I think most educators would agree that they are tired of getting lectures from billionaires about how to teach or how to fix the problems of American education.

But Peter Greene reports that the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, has decided it’s time for him to add his uninformed views to those of Bill Gates, Betsy DeVos, the Walton family, and a long list of financiers, all of whom use their wealth to change the schools.

Greene writes:

Elon Musk has some thoughts about education, and because he’s Very Rich, Fortune Magazine decided it should share some of those thoughts, despite Musk’s utter lack of qualifications to talk about education. 

Reporter Christiaan Hetzner mostly covers business in Europe, so it’s not clear how he stumbled into this particular brief piece, which appears to be lifting a piece of a larger conversation into an article. I’d love a new rule that says every time an outlet gives space to a rich guy’s musings about areas in which he has no expertise, the outlet also publishes a piece about the musings of some ordinary human on the topic–maybe even an ordinary human who is an expert in the area.

Hetzner launches right in with both feet.

More than a century ago, Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote, “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.” Well, Elon Musk is a doer with a lot of children, and he’s reached the conclusion he doesn’t want his kids to learn from some has-been or never-was simply because they landed a job in a local school thanks to a lack of competition.

It’s not clear if Hetzner is editorializing or trying to channel Musk’s point of view (I think perhaps the latter), but somebody here is really full of it. I’m not going to argue about Musk’s doer qualifications, though his ability to profit off the work of others and his interminable botching of twitter leave me unpersuaded of his genius. But this characterization of teachers is some serious bullshit. And things aren’t going to get better.

Over his lifetime, teaching fundamentally remained the same experience: an adult standing in front of a chalkboard instructing kids.

Of course, I don’t know how they did things in South Africa when little Elon was a young emerald prince, but the “school has never changed” trope is tired and silly and a clear sign that someone knows little about what is happening in education. 

But sure. There is still an adult in a classroom, much as cars are still four wheels, one in each corner. But perhaps that’s because Musk appears bothered that the shifts in tech that are “upending the labor force” haven’t yet touched teachers. 

Musk calls for compelling, interactive learning experiences. His example is that, rather than teaching a course about screwdrivers and wrenches, have them take apart an engine and in the process learn all about screwdrivers and wrenches. I’m sure that my former students who learned about operating heavy machinery by operating heavy machinery, or learned about welding by welding, etc, would agree. I’d even extend his argument to say that instead of trying to teach students to read by doing exercises and excerpts, we could have them read whole works, even novels. 

But just in case you’re not catching who Musk blames, Hartzen notes that Musk says that the system failed students because “the talents of the teaching staff tasked with imparting this knowledge to their students were sophomoric at best.”

Then Musk throws in an entertainment analogy. Teachers are like the “troubadours and mummers of yesteryear who traveled from one backwater to the next, offering their meager services to those desperate for their brand of amateur entertainment.” Education today is like “vaudeville before there was radio, TV, and movies.” Which compresses a variety of different developments, but okay. 

Then along came Hollywood, and a critical mass of the most talented screenwriters, directors, and actors around joined forces to produce compelling and engaging content that can cost tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars.

So, what? We’re supposed to inject hundreds of millions of dollars into education? And does this idea still work if we notice that the “content” cranked out by Hollywood is only “compelling and engaging” to some people. 

Finally, Musk throws in a reference that Hertzen calls “bizarre”– thespians entertaining the locals in Small Town U.S.A. with a “low-budget rendition” of the caped crusader couldn’t compete with Christopher Nolan’s Batman. 

To finish his article, please open the link.

Musk made a fortune as the owner of Tesla, but Tesla has the highest accident rate of any car on the road, says Forbes. Last year, two friends of mine were in a horrific accident: their car collided with a Tesla late at night on a highway. The Tesla burst into flames, and both cars were engulfed in an intense fire. When the firefighters arrived, they were unable to douse the flames. The lithium battery burned for two hours. All four people in the two cars died. The highway, more than a year later, still has the marks left by the fire.