CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
REBECCA
“WHAT’S BROKEN IN THIS COUNTRY?” Evan asks without preamble. There have been perhaps three quiet minutes between us, and in those minutes, I’ve watched the ground below retract as if it’s moving instead of us. At some point, Evan’s hand has left mine. Now that my nerves have calmed from takeoff, he must not think I want it there. He’s wrong.
I turn to look. I have to repeat the question in my head because it came as such a non-sequitur.
“Other than social programs, poverty, the tax system, and the government, what’s broken?” Evan goes on.
“You know you love your rich guy tax breaks, don’t lie.”
Evan waits for my real answer.
“Healthcare,” I finally say.
“What else?”
“Politics.”
“No.”
“War.”
“No.”
“The environment.”
Evan looks bored. “You’re bad at this.”
“Hey, give me a break! A lot of shit sucks right now.”
“Education,” Evan says.
“What’s broken in education?”
“All of it,” Evan says. “Did you go to college?”
“Yes.”
“What did it cost?”
“Dunno. Thirty to fifty grand, something like that? My dad paid before I told him to fuck off.”
“What was your major?”
“Civil engineering.”
“Seriously?”
“I’m a woman of many talents.”
Evan seems to need a moment. But then he says, “How much engineering do you do in your work today?”
“Only a little. Like, thirty percent of my day is spent engineering, max.”
I guess I’m not out of snark after all. Evan rolls with my joke by ignoring it.
“So you don’t use your fifty-thousand dollar education.”
“I guess not, but at cocktail parties when soil mechanics come up, watch out.”
“How about high school?”
“What about it?”
“What did you learn in high school that you use today?”
“Writing.”
Evan waves me off. “Don’t pretend that what you do today was what they taught you in school. You learned from experience. From reading.”
“What’s your argument, that school is pointless?”
“Not pointless. Broken. Some school systems have figured pieces of it out, but most are teaching by rote. According to an antiquated system, and an outdated model of how humans think, learn, and interact. Education today is simply an iterated version of education from the 1700s and earlier.”
“Which schools have figured it out? Montessori?”
“Any with an element of self-direction for sure. Montessori is on that list. As are some of the more progressive schools. A few of the public and private traditional institutions — and there are a bunch in Austin like this — get parts of it. But the issue is bigger than the systems themselves. No one system of education is right because it depends on the learner and the teacher. Different students have varying levels of motivation, self-direction, and interests. And within certain tribes of thought, there are right and wrong ways of doing things. Consider unschooling. I like the idea: kids are left to find their way and learn what interests them. But it varies widely by application. Some kids thrive because they can self-direct, while others need help. And because parents are the closest things to teachers that unschooled kids get, its success is dependent on the parent. Some parents unschool well because they understand what it requires and how to support their students. Others are lazy. Letting the child lead, in those cases, was their way of justifying their abdication of parental responsibility. I’m sorry, but I don’t see how letting your kid eat cake every day for breakfast if that’s what he chooses as educational. It’s neglect.”
I listen through Evan’s analysis, intrigued. This all feels out of the blue, coming from LiveLyfe’s founder.
“I thought about all of this when I was going through it myself,” Evan continues. “I was a really good student in high school, and I did well in college. But in this … well, this group I’m part of, there are a lot of rich men and women. I’d say maybe half were decent in school, no more. Many dropped out of high school. Others failed. Almost all of us, if assessed, would probably turn out to have ADHD. It takes an odd mind to succeed. So, to my questions about your education, Becca: all jokes aside, how much of what you learned do you even remember?”
“Lots, I imagine. I know how to do math and read and write and I know the history of the USA.”
“When was the Louisiana Purchase signed?”
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
“What even was the Louisiana Purchase, exactly?”
“That doesn’t prove your point. Not knowing specifics doesn’t mean the education was a waste.”
Evan holds up a finger. “I didn’t say it was a waste. I said it was broken. But what about math, Becca? You took a lot of math if you majored in engineering. Do you remember how to use the cosine law?”
“I’d have to look it up.”
“What about linear algebra? Integrating trigonometric functions?”
“I guess I’m not the only engineer in the plane.”
Evan swivels his big, plush recliner to face mine. He’s leaning forward. His intensity is magnetic. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone talk as passionately as Evan is talking now. And I think, I did this? Somehow, I got him thinking this way?
“You don’t remember it, do you?” he says.
“Of course not. But that doesn’t mean—”
“It does,” he says, raising a hand, cutting me off. “Schooling still relies on a metaphor of storage. Kids are treated like memory banks, and the goal through twelve grades and beyond, in this country at least, is to jam their heads with all sorts of facts and trivia. It’s meaningful that you don’t remember the details because that was the point. They tried to give you a textbook mind, but you ended up with practical knowledge. You distilled all that education down into the parts that are relevant for you today.”
“So, it worked.”
Evan laughs. “Hardly.”
“What’s the solution, as you see it?”
“Well, that’s what you got me thinking about.”
Time to voice my earlier question. “Me? How did I get you thinking?”
“You got me asking a new question. I’ve been looking for my next big thing, and I’ve always felt this way about education. It’s a behemoth built upon its own back. Self-contained and inefficient. A house of cards. The entire system only exists to recycle itself.”
“I didn’t talk about any of that,” I say.
“No, but you asked me what I’d do if I could start over. Do you know why I created LiveLyfe in the first place?”
I shake my head. The popular media probably knows this story, but I’ve never heard it.
“It was supposed to be a study aid. I made the first seeds of it for myself, and when my friends saw it, they asked if I could get them a copy. Making copies didn’t make sense; it made more sense to turn my system into a network. That would allow us to pool our resources and learn as a group. Our own little cloud of crowdsourced intelligence.”
“How did it become a social network?”
Evan shrugs. “It’s how the wind blew. As word spread, more and more people wanted in, so I added them. Then I hired someone to add them, then two people. Before I knew it, I had a staff. Something had to pay for them all, so LiveLyfe started to lean in the commercial direction you see today. The users, once they spread beyond my little pool of friends, didn’t use the curriculum modules. They shared personal photos and bulletins rather than scanning in notes and sharing academic data. I knew what I was doing. I’m proud of what LiveLyfe became. But it’s gone far from its original intention: a solution to my problems with education.”
“I don’t understand your solution.”
“Individualization,” Evan said. “We need a system that understands each student. It can’t be prescriptive. Rather than cramming all that crap into your head, wouldn’t it have been great if a mentor could have known what you’d retain and need, who lean into your strengths? Given you the right lessons at the right time, tailored to you? Looking to other mentors — maybe even buying your way into business mastermind groups, seeing as you turned out to be such a brilliant communicator and guerrilla businesswoman?”
“Great idea,” I tell Evan. “But it’s not scalable. Schools don’t have the resources to do that. It would take one teacher per student, and it’d have to be an excellent teacher, with tons of resources.”
“You’re right,” Evan says. “Schools can’t do it. But better AI can.”
“AI? You mean artificial intelligence?”
Evan looks at a clock on the wall, then laughs.
“Okay. This flight is only twenty minutes old. I’ve just beaten you with ideas for fifteen minutes solid. Maybe we should take a break. Talk about something else.”
I see his logic, but I have so many questions. I didn’t care when he started talking. Evan’s passion is infectious. I’m there with him now, my hyperactive brain on fire. I’m like the people he described: functional but crazy, brain-damaged in all the right ways. The people who move the world are far from normal, and for a change, I feel like one of them. Like I belong.
I want to ask a hundred questions. Will he try to build another LiveLyfe, but stick with his original vision? What role am I supposed to play, if this is still co-created: marketer? Connector? Influencer? I’m good at those things, even if I’ve thus far spent my talents making fun of Steve’s penis. And now, I can see it. My usual lack of confidence is gone. Listening to Evan, I feel like we could do this. Maybe I’m not the idiot Steve told me I was. Maybe my high energy and distraction is an asset, not a disability.
The feeling Evan gives me is addictive, but I see his point about stopping. My head is already full. I look back out the window. “How long is the flight?”
“Two hours?”
I nod. I can see the ground because there are few clouds. I’m usually terrified to be this high up, but something about Evan’s presence has made that better, too.
“What should we talk about, then?”
“Wine,” he says, pressing the call button.