Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Schacht: The science of learning is in its infancy like genetic engineering

Keith Schacht · Cost vs Quality in Edtech – Keith Schacht, Avichal Garg, and Geoff Ralston · Y Combinator · Apr 6, 2018 · at 48:11

Keith Schacht (co-founder of Mystery Science) explains why learning should be viewed as an emerging science rather than an established legacy industry.

0:00 / 0:32exact quote · 32.6s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“When you think of yourself as a learning company, learning is a field that's in its infancy right now. And it's deceptive because it's an old industry. So it feels like, well, we figured all this out and, you know, that's just like, I don't know, some efficiency gains that are left and things like that. But to me, learning is much more like, Genetic engineering, or, you know, in figuring out how to arbitrarily sequence DNA and inject it into an organism, like, the level of understanding we have about that, like, we're still poking this black box of genetic engineering and trying to make stuff happen for the first time. That's the state of learning.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Keith Schacht

Insight
Schacht: Parent educational product spending collapses during elementary and middle school
“Once you send your kid off to school full-time, parents remain involved in some respects. I think reading is one of the main ones. They still think, feel like it's their job to make sure they're reading regularly to their child and helping to reinforce, you kn…”
Keith Schacht Apr 6, 2018 ▶ 8:32 Cost vs Quality in Edtech – Keith Schacht, Avichal Garg, and Geoff Ralston · Y Combinator
Opinion
Schacht: Teaching science primarily to fill STEM job shortages is mistaken
“I think it is an absolute mistake to say that we should teach children more science because there's a lot of STEM careers out there that, that, that need to be filled. Like, that's absolutely the mistaken approach.”
Keith Schacht Apr 6, 2018 ▶ 35:08 Cost vs Quality in Edtech – Keith Schacht, Avichal Garg, and Geoff Ralston · Y Combinator
Insight
Schacht: Children cannot be taught anything they do not want to understand
“When you understand that a child's motivation is central to learning, you, I mean, one of our internal principles, you can't teach a child something that they don't care to understand. Like, if they don't want to understand it, no amount of trying to shove it …”
Keith Schacht Apr 6, 2018 ▶ 31:02 Cost vs Quality in Edtech – Keith Schacht, Avichal Garg, and Geoff Ralston · Y Combinator
Insight
Schacht: Edtech technology adoption lags enterprise software by ten years
“In the school space, I think that's one of the most significant things is it's, from my perspective, it seems like it is mirroring the enterprise cycle lagging about 10 years or so.”
Keith Schacht Apr 6, 2018 ▶ 15:13 Cost vs Quality in Edtech – Keith Schacht, Avichal Garg, and Geoff Ralston · Y Combinator
Opinion
Schacht: Legacy publishers sell top-down while new edtech sells bottom-up
“We've got the Pearson, McGraw, Houghton Mifflin, that generation of companies who still assume they're going to sell top down and roll out, and then Mystery Science and other tech companies that, that just do the a la carte and roll it up.”
Keith Schacht Apr 6, 2018 ▶ 17:32 Cost vs Quality in Edtech – Keith Schacht, Avichal Garg, and Geoff Ralston · Y Combinator
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Schacht: Best learning business opportunities will be outside existing stack
“So most likely the business opportunities in the learning space will be outside of the existing stack.”
Keith Schacht Apr 6, 2018 ▶ 51:14 Cost vs Quality in Edtech – Keith Schacht, Avichal Garg, and Geoff Ralston · Y Combinator
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 300 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.