George Mason professor Bryan Caplan’s just released The Case Against Education: Why the Education System is a Waste of Time and Money may sound polemical, but it’s a closely reasoned study, packed with economic analyses.

Kaplan makes a strong case America wastes hundreds of billions of dollars and countless lives by over-investing in an educational system that fails to live up to its promises, by almost any measure.  In other words, what we are doing as Acton parents in experimenting with a new model matters — a lot —  for our children and the world.

Some take-aways:

• The real world and humanistic value of traditional K12 and higher education is abysmal. Probably lower than you think. Close to useless for many students.
• Young people are smart. Most understand traditional education is boring and a waste of time.
• Learning to read, write and do simple math is important. But the real-world value for traditionally taught subjects like foreign languages and social studies is far lower, and in many cases next to nothing.
• However, employers will reward high school and college graduates for the signaling power of a degree. It’s easier for employers to use degrees as a proxy for intelligence and hard work than to risk being sued because you used an IQ test in hiring.

Yet, the rewards of degrees do not come without costs in terms of lost earnings and tuition.  When the costs and benefits are carefully measured, Caplan concludes:

• “Go to high school, unless you are a terrible student.”
• “Go to college only if you are a strong student or a special case.” Special cases include a full scholarship; majoring in a subject like engineering or placing a high value on prospecting for the right spouse.
• “Don’t get a master’s degree unless the stars align.”

Our heroes are different.  Our heroes will be armed with a strong work ethic; a hunger for a calling; a deep understanding of why civilizations rise and fall; real world skills and an armload of evidence from apprenticeship recommendations and portfolios that prove what they can deliver.

However, as parents we mustn’t neglect that for many heroes, the signaling power of a prestigious enough college credential, in the right major, obtained as cheaply as possible, still has value – or needs to be offset by proof of a marketable skill and deep industry knowledge.

My take on The Case Against Education comes from a quick read of a data packed work you could spend months unpacking.  I would welcome the observations of anyone who wants to dive into it more deeply.

Management consultant Margaret Heffernan recently made a case for reducing “pecking orders” in the world that struck me as interesting, incomplete and a tad misleading, with a dash of NPR-ish over celebration of radical egalitarianism thrown in for good measure.  So for those of you focused on studio culture, below are a few observations drawn from work at the Acton MBA and entrepreneurship:

1. Dominance Hierarchies are a fact of nature.

Pecking orders – or more stuffily, dominance hierarchies, seem deeply embedded in our evolutionary nature, from primates to perhaps 300 million years in lobsters.  Yes, it feels good to be at the top of the heap, and in ancient times you got the chance to spread your genes more widely.

2. There are two types of dominance hierarchies – and it matters a lot which one we reinforce.

Dominance hierarchies can be built based on competence and voluntary exchange, leading to the immense wealth and tolerant freedoms we enjoy in free market democracies, or dominance hierarchies can be based on power and prestige, more attractive at first to radical egalitarians because they seem “fairer,” especially if hard work and taking risks is  unappealing, but with a dangerous tendency to deteriorate into totalitarian societies (see the former Soviet Union; pre-capitalist China, Cambodia, Cuba and North Korea for the deadly side effects.)

You need to look no further than the salary distributions on Salary.com to realize that with hard work and a pleasant manner, being in the top 1% of some skill set provides more than enough income for creature comforts kings would have marveled at a century before.  Likewise, in a multi-aged Acton Academy studio we’re blessed by so many competency based “pecking orders” that each Hero can discover and hone a gift that will change the world.  Nearly endless pecking order opportunities, based on competence, in a civil society may be the magic sauce of Acton Academy.

Of course, this is only true if in middle school we can find a way to break up the popularity and prestige based Peter Pan cliques of boys and similar “mean girl” cliques – something we have not learned enough about yet.

3. Human motivation is far more complex than oversimplifying “competition versus cooperation” or denying individual genius.

Heffernan seems to suggest if we just “created more social capital” in organizations and paid less attention to individual genius, the world would be a kinder and better place.  I disagree.  My experience is that successful companies take on the DNA of their founders, and through hard work and luck succeed in the marketplace – usually for a short time before the creative destruction of the market offers customers better or cheaper choices.

In some cases, like investment banking, you are better off with the culture of a pirate ship.  In other industries, at other times, a culture Gandhi could love will prevail.  Motivating humans towards a vision requires a complex mixture of competition, cooperation and tribalism; intrinsically, extrinsically and otherwise encourage as shown by the slide below that summarizes the approximately 100 years of management theory we use to create incentives for our Tribe.

Our secret weapon for the Acton Academy network will be a continue focus on Positive Deviance, sharing clues and experiments, influenced by our own biases and hunches but proven and disproven in studios, until we can invent responses to various cultural challenges.  There will be no cures for human nature, but I’ll be looking to heroes like Juan Bonifasi of AAG, who I consider orders of magnitude ahead of me in these areas.

Lots to read on this – of course – by I’ve found Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life to have some challenging, if politically controversial insights.  Likewise, the work of Nassim Taleb, most recently in Skin in the Game.

Now on to more positive deviance!

Kudos to Launchpadders for pioneering a new way to master a foreign language.

Despite A’s in high school and college Spanish, the title above is courtesy of Google translate.  Transcripts notwithstanding, like most traditional students I never mastered a foreign language and dreaded the classes.

Our Launchpadders — plus two elementary Eagles who have joined the Foreign Language Quest — are choosing a different path.  Without a teacher, they are learning to speak Spanish by  — speaking Spanish.   Armed with tools like Duolingo and Modern States, Launchpadders fearlessly engage with native speaking peers on sites like WeSpeke, accepting a bit of early grammatical stumbling as a way to make friends and learn about different cultures.

How is it going?  Here’s what our customers report:

• I love that we immediately started speaking Spanish.
• I really like how Duolingo lets you move at your own pace.
• My favorite thing has been the launches where we’ve been forced to take ourselves out of our comfort zone with improvisation – in Spanish.
• Benny Lewis’ tools have been super helpful for beginning to “hack” my way to fluency. 

And let’s not forget that Launchpadders who pass the CLEP test at the end of the Foreign Language Quest may earn up to nine hours of college credit.

Viva la revolution!

Our Session Six MS Embracing Life and Facing Death Quest asks: “Is death the final authority in a Hero’s life?”

As someone who recently faced the deaths of a father-figure, a sister and a dear friend, it’s a minefield of uncomfortable thoughts, emotions and questions; hidden lines seldom noted in a world where many die alone, in an empty room full of buzzing machines:

• Social taboos
• Spiritual and existential questions
• Highly personal questions about the transfer of intergenerational wealth.
• Many, many topics seldom broached in polite company.

This morning, our MS launch showed a picture of a 13-year-old, tragically killed this week in a car wreck. The questions: What if this had been you? What three words would you want on your headstone, in what order? Who would read your eulogy and what would you want it to say?  Did we cross the line by making death so personal?

Next week, Eagles will haggle over funeral prices, taking advantage of economic disruptions so they aren’t taken advantage of by unscrupulous operators.  Will we cross the line by mixing money and grief?

A week later, Eagles will role play whether or not to withdraw life-support from a dying parent, with real life intra-family battles over childhood wounds and future wealth transfer.  Will we cross the line by raising questions that could go unasked for another decade?

Late in the Quest, Eagles will visit a hospice, and with permission, discuss life and death with someone who knows his or her time on this earth is nearing an end.  Will we cross the line by asking too much emotional maturity from MS Eagles? 

Eagles and parents may opt out of any topic or challenge; we trust them to draw the right lines for their families.  But important questions, once raised, are seldom forgotten.  That’s why we want heroes intent on fully embracing life to start asking them as soon as possible.

Dr. Gregory House lorded over the fictional Princeton Plainview Hospital as a Sherlock Holmes-like diagnostic genius on the television show House M.D.  Time after time, House would find just the right clue to solve the case; except when he failed and the patient died!

For the last five weeks our Middle School Eagles have stood in the shoes of Dr. House,  diving deeply into subtleties of diagnostic medicine, building models of the various systems of the body (Respiratory; Circulatory; Digestive; Nervous; Endocrine; Skeletal-Muscular and more); while at the same time devouring the latest medical research on a disease of their choosing.

On Friday it was time for the Medical Quest Exhibition, where parents, new Acton Academy owners from around the world and other invited guests became patients in a three-act play addressing: “Who is the ultimate authority of a Hero’s health: you or your doctor?”

Act I: Research Funding Pitches: Each Eagle became a leading medical researcher pitching for funding, describing the latest scientific breakthroughs in a devastating disease like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s.

Pitches were designed for a specific set of funders: National Institute of Health Director Francis Collins; Gates Foundation CEO Susan Hellman; Billionaire medical philanthropist John Huntsman or an individual investor participating through a crowd sourcing website.

The Eagle researcher who captured the percentage of funding from its target audience, represented by parents and other exhibition visitors, would be crowned the winner in each category.

Act II: Bodily System Stories and Displays:  Teams of four to five Eagles chose one of the human body systems and created a work of art (photos; videos or sculptures) to bolster an interactive story telling session about the function and care of that particular system.

Act III: The Medical Diagnosis Challenge: The final challenge was our main event, as teams of Eagle doctors diagnosed patients played by parents and Acton Academy owners who had been armed with difficult cases, subtle symptoms and even a few  false clues.

For the last five weeks our middle school Eagles tackled the same interactive games, videos and simulations used by nurses, doctors and emergency room technicians. Tasks included honing observational skills; practicing patient-centered questioning; exploring common cognitive biases and interpreting blood tests; CAT scans; X-rays and a host of other diagnostic tools, as well as collaborating to convert patient clues and tests into a differential diagnosis – just like Dr. House.

Many of the cases were perplexing: Did the patient have heartburn or was she moments away from a massive heart attack or a pulmonary embolism? Was stiffness in a shoulder a muscle strain or the beginning of septic arthritis? Did fever and stomach pain mean the flu, or the early stages of an Ebola-like epidemic?

Each minute of diagnosis cost $100; each test cost between $150 and $1,500, with an additional charge for an expert interpretation . A correct diagnosis was worth $10,000; if your patient died, the hospital was charged $20,000 in additional insurance fees. The winner would deliver the most effective health care for the lowest cost.

Our mock patients were dramatic, collapsing in pain; fainting and providing a host of subtle clues, some true; others leading to dead ends. The Eagles used well planned protocols and online symptom checkers to sort through aches, pains and test results and come up with a diagnosis.

Then, without warning, the game became much harder.

The lights of the flickered and then, an announcement: “The city has just been struck by a hurricane and our internet access has failed.” Now the Eagles had to rely on old fashioned logic.

A few minutes later, the PA system boomed again: “We’ve received word of a major train wreck. Prepare for the Emergency Room to be swamped. You may no longer see patients one at a time but instead have no more than 30 seconds to triage every injured or ill person.“

Even the best teams were stretched to the limit.

Finally, it was time to bring the exhibition to an end. A satisfied but weary group of middle school and Launchpad Eagles gathered for “lessons learned” and hard earned praise.

Study biology in a textbook? Not our style.  It’s far more powerful and more fun to learn biology through applying 21^st Century Skills you may need in the real world, to solve your own medical challenges.

Our Eagles emerged with a deep appreciation for the skill and dedication of doctors and nurses, and now are armed to become co-creators of a healthier future.

Perhaps a few will become doctors, nurses or medical researchers – all because of a few weeks of hard work, deep concentration and dedicated teamwork – and one putting real world learning to the test.