Ted Dintersmith

And if we botch it up, things fall apart.

And I feel like we're 40 years into the botch-up zone with this because the world's racing ahead and we stay stuck in time, which is why I wrote the book Aftermath.

I think it just is perfect, right?

It says thousands of hours on math that no adult uses.

At the same time, never getting to the math ideas that define our lives in ways that tell kids, yeah, we don't have an answer to your question of when will I ever use it.

There really is no point in this other than it gives us a nice way to rank and sort you, but do it anyway.

And by the way, your goal is to out-compete the people next to you.

And then we say, and wow, they're disillusioned and they leave school with no sense of purpose and most of them feel wailed on.

You know, like, it's not okay, right?

And I wish it weren't like that.

I mean, I'd be, like, traveling and having fun.

I mean, like, I did fine in Venture.

But I just feel like once you know that, you just say, darn, sorry about that.

You know, those who know have to speak out.

And, you know, that's what I try to do.

Because these kids, I mean, you look at these 8-, 10-year-old kids, they kind of look up at you, and you just know they're trusting the adults to make good decisions for them.

And I don't think we are.

Well, I generally don't talk much about my own kids, but I've got a 29-year-old son and a 27-year-old daughter that in some ways are a microcosm of what we talked about.

Our daughter loved school, loved the ideas, did a lot of other things besides study, but it just was easy for her.

And so you look at her and you say, she did incredibly well through the school process.