Our education system was designed to prepare farmers for the industrial revolution and it has changed very little since then. Factory education is a chronic failure, with 30-40% of students graduating high school having scored Below Basic on English, Math and Science. This hasn’t changed in over 20 years, despite a real, inflation adjusted, per capita increase in spending over that time period of 19%. It’s not a funding issue and it’s not the fault of teachers. We know all students learn differently and need different resources. However the well known ideal of differentiated education has been impossible to achieve. Humans simply don’t scale and teaching to the middle leaves far too many children behind.
By itself, this is reason enough to launch an ambitious startup. However, it is not the only reason. Post October 7th we have witnessed an explosion of antisemitism, anti-Americanism, anti-Western, Liberal civilization, and anti-Capitalism on college campuses. This did not originate in a vacuum. Alan Bloom recognized this emerging disaster in the mid-1980s and published his findings in The Closing of the American Mind. In the subsequent decades this progressive ideology has overrun academia and has trained two generations of teachers to push ideology over education on our children. October 7th revealed a bizarre ally – Islamic fundamentalism. Defeating this unholy alliance between Islamism and progressive, anti-Western ideology is critical for our shared future and is the challenge of our time. It starts with education.
We must return to our enlightenment roots and teach our children How to think, not What to think – critical thinking skills and universal human values instead of an ideology that seeks to destroy all human progress over the past several centuries. Our children deserve a modern, non-ideological education that prepares each and every one of them to be productive, moral members of society.
As Israel fights on the battlefield to defend herself and Western Civilization, The Maimonides Project will do the same in the classroom.
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