How to Accelerate Learning & Improve Education | Joe Liemandt
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We don’t do the basics. We need to nail the basics. Just like in sports, my famous example I always use is if you lose the ball 20% of the time going down the court. The coach is not saying, “Let’s work on the dunks and the alleyoops or the even the layups. ” They’re like, “Ball handling.
We’re going to get ball handling. 20% isn’t acceptable. 15% isn’t acceptable. You can’t be 85 80% accurate. ” >> In America, we’re like, “You getting a B, man.
Move on. We’re moving on to dunks. You just finished fourth grade at 80%, let’s get you into that fifth grade stuff. And the answer is no. No, because then all those problems compound.
Welcome to the Hubberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I’m Andrew Huberman and I’m a professor of neurobiology and opthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Joe Limont, the principal of Alpha School, which is a novel approach to education that strives to ensure that every child reaches the frontier of their knowledge and skill potential. Kids in alpha school spend just two hours a day, two hours a day, learning what they need to in order to ensure no gaps in their cognitive knowledge. Then they spend the rest of their day learning to and actually starting their own businesses, learning financial skills as well as communication and interpersonal skills.
The goal of Alpha School is to tailor learning to the unique needs of the child. But unlike so many other non-traditional forms of learning in schools, they don’t let the child pick what is easiest for them, nor force all kids to learn at the same rate across all subjects. So, it’s a truly unique approach. The data on alpha school kids are astounding. K- through2 students from alpha school test in the top 1% of students in the US and their average SAT scores graduating from high school is a nearly perfect 1530.
In addition, while still in school, many of the alpha students start their own businesses that are highly successful, meaning they generate hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. During today’s conversation, you’re not just going to hear about how alpha students do all this incredible stuff. It’s really about how the ways in which they learn will allow you, adult or young, to learn better and why filling in gaps in our basic knowledge that we all have at every age is both possible and can be done quickly with the correct lesson plans and understanding of neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to rewire itself. So, some of today’s discussion focuses on that as well. You’ll also learn that no, Alpha School is not just for wealthy kids.
They are changing education for students of all backgrounds and income levels. and Joe Lemont and his colleagues are striving to teach educators the real data on how kids and adults learn best in ways that serve the student both in and after they leave school. I have to say as a university professor who lives in the land of education, our conversation today completely changed how I think about learning in and out of the classroom and it also provides tools that I now use to learn more effectively. And I’m confident that it will do the same for you. Before we begin, I’d like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
It is however part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today’s episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Joe Limont. Joe Leemont, welcome. >> Thank you very much.
Great to be here. tell us about learning and education a 100 years ago because that sounds like a long time ago but it wasn’t that long ago and then we’ll use that as a contrast point to where you’re trying to take learning and education and schooling for young people now. So 100 years ago we were trying to say how are we going to educate everybody universal access to education 200 years ago was not a thing. Every person on the planet did not have access to education. 100 plus years ago, people said, “Let’s start educating everybody.
” And we’re talking K through 12. So they started the industrialized model started over in Prussia, right? And then was was imported. And it was very controversial actually if you look back of you have a rural society and you’re saying get off the farms and get into schools. And the best way to educate people back then was let’s put them in a room, let’s teach them how to read and write, let’s have a teacher in front of the classroom.
And that became the model. And that today is actually one of the things that’s the most universal in the world is the the education model. You can go to the richest school district, you know, down the street here or the richest private school and there’s a teacher in front of a classroom of kids. And you can go to the poorest school district, you know, in India and there’s the building’s not as nice, but there’s a teacher in front of a classroom. We have universal access.
What we are trying to do is bring universal learning. So there’s a vast disparity in how much kids learn during that 12 years that while they may have access to it, learning is very different. And so what we think is because of new things that have become available and things like AI and technology for the first time in 50 and 100 years you can revisit and change education. How we educate kids is going to be radically different in 5 years and 10 years than the last 50 and 100 years. And that’s what we’re out doing.
building that model, building the set of schools around it and then figuring out how we scale it and get it out to a billion kids so that everybody can have access to it. >> It seems to me that we think in terms of milestones. I mean, even before a child is born, if they can have an ultrasound, the parents are looking, are they meeting milestones? Yeah. >> And then we think of biological milestones and cognitive milestones.
How much of the current schooling system is based on milestones that make really good sense? like by time you finish a certain grade, you’re supposed to be able to read, you’re supposed to be able to write. What we decide is a critical milestone can easily change, but I’m guessing there are still some milestones that are cemented in that don’t make any sense any longer. >> Yeah, there’s a whole set of milestones that people have, especially the ones parents understand and grandparents, is whatever you went through are the milestones that you understand. Kids should read by third grade.
It used to be you memorized your multiplication tables by third grade. You’d learn cursive before that. And the standard the books, right? You would read books. There was a book list in in high school and and you would read it and you’d understand the content that was in that books.
And what has happened, you know, and I think where a lot of the unhappiness in education is is those standards have gone down. They’ve pulled those standards away around the academics for a lot of different reasons. And so when you think about development, there’s behavioral standards. How should I behave? How much should I know?
And then what are the nonacademic skills, whether it’s vocational or life skills that you need to have, financial literacy, that have changed from what were true 30 years ago or 50 years ago to where they are are today. And there’s generally a view that there’s broad unhappiness that whether it’s the standard or the students achievement of that standard and are they actually even hitting the standards that’s causing this big demand for we need to change our education system. And that’s sort of half of it. The other half is people are looking at things like AI and saying the world is really different. The world tha