Forget everything you know about school. Forget the bell that brutally interrupts your thoughts, forget sitting in lines like in a 19th century factory, and above all – forget learning facts by heart. In an age when your phone has access to all human knowledge in three milliseconds, classical school has become like a fax machine in the age of the internet. It works, but no one knows exactly why we still use it. Elon Musk, with his project Ad Astra ("To the stars"), showed what the "operating system" for the children of the future should be.
If I were to enter today time traveler from 1850 and looked around, I would be completely confused by everything – except for one thing. School. I would feel at home there. Blackboard, chalk, rows of desks and obedient silence. While the world outside is rushing into the age of artificial intelligence, genetic engineering and the colonization of Mars, our school system still functions like a factory producing officials of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is a system that has completely lost touch with reality, like that old uncle at the family dinner who keeps explaining to you that the Internet is just a fad.
Let's look across the pond, to Texas, where Elon Musk did not wait for the approval of the ministry, but he founded Ad Astro. This is not a school, this is a training ground for the future. There is no nerding out of battle dates that Wikipedia spits out in a millisecond. There are no classes where seven-year-olds sit together just because they were born in the same year. Ad Astra is brutally simple and logical: it teaches children to solve problems. Instead of listening to the theory of engines, children there take apart an engine. Instead of learning the definitions of aerodynamics, they build and test airplanes. There, a mistake is not a reason for a bang and trauma, but proof that you tried something. In their world, “failure” is just data needed for the next, better attempt. This is the mindset that created SpaceX, while our mindset creates people who are afraid to raise their hand for fear of saying the wrong thing.
Let's be brutally honest. The current school system was designed during the Industrial Revolution. Its goal? To produce obedient workers, who can follow instructions, stand in line, and perform repetitive tasks. Today? Today we have robots and algorithms for that. If your child is competing with someone at school to see who can remember more years, they are competing in a discipline where ChatGPT will beat them before breakfast.
Ad Astra is not just a “school for the rich.” It is a concept. It is a prototype. It is a beta version of education based on a simple fact: in the future, the winners will not be those who “know”, but those who know how to do something with their knowledge. If the classic school is a Fiat Multipla – functional, but aesthetically and technologically questionable – the Ad Astra concept is a SpaceX Starship. It is intended to take humanity to the next level.
What do children need to know in the age of AI?
If data is no longer a value (because it's free and everywhere), what is the new currency? Ad Astra and similar advanced systems are betting on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics), but not in the way we know it.
Problem Solving (Torque instead of Horsepower)
In automotive, horsepower (hp/kW) tells you how fast you can go, and torque (Nm/lb-ft) tells you how hard you can pull. In education, memorizing data is “horsepower” – impressive on paper, but often useless. Problem solving is torque. Kids don’t learn about engines. Kids are given a broken engine and a tool. The goal isn’t “getting the right answer” on a test, the goal is getting the thing to work. In the world of AI, you’ll be paid to solve a problem that AI doesn’t (yet) know how to solve, or to guide AI to the right solution.
Critical thinking and synthesis
Artificial intelligence can generate tons of text and images. Who will judge what is true? Who will separate the signal from the noise?
“The ability to separate truth from falsehood and connect unrelated facts will be the most important skill of the 21st century.” Children need to become editors and curators of information, not just consumers. This is cognitive flexibility – the ability to quickly change context and apply knowledge from biology to programming.
Ethics and philosophy of technology
This sounds boring, but it's crucial. When we empower machines, we need to know what's "right." Ad Astra encourages discussions about realistic scenarios. "Who should an autonomous vehicle run over in an imminent accident?" This is no longer a theory, this is an engineering problem that these kids will program.
Methodology: Goodbye, classes and bells
The concept of a “class” where all children born in 2015 are in the same room is absurd. It’s like saying in the automotive industry that all cars born in 2024 must drive at the same speed. Ad Astra abolishes age segregation.
- Age 3 – 9 years: All together. The younger ones learn from the older ones, the older ones consolidate their knowledge by teaching the younger ones.
- Project work: There are no subjects. There is no math class and no physics class. It is a “Let's Build a Bridge” project. And for a bridge you need math, physics, a little art and a lot of engineering.
- Focus: If a child is in the “zone” (flow state), don't disturb them. The school bell is the death knell for creativity.
The school of the future is a playground (with deadly serious toys)
Ad Astra uses a principle called “Gamification” of life. But it’s not about playing games on an iPad. It’s about applying game mechanics—try, fail, fix, try again—to the real world. A mistake in classical school is punished with a demerit (a negative grade). A mistake in engineering (and in Ad Astra) is just data. The data is that this approach doesn’t work. “Fail fast, learn fast” is the mantra of Silicon Valley, and it should be the mantra of every modern classroom.
Conclusion: Preparing for the Unknown
We can’t predict what the world will be like in 2040. By the time today’s first-graders graduate, the world may be run by artificial general intelligence (AGI), we may be living on Mars, or we may be solving climate collapse. The traditional school system prepares children for the world that existed in 1990. Models like Ad Astra don’t prepare them for a specific career, but rather equip them with the mental tools to navigate any scenario.
So what does your child need? Not an A in history. It requires curiosity, resilience to failure, and the ability to ask “why” when everyone else nods silently. Because at the end of the day – algorithms will always have the answers. But we humans are the ones who have to ask the right questions. And that’s the only thing that separates us (for now) from machines.
What about us? We have an obsession with the leveler. Our system is set up to clip the wings of eagles, so that the chickens don't feel inferior. We wait for the slowest instead of letting the fastest run. In an age when artificial intelligence writes essays and programs faster than humans, we still force children to memorize data. This is about as sensible as teaching them to wash their clothes by hand in a stream when they have a washing machine at home. The teacher of the future must no longer be a slide reader – that role will be taken over by an AI tutor who adapts to each child individually. The teacher must become a mentor, a coach, a “selector” who encourages debate, critical thinking and social interaction.
The school of the future must include subjects for survival in the 21st century, not ballast for the Millionaire quiz. Where is financial literacy? How is a child supposed to understand the world if they can't tell the difference between credit and debit, but can name all the tributaries of the Amazon? Where is logic and rhetoricso that they will be able to distinguish truth from lies TikTok? And where is programming – not as an elective, but as a new literacy, equivalent to the alphabet? If you don't speak machine language, in the future you will be just a mute observer while others dictate the pace.
It's time to stop raising "good" children. Diligence is a virtue for a worker behind an assembly line that no longer exists. The world needs curious, bold, and capable individuals who know how to connect the unconnectable. We need a school that is not a parking lot for children while their parents are at work, but a launching pad for talent. Unless we quickly and radically change direction – away from nerding and toward problem solving – by 2040 we will be a nation of highly educated people who are excellent at clearing tables for robots. Ad Astra It teaches us that the only way is up. Everything else is stagnation, wrapped in nice bureaucratic cellophane.
