Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)

I thought I had read the post before. Thank you for the insights, and I hope that you can do that follow-up!

One thing not mentioned which I think is important is the ease of paying (whether the edtech is app or web-based). It’s all very well to target those in poorer countries, but many of them (consumers) still don’t have online banking, and payment gateways are often local and clunky (I did notice in my last trip to Asia that this is improving.) I’d love to hear your thoughts on this :)

We offer a free, licensed, MBA course and offset the operational costs via a hiring engine that takes a cut on employment match. Online only, interactive, non-video content. There's also an extremely low-cost, licensed, EMBA program for those people who are already gainfully employed and just want to develop their business / operational knowledge.

> So that's a pidly 90 hours of instruction per year. I'm going to teach you practically nothing in that time.

Well, there’s always not enough time to teach something properly :) I don’t think that teachers need to be so idealistic, just as long as they tick-box the curriculum (sadly exams do matter a lot) and plant plenty of seeds which, we hope, would set root soon if not later in their lives.

By that I mean spending significant classroom time on interaction and the “fun stuff”. For example if it’s ESL and the students are into pop music, okay let’s decipher some Beyoncé or let’s try and mimic some funky singer’s accent. Do some immersive stuff, make it real. I’m a big fan of flipped classrooms, where students study most of the formal stuff for homework - this will also help them construct the knowledge in their own way - and then present it in class and have more meaningful discussions.

But I would say that if the students are beginners, then yes you do need to organise information to make it as easy as possible. The initial learning curve is always the hardest! When they become more comfortable and confident, they can always go back and revise their mental models.

Edit: Sorry, I didn’t take into account that you might be a private tutor. If you were, then I can absolutely relate to the frustration! Parents’ (totally unrealistic) expectations also do not help at all

> A good 70% or so were pretty much furniture. They were there because they had to be, and their parents saw school as free babysitting service. They would end up in a trade school afterward if they were lucky, or a more likely future drifting between unemployment and Walmart/McDonalds employment. Then there were the 25% who were actively opposed to learning. They existed to disrupt everything, start fights, and waste all of the teachers' and administrators' time. Most of them were into gangs, selling drugs, etc. and their presence detracted from everyone else's experience. This group is likely dead or in prison today.

There is so much here that can be looked at critically if we want to change how education is done. Looking at people as furniture is really telling about what you think of their potential. If you're people like this from a student's perspective, I can understand this. But anyone carrying this mindset as an educator should leave the profession.

I have spent my life teaching the kinds of students you describe. They're the people whose father died when they were 8 or 10 years old, and whose mom had to try and hold their family together. They're the kids who have never known sober parents. They're the kids of parents who are angry at the world. They're the kids of parents who have been arguing and hitting each other their entire lives. They're the kids whose parents never opened a book with them by the time they got to first grade.

Yes, there are some kids who grew up like this and inherently took school seriously and flourished. But they're the exception, and we can't expect everyone to respond like that. Schools really need to be restructured to truly meet kids where they are at, and work from there. It can be done, and it's not overly difficult. We tend to meet kids where they're at for a little bit, and then expect them to catch up to everyone else and stay there.

There is a small portion of the population that is really difficult to reach. But schools can do a lot more to bend to students' needs than they're currently doing, which is asking everyone to change to meet the schools' needs.

I joined an edtech company earlier this year: yellowdig.com. I think the thing I'd echo from this post is that time definitely needs to be on your side. Having connections also really helps. I'll keep the points about cost in my back pocket.