🐴 Tomorrow: Break Free from One-Size-Fits-All Education (Special Book Launch!)

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💡 THOUGHT

ESCAPING THE 200-YEAR-OLD TRAP

The average American child will spend over 13,000 hours in a traditional classroom by the time they graduate high school. 13,000 hours in a system that was designed during the Industrial Revolution to sort children like products on an assembly line. Despite massive technological advances in every other field, our educational approach remains largely unchanged.

The good news is there's a growing movement of families breaking free from this outdated approach, and discovering that education can be opened up—not by throwing everything out, but by combining different approaches that respect each child's unique learning style, interests, and pace.

If you consider yourself a part of this movement, please share the link to our live launch event or forward this email to a friend who might need to hear this message.

📊 TREND

THE MYTH OF THE AVERAGE STUDENT

In the 1950s, the U.S. Air Force had a problem. Pilots kept making dangerous mistakes in cockpits designed for the "average" pilot.

Lieutenant Gilbert S. Daniels decided to measure over 4,000 pilots on 10 critical dimensions, asking a simple question: How many pilots were average on all 10 dimensions?

The answer: zero.

The "average pilot" didn't exist.

As a result, they started building adjustable seats and controls instead of designing for the mythical average. Yet in education, we put unique children in identical educational "cockpits" and wonder why so many struggle to thrive.

🔨 TOOL

LEARNING SPRINTS: A BETTER WAY TO MEASURE PROGRESS

One of the practical lessons in the book centers around the idea of a “learning sprint”: a two-week focused exploration that follows this simple structure:

LAUNCH MEETING (10 minutes): 

• Choose one area of focus

• Identify needed resources

• Set clear, achievable goals

MID-SPRINT CHECK-IN (5-15 minutes):

• Review progress

• Address any obstacles

• Adjust as needed

CELEBRATION (20 minutes):

• Share what was learned

• Give specific feedback

• Discuss next steps

This approach creates momentum without burnout, harnessing natural curiosity while providing enough structure to make progress visible.

Try This: Choose one area where your child has shown interest, and create a simple two-week sprint around it. Document their progress with photos or notes, and celebrate what they've learned at the end—regardless of outcome.

That’s all for this week!

– Charlie (the OpenEd newsletter guy)

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