#068 - Why kids who learn at home don’t get bullied as much

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💡 THOUGHT

Why kids who learn at home don’t get bullied as much

As an adult, if someone tries to harass or intimidate you at a coffee shop, you just ignore them or go to a different coffee shop. But in many schools, kids are stuck.

No child's education should feel like a trap.

Watch the full 2-minute clip, in which Naval (Silicon Valley's modern-day Socrates) explains how industrial schooling makes bullying inevitable while a more customized approach makes it almost unheard of.

📊 TREND

Students Designing Their Schools

In North Carolina, a program called SparkNC asked its students to help design their schools. In its first year, the program reached 1,500 learners across 17 school districts with a radical idea: let students choose from 60+ learning experiences in high-tech fields like AI and cybersecurity.

As one Spark Scholar puts it: "Here I'm not just a student, I'm part of something bigger than myself. I'm a member of a community that celebrates curiosity."

Next year, they’re letting students design the actual courses.

SparkNC Students are creating industry-relevant portfolios, building professional networks, and most importantly, feeling at home in their learning environment.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Learning works best when students have agency!

🛠️ TOOL

Just Breathe

Need to calm your nerves?

Today’s tool is a reminder to be conscious of what is normally an unconscious process. Try a few measured breaths into your belly—in sync with the happy flower.

You’ve got this!

(TERM) OF THE DAY

Dunbar’s Number

Dunbar’s number refers to the cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. Named after anthropologist Robin Dunbar, it suggests humans can only maintain about 150 meaningful relationships at once. Maybe that's why the most successful learning environments – from one-room schoolhouses to modern microschools – tend to stay small.

As Naval Ravikant puts it, "We're meant to live in smaller, higher-trust societies." Your child's education should reflect that, too.

That’s all for today!

– Charlie (the OpenEd newsletter guy)

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