Writer's block and Alpha School

An illustration of how to defeat writer’s block and a new school that is getting amazing results.

The true source of writer’s block

A nice illustration of how to overcome writers block.

Imagine you have two pens: One is blue, and you know it writes in blue. Another is white, but you don’t know in what color it writes. With the blue pen, you can write, “This pen writes in blue,” because you already know that. But with the white pen, you can’t say what color it writes in, because you don’t know. If you wait until you know the information to start writing, you’ll be waiting forever. Once you write, “This pen,” you’ll know what color it writes in. Then you can write the rest.

(Excuse the American spellings - it’s a quote)

Sometimes you just need to start writing to find out where it will take you.

Education is broken. This might be the solution.

The Alpha School is starting to get attention for its alternative approach to education based on actual studies:

Alpha students are top 1% in the USA in every class and every subject (except for one: 5th grade math, where they’re “only” in the 93rd percentile). Alpha kids are learning 2.5x faster than the average American student. They crush standardized testing too. Only 2% of Texas students score above 90% on the Texas STAAR test. Every Alpha student scores above 90% and the majority of their students are over a grade level ahead.​ And here’s the kicker: Alpha students only spend two hours on academics per day — just two hours from K-8 and three hours in high school.

There is a big dilemma at the moment in education about how much pupils should use AI and a big focus on fixed curriculums. Maybe now is the perfect time to rethink how we teach our kids.