In one way or another, Hannah Frankman has spent most of her life in the alternative education sphere: She was homeschooled, then worked for the college-alternative bootstrapping program Praxis before starting her own alternative education company, Rebel Educator. What follows is an edited, condensed version of the most recent conversation we had on my podcast, “Philosophy for Flourishing” (listen to the full version here).
Jon Hersey: What is Rebel Educator?
Hannah Frankman: Rebel Educator is an education media company supporting parents who want to take their children out of government schools. We are building a resource hub for parents who want to find something better for their children, whether they want to start homeschooling, find a micro school or a certain type of private school, get online classes, or get their children working on projects or doing apprenticeships. We share evidence validating their suspicions that our system is very broken and very rotten. I also launched a podcast a few months ago, “The Hannah Frankman Podcast,” where I interview people about education.
Hersey: Why is the education system broken? What fundamentally is the problem?
Frankman: The problems run deep, stemming from the structure of the system itself. The history of education in America is very interesting. (And sidebar, most of my work is centered on America’s education system, though many things apply to education systems in other nations.) For the first century and a half of the country’s existence, America had localized education; a town had its local school board, which determined what students would be taught. They had a lot of freedom, and we had a highly literate, highly competent populace. But around the middle of the 19th century, educators and policy makers began to develop an education system that could scale to a national level and be run from Washington. That system was put into place in the early 20th century, and it was designed to fit children into the new economy. America was rapidly industrializing and had a growing population of immigrants and others who likely were going to be working in factories. The people who designed the education system essentially were focused on creating a workforce, and they didn’t want to include things that would distract from that goal. They definitely were not interested in giving students a well-rounded education, challenging them to think critically, or to develop their creative capacities—all of which they considered a distraction. The thought was, for instance: We have enough poets already; we don’t need the general masses to know much about poetry, which is not useful for the humble problems they’re going to encounter in their lives.
So, it was elitist, and we ended up with a system intended to homogenize the population so people could fit like cogs into an industrialized economy. The outcomes reflected this. Children weren’t taught how to think independently and build a lifelong habit of learning. They weren’t exposed much to the liberal arts. Those who were highly academically competent were steered toward more academic trajectories. But the broad intention was to create people who are good at following rules, who understand how to work in large groups, who hear bells ringing and go where they’re assigned. And things haven’t changed much in the century since. That obviously leaves out a lot of important things, such as the ability to think independently and question things. Children still don’t have much chance to learn autonomy or personal responsibility; someone else is always responsible; students are constrained to a small set of choices, and everything else is decided for them.
When you look at those who have been most innovative, virtually all of them did terribly in school. They were so determined that they were able to succeed in spite of the system, not because of it. So, the system is not set up to help children thrive, and parents are looking for the exits, which is why I’m doing what I’m doing.
Hersey: What tools do you have for those who’ve exited, and what should they be looking for? What is good? What is bad? How do you help parents tell the difference?
Frankman: We’re working on more robust tools; right now, what we have is a ton of articles offering this sort of guidance. But this very issue is a big part of what keeps people inside the system; it’s hard to find options, never mind assess them. The “product information” for schools is sparse. How do you know what you’re really getting? At least the status quo is a known quantity, even if it sucks. But once you have an idea of what you’re looking for, it’s not such a daunting prospect to evaluate schools.
First of all, though, before I give parents any practical advice, I try to instill in them some level of confidence that even if they have trouble choosing a school, the probability of making a critical or fatal error—doing irreversible damage—is extremely low. I have seen children bounced between multiple schools before landing on one that was a good fit for them, and when they finally did, they absolutely thrived and caught up on everything they’d missed. Parents shouldn’t be afraid of moving their children between schools until they find the right fit.
That being said, when you’re looking at schools, the first thing is to ask yourself, What do I value in my child’s education? When your child is ready to go out into the world and forge his own way, what kind of person do you want him to be? What kind of skills do you want him to have? What do you want him to know how to do? If you use that as your starting point, then you can work backward and think about how to get there. That may lead you toward a more self-directed approach, for instance, that focuses on helping children build agency—or, on the other hand, a more structured approach that exposes students to the great ideas of the Western canon.
Of course, there are also nuts-and-bolts practical considerations, such as your budget, the distance you’re willing to drive, whether online classes or a hybrid online/in-person arrangement works for you, the number of hours per day and days per week you expect your child spend on education, the student/teacher ratio, grade-level split in the classroom, and so on. Once you learn a bit about what’s out there and think about what’s best for your child, you can start to parse the options.
It’s important that parents really trust themselves. Whenever you step off the beaten path, those invested in the status quo freak out. They may say “You’re not qualified to make these decisions; you don’t have the credentials to know what you’re doing; you need to bring your child back to us immediately, because they’re not safe out there.” Remember, no one has spent as much time with your child as you have; no one knows your child as well as you do. As long as you’re listening to him, paying attention to his needs—as long as you’re coming to the problem with the mind-set that I want what’s best for my child—you can do this. You are the best person to know how to help your child thrive. Trust yourself; know your options; experiment—you will find something that works.
Hersey: I love that message. Thinking backward from the point at which your child is ready to leave the nest, of course, presupposes that he’s learned how to think and live independently. Could you expand on the competing educational philosophies parents will encounter—Montessori and Waldorf, for instance—and how they relate to cultivating independence?
Frankman: I would group Montessori, Waldorf, and another approach—Reggio Emilia—together into one category or cluster. Of course, they’re distinct, but they’re broadly similar and will appeal to the same group of people: those who want an education that specifically stresses cultivating independence.
There are many more approaches: Michael Strong has developed schools focused on the Socratic method, which help to foster deep, critical thinking. There are classical schools that use the Great Books approach, arming students with a tremendous knowledge of history—of what people have thought, and why. Each of these has its strengths, and they all aid in cultivating independence, but in different ways.
Consider, though, that we’re living at a time of tremendous innovation in education. Throughout history, the field has been fairly stagnant. Much of what we still do is essentially what the Ancient Greeks did, and to be fair, they got a lot right. But the world that we live in is dramatically different. We’ve innovated in countless ways. Haven’t we learned enough in 2,500 years to do things dramatically better?
The answer is, we do know a lot more, but the system hasn’t caught up. In the past fifty to sixty years, a tremendous amount of research has been done in the subject that’s become known as “learning science,” the science of how we learn things. And a lot of what we’ve learned indicates that even just the mechanics of how we educate children—never mind the subject matter—is highly ineffective, even backwards. We’re teaching children in ways that are not at all tailored to the natural learning process. We have children memorize things, test them, and then move on—often without connecting later lessons to earlier ones or even asking students to recall that information. But if you remember something for a couple of weeks, spit it out on a test, then forget it, have you really learned it? If we’re making students spend all this time on things, we probably want them to remember what they’ve learned.
Researchers have discovered that children learn best when they’re given a small set of problems or a short lesson to work through, they practice it, then are immediately quizzed on it. Then the next lesson should be adapted based on their test scores. This is essentially how effective one-on-one tutoring works. The educator gets feedback in real time about what the student does and does not understand. So, the next lesson reiterates what the student hasn’t grasped yet, and the practice also includes things from prior lessons so the student doesn’t forget it. That probably sounds familiar, right? It’s exactly how Duolingo works. It’s exactly how a lot of learning apps work, because they’ve been designed based on the learning science research. When much of this research was done in the 1980s, those running the education system saw it and concluded that there’s no way to efficiently transfer this into a classroom model, where there might be one teacher for thirty students. She can’t sit down and grade everybody’s quiz really quickly and then give everybody a custom lesson based on what they got right. So, she teaches to the mean and does the best she can to make sure that she’s addressing the “average” student—even though some are way ahead, and others are way behind. Those who are way behind may never catch up. But as long as they get 60 to 70 percent of the questions right on every test, they get a passing grade, and they keep going. And they just keep building on the gaps. That is how our current system runs.
So, all this research was done, and it wasn’t scalable inside the traditional model. However, now that we have all this newer technology, we can start building tools that can do what a teacher cannot. So, we’re seeing this explosion of “AI tutors,” that is, learning software that applies what we’ve learned about learning to help students actually learn things, exactly at their own speed, and without gaps. So, to come back to your original question, there are many interesting schooling models being developed that leverage this technology or, more broadly, make use of the learning science research. Some are solely online and use technology exclusively, whereas others are hybrids, combining tech and teachers, for instance, mixing project-based learning with apps for drilling on academic topics. So, in addition to various educational philosophies, there are various delivery models, and these are more important than ever to consider, given that some are based on learning science and others aren’t.
Hersey: As someone who worries about children being sucked into technology to the exclusion of reality, I find the hybrid options really attractive. Also, a friend of mine, Andrew Bernstein, often points out that, around the globe, there are loads of hungry, broke PhD students, many of whom are more qualified to teach their subjects of specialization than are high-school teachers. He recommends that parents hire them as tutors to teach via Zoom and fill in subjects that homeschool parents don’t feel comfortable teaching.
Frankman: I love this. And, actually, there’s someone building a hub for exactly this. I had Audrey Wisch on my podcast a few months ago. She was studying at Stanford University but dropped out to start a company called Curious Cardinals. She had been connecting friends to tutors in her network and decided to go all-in and create a tool that can do this for anyone, anywhere. She’s creating a vast and diverse network of college students who tutor K-12–level students. Virtual tutoring is awesome. Throughout history, rich people typically have had tutors for their children, and for good reason. It’s not super scalable, but it is super personalized. And now, technology enables students to learn from the best teacher on the planet in any given topic. The market has means for bringing the most competent teachers to the top—and, actually, technology has made aspects of personal tutoring scalable. For instance, Salman Khan is wonderful at teaching math, and he created Khan Academy. Any student on the planet with a Web browser can log on and learn math from Khan via prerecorded lessons; that’s incredible. And I think we’re going to see a lot more of that.
Also, the more you can expose your children to great mentors, coaches, and role models, the better—especially if it’s in person. It’s such an important yet overlooked facet of learning. And it doesn’t always translate well in an online learning environment. We don’t live in our computers; they’re great tools, but we live in the world. Having people who can help your children bridge out into the world—who can help them navigate it and be a role model while doing so—is really important. We all need human connection, too. So, I’m a huge proponent of establishing real connections; it’s one of the most important parts of an education.
Hersey: As a new parent, I’m really grateful for what you’re doing and excited to see where you take it. Where can people follow you?
Frankman: I’m on X.com [formerly Twitter] as @HannahFrankman, and everything is linked from there. The Rebel Educator X account is @RebelEducator. If you’re not on X, you can go to RebelEducator.co. That’s the site with all the articles and the content we’ve created via Rebel Educator. My podcast is The Hannah Frankman Podcast, and it’s available on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube. And one easy way people can help me get this message to more people is by following me on YouTube, which will increase the channel’s visibility. Also, if you liked this conversation, check out the forthcoming episode of my podcast with Craig Biddle, which also goes deep on the philosophy of education.
Hersey: Excellent—thanks so much, Hannah, and best success with this wonderful project!
Frankman: Thanks, Jon!
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