[Keios]

I seem to have only a few questions...

How does a 6th grader know that she wants to be a startup-founder?

Are you attempting to replace an admittedly broken schooling system with another one?

Are you attempting to increase creative space? If so, can creativity be decoupled from freedom? Are you going to force them to be creative?

Finally, at a risk of sounding a tad off. What good will this do anyone? What pain are you fixing? Is there a pain big enough? Why hasn't it fixed itself yet?

[palish]

Hiya :)

Any given 6th grader doesn't, but it seems like if enough children get a chance, some will succeed. The nice thing about this system is there's no penalty for failure. Students can work for other startups or go to college.

This sort of system could be an alternative for people actively seeking one. Maybe parents who realize the current model might not be the best for their child, or a student not satisfied with the rate of teaching.

The school would be an increase in creativity.. It's focus would be on creation. Of course the school wouldn't force anyone to do anything. It's simply an alternate path, one that would probably be fun for everyone involved.

I was actually trying to fix my own pain, and this seemed a reasonable way to do it. You see, I'm nineteen. At seventeen I dropped out of public high school to work for a videogame company because I couldn't stand it one second longer. I felt caged, mentally beaten up, and I felt extraordinarily hopeless. Running off to pursue a creative endeavor like writing video games at a game company solved all that. It was simply the best choice for me.

But wait a minute, if I was so miserable, there must be other children who are, too. Creative ones who can accomplish great things if only society deems that they could follow their dreams. And why couldn't they actually work on their dreams in the best place for it, in an environment with creative people? Yeah, they need a certain level of maturity, but that can be supplemented by having mature people around to go to for advice.

So, in short, it would be great to offer the hopeless some hope, something other than "Just wait 'til you get to college, everything will be wonderful then".

[Keios]

Hi Palish, Thanks for your response. Some more thoughts...

The challenge is that the current system is generic, it allows you to choose any field of work or study and that choice can be postponed. In your school, that choice is made early and that brings with it a risk.

I think your pain was that 'you' felt mentally caged in the current educational system and that 'you' fixed your pain by making a change. What you seem to be doing now is applying a 'mass fix ' by generalizing/abstracting your problem, and while that works in most cases it may need additional fleshing out. Perhaps the fix for each individual might be more effective, perhaps everyone who feels caged needs to apply an individual patch just like you did rather than fix something which isn't broken when they are in 6th grade. Are we fixing before there is a pain?

Hope these thoughts help you develop your idea. Best of luck.