At The Socratic Experience, we believe young people each have their own unique talents just waiting to be discovered.
Our mission: To liberate millions from the dull, uninspiring environment in which many of them are learning.
75% of American teens are unhappy in high school.
66% are not engaged in learning.
50% are seriously depressed.
School is a mental health catastrophe.
It trains young people in misery, avoidance, and defeat.
May school as we know it someday be regarded as barbaric.
Adolescence in the US is a catastrophe.
We predict that as research is done on diverse kinds of schooling, mental health will be much better in small, personalized programs that provide agency.
Teens need community, meaning, and purpose. They don’t get it in traditional school.
Once one realizes that children can learn more, more deeply, by means of a passion-driven life...
...then the inhumanity of schooling will be seen as a violation of the spirit of the highest order.
Where does real learning happen in a teenager's life? Sometimes it takes place in formal classrooms.
More often, it's out in the world, among friends and mentors, in the pursuit of adventure, usefulness, and meaning.
🧵Thread 1 of 2 on 81 adventure challenges for young people:
At The Socratic Experience, our curriculum is complemented by daily group conversations on how we can be our best selves, how we can manage the challenge of being a responsible, thoughtful human being in the challenging environment in which young people find themselves today.
Instead of school:
✅ 4 hrs/day of engaging convos on wide range of topics
✅ Cool digital skill electives
✅ Entrepreneurial and creative projects
✅ Personalized math with tutors
1-on-1 mentoring
✅ No lectures, no memorizing, no tests except for self-paced math tests or
"Most schools teach you what to learn, the teacher tells it, done. Our schools helps you become a person who figures it out, and you know how to ask questions, so you can master anything." -
@flowidealism
"I never liked going to school... I just wasn't interested.
When I joined TSE, it was an entirely different story. It was a community of people who were striving to do what they believed in and wanted to do what their lives, and they were acting on it everyday. (1/2)
"Your children should be happy at school. If instead they dread Monday mornings or count down the hours until the weekend arrives, it’s a good sign they might be better off in a different school or learning environment." -
@Kerry_edu
:
Michaelah was looking for something that offered the autonomy of homeschool but provided an external push to keep her on track toward her goals.
At TSE, students have mentors who help them think through post-high school plans and academic goals.
If your child has a given creative interest, our mentors at TSE will work with them on a project based around that interest.
The goal is to achieve something concrete and professional, focused on developing and discovering each student's unique talents.
#entrepreneurship
Most school “learning” can be described as memorize and forget.
Many adults got straight As in school by memorizing and forgetting everything.
Skill development is different; getting better at reading, writing, and math is valuable.
But most of school is a waste of time.
Covering standard curriculum is trivial.
Homeschoolers have known this for years.
What takes 7–8 hours in public school can easily be covered in 2 hours.
What should be the purpose of school?
At TSE, it's simple. We aim to guide each child and teen along a path toward lifelong happiness and well-being.
They own their education. We support them by immersing them in a warm, purposeful culture with personalized options.
Can you imagine your child having more fun at school while also becoming an intellectual star?
The Socratic Experience is a community-centered secondary school alternative.
What if traditional school itself is the obstacle in the way of children “getting an education?”
For a large percentage of students at the secondary level, conventional schooling is mostly a damaging experience with little or no upside.
Students in traditional schools have 7 to 8 hours a day “at school.”
Most of that time is crowd management. Moving from classroom to classroom.
At least half the job of being an educator is closer to being a prison guard.
Maria Montessori was a genius.
We see her greatest contribution as reconceptualizing education to give children autonomy in a prepared environment.
Respecting the child is baked into that paradigm shift.
Learning based on student agency is the future.
Traditional school is designed to make people less competent. It trains us to be intellectually and emotionally dependent.
We are taught we must be taught in order to learn. We believe that is false.
Where does real learning happen in a teenager's life? Sometimes it takes place in formal classrooms.
More often, it's out in the world, among friends and mentors, in the pursuit of adventure, usefulness, and meaning.
🧵Thread 2 of 2 on 81 adventure challenges for young people:
When it comes to math, many are left behind in their progress by the approach of traditional schooling.
Our program is adaptive and self-paced. Some students might choose to take more or less math depending on their interests—or move slower or faster depending on their needs.
The unwritten contract at most schools is “We pretend to teach, you pretend to learn.”
Students try to get the best possible grade while doing as little work as possible.
Congratulations to TSE 7th grader Micah Siegel for winning a $10,000 award from
@Mercatus
's Emergent Ventures!
Micah began his podcast in June. Each week, he speaks with people around the world helping to save animals.
Our focus at TSE is almost entirely a matter of shifting adolescent social norms from environments in which it is not cool to discuss ideas to environments in which students love to discuss ideas – and support their peers in doing so!
"Most schools teach you what to learn, the teacher tells it, done. Our schools helps you become a person who figures it out, and you know how to ask questions, so you can master anything." -
@flowidealism
Do you agree or disagree with Dr. Peter Gray?
At TSE, we argue that traditional schooling itself is often a source of unhappiness - and that it is entirely unnecessary to force kids into environments that make them miserable.
In the complexity of the modern world, understanding who we are, what we stand for, and why is essential preparation for life.
We often describe the ultimate curriculum at TSE as “the conscious development of personal identity."
Whether your child is already on their entrepreneurial journey or they could benefit from thinking more entrepreneurially, TSE could be an excellent fit!
We offer paths for teens interested in finance, sales, real estate, and more.
Traditional schools wholly ignore these.
Based on Montessori principles, our Novice program serves students ages 8-11.
Our program combines personalized learning, Socratic dialogue, and offline experiences that develop your child’s heart & mind within a warm community, ensuring personal well-being & academic success.
The Socratic Experience welcomes you to attend our Virtual Open House tonight at 7 PM CT. We’ll cover our cutting-edge approach to helping your child discover and develop their unique genius.
Register here:
#education
#learning
#school
#students
#success
Our first annual trip to Greece, in collaboration with Pan Logos Foundation. We enjoyed historical sites, museums, and unique cultural activities, including storytelling, eating an ancient Greek meal, racing in the Olympic stadium, cruising through islands, and more! (1/2)
Teens love thinking and talking about ideas for hours per day at TSE.
They love engaging with difficult texts and problems.
Being “taught”? Not so much.
We are social animals. Education should reflect and leverage that fact. TSE does.
Parents know if their child is thriving or not.
This notion that you need to be trained in pedagogy to choose a better path for your child is stupid.
It doesn’t take a trained eye to see when the system is failing to produce students who thrive.
Current 11th grader Diego Gunter on his time last year at The Socratic Experience:
"TSE is the best decision I've ever made. It's revolutionized the way I think of education. I can already guarantee that I'm years ahead of where I'd be in a traditional education system. (1/2)
Our students love engaging in conversations in our programs.
They're eager to see their friends and talk with them.
Our secret sauce: We normalize intellectual dialogue as a social experience for a wide range of students. Our classes are both warm and intellectual.
A school for purpose-driven people who want to be amazing at learning how to learn, thinking for themselves, and developing solutions for the 21st century. Meet our Founder,
@flowidealism
.
Learn more about our program on our website:
"You couldn't pay me to go back to middle school."
Many adults have recurring nightmares about the drudgery of their school years, flunking a test, bullying, etc. It's a near universal feeling.
We survived, but why does that mean we force kids today to suffer likewise? 🤔
Almost all adolescent dysfunction (including depression, anxiety, suicide, early pregnancy, and substance abuse) can be tied to teens being disconnected.
Disconnected from school, parents, and positive peer relationships.
The Socratic Experience welcomes you to attend our Virtual Open House tonight at 7 PM CT. We’ll cover our cutting-edge approach to helping your child discover and develop their unique genius.
Register here:
#education
#learning
#school
#students
#success
Our students engage in 2-4 hours of intellectual dialogue every day. Writing about ideas (aka “essays”) becomes natural after one has spent hundreds of hours thinking about something one cares about, along with testing one’s ideas with one’s peers.
Part of the secret at
@socraticexp
is that students feel respected.
We take their ideas, and the reasons behind their ideas, seriously.
Challenging each other with honest questions about why we believe what we believe is one of the deepest ways we can respect each other
We agree with
@kimkiyosaki
's points and aim to be that school that empowers children to:
✅Make mistakes and learn from them
✅Cooperate and brainstorm with others
✅Discover ways to find answers to questions in multiple ways
✅Be entrepreneurial
What is your ideal school like?
People are choosing flexibility.
Work from anywhere, 4-day work weeks, digital nomads.
Every facet of our lives is becoming more flexible. Except one.
School.
Running an alternative school, you get a certain kind of selection bias.
You get kids who’ve been struggling with school, the kids who the system has labeled, diagnosed, medicated, and rejected.
But within months, sometimes weeks, we see them go from miserable to thriving.
But if we’re here to educate kids, and the majority of the hours spent at school aren’t actively educating, then what we’re doing has more to do with warehousing children to make it easier for both parents to work than it does with learning.
We often describe the ultimate curriculum at TSE as the "conscious development of personal identity."
In the complexity of the modern world, understanding who we are, what we stand for, and why is essential preparation for life.
At TSE, we coach students to learn how to read difficult material.
They work together to make sense of classic literature, poetry, or philosophy. Once students learn to read Aristotle or The Federalist Papers, they can read anything.
Do you agree or disagree with Agatha Christie?
Not so at TSE.
We respect students' autonomy and individuality.
Students spend 2-4 hours per day in intellectual dialogue and meaningful conversations about things that matter to them.
They do real-world projects with a mentor
We've known kids who were anxious, depressed, or suicidal in conventional schools.
In our environment they became happy and well. Giving kids options save lives.
Many of us went to “good” schools, but we should never require any kid to suffer the experience. Boring and cruel.
Almost every human being loves conversations. “Being taught,” not so much.
The problem is, in traditional school, the role of teacher is premised on “teaching” things.
Give that up, then learning can happen.
At TSE, our students spend their days thinking and talking about ideas, often engaging in friendly debate, in Socratic discussion.
So what is the Socratic Method? How is it practiced at TSE?
@flowidealism
explains.
A sample Purpose class from last week at The Socratic Experience. We are continuing on from a previous conversation on "What do you love?" in which we discussed the question, "Can we change what we love through rationality?" as in situations with respect to health or
There are tons of questions to curiously pursue in STEM.
But the vast majority of people have jobs that after a certain level of technical fluency become about interpersonal relationships.
For entrepreneurship, or life generally, understanding human beings is essential. (5/5)
A clip of
@flowidealism
welcoming students for the year on the first day, August 28th.
"We want to support you in being your most amazing self. We want to help you learn how you learn, we want to help you learn how to improve yourself."
At The Socratic Experience, we develop self-motivated autodidactics through a culture of inquiry.
Students explore what is true, good, and beautiful/noble in diverse conversations on texts, their lives, and on scientific issues.
If we sometimes seem outraged by what traditional schools do to children, it’s because we’ve seen the kids the system chews up and spits out.
Those same kids go on to flourish when given the opportunity.
For us, it’s become an issue of great moral urgency.
Students should be thriving and vibrant in school.
They should be happy and confident.
Students should not be bored, disinterested and reluctant.
They should not be miserable and frustrated.
The Socratic Experience welcomes you to attend our Virtual Open House tonight at 7 PM CT. We’ll cover our cutting-edge approach to helping your child discover and develop their unique genius.
Register here:
#education
#learning
#school
#students
#success
At The Socratic Experience, our contemporary interpretation of “Know Thyself” consists of “The Conscious Development of Personal Identity.”
They also have personalized math with tutors, so they can go fast as they want.
But Number One is “Who am I, and what do I stand for?"
Traditional public schools are premised on busy-work and one-size-fits all curricula. Is it any wonder that students stuck in the system are uninspired?
Soli Gunter, 7th grader at TSE, on the rich friendships she's developed in the program over her two years with us.
We're the school for children and teens who are:
✅ Entrepreneurial
✅ Critical Thinkers
✅ Purposeful
✅ Creative
✅ Intellectual
The Socratic Experience welcomes you to attend our Virtual Open House tonight at 7 PM CT. We’ll cover our cutting-edge approach to helping your child discover and develop their unique genius.
Register here:
#education
#learning
#school
#students
#success
High level verbal skills, speaking and writing, are among the superpowers of real world success.
TSE has kids reasoning with each other all day and writing based on their conversations.
Most schools have kids shut up and do meaningless writing exercises.
TSE 7th grader Soli, on her first Experience Day.
At TSE, we offer the option of Experience Days where your student can sit in on a day of classes and test drive the program in a day in the life, seeing for themselves what they think.
Educational choice is the solution. Let everyone choose meaning communities that are meaningful to them. This will help create communities that can provide young people with purpose.
Parent choice as the only accountability mechanism allows the humanity to return to schooling.
When you see these wonderful faces come alive again, you realize all it takes to improve their lives is to give them love, attention, agency, purpose, and a positive peer environment.
When you can do that, their lives are fully transformed.
Too often children are forced into situations that do not serve their well-being.
At TSE, our explicit goal is the lifelong happiness of our students years down the line.
Only parents, who know if their child is confident and flourishing, can evaluate.
The ultimate goal of asking children and teens thoughtful questions from a young age is to get to the point at which intellectual dialogue, the joyful exploration of ideas, is a natural process, a normal form of interaction.
How do we curate a culture of Purpose at TSE?
Everyday at 4 PM, we lead a Socratic conversation on Purpose.
Each day we engage in 30 minutes of reflection on a key question, discussed in dozens of different ways.
On Monday: “What do you love?”
On Tuesday: “What are you
The Socratic Experience welcomes you to attend our Virtual Open House tonight at 8 ET.
We’ll cover our cutting-edge approach to helping your child discover and develop their unique genius.
Register here:
#education
#learning
#school
#students
#success
The environment at Diego's public high school was so oppressive that he couldn’t even share a traditional first-day lunch with his father without jumping through bureaucratic hoops.
TSE reignited Diego’s passion for learning, pushing him to explore topics he never imagined.
The Socratic Experience welcomes you to attend our Virtual Open House tonight at 7 PM CT. We’ll cover our cutting-edge approach to helping your child discover and develop their unique genius.
Register here:
#education
#learning
#school
#students
#success
The act of taking initiative and doing amazing real-world projects is valuable in the real world and in college admissions.
Graduates from similar brick-and-mortar programs by our founder
@flowidealism
have been admitted to Harvard, Stanford, Georgetown, & Smith, to name a few.
We're often asked at TSE how we differ from the Montessori school model.
Our Novice Program is what we call "Montessori adapted to the virtual environment," serving children ages 8-18.
Maria Montessori designed no secondary model, but our Secondary Program can be thought of as
The Socratic Experience is a highly personalized learning community designed to cultivate your child’s unique genius, with a particular focus on intellectual, creative, and entrepreneurial genius.
All of the research on happiness and well-being points to purpose, agency, and community as essential features of well-being.
Traditional schooling, as experienced by most students, is a machine for destroying all 3 in a crucial developmental phase.
The mutual expectation of consistency and coherence of understanding.
The essence of Socratic dialogue:
We each seek to understand the other.
We ask questions that lead to more consistent understanding.
Socratic culture is one in which this expectation is shared socially.
Check out
@RaheenFatima6
's TEDx Talk on YouTube: "Exploring Your True Purpose."
At the age of 10, Raheen devoted her life to purposeful living.
She found a school that aligned with that mission in TSE.
Now she's 16, and developing an education that works for HER.
All of the research on happiness and well-being points to purpose, agency, and community as essential features of well-being.
Traditional schooling, as experienced by most students, is a machine for destroying all 3 in a crucial developmental phase.
At TSE, we actively mentor students on how to optimize their lives.
Each student meets with a mentor each week and participates in a personal growth discussion every day on relevant topics.
We use the wisdom and maturity of adults to guide students to better lives.
School was was designed to produce people who will follow instructions and listen to authority.
Not free thinkers.
The Internet provides the chance to disrupt that paradigm.
The Socratic Experience welcomes you to attend our Virtual Open House tonight at 8 ET.
We’ll cover our cutting-edge approach to helping your child discover and develop their unique genius.
Register here:
#education
#learning
#school
#students
#success
The act of taking initiative and doing amazing real-world projects is valuable in the real world and in college admissions.
Graduates from similar brick-and-mortar programs by our founder
@flowidealism
have been admitted to Harvard, Stanford, Georgetown, & Smith, to name a few.
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, doing well in school was a proxy for learning valuable skills. Now one can more easily learn valuable skills outside of school, and much of schooling damages valuable habits.
As a society we need to leave the fairytale version behind.
So what is the student role in a Socratic seminar?
The student's role is to take responsibility for their own learning. We insist that the students take responsibility for creating meaning for themselves. Beyond that, students are responsible for actually understanding the text.