Contemporary education needs to look different than it did thirty years ago because the world is different. Technology has changed the academic landscape for good. Colleges can’t keep up to date with the enormous changes that are happening by the day. That’s why Jonathan Brush created Unbound, a project-based education curriculum that puts young people in real-world learning situations. Tune in to this episode where Jonathan talks about all this and more!
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– WHAT IS THE NOAH WEBSTER EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION? –
Noah Webster Educational Foundation collaborates with individuals and organizations to tell the story of America’s education and culture; discover foundational principles that improve it; and advance practice and policy to change it.
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Reach out: info@nwef.org
Contemporary education needs to look different than it did thirty years ago because the world is different. Technology has changed the academic landscape for good. Colleges can’t keep up to date with the enormous changes that are happening by the day. That’s why Jonathan Brush created Unbound, a project-based education curriculum that puts young people in real-world learning situations. Tune in to this episode where Jonathan talks about all this and more!
Resources Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
GET CONNECTED WITH NWEF
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nwef.org/
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NWEF_org
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nwef_org/
Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtdHayyOqPftVoiGEqxYdsg
To hear more from NWEF, subscribe to our other podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1898310
– WHAT IS THE NOAH WEBSTER EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION? –
Noah Webster Educational Foundation collaborates with individuals and organizations to tell the story of America’s education and culture; discover foundational principles that improve it; and advance practice and policy to change it.
Website: https://www.nwef.org
Reach out: info@nwef.org
ADAMS: You talk about project-based education versus degree-focused education. That's fascinating to me, and I think people will understand what you're saying. I'm a big proponent of that.
I mean, degrees are, so to speak, theoretical mile markers. But we try to pack all the stuff into them. It's funny because I was actually sharing with somebody just the other day. Back when I was really engaged in the academic space—I mean, working with accreditation teams and all of those kinds of things—every degree program was structured and there were so many credit hours in certain things. And we had all these different components and it had to build out so many credit hours to get certain levels of…a bachelor's or this or that—and a master's and so forth.
it was all components that were thought, “Okay, so many essential elements. Then if you're a different degree, you would have more of this and more of that.” It was kind of these pieces that were all kind of put together that were thought of as essential. And much of that, I believe in.
Now, in a more modern focus, it's kind of self-guided. It's kind of like you can get a degree and you have no major. You may not even have a minor. It's just: you get a certain accumulative number of credit hours that can be kind of self-directed, whatever it comes in. That's a little bit of an exaggeration.
Now, I kind of got off here a little bit. But with the difference of a degree versus a difference of project. A lot of times, too, you talked about not every student needs to go to college in the traditional sense. You can go to get a degree in computer science and if you're going to really pursue that, you probably need that because there are certain foundational things.
But at the bottom end of that, you get a degree, and two months later, you could arguably say that it's like buying a computer. It's obsolete now because information and everything is changing constantly. So, really, the focus in some worlds now is not so much the degree, but a certification, which is a specialization that gets you an ability. You can do certain tasks that fit in that space.
Talk to us a little bit about your focus, your programs, and how that works.
BRUSH: Well, I think that you touched on a lot of things that are really relevant here. This is one of those strange things that when people hear it, it strikes them as totally different or totally radical and they get a little bit nervous.
And I say, “Actually, I think I can take you…” And that makes sense to me because I'm pretty nervous about people saying, “Hey, everything's changed and I've got the answer.” That generally makes me tighten up and want to not listen to what they're saying.
I tell people, “Look, I think I can walk you through this logically in a way that this will almost immediately make sense to you.” So let me take an attempt at that now. I don't consider myself to be particularly old, but when I was in high school, there was a hard limitation to the acquisition of knowledge.
What I mean by that is, if I did not know something and my parents did not know it and our extensive home library did not contain it, then what I would have to do is I would have to get in my rusted-out 1984 Chevy S10 Blazer. I would have to drive 20 minutes to the library, which was the closest library for us. I would have to go to the card catalog, pull the card, find the book with the information I needed, look in the back, find the information.
Then I would have to either memorize that information or make notes about it in a way I could retrieve it later in order to learn something new. If the library didn't have it, I'd have to do something called interlibrary loan. And as a young teenage male, that was not going to happen, right? I couldn't even order something that I wanted from the Cabela's catalog because it was too complicated and too many steps.
That was how you acquired knowledge. Consequently, throughout all of history, while things kept getting better with the printing press and all those things, there was a time commitment to gaining knowledge that was significant and substantial.
Because of that, if speed is important in business, then that would mean that, in a business world, in a professional setting, people that had more stuff in their head would have an advantage because they could recall that stuff immediately and they could use it for whatever project they were on. You had a project going on, you had a person that had a master's degree or a bachelor’s degree, or whatever, in that discipline. And they knew that stuff. You didn’t have to wait for someone to go research those things.
That meant two things. One, degrees had a real inherent worth. The more letters behind somebody's name, the more stuff likely be in their head, the faster things can move. But fast was relevant. Everything was expensive because things moved slowly. Therefore, business moved by planning in depth, testing extensively, and launching slowly.
If you were going to launch a new product, you would iterate that product, you would [unintelligible], you would take it out to focus groups, you would put a bunch of plans in place, you would have all kinds of contingency plans. You would spend, perhaps, years planning this stuff. Then you would spend a lot of money on a very highly orchestrated launch. That's why it was slow to get things to market.
Okay. If you're our age or there about you know what I'm talking about. Now, of course, that's totally different. You carry around a device in your pocket that gives you literally instantaneous access to almost the entirety of the world's knowledge. We say that, and we treat it like it's normal, like breathing air, and we forget the consequences that that has wrought.
What that means is that we're now in a situation where we're in a questions-based paradigm, not an answers-based paradigm. The limitation is not access to knowledge, the limitation is too much knowledge and sorting out and figuring out which knowledge you need. Now you need people that are trained in being able to ask questions quickly, problem-solve, sort through information, and apply that information to the problem that's there.
Also, business works entirely differently. Almost all of business now is not long-term projects. There's still things like that. We'll come back to that in a second. But most of business is iterative decision-making. I launch something quickly, fast. I may put a website out launching a product that I don't have even made yet, and then somebody will buy it and then I will tell them I'll deliver it in six weeks and then I'll take their money and then I'll take it to the factory and build the thing that I just sold and then sell it. That's kind of the way things work.
Now, there are still disciplines where that's not the case. Elon Musk is planning things out quite deeply for SpaceX and his rockets. And the engineers that work for him are best coming from traditional education systems. If you're going to design a bridge that my family drives over the river, I want you to have sat in a lab in a traditional college. If you're going to solve the top of my head off and poke around in my brain to figure out where that clot is, I want you to have sat in a live lab somewhere.
But if we're talking about the majority of most of the rest of stuff, we're talking about a system that needs to move fast. The best example of this is: a marketing degree is practically useless. I had a student who went with us and then was finishing at a traditional college and he sent me a screenshot of his textbook which was using MySpace as a prime example of social media marketing.
This is at a top of the line university where he's paying tens of thousands of dollars per year to be there. They just practically can't keep up. I find that Instagram changes our algorithms approximately every six hours, it feels like.
All that is kind of the background to say: what if we had an education system that said “the best way to learn this stuff is probably to do it?” Now, if you're working for me and I'm paying you to do it, I want you to succeed. But if I have an education system and I have you do it, I don't care if you succeed or fail as long as you learn.
That is the philosophical background and the heart of a project-based education system. What if, instead of accumulating a bunch of credits—which is really a very detailed plan, as you talked about—to get to a certain place…what if you want to learn marketing and I said, “Go do some marketing. The stuff that fails we’ll talk about and the stuff that succeeds we’ll talk about and we'll do that.” You're going to actually learn by doing…maybe you'll get paid to do some of this, right?
But whatever it is, you're going to have to get out and do it without a case study, without a hypothetical situation—actually in the real world seeing that happen because this is going to be a fast moving place where you're going to have to iteratively adjust.
So, that would be the explanation for why we do project-based learning. Not so much how we do it, but the philosophy behind it.
ADAMS: I hear you. That's interesting and that's well said.
Are your programs really designed around project-based learning or kind of a fusion? Tell us a little more about that.
BRUSH: The answer is yes. There's a fusion for a lot of our students who—project-based education is the heart of what we do, but they are also going to earn credit that they will transfer into a partner school and they'll finish a degree.
But the fastest growing segment of my student body right now are those who are not interested in the degree and the project-based education is the heart of what they do. And the way we do that is we say incoming first year students for us have to take an idea from an idea to a reality.
We have parameters for that. It has to be challenging for the student. It has to require a significant amount of effort. But I'm pretty open-minded about what that is. I've had people run marathons. I've had people build businesses. I've had people illustrate children's books. We had somebody do a huge fundraiser for a nonprofit that helps fight human trafficking.
We had a kid, who had never done anything mechanically, restore a Mustang. You know what I mean, it's all these kinds of things and it's really custom to the student.
But then second year students have to take somebody else's idea from an idea to a reality. The reality is, most of us don't get to choose all the projects we work on. We work for other people. Years ago in the old paradigm I talked about, the boss knew where we were going and had because the boss had been there longer than everybody else and he or she had seen everything.
Now, frequently you work for organizations and the boss has no idea how to do what they're doing because it's brand new. If you have employees who can come in and say, “Tell me where we're trying to go and I can figure out how to get there,” those employees are incredibly valuable.
Traditional education doesn't train people very well in that outcome. Project based education does. So second year students have to do that. Then, third year students have to take an idea from an idea to reality where they lead a team. They have to do something that not only keeps track of what their objectives are, but they have to manage a group of people as they do that.
For our program, if you're non-degree seeking, three years and you will finish the program. If you are in the fourth year, you'll transfer into a partner school either online or on-site and finish the degree.
BRUSH: Jonathan, you made a statement a little bit earlier that I think is significant. I think it's worth enough that we want to go back and pick up a little bit more.
We live in a day where it's kind of like everybody has to succeed. And regardless of what that really means, everybody needs to feel good about themselves. Failure is not an option and we don't let people fail, even if they're failing. We pat them on the back and say, “You're doing a great job.”
This is absolutely true in much of education today. That's why we have students graduating high school and some of them that can't even read. It's just failing our students. I think I heard you make the statement that success matters—I don't know if…this is my takeaway. “Success matters and so does failure. Ultimately, learning takes place.”
BRUSH: That's true. You're just letting me get up on all my soapboxes here. I'm just having so much fun talking about these things that…Yeah, these are things that we've learned and we're really so excited about sharing.
One of our most popular t-shirts that our students wear is one that says, “On the other side of fear, failure is—” underlined— “an option.” And people stop us. We've been out in different places and people stop kids and say, “What is that about?” It's a great conversation starter.
But here's the interesting reality. We have a system that trains our young people to be absolutely terrified of failure. Now, there's all kinds of things around the system. We can go in several ways, but let's stay focused on the failure part. What we tell students is that, “You will not be successful unless you have a great college degree and the perfect major to get a great job. That's the only way to success.”
That's a stereotype, but that's what so many students are told. That means you cannot fail, especially when you come into high school. You've got to have perfect GPA, great SAT scores to get into a great college where you have to have a good GPA and all those things that you might need to get to master’s school, et cetera, et cetera.
Just one failure, just one C or one D or one F in a class, will murder your GPA. Then the cards will start to fall. You can't get into the right school and you can't get in the right program. You can't get all those kinds of things.
But the reality is, there's only one segment of society where that actually really works that way, and that's education. That's why most 4.0 honors graduating people go back into the education system because it's the only place on the planet where you actually do measure success all the time that way, right?
For most of us, the jobs that we work in, there's not that kind of feedback loop. And we're being asked to do things that are new because technology just came along and disrupted the way things have been done for generations. In those cases, failure is not just an option, it's inevitable.
When you have a bunch of people that are fragile and who will do everything to avoid failure, you have a bunch of people who can't innovate, who cannot think their way through the problem and who won't take the risks necessary to learn even if they fail. Now, there's levels of failure, right? I mean, there's there's places where you have to be really cautious about failure: if you're a pilot or if you're on certain projects. That comes back to things like engineering, right? I mean, failure is not an option if you're building a bridge.
Those are where traditional education—minor places—where traditional education is very good at preparing those people. But for lots of us, we're going to be in a world where it's going to be a constant iterative development process. And those that are unafraid of failure and willing to learn from it are those that can progress the fastest.
I think that's an important thing, and also a freeing thing that can often depressurize life for a bunch of people.
ADAMS: That's so true.
It's important that we grasp that. I think that whole philosophy, because it's been so expunged out of education, honestly, that's why some of our systems have collapsed and are collapsing. They're unrealistic. Reality—again, true education is finding truth. It's not just getting told what we want to hear. Yeah, that's really important.
Now, let's talk a little bit more about your programs. Then I want to dive into a couple of real practical things that hopefully our listeners can take away.
Your programs, would you consider them—now, you kind of just shared your first year, second year, third year. I think I saw on your website some stuff about like ninth grade and up and so forth, as well. Maybe tell us a little bit about your programs of study.
Also, would you consider your programs extracurricular, or can you implement your programs into existing public or private schools? I mean, could that model be duplicated?
BRUSH: Yeah, that's a great question. So, two divisions here: we have high school and post-high school.
High school is ninth through 12th grade, we call that Equip. That's a curriculum that is study skills and life skills that can be integrated into any curriculum. Now, you ask about public school, private school, homeschool: it's designed specifically to work with homeschool students, who have the most flexibility, and private schools where they're willing to adapt them into their systems. It doesn't typically work with public school because we have a Christian worldview that is integrated into all of that.
What we do is we teach through a series of teams and some mentors and some coaching and then some classes and content. We teach study skills and life skills, but we use it as a foil to teach that, the educational process you're already going through.
So, in other words, for a student, we say, “Look, this is not going to double your time and your academic load. Instead, as you learn algebra two, we're going to teach you a series of study skills that you'll practice learning algebra two. We're going to teach you a series of life skills that you'll implement as you put together your study schedule for high school.
The result of that is—we call it a program that actualizes a student's education. This goes back to our questions-based paradigm where we say that the base thing that you need to learn…so I have people at times that are like, “What is it you're supposed to learn?” Because it used to be this list of boxes. Now we're not sure because the world changes so quickly.
We say when it comes down to it, “QEMCI” is what we're looking for. The ability to Quickly and Effectively Master Complicated Information, which is honestly just a fancy way of saying “to learn how to learn.” I tell students all the time, “Look, if you're an engineer, you'll need algebra two, pay attention. If you're the majority of us, you won't.” And they say, “Oh, great, so I don't have to take algebra two.” I say, “Oh, no, no, no. Algebra two actually ends up being a very valuable course.”
Because it's not learning the formulas that will be important. It's the process of teaching your mind to learn something difficult and apply it correctly. That's the transferable skill. Whatever class it is you're struggling with, worry less about the content and mastering it—although often the content's important, so I'm not belittling that—but understand that the thing that you're looking for, the transferable skill, is the process by which you learn the content.
People who can quickly and effectively master complicated information are people that are well adapted for a world where information is constantly flowing, technology constantly disrupts, and problem solving is a constant need in every industry. That would be—the high school program is designed on that. And then, of course, our college or post-high school program would be the Ascend program that I touched on before, which is project-based education.
And in this case, it would be a program that would work—if you're looking to earn a degree, we can help you earn 90 credits that will be guaranteed to transfer into the school of your choice. You'll make those decisions before you enroll with us so we'll know where you're going. Or, if you're a non degree-seeking student, you'll earn a certification that will tell an employer all the skills that you've learned, regardless of whether you earn a degree or not.
If you spend three years with us in ascend and you earn our certificate, we guarantee that you will be employed at a job that pays higher than the average college salary, or we will refund all three years of your tuition. I have 10,000 alumni, and I've never refunded a dime.
It's a program that's really designed to help students be practically prepared. What is often unnoticed from this is that…the program is great and of course I'm a big fan and I'm biased—I want to say that—but the community is extraordinary.
I mentioned I have 10,000 alumni. The reason I can make such audacious job promises is that every week I have alumni that say, “I will hire whoever you send to me. I don't need to interview them.”
We have a network and a connection that is literally nationwide that is as strong as the service academies. If you’ve ever talked to anybody who talks about the Annapolis Network for the Naval Academy, I have something very much like that with the Unbound Network because we attract people who think differently, who tend to perform better than average, and they look to hire people like themselves.
ADAMS: Super. This is very interesting.
Let's talk a little bit now to parents and students. Give them some practical tips, particularly for young people, really focus toward them, but something that—parents may be listening, kids may not be listening to this podcast—but they may want to take back and share some things with their kids.
Some things that really could make a huge difference for them. What would you share with them that could be pivotal in their thinking, in their planning. Some of those…some guidance that will put them on the right path?
BRUSH: Well, I will start with something that sounds counterintuitive. This may sound discouraging at first, but bear with me for a second because I think it will actually be the most encouraging thing you'll hear.
You're not God and all things are not possible for you. First, get off this “everything is possible” bandwagon. That's ridiculous. It's a farce on its face and it has been responsible for stressing out more parents and students than anything else I can think of.
You are put in a particular time and place in your immortal being and there are only so many options in front of you, not all things are possible. Then you start to—at first people go, “Wait a second, what about that?” Just sit back and absorb that for a second. Then with that, you do not have to figure out everything that you need to do for the rest of your life now. And if you do, you're almost certainly wrong.
I call this the fighter pilot syndrome. Some guy who went to the Naval Academy and got out and gotten flight school and got to fly F-18s off of aircraft carriers comes back and tells his alma mater, “If you two will work really hard and you get a 4.0 and you get in the Naval Academy and you do all the right things, get all the right tests, you too can achieve your dreams.”
And everybody goes, “Yay, it's so exciting”. And that's true, but it's not the truth. Because the truth is you can do all those things and you can pass out in the spinning machine because there's something physiologically different with you that you can't handle G-forces and you can't be a fighter pilot. Or you can do everything perfect and be physiologically fine…and the Navy doesn't need that many fighter pilots right now and you fly radar planes instead. I mean, there's a whole set of factors that work…
Does that mean that everybody who has this different outcome is not successful? I just fundamentally reject that. You don't need to know everything you're going to do, nor is it true that you just work hard, you achieve anything.
Instead, we teach students at Unbound—and I would want to pass on to you—the process here should be: do what's right in front of you to the best of your ability. When you do that, have an attitude of mastery: whatever is in front of me, I'm going to try to do as best I can. And when you're at the point where you can't master anything else, turn around and look and do the next thing. Then start to ask questions about what you just learned about yourself.
If you're willing to do that, if you're willing to lean in and discover and keep doing the next thing as best as you can do, and if you're willing to be wise enough to turn around and reflect on what happened, you'll do great. I don't know what you'll do and I don't know where you'll do it. I don't know if Unbound is a great route for you or traditional education, or if you indeed will fly F-18s.
But I will tell you that's a much less stressful way than this idea that at eighteen, you have to know what college you're going to, what major you have to do, and what career you're going to follow for the rest of your life, and that you have to be terrified that failure will mean that you can't do that thing.
It's an iterative process, and going back to something we said earlier, our entire education process is that there are principles, things that are true no matter what. Our job in teaching is to give you perspective on those principles so that you can apply them. If you think about that in terms of how you learn and how you lean forward, I think that you'll find that the whole process becomes way less stressful and much more practical.
ADAMS: That's great advice for kids. Just live every day, do the very best you can at what's right in front of you. Good advice.
BRUSH: And trust God that God will take you and open the doors that you need. I can look back at a life that has had all kinds of unexpected doors, including the fact that I'm on this podcast in the position I am right now, that I could never have seen coming, and it has been a life that has been full and wonderful and sometimes strange and very exciting, and I spent a lot of it stressing out about what was around the corner.
I look back at that and laugh now because it was so beyond my comprehension of what was possible.
ADAMS: Ain’t that the truth!
Alright, let's now shift to the parents. As they are working with their teenagers—or their little kids maybe—what are some things they can instill in those kids that are—certainly what you just shared is applicable to every child, but for guidance for parents. What would you tell parents? How can they best—you have six kids. I have six kids, by the way, and twenty grandkids.
BRUSH: That’s awesome.
ADAMS: As we are talking to folks who are listening in, what can you share with them?
BRUSH: Once again, I would say, look: you are much less in control than you think you are. First of all, knowing that might de-stress the whole situation.
Secondly, your job—and I am barring this phrase from a man named Andy Andrews who…check him out, AndyAndrews.com, he is a best-selling author and he has some really cool stuff. He says, “Your job is not to raise great kids. Your job is to raise great adults.” I would then add to that advice I got from a very great parent and father that said to me, “I never thought they were mine. I always thought that my job was to get them ready to launch.”
That framework will put you in the right attitude. I would say boredom is your friend. In a world where everybody is plugged into devices all the time, I would just challenge you to cut as many devices as possible. Technology is such that it is intuitive and students can pick it up really fast later in life. I would instill as much boredom as possible as early as possible, because that will spur your children to creatively come up with their own ideas.
And the more you can get them involved in the natural world and the more that they can take responsibility for their own entertainment, the better outcomes that you will see. Your job, then, as a parent is to provide the safe space to be bored and then to provide the uncomfortable pressure to move them forward in that boredom.
What I mean by that is that your job is to not create a place where they want to stay forever. Your job is to create a place that is constantly moving them into that place where they're not comfortable. Look, there's a thousand ways to do that. There's no formula to do that. There's no perfect way.
You can't do it the way I did for my kids. If I told you how it was and gave you the formula, you should reject that and run from people who say that. But those things I just said, they're principles. There are things that are true no matter what.
ADAMS: Yeah.
BRUSH: I think that that can often relieve a lot of pressure and also allow you to parent in the unique way that God has equipped you to do.
ADAMS: Great advice. This is very, very useful. Very good.
Thank you, Jonathan, for joining us today. Real quick: how can people connect with you? How can they learn more about what you do? Websites?
BRUSH: Yeah, absolutely. If you go to BeUnbound.us and that's B-E-Unbound.us, you'll find our website. Of course, you can search for BeUnbound and all the social media platforms. You'll find us particularly on YouTube and Instagram and some of those places and you can learn more about us from those things.
Then look, we're not an enormous multi-hundred person organization. So if you have questions or thoughts or, even more interestingly, disagreements, if you go to BeUnbound.us and use any of our forms and say, “I'd like to talk to that Jonathan guy,” they'll connect you to me directly.
I'll be delighted to help in any way I can, whether or not you're interested in what we do for our programs. Or if you disagree, be happy to have a conversation with you. So feel free to contact me directly.
And then yeah! If we do things that did pique your interest, for those who are still interested in enrolling people in the fall class, we have a few spaces left both at the high school and in our second level. Depending on when this airs, you can still go to BeUnbound.us and find out more information about those things.
ADAMS: That's excellent. Thank you for spending time with us today, Jonathan. And God bless you and what you're doing.
BRUSH: Thank you so much for having me. It was an honor and privilege to be here.