Elon Musk’s School: For Rich Families Who Don’t Care About Arts Education

When I recently learned about Elon Musk's private school Ad Astra--a school that teaches middle schoolers how to build robots and debate geopolitical conflicts while offering almost no arts curriculum--I felt like it welcomed a pro-arts response. I'm being a little hard on Musk here, but for all his technological achievements, this foray into something he has no professional training in seems more than a little misguided and hubristic. Cutting most arts and humanities from our kids' school curriculum, just because they're not Musk's area's of expertise, is a horrible idea. So in this piece I look at the pros and cons of Ad Astra, and why kids would be better off getting an education that includes all the myriad benefits the arts provide. (SpaceX may still, however, be an amazing place for a field trip or after-school program.)

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Elon Musk. Photo: The Henry Ford Foundation, via Flickr.

"Are you a parent in LA, looking for the best education for your children money can buy? Have you looked at the staggering accomplishments of billionaire inventor Elon Musk — cutting-edge Tesla vehicles, SpaceX rockets, the quirky infrastructure projects of The Boring Company — and thought, “I wish this man, clearly brilliant in technology and engineering, would turn his attention to something he knows nothing about — education — and build an elementary school!” Well, I have good news and bad news. The bad news is, such a school exists, but you’re not likely to get in. That school is Ad Astra, a nonprofit, tech-focused organization that Musk founded in 2014, originally for his own children. Over the past few years, the school has gradually expanded, but at a current total enrollment of 31, admittance is hyper-competitive and available to just a few of the hundreds of families who apply. The good news? If you want your kid to get a well-rounded education, you probably wouldn’t want them going there anyway."

(For the full article, you can read the rest here.)