SupportED Learning Podcast
On a mission to speak with global education experts on how we can revolutionize the education system, especially in the dawn of AI.
SupportED Learning Podcast
Episode 9 – Dr. Barbara Oakley on How the Brain Learns, AI in Education & Fixing How We Teach
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In this episode of the SupportED Learning Podcast, host Dr. Joe Sebestyen welcomes Dr. Barbara Oakley, world-renowned educator, author of A Mind for Numbers, and co-creator of the global course Learning How to Learn.
Once convinced she could never do math, Dr. Oakley shares how her unlikely path from language learner to engineering professor reshaped her understanding of how the brain learns. Together, they explore the neuroscience behind effective learning, the overlooked value of practice and structure, and why teacher preparation programs must evolve to reflect modern research.
Dr. Oakley also offers a balanced look at the role of AI in education, describing it as “dynamite”, a tool with the power to transform learning when used wisely, but one that requires care and responsibility.
This episode delivers a powerful, evidence-based conversation on how educators, parents, and students can build the skills and mindset to learn how to learn in a world transformed by technology.
Thanks for tuning in to the SupportED Learning Podcast with Dr. Joe. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe for more insights on education, critical thinking, and AI integration in learning. Visit our website at supportedtutoring.com
Remember to share this podcast with fellow parents and educators who are passionate about reimagining education for tomorrow's world. Until next time, keep supporting learning!
You're listening to the Support Ed Learning Podcast, where we challenge the status quo of education and reimagine what learning should be. I'm Dr. Joe Sebastian, and in every episode we dive into critical thinking, Linux taxonomy, educational innovation, and how AI is shaping the future of learning. Whether you're a teacher, parent, policymaker, or lifelong learner, you're in the right place to rethink, reshape, and revive education. All right, welcome back to the Supported Learning Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Joe Sebastian. I am joined by the lovely Barbara Oakley. Barbara, welcome to the show. How are you?
SPEAKER_00I am great, Joe. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Thank you for making the time. Um, I do want to give you a proper introduction. Uh Ms. Barbara Oakley is a proper introduction. Absolutely. Yes. So you are a distinguished professor, professor of engineering um from the University of Oakland. No, Oakland University. Oakland University, excuse me. Don't want to get those wrong. Oakland University. Oakland University. You began your academic path in languages studying Russian at the Defense Language Institute after enlisting in the U.S. Army.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_02And uh you got a bachelor's in Slavic languages and literature from the University of Washington. You served four years in Germany as a signal officer, reaching the rank of captain before deciding to pursue engineering to better understand the technology. Um, you and you worked with uh the military. You went on to earn a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering, followed by a master's in electrical and computer engineering, and a PhD in systems engineering. So you love engineering programs.
SPEAKER_00I'm a sucker for punishment.
SPEAKER_02And you've your roles have spanned uh as a Russian translator on Soviet trawlers in the Bering Sea, an instrument and controls engineer in a laser and research and development firm and a brief stint at Ford before ultimately becoming a distinguished professor of engineering at Oakland University. So that is pretty impressive uh background, I'll say the least. But first and foremost, just thank you for your service. And uh thank you for doing thank you for joining us today.
SPEAKER_00It's my pleasure.
SPEAKER_02So you have had, I guess, the um pleasure, the the experience of seeing education at all levels, uh, from the bachelor's programs all the way up to PhD. I guess just you know, it spans spans years in that, but in terms of just your journey through learning, like why did you choose this field to begin with?
SPEAKER_00Um, you mean the field of engineering or the field of education?
SPEAKER_02Well, I guess well, I guess you know, education became out of it, but I guess guess both in terms of where where did that all start from to get engineering and as well as education?
SPEAKER_00Oh well, I I grew up thinking there's no way I can ever learn math. In fact, I absolutely hate it. And I remember getting called into the Dina students because I refused to pay attention during math class. I would just read. And he would take a book away that I was reading, I'd just get another one out. And um uh I wish I had the tape of that conversation because I remember I if I was the last person on earth, I still wouldn't ever, ever touch mathematics. He will never make me touch it. And now, of course, I love math and I love science and uh and I think what changed me was uh you know, I I learned a language in the military. So I I enlisted, I thought, well, if I can't do math, maybe I can learn a language, and I could certainly be paid for learning a language, but that learning of a language did a lot more. It also taught me how to learn because learning a less a language as an adult really, you know, it forces you to concentrate, to focus, to practice to the point of automaticity. So you don't realize it, but what you're doing is you're kind of using the brain's two major learning systems, that declarative, you know, um, system that that you learn through explanations, like this is how you conjugate a verb, right? And practice that uses that basal ganglia, habitual automatic system so that things roll out uh instinctively. But then I thought, you know, I went to get out of the military and like nobody wanted to hire me with my, you know what, you know, I followed my passion right into a little career box where you know I had a degree in Slavic languages and literature by that time. And all my friends who were in uh, you know, and they had engineering degrees that graduated from West Point, and they were easily able to get jobs. So now wait a minute, you know, I I do like being open to new adventures and new perspectives, and there is nothing on earth that could possibly be more alien to the way I look at life than to become an engineer. So let's go for it. Right. And I could only take about six months at a time. I'd I I'd study really hard and diligently for six months, and then I'd go out at sea and work as a Russian wrestler and drink for six months. And you know, and then your liver gets a little tired, and so then you go back in. And uh, but I made it through um and and got my uh my second undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and and really fell in love with the subject, which people often don't realize. They're like, you should motivate students to to be excited, to fall in love. Well, actually, a lot of times you have to build some kind of structure and understanding before you can fall in love with what what you're learning. So there's this intermediate or initial period where it may seem like drudgery and it's really, but if you can kind of get past that, at least in your own mind, you can start to it's just like falling off your bike, you know, it's not fun at first, but pretty soon you're flying along and it's kind of cool. So, um, so I guess that's you know, once I got into studying engineering, then it just became more and more interesting, which is if you have known me as a child.
SPEAKER_02So that I mean, well, first off, being an engineer that doesn't didn't always love math is very because it's different from the conversations we have with kids are usually being forced into, you know, or wanting to go to engineering programs, um, know that math is important. Um, but that's that's a very interesting take that you did not like math right off the get-go, um, but kind of learned to like appreciate at least, right? Um, so I guess what was the turning point when you realized that you wanted to dedicate your career to understanding how people learn?
SPEAKER_00Oh well, I I always kind of like to write books on the side. So when you are a professor who is trying to get tenure, you in engineering, you better not go around saying you like to write books on the side. So I um I worked on this book for six years, um, and it was just a sort of a meditation on my sister and why she was the way it she was, which was not uh um, I mean, she was kind of a quasi-malevolent person who could sometimes be a good person and sometimes really not be a good person. But that book was called Evil Genes, why Rome Fell, Hitler rose, Enron failed, and my sister stole my mother's boyfriend, which she actually did. Um and uh working on that book kind of on the side secretly, uh gave me this really uh interesting background in you know, what's going on in neuroscience, what's going on in uh the social sciences. And and so I I looked really carefully, learned a lot in order to write that book. And then the question arose, well, you know, uh Hitler, you know, he he wasn't a good person, but many people who followed him were good people, genuinely. How did that happen? So that took me off on the the path of studying pathologies of altruism. And I wrote an ed or I co-edited a book on pathological altruism from Oxford University Press and did an uh uh an article for the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. And then I just I kind of got reached a point where I was like, you know, I'm really sick and tired of writing about people who are not quite right. You know, they're either pathologically altruistic or they're, you know, maybe out and out uh narcissists or whatever. I'm gonna go to a completely different discipline. I want to write about education. It's just filled with all these really good people doing great and good things. And little did I know that my my background in researching, particularly pathological altruism, would come in very handy when I was trying to understand, you know, the strands of what was going on in education. So um, so I I just kind of took a little career swerve, wrote this book called A Mind for Numbers, which I thought, you know, that's the most boring title I could ever imagine for a book. Penguin Random House, my editor, picked this title on. I thought, oh, this is such a loser title. And, you know, because you find who had a mind for numbers? It's always somebody being written about in their obituary. Frank had a real mind for numbers, you know, that kind of thing. But it turns out this book has sold over a million copies around the world. It's just a really popular book. And the funny thing though was that when I wrote this book, um there were these things called MOOCs coming out, massive open online courses. And uh so anyway, I had I had presented at the proceedings of the at the National Academy of Sciences about pathological altruism. And when I presented, the audience was like, yeah, you know, he altruism's always good, it just always is. And but my moderator kept interrupting these people who were interjecting in uh not the friendliest way from the audience, and he he kept throwing me these softball nice questions. And it turns out our moderator was Terry Sinowski, and Terry was you know, pathological altruism, that's really important, but this there's this other area in our country that's also really important, and that's you know, education in in instead. Um, you know, uh this is really problematic, and that needs some good people to be tackling it. And I said, well, Terry, it just so happens I'm writing a book about that. And he goes, Well, can I write the forward? And I was just like, can I just die and go to heaven? And uh, and so uh anyway, we also, as the book was going through the publication process, we um made a course called Learning How to Learn that was kind of based off the book, and that became one of the most popular courses on and still is one of the most popular courses on Coursera, which is uh a great online learning platform. And so I don't know, the rest is history, there's so much interest in this area, and it's such a fascinating area that I can't help but dive deep more and more deeply into it.
SPEAKER_02Gotcha. Okay. Well, that that does um that does explain the entry point to that. Let's let's um because I'm sure you have thoughts on where this is going in terms of AI, right? Because now AI opens up a whole nother universe, essentially, to us in terms of learning. And you know, since you've taught so many uh about learning, how like obviously how to learn, but how do you how do you see AI making that kind of personalized learning experience even more powerful?
SPEAKER_00Oh, there's so AI is a little bit like if you are working in construction and you build bridges, uh you love dynamite because it can really help you to dig things out a lot more quickly and do things quickly. But dynamite's also really dangerous, and that's what AI is in education. It it is incredibly powerful, incredibly useful, but if it's not used wisely, it's also incredibly dangerous. So uh um some of the great ways that it is extremely useful. I I just one of my favorite ways of using AI is give me a good metaphor for whatever concept I'm trying to teach. You know, like if I'm trying to teach about main guard and scope and python programming, well, you know, what's a good metaphor? And you can get the gatekeeper of a castle, the rooms within a castle. You can also use it to help motivate. So, for example, when I was in Mongolia, um, the the professors in the city would say, you know, we're city folk, and we just don't know how to reach the students who are coming off of the Mongolian step. You know, when we're teaching Python programming, they don't care. And what can we do? And I'm like, go to ChatGPT, explain about your students, and ask for good motivational ideas and also good ideas that they can connect with the concepts you're teaching. So they can connect main guard and scope to things like migratory patterns and yurks and the kinds of things that are you know very familiar with for students uh in that area, and it can help make learning not only more interesting and exciting, but also easier to grasp.
SPEAKER_02It's interesting um because I it's the dichotomy of um of AI, because I hear it you have something extremely powerful that can be completely personalized to the individual. But knowing what to ask, knowing what to actually seek, you have to almost come with that. Because like we're getting into like where AIs have biases and can reaffirm biases, and you actually don't know what it obviously makes mistakes, but um, I think it's a very fine line in terms of where the developers have to go with it. Um so under the right, I like the analogy of dynamite, that's actually really, really good. Because like it's you can build the trans content of the railroad with it, or you could blow a lot of things up to hurt a lot of people. Have you used any platforms lately? How how what is your experience in education using any platforms?
SPEAKER_00Well, um, so I I've I've used a number of platforms, and um one problem I have is you know, and it it's hard for me to identify with students sometimes, is when I'm asking a question, I don't want it to beat around the bush and say, well, what do you think? You know, and so some of these um platforms, the educational platforms, for example, being put out by Google, um they might be good stepping stones in part for students, but students can also get really frustrated with, you know, like you know, quit beating around the bush. I I've been trying to figure this out. I just want to know, you know, what is this? What's the answer to this, you know, so I can know whether I did it right or whether my thinking is right and that sort of thing. So sometimes I think they get a little bit too um enamored of themselves with the idea that we're we're using Socratic questioning to move our students forward. On the other hand, some c some Socratic questioning can actually be terrific. And I, you know, I hate to sound like I'm touting uh Coursera, um, but um this is something I really love about this uh uh about what they're doing. They have a dialogue that once you have learned something, you can go in and have a dialogue with this coach that questions you to see whether you really learned it. And I I just think that's uh actually a really effective that's not that's not the only way to verify that students might actually know the material. But it's it's a it's a different way because testing, flat out testing, uh you know, good is you can't get away from it. I mean, people will say, oh, sure you can, you just don't do it. Well, then students don't learn, but it it can be a little dry to do a lot of testing like that. And so you know this kind of Socratic dialogue with coach is a great way to do things. On the other hand, um, you know, I mean, I just use Chat GPT and Claude and so forth all the time because I just I enjoy it. I also use a website called smarterhumans.ai, which I'm a I'm a huge fan, I mean, to such an extent that I'm actually affiliated with a company. And what I love about it is you can upload whatever you want and it will create these wonderful flashcards, and you're like flashcards. But the thing is, I can upload a really good scientific study, I can press a button and it will generate all these flashcards, you know, and I can edit or tweet that with the main points of that study. I can pick out the key concepts of the study and so forth. And um, I I just retrieval practice using simple flashcards. People are like, oh, it's just a trivial fact. But actually, facts connect. And as Natalie Wexler has uh pointed out, you know, when they stopped teaching the dates of history, because they're just simple facts, then students started thinking that Abraham Lincoln must have known Martin Luther King because you know, civil rights, civil war, then yeah, they're pretty much the same thing. And so those two must have been buddies. So you need a foundation of facts to really move forward with expertise in anything.
SPEAKER_02So you mentioned flashcards and you mentioned there's a couple tools as an educator. Um, you're obviously seeing the finished product of K through 12 learning come your way, right? And affect experience that way. So if we look at schools through a system lens, where do you see, especially with AI, where do you see the biggest opportunities for change?
SPEAKER_00In schools of education, well, the biggest impediment to change is schools of education. The biggest opportunity for change are in schools of education. And the reality is, you know, I I know people don't like to think of engineering analogies when it comes to people. But if you have in engineering, if you have a bunch of broken pieces coming out of whatever that process, you want to go in and look at, you know, if you're having to fix things all the time that are coming out, go back and look at how that, you know, whatever that thing is is being created and see if you can fix what the problem is that you're having to fix along down the pipeline. The problem is that we are the schools of education are training teachers to be using. Theories that are often a hundred years old or more that were developed before we had any idea of how the brain works. And you'll always hear about what's right about Piaget and Dewey and Vygotsky and Montessori, but you'll never hear what they got wrong. And they got a lot of stuff wrong. Now what um the educate bear in mind that teachers themselves are awesome. You know, sure, are there, you know, uh some problematic players here and there, but on the whole, teachers love their students and they want to do the best. It's just that they've been told that the best, you know, how they've been taught how to do that is based on these, you know, our really, really problematic theories that are in many cases completely wrong. In medicine, you get a theory wrong and your patient dies. In engineering, you know, you build a bridge, you don't have your theory right, the bridge falls down. In education, you can have a theory that's dead long, and it will sail on for decade after decade because it's you know, it was the that school wasn't right, or you know, the teachers didn't quite do it right. Or, you know, there's always an excuse. And so um that part of it is, you know, uh educators can inadvertently circle the wagons and they they don't want to hear from people like me or people who work in industry who say, you know, there's a real problem here because they would like to think that only they know how to teach children. But the the bottom line is if you look around me, for example, at my wonderful colleagues in my school of engineering, 80% or more are they were grow, they grew up being educated in systems that, for example, still value at least some modicum of rote learning that's supposed to be terrible for you. I mean, this is like so common through the US that you have to kind of say, well, uh wait a minute, maybe uh maybe we've thrown the b baby out with the bathwater. And uh there is something to internalizing knowledge, and we need to be requiring this and boy is that true in this day and age of AI.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Um do you it's interesting you picked uh you picked schools of education as a higher education. Do you and you basically see that as a cycle that perpetuates the K-12 system then?
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_02Okay. So then what do you think needs to change how we teach teachers how to teach? Like what is that one thing that you think we're missing if it is wrong?
SPEAKER_00So uh a wonderful example is given by England. So under the Minister of Schools in England for 10 years, the England's rankings internationally rose phenomenally. What did he do? He didn't just uh go in and say we need to have knowledge-based teaching, although that was part of it. He also said, let's keep teachers trained outside of schools of education, right? Let's just bypass that system. And that's what they developed in England was a whole system of allowing teachers to learn how to become teachers, but not be uh inculcated with this often erroneous and uh and deeply retrograde way of looking at how students learn that is not informed by evidence-based practices and by uh insight from neuroscience.
SPEAKER_02This episode is brought to you by Supported Tutoring, where we don't just help students get better grades, we help them become critical thinkers. Whether it's mastering AP exams, maximizing college applications, or building lifelong learning habits, our expert tutors focus on critical thinking, confidence, and real growth. Head to supported tutoring.com to find the support your student deserves. And is it true because we work in you know in our setting, we work with a lot of um job placements. We well, we've we've we've talked to some engineering programs, and they're they're not even at this point, because there's so much, there's so much competitiveness out there for kids to get into these top engineering programs, and they're putting less stock in that and more like we just want you to complete an engineering program because we're gonna have to train you our ways anyway. We just want to see you finish one. Do you see that more of like do is there any value and weight of the programs that kids are going into? Like, you know, you see the top-ranked engineering program in the country or whatever. Like, it's is that what's learning, or is it more just is that what's what's valuable, or is it more just can this kid learn?
SPEAKER_00Well, that that is a foundational question that has often been asked. And some of the insights that have come out of research is the kids that get selected by these top, top programs would probably be doing great in whatever program they ended up in. They're real sales starters, they're able to make things go. Um but what I think is really important is that you don't need to go to some really high-ranked, high-volutent school to be um successful in the US. And that's one of our great strengths. You know, we can students can go and just get an engineering degree from, start out at a community college, start out heck by just going online in some of the great online programs. And and you can learn what you need to know, and you can also be kind of um uh I don't know, you can look at it independently. I have one young man who I sort of mentor a tiny bit by email because I I don't really have a lot of time, but he was he was asking me, you know, he's very interested in this subject. Could he learn it on his own? And it's you know involves advanced physics concepts. And I said, well, no, not really. You want to go to to some kind of university where you can uh but what you can do is you start studying every single possible thing you can about this field by going online, by reading books, by really learning beforehand. And then when you get to the university and when you're going through that program, you will be able to look at what you're being taught in a much more fresh and independent way. I remember when I was going through engineering, um, electrical engineering as a young student, every once in a while there'd be this student and they'd just be, you know, really standouts. Uh and they remember one guy, he would sit and read Agatha Crispy novels during the class because he already kind of knew this stuff, but he had actually taught himself and kind of gone through and studied these materials. And so he had a much broader perspective than most of the students in the class. And we can all do that. I that's what I, you know, if I had known, I would have been trying to do that kind of thing as well.
SPEAKER_02So you're much more of the growth mindset philosophy then.
SPEAKER_00Oh, don't say that. Why um I I you know, much as I admired Carol Dweck, I I think it's um kind of overrated. There are some, you know, it depends on what study you look at, but some of the original studies it's really people let's say intelligent people have wondered about the statistical possibility of having the kinds of findings that were found. And indeed, if you go look at there's one study that was done on I believe it was on SA or uh ACT scores. Um and you know, so you would think that high scores on the SAT or ACT were would be well, they'd have to have a growth mindset. Well, they don't, you know, and so uh uh I certainly didn't really have a growth mindset. I was just kind of like I I want to flounder ahead. And a lot of great students I know. The trick is thinking that you just can't do it yet is not gonna give you get you very far. What's gonna get you far are specific ideas about what do you do when you're trying to focus and you're being distracted. Uh, what do you do when you can't figure something out? How do you tackle that problem? You know, these are things where insights about learning can be very beneficial. And Santiago Ramoni Cahole, the father of modern neuroscience, said um like 150 years ago, we we can sculpt our own mind and how we're looking at things. I mean, he was saying growth mindset a long time ago. So it's it is true, but we can go so much further than that um with what we know now about these uh, you know, I hate to call them um brain hacks, but there are great hacks that you can use to help improve your ability to learn.
SPEAKER_02Right. Absolutely. I I do want to be respectful of your time. I know we uh in terms of start time, but um you said you said you were interested in uh asking me some questions, what are about my background? Um, what did you want to know?
SPEAKER_00I want to know how you got into education and what do you um you know what what do you see as how education is gonna unfold in the future with AI? And what part are you going to be playing?
SPEAKER_02Well, that's that's that's a three-parter, so that's okay. So background education. Um well, like everyone, I think I I like school, um, but I probably I liked a lot of a lot of some of my teachers. I loved history. Um, but I really left high school saying I never go back to school. Like I'm after I get through college, um I actually wanted to be a movie director at one point. My parents were like, no. So like um, I I uh went to a small school in Pennsylvania to be uh actually the pre-law. And I think my first, I mean I had some good class in my first semester, but I'm like, there's no way I want to do seven years of this. So I my my roommate, my good friend from high school at the time, you know, he loved his advisor and he was in secondary education, social studies. And I liked my history professor and I liked my history teacher. So I was like, well, I'll just do that. That's that sounds better, right? It's so great. So I switched um and um had a really good experience within the history department. Uh, like loved, loved learning about history, had some amazing professors. Um, one I actually got to learn in his last year before retirement, our dean or department chair of history, he was an expert on like Nazism, the Holocaust. And he taught my history teacher who I loved. So like it was kind of like that full come full circle moment. Um, and I think similarly, even though our school was known as an educational school, I left there having known nothing about how to teach. Like, it's just it's so you get so smacked in the face with it. But I mean, but it's funny because of my unique journey. So like I was able to student teach partially for a semester abroad in Budapest, Hungary, and that was awesome. Um, that was a really cool experience. So that like made me want to move away from Pennsylvania at the time. Um, so I got my first job in North Carolina, but uh it was but I'm I'm pretty unique. Like, I'm I guess on the younger side, I've I've taught and been an admin in I think seven different systems now, like in that short career. Like I was North Carolina public, I was in a DC charter. Um, my longest tenure for teaching was with Fairfax County Schools, moved back to a Catholic school to teach, and then I got into admin and did a private and two publics, and that's where I'm at today. And um, but yeah, I mean, I don't think I learned how to teach until my second and third year. My second year was behavioral management in inner city, DC, like how to actually manage a classroom because I had no idea. I thought your personality could carry it. And then really where I think I fell in love with like instructional design and teaching was teaching IB history in Fairfax, my third year. Cause like it was, I wasn't teaching history, I was teaching writing through history. And so realizing that yes, I know a lot of information and I'm I'm very passionate, but like it doesn't matter if the kids can't do anything, they can't pass these tests, they can't write it for these exams. Our pass rate when we started was like a 20%. So we literally taught structures of how to write and improved writing to about 90% uh pass rates. So like it was that was really like that's where we really fell in love with the power of teaching. And I realized that it's not, you know, we learn by doing and telling is not teaching. So like having that experience, and then I was able to do a little adjunct work teaching other teachers, well, people that were transitioning into it. So I went the educational leadership route with my masters because I leaned on that department chair who was like, if you were my son, I would not tell you to get a master's in US history because there's gonna be more jobs in education than and he was pretty much right. I mean, I as much as I love history, but God knows where I'd be with that. So got into admin. Um I like it. It's a it's a I some people describe being assistant principal as the worst job in education because it's like going from the star athlete to referee. So yeah, you know, that that has been it. And then I basically COVID was definitely hard. I like building positive relationships with students and that experience. I started tutoring again and then kind of built this company from that. So I got really good into like test prep working for other companies and then kind of did my own thing and kind of grown that ever since. Um and I guess the and I've really done it as a systematic way of like it is so. I don't know, I'm a little bit more, I guess, um open to the to the growth mindset because especially when it comes to standardized testing, it's really not the smartest kids still fail. So if you're not practicing, if you're not just doing the reps, um you're not gonna be successful. Some kids can be. Some kids are naturally talented, but like really we've taken kids who have been failing and got them to fours and fives on their AP exams just by like, if you could just do four practice tests, if you could just review, which these kids don't do on their own. Cause again, we're we're teaching content, we're not actually teaching those skills that are needed. They're just assumed, there's a lot of assumptions, I think, in education of kids have these skills, they're smart kids, they have these skills. No one actually taught them how to like think, and a lot of people haven't taught them how to learn. So like everything you said, I think speaks to me. It's just I see the I see the failures of the system producing worse and worse results. And I saw that as a teacher 12 years ago. I'm like, these kids are getting dumber. And it's like every, I mean, and I don't mean that like mean. I mean like every year kids knew how to write less and less. Where my first year they could write a full essay. My last year was like, can you write a topic sentence? Like, do you know what that is and why that's important? So that's like scary um where we're going because it means that they're less and less independent thinkers later and later into their educational career. Um what I'm interested in, I guess, with this to transition to the second part of your question. Um, I think AI can revolutionize education, but I don't think I don't think it'll happen soon enough to do it. I I do see, not that I want it, I believe in public education, but I just see that there's going to be, you know, with all the political stuff that's come out of COVID and just where we're at, I do see this massive privatization movement going to happen. Um they, you know, to unlock those tax dollars and to basically get for the haves and the have nots, if they can dislodge that money that funds public schools and get it to privatize, I think the people who have money will have access to better schools than the ones that don't aren't. That's not to say public schools are bad. They are they're good, but like we're solving the entire all of society's problems right now and not actually focused on what they were designed to do, teaching and learning. With that being said, teachers, like you said, are it's antiquated in a lot of ways, and that there is a tool out there that can actually personalize learning for every student in your classroom. And you're being asked to kind of do that with IEPs, accommodations of those things. And we're not like, how do we figure that out? How do we do that so that because there's going to be gaps no matter what student body you have, AI can fill those gaps and get kids to level up, if you will, and be on this. And that I think that's truly revolutionary. And I just don't, I just don't see the system of education embracing it fast enough to make a change. But I think some schools will do it. So what I'm excited about the tools we're developing um to have like a personalized learning tutor, um, I think that will, I do, I mean, obviously we we're gonna try to use that for our business, but I would love to be able to give that to education. Um, because I mean there are people who are gonna do it for other, but like if if you actually had a tool that could tell you exactly where you are and where you need to go, um you kind of level the playing field and you make the opportunity that any kid we we actually truly believe any kid can learn now. Any we actually give them the tool any kid can't learn. Like you can literally give them the direction.
SPEAKER_00So no, I couldn't agree more. I could not agree more. Well, I think you're you're off on a terrific track. It's it's fantastic to hear sort of the motivation behind um, you know, in which direction you're going in. And I think you are you are heading right into a really, really much needed area. Um, and so and before we sign off, I would like to know from you what are your top three books of history that are like you know, related to history that you would recommend.
SPEAKER_02Okay, I just because I just I gave away my copy, and then I had to buy another copy. So number one is Rise to Greatness. Um, you know, Doris Kern's good one. I love Team Arrivals, but Rise to Greatness takes the snapshot of 1862 through Lincoln and his development as a leader, and like it is so well written, it's it's so it's so good in terms of um just teaching you how Lincoln fought and his evolution as a strategic leader. I love rise to greatness, it it reads very, very fast. I I love Hamilton by Cherno, as long, but if you have, but in terms of like what I believe, because I think remediation is a waste waste of time, you think you it true. Remediation has to happen in front loading information. If kids don't get, if you know kids aren't going to get the concepts, they have to, they have to hear it almost the first time or know, have it at a lower level before they go deeper, right? Like previewing content rather than trying to reteach bad learning. Um I say that because I listened to the soundtrack of Hamilton before I read Hamilton the book. And there's differences in it, but it's it's so much Therno's a great writer, but I mean when you listen that you're like Lynn Manuel is a genius, and this book is fantastic.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_02And number three. Number three. Ooh, what would I that'd be a toss-up, but I'd probably I don't know. I'm a I'm a sucker for 1776 too. I think that is that mean that's not me. Um he wrote he wrote Adams too. Um it's just it's yeah, that's who was that? That's not McCulloch.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I read Adams. That was really good.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. 1776 is really good in just like how how bad it was, how bad it was for the US Army, uh Continental Army, the colonials, uh, during the Revolutionary War, and how like George Washington held that together too is pretty impressive. Um yeah, I I mean I I am a sucker for what the reason I love the Civil War. We spent eight weeks on it for IB because IB was you got two essay questions. So we knew the ins and outs of it, and it's just really, really fascinating to look at it through the eyes of leadership. Um we didn't spend that much time on the Revolutionary War, but I mean there's been so many good, I guess, documentaries slash movies like the series Adams. If you read the book Adams, like John Adams on HBO is fantastic, but like you know, it's it's really, really good. Um yeah, those are probably my for history, yes. Um I do like a couple other things, either a little more controversial, but um, I would put maybe four and five on there is how to hide an empire, just about how like even though America says it's a republic, it's actually an empire. And then um, if you really want to go deep into like it's not really conspiracies, just how everything in the US since the cold war has been driven by like profit and money. Um, the toll brothers, um that's it. What is it? It's not the toll brothers, is it the toy? It's um not the toll brothers, the uh brothers, John Foster Dallas now is Alan Dollas. Let me see what the book's called. I forget now. Alan and John Foster. I think it's the book. Oh, yeah, it's just called the Brothers. That's what it is. So it's literally if you know who John Foster Dollas, Dallas Airport's named after him. Yeah, John Foster Dulles was the Secretary of State for Eisenhower, and Alan Dulles, his brother, was the head of the CIA.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I he always didn't he always think that there was somebody who was a master spy within the CIA and eventually after Dulles died, yeah, they was. So he was right, and they always said he was just puring.
SPEAKER_02He was, but they they definitely shaped the geo a lot of the geopolitical situations we are in stem from a lot of their early intervention in the lens of preventing communism from spreading, like toppling democracies that were left-leaning. Um, so it's there there's some great books, but I I've it did you learn a lot about kind of like that that area, so highly recommend.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's well, just before I go, I'll toss back to you Jack Weatherford's uh Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World.
SPEAKER_02Really?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so if there's I don't have much on Genghis Khan, so yeah, this'll this is a great way to start.
SPEAKER_02Okay, awesome, awesome. All right, well, thank you so much. Honor. Uh it's been a been a definitely uh a pleasure to have you. Uh we'll hopefully connect in the soon in the future, but good luck with everything and uh thank you again.
SPEAKER_00Thank you.
SPEAKER_02All right, have a good one. Thanks for joining us on the supported learning podcast. If today's conversation inspired you, challenged you, or sparked a new perspective, be sure to subscribe and share with a fellow change maker. We'll be back soon with more voices, more insight, and more ways to elevate the future of learning together. Until then, keep learning and keep pushing the conversation forward.