What Are We Building?

The Case for New Subcultures

One of the recurrent background themes about the pathologies of modern America is that we are no longer building.  Peter Thiel was one of the first to highlight this, with "We wanted flying cars instead we got 140 characters."  More recently Marc Andreesen has announced, “It’s time to build.”  The former are both libertarian-leaning, pushing back against the ways in which regulation inhibits innovation.  The economist Noah Smith has been trying to promote an innovation-oriented progressive movement, with huge enthusiasm for industrial policy and the Green New Deal.  He is acutely aware of the extent to which "being against" is not inspiring.  Prior to purchasing Twitter, Elon was largely a hero as a builder of Space X and Tesla.  At a deeper level, commentators such as Tanner Greer and Brink Lindsey have identified the lack of a culture of building and the associated optimism as evidence of a deeper malaise in American culture, quite aside from the outcomes. 

Certainly the overreach of the regulatory state is a problem, and without a doubt it constrains the realm of the possible.  Even Noah Smith acknowledges this, as does Democrat Stephen Teles, in a book co-authored with Brink Lindsey.

In the meantime, we are more polarized than ever before, even as we approach a presidential rematch between two geriatrics who are less than inspiring political figures.  Our debt continues to explode, likely leading to some combination of recession, depression, inflation, and/or fiscal collapse in the coming years.  Meanwhile, trust in institutions is collapsing.  On the right, collapse in trust with respect to K12 and post-secondary education is severe.

Pessimists believe we are caught in a death spiral; the decline of the West or the at least the decline of the U.S. (and if the U.S. does not lead the West, then who will?)  

Meanwhile, progressive causes are no longer inspiring.  Certainly the Marxists inspired for a century or so. Despite the repeated disasters of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot, etc., Marxism motivated political commitment like nothing else. Then the 60s fight for equal rights for women, minorities, and LGBTQ people inspired for a long time.  But now Kendi has fallen, even the NYT now publishes “Anti-Racism Was Never the Answer.” The woke virus and associated tyranny of thought does not inspire. We are now seeing a growing reaction to the excesses of the trans activists - when Europe turns a corner on medical transitions of minors, when feminists turn against biological males invading female spaces, and when even many gays and lesbians no longer want to associate with trans activism, we have reached a turning point.

The rhetoric of the "climate emergency" is at fever pitch, but in the meantime the IPCC has moved away from the absurdly extreme projections, the new IPCC director acknowledges that rhetoric had become overheated, and Nature has even published an article acknowledging most trends are positive for the future despite climate change: “in most scenarios, humanity is better educated, better fed, longer lived and healthier, also with less poverty and less conflict, continuing trends that have been underway for decades.” A leading indicator of this change, despite the catastrophe headlines that still dominate media, is that Zion Lights, formerly a high profile Extinction Rebellion activist, is now preaching optimism and nuclear energy (her stuff is great!).

The left has nothing to offer beyond identity politics and climate alarmism. If that is not the death throes of a movement I don’t know what is. No one is inspired by government anything anymore.

What might we point to that is inspiring?

While I like the idea of flying cars, supersonic transport, anti-aging breakthroughs, low cost, reliable energy that doesn't pollute, and space exploration, none of those "causes" is likely to inspire a new political movement.

We need something better.  More importantly, we need a "something better" that will inspire women as much as men.  The political divide is growing, especially among young people, with young men moving to the right and young women moving to the left.  We can't create a new political vision based only on tech that appeals primarily to men. 

What can we do?

Let’s Build New Schools with New Subcultures

I propose a four part solution:  A focus on innovation in education, subcultures, community, and governance as a new political ideal.

The global movements towards founding new cities and jurisdictions, including Startup Cities, Charter Cities, Free Cities, Network Cities, Enterprise Zones, Opportunity Zones, and Seasteading are alive and well, attracting young, ambitious, and idealistic people and in some cases serious capital investments. It remains insufficiently known and not adequately supported, but there is momentum towards this becoming a political ideal among a growing group of innovators. Some of these initiatives prioritize innovations in community, others innovations in governance, but the two are complementary. The current governance focus is male dominated.

But education, subculture, and community creation may be female dominated. Education certainly is. And the future of education is subculture creation.

The biggest challenge with a focus on innovations in education and subculture is that almost no one at present understands that innovations in education should be understood primarily as innovations in subculture creation.

Education professors are almost entirely focused on public schools, which are dying. Policy wonks who do recognize the importance of school choice are almost entirely focused on test scores.

The rationalist community and most geeks interested in education are interested in data driven arguments about learning, again usually focused on test scores.

Almost all conversations about education are stuck within the “Grammar of schooling,” the assumption that schooling is about “covering” 4th grade math, 7th grade science, 10th grade US history, using the right curriculum, pedagogical methods, assessments, etc. That is what education “is” to perhaps 95% of the population.

But there is an unnoticed convergence that is leading to the development of new schools with new subcultures as a movement. It is a combination of alternative educational models, funding and interest from tech entrepreneurs, new legislation allowing public funds to flow to alternative schools, and a growing microschool movement led mostly by moms and former teachers - a largely female movement ready to support this new form of building.

The world of educational alternatives, Montessori, Waldorf, Reggio Emilio, Sudbury/democratic schooling, Agile Learning Centers, Acton Academies, Prenda, Alpha, Prisma, Sora, Synthesis, etc. is each focused on their own programs, believing it to be the best. But what most of them does is de facto a matter of creating a new subculture of learning in order to support greater student agency and personalization.

Often tech founders mistakenly believe they can found new school models based on new tech. AltSchools raised $174 million from Mark Zuckberg Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective, Pierre Omidyar’s Omidyar Network, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and Marc Andreessen’s Andreessen Horowitz and others. It failed. Max Ventilla, the founder, had believed that software could lead to student agency and personalization. But without expertise in developing the classroom culture and school culture needed to orient the students effectively towards this model of learning, students were all over the place with different teachers in different classrooms setting different expectations - and parents were dissatisfied.

I was creating the Montessori high school model for Higher Ground Education, the largest Montessori network in the U.S., when they bought first the schools of AltSchool and then later the software product (I expect at a fraction of the investment that had been put in). Even with excellent individual teachers, with no clear subculture created, a software product alone cannot provide an educational vision. Meanwhile Montessori has 100 years of experience with teacher training and school design within an integrated vision. Tech entrepreneurs and investors underestimate the significance of human systems as the foundation of a school.

But what is striking about the new wave of educational innovation is that it is largely driven by entrepreneurs - Agile Learning Centers was founded by an agile software developer, Acton Academies by an oil and gas entrepreneur, Prenda by a tech entrepreneur, Alpha by a tech entrepreneur, Prisma by former Apple managers, Sora by young entrepreneurs, Moonrise by a tech entrepreneur, Synthesis is descended from the school founded by Elon Musk for his kids, etc. Many entrepreneurs who have succeeded through initiative and focusing on adding value see how outdated schooling is. Both Jobs and Wozniak have been extremely critical of schooling for destroying creativity.

As an ever larger number of states allow public dollars to flow to these private alternative options through Educational Scholarship Accounts (ESAs), we will go up the technological adoption cycle. At present about 11 million students have access to such funds. If Texas passes universal ESA legislation this month, that leaps to 16 million. In ten years, there could easily be 50 million students with access to government funds to pay for private alternative schools.

At the same time, the microschool movement is booming, sometimes using one of the foregoing models (especially Montessori, Acton, and Prenda) and sometimes more of a DIY approach. Many of these schools are founded by moms and teachers, many of whom are women. The vast majority of teachers are female as well. These are idealistic projects - most microschools pay very little and may offer long working hours with no benefits. Twenty years ago I estimated that the average Montessori teacher sacrified a million dollars in lifetime income relative to her public school counterpart. Given inflation and the even rougher start many of these microschool founders have, it could easily be two million dollars lost in lifetime income.

But the founders and educators building the microschool movement love being able to do the right thing for kids. After getting mostly positive media coverage in the Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post, this article on “Microschools and the Hype Cycle” notes,

And it’s no surprise legions of researchers, journalists, advocates and program officers at education foundations have all latched on to microschools at the same time. They see previous education reform fads (teacher evaluations, personalized learning) sucking wind. They’re peering desperately for beams of light amid the post-pandemic gloom. And when they actually visit microschools or talk to educators who work in them, they see what I’ve seen: The kids are happy. The teachers are energized. Families and community groups, often sidelined in schools, are pulled into the center of the learning experience. If you ask a student what they’re doing and why, they’ll tell you, often enthusiastically. These are things we should hope to find in any learning environment. The fact that they stand out underscores the extent of the current malaise.

A mostly female movement at which kids are happy, teachers are energized, and families and community groups are pulled into the center of the learning experience? This is the foundation of a movement.

More deeply, these small, personalized educational environments are the seeds of the solution to the adolescent mental health crisis. I’ve written on how public schools are causing an epidemic of mental illness and how connection, community, meaning, and purpose are the solution. These small, personalized microschools are thriving precisely because they provide connection, community, meaning, and purpose. Once the therapist and counseling communities understand this fact, then additional large, influential caring organizations largely staffed by women will become inspired by this movement (see Naomi Fisher in the UK and Teva Johnstone in the US, two female therapists who are already there).

Meanwhile, I’ve launched the Adolescent Flourishing Initiative (AFI) at the University of Austin (UATX) to gather the converging lines of evidence supporting these hypotheses. There are reasons to believe that adolescent dysfunction and mental illness are due to an evolutionary mismatch that conventional schooling exacerbates. Neo-Durkheimian sociologist Liah Greenfeld has made the case that identity formation in a modernity in which anomie is increasing is the root cause of functional mental illnesses (a case that complements, rather than contradicts the evolutionary mismatch hypothesis). Separately there are various schools of thought noting that character education is impossible without being embedded in a culture that takes virtue seriously (see Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue for the deepest articulation of this thesis).

AFI will research the non-cognitive benefits of school choice to evaluate the extent to which these new learning environments actually provide these kinds of mental health and character virtue benefits for young people. As we have a university-based institution focused on this issue we will gradually win over the more honest scholars who care about the well-being of children. There is a lot more evidence for my provocative claims than most people are aware of but it remains invisible because mainstream academia is aggressively pro-public school. A perspective so radical as to suggest that public schools are a causal factor in the adolescent mental health crisis is WAY outside the current Overton window of acceptable campus discourse. But the evidence is already highly suggestive that this is not such an outlandish hypothesis. AFI will create a community of scholars willing to take this hypothesis seriously and honestly discover what kind of learning environments are best for children. I predict that large public middle schools will not win at this game.

Finally, religious schools and religious communities are a natural ally in this movement. The ESA legislation has provided new enrollment and new revenue for religious schools of all sorts. Religious schools are often very focused on creating a distinctive culture separate from secular culture. But most of us would not describe their work as creating “new subcultures.”

Thus the rhetorical work we need to do to shift towards optimistic building that includes women and children: While gradually shifting our friends away from identity politics and climate panic, engage more of them with the exciting world of creating new educational models. The key jiu-jitsu move here is to get caring people to be more excited about well-being for children than they are hateful of religious conservatives. I’ve personally known dozens of loyal teacher union members who became interested in microschools and ESAs when their children were suffering in the system. The unimaginable political shift that I’m asking you all to imagine is one in which millions of moms, teachers, and therapists are so inspired by the new learning communities that they gradually express a willingness to break with the diehard public school advocates. I call it the #MamaBearRevolution.

So, yes, we can be excited by new technologies (though note that AI, nuclear energy, and anti-aging medicine are all controversial and not universally beloved).

But to create a brighter political and cultural future in the U.S., we need to celebrate the exciting opportunities for new school creation and the opportunity to create new and better subcultures for the future!