sense of what you want to get out of it, you know, like those are great years, you know, right? If you don't like academics or, you know, it's just not for you or you have a real passion for something else, I think we need to celebrate that path as well. I do think that this whole mantra of you've got to go to college, no matter what it takes, I go to some of these colleges, some more mid and low tier colleges where, you know, it's a certain time of year, every lawn is plastered with the sign up for FAFSA, you know, renew your student loans and so many people are just dealing with student loan debt they're never going to get out of. And because we told them, this is your ticket to success and it can be, but it is not a guaranteed ticket to success, that's for sure. So let's talk about kind of magic want us two or three policies you could implement that you think would change higher education or just education for the better. What would you like to see happen? Yeah, I would say first, I would say put weight in terms of course requirements and graduation on real things you create and invent and stick with it until you've done something you're proud of and less on multiple choice exams. So I would start looking for authentic portfolios of progress of impact and make that at least part of what we expect kids to do through school. That would be the first thing. The second thing is I think it's grossly irresponsible today to forbid kids from using AI. You know, like I don't think it should be in all classes, but I think if a kid spends 12 years in, you know, in school 14 whatever, however many years they spend, a kid that comes out of school really good at using AI can create or pursue almost any career they want. And a kid that can't I think is going to be hurting. So we can do that, right? And we don't have to teach them. We just have to let them use it. But I give you an example, I give a guest lecture every year to, you know, a very well known public college, about 100 juniors and seniors. And and too much ago I asked them how many of you consider yourself today to be really good at AI to be able to use AI to make yourself and those around you more productive hundred. Nobody. I said, no, no, no, wait, I'm not here. Like this isn't a witch hunt. I actually hope everybody holds your hand up. So let's do this again. Because by the way, this is going to be really important. Still no one. I mean, you know, like I'm, I'm my head's exploding. And I just explained to them, you can spend your next four months here or 16 months here or, you know, 28 months here trying to eek out a point one or point two increase in your GPA or allocate time. So you get really good at using AI, whether it has the blessing of your proff or not. And the difference is going to be enormous because if you do the first one, no one's going to care. And if you get good at using AI, I'm right, your own ticket. I got so many thank you. I mean, how many college kids write thank you notes? No, right. I got this whole bundle of thank you notes from these kids who, someone to my amazement said, I never really thought of that. You know, like, okay, so that would be my second one. And then the third is I think investing a lot more money in our teaching force. You know, a good friend of mine is a guy named Posse Saul Berg. He wrote finished lessons. He architected all the changes in Finland. And interestingly, you asked Posse, what made all the progress in Finland possible? It was a budget crisis. You know, the oil revenue tank, they were under the gun. And they had to make a choice. And we could do everything sort of half-assed or we could put our dollars on data or we could put our dollars on teacher training. We can either have more data tracking how our kids are failing on goals that don't make sense or we could put it into making our teachers amazing. They shut down a bunch of the colleges of education. There's a joke in Finland. You know, three people go into the bar, a doctor, a lawyer and a teacher. The bartender asked the doctor, why are you doctoring? So I didn't get into, didn't get into the school of education. That's the lawyer, why are you a lawyer? They turned me down, so I'm a lawyer. But you know, it's like our teachers. We just weigh on them, right? I mean, it's just heart breaking. And it ripples down. When I asked teachers in schools today, what drew you to the profession? It is often my parent did, often the mother. And then I say to them, would you encourage your child to teach? And they said, nope, nope. And I'm living that. I've got a 27 year-old daughter who does teach. And I mean, like, when I track how her hours are and how little she's paid, I'm not going to, I hope she doesn't watch this podcast because I'm thrilled. But I'm like, wow, it's a good thing she's incredibly frugal because no one could live on that salary. It's hard to argue against paying our teachers more. But we live in an economy that's a blind demand in a labor force. And is there a teacher shortage? Because at the end of the day, at some point, if they're not paid well enough, people aren't going to go into the profession and they're going to have to raise the compensation. So in some, as long as people are willing to teach for low salaries, you're going to keep your salaries low. Do you? I asked this generally as a question, not as a comment. What are the employment and participation trends in teachers across public schools? It's Graham. I mean, the pipeline shriveled up. There are a lot of openings. You know, But there is, I think anybody in that world would say there's a lot of people who are There's an acute shortage of teachers. And it's just, we've made it very, you know, if you're not on this page on October 19th, we'll wrap your knuckles. You know, I'm a supporter of and I've visited several times. There's this National Teachers Hall of Fame in the middle of nowhere in Kansas, in Poria, Kansas. And I went all over the country, my wife and I are driving on a highway and we see this sign. National Teachers Hall of Fame, I didn't even know it existed. We just said like, I turned the car, drove off, went and visited, met the woman who ran it, ran it. And I've been back several times and they've been, you know, unbelievably great in every respect. The museum itself, like compared to, you know, Canton, Ohio or Cooperstown, New York, I mean, this is dinky, right? It's one little room, but at least it's there. But Scott, you go up on a hill. There's a no and a little chapter and there are these obelisks. And the obelisks have the name of all the educators who've given their lives to protect and defend their kids from a shooter. And they're raising money. I just gave them the grant to finish it, but they have to put a whole new obelisk. And, you know, it's 200 teach, you know, and the point I say is we trust them with the lives of our kids, but we don't trust them with their lesson plans. And how, you know, like, if nobody likes to be scripted every minute of the day, nobody likes to fear that if they say, not quite the right thing, that some crazy parent will doxam on social media, you know, I don't know, you know, it's like, like, this is the foundation of our country, right? Strong education is the key to a successful democracy. And if we get it right, things fall in place. And if we botch it up, things fall apart. And I feel like we're 40 years into the botch up zone with this because the world's racing ahead and we stay stuck in time, which is why we're with the book of aftermath. I think it just is perfect, right? It says thousands of hours on math that no adult uses at the same time never getting to the math ideas that define our lives in ways that tell kids, yeah, we don't have an answer to your question of when will I ever use it. There really is no point in this other than it gives us a nice way to rank and sort you, but do it anyway. And by the way, your goal is to outcompete the people next to you. And then we say, and wow, they're disillusioned and they leave school with no sense of purpose and most of them feel wailed on. You know, like, it's not okay, right? And I wish it weren't like that. I mean, I'd be like traveling and having fun. I mean, like, I did find adventure, like, you know, like, but I just feel like if you, once you know that, you just say, darn, sorry about that. You know, we got to speak, those who know have to speak out. And, and that's what I try to do because like, these kids, I mean, you look at these eight, 10 year old kids, they kind of look up at you and you just know they, they're trusting the adults to make good decisions for them. And I don't think we are. So the last question, after learning everything you've learned about education, how does it impact your role as a father and what you try to teach your kids? I mean, a lot of education or the pretext of the context or the pillars for them succeeding in school happen at home. What advice would you have for parents in terms of what happens in a home helping set them up for success in the classroom? Well, I generally don't talk much about my own kids, but I've got a 29 year old son and a 27 year old daughter. Then some of these are a microcosm of what we talked about. You know, our daughter, love school, love the ideas, did a lot of other things besides study, but it just was easy for her. And so, you know, you look at her and you say, you know, she did incredibly well through the school process. Our son, from about grade three or four, just hated it. And mostly he hated having, being told what to do. You know, there was just something about this is what you have to do that he just didn't respond to. And so he, you know, he spent a few weeks in college and just pulled the record and, you know, sort of bootstrapped his way up to creating and directing music videos. And, you know, he's done things for the Grammys, things for the college football. I mean, like he, he's bootstrapped his way up, but he's done well. Yes, he's done fine. But I think in my advice to parenthesis, kids will tell you what works for them. Kids have their interest, understand that. But I know with my son, if I had wage war and beat the bejes of that of him to get a slightly higher GPA, our relationship would be broken. He probably would have had best turned one B minus into a B or something. And I think he would have gotten a drum beat of somehow people didn't admire him. You know, people didn't respect him. So I say to parents, I mean, I think it's easy, right? Do you care more about the decal in the back of your car? Or do you care more about helping your kid find their lane and supporting the heck out of them? And most parents will tell me, of course, all I want is for my kid to be happy. A lot of parents act in the exact opposite way. That they just like, you know, I, you know, I reconnected with my high school. And so I went to public high school in North Virginia. I gave a very controversial graduation speech. It was so controversial. I was booed by the audience. And what I went to school the next day, they called the police to arrest me. So that wasn't my, maybe my best moment in high school. But they approached me. I was giving a talk in a conference and a bunch of people from that high school came up to me. They had seen my work, my films, and read some of my books. And they brought me a frame picture of me from the yearbook. And that was kind of cool. But I've gone back there. And interestingly, one of the teachers had the kids watch, you know, my first film, "Most Like a Succeed" and read some of my book, "What School Could Be." And then each of these kids gave talks to their classmates, to their teachers, to parents, and to the principal. 36 kids, not one said, school is a source of joy for me. I mean, many were in tears. And at the end, the principal said, like, we, I just have to ask, how do we let this happen? And I say some things. So you have a sense of what I might say to that group. I try not to like totally diss it. But I sort of say like, we need to have schools of creativity and joy, not schools of drills and worksheets. And this mother and dad come up with their daughter. And I try to be very specific. I said to the daughter, your talk was really interesting. You made these two points. I thought they were great. But the mother says to me, we really just are interested in this. Like, we know heart. We know our daughter is not college material for this class of college. But what kind of AP course coverage and scores do you think she needs to get into this tier with the daughter right there? And I say like, wait, your daughter just gave this great talk. Like, you need to be excited. Like, don't like your view about your daughter be defined by some anonymous 28 year old college admissions officer who's probably there because their family gives a lot of money or they were an athlete. Like, help this kid find their length. She's great. And it's again, all I want is for my kid to be happy. And then what happens, right? And I just say believe that if that's your goal, and you know, I'll put it into a metaphor that you and I can understand. And I hope people listening to this can. You know, I'm an adventure guy, through and through. I am a venture guy. Venture guys don't tell anybody what to do. As a venture guy, if we do our job and I tried to do my job and I think I did it well, I try to find out what your dream is and support the hell out of you, right? What do you want to accomplish and how can I help? And if I don't think you want to accomplish something that I care about or is important, I don't work with you. But that ripples through my view about education. Adults should figure out what that kid really feels they're put on this planet to do, which won't happen at age five. May not happen at age 10, but if we work with those kids by the time they leave school, they ought to have a clear sense of what problems they want to solve, what's important to them, what drives them. And then I think just support the heck out of them on that mission. And don't sweat if they want to be an electrician versus being, you know, whatever, you know, I've got to call it. I mean, like help them find out their dreams and purpose and support them. That's what I would say to parents, because kids don't want to leave the life you tell them to live. They want to live the life they want to create. And I think our role as adults, whether we're parents or teachers or friends or relatives, is to just help those kids blossom. I, yeah, it's impossible not to nod when you say, you just want your kids to be happy. But any, a lot, I'm gonna project this on other parents. And honest, when I really am honest in my own self-assessment, getting my oldest son or him getting into an elite school was hugely important to me deep down. And of course, I want them to be happy, but I've talked myself into believing, I think if we're honest as parents, it's sort of the first real time a neutral third party or a fairly neutral third party, not only assesses the kid, but assesses you as a parent. And we need to break out of that. We need to have more qualitative assessments of what it means to be a successful parent and that doesn't necessarily mean getting your kid into an elite school. But I'm hugely guilty. I know exactly what you're saying and a lot about education. I think I like to, I know I love my kids and I want them to be happy, but I still think the majority of us, when push comes to shove. Really help our kids get into an elite school and are disappointed if they don't I Think I think that's fair to say I mean by my film most likely to succeed you came out in 2015 and and a group in Palo Alto just was on me like a dog on a pork chop to do a community screening gun high school because that year They had five student suicides and these were normal kids, right? But these were kids that were told that of course you've got to get into Stanford and I'd be crushed if you go this was in the Bay area Yeah, I remember reading about this. Yeah, so I just would say you know You always have to ask at what price right? You know, I mean I I had a daughter who loved the ideas of school, you know like I Didn't say anything other than go with it, right and and that unfolded in a way that worked for her But I mean I tell you you know if a kid is telling you that I don't enjoy it or I don't like it or I don't see the point in it or my interest or somewhere different You know I don't know really Costion that's all I say caution Ted Dinter Smith is an education advocate author and filmmaker focused on how schools can better prepare students for the future of work His new book after math the life-changing math that schools won't teach you is out now Ted very much appreciate you working and enjoy the conversation. Yeah, this was great I appreciate and thanks for all you're doing it's really fantastic This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Lord Jenner Camille Rieck is our social producer Bianca Rosario and Mirras is our video editor and Drew Burrows is our technical director Thank you for listening to the property pod from PropG media