More than a century ago, Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote, “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.” Well, Elon Musk is a doer with a lot of children, and he’s reached the conclusion he doesn’t want his kids to learn from some has-been or never-was simply because they landed a job in a local school thanks to a lack of competition.
Over his lifetime, teaching fundamentally remained the same experience: an adult standing in front of a chalkboard instructing kids. Why, though, should today’s tectonic shifts in technology that are upending the labor force stop just short of the teaching profession?
“You don’t want a teacher in front of a board,” the serial entrepreneur and Tesla CEO argued during a discussion on Monday with Michael Milken that otherwise veered heavily into the existential risk facing humanity.
Kids instead need compelling, interactive learning experiences that engage them with a subject matter, such as taking apart a car engine to understand how it works and, in the process, learning what wrenches and screwdrivers are used for.