Our Practical Superpowers Curriculum

As the man behind Google Brain has said:

I think most people can become good at almost anything.
–Andrew Ng

People sometimes talk about practical and intellectual skills as if they were opposites — as if a school needed to choose one or the other, or strike some balance between them.

And so we get, for example, national debates about the merits of vocational-tech vs. college-prep programs.

Nonsense!

This is based on a false choice. Understood properly, practical and intellectual skills are two pieces of a whole. Real intellectual skills are practical — and real practical skills are intellectual!

What if a new kind of school could destroy the false divide between practical and intellectual training? And what if we could help most students become excel at most things?

In our schools, we'll help students —

And many things more! We develop practical superpowers.

Our schools attempt to be more business-practical than vocational tech, and more vibrantly intellectual than college prep. 

And because we're grounding our instruction in cultivating student interest, and then in developing mastery through deliberate practice, we think we can actually do it.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. 

Specialization is for insects.

– Robert Heinlein