Supporting children to find their purpose

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Use promo code theProfG20 for an extra $20 % off episode 390 39 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 a.m., you're home alone, and you don't have children. Welcome to the 300 ninetyth episode of the ProfG Pod. What's happening? In today's episode, we speak with Ted Dintersmith, an education advocate and author focused on how schools can better prepare students for the future of work. So we're we're obvious ly uh fascinated with education, specifically higher education, uh, 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 bless ings 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 all that 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 credit for their success. But anyways, first and foremost, the thing that I reverse engineer to is the irrational passion for my well-being uh of my mother who lived and died of secretary, raised me on her own. I think I'm a confident person, and I think she gave me that anchor um every day in an implicit and explicit ways, verbal and nonverbal, making me believe that I had value. And then two, uh, it was uh the generosity and vision of California taxpayers in the regents of the University of California, respectively, who built this amazing system , this incredible gift, I would argue the crown jewel of the great estate 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 B's in high school and you wanted to go to college, you could go to the University of California in exchange for twelve hundred dollars in tuition a year, which is what I paid. So I think a lot about higher education and how we um 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 thirty, forty 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. Let in more gay kids, more trans kids, more black kids, more white Republicans from red states. Just let in more kids and all this bullshit's gonna go away. You know who doesn't have huge fights over DEI 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 these this enormous amount of anxiety and dissent at the university level. Uh, because again, uh, 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-embcera affirmative action, but it should be based on color. What color? Money. In sum , uh your any additional help you get should be a function of you coming from, say, the lowest quintile or the lowest two quintile. So if you're in the upper quintile, you do not need any help. Trevor Noah's kids, Tyler Perry's kids do not need help getting into college. Letting in the daughter of a private equity Taiwanese millionaire is 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? And 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 uh have measles because it makes me stand out being a graduate of Dartmouth or Cornell or the University of California, Berkeley. In some, it's bullshit and it needs to stop. So, anyways, we hope you enjoy our conversation with Ted Denter Smith. Ted, where does this podcast find you? I am in Charleston, South Carolina. Let's bust right into it. Yeah. So you have a Stanford PhD in engineering. You are a top-ranked venture capital ist uh in the late 90s, and you've spent the last 15 years immersed in the world of education. Give us the state of play or how 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, you know, and so we still adhere to the model that goes back to 1893. And so that model was designed to equip, you know, young kids with road skills and intentionally erode their creativity and curiosity and audacity and agency. And our decision, which I think was quite fateful, 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 it's working in terms of its goal it just has the wrong goal. Why was that the right goal then and the wrong goal now? Well when I I'm older than you are, but um when I got out of school, I'd say 99% of the jobs in the economy were rogue jobs. You know, you you worked on a factory line for the rest of your life or you were handling insurance claims or something like that. So it was largely a rote job economy with fairly simple s uh, you know, 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 the 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 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 for ward. 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 at complete opposite ends 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 um a bit surprised that you would say that it's it's been working. I mean i uh everything I hear about education and it might be I've I always feel 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, historic lows across all of K through twelve, twelfth grade reading scores today are ten points lower than in nineteen ninety-two, and not a single state improved in eighth grade math from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty-four. How do you interpret these numbers? What's behind this decline Yeah. And 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, you know, a nation at risk report, nineteen eighty-three sounded alarm bells about all education education system. That sparked more test prep, more drills, more worksheets, no child left behind in two thousand two, even more drills and worksheets. You know, race to the top, take it up another level. It's been the 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 happening? I think it's happening because teachers are demoralized, 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 a you know about the same as cleaning the the toilet or something. And then with math and I I wrote this book after math to go right at the issue. You know, everything about the m world of math has changed in the last 50 years. And what I go back to, you know, in high school, I was w 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 it's mandatory, it's multiple years of kids' time in school. It's super high stakes. It largely serves to rank and sort kids and punish millions. And it's all towards skills that computers do excellently tied to math that 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 uh I'm this morning, I needed to take the cube root of minus twenty-seven or you know, like I'm gonna do well today because I can sort through a piecewise linear function, or yeah, the chain rule is gonna make my day. You know, it's like, wait a minute, you know, like and I think that's a that 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 . You know, the more we do that, the longer we persist, the more kids leave school, you know, with really dismal prospects and a hollowed-out sense of purpose. I read that uh there's been a lot of attention around I think it's the state of Mississippi that have seen a huge ascent in their test scores . Can you speak more about what they appear to be doing right? Well w one of the drivers and there there are several. I mean first th 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 tests at third grade. So you sort of basically strip out the bottom 10% of test scores and then your fourth grade scores get a boost. And that happened. And and I in looking at the data, they they kind of flatlined against the standard of the test. They've increased in state rankings because many states have actually declined. And I and I think they're probably doing, you know, I visited every state uh 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 sch ools figured that out. But also like if you make one thing, you're all in focus. If you get all sorts of pats on the back for a 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'd get some improvement. And they've gotten some. But I actually think, and this is this sparked me to write the book, is you know, I feel like there's a general sense of futility in the way people deal with these scores. You know, because the it's a cardinal scale that comes from the National Center of Education Statisti cs and the scale runs from zero to five hundred . And so we'll see swings of like three or four points on a scale of zero to five hundred. 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 zero to five hundred, show one at a compressed scale of zero you know 10 range 10 point range or 20 point range you can make three points look catastrophic or miraculous if you show three points on a 10 point range instead of a zero to five hundred point range . So I'm the 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. You it's hard to find teachers who want 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. Yet 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, yeah, I 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, aftermath, the life-changing math that schools won't teach you, the book, your most recent book, you argue that math schools teaching um 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 don't understand the straight on their credit card. What's your proposed solution? Is it some sort of adulting class or or specific types of math? Aaron Ross Powell Well, you think about how many hours. So your kids, my kids are older, but my kids when they were in high school, anybody's kids, you know, it's it's not an elective or a a course. You know, basically all kids in America are spending three to four full-time years on that. So it's just say 25 00 hours. Think about what we could do with that 2500 hours. I mean, one of the things about my book that's been gratifying, you know, some of the people who got advanced copies send me a note back saying, I I want to read more of your book, but I can't get it away from my 13-year-old. You know, 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 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, standardized exams. And so I 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. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. With tax season upon us, it's worth remembering the side of finances you typically don't see discussed, the emotional weight of financial stress. It goes beyond our bank accounts and it affects everyone at some point in life. A recent study showed 88% of Americans are feeling some form of financial stress at the start of 2026. Money warriors can take a serious toll on mental health and relationships. It shows up as anxiety, sleep disruption, depression, and it's one of the leading sources of conflict for couples. So even if you can't immediately change your finances, one thing you can start doing today is improving your mental state around them. That's where a therapist can help. 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You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday . We talk a lot about I mean, K through twelve education is just a subject that keeps coming up. I wanna talk about one that divide between rich and poor, public and private. Uh I went to a high school, university, high school, a public school . And when I went, it was about a third, a third, a third, a third white, a third black, a third Latino . And now it's about 90 plus percent Latina. Basically anyone with any money seems to have abandoned 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 thrown or 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 16, I went to every state and visited 200 schools. And that ended up in my book, What School Could Be. Uh an example that sort of makes the broader point is in Mississippi, I visit one school near high in Jackson. The building should be condemned. I mean, the ceiling is falling apart. The the playground has glass, broken glass all over . And then you go like 12 miles away to Ridgefield and it's like three football you know, a major football stadium and two practices A lazy river. Yeah. And so I I do think that, you know, w while we put a lot of focus on Brown versus Board as a major Supreme Court decision, you know, 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 that are least needy. And then the parents do weigh in. And so it sort of reinforces. And so you look at the overall flow. And it's very hard to see how kids in 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 school so darn boring. You know, you know, you got to do this just because it's 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 they've got schools that have really compelling teachers that 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-day challenges, amazing things happen because by and large the the well-off micromanaged kids sort of like freeze up like you're not making it clear what I've got to get to do to get an A or their parents will call. Like lay out the steps. I need to know what my kids gotta 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 on the show about the gap, the educational gap between boys and girls. The boys that once we leveled the playing field, um part of just girls was blue by boys, and seven and ten high school valor ans are girls. Some of that has been assigned to just the biological difference that boys mature faster than girls, um, but also that there's just a predominant number of people who are are girls in uh women in K through twelve. Talk a little bit about the gender disparity in K through twelve and if it's as stark as 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 angst over when you started reading. You know, a lot of I'm not even sure when I read. You know, it may have been second grade or third grade. Um there's a a study that I think it was called the Pygmalion 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 then the boom, boom, boom, 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 deliver d develop at a slower pace, right? And we do this testing from the very earliest ages. You know, you can go to Manhattan and parents are paying for Wesler test tut ors so they can get their kid in the right pre-K school. You know, it's nuts, right? But 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 know, you're not as gifted as this the the girl in the desk next to you. And that just ripples on through the system. That said, I think that it's there 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 in your admissions, what would your interim class look like? Nobody's willing to say, but they tell me 75% female. So 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 meat grinder of 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 or college, you know, student bodies. But 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-confiden ce 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? So 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's condition s 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, cu riosity and creativity, and they'll do almost anything. They don't mind 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 in the development of the brains among boy 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, and it's heartbreaking. What's interesting is your view is a little bit different than the public discourse I'm hearing. There's a lot of 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 beasts in a 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 degree you know get a master's in engineering. Two 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 go to college , you get a degree, you interview with one of the fifty firms that come to the Career S services center and you think, Oh, uh 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 pat h . And what you're suggesting is that especially on entrepreneurship, there is an alternative path for the rogue. And what's interesting, what you said about, you know, the rebel has a role in this world. I think I read somewhere that the Baker scholars, the top performing academic scholars at Harvard, actually twenty, thirty years on weren't doing as well as everyone else. I I guess the question is how do you institutionalize and scale this ability to unlock the creative beast in our educational institutions. You know, too. And that study was verified. And it I have to say, as a venture guy for years, I love to back people who had gone rogue on school. You know, I avoided, you know, like somebody said to me, Exeter Princeton, Harvard Business School, I'd say, like, go get a job at McKinsey. And 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 going to 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 say 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 does an 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 entreprene urial aspect of all of our kids. Some will do really well, some won't, but I think they would all benefit from 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 would 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 aftermath. But I also have a film out called Multiple Choice that shows and it's fascinating. I mean I I do these films they're they're not cheap to do but I visited the school a public school in Winchester Virginia I just love what they were doing. I just when when I got left there I said we're going to 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 cybersecurity 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 have 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 at 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 develop some appreciation for the ways we're talented, the quite distinctive ways we're talented. And they build 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 AP chemistry. So the college kids actually benefit. But the ones that go directly to the workforce, which in their cases half, have explored kill careers, developed 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 work force path, not only are they different, but one is way better than the other. You know, and you know you look at the college signing days and the pennants and the, you know, I mean, I I w was a big supporter of no Barack and Michelle Obama well, but I used to just almost break my heart when the 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 I give this, I use this video in my talks. We didn't do it, and 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 at MIT for 45 years and became convinced. I have to say this slowly because 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 them 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 bothering me with something so pedestrian on this big day and then they can't light up the light bulb. And the point I make is had those kids along the way shattered an 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 care er over there, get on a bus, you're stigmatized, this is your 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 against 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 sounds like you're a big proponent of vocational programming. Well, first I love calling it innovation. Vocational is such a stigma. 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, y you know, it it's a personal thing for me. So m I grew up, my dad dropped out of high school to fight in World War II, discharged with a nervous breakdown, never went back to high school, kept us afloat as a carpenter, was always kind of looked down on as like, you know, no high school degree, no college degree, but you know, like you still go back to that neighborhood. He he did all the work for the local church convent. He built family rooms and porches for for he was 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 jeans from 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 him who did , I feel like we're just being grossly unfair to people whose talents lie more in a hands-on profession. And so yes, I'm a fan of it. And it is not to say schools should be all about career, but I feel like if 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 a sense of purpose and and a hireable 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 in that knowing I'm really good at something that could help me move forward with the career I find fulfilling . We'll be right back . Support for the show comes from hosting her. The biggest barrier to entry for most entrepreneurs isn't a lack of capital. It's the friction of starting. 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Plus, get an extra twenty percent off with promo code the Prop G20. That's less than the price of a cup of coffee per month. That's hosting her.com/slash thepropg20, promo code the Prop G20 for an extra 20% off . We're back with more from Ted Dinter Smith . 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 an upcoming disruption and if if there is, w is it from AI or something else? Well and you know you go back to and I had a high opinion of Clayton Christensen, but what was it twenty years ago when he predicted the demise of higher ed and it it 's rolling. Yeah, he was wrong. And you know, I I think a few things. I would love to see higher ed be more innovative. You know, I I, you know, and I 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 2 50 bucks. You know, you know, like my summer job, what we had similar thing, we had we both worked at grocery stores for summer job s, but you know, my summer job, I made enough to cover tuition room and board for my last year of college. Yeah. And so 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. But if you just work a standard summer job, you're gonna still be way underwater. I I think you're gonna see a lot of the, you know, we tend to just say higher ed as though it's one universal basket of schools offering similar experiences for their kids. You know, I'm a big fan of, I don't know if you've read any of Paul Tufts' books, but Paul is a very thoughtful guy and wrote a book called The Inequality Machine. And so where you teach or the Ivy League schools, their budget per student year to take care of and educate those students is six digits. You know, that you know, they charge 80 K and they spend 100, 110, 120K. There are a lot of colleges where that budget per student year is like 2500 bucks. And I think those are very vulnerable today. And what I'd love to see for the c colleges that really do a great job for their kids. I love to see them expand the student body size. You know, like why is selectivity such an important factor, other than it flows into the US News and World Report? But wouldn't it be great if these colleges said over the next five years we're gonna accept 10x the number of students? I think that would be interesting. They certainly could hire great faculty for and they've got the money. And I do like when I first started working in Boston, uh you know, to be really direct, Northeastern was sort of like a third tier college. And now it's unbelievably hard to get into. And I just love what they're doing, right? You know, 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 send such a a bad message. You know, you walk around college campuses, right? And they're like, kids will complain because they have to share a bathroom with three other kids. I mean, when I went to college, you know, 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 a a message to these kids, you've made it. You know, a school I visited and wrote about is in Washington State, Evergreen College. I mean, it's bare bones. You know, their campus is not. UCLA in the 80s. Yeah. The whole place should have been condemned. It was but it was four hundred dollars a quarter. I'll take it. As long as there was beer. I mean we were fine. 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 I do think, you know, and and I think we're mostly in agreement on this. I mean if you can go to college, not go into 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 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, a certain time of year, every lawn is plastered with the, you know, 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 wand tests. Two or three policies you could implement that you think would change higher education or 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, unless 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'd 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 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 it's 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'll give you an example. I give a guest lecture every year to you know a very well-known public college, about a hundred juniors and seniors. And and two months ago, I asked them how, many of you consider yourself today to be really good at AI, to that to be able to use AI to make yourself and those around you more productive? Hundred. Nobody. I said, no, no, no, wait. I I'm not here. Like this isn't a witch hut. 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 like 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 eke out a 0.1 or 0.2 increase in your GPA or allocate time so you get really good at using AI, whether it has the blessing of your prof 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, write your own ticket. I got so many thank I mean, how many college kids write thank you notes? No one, right ? I got this whole bundle of thank you notes from these kids who, somewhat to my amazement, said, I never really thought of that. You're 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 Salberg. 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 tanked, they were under the gun, and they had to make a choice. You know, 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 could 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. And the bartender asks the doctor, why are you a doctor? And so I didn't get into the school of education. And asked the lawyer, why are you a lawyer? Why I they turned me down, so I'm a lawyer. But you know, it's like our teachers, we we just wail on them, right? We, I mean, it's just heartbreaking. And and it ripples down. When I ask 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 say, Nope, nope. And I'm living that. I've got a 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 i'm not gonna i hope she doesn't watch this podcast because i'm thrilled but 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 supply and 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 Schools. It's grim. I mean, the pipeline shriveled up. There are a lot of openings. Um, you know, so there is, I think anybody in that world would say there's an acute shortage of teachers. And it's just we've made it very unattractive, you know, you know, if you're not on this page on October 19th, we'll wrap your knuckles. You know, I I I'm a supporter of and have visited several times. There's this National Teachers Hall of Fame in the middle of nowhere in Kansas, Empor ia, Kansas. And I on what 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 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 it's one little room, but at least it's there. But Scott, you go up on a hill, there's a knoll and a little chapter, and there are these obelists, and the obelisk 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 it's 200 teach you know like and 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. Nob nobody likes to fear that if they say not quite the right thing, that some crazy parent will dox them on social media. You know, I don't know. You know, it's 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 bot -up zone with this because the world's racing ahead and we stay stuck in time which is why i wrote the book aftermath it 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 and then we say, and and wow, they're 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 inventory, like I you know, like, but but I just feel like if you once you know that you just say fu darn sorry about that um you know we gotta speak those who know have to speak out and and you know that's what I try to do because I these kids I mean you, look at these eight, 10-arye-old kids, they 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. Last question. Uh 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? And I mean a lot of education or the pretext or 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 the home helping set them up for success in the classroom? Well, I don't I generally don't talk much about my own kids, but I've got a twenty nine year old son and a twenty seven year old daughter that in some ways are a microcosm of what we talked about. You know, our daughter loved school, loved the ideas, uh did a lot of other things besides study, but 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 that he just didn't respond to. And so he, you know, uh he spent a few weeks in college and just pulled the ripcord 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 they' likere he he's bootstrapped his way up but he's done well. Yeah he's he's done fine. But I but I think he and my advice to parents is this kids will tell you what works for them. Kids have their interests, understand that. But I know with my son, if I had waged war and beat the bejesus out of him to get a slightly higher GPA, our relationship would be broken. He probably would have at best turned one B minus into a B or something, and and I think he would have gotten a drumbeat 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 on 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 exact act in the exact opposite way. They just like , yeah, I I, you know, I I would I've reconnected with my high school. And so I went to a public high school in Northern Virginia. I gave a very controversial graduation speech. It was so controversial, I was booed by the audience. And when 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 at a conference, and a bunch of people from that high school came up to me. They had seen my my work, films, and read some of my books, and they brought me a frame picture of me from the yearbook. 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 Likely to Succeed, and read some of my book, uh, 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 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 unbelievable, you know, I I try to be very specific. I, you know, I say to the daughter, your talk was really interesting. You made these two points. I thought they were great. Boom. The mother says to me, we we really just are interested in this. Like we know we know how 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 a daughter right there. And I say like, wait, your daughter just gave this great talk. Like, like you need to be excited. Like, don't let 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 and I just think believe that. If that's your goal, and you know, I'll put it into the a metaphor that you and I can understand, and I hope I hope people listening to this can. You know, I'm a venture 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 putting 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 it's an obviously 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, live 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 well, I won't I won't project this on other parents. An 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 him to be happy, but I've talked myself into believing I think if 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 I'm hugely guilty. I I know exactly what you're saying. I know a lot about education. I I think I I I'd like to I know I love my kids. I want them to be happy. But I still think the majority of us when push comes to shove really hope 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 my my film most likely to succeed, you came out in twenty fifteen 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 to the. This was in the Bay Area. Yeah, I remember reading about this. Yeah. You know, so 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