 In the year 2020, I decided to read a lot of biographies, especially that of successful entrepreneurs and their companies. So, I laid my hands on Steve Jobs' biography, Coca-Cola Way, and of course, the biography of Elon Musk, written by Ashley Vance. In his account, Vance showed how Musk's childhood in South Africa was a hard slug. He was victim of bullies and his lack of interest in road learning led him to get poor grades in some subjects. When you have this experience as a child, you definitely don't want your own children to have them, especially if you're one of the world's richest people. So, Elon registered his kids at the Los Angeles Merman School, a private educational institution for gifted children that requires pupils to pass an IQ test. As we all can expect, Merman School is for rich kids. I mean, to get your child there, you would have to throw away as much as $30,000 in tuition. While the average student-to-teacher ratio in a medical school is 16 to 1, Merman School boasts of a student-teacher ratio of 7 to 1. But the space ex-genius wanted even more for his children. After looking around for what he wanted in a school and couldn't find it, Musk decided to withdraw his children from Merman School and create his own school instead. The regular schools weren't doing the things that I thought they should be done, Musk said. So, I thought, well, let's see what we can do. He named his school Ad Astra, a Latin name for To The Stars, and it's in Southern California. So, what's so special about Ad Astra? Well a few important things. 1. Children aren't conditioned to see learning as a race for grades. In the part of the world where I'm from, school is synonymous with certificates and grades. Most people really don't care that much about learning. They care only about the grades and the degrees. This conditioning started long before we even knew it. Since we were young children in elementary schools, we have been conditioned to see the entire school activity as what ends with tests, grades and degrees. The problem with this horrible conditioning is that we lose the real reason for school, which is education. At Ad Astra, kids go to school knowing that there will never be anything called tests or grades, so the focus is on learning. 2. Ad Astra school students are not compelled to sit in any class or be in a school for certain hours. If you're a student in this school, when you're going to school in the morning, you know you're in control of whatever you learn today. If you hate a particular class or you're tired of a teacher's rant, all you have to do is get out. Really? Yeah. Just get out of the class and that's fine. You think about it. Why do we hate school so much? Well in my own case, I hated going to school because I wasn't in control of what I was to learn there. For example, I loved some subjects so much that I could spend the whole day learning them, but there are always these classes I wish their teacher died or fell sick. Just joking there. But you got my point. There are always those classes you hate so much and they are the reason you hate school. Now, at Ad Astra, if you're bored in a class, you have the freedom to get out and do something else. 3. Ad Astra school focuses on getting the students to know why. In an interview, Elon Musk said, if you want to teach children how engines work, you wouldn't want to first teach them all about wrenches and all about screwdrivers. You would show them the engine and ask how they would take it apart. Then a very important thing happens, which is the relevance of the tools becomes apparent. Think about that for a moment. I don't know about schools in your part of the world, but where I'm from, you would sit in the classroom day after day learning definitions of things without you having any practical understanding of how such things are useful. I remember learning about an accounting topic called bank reconciliation statement. Even though I was the best student in my class, this topic frustrated my life. Years after I left school and understood how banking works, I discovered that this accounting term is actually very simple. What made it difficult was that I had never entered a banking hall when my teacher taught me the theories about what is going on inside a bank. How best can we teach a child what screwdrivers are used for? Well, let's get them in front of the engines first, then they can see practically what they need screwdrivers for. In this case, they don't even have to struggle to learn the definitions of screwdrivers. They know what it is, they're a practical experience. 4. Ad Astra makes children see school as a playing field When I became a parent few years ago, I was curious to know what researchers in the field of child education have found out. So I started reading. Thanks to Google, I read and read until this day I'm still reading. Regardless of their political or social background, everyone who studies children and their development comes to understand that children love to play. But wait, if you were like my father or other parents in the town where I grew up, playing wasn't what you would allow a child to do for long. Unfortunately, several studies have found that everything a child needs to grow mentally, physically and emotionally are inside play. Play makes children creative because it gets them engaged. Play makes them healthier too and to crown it all, play is enjoyable and it can actually be the best way to learn anything. Let's think about how best we can teach a child what traffic lights are. In school, you will sit down like prisoners and try to force the understanding of traffic lights into their heads. What if we get the pupils outdoors, design the traffic lights and use them as vehicles while we demonstrate what traffic light does? So it turns out that kids in our second method would run to school tomorrow morning while kids in traditional schools want to avoid school. That's why students in Ad Astra hate vacations according to Elon Musk. These children hate vacations because schooling to them is plain. What can we all get out of this? You see, if we can't use a phone produced 50 years ago, we shouldn't definitely be concerned about an educational system that remains the same for more than a century. If education isn't fun, then whoever is given such education is to be blamed, not the students. If you're a parent, your goal isn't supposed to be to give your child the best education you can afford. Instead, your goal should be to make your child love learning. Think about that for a second. People who love learning go on to learn and they are the leaders and rulers of our world. While people who get an education go out of university and feel that they are out of prison, and they are right, it's a prison. According to Jenkins Group, 42% of college graduates never read another book after college. Anyone who knows the importance of education will cry about their above-findings. You see, the more you learn, the more you learn. According to HiguartsProfessor.com, the statistics show a clear relationship between the average salary and the number of books someone reads. In conclusion, education is as important to humans as oxygen. So, when we have a school system where children are made to hate learning, that should make all of us cry. I hope this video helps someone. My name is Tiff Carage. I'm a Nigerian entrepreneur based in Lagos. 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