Schools Are Teaching Kids the Wrong Things — with Ted Dintersmith

Ted Dintersmith, education advocate and author, joins Scott Galloway to argue that American schools aren't broken, they're just optimized for the wrong century. They discuss why chasing test scores is failing kids, what math we should actually be teaching, the growing gender gap in K-12, and why embracing AI in schools may be the most important thing we can do for the next generation. Also, friendly reminder that we're live on Substack. Subscribe at profgmedia.com to get ad-free versions of all our podcasts, the full archive of Scott’s newsletters, and exclusive content including deep dives, livestream conversations, and subscriber Q&As. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Scott Galloway?

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• 0:48Speaker 01

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• 1:19Speaker 02

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• 1:49Scott Galloway?

  Episode 390. 39 is the country code for calling Italy from abroad in 1990. Home Alone was released in theaters. You know, there's nothing more joyous than the sound of a baby laughing. Unless, of course, it's 3 a.m., you're home alone, and you don't have children.

• 2:09Speaker 03

  Go, go, go!

• 2:20Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to the 390th episode of the Prop G Pod. What's happening in today's episode? We speak with Ted Dintersmith, an education advocate and author focused on how schools can better prepare students for the future of work. So we're, we're obviously fascinated with education, specifically higher education, for several reasons. One, it changed my life. It's important. I think it's a really decent exercise, if you feel blessed, to try and reverse engineer your blessings to the things that aren't your fault. And that is, we have a tendency to reverse engineer to all the wonderful attributes that made us successful. It's my grit, it's my character, it's my relationships, you know, all that, all that stuff. And we have a tendency to overlook the things that aren't your fault.

• 3:03Scott Galloway?

  And for me, as I've gotten older, I spend a lot more time thinking about the things that aren't my fault, and then trying to reinvest in those things, such that a bunch of other people can be accidentally prosperous and then credit their character and their credit for their success. But anyways, first and foremost, the thing that I reverse engineer to is the irrational passion for my well-being. My mother, who lived and died a secretary, raised me on her own. I think I'm a confident person, and I think she gave me that anchor every day in implicit and explicit ways, verbal and non-verbal, making me believe that I had value. And then, two, it was the generosity and vision of California taxpayers in the regions

• 3:47Scott Galloway?

  of the University of California, respectively, who built this amazing system, this incredible gift, I would argue, the crown jewel of the greatest state in the Union, California, and that is the University of California, where, when I applied, there was a 74% admissions rate. And basically, if you got Bs in high school and you wanted to go to college, you could go to the University of California in exchange for $1,200 in tuition a year, which is what I paid. So I think a lot about higher education and how we continue to bet on unremarkable kids. And I think that's the whole point of higher education, and it shouldn't be an argument around. The argument around who gets in, which has been a vicious argument for 30, 40 years around affirmative action, is a false flag. It's a distraction. It's not about who gets in, it should be about how many. Let in more gay kids, more trans

• 4:31Scott Galloway?

  kids, more black kids, more white Republicans from red states. Just let in more kids and all this bullshit's gonna go away. You know who doesn't have huge fights over D I and affirmative action? Junior colleges. Because if you show up and you're willing to pay, you get in. And so they don't have this enormous amount of anxiety and dissent at the university level. Because again, we have decided to create a false argument around who gets in as opposed to how, how many. I believe in affirmative action. However, I think a key transformation in education needs to be that we embrace or reembrace affirmative action, but it should be based on color. What color? Money. In sum, your, any additional help

• 5:14Scott Galloway?

  you get should be a function of you coming from, say, the lowest quintile or the lowest two quintiles. If you're in the upper quintile, you do not need any help. Trevor Noah's kids, Tyler Perry's kids do not need help getting into college. Letting in the daughter of a private equity time when he's a billionaire is not diversity. But if we had a drug that we could give to people that would make them less likely to kill themselves, kill other people, less likely to be obese, less likely to engage in self-harm, less likely to get divorced, more likely to run for office, more likely to make double the amount of income they would make if they didn't take that pill, would we hoard that drug? And that's what we're doing. We're hoarding the drug. Because once we're cured, once our cancer's gone away, once we no longer have the measles, we've decided, isn't it cool

• 5:58Scott Galloway?

  to not have measles? So I'd rather more people have measles, because it makes me stand out, being a graduate of Dartmouth, or Cornell, or the University of California, Berkeley. In sum, it's bullshit, and it needs to stop.

• 6:16Scott Galloway?

  So anyways, we hope you enjoy our conversation with Ted Dinter Smith.

• 6:28Scott Galloway?

  Ted, where does this podcast find you?

• 6:29Speaker 04

  I am in Charleston, South Carolina.

• 6:32Scott Galloway?

  Let's buzz right into it.

• 6:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:34Scott Galloway?

  So you have a Stanford PhD in engineering. You were a top-ranked venture capitalist in the late 90s, and you've spent the last 15 years immersed in the world of education. Give us the state of play or how you would describe American education right now.

• 6:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, people will say it's not working. It actually is working really well. It's just with an obsolete model. You know, and so we still adhere to the model that goes back to 1893. And so that model was designed to equip, you know, young kids with rote skills and intentionally erode their creativity and curiosity and audacity and agency. And our decision, which I think was quite faithful, was as technology started to really shift things and move us out of the, you know, the industrial era to the innovation era, we just doubled down on obsolete. And so, you know, so it's, it's working in terms of its goal. It just has the wrong goal.

• 7:28Scott Galloway?

  Why was that the right goal then and the wrong goal now?

• 7:30Speaker 04

  Well, when I, I'm older than you are, but when I got out of school, I'd say 99% of the jobs in the economy were rote jobs. You know, you, you worked on a factory line for the rest of your life or you were handling insurance claims or something like that. So it was largely a rote job economy with fairly simple, you know, citizenship demands, you know, watch NBC or CBS or whatever. And so that model was actually a great fit. I mean, that model is what helped America do so well for decade after decade and build a really strong middle class. It's just as, you know, an area you know really well. As technology got better and better and better, following its exponential growth curve, things change, right? And, and now, you know, if you are an adult,

• 8:13Speaker 04

  particularly a young adult, just good at doing whatever you're assigned, we're already seeing that. Those young adults are struggling to find their way forward, you know, because that's what AI does perfectly. And so when you think about what the school model tries to eliminate and what is really needed today, you know, they're at complete opposite ends of the spectrum, you know? So who's rewarded? You know, if you're creative, if you're entrepreneurial, if you're bold, you know, if you're a proactive problem solver or opportunity creator.

• 8:44Speaker 04

  That's what we need. And I admire schools. I write about schools that where a teacher will do that, or even a school will do that. But it goes against a model that says, we're going to define success with these high stakes math and reading scores.

• 8:59Scott Galloway?

  So I was a bit surprised that you would say that it's it's been working. I mean, everything I hear about education, and it might be, I always feel like experts and papers have a vested interest in catastrophizing a bit because it just makes it sound more compelling and more of a call to action. But nearly half of American high school seniors are testing at below basic levels in math and reading, historic lows across all of K through 12. 12th grade reading scores today are 10 points lower than in 1992. And not a single state improved in eighth grade math from 2019 to 2024. How do you interpret these numbers? What's behind this decline?

• 9:39Speaker 04

  Yeah. And what's being tested? And how do we interpret the decline? Right? Let's talk about that. But to the first point, I feel like it worked really well from 1893 to about 60 years ago. So there was a glorious period where America's more or less sore, not for everybody, but as a nation, those were glory years. You know, today, you go back to, you know, a nation risk report, 1983, sounded alarm bells about our education system. That sparked more test prep, more drills, more worksheets, no child left behind in 2002, even more drills and worksheets, you know, race to the top, take it up another level. It's been the all consuming goal of our schools, get better math and reading

• 10:22Speaker 04

  scores. And as you say, they've been flat to down. And, and so why is that happening? I think it's happening because teachers are demoralized, kids are bored, and we've dumbed it down so that the reading is, you know, take on some boring passage and train for a multiple choice question about signs of author bias. So you look at the, the data on high school kids. I mean, most high school kids hate to read. You know, it's like, how are you going to get great reading scores with kids feeling like reading is a You know, about the same as cleaning the toilet or something. And then with math, and I wrote this book Aftermath to go right at the issue. You know, everything about the world of math has changed in the last 50 years. And what I go back to, you know, in high school, I was the last wave of kids using the slide rule.

• 11:07Speaker 04

  I go back to when people in the workplace needed to do things like factor polynomials by hand. Well, now that's all subsumed by computers. And we still do that in school. We not only still do it, it's mandatory, it's multiple years of kids' time in school. It's super high stakes. It largely serves to rank and sort kids and punish millions. And it's all towards skills that computers do excellently tied to math that adults just don't use. And I could rip through most of what's covered in high school. And if there are any listeners who say, oh, yeah, I'm a, I'm this morning, I needed to take the cube root of minus 27. Or, you know, like, I'm going to do well today because I can sort through a piecewise linear function.

• 11:52Speaker 04

  Or, yeah, the chain rule is going to make my day. You know, it's like, wait a minute, you know, like, and I think that's a, that gross mismatch between what we not only insist on in school, but devote thousands of hours to versus a world that doesn't care about that anymore, but cares about all these really powerful, interesting math ideas, ideas that absolutely shape our lives. You know, the more we do that, the longer we persist, the more kids leave school, you know, with really dismal prospects and hollowed out sense of purpose.

• 12:26Scott Galloway?

  I read that there's been a lot of attention around, I think it's the state of Mississippi, that have seen a huge ascent in their test scores. Can you speak more about what they appear to be doing right?

• 12:39Speaker 04

  Well, one of the drivers, and there are several, I mean, first, they got an immediate boost because they put a gate after third grade, you know, so you couldn't go to fourth grade unless you could pass reading test at third grade. So you sort of basically strip out the bottom 10% of test scores. And then your fourth grade scores get a boost, and that happened. And, and I, in looking at the data, they, they Kind of flatlined against the standard of the test. They've increased in state rankings because many states have actually declined. And I think they're probably doing, you know, I've visited every state on a trip I took, but that was 10 years ago. I suspect two things. I suspect they figured out some things like, you know, the science of reading before other schools figured that out.

• 13:24Speaker 04

  But also, like, if you make one thing, you're all in focus. If you get all sorts of pats on the back for a reading score boost for fourth graders, then that's what you're going to do. And if you just direct all in focus on those two measures, you know, you would hope you'd get some improvement, and they've gotten some. But I actually think, and this sparked me to write the book, is, you know, I feel like there's a general sense of futility in the way people deal with these scores. You know, because it's a cardinal scale that comes from the National Center of Education Statistics, and the scale runs from zero to 500. And so we'll see swings of like three or four points on a scale of zero to 500. And we impute the most significant of consequence to that.

• 14:09Speaker 04

  And when I interviewed the people who designed those tests, you know, it's like you realize, I think a lot of the people in these positions of authority and power are pretty math confused themselves. And, and I think the people who report on it don't know how to make sense of it. And then you'll see, and this is something most people are familiar with, you say kind of a cheap data visualization trick. So if you have a four-point swing on a scale of zero to 500, show on a compressed scale of, you know, 10 range, 10-point range, or 20-point range. You can make three points look catastrophic or miraculous if you show three points on a 10-point range instead of a zero to 500-point range. So I'm, I pay attention to the scores.

• 14:50Speaker 04

  I feel like our testing, if we used it thoughtfully and diagnostically, would yield some information. But that's what we chase. And that's how we measure the success of a school, or a district, or a state, or even a kid. And my issue with that is, look at what's happened. You know, like nationally, those scores have been flat for years. It's hard to find teachers who want to enter the profession. So we've made that profession, you know, a real torture chamber. And kids are bored. And when you look at what we would really love, I mean, don't we want kids who come out of high school just loving to read, you know, picking up a book like your book and saying, like, I can't put it down. Yet when you ask these kids, whether it's on a, you know, sample study basis or anecdotally,

• 15:35Speaker 04

  when I travel over the country, they say, no, I don't really like reading. A lot of kids in high school don't read a book cover to cover.

• 15:42Scott Galloway?

  So speaking of books, Aftermath, The Life-Changing Math That Schools Want to Teach You, the book, your most recent book, you argue that math schools teaching is almost entirely useless in adult life. And I relate to this because while my kids can do integers and calculus, they can't. They don't understand, you know, straight on their credit card. What's your proposed solution? Is it some sort of adulting class or specific types of math?

• 16:06Speaker 04

  Well, you think about how many hours. So your kids, my kids are older, but my kids, when they were in high school, anybody's kids, you know, it's not an elective or a course. You know, basically, all kids in America are spending three to four full-time years on that. So let's say 2,500 hours. Think about what we could do with that 2,500 hours. I mean, one of the things about my book that's been gratifying, you know, some of the people who got advance copies sent me a note back saying, I want to read more of your book, but I can't get it away from my 13-year-old. You know, like, like these math ideas, like how you estimate something, or what an algorithm is, or what does it mean to optimize, or how do you think about decisions in a creative and logical way? I mean, they're not graduate school topics.

• 16:49Speaker 04

  These are things that get young kids excited about math. And yet, schools don't get to it. And the reason they don't get to it is those are complex nuanced things that beg for creativity that don't lend themselves to multiple choice, one right answer standardized exams. And so I think it's fair to say, it's one of my criticisms, is that the story of American education is we teach what's easy to test, not what's important to learn.

• 17:15Scott Galloway?

  We'll be right back after a quick break.

• 17:21Scott Galloway?

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• 18:05Scott Galloway?

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• 18:50Scott Galloway?

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• 19:34Scott Galloway?

  That's upwork.com/prog to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's upwork.com/prog. upwork.com/prog.

• 19:49Scott Galloway?

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• 20:34Scott Galloway?

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• 20:58Scott Galloway?

  We talk a lot about, I mean, K through 12 education is just a subject that keeps coming up. I want to talk about one that divide between rich and poor, public and private. I went to a high school, university high school, a public school. And when I went, it was about a third, a third, a third, a third white, a third black, a third Latino. And now it's about 90-plus percent Latina. Basically, anyone with any money seems to have abandoned the public school system in certain parts of the country. And my understanding is it's more than just economics and funding. That Democrats have thrown or have been accused of throwing a lot of money at the

• 21:42Scott Galloway?

  problem and the problem continues to get worse. And then a lot of the data I've seen is that it's more about parental involvement than it is or engagement in the school than it is about resources. Can you talk a little bit about the socioeconomic impact as it relates to public schools and the public-private dynamic over the last several decades?

• 22:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, I visit a lot of schools. As I mentioned, in 2015 and 16, I went to every state, visited 200 schools. And that ended up in my book, What School Could Be. An example that sort of makes the broader point is in Mississippi, I visit one school, the near high in Jackson. The building should be condemned. I mean, the ceiling is falling apart. The playground, it has glass, broken glass all over. And then you go like 12 miles away to Ridgefield, and it's like three football, you know, a major football stadium, two practice

• 22:35Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, a lazy river.

• 22:37Speaker 04

  Yeah. And so I do think that, you know, while we put a lot of focus on Brown versus Board as a major Supreme Court decision, you know, maybe more important was Rodriguez versus San Antonio, where we basically said, local property taxes can be the main driver for school funding. And so the kids that need the least get the most. The kids that get the most are the ones that are least needy. And then the parents do weigh in. And so it sort of reinforces. And so you look at the overall flow, and it's very hard to see how kids in more challenging circumstances might look at this as a fair shake. Now, the thing I find, right, is that one of the things that I think amplifies the differences is

• 23:18Speaker 04

  that we have made schools so darn boring. You know, you got to do this just because you're assigned to do it. And when that's the case, the rich families get tutors and they bribe their kid with an iPhone. And they they've got schools that have really compelling teachers to do it. And it's very difficult for the kids in poorer circumstances to keep up. What I do find, Scott, is that when you flip it, and when you actually ask kids to take on open-ended challenges, Amazing things happen because by and large, the well-off, micromanaged kids sort of like freeze up like, like you're not making it clear what I've got to do to get an A or their parents will call like, lay out the steps. I need to know what my kid's got to do to

• 23:59Speaker 04

  get an A. And these kids in tougher circumstances just rise to the challenge. And so I feel like of all the levers we could pull, if we shifted more of the focus in schools to things that kids believe are important and can articulate why, help them go deep and fast on that, help them develop skills in the process that help them accomplish something they're proud of, you would do a lot more to close the achievement gap than we've done in, you know, 40 years of chasing data where the scores are flat and the achievement gap doesn't close.

• 24:33Scott Galloway?

  We talk a lot about on the show about the gap, the educational gap between boys and girls. The boys, the ones we leveled the playing field, perfectly just girls is glued by boys and seven and 10 high school vallektorians are girls. Some of that has been assigned to just the biological difference that boys mature faster than girls, but also that there's just a predominant number of people who are girls in women in K through 12. Talk a little bit about the gender disparity in K through 12. And if it's as stark as I've been led to believe, and if you have any ideas on how to close that gap.

• 25:16Speaker 04

  Well, when I went to school, there was a lot of angst over when you started reading, you know, a lot of, I'm not even sure when I read, you know, it may have been second grade or third grade. There's a study that I think it was called the pigmentarian effect study that's worth noting here, which is that they did this and replicated it. So it's been verified, but they would take kids at random and they'd go to teachers and say, you know, you've got this kid in your classroom. And even though their past academic performance has been pretty ordinary, they actually have unbelievable talent and we think you're going to unleash it. And then the boom, boom, boom, over the course of the year, that kid just soars. Now, of course, those kids were picked at random, but because there were different perceptions, different views built in, in terms of the adult perspective on

• 26:00Speaker 04

  the kid that rippled through, you know, young boys' brains deliver, develop at a slower pace, right? And we do this testing from the very earliest ages. You know, you can go to Manhattan. And parents are paying for Wesley test tutors so they can get their kid in the right pre K school, you know, it's nuts, right? But but you'll start to get this message early where the boys aren't doing as well on the drills and worksheets. They get this sort of sense of like, yeah, you know, you're not as gifted as this, the girl in the desk next to you. And that just ripples on through the system. That said, I think that it's there, nobody wins in this, right? I think girls are more responsible. They're more vigilant about their assignments.

• 26:44Speaker 04

  They they do far better in school. You know, all this angst about diversity and equity in colleges, you know, if you ask a college admissions officer, if you were gender blind in your admissions, what would your entering class look like? Nobody's willing to say, but they tell me 75% female. So so we may go after race or ethnicity or something, but that gender difference is enormous. But I'd also say that boys have different ways to react and some just peel out and they are in a world of hurt going forward. But others just say, screw it, right? They go rogue and they don't take school that seriously and they sort of dodge the meat grinder of school that erases that creativity and that entrepreneurial, you know, initiative.

• 27:26Speaker 04

  And so you look at, girls do way better in school. Girls ought to be three quarters of our college, you know, student bodies. But then you look at the world of entrepreneurship and I think that's for a lot of reasons. I don't want to oversimplify it, but it is heavily male dominated. And most of the guys that do really well, and I backed a lot and you'd be a perfect example, kind of just chucked it in school. They just said, like, I'm not into this, right? And I've got enough self-confidence to feel like I can come through, but I don't like being told I've got to do something I don't see a point to. And and how many of them, you know, that's the irony, right? So many of the people that dropped out of school are the same ones that want more kids to, you know, to take calculus in high school.

• 28:08Speaker 04

  It's like, wait a minute, like you sort of went rogue. I think that actually proved to your advantage, you know, like, why don't we? Begin to think about what's conditions led you to run with your entrepreneurial nature. How can we foster and develop that in kids? Because, you know, it's there in every kid. It's not a girl or a boy thing. You know, you hang around with five year olds. They are like bursting with, you know, curiosity and creativity and they'll do almost anything. They don't mind failing and failing and failing. It's just the more we say buckle down and do what school tells you to do, the more we drive out of kids certain characteristics and reinforce others. And as I say, that model made all sorts

• 28:50Speaker 04

  of sense in 1950. And I think we're in very difficult times now. And I think differentially, because of that latency in the development of the of brains among boys and girls, there's a differential impact that does a lot of damage, I think in both cases, right? I think we're losing a lot of great female entrepreneurs because of this. And I think we're losing a lot of boys through the system that they just don't finish, you know, and it's just like, and it's heartbreaking.

• 29:17Scott Galloway?

  What's interesting is your view is a little bit different than the public discourse I'm hearing. There's a lot of talk about going back to the basics. Look at Mississippi and Louisiana. Let's return to the basics. And what you're saying is there needs to be an evolution, not a devolution, not a return to the basics, but we need to kind of unlock the beast. And I say the beast in a positive way. We need to unlock the creative animal. How do you do that? How do you, especially at scale, recognize that not everyone is going to go to Stanford and going to, you know, get a master's in engineering? Two thirds of our kids are not going to end up with traditional liberal arts college degrees. There's a path for the kid going to college, right? You go to college, you get a degree,

• 30:02Scott Galloway?

  you interview with one of the 50 firms that come to the career services center and you think, oh, my roommate wants to be an investment banker, so I'll be an investment banker. I don't like it. I go to business. I had a path. And what you're suggesting is that especially in entrepreneurship, there is an alternative path for the rogue. And what's interesting, what you said about, you know, the rebel has a role in this world. I think I read somewhere that the Baker Scholars, the top performing academic scholars at Harvard, actually 20, 30 years on weren't doing as well as everyone else. I guess the question is, how do you institutionalize and scale

• 30:45Scott Galloway?

  this ability to unlock the creative beast in our educational institutions?

• 30:52Speaker 04

  You know, and that study was verified. And I have to say, as a venture guy for years, I loved to back people who had gone rogue on school. You know, I avoided, you know, like somebody said to me, Exeter, Princeton, Harvard Business School, I'd say like, go get a job at McKinsey. You know, because again, it's not that they're not talented. It's not that they're not hardworking. They are. But, but going through that process and jumping through the hoops put in front of you isn't conducive to a mindset that says, I'm going to go rogue and change the world. So how do you do it? I'd say three things. One is you don't have to change. I mean, I spent 15 years hoping that schools would be very innovative and it's proven to be difficult. But I say, you don't have to change everything. But what if we said each kid coming through school

• 31:36Speaker 04

  by the end of their school year would create a capstone project that shows them at their best, you know, something that they viewed that would be an important problem to solve or opportunity to create, where they would be learning important skills in the process, trying it, failing, trying it, failing, trying it, failing. But by May, damn it all, they have something they could display and the school does an entire display. And we show that in our, in my first film, Most Likely to Succeed, where these kids are bursting with pride and the adults are coming and saying like, wow, you did that. Like if we did that, we'd start to at least nourish the entrepreneurial aspect of all of our kids. Some will do really well, some won't, but I think they would all benefit from that. That would be the first point. The second thing is to really rethink accountability.

• 32:20Speaker 04

  And we talked about that a few minutes ago. When we obsess about these very narrow measures of math and reading scores, and I see this over and over and over again, it pushes aside innovation. You know, like, we would like our kid to do X, but that may take some hours away from drilling on irrational numbers or something. And then, we have a film out, so I've been busy, but I've got the new book out, Aftermath, but I also have a film out called Multiple Choice that shows, and it's fascinating. I mean, I do these films, they're not cheap to do, but I visited this school, a public school in Winchester, Virginia. I just love what they're doing. I just, when I got left there, I said, "We're gonna make a film about this," because mainstream public school,

• 33:03Speaker 04

  brilliantly, they create something they call the Innovation Center. Career-based learning across a whole range of skills, you know, from plumbing to carpentry to welding to cybersecurity to healthcare to AI to digital media. But the key, and the reason I made the film, is this is important for all kids to do, not those kids. And so you have this center that almost serves like a microcosm of national service. So you might be really good at 10 things, and I might be bad at all those 10 things, but maybe I'm good at one thing you're not good at. And we're side by side. And suddenly, we both develop some appreciation for the ways we're talented, the quite distinctive ways we're talented. And they build those skills, by the way, based on what the local economy needs. So

• 33:48Speaker 04

  suddenly, they're developing a pipeline of kids that come into their community. Some go away to college, because all kids have to do it. They're not penalized for welding instead of AP chemistry. So the college kids actually benefit, but the ones that go directly to the workforce, which in their cases, half, have explored careers, developed skills, and they're off to a running start. And I think we've sort of convinced ourselves, and it's been a colossal mistake, that there's either the college academic path or the career workforce path. Not only are they different, but one is way better than the other. You know, and you look at the college signing days and the pennants and the, you know, I mean,

• 34:27Speaker 04

  I was a big supporter of Barack and Michelle Obama well, but I used to just almost break my heart when it would be college signing day, you know, you can do it. Every kid, you know, and a lot of kids just, they're not academically inclined or they find their passion in different ways. And it's like, if we respected all these paths and if kids, I give this, I use this video in my talks, we didn't do it and the video production quality is terrible, but a guy named Woody Flowers, I don't know if you met Woody, but he co-founded First Robotics with Dean Kamen and he taught at MIT for 45 years and became convinced, I have to say this slowly because people don't believe me, Woody became convinced that MIT graduates

• 35:10Speaker 04

  had learned very little science and engineering. And to make his point, graduation day, caps and gowns, world's most prestigious engineering institution in the world, we're proud graduates, they go up to all these grads and they hand them a light bulb, wire and battery and say, can you light up the light bulb? And these kids are like, of course, like, wait a minute, why are you bothering me with something so pedestrian on this big day? And then they can't light up the light bulb. And, and the point I make is had those kids along the way shattered an electrician or done a summer internship with an electrician, they'd be way better MIT engineering students. And other kids might go on to be electricians that do incredibly important work to hold their community together and everybody else would at least know when the power goes out

• 35:55Speaker 04

  at their house, here's what we do about it, right? And so that, that sense of career over there, get on a bus, you're stigmatized, this is your consolation prize, college, yes, bingo, you did it. I think that's been very destructive to the way our nation moves ahead. And I think, quite frankly, incredibly destructive to the Democratic Party because that Democratic Party has been for years, of course, you need a college degree to be a first-class citizen. And of course, if it doesn't work out, taxpayers should cover the cost. And I'm not against college, I'm just in favor of exposing kids during those precious free years of high school to gain experience across a range of career areas, to understand

• 36:37Speaker 04

  what it means to learn things that are tied to real world impact and to make better choices as 18-year-olds.

• 36:43Scott Galloway?

  It sounds like you're a big proponent of vocational programming.

• 36:46Speaker 04

  I would say, well, first, I love calling it innovation. You know, vocational is such a stigma. I think, I think it's important for all kids. And I think, I think because that's where the learning gets real. Now, in my case, you know, it's a personal thing for me. So I grew up, my dad dropped out of high school to fight in World War II, discharged with a nervous breakdown, never went back to high school, kept us afloat as a carpenter. Was always kind of looked down on. It's like, you know, no high school degree, no college degree. But, you know, like you still go back to that neighborhood. He did all the work for the local church convent. He built family rooms and porches for, for, he was a great citizen, hardworking dad, you know, doing an honorable profession.

• 37:31Speaker 04

  When I was in high school back then, we still had to take shop. Here's what saved me. Like, had my shop grade counted, my class rate would have just dropped through the floor. I did not get any of those genes from my dad. I am terrible at that. But being around him, I really appreciated the fact that the way he was really talented had nothing to do with school, had nothing to do with standardized tests. But it was impressive. It wasn't something I was good at, but it certainly wasn't something I should look down on. And having seen other people around him who did, I feel like we're just being grossly unfair to people whose talents lie more in a hands-on profession. And so, yes, I'm a fan of it. And it's not to say schools should be all about career.

• 38:17Speaker 04

  But I feel like if a kid spends 18 years, you know, well, 12 years at school or 14 years, 16, whatever, how many years of school? If they leave and they don't have a sense of purpose and a hireable skill, I think we've sort of let them down. That's a lot of years to make sure they feel some sense of purpose in their life and at least have that safety net of knowing I'm really good at something that could help me move forward with a career I find fulfilling.

• 38:45Speaker 04

  We'll be right back.

• 38:53Speaker 02

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• 39:52Scott Galloway?

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• 41:01Scott Galloway?

  We're back with more from Ted Dintersmith.

• 41:06Scott Galloway?

  Ever since I've been in education, we've been predicting the end of higher education or a massive disruption. And every year, the industrial higher education complex gets stronger. What, any thoughts about, is there an upcoming disruption? And if, if there is, is it from AI or something else?

• 41:28Speaker 04

  Well, you know, you go back to, and I have a high opinion of Clayton Christensen, but what was it 20 years ago when he predicted the demise of higher ed and it's rolling? Yeah, he was wrong. And, you know, I think a few things. I would love to see higher ed be more innovative. You know, I, you know, and I'd go back. I mean, I got a lot out of college. I went to a public college in Virginia. But when I got my senior year, the tuition for the year was 250 bucks. You know, like my summer job, we had similar, we both worked at grocery stores for summer jobs. But, you know, my summer job, I made enough to cover tuition, room and board for my last year of college. Yeah. And so that ratio is really unfavorable now. You can no longer, even for a public college, a kid

• 42:11Speaker 04

  can't in a summer job unless they're an AI consultant or something. But if you just work a standard summer job, you're going to still be way underwater. I think you're going to see a lot of the, you know, we tend to just say higher ed as though it's one universal basket of schools offering similar experiences for their kids. You know, I'm a big fan. I don't know if you've read any of Paul Tough's books, but Paul is a very thoughtful guy and wrote a book called The Inequality Machine. And so where you teach or the Ivy League schools, their budget per student year to take care of and educate those students is six digits, you know, that, you know, they charge 80K and they spend 100, 110, 120K. There are a lot of colleges where that budget per student year is like 2,500 bucks.

• 42:57Speaker 04

  And I think those are very vulnerable today. And what I'd love to see for the colleges that really do a great job for their kids, I love to see them expand the student body size. You know, like, why is selectivity such an important factor, other than it flows into the US News and World Report? But wouldn't it be great if these colleges said over the next five years, we're going to accept 10x the number of students? I think that would be interesting. They certainly could hire great faculty for it, and they've got the money. And I do like, when I first started working in Boston, you know, to be really direct, Northeastern was sort of like a third-tier college. And now it's unbelievably hard to get into. And I just love what they're doing, right?

• 43:39Speaker 04

  You know, five years instead of four, two to two and a half years out in the real world in co-ops where you're often making money. And kids leave with a real sense of what they want to do and a great job path. But they also have a really strong liberal arts program. So it's not, again, career only. But it's sort of like that connecting learning to the real world. And so I think there are real opportunities there. But I do feel like we send such a bad message. You know, you walk around college campuses, right? And they're like, kids will complain because they have to share a bathroom with three other kids. I mean, when I went to college, you know, like, there were an entire hallway all went to one bathroom, you know, like, and it wasn't plush, and it wasn't cushy. And I think we send a message to these kids, you've made it.

• 44:24Speaker 04

  You know, a school I visited and wrote about is in Washington State, Evergreen College. I mean, it's bare bones. You know, like, their campus is not-

• 44:32Scott Galloway?

  UCLA in the 80s.

• 44:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:34Scott Galloway?

  The whole place should have been condemned. It was, but it was $400 a quarter. I'll take it. As long as there was beer, I mean, we're fine.

• 44:42Speaker 04

  Evergreen does a great job with its kids, and they've produced a number of outstanding, you know, graduates, and it's very affordable. And also, it's very easy to get into. And so I think that we need to make some changes. But I think, I do think, you know, and I think we're mostly in agreement on this. I mean, if you can go to college, not go into enormous debt, you know, actually you have a sense of what you want to get out of it, you know, like- Those are great years, you know, right? If you don't like academics, or you know, it's just not for you, or you have a real passion for something else, I think we need to celebrate that path as well. I do think that this, this whole mantra of you've got to go to college, no matter what it takes.

• 45:26Speaker 04

  I go to some of these colleges, the more mid and low tier colleges where, you know, a certain time of year, every lawn is plastered with, you know, sign up for FAFSA, you know, renew your student loans. And so many people are just dealing with student loan debt they're never going to get out of. And because we told them, this is your ticket to success. And it can be, but it is not a guaranteed ticket to success, that's for sure.

• 45:50Scott Galloway?

  So let's talk about kind of magic wand test. Two or three policies you could implement that you think would change higher education or, or just education for the better. What would you like to see happen?

• 46:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, I would say first, I would say put weight in terms of course requirements and graduation on real things you create and invent and stick with it until you've done something you're proud of and less on multiple choice exams. So I would start looking for authentic portfolios of progress, of impact, and make that at least part of what we expect kids to do through school. That'd be the first thing. The second thing is, I think it's grossly irresponsible today to forbid kids from using AI. You know, like, I don't think it should be in all classes, but I think if a kid spends 12 years in, you know, in school, 14, whatever, however many years they, they spend, a kid

• 46:46Speaker 04

  that comes out of school really good at using AI can create or pursue almost any career they want. And a kid that can't, I think is going to be hurting. So we can do that, right? And we don't have to teach them, we just have to let them use it. But I'll give you an example, I give a guest lecture every year to, you know, a very well-known public college, about a hundred juniors and seniors. And, and two months ago, I asked them, how many of you consider yourself today to be really good at AI, to, to be able to use AI to make yourself and those around you more productive? Hundred? Nobody. I said, no, no, no, wait, I'm not here. Like, this isn't a witch hunt. I actually hope everybody holds your hand up. So let's do this again. Because by the way, this is

• 47:27Speaker 04

  going to be really important. Still, no one. I mean, you know, like, my, my head's exploding. And I just explained to them, you can spend your next four months here, or 16 months here, or, you know, 28 months here, trying to eke out a point one or point two increase in your GPA, or allocate time so you get really good at using AI, whether it has the blessing of your prof or not. And the difference is going to be enormous, because if you do the first one, no one's going to care. And if you get good at using AI, write your own ticket. I got so many thank, I mean, how many college kids write thank you notes? No one, right? I got this whole bundle of thank you notes from these kids, who, somewhat to my amazement, said, I never really thought of that. You know, like, okay, so that would

• 48:11Speaker 04

  be my second one. And then the third is, I think, investing a lot more money in our teaching force. You know, a good friend of mine is a guy named Posi Solberg. He wrote Finnish lessons. He architected all the changes in Finland. And interestingly, you asked Posi, what made all the progress in Finland possible? It was a budget crisis. You know, the oil revenue tanked, they were under the gun, and they had to make a choice. You know, we could do everything sort of half-assed. Or we could put our dollars on data, or we could put our dollars on teacher training. We can either have more data, tracking how our kids are failing on goals that don't make sense, or we could put it into making our teachers amazing. They shut down a bunch of the colleges of education. There's a joke

• 48:53Speaker 04

  in Finland, you know, three people going to the bar, a doctor, a lawyer, and a teacher. And the bartender asks the doctor, why are you a doctor? And so I didn't get into, didn't get into the school of education. And asks the lawyer, why are you a lawyer? Why? They turned me down, so I'm a lawyer. But, you know, it's like, our teachers, we, we just wail on them, right? We, I mean, it's just heartbreaking. And, and it ripples down. When I ask teachers in schools today, what drew you to the profession? It is often, my parent did, often the mother. And then I say to them, would you encourage your child to teach? And they say, nope, nope. And I'm living that. I've got a 27-year-old daughter who does teach. And I mean, like, when I track how her hours are, and how little she's paid,

• 49:38Speaker 04

  I'm not gonna, I hope she doesn't watch this podcast, because I'm thrilled, but, but I'm like, wow, it's a good thing she's incredibly frugal, because no one could live on that salary.

• 49:48Scott Galloway?

  It's hard to argue against paying our teachers more. But we live in an economy that's supply and demand in a labor force. And is there a teacher shortage? Because at the end of the day, at some point, if they're not paid well enough, people aren't going to go into the profession and they're going to have to raise the compensation. So in sum, as long as people are willing to teach for low salaries, you're going to keep your salaries low. Do you? I ask this generally as a question, not as a comment. What are the employment and participation trends in teachers across public schools?

• 50:22Speaker 04

  It's grim. I mean, the pipeline shriveled up. There are a lot of openings. You know, so there is, I think anybody in that world would say there's an acute shortage of teachers. And it's just, we've made it very unattractive. You know, if you're not on this page on October 19th, we'll wrap your knuckles. You know, I'm a supporter of, and I've visited several times. There's this National Teachers Hall of Fame in the middle of nowhere in Kansas, Emporia, Kansas. And I, when I went all over the country, my wife and I are driving on a highway and we see this sign, National Teachers Hall of Fame. I didn't even know it existed. We just said like, turn the car, drove off, went and visited, met the woman who ran it.

• 51:03Speaker 04

  And I've been back several times and they've been, you know, unbelievably great in every respect. The museum itself, like compared to, you know, Canton, Ohio, or Cooperstown, New York, I mean, this is dinky, right? It's one little room, but at least it's there. But Scott, you go up on a hill, there's a knoll and a little chapter, and there are these obelisks. And the obelisk have the name of all the educators who've given their lives to protect and defend their kids from a shooter. And they're raising money. I just gave them the grant to finish it, but they have to put a whole new obelisk. And, you know, it's 200 teach, you know, like, and the point I say is, we trust them with the lives of our kids, but we don't trust them with their lesson plans.

• 51:48Speaker 04

  And how, you know, like, if, nobody likes to be scripted every minute of the day. Nobody likes to fear that if they say not quite the right thing, that some crazy parent will dox them on social media. You know, I don't know, you know, it's like, like this is the foundation of our country, right? Strong education is the key to a successful democracy. And if we get it right, things fall in place. And if we botch it up, things fall apart. And I feel like we're 40 years into the botch up zone with this because the world's racing ahead and we stay stuck in time, which is why I wrote the book Aftermath. I think it just is perfect, right? It says,

• 52:28Speaker 04

  thousands of hours on math that no adult uses, at the same time, never getting to the math ideas that define our lives, in ways that tell kids, yeah, we don't have an answer to your question of when will I ever use it? There really is no point in this, other than it gives us a nice way to rank and sort you, but do it anyway. And by the way, your goal is to out compete the people next to you. And then we say, and, and wow, they're disillusioned and they leave school with no sense of purpose and most of them feel wailed on. You know, like, it's not okay, right? And I wish it weren't like that. I mean, I'd be like traveling and having fun. I mean, like, I did fine in venturing, like, you know, like, but, but I just feel like if you, once you know

• 53:11Speaker 04

  that, you just say, darn, sorry about that. Um, you know, we got to, those who know have to speak out. And, and, you know, that's what I try to do because I, these kids, I mean, you look at these eight, 10 year old kids, they, they kind of look up at you, you just know they, they're trusting the adults to make good decisions for them. And I don't think we are.

• 53:32Scott Galloway?

  Last question. After learning everything you've learned about education, how does it impact your role as a father and what you try to teach your kids? I mean, a lot of education, or the pretext or the context or the pillars for them succeeding in school happen at home. What advice would you have for parents in terms of what happens at home, helping set them up for success in, in the classroom?

• 54:00Speaker 04

  Well, I generally don't talk much about my own kids, but I've got a 29 year old son and a 27 year old daughter that in some ways are a microcosm of what we talked about. You know, our daughter loved school, loved the ideas, did a lot of other things besides study, but, but it just was easy for her. And so you know, you look at her and you say, you know, she did incredibly well through the school process. Our son, from about grade three or four, just hated it. And mostly, he hated having

• 54:29Speaker 04

  Being told what to do, you know, there was just something about this is what you have to do that that he just didn't respond to. And so he, you know, he spent a few weeks in college and just pulled the ripcord and, you know, sort of bootstrapped his way up to to creating and directing music videos. And, you know, he's done things for the Grammys, things for the college football. I mean, like he he's bootstrapped his way up, but He's done well. Yeah, he's done fine. But but I think, and my advice to parents is this, kids will tell you what works for them. Kids have their interests, understand that. But I know with my son, if I had waged war and beat the bejesus out of him to get a slightly higher GPA, our

• 55:11Speaker 04

  relationship would be broken. He probably would have at best turned one B minus into a B or something. And and I think he would have gotten a drumbeat of somehow, people didn't admire him, you know, people didn't respect him. So I say to parents, I mean, I think it's easy, right? Do you care more about the decal on the back of your car? Or do you care more about helping your kid find their lane and supporting the heck out of them? And most parents will tell me, of course, all I want is for my kid to be happy. A lot of parents exact act in the exact opposite way. They just like, you know, I I reconnected with my high school. And so I went to a public high school in Northern Virginia. I gave

• 55:53Speaker 04

  a very controversial graduation speech. It was so controversial, I was booed by the audience. And when I went to school the next day, they called the police to arrest me. So that wasn't my maybe my best moment in high school. But they approached me, I was giving a talk at a conference, and a bunch of people from that high school came up to me. They had seen my work, my films, and read some of my books. And they brought me a framed picture of me from the yearbook. And that was kind of cool. But I've gone back there. And Interestingly, one of the teachers had the kids watch, you know, my first film, Most Likely to Succeed, and read some of my book, What School Could Be. And then each of these kids gave talks to their classmates, to their teachers, to parents, and to the principal.

• 56:36Speaker 04

  Thirty-six kids, not one said, "School is a source of joy for me." I mean, many were in tears. And at the end, the principal said, like, "We, I just have to ask, how do we let this happen?" And I say some things, so you have a sense of what I might say to that group. I try not to like totally diss it, but I sort of say like, "We need to have schools of creativity and joy, not schools of drills and worksheets." And this mother and dad come up with their daughter. And unbelievable, you know, I try to be very specific. You know, I say to the daughter, "Your talk was really interesting. You made these two points. I thought they were great." Boom. The mother says to me, "We really just are interested in this." Like, "We know, we know our, we know our daughter is not college material

• 57:20Speaker 04

  for this class of college, but what kind of AP course coverage and scores do you think she needs to get into this tier with a daughter right there?" And I say like, "Wait, your daughter just gave this great talk." Like, like, you need to be excited. Like, don't let your view about your daughter be defined by some anonymous 28-year-old college admissions officer, who's probably there because their family gives a lot of money or they were an athlete. Like, help this kid find their length. She's great. And it's again, all I want is for my kid to be happy. And then, what happens, right? And, and I just say, "Believe that. If that's your goal." And, and you know, I'll put it into the, a metaphor that you and I can understand. And I hope, I hope people listening to this can.

• 58:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm a venture guy, through and through. I am a venture guy. Venture guys don't tell anybody what to do. As a venture guy, if we do our job, and I tried to do my job, and I think I did it well, I try to find out what your dream is and support the hell out of you, right? What do you want to accomplish and how can I help? And if I don't think you want to accomplish something that I care about or is important... I don't work with you. But that ripples through my view about education. Adults should figure out what that kid really feels they're put on this planet to do, which won't happen at age five, may not happen at age 10. But if we work with those kids, by the time they leave school, they ought to have a clear sense of what problems they want to solve, what's important to them, what drives them. And then I think just support the heck out of them on that mission.

• 58:50Speaker 04

  And don't sweat if they want to be an electrician versus being, you know, whatever it's an Ivy League college. I mean, like, help them find out their dreams and purpose and support them. That's what I would say to parents. Because kids don't want to leave, live the life you tell them to live. They want to live the life they want to create. And I think our role as adults, whether we're parents or teachers or friends or relatives, is to just help those kids blossom.

• 59:17Scott Galloway?

  I, yeah, it's impossible not to nod when you say you just want your kids to be happy. But in any, well, I won't, I won't project this on other parents. And honest, when I really am honest in my own self-assessment, getting my oldest son or him getting into an elite school was hugely important to me deep down. And of course, I want him to be happy. But I've talked myself into believing, I think if, I think if we're honest as parents, it's sort of the first real time a neutral third party or a fairly neutral third party not only assesses the kid,

• 1:00:01Scott Galloway?

  but assesses you as a parent. And we need to break out of that. We need to have more qualitative assessments of what it means to be a successful parent. And that doesn't necessarily mean getting your kid into an elite school. But I'm hugely guilty. I know exactly what you're saying. I know a lot about education. I think I, I'd like to, I know I love my kids and I want them to be happy. But I still think the majority of us, when push comes to shove. Really hope our kids get into an elite school and are disappointed if they don't.

• 1:00:35Speaker 04

  I think, I think that's fair to say. I mean, my, my film, Most Likely to Succeed, it came out in 2015 and, and a group in Palo Alto just was on me like a dog on a pork chop to do a community screening, Gunn High School, because that year they had five students suicides. And these were normal kids, right? But these were kids that were told that of course you've got to get into Stanford and I'd be crushed if you go to-

• 1:00:57Scott Galloway?

  Oh, this was in the Bay Area. Yeah, I remember reading about this.

• 1:01:00Speaker 04

  Yeah. So, so I just would say, you know, you always have to ask at what price, right? You know, I mean, I, I had a daughter who loved the ideas of school, you know, like, I didn't say anything other than go with it, right? And, and that unfolded in a way that worked for her. But I mean, I tell you, you know, if a kid is telling you that I don't enjoy it, or I don't like it, or I don't see the point in it, or my interests are somewhere different, you know, I don't know, you're like, caution. That's all I'd say, caution.

• 1:01:32Scott Galloway?

  Ted Dinter Smith is an education advocate, author and filmmaker focused on how schools can better prepare students for the future of work. His new book, After Math, The Life-Changing Math That Schools Won't Teach You, is out now. Ted, very much appreciate your work and enjoy the conversation.

• 1:01:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, this was great. I appreciate it. And thanks for all you're doing. It's really fantastic.

• 1:01:52Scott Galloway?

  This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Laura Janer. Kami Reek is our social producer. Bianca Rosario Ramirez is our video editor. Andrew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from Prop G Media.

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