Wow.
The pencil is fully let it education tuck, educated educators talking, education class
in session for Dr. Johnny Lupinacci, Jacob chairman of the board. And I might be conducting class
today. That's me, Dr. Tim Slecker. And I wanted to ask a question for both of you.
Do you like good science fiction, Johnny Lupinacci?
It depends. Yeah, I can get, I can get into it. I wouldn't call myself a sci-fi fan,
but I can get into some good science fiction from time to time. But it's not my number one go to,
not my number one genre. Jacob, yeah, I gave you a whole show about start.
I tried to do it again. We know Mr. Data and how much you love him. But Tim, there's other things
happening in the world. Yes, I like science fiction. Yeah. Okay. So three world or three body
problem, Netflix. Jacob, what do you think? I see, I saw, I saw it. You've seen it, right?
I've seen some of it. I started watching it. I did not finish. I saw the cool,
historical scene of the cultural revolution at the beginning. I thought, wow, this is an
intense, well done thing. And then I saw a bunch of human beings with tarps on their back,
being used as a giant analog computer. I thought, this is a Tim Slecker idea. I'm not a doctor.
I can't follow. So I thought I would save it. Great show, man. I mean, I watched it. I think
like a year or so ago. Yeah. Great, great, great Netflix series, man, especially as a
math nerd myself. But yeah, I liked this one. I'm only, I'm only on the episode like four.
Oh, good. I was about to be like, I thought we were going to break right into it. I was getting
ready. Just like, like, like, oh, man, I love when this happens. And I was about to tell you,
but yeah, I like it, man. And it's related to, I mean, I love when, when any genre, especially
with a tinge of science fiction, you know, is close enough to like, what do they, it's just got to
be like a, like a category for it. Everybody listening right now is cringing because you're probably
saying it as I'm not able to put, you know, get that word. But like, you know, like historical
fictions are like close to accurate fictions. Yeah. This is one of those that like you watch and
it's kind of pretty close to, you know, you raise your eyebrow a little bit and you're like,
this could be going on, you know, like, not too far off. But I love the show, man.
Hi, that distinction you're talking about, Johnny, I think, Tim, maybe you can hop in because you're
a Star Trek expert. But the thing that you would talk about there is the distinction between hard
sci-fi and soft sci-fi where hard sci-fi, you have real, you know, those super realistic rules in
place that like, you can see this really happening in the future versus something like Star Wars,
which is sci-fi, but the rules and the science might not actually make any sense.
Yeah. There's the, there's the element of possibility of this where, yeah, I mean, some sci-fi is,
you know, and say, Star Wars is a great example of more of, you know, a story that happens to
take place in space. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a great story. Yes. The science part of sci-fi to
Star Wars, not really. But in this, in this show, I, well, here, I came across it because,
you know, I just, I'm getting these, I don't know, a, I algorithms that are driving news to me,
and I must have at some point clicked on something sci-fi, and now I'm getting bombarded in my Google
kind of, hey, check this stuff out. All these sci-fi recommendations, and I, and I read this one,
and I started doing it. I'm like, well, Tim, you've always been a fan of math and physics.
So, you know, it's, you know, just kidding. Maybe that's it, too, like you're confronting some of your
math phobias by finding these excellent, you know, shows that are based loosely around, you know,
the work of mathematicians and physicists, and, you know, it's just desensitizing you to that phobia
that you always speak of here on Bust of Pensi. Yeah, though, I mean, the whole connection to,
you know, communication, but I'm looking at it, though, it was like, there's, there's also this weird
kind of like AI component, even though we're not exactly sure. And we've spent a lot of time,
you know, on this show, talking about AI, and either of them. I would say more VR than AI, but,
you know, technology, right? Yeah, I mean, talking about the show, right? Well, no, no, I'm kind of
moving in and yeah, these technologies. And I mean, the whole idea, potentially, you're only
three episodes in. So, yeah, yeah, well, lots of VR folks. Okay, I'm just, well, I mean, the VR
part is actually kind of cool, but I'm just very cool about the potential of, you know, are they
truly talking to, well, I'll tell you what, to my immediately, I immediately went and grabbed my
copy of Silent Spring and hit it. See, like right there, there's a great connection. And so for any of
you, like environmental sustainable, sustainable hippies like me, you can want, no, but you watch
this and you're like, oh, my God, great stuff. Anyway, I'm making the connection, though, I,
that when, when they're quote, talking, it's like, are they really talking true intelligence,
are they talking? And so you're thinking about this intelligence, and I've been seeing just a lot
of back and forth, what is it good for? What's it capable of? And it made me think, well, you know,
we've actually been talking a lot about the Alpha School, the two hour learning. And,
um, you know, I've been probably on a cheerleading bandwagon for the Alpha School. And, um, boy, just, uh,
two days ago, wired magazine, put out a piece, incredibly critical of Alpha School. In fact,
highlighting looking at parents that have said, we want out, we want out. All is not necessarily
well. And it's, it's a paid version that you have to get into. But, um, looking at other kind of
criticisms, I'm just wondering if we have, we jumped on a bandwagon before looking at true results,
or is this a hit piece that is actually designed to, um, you know, throw a whole bunch of poop on,
um, you know, an idea that has the ability to upend the status quo. And this is really the status
quo fighting back and saying, all is not well. So looking at that is the legitimacy of a, of a
criticism by a few parents, really enough to blow up the whole idea of what Alpha School is about.
Or is it status quo propaganda? Jacob, you had your hand up. Tim, I think that it's great to have
this sort of criticism because we, we don't talk about Alpha School because we're early investors
in Alpha School. We don't talk to Mike Bigley because, you know, we get something on the back
in from Mike Bigley. We talk about these guys because we believe in the effort to try to find new
ways of doing things, giving novel things and experiencing where things go, not being stuck,
doing things the way they always have been. So when you have feedback, the only thing we, I think
we should look at that, we should evaluate it. See, what do we think about this feedback? Because
we want it to get better. So frankly, you know, if you come to me with criticism of something we've
said or something we support, I'm happy to see that because I think we're always trying to grow
with these experiments. Same. And I'll put loose quotations around we because I'm, I don't think I've
ever fully jumped on the, the bandwagon of Alpha School, except I love like Jacob said, I do
and Tim, you and I've talked about this one. I'm like, I don't know about this, but what I do know is
all three of us have, have hammered home this point. School's got to change. Right. And, and this
is a pretty big effort to change it. We're all pretty apprehensive of any, you know, silver bullet
or, you know, big solution that, you know, is the one-size-fits-all. I don't think what, like our
guests who've come on have proposed, hey, we're the one-size-fits-all, we're the solution. Yeah,
we're the savior to education, the replacement. So it's exciting to hear what's happening.
And I've long, Tim, we've talked about it, long been a fan of rethinking the school day,
rethinking the rethinking the work week, really imagining and not only being creative about it,
but, but leaning into scientific consensus on how we know kids learn at different developmental
stages of their learning. So more playtime for young students and not less time for our older or
more mature students, you know, like you've said it over and over, and the more you sit and get
tends to be like the formula, the longer you're in school, like the older you get, the more you're
sitting down and listening and learning that way, as opposed to all the different ways we know that
even adult learners need to be engaged. So anything that shakes up schools is always going to be if,
you know, something we're going to ask questions about and hear from here on bus depensals,
because that's the three of us. We want to know what's happening out there in the world that says,
we know what we do now could be so much better, but yet, you know, it takes a little bit of a leap
of faith, some courage, some bravery, you know, to jump out there and say, hey, we're going to do
things differently. And I'll say this, it's great to get feedback like Jacob said Tim, but I think
it's your initial question, you know, is this critique, you know, exposing alpha school or is it
status quo noise? You know, it's both, right? Anytime you start to say, hey, we've done this for the
better part of a couple hundred years and we're going to do it differently. There's going to be a
whole lot of people that are like, wait, no, you can't do that. And there's going to be some,
some feedback or some kickback, some noise to doing things differently. Um, does that mean we ignore
the noise? No, like Jacob said, like, listen to it. Let's hear like it's, it's a probably a valid
experience, right? I don't know. I can't wait to take a look at this piece, Tim. I hope you
send it out to us because we'll, you know, it would be great to further discuss it, maybe on our
Saturday afternoon show at more length, or maybe even dive into a little bit of it today if you
want to drive that bus. But one of the things about that that I get excited about is, hey, let's
figure out what this noise is all about because it might be saying, hey, if you're trying to do
something differently, then we would prefer you just do it the same, which all of us carry a little
bit of Stockholm syndrome from our schooling experience. How many times have I, you know, have we
done any teachers out there listening? You've done some new activity in class, you know, and
students are like, oh, why can't you just give us a worksheet? Oh, like, come on, can we just
take a quiz at the, can we just do practice problems and do a quiz at the end of the week?
Like the other math teachers, like, no, we're going to, we're going to really dive in and engage
as learners. Well, sometimes that's different than how we've been learning. And it feels a little
bit uncomfortable. And so we speak out against even the necessary or important changes.
So I'm excited to look into this without saying I'm a big fan of Alpha School. They're part of
school change. I'm a big fan of school change, man. Well, so the criticism, yeah, maybe we'll
dig deeper for a longer show. But what I'm, and again, because I'm, yeah, I'm not going to say
I'm a fan of Alpha School as much as I'm a fan of the disruption to the status quo about
teaching and learning. And, and, and I do think they're premise of, you know, essentially like,
man, look, look, the, the, the, the droning, the neg, or the, the boring, the academic rhetoric,
whatever, you know, get it done and spend the rest of the day, though doing application practical
thing, I think that I love the model. I got to tell you that what, what, what it appears, though, to
me is is that this kind of falls into the, it's a criticism of a private school. And, um, now, like,
I'm not seeing any new novel criticisms that would make us go, oh, that's interesting. Instead,
the criticisms come down to, hey, guess what? Um, in a private school like this, guess what, smart
elite kids do really well. Poor kids don't, and therefore it's a crappy experience and public
schools don't have the choice to only pick great kids. And so to me, I'm kind of like, I'm more
disturbed by the criticism itself, not being new. Yeah. The criticism comes back to almost like,
look, it's a private school. And here is the criticism of private schools of which we have done
on this show for years, really hardcore criticism of private schooling, um, from the standpoint of,
of polling resources potentially from public schools, right? Yeah. That's the point.
Right. I was separated out and clarified for listeners. And you're pretty. And I'm also an
avid supporter of our public schools. Obviously, we say it over and over. Public education is a
better off of democracies. But I think in the landscape that we're in, that what often get called
private schools sometimes operate in more public ways than local public schools. So I love what
Jonathan Girko, publicization guy, right? You know, introduces, let's actually hold all schools
accountable to their accessibility to the ways that they meet children's learning needs. And
be weary of the right only sits, speak an absolute sci-fi reference there for you. And the,
is it public or is it private critique? It's sort of, it's sort of, uh, to my opinion,
belaborate at this point. But I'd like that, I like that distinction you make that
because I'm a little different. Like I support some private schools. I think it's,
I think that they do really novel and wonderful things. And they're not for everybody in terms of
sometimes they are cost prohibitive. But that doesn't mean they should be the only good education,
right? And if we have a strong public school system, those private options can be strong,
stronger or weaker, they just start different options, but they're not the only better option,
right? So without a strong public schools, there aren't really strong private schools. The,
the, the, the thing about this one, though, Tim, is, um, I think when you look at it, when I look at it,
I ask, is it something that's inaccessible or the quality of the education, isn't, isn't serving
the community, right? And I don't know that that's not necessarily true from this critique.
I can't get into it right away because you sent, sent me the link, but I got to subscribe to
Wired magazine. I'm not, I'm not a avid Wired magazine guy. Go figure, but, um, I'll get, I'll get
into it. But also one of the things that I'm curious about if we're diving in is parents and
students experience with the time they spend and technologically mediated learning. You know,
you've talked about it where removing schools are, you know, phones from classrooms and different
things. And students are saying they're enjoying that, that human time together. They don't say
human time. It's like, they talk about like, I like talking with my friends or I like that my
teacher has us discuss with one another and then, you know, says, Hey, now it's an opportunity to,
you know, go to chat GPT or wherever. Now that we've had a small group discussion and we have
generated some ideas, see what other ideas might be out there and more, more human physical connection
being great. I've just always wondered, Oh, great, I can't wait to hear the experiences
of students and families because anytime we're spending that much time on computers or on devices
and this could be at a public school or a private school for all I care. You know, there are questions
about surveillance. There are questions about young people's development. There are questions about
how does this also align with the research, you know, coming out of, you know, learning scientists
and psychologists who are saying we have increased an anxiety and depression and young people because
of the amount of time they're engaged in social media, not saying that this is all social media
learning time in the alpha school. I know for a fact that it's not that we've talked to, you know,
teachers and representatives from those schools, but I just think all the things start to connect
in some ways and I wonder what those experiences are. And it wouldn't surprise me that
sadly right now in our culture, negative experiences are what we hear louder than positive
experiences, right? So I'm not saying we're we're the show that listens to everyone, but in a sense
that's democracy. Let's get all the information, right? And hear the experience the educators
are having. Hear the diverse experiences that different students and families are having
because if we only hear the complaints, right? What's it called? The squeaky wheel gets the grease
right or the oil, right? We slip into those kind of those problematic patterns of whether if you
complain, right? Then you kind of get hurt. And that's not how democracy works. It's when when
we share what our needs are, what's working, what's not working, and we figure that out together,
then we're progressing as a stronger democracy, as a stronger education system. So I think that's
my long-winded way of what Jacob was saying, right? Like let's get all the information together and
let's chop it up. I want to see this information from you, Tim. Behind your secret, your top secret
paywall, you've got over the ice, his subscriber paywall, man, Pant, you got to get your buddy
clawed to send us a summary. So you could find out what actually he was telling me there has jail
break internet or more subscriptions than anybody I know. No, you know, what I do is I fall for the
free, you know, you sign up for the trials to two week trial. And then I forget the cancel,
and then I get yelled at by my wife. And so I don't know. Yeah, whenever I see a good story,
though, I'm very hard to kind of be like, you know, the paywall is not something I, you know,
I don't have any problem taking out the paywall because I want to see this stuff. And
I appreciate that about you, Tim. That's good, man. You're supporting, supporting journalism.
I think that's something like I'm definitely a feeling like I should do more of that. Wait,
I'm unintentionally supporting journalism because I have all my intention is to get free access
and unsubscribe. It's just that my laziness usually stops me from unsubscribing. And then I have
a year of access, which actually then turns out pretty good because then I have a year of access.
No, I just think I'll say too. Why are it's pretty good, man? Yeah, I really enjoyed and looked
up to the, you know, the quality of work that comes from wired. So I'm, then you've convinced me,
I'm going to subscribe. I'm going to get this article and I'll do my homework.
Well, it's, and so I just see again, this, yeah, and I'm glad you're going to get the article.
And I, I'll actually get a PDF too for, for people.
Tim, no, we're all going to subscribe. Come on. I know, I know, but, but if you
look at for this, he said, I really get a sense of saying that this is pushback. And, and the
criticism is is that, well, it's an elite private school. And they can do these things. And, in
fact, look, here's some angry parents whose kids didn't have success. Therefore, we know now,
because it's, you know, a private school, it didn't work. And what I wouldn't want to frame
this is coming back of going, is it really the disruption of the, of the status quo model that
is causing the criticism, because we see in Mike Bigley, you know, Britt, Brittney Walt,
Cease of Four, rural Wisconsin, them breaking the model and doing it with all kids. And I get,
I'm kind of wanting to look at this and going, you know, wait a minute, because it's private.
We've kind of pushed on that and saying, hey, it might not be for everybody, but the challenge
to the model, the framing, the 150-year-old industrial sit-in rows, you know, sort kids, put them in,
you know, programs that don't benefit them. We had, you know, Ira David Sokol on,
back, you know, credit pointing out that, you know, the history of, of the American public school,
not public schooling as an ideal of a bedrock of democracy, but the system of public schooling that
was put forth really hasn't been that great of a benefit, particularly for kids who have a sense of
going, you know, or I'm going to say this now, particularly for kids who have any sense of, of
wonderment, you know, they haven't been great places and here, Alpha School comes along and then
we got Mike Bigley, Cease of Four. And I wonder here too, because what is the criticism going to
potentially be of what they're doing in Mike Bigley's area up there? I got a sense that the
criticism will be largely, that's not how I experience schooling and therefore it must not be great
or a certain kid might not fit in. You know, I, yeah, I'm, I'm, and people who've listened to, again,
busted pencils before civic media, just the podcast, you know, say we're on 15, going on 15
years now, almost of, of doing some form of this and people say, boy, you, you've changed your tune.
I don't know if I've changed my tune as much as I'm just more saying that, man, when we see
examples of teaching and learning that challenges the way we've always done teaching and learning,
we need to look at it and then we need to look at the criticism because it's not a public
private school argument here for me and what's happening in, in what I sense in this critique
is that these are largely public school advocates critiquing a private school and that the critique
of the teaching and learning, the fact that it might not fit a couple kids, is then being sucked up
into this grand narrative of going, hey, look at this really expensive program that really fails
most kids and I don't know that it fails most kids and I would point out that again, what does
fails most kids? So I'm really getting sensitive to saying like let's decide what it is we're
criticizing first. I have no problem criticizing the intentional defunding of our public school system
and derailing its democratic roots and what it does. You know, I have no problem though also
enjoying it too. We have no problem criticizing the crap that goes on sometimes in what we call
teaching and learning in public schools because of that's what we're supposed to do. The foundation
though of public schools and yeah, when public schools are defunded to fund private schools,
that's the criticism. I've got no problem hitting hard and criticizing that.
Looking at, Johnny, this might come back to what you were saying, looking at good teaching and
learning private public, semi public, semi, that is just looking at good teaching and learning
and therefore I'm not going to say because it's private, it must be bad. That's not what I want
and I just feel like this criticism is coming more from, oh look, here's somebody who's trying
to put together a rich private school and it just doesn't work and I don't know that it doesn't
work. That is so disappointing to me Tim because I welcomed the news of this criticism when you
told it to me, I thought that is really good to hear. And Johnny, you were talking about the general
quality of the journalism over there. But if it's just that sort of surface level critique,
you read the words alpha school is a private school that okay, I don't even hear that that.
You got me at private school. I'm against it. It sounds terrible. That's not addressing
the interesting thing about this and there are probably plenty of ways to have intelligent
informed criticisms of this. I mean, you bring up in that article or Tim, you were bringing up just
on the surface, you know, questions of well, hey, do kids actually do better due to the methodology
here or is it just the same bump you see because you're going to St. Mary's and you know,
that you have the benefits of a private school. There are so many different things here you can
look at. And if they only went as deep as that's a private school, I don't like it. That's
disappointing. There's a lot of work that needs to be done and it's important to criticize the
actual things happening. Well, Tim, the heading right of the of the article says, you know,
where surveillance of kids, software and lieu of teachers, right, to be an education
end and of itself. You know, we've asked the people, not the students at alpha school, but, you
know, some of the educators and leaders involved in these in this in this school change model.
And they like specifically said, you know, debunked the myth that this isn't just teachers replaced
by computers and software. And and that's the that's the thing too. I'm like anxious anxious
and eager like equal parts of anxiety and excitement to read this article and this critique because
we've now heard some different stories because, you know, we've heard that, hey, this isn't about
any software or any programmer, any use of AI replacing teachers. It's still the most important
component of any education is that relationship that students have with other students and with
their educators. And so, you know, I'm I'm eager to to hear the experiences captured in the
wire article, but also come back around to that. Tim, you talked about good education, what what
we know works and the whole critique of should we even have private schools. It goes away
if the public schools are great. And and so almost it, you know, it's it we've talked about
so many times if you if you make education in your country, a marketized commodity, then you sort
of manufacture this level of competition that is anti-democratic and it's anti it's against the
strength of your country, right? So in other words, if a moniker of strong democracies is our
strong public education systems, those should not be different if you're rich or you're poor.
Now we know there are some options around that around the world like like, hey, maybe if I'm really
rich, I can afford an option of instead of public school, I'm going to go to this elite private
academy. And those have existed since before public schools will exist side by side with public schools.
You know, I don't think you'll ever see an end to public education, but you know, they'll always
be around those elite privates. But but the alternative should be so good that it's a unique choice
that those private academies are particular fit. Maybe it's because they have a really awesome
baseball program or or they really specialize in something unique or they're, you know, they're
they accommodate and sort of build community around a particular set of religious beliefs.
Okay, great. That's part of freedom of expression in this country to organize and have that.
But the public school system is free at the point of access, right? So we know there's some other
levels to that. It's it's not free. It's funded by taxpayer dollars and other, you know,
contributions, but it's so well funded and it's so good that there isn't it isn't putting
families and communities ultimately the students in this position of unless I can afford
a better education, I'm not going to get one, right? And and we often live in those kinds of
contexts where the charter is a good option because the public school isn't a great public school.
And so it's enticing. And so parents move families to that local charter school or to the other
things we've created and manufactured competition or market ideology onto public education. And
and it's not without consequences. And so here we are in that situation. And I think maybe it's
almost time to have Jonathan Gerkow, Dr. Gerkow back on because this is his book, man, publicization.
I'm not just plugging it because I, you know, I'm a I'm a buddy of his. I'm I only know him because
that's just some groundbreaking ways to talk about the the landscape we're in right now as parents,
as educators, as having a public system, you know, that needs some recession that needs some
support and has been defunded and thrown into this, you know, market competition world that it
was not set up for that many decades of school leaders and excellent teachers were not trained
to do their best in, right? And so we're we're releasing a changed landscape. So I think all this
kind of feeds into those great discussions around new models, school change, public versus private
is there such thing, right? Or how do we hold all schools accountable to what Jonathan
Gerkow calls publicization reclaiming that? What does it mean to be public? Well, he's got some
really important like signifiers of that, right? And I love that. Like, like, you know, are they
accountable to the well-being and the growth of their students? Are they accountable to all students
in their communities? Not just being selective. I hear some ones that do really well on tests.
Well, we'll admit those, right? That selective enrollment stuff that oftentimes you see in some of
these charters or in some of these elite alternatives. And I'm not saying I know or have proof that
alpha is that, right? So I get excited about that conversation really looking at what does it mean
to be part of public education? And maybe some of the labels we have right now are misleading.
Hmm. And with that, now it's time for your moment of sin.
I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime.
It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution,
thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture.
Hey, thanks for listening to Bust & Pencil's class in session today. And you could always
grab great podcasts like this one. Just head on over to Bust & Pencils.com or you could check
the Civic Media website or wherever it is you get your podcast from just search Bust & Pencils.
You'll find us. Hey, and don't you forget to find us throughout the week beginning each week
with home rooms, find in a class in session midweek and always wrapping up the week with producers
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central time across all the civic media network stations for one hour of your favorite blue collar
scholars, Tim and Johnny, and keep Bust & Pencils.