Elon Musk School: wants to break the traditional education pattern and train small entrepreneurs

The multi-faceted entrepreneur Elon Musk has twin sons (Xavier and Griffin, 15) and triplets (Kai, Saxon and Damian, 13). Five years ago, he made an important decision related to his education. He decided not to go to the private school where they were studying to teach another type of education, eliminating all formalities.

A year later, in 2015, Musk created his own school, called Ad Astra. And he chose the one that, perhaps, could be the best place for a child. It is located in the Space X offices, its business rocket and space mission business (unthinkable), in Hawthorne, California.

Why did you choose this name? In Latin, Ad Astra means "towards the stars". The goal of the school is to educate children from 8 to 13 years old. There are no diplomas or divisions, students study together. Creativity and the spirit of enterprise are encouraged.

Musk, in an interview with Beijing Television, China, in 2015, spoke about his school that had started as a form of home education (in this case, in the "father's office"). He explained that in Ad Astra that there are no qualifications.

The entrepreneur said that the skills of each child are worked, knowing that there will be people who reflect their strengths in languages ​​and others in math or music. Ad Astra offers to exploit these abilities according to personal preferences.

Musk said that in his opinion, the main problem of education is to teach the problem and not the tools to solve it. Likewise, he admitted that it was essential to take into account the ethical implications of the advancement of technology.

On Ad Adra's website (the house has a picture of the planet Mars, where Musk wants to arrive in 2022), it is possible to complete the form of admission to the school (he has closed on March 15 for 2019/2020).

It has questions that the student can answer in the format that he prefers (written, audio, audiovisual, artistic format – it could be a song – among others). The admission process focuses on the student, but also on the families (essential to contribute significantly to the child's creativity, among several aspects to be taken into account).

One of the slogans is to deal with moral dilemmas. They propose to imagine that in a place where children live, there is a lake and a company where all the inhabitants of the city work. But this company contaminates the lake. So, does this business have to close? Where should he change? What would the children do?

The school welcomes students aged 8 to 13, preferably living in Los Angeles, but is also planning to incorporate children from other cities. One of the slogans of the problem is to send a project or a major effort to your student.

Ad Astra is looking for examples showing the commitment, ambition and originality of the child. Since school, they declare, on their website, that adults can encourage children and help them organize their thoughts, but ask that they do not influence their ideas or their responses to the form.

"If we suspect the handling of parents, we will ignore the presentation of their child," they say of the school.

If children are accepted into this initial process, they will then be invited to Ad Astra to visit the school and participate in other admission events. In the case of students who do not progress in the process, the school sends general comments and open source activities used in the school to develop reasoning and creative thinking.

What is the value of this exclusive education? It's a big secret that has not been revealed yet. However, it appeared that Ad Astra was funded almost entirely by Musk, which provided the school with $ 475,000 a year between 2014 and 2015.

Why does Musk make this commitment?

"This project is not Elon Musk's commitment to education, but a test that he tests for his own children. He wanted to be able to benefit from the best possible education, with a very critical look at the traditional education system and, from there, he thought about it."he points to Infobae Melina Furman, doctor of education.

"And it's a small school, it started in a Space X glbad room and it was growing a bit more, I understand that there are about 60 kids, maybe more. But it's not something that thinks it can grow, at least so far we do not talk about innovation in education"

Furman says that Ad Astra is a pretty secret school. Musk has referred in a few conferences to his educational project. He talked about the "what for" knowledge. "It's something that thinks a lot about big educational transformation projects," he says.