Elon Musk was a question: “Does anybody have any experience with first principles analysis?” He spoke to a group of children, some of whom he knew. Musk as the CEO of companies that made rockets and cool-looking cars—and as the founder of Ad Astra, the microschool they attended in his Bel Air mansion, per a video Post by Newsthink on YouTube. Five of the five people he spoke to thought he was a simple person. “Dad.”
Musk is said to have pulled his sons out of Los Angeles’ elite Mirman School, and then recruited one of those teachers in order to build an alternative educational institution that would not be bound by the conventional curriculum. Ad Astra students studied nuclear chemistry, worked on independent engineering projects and heard lectures by successful tech executives in between classes. Kierra, who attended Ad Astra middle school around the time Musk and his triplets did, recalls participating in college level hackathons when she was eighth grade. Ad Astra, she said, gave her both the technical knowledge and the confidence to be able to compete with children much older. “gall and confidence” Fraud about age in order to gain entry.
Musk was a pioneer of the microschooling trend with Ad Astra. Microschools, loosely defined, are schools that have fewer than 150 pupils. They often run for profit and operate outside of the regulations that govern public schooling. RAND estimates in 2024 that somewhere between 750,000-2.1 million US students will be educated by microschools. Silicon Valley plays a key role.
Musk, who has more than one child, has increased his education footprint. He has funded a project led by a Californian company, Xplor Education, to build a Montessori school in Bastrop (Texas), where Musk and several of his companies have their headquarters. Musk’s efforts inspired other tech leaders to emulate him. Xplor helped to open a Montessori school on Lanai in Hawaii, which was largely owned and operated by Larry Ellison. He is the co-founder of Oracle, a billionaire. Locals on Lanai said Ellison himself has his children enrolled at the school.
Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel and other investors are said to have taken the stage in Idaho at an exclusive conference to encourage fellow technology heavyweights (including themselves) to homeschool their kids. OpenAI’s Sam Altman and AngelList’s Naval Ravikant are among the investors who have funded alternative education firms.
Many billionaires, even those on the liberal side of politics, such as Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings, and Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates have become major donors to the school-choice campaign, which seeks to divert tax dollars away from traditional public education. They would do well to take a lesson from the efforts of other billionaires, such as Mark Zuckerberg. $100 million attempt Newark Public School Reform or Newark New Jersey’s upcoming shuttering He helped establish two low-income schools in San Francisco Bay Area.
Silicon Valley parents find the movement for alternatives to traditional education appealing on several levels. Autodidacts, many of whom struggled to fit in with traditional schools’ social norms, are among the most common. Other parents looked at their children during Zoom’s Covid era and weren’t happy about what they saw. “Tech elites” who became increasingly alienated with so-called “woke” Culture began to seek out new options which felt more aligned with politics and culture.
Silicon Valley parents look at traditional education institutions and think, “This is ridiculous. Why would we do things the old fashioned way?” Michael Strong is the creator of The Socratic Experience, an alternative educational program. Michael Strong explains how many parents believe that their children who are high achievers have been held back because of rigid curriculums that do not allow for rapid learning. “The idea is, if kids can learn faster in two hours, why not?” Strong.
