Based Camp: The Education Reformation

In this thought-provoking episode of the Malcolm and Simone Podcast, we dive deep into the core issues plaguing the traditional educational system and the potential for innovative approaches. We critically evaluate the current state of education, its origins in the Industrial Revolution, and the outdated "one size fits all" methodology still prevalent today. We explore alternative educational approaches like unschooling, Montessori, and the Acton school system. Are these the answers we've been looking for or just steps along the path to a truly revolutionary education model? We also analyze the trend of optimizing educational research around self-esteem instead of tangible outcomes, such as career success and mental health. This conversation promises to challenge your perceptions and spark your curiosity about the future of education.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. It's wonderful to be here with you today.

Simone: I thought today we might talk about a long time obsession of ours, which is crafting and cultivating geniuses and a world leader is what do you

Malcolm: think? Well, I mean, I don't see the point in having kids if you're not going to aim for the stars. Yeah.

Malcolm: I

Simone: mean, we were always really enchanted by what Laszlo Polgar did, not just because he was a shot caller. Like Laszlo Polgar,

Malcolm: okay, as to who Laszlo Polgar is, Simone, because some of our viewers may not just immediately know who this guy is. So there was this guy who was living in , a communist bloc country. And he had this theory that you could intentionally create geniuses.

Malcolm: And so, very similar to, I feel like how I met my wife. He puts an ad in the paper saying, I'm looking to create geniuses and I'm looking for a wife who I can do this with. Which is very important that he did this from my perspective, because there are [00:01:00] some people out there who claim they know the secret to being a good parent .

Malcolm: And they. Happen to have three kids who are really successful. And it's yeah, but if you're just dealing with a large population, some people are going to have. Three kids that are successful or four kids that are successful saying that you're going to do this up front and having it like as a recorded thing in media that is very, very different when you're talking about statistical outcomes and can be used as a sign that he probably understood something.

Malcolm: Well, this

Simone: comes back to one of our key criteria for truth, right? We, we give a lot more credit to people who we are, who are what we call shot callers and Laszlo Polgar called a shot. And so we were always really fascinated by this specifically because we are really interested in, well, what can you do to

Malcolm: create a great leader?

Malcolm: We haven't finished the story yet. They still have no idea who he is. Okay. Sorry. Okay. So anyway, Laszlo Polgar said, I'm going to try to create geniuses. They know that part. They know his hypothesis. [00:02:00] You're like, I love you. It'd be like, if we were telling a story about some famous basketball player and you're like, and one day that, that four year old boy said, I'm going to become the greatest basketball player of all time.

Simone: One can assume that obviously he did it.

Malcolm: You've got to say what happens. All right. All right. Okay. Okay. So he raises three daughters and he decides that the metric he's going to use for success is chess and the worst of his three daughters. was the sixth highest rated chess champion in her lifetime as the female.

Malcolm: The best was the best female champion of her lifetime. And the second was the second female champion of her lifetime. And actually, when they first went to participate in a chess championship, they called it like the event, the sack of Rome. Because it was just so outstanding. They just. Were these little like 13 year old girls who are just like sweeping everyone.

Malcolm: But the point being, and where this is really interesting is I think a lot of people have this [00:03:00] perception that if you approached education and you tried to really reform the system or try something very different, you could do like 20%, 30% better, what the Laszlo Polgar case study shows is that the ceiling for how much we could improve the educational system is.

Malcolm: Like a hundred X 200 X better that you could potentially reliably create outcomes that are What today would be we'd call geniuses like literally world class every time that is what got us really Excited about the potential of this space. The other thing that got us really excited about the potential of the space I'll get you in a second.

Malcolm: But Simone you have some stuff you wanted to say

Simone: Well, I mean, it's just been an obsession of ours. We really want to know how to consistently, and ideally at scale, create people who are capable of changing the world. Perhaps we are even more interested in this today because we [00:04:00] see generations of people graduating as infantilized people, as a disempowered people, people struggling not just to have a successful career, but like literally not.

Simone: like endure life with crippling depression, anxiety, et cetera. So this is something that we were always really obsessed with.

Malcolm: Yeah. So when we first went to approach the education system a few things really shocked us. . So the first thing that we did when we went to the educational system is we wanted to get a read of the predominant educational system.

Malcolm: Like how good is it? Where can it be tweaked? And when we first started noticing about the research. Is that it was bad. And actually this as a science is really interesting. If you, if you look at people who get PhDs in education statistically you compare their IQ across like different PhDs. You can get they have.

Malcolm: I think the lowest are one of the lowest average IQs of all PhD categories. So I guess this is why they like weren't using proper controls and stuff like this. But anyway, so we were like, oh, this is really shocking. Well, okay, so we have to start performing some of our [00:05:00] own research in the space or start, gathering evidence from different areas in the space to try to get a feel of how good education is.

Malcolm: We do it right now because it seems really silly the way that we're doing it. They were like sending people to a room and then sit and then somebody's lecturing to them. That doesn't seem like It would be a good system now that like the internet exists. So anyway we, we said, okay, well, how can we create a control for the education system?

Malcolm: And this is where unschooling became really important to us. So unschooling is this educational movement, which is different from homeschooling and that kids have literally no structure. There, there is no test for them. There is no anything like that. Just go do whatever you want. So this researcher in this phase, he, he looked into these kids and what he found is doing literally nothing ended with these kids having higher educational outcomes than kids who go through the traditional school system.

Malcolm: They were getting into college at higher rates, they had better mental health, and they were graduating college at higher rates. [00:06:00] And yes, These studies that he did, didn't control for socioeconomic groups. So that probably plays a pre