Why am I interested in alt-ed?

In my view opinions & disagreements about education often boil down to differences in values. Even if we had RCT evidence for one approach being better, those would be population-level effects by definition and it’s less clear how relevant they are to the idiosyncratic process of raising a particular child.

So why pursue alt ed at all?

Values are absorbed culturally & I have (I think) fairly distinct values from those explicitly or implicitly prioritized at many public schools. Partially that is because it is (intentionally & appropriately) difficult for public schools to enforce a specific culture with specific values – they have a wide set of stakeholders & are committed to not infringing on personal beliefs. More on this in asteriskmag.com/issues/….

So what are these values?

(1) A high standard for agency/ambition

This is annoying to define as these words are pattern-matched by readers to all kinds of different things these days. But something circling:

• full-bodied emotional contact with yourself & the world
• a secure attachment to reality
• a willingness to explore, figure out what you want, experiment
• a feeling that the world is fundamentally a good place for you to be in

This is explicitly not about material or professional success later in life – it is about emotional & spiritual success right now, whatever the child’s current stage of development. A related idea here is that concentrated work is a key ingredient for happiness.

(2) Kids’ time is valuable

Requiring kids to proceed at the pace of a large class rather than at their own pace is inefficient, wasteful, and to me implies a disrespect for their time.

Finishing your schoolwork early because you were quicker at a particular subject & spending the rest of the day on self-directed projects, playing outside, or even just plain being bored is better. Or taking much longer on a particular subject to ensure mastery is better than just moving on to the next grade because “it’s been a year”.

Mastery based individualized learning respects kids’ time in both cases.

(3) Kids are very capable

Self-explanatory – kids can do much more than is commonly assumed. Eg this post argues a cause of teen angst/suffering is still treating them as children rather than capable young adults petergray.substack.com/….

I am most interested in Montessori (through elementary) because I believe it aligns best with the values described above.

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Earlier rough notes:

See seeding an educational culture and this post.

The traditional public school system is designed to educate all kinds of children, at scale. This tends to sacrifice efficiency and personalization. Public school is not optimized for maximizing individual learning – neither efficiency nor quantity.

Academics can be reasonably “completed” (at minimum least at the state mandated level) in a couple hours of formal instruction a day. Having the rest of the day free to be bored/work on self-directed projects/play outside is extremely valuable.

Excelling at something in life is valuable for what it teaches you & the belief/confidence it gives you. Academics are a priori relatively low-hanging fruit as Rami has good genes & peer groups. At least give him the chance to love school/learning and see if he wants to excel at it - I don’t think traditional schooling can provide that. Obviously if he doesn’t like it we can do smth else.

School implicitly teaches kids that their time is not valuable by not allowing them to progress at their own pace.

Kids have an innate ability to focus deeply which school chips away at over time. I want to nurture that state.

open qs:

• I don’t like the ‘competitive’ culture that can exist at academically focused schools. How does Alpha/GT/whatever address that? How would I address that w homeschooling? Esp because friendly competition is obviously healthy and valuable comment
• Intelligence is probably not going to be the bottleneck. Being OK with being embarrassed asking for crazy things, etc. In other words, emotional fluency. That’s harder to measure/teach. How do we address that. This may be even more important tbh.
• How do I feel about the ‘incentives’ piece of Alpha? It does seem to go against a lot of the self-determination literature. This is a big one. The crowding out effect is only relevant for things the kid already likes to do tho, so hm. I’m also not sure if any studies tested personalized incentives? I think they were all generic cash or equivalent. my comment on this
• Would I actually spend this much money on a school? comment

Where does this leave us?

• This is close to my ideal life: https://x.com/_cturner/status/1940418736533422344
• Microschool/homeschool, Alpha school, Montessori