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Shaka Mitchell: Civil Discourse Through Music, School Choice & the Rise of AI in Learning

• Rui • Episode 16

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Today on Floating Questions, we sat down with Shaka Mitchell - Aspen Institute Civil Society Fellow, Senior Fellow at the American Federation for Children, constitutional law lecturer, long-distance runner, creator of the Come Together Music Project, and father of three. 

Shaka has spent decades building bipartisan coalitions in education and civil discourse, guided by humility, principled thinking, and a deep commitment to humanizing others. In this conversation, we explore:

  • Music as a bridge: why “every memory has a soundtrack” and how sharing a song helps people humanize each other before hard political conversations 
  • Values, faith & principled living: “to give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift,” and why humility matters when advocating for what you believe 
  • School choice & civic engagement: how diverse motivations still build coalitions, and the tension between plural school options and the demands placed on parents
  • AI in the classroom: how AI can support learning and where it can’t replace teachers, plus emerging policy questions as AI enters education

Shaka shares stories from his coalition-building work, his family, and his faith - offering a grounded look at how people with very different backgrounds and beliefs can still learn from one another.

You can also follow his work and thoughts here https://shakamitchell.substack.com/

Rui:

Welcome to Floating Questions, the podcast where curiosity leads, we follow and stories unfold. My name's Rui, simply asking questions, shall we begin? today. We are joined by Shaka Mitchell, as an Aspen Institute, civil Society Fellow and Senior Fellow at the American Federation for Children. He's built bipartisan coalitions on education and civil rights. Shaka also teaches constitutional law at Belmont, runs long distances for fun, and launched the Come Together Music Project to spark more civil discourse, all while he is raising three lovely kids with his wife in Tennessee. Welcome Shaka.

Shaka Mitchell:

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here. Looking forward to our conversation.

Rui:

Yeah. Thank you so much for reaching out. and after you reach out, we have that chat. I was like, I'm so excited about this conversation. I'm so excited about your background. It's really different from mine and it's very different from a lot of the people that I am usually in touch with. So I'm excited to learn more stuff from you.

Shaka Mitchell:

Fantastic.

Rui:

Um, okay. I actually loved the story behind the Come Together Music project. could you start sharing that with the audience

Shaka Mitchell:

Yeah. Um, thank you for asking. So the Come Together Music Project is really a, a passion project of mine. It kind of has the nexus in a few different places, but I would say it's a project where, uh, the synopsis would be where I try to use music to, create new relationships, deepen existing relationships and build bridges. And it's because I think that music is what I might call like a common grace. It's something that spans every known civilization. It's something that is a part of every culture. It's a part of different, faith contexts, you know, uh, religious and worship ceremonies. There's a reason that people go to concerts with other people. and it is such an experiential thing. Music just has this tremendous power, I think to, help people form bonds. Music is also really, really sticky. So. I would say a way, the way that the project came together, long story short, is that, actually over COVID, some friends of mine, we started getting together. We kind of missed hanging out, you know, we're doing all the social distancing as many people were, and, uh, we just kind of missed some time together. We're like, Hey, let's just, we gotta get out of the house. And so we started to link up at a friend's house. There were four or five of us, and we'd do it once a month and we would send out three categories of songs ahead of time and each person would send in song, one song for each category to the person who was hosting and put a playlist together. And then we got together, we would listen to the song and everyone would tell a little bit about their song. So sometimes the category might be like a song that's kind of a guilty. And you know, it's when you, I found out that one of my friends who's a grown man, was a really big Taylor Swift fan. Um, uh, then there might be a category that was like a song that you can't stand. And I remember mine, mine is a song called, this is How We Do It by Montel Jordan. I, I can't stand this song. I hate this song. but as we would do it, what I found was that one of the most enjoyable parts, it wasn't just learning about new music or hearing someone's selection, it was learning more about them. Right? Because songs are very sticky, as I mentioned. So Andy Warhol says that, um, that every memory has a soundtrack all its own. And I, I believe that's true. And so, I thought, you know, with a little more intentionality. I think we can really do something we had, there's something powerful here. And so I actually just came back. I was just in North Carolina with a group of colleagues and we did this, we were in a big, a group of about 60 people and I had three of my colleagues and asked them ahead of time to send in categories in the categories that we did. We said, what's a song that reminds you of your senior year of high school? What's a song that you associate with a job that you've had before? And then the final question was, what's a song that inspires you? And so, you know, over the course we get to listen to 30, 45 seconds of each one of these songs. But really what's happening is we're learning about one another and we're showing that, oh, even though we have very, might have very different political views, we might have very different backgrounds. We can still humanize one another. And that to me is one of the first steps towards having conversations about other maybe higher level public policy issues. First, we have to be able to even have a conversation and humanize one another. So that, so that's what it is. That's kind of long-winded. I, I apologize. But, um, yeah, it's been a really fun project.

Rui:

No, I love that description. Not long at all. Um, actually, I would like to ask another question. if you have to pick a song that best captures the spirit of what you are trying to do in the world in

Shaka Mitchell:

Hmm.

Rui:

not just for this project, but in general of your live theme so far, what would it be and why?

Shaka Mitchell:

Boy, that's a hard question. It's terrible when you have a music podcast and then you get asked a question about music. It's, I always find myself like flatfooted, um,

Rui:

Or

Shaka Mitchell:

song.

Rui:

a collection of songs like let's say three together. It's like, oh yeah, this is the three facets that sort of like represent me.

Shaka Mitchell:

Sure. Yeah, I think those are, it's always challenging to say, you know, what's the one song, right? I mean, there's a great podcast that I, or it used to be a radio show on the BBC, it still exists. It's called Desert Island Discs. And they ask the question and say, if you could bring 10 songs with you trapped on a desert island, what would you bring?

Rui:

Hmm.

Shaka Mitchell:

And, you know, it's a good thought exercise, but it's also like, boy, I hope I'm never stuck on a desert island and I only have 10 songs. I, for multiple reasons, I don't wanna be on that desert island. But, um, you know, the, I'll tell you what, the album that came to mind, because I think the, the title is so Spot on. It's a Stevie Wonder album. it's called Songs in the Key of Life. Songs in the Key of Life. And, and actually on that album, there are really a range of songs. He has a song called, um, pastime Paradise. He's got just, songs that are about, in some cases, um, living in low income communities. But coming out of those and still finding hope, he has some songs that are about love, some songs about friendship, but songs in the key of life. I think that might be emblematic of, uh, what I'm trying to do.

Rui:

That's actually a really good pick. Uh, I love that how you just picked the entire album that is like very eclectic and sort of have all kinds of theme together that really speak to how balanced person you are actually. Um.

Shaka Mitchell:

erratic, either one, but yeah.

Rui:

Balancing erratic. Maybe it's like if you zoom in parts, it's erratic, but if you step back and look at the whole,

Shaka Mitchell:

Hmm.

Rui:

balanced.

Shaka Mitchell:

Yeah, I hope so. I like that.

Rui:

Yeah. Um, maybe this is also a good segue into, at least based on the choice of the album also based on what I understand, what you do, uh, especially building bipartisan coalitions and even like Come Together Music Project, it's about, first let's humanize each other

Shaka Mitchell:

Mm-hmm.

Rui:

diving into some very, um, contentious topics and discussions. Um. At least one value that I suppose that you would have, it's about this like very balanced and centered and grounded view about life and about issues. would you say that capture what you value the most or what are the values and principles that you fully embrace in work and life, how, how do you rank them? Actually in general? I want to understand a little bit your, you know, value system.

Shaka Mitchell:

Yeah. Thank you. I think perspective is really important to me, uh, because I would say, and I, and this is gonna also answer the question a little bit, so I am, um, a, a person of faith. Um, we are, my, I and my wife, um, are Christians. I would say that's the predominant identifier if, if you will, in, in our lives. And so to me, everything else, um, requires a good deal of keeping things in right perspective. Because on the one hand, I think that we've been given gifts. I think every person has been given gifts and talents, and I think we should pursue those and, and honor the gifts we've been given. Um, there's this great, this great runner actually, well, he's no longer alive, but a guy, um, named Steve Prefontaine, and he was a runner out of Oregon in the seventies. And he said, to, to give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift. And I, that quote has always resonated with me. I think, I think we should give our best, you know, in some ways it sacrifices the gift if we don't. That being said, I do believe that it's, there's a temptation for all of us to believe that our gift, our cause, our issue is more important than everyone else's. And I think we have to be very, very, skeptical. of that impulse to make our thing the most important thing. So on the one hand, I, I think that, I mean, as you alluded to, um, much of my professional work, most of my professional work is in education, education, advocacy. I think it's super important. I want to do the best job I can. I really believe in, but it's a big world. There's a lot of other things to be passionate about and to care about. And so if you tell me that what you really care about is, healthcare and medical technology or, um, hunger and homelessness or economic development, I'm not gonna get mad at you and say, well, that's not important at all. You know? I think to be able to appreciate that other people's lives and causes are also valuable. I think that's, I think there's a humility there. Um, and, you know, kind of. I think it's important to be humble in that, in that, you know, probably took decades for me to appreciate, you know, 'cause of course when you're younger, you think whatever you're doing is the most important thing. but yeah, I, I sort of, to me it's like faith and really everything else ranks under that. And it's almost like there's a big gap between number one and whatever, two A, two B, two C, whatever those sub parts are.

Rui:

one of the most interesting parts is, uh, trying to get to know your value and your identity, right? A little bit. Because when you talk about faith, am, not religious,

Shaka Mitchell:

Mm-hmm.

Rui:

a person of faith. what I find fascinating is when I'm reading through your blog I just get a sense that you are someone who has a principled way of being, of how to work with other people, how to get along or take care of other people. Um, and you have this centered humility that I can see and I can connect with. And I feel like you are very open to different perspectives and trying to understand them. I don't have faith, um, in the sense of like, I don't particularly belong to any part of the religion, but I think I also have a core set of principles that potentially quite close to yours despite it's not governed by. faith Um, so I think that's some level why we connect,

Shaka Mitchell:

Hmm.

Rui:

and I guess do you feel like you have to operate under the faith in order to act out those principles? How do you

Shaka Mitchell:

Yeah, it's a, yeah, it's a good question. I mean, listen, I believe one of the tricky things actually about, uh, people who are, people who have a certain set of beliefs, maybe they practice a certain religion, is that there can be many things that your, faith dictate that have a whole lot of overlap with what just seems reasonable or prudent or wise or helpful or healthy, even absent a faith context, right? And so I think that, that things can look very similar. I mean, it's something that we talk to our girls about, for instance, our kids. I, an example might be, you can choose to not spend all your money on kind of frivolous things. You might choose to do that because you care about the environment. You might choose to do it because you think it's unwise to spend all your money. You might do it because you want to honor God and give money to charity, right? Those are three different reasons, but, the end result might look the same. And so I think there can be some overlap between actions and intent. I don't always do it perfectly for sure, but I've tried to let my actions be, uh, I guess informed by the knowledge that I'm still learning. I'm still growing. and so, you know, what I would say, Ray, is that you may not be a person of faith, but you're still seeking. and I would say like I'm still seeking and learning as well, right? Because, every new person that we engage with is a new way to live out our beliefs and engage with that person. And so in some ways, it's sort of like an infinite number of ways to think about how our lives can manifest our beliefs.

Rui:

Yeah. I guess for me Let's say hypothetically, all of my principles are actually aligned with Christianity, right? Like, even if I don't believe it, but I, if I act that way, what makes it different than whether I. Truly believe it or not, if I'm like living my life that way.

Shaka Mitchell:

Yeah.

Rui:

Conversely a lot of your core principles aligned with Buddhism. Um, so then what makes you not a Buddhist if you act already in that direction?

Shaka Mitchell:

Right, right, right.

Rui:

I guess head it's more about like, I, don't know whether one set of system would fully capture exactly what I would believe in or how I would behave. I, I can behave in a way that is a little bit more consistent and sort of guided by some bottom lines and principles. Um, but whether those principle or bottom lines are in line with one system versus another, I, I don't know. I just want to sort of almost like pick and choose maybe

Shaka Mitchell:

Yeah. I.

Rui:

reason why I find it a little bit difficult to opt in

Shaka Mitchell:

Sure,

Rui:

one specific system

Shaka Mitchell:

sure, sure. Well in, you know, not to make your podcast about, um, proselytizing. but my response to that is that I think there's a lot of value in finding a belief system that is internally coherent, right? Because, um, just from a pure number standpoint, again, this says nothing of any of your ability of any other person's ability per se, but from a pure number standpoint, it seems like the odds that one person in now, 2025. Stumbles upon like an ad hoc kind of, a piecemeal belief system that works better than the prior 50 billion people, um, who have been on planet Earth like numerically, there's pretty low chances. So I do think that there's a lot of value and wisdom in saying, okay, I'm not the first person to wake up in the morning and wonder about questions like, what should be my purpose? So let's study some other people who have also thought about this too. Two,

Rui:

That's a very interesting point. I can that

Shaka Mitchell:

so

Rui:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Shaka Mitchell:

I will say one thing that I think, and this maybe speaks a little bit to my other work and policy work as well. And, and just kind of the way in which I approach it, I do think that something's really important, whether it's because you're trying to tell someone about your beliefs, um, your beliefs in terms of what it means to live a good life, or your beliefs in terms of what it means to, have good economic theory or what it means to pursue the right business strategy, whatever. I, I do think that it's really helpful to, earn the right to be heard, right? So I think the, the inverse about what's not helpful is just to come in and just start sort of saying like, you know, what, you believe something different than me and what you believe is so stupid that only a stupid person would believe it. I mean, like, that's not convincing at all. it doesn't endear you to one another. Um, and so, you know. I don't think you wanna be manipulative. I hope I'm not manipulative with that, but I do think, like, what's it look like to earn the right to be heard? And first of all, that means like listening. Okay, what does this other person actually think? Where are they coming from? What's their, what are their experiences? And then maybe we can start to have a conversation about, um, you know, about our beliefs and other points of difference. I think that's probably a good like roadmap for lots of conversations, whether it's religion or a whole host of other things.

Rui:

Yeah, for sure. well actually, Have you seen moments where groups with very, very different political viewpoints end up on the same side, but for totally different reasons, or actually they have the exact same reasons. It's just they didn't even expect that it would be on the same side despite their view or identity or labels are like wildly different traditionally.

Shaka Mitchell:

Yes, yes, for sure, for sure. I mean, this is, um, in the, in the political science world, you know, there's a, a public choice theory, has this sort of thought experiment and, and we call it baptism and bootleggers. And, um, Baptists, you know, the sort of religious Baptists and bootleggers people who were selling alcohol illegally. Well, what are these two, what did these two groups have in common? Not a whole lot, um, except that they both, approved prohibition of alcohol and laws that, that banned alcohol at the what, the beginning of the 20th century. Well, why did they, why did they do this? Why would Baptist and Bootleggers, you know, these people who are religiously strict and very religiously conservative, why would they be on the same side as you know, folks who are running a black market alcohol distribution network? Well. They both had an interest in prohibition laws. The Baptist wanted it because they wanted to ban alcohol and they wanted to, you know, stop people from drinking.'cause they felt like it was gonna lead to all sorts of social ills, right? So they favored those laws. the bootleggers, favored laws prohibiting alcohol because as long as there was a law prohibiting it, it means they could keep raising the price of their black market alcohol because they still had that had access to it, right? So it's this baptism bootleggers is kind of a, a pretty famous, um, example of when different groups can get on the same side. Now, I would say that those are different groups getting on the same side as something that actually wasn't all that popular to begin with. but yeah, you get some of not just. Examples, but, from time to time you have political movements and actually I would say that a lot of political movements, it's a, a matter of getting lots of otherwise disparate groups under the tent so that they can all at least agree to one, kind of cause of action. Right. even if you think about the sort of civil rights era, 1960s in the us when you had things like bus boycotts in Montgomery, Alabama. Well, there were people who wanted to end the bus boycotts for lots of reasons. you know, African Americans said, we are being discriminated against when we ride public transportation. They said, okay, we're gonna ban together and we're not gonna ride public transportation at all. And, they held out for weeks and weeks. No one rode public transportation. Well, it was a, a huge, economic disruptor on the, government and city revenue. Alright, so when voices start to say, all right, we have to, integrate buses in a way that's just and fair and we can, we know we don't need to discriminate anymore. Well, you can believe that not everybody was doing it because they had some epiphany and all of a sudden they believed in equal rights for people of all color. Right? No, some of them were like, Hey. I don't know what the number is, but they were losing what, thousands of dollars per day in revenue. Right? And so you can believe there were some people who were like, we need to do whatever it takes to get commerce flowing again. Right? There were city leaders and state leaders who said, Hey, you guys in Montgomery need to fix this because now the eyes of the country are watching your city. And it's really embarrassing, right? So there's some people who, who just wanna save face. There are some people who, again, in that time wanted to actually reform the system because they believed in equal rights for all people. But again, you're, you're trying to get multiple people and it's like, Hey, we may not all have the exact same, desire in our hearts, but we can agree on this outcome. And that's good enough when you're thinking about policy. I would say that's good enough. It doesn't matter if everybody is a true believer. you're trying to get enough people to like vote the, you know, in a certain way or take a certain action. It doesn't matter if they are all in their, in their heart of hearts, fully on board with you.

Rui:

Uh, I love those stories. What about a story of your own, like in your experience in trying to build that bi bipartisan coalitions and specific policy that you're trying to push through,

Shaka Mitchell:

Mm,

Rui:

the, I, I would like to hear one story maybe from your own experience.

Shaka Mitchell:

sure. Thank you. I would point to education. movements that I've been a part of, sort of education reform, so we would call it school choice, the idea that every child deserves to have access to it. A school or an education, a best fit for them. And the way to do that is to ensure that the parents or guardians have a choice in the process. So as opposed to just say your zone school, you know, the one that you go to based on your, your address where you live. Um, that's the, the world that I've kind of worked in, and operated in for now, you know, 20 years. so something that's really interesting in this space is that lots of times, the groups that get the most attention because their, their communities realize that they don't have a lot of great options, but for very different reasons are urban centers and very rural places. Right. I live in Tennessee. So in, in the city of Nashville, in the city of Memphis, we have a lot of high schools. You know, there are dense cities. Each one is, uh, I mean, Nashville proper and is call it 600,000, 700,000 people. we have a number of public high schools and they don't perform very well academically in Memphis, the scores are even lower. And what that means for your listeners is, you might have a college ready rate of 15% from the high school, even though the graduation rate is more like 90%. So, you know, you'd say, well, we're graduating kids, but like, what are they really ready for? maybe not the working world or, or college. Anyway, so that's a dynamic like in the inner city. And then you go out to the suburbs, and this is, this happens in nearly every state. You know, the suburban schools tend to be a little bit better, right? People like to move out, they get some money, they move out to the suburbs a little bit, they're living in cul-de-sacs, whatever, and that's fine. but then you get out beyond that. And then rural areas, you often have very low population. There might just be one high school in the county. and where that's the case, uh, you kind of, it's like we used to tell our kids with, with dinner when they didn't like what we were serving them. you get what you get and you don't throw a fit. And that's kind of how it is, how education is. If you're in a rural area, you get what you get and, you don't have many other options. So in that scenario, you have, um, urban activists, inner city activists, and you may have some rural, um, leaders. That sort of say, you know what, we actually have this, similar problem. Even though we live in very different context, we have very similar problems. And so you've seen, um, in, in some places, Florida comes to mind, uh, Milwaukee early on where you've had urban Democrats and then you've had republicans who kind of appreciate, Hey, we actually could do some options, some rural options, um, two coming together so that you can have, uh, they can pass a school choice program. So that's been, that's been pretty cool to say. It doesn't happen everywhere. Um, every state has slightly different dynamics, but that's when that happens. It's a pretty cool example of really different interests, um, seeing that, that the same solution might be applicable in their different contexts.

Rui:

Fascinating. people come together for different reasons. even though the outcome might be same, or at the very least very similar, because of the why could be drastically different You always have a lot of tension because it could still manifesting what you are building, right? Like how you are going to solve it. Um, how do you hold that tension together and actually make progress when the fundamental reason can be quite

Shaka Mitchell:

Mm-hmm.

Rui:

that's the really tricky part. And I,

Shaka Mitchell:

Mm-hmm.

Rui:

and I even. I'm asking you this question, I realize this question is even like too broad. I'm actually really relying on you to help me maybe collapse that question into a little bit more even concrete example for how do you manage that tension? How do you navigate through that complex motivation?

Shaka Mitchell:

Right, right. Well, it, it, it does. And you're, I think you're getting to something that's at the heart of many, many public policy issues, which is kind of the, the, broadly speaking, like the sector that I've spent a lot of time working in. And that is, um, it might seem like, oh, we just wanna get this, this law passed, or this program passed. But very quickly what you find out is that, the underlying questions about vision and, and purpose and even philosophy to an extent, really undergird what comes out as a piece of legislation and eventually a law. So, if you haven't thought at all about, well, what actually is the purpose of education? If you haven't thought at all about that, um, very quickly you're going to find out that you can go in lots of different directions from a policy standpoint, that might all sound reasonable. and, and, and actually those different policy, proposals might help crystallize what you, what your assumptions were about education, right? So getting to what you're say, what you're asking about. one way that we see this is in how we think about quality. So it's one thing to say, oh, the school in my neighborhood school, it's, it is really low quality. Okay, well, what does that mean? What do we, what do you mean when you say low quality? I mean, I'll ask you, when I say the school in our neighborhood, it's a low quality, what's the, what are the first things that you think about? What would make it low quality?

Rui:

Um, I guess for example, are students learning the newest materials out there, like the best understanding of the world, that's could be one aspect. Uh, it could be how well the teachers help them understand and improve based on their individual needs.

Shaka Mitchell:

Mm-hmm.

Rui:

there are so many dimensions that you can name, right? Like, um,

Shaka Mitchell:

Exactly.

Rui:

very ambiguous. And sometimes people could even talk about the same thing with different words, or with different things, with the same word. So even

Shaka Mitchell:

For sure.

Rui:

piece is very, very difficult.

Shaka Mitchell:

A hundred percent. So, yeah, I mean, you mentioned a few things that are all very reasonable, right? Um, but I have a friend, he works in real estate. and we've discussed this before. It is very important for him to have a, to see that the physical structure of the school is like very new and modern. So if my, so frankly if my friend went to Cambridge and walked around, he might look at Harvard and go, I don't know, this looks pretty low quality. But what he would be thinking is like, because look at how old these buildings are, right? Look at how old the buildings are. The dorm rooms are tiny. You know, and he would give it two thumbs down and then he'd be like, oh, I'm okay. And that's, that is very different than what's being taught in the classrooms. What's the pedagogy? What's the philosophy of learning? you know, and ideological bias, um, all, all of those things are kids college and career ready, right? So there's many different ways to determine something like quality. Well, the way that that informs public policy is that, and, and you kind of alluded to this, it means that some people may want to have really tight strictures on how you measure the, say academic efficacy. Of a school choice program, and then others who also might favor the school choice program, they might say, no, no, no, we actually, we wanna say hands off the way to the way that we know that this is working is all because it's demand driven. And so, uh, so they might say, I have a friend who says, well, high parent demand, that alone is the marker of, you know, a sort of, um, high quality and successful program. Because parents, if you think that parents are the ultimate arbiter, then if they are choosing this sort of defacto, they are saying that, that this is valuable. And then others, other people would say, well, maybe, but don't people make bad decisions all the time. Right. And so the, this is the tension. So when I'm thinking about how you work with these coalitions, it's, I think there are places to be tight and there are places to be loose. I try to be very realistic and we tell people there are only trade offs in these policy spaces. As soon as you start writing it down and putting pen to paper or whatever, typing it, um, there's only trade offs. So you just have to know there's gonna be trade-offs. and it's going to be very challenging in a country with, 60 million school-aged children. we're not gonna be able to gain total consensus. Right. I try to be upfront with people at the beginning, especially if they're new to the process, to sort of say like, listen, this is not gonna come out in a way that you think is absolutely perfect, but we're gonna be so much better than where you've been and we're gonna be so much better than what the existing state of the world is. Yeah.

Rui:

This is interesting because, um, I definitely feel like us, one of the funding foundations is, at least based on my observation, the. The diversity or the disagreement is built into it, right?

Shaka Mitchell:

Mm-hmm.

Rui:

it's in the DNA of the US to have

Shaka Mitchell:

Yes.

Rui:

set of views and sort of like tensions. And so inevitably that manifests for example, state versus local or federal versus states, and also across different states, uh, were different systems like how all of those different viewpoints need to reconcile with each other.

Shaka Mitchell:

Yep.

Rui:

a

Shaka Mitchell:

this is like the Federalist Papers. Federalist 51 I think is all about factions. And I say, well, how do you make sure you don't have a dominant faction? You. Well, you have the proliferation of factions. We have a bunch of little groups that all disagree with each other. Yeah.

Rui:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I think it's interesting how this manifested, for example, in specific education, how that would really look like. it's interesting to think about. So I guess, let me, since you already start to allude to the pro-choice, at least that's the value that you hold, in the realm of education. I want to talk a little bit more about that. Um, so you explain a little bit of what pro school choice, uh, is like, and the way that I understand it is that on the demand side, you encourage choices for parents. Um, maybe like for example, you would have used education savings account or vouchers to pick whatever schools that they potentially want their kids to go to. And on the supply side, you want the system set up in such a way that, that embrace the pluralism and pair that part. With this high standard and accountability, um, it's not just about diversity, but also about the quality of each system. Is that a fair summary

Shaka Mitchell:

Uh, yeah, I, I,

Rui:

way of like putting

Shaka Mitchell:

yeah, no, I think you, I think you did a very nice job actually of, of summarizing those, those things. Yeah. And, and, um, and of course there's, as we just discussed, there's some tensions there, right? Because it's one thing to say, that we want, we want a plurality of different educational options, but we also are oriented towards the, the same high standard

Rui:

Mm-hmm.

Shaka Mitchell:

because what you, but I, but I think we see this a little bit in, in other contexts, right? I mean, we, we sort of say to, to automobile manufacturers, Like the point of every car I, I think, is to get you from point A to B, but we wanna do it safely. and then there can be some safety regulations. We can say what we mean by that. We wanna do it safely. We wanna do it in a way that hopefully is like getting cheaper over time. That's, you know, not polluting this much by whatever, however we quantify that. Um, but we're not, hopefully, we're not looking over the shoulder of every automobile manufacturer and saying, Ooh, I don't like that design element of the interior of your car. I don't like that pink job, whatever. Right. So there's still a whole lot of, um, design flexibility and customization that can happen. I mean, even, you know, there's some of these cars now. I see the, the Ford Bronco, you know, they brought back the Ford Bronco and every Ford Bronco on the road looks different from the last one that I saw, because there's so many different ways to customize it. and that's a, that's a pretty cool thing. People seem to really appreciate that, that they can personalize things, but they, at the end of the day, still getting them where they need to go. And there's some scale benefit from Ford creating that thing. Unfortunately, our conventional public school system does not really operate that way. it's not really built for much customization. And so I think that's something that we're, that I'm interested in injecting into the system. It's both the customization and innovation, because I think that those two things will actually result in higher quality.

Rui:

Okay. I'm gonna ask two a little bit more pointy questions just to poke

Shaka Mitchell:

Sure.

Rui:

where your boundaries are at. The first one is between high standard high quality versus more choices. Which one would you rank first? it's a trade off.

Shaka Mitchell:

Yeah. Yeah. So between high quality and say, say high quality and Sam on the one side and number of choices on the other side.

Rui:

Yeah.

Shaka Mitchell:

Um, I think I would, tend towards choices. I think I would tend towards choices because I think, because I think that choices lead to. More to high quality in a way that, um, that I actually don't, I don't know that the, that the arrows work in the same direction on the other side, if you have, let's say you did, because again, that's, in some ways that's just such a counterfactual,

Rui:

Mm-hmm.

Shaka Mitchell:

to say that you can just, that you can just script high quality. I mean, every state, every governor, you know, every state superintendent has said we're gonna have high quality schools. Okay, well, just because you said it doesn't mean that we're gonna do it. It doesn't make it easy. If you knew how to do it, we would've done it already. So I think I would go choices.

Rui:

No, I think that's a great answer. Uh, they're not sort of like mutually exclusive. They have definitely overlap. It is just

Shaka Mitchell:

yeah.

Rui:

how you even define quality, right? Because if you define quality as its customization catered to individual needs and want, then. In that direction of high quality, you would naturally just pick the more choices part. Makes sense. that brings me to the next question. Does, the plural choices, risk further factoring the culture does it actually help bridge the divide?

Shaka Mitchell:

Yeah, so there's some really good research on this out of the University of Arkansas that says that, families who participate in choice programs actually score higher on civic engagement, which is pretty interesting. Yeah. So the why is the, is sort of the. You know, the big question, but the, the researcher who did it, he's guy named Patrick Wolf. He's got, he has a couple different hypotheses for why this might be the case. one reason is that if you imagine the situation where, mm, where a family is choosing their school, right, as opposed to a family where the school is just selected for them based on where they live. When, when a family is choosing their school, that's a proactive decision that they're making. One of his hypothesis is that. Once you start making that, that that might actually be one of the first in a series of proactive kinds of, decisions that you start to make. And that now all of a sudden now you're, now you're building up, right? It's like you're getting the flywheel turning because you went, oh, I made a decision about that, and it's a decision that matters. Now I'm, I'm more engaged. I start to engage more in other sectors of life versus, I mean, I'll tell you in the, if, if, because not every public school is like this, but if you're in a public school system where, um, you send in a question or a complaint and it never gets answered, well, what would you do? You probably at some point you probably disengage. And so his, the idea is, well, if you're in a system that that. almost fosters disengagement. That's not healthy. And so they're, so that's one hypothesis. The other hypothesis, and people forget about this, um, you know, public school boards are elected, right? They're elected usually every, you know, call it two to four years. And the members are, are elected. Well, these are not high turnout elections. I mean, this is, a lot of people could not tell you who their school board member is. I actually don't know if I can tell you right now who my school board member is. and I'm pretty engaged as far as it goes, but, but those things can change every two years, which means that it can be very, very difficult actually to sustain a consistent and coherent vision. Whereas actually In a non-public school, whether, whether that's a religious school or a non-religious school, or even even a, you know, homeschool or micro school, when it's operated privately, they can actually, they can say, here's our mission statement, here's what we're gonna do, and we're gonna do it for as long as we can. Right? And it, we're not subject to a popular vote every two years that might come and sweep in a whole new, board that has new directives. I mean, if you had private companies that had a, that kind of board turnover every two years, imagine how disruptive that would be to the underlying. You know, mechanics of a, of an organization, that's what happens in a lot of school districts. So there's actually not the coherence and that can affect some of the, I would say some of the, the like coming together, because again, we saw this during COVID pendulums really swung where you had some school boards that were, that had a COVID policy that a majority of families didn't like, and those, those school board members got voted out, new members came in, they do something, and now the entire district policy swings the other way. So now, people who were really happy are now really unhappy and vice versa, and that's not, I would say that that doesn't help to foster civic engagement either.

Rui:

The volatility of a system generate a

Shaka Mitchell:

Yes,

Rui:

uncertainty that

Shaka Mitchell:

yes,

Rui:

turn, make people turn away from the system and disengage, because why does it matter anyway? Tomorrow things could change.

Shaka Mitchell:

yes, that's right.

Rui:

so your hypothesis is that if the parents make a choice consciously about where their kids should go and opting into that system, they have a little bit more intrinsic, uh, sort of incentive to. help monitor the system or improve the system for the better for that specific system that they believe in.

Shaka Mitchell:

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And I think that, um, and not only for that system that they believe in, but I think that there's also some spillover effects, right? Because they, you start to see yourself as someone who has agency and the ability to. have effect. Have an effect not just in your small circle, but maybe your circle. You know, now you have some concentric circles a little bit, right? And it starts to expand a little bit and you say, oh, well look, we could do that at my school. What can we do in our community? What can we do in our county, in our, you know, is is an interesting way to think about it. I also think there is a quality element here. I think that the more educated a, a populace is, hopefully something that's coming with that is a humility and an appreciation that, actually that we don't know everything, right? the world is a big place and it requires some nuance. I need to listen to other people and I need to be more appreciative of other thoughts before I make my final decision. I think that's a helpful way to be. if we don't get to that level of education, I actually think people are more siloed because they're overconfident in their provincial narrow views. you end up with some wild things like the, the actor who was on the Joe Rogan show, you know, who said that he came up with a whole new periodic table. It's like, I don't really think you did. I, I think, I think your periodic table might have been chemically induced, but I don't think you came up with a new periodic table.

Rui:

Yeah. Um, I guess one thing About the pro school choice system is that it demands the parents to actually have the time and effort and resources to actually thoughtfully engage and select the school system that their kids could go.

Shaka Mitchell:

Mm-hmm.

Rui:

uh, the reality is there are so many people out there, for example, single parents work, jobs, shifts, and then barely make the ends meet. They wouldn't even like have the resources or understand like what are different choices are out there for them and potentially for their kids. Or there could be a number of scenarios where people simply just don't have the energy and resources and the capability, potentially, sometimes even to understand a very complex system and so many choices out there. There is decisioning fatigue. When you have so many different choices, how are you going to choose? Uh, it re requires someone. Who think deeply about what does it mean to be like, them kids education, what does it mean to be high quality? And that type of thinking requires a lot, a lot of reflection. And even then you barely arrive at an answer. So bar for someone who can actually effectively engage with the pro-choice system could be quite high, at least based on our conversation so far. That's the feeling that I'm getting. How are you thinking about that side?

Shaka Mitchell:

Yeah, it's a great question. yeah, with, with this new world of options certainly comes a question about what does it take to navigate this new system. Um, and I, I will say that I, I, my family always. They always get really, tickled. If we go through certain, like drive-throughs, it's, this happens like on road trips, right? Where you're in, in someplace you don't know and you go through some drive-through. Um, there are certain drive-throughs that it's like totally overwhelming to me. We're sitting there and you pull the car up and I'm just looking and if I'm not familiar with it, it's like too much information. It's like pictures of this and that and, you know, some it's words, it's prices, it's, and then they're asking you, you know, would you like a, a number seven with a, you know, an extra apple pie or whatever. And I'm like, I don't know. I just need a minute. I need like 30 minutes to figure out how to order a cheeseburger. So yes. So how do we do this in the education context? we do think about this a lot. Um, we actually really encourage. Uh, states that when they pass programs that they allocate some budget for what we would call like parent navigators. So for someone maybe that's in the nonprofit sector, maybe it's someone within, um, you know, state government or state Department of education, something like that. Someone who can, kind of like a community health worker in a healthcare context. Someone who can be like a concierge who can say, okay, um, alright, Shaka, you have some, you have kids, you got three kids going, you know, trying to get an education for them. Talk to me about what your goals are for your kids.'cause you might have different goals for, for the different children, right. Within one family. Um, most of us do actually, because we see that they are different, they learn differently, they have different interests, whatever. And say, I'll say, alright, so someone you can talk to. And then they can say, okay, well let me tell you what some of the options are in your area. One, let me tell you some of the different ways you might be able to access those.'cause it might be that it's a public charter school, those don't have any cost. Um, it might be that there's a private school, but there's a a choice program and you can get a scholarship, right? So these navigators can really, really help to do this. I've also seen now there's a whole like exploding, tech space where folks are trying to figure out if you can do this, if you can have, almost this, this is gonna be too basic. I'm gonna undersell it, but almost like a Yelp for different education options in your area. Um,

Rui:

Mm.

Shaka Mitchell:

so, you know, those are coming around. I think the power of technology is really gonna help to, um, to, to flatten the learning curve. On this a little bit, but you're right, this is not without effort. Um, but I do still put a lot of faith in parents' ability to, A, they care about how their kids are doing. And then b even if you don't have the kind of lifestyle and the kind of time where you can go do a bunch of school tours, 'cause that takes a lot of time for anybody. even if you can't do that, we still, we're in community with other people, right? So it's, I mean, we would be at the playground and that's what parents are talking about at playgrounds a certain time of year, they're like, Hey, where are you? You know, it doesn't matter if they're two or three years old. Where are you going to daycare? What are you doing? How, how do you like that place? Oh, you do like it? Oh, they, they do arts and crafts. Okay, cool. Mine does this. Mine only meets on these days. Right. And so parents share information with each other, whether it's in the grocery store or at work or at church or whatever. They share information. So that kind of organic stuff, is really, really valuable. But we do encourage this, like the navigator system, and I hope that continues to develop.

Rui:

I see. So what you're trying to say is, one, this type of system does, uh, imply that the parents need to take more agency into their hand. At the same time, the solution potentially is just lower the information barrier and the way that it. It's being served and how easy it is for them to understand.

Shaka Mitchell:

Yes, yes. On both, both accounts.'cause again, I think our, our, the barrier, those barriers are coming down as they have with lots of things, right? I mean, I don't know when the last time was you bought a car, but, most of us, when we buy cars, we're not doing research on combustion engines. We don't, you know, we don't have to have that level of detail and precision, but we can get information from other people. whether it's the, the mileage, whether it's the ability to, you know, what breaks down and when things like that, I mean, we can kind of crowdsource some of that information and, and make decisions that are right for us.

Rui:

Yeah, previously you asked me the question, what is a high quality education for me? But honestly I don't think too much about it because I don't have a kid right now. So like that type of thinking, it just doesn't come across my mind very often. But what is a high quality education to you besides, you know, fundamentally you believing there's more choices for different parents to choose, but like personally for your kids to be successful, whatever that means to you. what kind of education you want them to have.

Shaka Mitchell:

Mm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'm, I will say I'm still a, a believer in the value of higher education, you know, college, that maybe is falling out of fashion a little bit. You hear a lot about the value of certificates and, um, and I think that there is a lot of value in certain certificates. I think that's currently, it's a little overblown. Nevertheless, a couple things to me are make for high quality, um, the ability to think for oneself, right? So to, I think that's, uh. Being at an education institution. You know, my girls are right now in, in middle school and high school. So at a place that encourages them to ask follow up questions, ask more questions, I think that's important. Um, I think a, at least at this level, a pretty broad based education, meaning, yes, let's study reading and writing and math and science and social studies, like, learn a bunch of things because they, you know, children are such sponges and so let's learn languages. I live in Nashville, it's music city. Um, but. Even though we love music, most people are not gonna be professional musicians, but nevertheless, let's learn about music. Let's just kind of unlock different parts of our brain. I think that's really, really important because who knows when you might wanna use that later, or just even seeing the world, So exposure to those different things I think is important. Being able to be a critical thinker. I think certainly right now it's important to think about how kids can remain kind of what Pollock calls like, the human in the loop when it comes to AI It's still not gonna be able to answer the biggest questions for us. Um, what does it mean to live a good life? Right? And so I think, um, I think those questions are important, but I think having kids who understand some of the limits of technology, who are not afraid to use it, I think those are some of the things that are really important to me. Yeah, I, I don't think a whole lot about the economic ROI yet that will come, you know, my kids are not in college yet, so if they come to me and they say they want to spend a lot of money for on, on student loans so that they can study Romanian, I'm probably gonna say no, I don't think that's a valuable endeavor, but we'll see.

Rui:

Yeah, it's interesting, since you're already starting mentioning, um, the AI part of the things, so how are you seeing AI show up in your kids' current education? For better or worse?

Shaka Mitchell:

I think that for most people, AI right now is just like, like search engine 2.0 or search engine 3.0. You know, they're not really using it in ways that are very powerful. one example is that during March during the, the NCAA basketball tournament season, our family, we were filling out our college basketball brackets. And if my kids got to a game and they've never heard of either one of the schools, one of my kids would like speak into, into their Apple watch and they would say. You know, Hey Siri, who's gonna win such and such basketball game? I said, okay, well, Siri does not know that. Um, right. So, but it, it, to me, it was an indicator that, oh, they actually don't know what kinds of questions yet can be answered by this technology. Right. So I think that's, that's where I see that schools can help to teach students like, um, you know, the technology can tell us what the probabilities are, but it can't speak to the certainty of outcomes for many things. Right. So, you know, seeing it there, they're just, they're just learning a little bit. I mean, I do think that, they are so much more adept at navigating, um, navigating things in this sort of visual and design space than we were, so, I. I can almost guarantee that my high schooler can put together a dozen slides faster than you or me, it's second nature to them because they've just grown up with this. They don't have to think about, oh, where do I do this? They just instantly, you give them a, a touch screen and they instantly, it's like they know what to do. Um, so that's not an AI question so much. It's just a, a like technological fluency. Um, yeah. But where AI's going? I think we're still a few, frankly, a few years away from schools using it in a way that's very powerful.

Rui:

Yeah. But I guess going along with your thoughts about if you do believe in the diversity of choice, not just in terms of like system, but also in terms of individual learning modality.

Shaka Mitchell:

Yeah.

Rui:

extreme end of it is like you almost have like AI teacher

Shaka Mitchell:

Yeah.

Rui:

learns about your kid, their quirks, their strength, their weakness, and almost adaptive to your kids thinking process even. And then teach them basic things like math or science subjects a

Shaka Mitchell:

Yes. Yes.

Rui:

a traditional. You know, a human teacher would be able to 'cause one, you're simply restrained by the supply and the energy level and AI will never get tired. So

Shaka Mitchell:

Yeah.

Rui:

that extreme end of the things is that the world that you want to have or, what are the major caveats where like modification you would you want to have in that specific, like that extreme version of the world?

Shaka Mitchell:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Great, great questions. I'm very comfortable with these products and these tools, whether it's adaptive learning, um, or, you know, yeah. Many of these tools that, that can change based on the answers that are coming in change based on the, the situation, subject matter, and the, and even the student, I'm very comfortable with letting them have, uh, with sort of seeding a lot of instructional time to those versus a say. in real life classroom instructor. Okay. I mean, I think there are a lot of inefficiencies with the school day. When we saw this during COVID, I mean, I think, I think actually that has led to a lot of the school choice, um, activity in recent years is that parents had a front row seat.'cause they were watching what was happening and they were going like, oh, this is a lot of time and We think we could have compressed this amount of information into a much smaller amount of time. So I'm all for use of this. Okay. The caveat is that not every student is served well in that situation. and here's where, you know, I'll say I don't, I'm not an expert on this, so I don't know what the numbers are gonna be. I don't know if it's gonna be a majority. That, adapt well in that context or if it's going to happen over a generation, I don't know. But you know, quick example, when our kids, all of a sudden, all three were at home during COVID, one of ours who's like very intrinsically motivated, she could do the stuff online and basically said, Hey, if I finish early, can I just go outside and, and play? And she would be done quickly. Her work was done well and then she was just ready to move on to the next thing. And it was before lunch and she was done. another one of mine really responds well to a teacher in the classroom.

Rui:

Mm-hmm.

Shaka Mitchell:

And, and so that's where I think we have to be careful because just because we've got these innovative tools doesn't mean that they're gonna be effective for every student. And that's where we, where it's gonna take some time. And where I would, where I encourage parents really, again, to keep an eye out and like try different things. But, um, I, I tell my, always tell my friends, like, hold it loosely, because what's, even, what's working this year, may not work as well next year. You know, kids are going through their own developmental changes and so I think we have to hold that loosely.

Rui:

So what you were saying is delivery method, the medium, whether it's in a traditional classroom with a human instructor or potentially just like study from home with a AI teacher, there should be more choices I want to understand as a parent, as a policy maker, the content of what AI teacher what characteristics that you would actually care about? Like if I were a parent, I guess there is a question of like, is this AI tutor or teacher actually speak factually true information? but a lot of things, what is factually true is even difficult to define. So what is the line? How do we draw it? How do you even monitor that line?

Shaka Mitchell:

Yeah. Yeah,

Rui:

It's very difficult. So that's one.

Shaka Mitchell:

yeah. So I saw, I saw something that a friend posted, in the past day. I think he, he asked, um, chat GPT to create an image of all of the presidents since, I believe, since Herbert Hoover. he wanted it to create a page that had their images and the, their names, and then the dates of their presidency. And for whatever reason still, and this is the, the version chat g PT five that just came out and for whatever reason, um, chat still is terrible with images when it's trying to combine images and texts together, right? it misnamed a bunch of the presidents all of the presidents in this image looked similar to the person that it was supposed to be, but it was like just off a little bit, right? Things were just off, um, the names were not spelled correctly. And the dates of the presidency were like 1996 to 1972. So somehow he was reversing time. Right. I guess I'm signing on to what you're saying, and that is we can't just give away all instruction to ai, um, because it's not there yet. there has to be a human in the loop who is, um, checking and checking some of this information for accurate source data, maybe source material, Regardless of whether or not it's a private company, these company or a nonprofit organization is for there to be like maximal transparency so that it's easy for both parents and other educators or other subject matter experts to assess the veracity of the information that's coming across.

Rui:

Yeah, for sure. But even like among experts, right? Like experts who let's say study the modern history,

Shaka Mitchell:

yep.

Rui:

they could even disagree with each other. What is factual versus not?

Shaka Mitchell:

Sure,

Rui:

guess like, I guess like at least the basic level of information, probably they could at least agree only when you get into really advanced, more detailed, really, really nuanced subject and the sort of debate that could become a lot more tricky to align people on what is the factual versus not,

Shaka Mitchell:

Yeah. maybe one way to think about it, and this, uh, we saw, we've seen some of this in recent years in the us particularly in the area of, civics. So, you know, whether it's history or civics, where too often the, the cur a curriculum, um, maker gets into trouble when they try to, uh. Overstate either the causes or the motives of people act who are in history. So that's where, that's where often I think, I think you see lots of these debates start to arise. So, so for instance, the US Civil War, that's been the topic of a whole lot of discussions. Always. well, it's one thing to say the Lee General of the Confederate States of America surrendered at Appomattox. Okay. that's factual. It is another thing to say that the Confederate states lost the war because of, now fill in the blank. Bad strategy, bad leadership. because of a, a moral inferiority, right? Like when curriculum companies start to posit the sort of, those causes

Rui:

Mm-hmm.

Shaka Mitchell:

are, that are much more complicated, nuanced, multifaceted, that's where they get into trouble. So let's teach kids when the surrender happened now, and then we can say, and by the way, when wondering why that happened, here's what the scholars say. Some scholars say, blah, blah, blah. Some scholars say this other thing, some scholars say that, you know, I think that's a, that seems to me to be a responsible way to present information.

Rui:

Yeah. Fascinating. in order to build an AI product that really works the curriculum and standard articulation becomes ever more important. it's equivalent basically to in tech industry, what do we call as a product requirement, right? Like specify what this product needs to really look like, and following a set of principle. that's truly potentially where the magic happens is that on the one hand you are enforcing a high a. Quality standard by instilling it into the requirement that you set either for curriculum

Shaka Mitchell:

right.

Rui:

And on the other hand, it's self adapting to the kids' needs, uh, and help them pace in such a way that sort of meet those learning objectives.

Shaka Mitchell:

Yes. Yes. And now what I, one of the things that I think, um, that I suspect is still a little bit tricky and tricky because I think there's, there's probably a disconnect. Is that many of the companies that are working most seriously on AI products in the education space still don't have enough expert, classroom teachers, as part of their organization. Because this is something that expert teachers have been doing for years is saying, okay, I have this knowledge base and now I've, I've got a room full of 25 kids, and I know that I have to get them to understand this, this content, but they have different styles and they have different interests. And so how am I gonna, how am I going to unlock the interest for, you know, all 25 of them, right? Great teachers, this is something that they're doing and they're doing in, in real time often. And so where I do think that there can be a disconnect is. do the ai, uh, products and engineers, can they yet figure out how to, um, document and systematize what those teachers were, were seeing, right? Or the other way to think about it is have those teachers, um, been able to articulate what they were seeing and how they would adapt the content to the individual students in a way that we can now document and put into the logic kind of behind the, the scenes. Um, now once we start making those links, man, it's gonna be super powerful. so we're not there yet. But again, I'm hopeful, it has the potential to help a lot of students and a lot of people who have not been served well by the conventional system.

Rui:

Yeah, for sure. a legislation perspective, what are the big questions you think, um, states where the federal government will have to grapple with, um, as AI moves into education? Or what are the questions that you actively think about or potentially want to learn more about so that you can form your opinion and help make the policies?

Shaka Mitchell:

I worry about really two things, two big things, one. I worry that about free speech issues. And so I'm not a huge fan of, overburdening and overregulation of free speech. And so I think we probably wanna avoid lots of laws that purport to dictate, um, frankly, what, what the code should be. If we start trying to, to use the hand of, of the government to dictate what software engineers do, that's gonna be a problem. Right. Because all the, all the reasons that you said when you were researching the Texas Education Agency. Yeah. These things get political and, um. And I don't think you want a, a government entity sort of with its hand on the thumb of, the answers that get spit out from a search engine or from, you know, an AI chat bot or, or whatever, or, or even the decisions that they're making in other context, like in the healthcare context, et cetera. So, so that, that's a concern. I also think another, um, concern is, is just, and this is something I would be thinking about if I was at one of these AI companies, is how do we educate lawmakers about what it is we really do?

Rui:

Hmm.

Shaka Mitchell:

Um, and I remember this was a thing years ago with smartphones and with, you know, this is even before, before kind of smartphones as we know it. But I'm thinking about like the, the old school blackberries. and when, when texting was just really kind of. Uh, coming into, into popularity and you saw lawmakers wrestling with what kinds of safety laws do we need about texting? And, you know, the problem was that even at the time, many of the people who were coming up with these laws were like, well passed retirement age. And so they didn't have the familiarity with the technology. that can be really problematic, right? If you have folks who are so disconnected from the technology, but they're the ones empowered with regulating it, of course you're gonna get things that just, um, don't make a whole lot of sense. So I would be thinking about how do we, how do you educate lawmakers on what responsible use looks like on, on what the upsides and what the power is of, of these things? And, and even show them how familiar, again, like younger people are with these technologies.'cause otherwise, there might be more fear and apprehension about things. That's, in some cases unwarranted.

Rui:

thank you so much for the conversation today. It has been a really interesting chat for me to understand a little bit more about education, how you see it, and also what really shaped your view on the education, including your faith and other value system. Thank you so much for your time.

Shaka Mitchell:

Well, thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it.

Rui:

This could be the last episode of floating questions, or it may not be either way. I hope you enjoyed flowing along with us today. If you liked our journey, please consider subscribing. Thank you for listening and may the questions always be with you.