Latest / ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence / How Micro Schools Can Transform Education With Sai Gaddam

Transcript

How Micro Schools Can Transform Education With Sai Gaddam · ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: So I think what he's after what he's well known for is to be able to use a very simple to treat patients with this with these so-called factors, right?
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_03: Fantom pain, the difficult factor.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, the idea that there are amputees who have a scratch limit.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_03: How is that even possible?
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_03: So first is the mystery how is that even possible?
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_03: And then the even more incredible idea that you could actually solve that.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_03: This is a phantom pain, imaginary pain, and then you could still use something to solve that.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_03: And in that case, it was a very neat and very simple idea of using mirrors to sort of chip the pain again.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_03: So treating an illusion with an illusion.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_03: What is for me, what was for me an very engineering perspective.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_03: So that was very profound.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_03: And that made me realize that the same mathematical engineering perspective, which I guess I was naturally flag to at that point, could also be applied to something like a green.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Hello everyone.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to another edition of Contraminds.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: In this episode, I am talking to Sai Kadam.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Sai Kadam is the founder of Community Learning.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Sai has had a stellar academic career.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: He's graduated from the IIT, he's done his master's in neuroscience from the US, and paradoxically, he is now building an alternative learning model, a microschool, which is what community learning is all about.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: I began my conversation with Sai on his early years, the people who inspired him, the books that he read, and what are the concepts that stuck to his mind for life.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: We then spoke about the current education system, what ails the current education system, and what are the challenges the kids go through in schools and colleges, and does it even prepare them for the real world?
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Sai spoke to me about the importance of ambiguity, chaos, and decision making which every learning methodology and model needs to incorporate to prepare these kids for the real world.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: We also spoke about what learning is all about, the definition of learning, and how learning needs to transform the mind.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: We then spoke about the importance of every kid being unique and therefore the need for personalized learning.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: We spoke about the application of AI and how he's building a microschool in a box.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: The importance of hiring and how do you find teachers to build this alternative learning model and scale it is something that we spoke about.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Over to my conversation with Sai.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Today's episode is proudly brought to you by Evertless.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Effortless is the ultimate solution for startups and SMBs seeking seamless money management and compliance handling.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Effortless wasn't just created by anyone, it was crafted by chartered accountant and entrepreneurs who understand the pulse of startups and SMBs.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: Visit www.goeffortless.ai and embark on a journey that will redefine the way you do business.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: So how has it happened?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: And can you tell me your backstory, where it all began and how did it happen?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_03: So I uh I'm in the education space now.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh my wife Priyanka and I went on microschool in Bombay.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_03: Also a neuroscientist by training.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_03: I've written a couple of books.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_03: The most recent one being Journey of the Mind.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_03: So, and then before that, I was an engineer.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_03: I graduated from IIT class a long time back.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so I'd say that yeah, that if I have to try and find a pattern, is this that a bunch of uh semi-rex decisions one leading to the other, and they all worked out.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um yeah, so I grew up in Hyderabad.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_03: I went on to do my undergrad in IIT class in electrical engineering, uh, discovered neuroscience in my final year there thanks to this amazing book, The Phantoms of the Brain, by B.S.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_03: Ramachandran.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_03: That is what led me to take up neuroscience.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_03: It's been 22 years now since I've gone down that path.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_03: Um, did a PhD, um went on to write these books, then uh was an entrepreneur, got back, came back to India.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_03: This was uh PhD was in Boston, Boston University.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_03: Was very fortunate to have to have landed up there uh for reasons I guess we'll go into later.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_03: For me, it was just a very random choice when I when I did take me that choice.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_03: But anyway, so did that, came back to India, worked on a second book, have done some consulting work, been an entrepreneur for more than 10 years now, and uh what we're doing now, this is the latest version.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_03: This is finally, I think, where all the diversions and excursions and interests uh intersect, and uh it's a happy place to be for me.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, what did uh uh V.S.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: Ram Chandran's book, The Phantom of the Brain, what did it do to you?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, what was really the trigger that got you interested in something like this?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_03: I think it was the first book that helped me realize that if you think about the biology and the brain, so especially if you've done conventional schooling in India, there's a sense that it's very taxonomic, very fact-oriented, that you have to know the taxonomy, you have to know all the facts, you have to know where things are, and that's the foundation.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_03: I think that was the first book to reveal that uh actually there's a functional way of looking at the brain, right?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_03: Which is very, very, very close to how an engineer would imagine a system, right?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_03: There are things that happen, their functions, uh things go right, things go wrong.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_03: So it's not about the specific names of different brain regions or whatever it is.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_03: What matters is how are things being done, and then to be able to uh put that to use.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_03: So I think what what the book was the what the assumption is work, what he's well known for, is to be able to use a very simple illusion to treat uh patients with this with these so-called phantom space, phantom pains, that's the name of the book, Phantoms in the Brain.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_03: The idea that there are amputees who have a scratch in the limb they don't have, right?
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_03: How is that even possible?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_03: So, first is the mystery, how is that even possible, and then the even more incredible idea that you could actually solve that.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_03: This is a phantom pain, imaginary pain, and then you could still use something real to solve that.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_03: And in that case, it was a very neat and very simple idea of using mirrors to sort of trick the brain again.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_03: So treating an illusion with an illusion, with what is for me, what was for me an very engineering perspective.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_03: So that was very profound, and that made me realize that the same mathematical engineering perspective, which I I guess I was naturally inclined to at that point, could also be applied to something like the brain and the mind.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so what is it like uh, you know, after having done neuroscience and actually done engineering, and now you are a teacher, right?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, how is that transition uh been and uh what's what's it taught you?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_03: I find education fascinating.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_03: So it started off as a reaction to seeing what the eighth system was like when so we we have two kids, a daughter and a son, they're eight and four now.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_03: So this started when we started look when the pandemic happened, education or what passed for education came online, and we saw what that was about.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_03: And this was the same time I was working on a book as well, uh Journey of the Mind, where we're looking at the mind from a very theoretical angle.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_03: But here is if you think about it, education is really about transforming the mind, right?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's a very practical application of that.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_03: So while I was doing this on the on the side, which is this theoretical approach to okay, what is what is thinking?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_03: There was a very practical approach to education, a very flawed one that was unfolding in front of me.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_03: So that got us thinking about education, got us thinking about okay, we also happened to move to Bombay at that time, uh, started looking for schools, didn't find any.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_03: And then they were like, okay, so this is this is a great time to put all that theory to use.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_03: That's how this journey into education came to be.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_03: Uh at the same time, actually, so stepping back a little, we were also working on uh we still have that app there.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_03: We have an app for helping kids learn to read.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_03: That was the first step, saying that okay, so there's so many things about learning, right?
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_03: If you think about foundational aspects of learning, one is uh learning to read, the other is learning to do math.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_03: We have a long history of educational initiatives, educational ideas, but very little about how the brain works and therefore how that can be used to make things better.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_03: So that was the genesis, then that led to this deep dive into all of education itself, early education.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_03: And for me, I think the the background, both having been an engineer, bringing an analytical perspective, being a neuroscientist, and not your typical uh neuroscientist with the so neuroscience is a vast field.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so much of that is uh I would say still very taxonomic, right?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_03: But in a in a more advanced version, where for the last 20 years, at least when I was a grad student, and after that, the most dominant theme in neuroscience was okay, what what brain region lights up when this particular thing happens?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_03: Which gives us a false sense of understanding, but and this is a metaphor I love to use, so it's sort of like aliens coming looking at the world and then saying, hey, we understand how ravioli or sambar are made.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_03: They're made in the kitchen, right?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_03: There's they're made in a little room that we call the kitchen.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_03: Which sounds like you know something, but that we are nowhere closer to understanding how those are actually made.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_03: And so this there was this happening in neuroscience still is uh in many ways, this taxonomic perspective.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_03: But I was incredibly fortunate to have we exposed a functional perspective, which is okay, so okay, what it what exactly is it doing?
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_03: Forget all the names, forget everything else.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_03: But what's happening when we're trying to learn?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_03: What's happening when we're trying to do something?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_03: What's happening when we're trying to remember, see, and being able to then apply all of this to education.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_03: For me, it's I think that's been uh revelatory, it's been fascinating.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we're two years in and it's still so much learning going on, still figuring out okay, wow.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, there are layers to this, right?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_03: We can keep unpacking this.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I think that's how it's involved.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, Sai, uh so when I look at your uh you know education, you are fairly successful, right?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because you've been in IIT, you've gone to the US, you've studied there.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: So if I put it from a the traditional template of education, whatever was the education system, you have been very, very successful, right?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, therefore, given the fact that you are you're successful in whatever templates that are currently running today, right?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and the template that you are now looking to change as a part of community learning that you have, uh, how do you see it different?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: And what do you see are the challenges?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because at one end you have been so successful in the old template, right?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: If you are not somebody who said, Oh, I I'm a dropout, and you know, I did not go to the school.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, you've been fairly really successful in the old template, right?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: If I were to call it the current template, right?
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: So, what does that mean to what you're doing today?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's work very well, right?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, therefore, how does it change given the new uh framework that you're building?
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's a great tragedy of our education system that someone who went down that path could be considered a success.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_03: So I was very successful at one thing, which is I think cracking exams and doing well in uh standardized exams.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_03: And that did get me quite the distance, but it also shielded me from real world and reality for a very long time, almost 30 years.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean, I almost have to laugh or maybe cry and look back and say that we have a system that shields you from the real world, creates a very artificial uh world where the things that matter are very, very different from what matters in the real world, right?
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_03: So your exams don't matter at all in the real world, right?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_03: What matters is whether you can get the job done.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_03: Uh our education system started off as a proxy for getting the job done, but that was in the industrial age, and the real world has evolved and moved on very quickly, but our in the world of education is not.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_03: And it's it's I think very sad that we still have the system where you know, so tens of blacks of Indians go through these competitive trends, whether it's IIT, IAS, spending four, five years, kid start as young as six, going through all of that.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_03: Of course, when you go through that, you know, you come up with any test, you will have people who excel at that who probably have other abilities as well.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't think it's a merit of the system itself, it's just that you you're just literally dumping tens of millions of people through a filter, and you're going to get someone out of it.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_03: You are you are going to get true positives no matter what.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um yeah, so the the system, I think, having gone through that, having been on the inside and seeing very closely what it can and cannot do, really helped me realize that education, especially now, is the conventional system that we have is very separate from what is required for the new world.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_03: New world values something else, it requires it requires us to understand and be comfortable with ambiguity, with uh chaos, even, with understanding how to make decisions, how to work in that.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas the schooling system that we have is very deterministic.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_03: It teaches you.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_03: And in my case, you know, having gone through these multiple steps, at least for the first 25-30 years of my life, was telling me that you know life comes as a series of neatly defined packaged problems, and all you have to do is solve that and you cracked it in life, which is absolutely not the case.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_03: And I think having gone through that, then having spent 30 years within that system, I say 30 because I mean while the PhD does open you up to some of the ambiguities, you're still within academia.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_03: And academia is still far removed from the from the real world.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_03: So having gone through that and then finally exiting that and then saying, oh my god, the real world is nothing like the model, or at least the distant model we have there, that really opened up my eyes.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_03: So I think even like even before we had kids, there was this vague notion that uh you know we we can't have this education system.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_03: But of course, I didn't really have any uh skin in the game, but after after kids that became especially uh a pressing problem.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_03: So yes, I think that the being on the inside really helped see the flaws up close.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: So so you keep using this word that uh you know we know what the education system can do and cannot do, and therefore uh you are building an alternate model, at least you are uh you know experimenting trying to build an alternate model.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: So, what do you think the current education system can do and cannot do?
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: And what do you think that you are building uh can do and cannot do?
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_03: So, one is I think the the the very fact that this is a system that is being set up with very well-meaning intentions to work for work for everyone, I think the problem starts right there, right?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and this is very linked to our ideas about what learning is.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_03: So only now are we realizing that realizing what learning looks like inside the brain, inside the mind.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but earlier the idea was you know you could train someone, and uh that that training process could be very standardized, and therefore you could apply that to it to every individual.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_03: So this is this was in fact a paradigm in neuroscience.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_03: Uh behaviorism was very much like that, right?
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_03: You could come up with a behavioral paradigm, you could come up with an input-output mechanism, train someone, and then at the end of it, you have someone who's ready to do whether that's a human or a rat in a lab, there I use that.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um that worked in the industrial era when the people you needed, the vocational skills you needed, uh, were largely standardized.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_03: But the fact is that we are all unique, and the system does not take that into account.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_03: And the system, given its intentions, that it should work for everyone, makes it especially hard.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_03: Because we if everyone is so unique in their in the way they approach learning, in their attitude towards learning and how they learn, having one system for everyone just does not make sense.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_03: So, first is understanding and being humbled by the sheer immense problem that is to take on a system.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_03: We're not trying to change a system, we're trying to change it from the bottom up in a very localized way.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_03: And that localized is okay, our kids in this small community, and that's a problem that we can tackle, and that's that it's a much more well-defined problem.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_03: It's not the abstract problem of solving education, but it's a very real problem of seeing what are these kids interested in?
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: What do they want to learn?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_03: What are their attitudes, and how can we how can we best enable this learning?
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_03: So that makes the problem very real.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that having this localized approach is uh is the greatest advantage that what we do uh brings.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: So so when you say you take a localized approach and when you say what do these kids want to learn, uh can you enumerate uh how do people learn, how do kids learn?
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: And uh if you can tell me what are the fundamental mental models of what you have seen as uh the best form of learning uh and how it is so different from the traditional form of learning.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: So if you can talk about that and how does it actually work in the brain?
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're going to if you're really looking at learning, how is it this form of learning is very, very different from the traditional form of learning?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_03: So that is a very the answer is a last one.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_03: I think the question is uh I think deceptively simple.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_03: So, what is learning?
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_03: So, learning is everything that enables us to uh successfully navigate life.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_03: Learning is self-expansion for us, and that is very interesting.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's an interesting perspective because uh you could say that in the older model the self is fixed, right?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_03: It is you're then acquiring certain skills.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_03: But in this perspective, I think learning is enabling you to change yourself, to be better equipped to navigate the world, to change the world you will.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_03: So that's that that is very abstract, and is necessarily abstract because learning is for us.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_03: Learning is for you know picking up specific skills, learning is about attitudes, learning is about conceptual understanding as well as uh technical know-how.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_03: So there's no one answer to this.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_03: So it's really okay, learning is life itself, right?
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_03: And what's different about us is that we don't drop out of the womb with any set of skills they have we are quiet, right?
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_03: We are completely and utterly helpless for the first couple of years of our life.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_03: We need a lot of uh literal hand holding initially, and later on, I think that transitions are giving gently largest, but we're always in the process of discovering what the world is.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and we have to figure out that balance of understanding what is the system we have, right?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_03: Understanding how how the world works, and this is always changing, right?
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_03: So we all live in within flawed systems.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't mean that we just stop and try to write everything for our systems.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_03: Systems are fundamentally there because you know there's so many different things that are happening.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: So once you're within that, how do you navigate that?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_03: What parts of it can you change if you want to?
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_03: How do you become aware of that?
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_03: Everything that enables that is learning.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that the contrast here is that in the conventional system, learning is at least the way most people see it, is very educational.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_03: It is what allows us to get a particular job or we're saying that no, that's anyway.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_03: The world is changing.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_03: We probably it's a very different world from the ones that our parents inhabited and had successful careers, stable jobs in the same place for 40 years, that's changing that's gone.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_03: That that world is no longer there, right?
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_03: So, what is this new world?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_03: How can we equip ourselves with the skills to both navigate this world and learn continuously?
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, uh in comedy learning, how do you really approach this problem?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, what are the steps that you are taking to get the kids uh to be uh learning what they are interested in, and how do you even discover what they are interested in?
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_03: So kids change really, really fast, which means that what they're interested in changes pretty much, I think, we need to be one of the other.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so the metaphor we really like uh to use as our guiding metaphor is that so learning happens on a vast landscape of possibilities, right?
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_03: Kids could be interested in math, it could be kids could be interested in music, kids are interested in gaming, kids are interested in uh you know figuring out how to do uh handholds or you know stand upside down.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_03: It could be whatever, right?
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: And this is because it is literally them learning with their minds and bodies of how to navigate the world, to navigate the literal world as well as the uh the world of systems, the world of concepts, right?
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_03: So our job is to say that first is the belief that you know what kids can actually learn on their own.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_03: So we are here.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, what's exceptional where we are actually exceptional as a species is that ability to learn, ability to learn from each other, and that itself.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's we are we are wide with that, right?
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_03: So we're born with that.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's not like we have to teach someone they learn on their own.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_03: But of course, when you show them a certain path, it can become easier.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_03: And this is where the metaphor happens, right?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_03: So if the metaphor, the central metaphor is that you know learning happens is an exploration of this vast landscape of possibilities.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_03: What is our role as educators or religious?
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_03: So we are not there to say we are not so we are guiding that on this last time.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_03: But we are not strict guides.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: We're not saying that this is the only path we can take on that.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_03: We are actually acknowledging that there are many paths, paths that even we ourselves don't know, right?
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_03: But we are here to tell you that hey, you know, these paths have been navigated by people who've come before us.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_03: There's certain things that you can find on these paths, certain interesting things.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um here's what you can get out of that.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_03: And we're also here to say that okay, so there are some perhaps some dangerous paths.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_03: It could be exposure to uh something that's not necessarily appropriate at the same time, right?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_03: Again, that's a balance.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_03: Like, who are we to decide that?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_03: It has to be a collective decision.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_03: But how in in this worldview, we are gentle guys who are here imaginative along the way.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_03: So the phrase that often often used in uh education or something that doesn't we are guys on the side, we are not the sage on the stage, right?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_03: We're not here to say that we know everything and you're about education, everything that we are learning along the way.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_03: We happen to have uh a few more yards and years than you, and therefore we have an experience that we have virtually no one knows anything.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_03: That's the idea.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: How does the classroom look like in comedy?
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: So uh so I am you know if I have a kid uh and if I were to uh you know get you get uh you know get the kid into your school.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: So how does a class look like?
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because to me, it looks abstract from whatever you're telling me, and uh, you know, uh me as a parent, I would like to know how is my kid progressing.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, does he know addition?
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: Does he know subtraction?
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, does he know multiplication tables?
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, uh does he know grammar?
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so these are the worries that I have as a parent because that's really what I believe gets tested as the kid grows wanting to go to college and things like that.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: So clearly, uh uh how do you really uh then prepare the kids for the real world?
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because obviously that's the real world that's out there, right?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_03: It's one aspect of the real world, which is that we have these competitive exams that's changing too, and I assume that uh I'm willing to bet as well that with the way AI is progressing, that's going to change dramatically because we already have have AIs that within two years of you know chat GPD coming along are already cracking the most sophisticated exams that can be given to them.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but that's happening, but even without that, I think yes, competitive exams are in reality, but a very small part of reality.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_03: The larger part of reality is the world itself.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_03: So our job is to help them model the world, model, understand the world, understand themselves, and therefore our classrooms have to mimic that in a certain way.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_03: So in your conventional school, you classrooms it's it's very interesting how philosophy informs the structural design itself.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_03: If your philosophy of learning is that this is knowledge to be in state, that means that it's one direction.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_03: The classroom that you have is one where the teacher is by the blackboard and their class on one side.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_03: Literally, the design itself is shaped by that philosophy.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_03: Here, the philosophy is that that's not true, we are guides on the side.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_03: That means that there's no such structure, it's a very flexible one.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_03: So we have a lot of free play where kids are doing whatever, but we also have guided activities where the kids come together as groups.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_03: They don't sit at desks, we sit around, there's a facilitator or educator, and depending on the activity, the space is used that way.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes it's desks if they have to be done at desk.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_03: But the point being that there's no single fixed structural design that is used for this, right?
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_03: So the classrooms, when you talk about how they look, it's that it's free from, right?
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_03: So we have these spaces, we have a library, we have music spaces, uh, we have spaces for the kid to run around.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_03: In Bombay, we are being very creative because obviously spaces are three big.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but we manage that, right?
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_03: So it's not a it's not your typical test.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_03: Now, when it comes to testing, uh this is again very interesting, right?
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_03: Two years down, we're realizing that hey, you know what?
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's true, kids need to know this stuff.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_03: Uh again, now when we say need to know, there are certain basics.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the uh the assumption made in conventional schooling again is that the kid has to be well-rounded, which for some reason now that's lost in the mist of time, also means that they have to understand chirality in chemistry and uh geodesic plates or whatever in geography, even though that without any meaning or relevance is just a bag of facts.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_03: So we're not saying that, but we do understand that kids have to take their exams that go down a certain part.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_03: But then what we're questioning is does that have to be done in a very standardized path where every kid is trying to do something by a certain age?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: So, like you said, uh you know, the the natural anxiety a lot of parents have is hey, my kid is six but not able to string together or recognize four-letter words, right?
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_03: This is the kind of anxiety that's been instilled by the system.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_03: And if you step back and you look at okay, what what is what does neuroscience tell us about learning?
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_03: We realize that outside of learning to speak, which has a critical plasticity for uh part, uh what that means is that if you don't learn to speak by a certain age, it is very, very hard to pick that up.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_03: But every single one of us learns to speak simply because we've immersed in that.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_03: But when it comes to things like learning to read or learning to uh adapt number, learning to do math, there is no critical plasticity.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_03: What it means is that there's no sensitive period by which you must master multiplication, there's no sensitive period by which you must master addition.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, it is counterproductive to try and reduce to introduce that early on because it does something profound.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_03: Instead of the kids might learn it with the same behavioral uh skinary mechanism that hey, let's let's you know beat this kid into submission into learning that, right?
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_03: So they know the multiplication tables.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_03: So they'll be able to parrot that.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_03: But what you have is a very shallow level understanding and a deeper and a very profound dissatisfaction with this, right?
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_03: And that goes on in life.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_03: So math phobia is something that you know so many of us are aware of.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_03: And math phobia exists because this has happened.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_03: Kids have been exposed to these abstractions too early in life, they've learned to fear them, right?
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_03: And that's the sort of counterproductive learning we don't want.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_03: So, what we're seeing again and again, and this is of course, we are only two years old, but we we can see how alternative schooling pathways have looked for kids who have taken them.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_03: Sudbury is a very great example.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_03: Sudbury School is a democratic school in the US, somewhere here in the UK.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_03: They've existed for 70, 80 years now.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_03: And one thing that you learn from them is that you know what matters are the fundamental aspects of learning, which is not these superficial topics like additional multiplication, but your attitudes toward learning, things like are you able to stick to something?
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_03: Do you have the working memory, do you have the critical thinking to be able to question something?
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_03: Once that is there, and you can build on that very easily.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_03: So, and and this is something you know, homeschoolers will tell you again and again, democratic schoolers will tell you again and again.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_03: Once someone is ready, and that means both uh in terms of their mindset, in terms of their attitude, in terms of their uh developmental age as well, they can just breeze through things.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_03: So you can take an 11-year-old, and even if that kid has not learned to eat by then, once exposed to reading, when it's ready, it'll just pick it up right away.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_03: So a lot of these fears are very unformed.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_03: So for us, our job as we realize is to keep telling parents about this.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_03: Like uh you don't have to worry about this, right?
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_03: A kid has all the machinery required, uh, they will pick it up.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_03: It's just a question of when.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_03: But it's counterproductive to try and squeeze everyone into the same bucket and say you must finish this by this age, you must finish this by that age.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_03: So, to come back to you know how we deal with this, yes, we do have we absolutely understand that you have assessments to do, but we are not very worried or at all worried about saying that okay, that must mean that we have assessments everywhere.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they have it when they do grade 10 or grade 8, that's fine.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_03: And we'll get them ready for that, right?
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_03: Before that, there's all of life itself for them to explore, all of fundamental skills and traits to be acquired.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: So, so how do you how do you teach them these fundamental traits?
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because uh that's very qualitative in nature, right?
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, therefore, uh you know, dealing with ambiguity is what you talked about.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, uh chaos is something that uh the world uh is all about kiosk, and therefore you need to navigate kiosk, right?
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: So these are some of the things that uh you know kids have to learn, but uh, you know, the schools don't teach them, or for example, failure, okay, uh, is something that uh kids have to be taught because you go through failure uh you know in anything that you do, uh, because you're not going to be uh you know, you're not going to be first rank or uh you know the best uh the topper every time, right?
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: So therefore, learning failure and uh coping with failure is a very, very interesting uh you know, uh, I would say pivot in terms of learning.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: So in the classroom, how do you teach it to the kids?
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you really ask me, uh I saw an interesting uh post that you have put up saying that uh uh you know this whole endless cycle of assessments is really what uh is creating the problem, right?
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: But then the endless cycle of assessments is really what the best IITs have come out of, you know, the best IMs have created, the best uh you know, the management graduates.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: They're all in top jobs today, right?
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: So, therefore, the endless cycle of assessments has indeed created some successful uh people.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: So, therefore, uh how do you see it counter to what is needed in the maybe the knowledge economy or the uh you know the sharing economy or whatever that we would call it?
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's really the new craft economy that we are talking, which is which is coming in with the AI.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: So, from the industrial edge to the craft economy, if I were to call it, uh how does this have to change?
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because frankly, uh I mean, me as a parent, I'm actually saying that hey, he's he's uh you know he's among the top 10 percentile of the class, he's doing very well, uh, you know, he is moving to a school.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: So clearly, if you were to apply this in your school, uh, I would want to know the progress of my kid, right?
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: I would want to know uh is he or she better than somebody else, okay?
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and therefore, uh, how successful would the next admission be as they move from one level to the other?
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, how do you handle these things?
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: And can you tell me how do you really go through this process?
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because what you're telling me, so you run a micro school.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: So, first tell my audience what's a micro school, right?
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh, you know, can you walk them through what is this whole process of teaching that you do there?
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's very important for us to understand the model of teaching that happens there.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_03: So uh we are a microschool, as the name suggests, and it's a very small school, and that's very important because Ali said, foundational to what we do is the idea that everyone learns differently, there's no standardized path, and therefore there's no standardized assessment.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_03: But the reason this is not really taken off so far is that it's very hard to put in practice, right?
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_03: Homeschoolers have done this for a long time.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_03: There are so many exceptionally gifted uh homeschoolers who struggle in school, who have been homeschooled because you know the regular pace does not make sense for them.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_03: It's at both ends of the spectrum, once you flatten it into a spectrum, right?
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_03: Someone who's struggling because they're slower, someone who's struggling because they just get bored.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_03: And these people have gone on to do wonderful things, they've gone to Ivy League schools, uh I mean they're Nobel Prize winners as well, maybe homeschool.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_03: Uh now, conventional school, the uh before jumping ahead.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_03: So we're a micro school because we're saying that uh okay, so if learning has to be personalized, we have to be able to pay attention to each one.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_03: And that is very hard to do if you have a class of 40, right?
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_03: So if you have a let's let's assume that you have a class of 40 and you have one teacher come in for a one-hour period, right?
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_03: It means that you literally can spend about a minute and a half with each kid, which actually is ridiculous if you think about it, right?
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_03: So, how do you understand you know what that kid is studying?
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_03: So we have the system of standardized testing, of standardized teaching to make it easier at scale.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_03: So the system is not designed for the individual, the system is designed to work at scale and throw out some individuals, and as we discussed, you know, the idea of true positives.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_03: True positives are so you just explain what true positives and false positives are.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_03: So you have an exam, someone's going to you know rank in the top ten, right?
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_03: Some of them are really good, some of them happen to be ones who just absolutely mastered the art of doing well in that exam.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_03: But often we look at the ones who are really good, the true positives, and assume that the system created them.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_03: But I would say that it's despite the system, right?
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_03: They would have like they happen to thrive in that system, but that doesn't mean that they would thrive somewhere else, too.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_03: But I think what's interesting is to see who struggled in that system and then it's finally said this is not for me and moved out.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_03: And there's so many such success stories.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_03: And I believe that if we if you open up our eyes and look around, there are so many such success stories.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_03: And this is more true now, and I think this is very important for people to work with.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_03: This, especially in an Indian context, we are not talking to about the India of pre-1990s where the GDP was growing at this very early rate, right?
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_03: So we are uh so I think for the next 20 years, our GDP growth rate is going to be all the best in the world.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_03: And this is very important even for education because it means that we are creating a ton of opportunities for everyone.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_03: And this means that there's not a single game, it's not a zero-sum game where it's not a government job, which is literally a zero-sum game, right?
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_03: So some people will get it, the others don't get that.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_03: But in the real world, if we get our systems right, if we get our institutions right, there are it's a non-zero-sum game.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_03: So we a thousand people play the game, a thousand people can win it.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_03: And that's a very profound and different perspective that we have to adopt in many levels.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_03: So you mentioned how I think that we have this anxiety, hey, is my kid better than someone else?
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_03: How will they rank?
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_03: This is what I would call the zero-something, right?
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_03: It makes it made sense for a long time, but no, it doesn't make sense anymore.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_03: What we want to say is what are the hosts of skills that they have, right?
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_03: Uh sure, we can still compare them, right?
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_03: There's always, if you take a use a mathematical uh I think translation here, right?
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_03: So if if you have two kids, you rank them on 100 dimensions of any different, you can still flatten that down to a single number, which is what we're doing.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_03: You could still rank them.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_03: But you've thrown up thrown the baby out and how with the bathwater, right?
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_03: So in the real world, maybe it's you know, you've flattened it out, but the things that really matter are three of those other dimensions which this other kid who did really badly excels at, absolutely excelled at.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_03: And that's just being lost in this, in this, I think, distill distillation uh summarization uh process.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_03: So we really want to avoid that.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_03: But that, as I said, so assessment, uh rejecting conventional assessments does not mean that we say, hey, you know, everything is great, let's just move through life without understanding that each kid.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_03: No, we absolutely want to make learning visible.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_03: And that's why now AI is at such a great place, even now in its evolution, to help us, right?
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_03: So it we are able to synthesize observations about each kid, right?
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so for instance, what we do in uh in comedy, so we have, I think, 10 domains of uh of knowledge within that we have 25 different competencies across everything fine modus skills, gross modus skills, socio-mocial, uh, well-being, uh, critical thinking, all of these.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_03: So we are saying that we'll keep an eye on all of this, right?
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_03: But we just won't reduce it to a single number.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_03: What we will have is rich observations, and then we we'll be able to figure out how we can summarize, synthesize these rich observations to create a narrative.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_03: And why is that narrative important?
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_03: Because we're saying that learning is a journey on this vast landscape, right?
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_03: So we will have assessments, it's a very different kind of assessment.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_03: And what give me hope is that I think, given where AI is, that we are able to now move to these richer assessments.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_03: Because earlier the big issue was okay, you know, if we have such holistic assessments for each kid, which are also subjective, how do you even go through one billion of these?
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_03: It was not possible.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_03: But now it is.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_03: You know, the world that's that's been opened up by AI, it is.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_03: So that that is a very exciting possibility.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_03: But for us, yes.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_03: So uh, yeah, so we we're microscope because we we think learning should be personalized.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_03: We believe the old assessments are wrong because they're too narrow, too rigid, but that doesn't mean that we reject assessments, it's that we need holistic assessments and uh that's what we are we need.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: Contraminds is a podcast dedicated to decoding people, minds, strategy, and culture.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: We interview and learn from high performance so that you can apply these lessons on your journey to becoming the knowledge worker athlete you were meant to be.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: The Contraminds Podcast is available on all leading podcast players, and if you are interested in revisiting past episodes or taking a look at our show notes from this episode, please visit us at www.contraminds.com.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: And now back to the show.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: So when you talk about holistic assessment, so if I were a parent listening to this conversation, uh, in your definition, what is holistic uh assessment?
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: Can you walk us through what do you mean by holistic assessment?
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, so your conventional assessment would be your report card, which had seven subjects or eight subjects, whatever that number is, where you had a single letter or a s or a number.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_03: That is distilling all of life down to those seven numbers for a life, for a kid and saying this is what matters.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_03: What we're saying is look, what also matters is is the kid funny, right?
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_03: Is the kid actually able to see wit and humor and things, which which which is interesting.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_03: We can't quantify its value right now, but we all know how that matters in life, right?
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_03: Uh you could be great at exception at something, but if you're an exceptional boar as well by being exceptional with something, life is still hard to navigate, right?
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_03: Whether it's a personal life or professional life.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so that is one example.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_03: Along with, let's say, okay, so uh now let's take something like math, which we do, which we do uh explore with with the kids, right?
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_03: What does holistic assessment look within math?
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_03: So math again is a set of competencies, it's about attitudes as well.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_03: So it's not just about whether someone was able to do a set of uh you know, successfully uh crack a certain set of questions, which is what conventional school would do.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_03: Here we look at okay, so what was their attitude, right?
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_03: How did you approach this?
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_03: Now, the same problem.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_03: So I mean, this is one of the uh very interesting examples given.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_03: I forget which uh which famous mathematician it was.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_03: Uh how do you add out numbers one to a hundred, right?
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_03: Uh like how would you do that?
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_03: So the famous story goes that I this eight-year-old, I forget it was Gauss, realized that you could write the numbers one to 100, you could also write them backwards, and then you see a pattern emerge, right?
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_03: When you add the first and the last number, it's 101.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_03: When you add the second and the 99 number, it's again 101.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_03: So now there's a pattern there, right?
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_03: And that's a brilliant way to do this.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_03: Now there's the conventional way of doing this.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_03: There's also this, which tells you that even within math, you could approach a problem in so many different ways, some of which are exceptionally creative.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_03: But when you start grading, you lose all of this.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_03: But what we are doing is that look, we are actually going to document the process by which someone tried to arrive at the answers, fully understanding that it's fine if they didn't get it.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_03: That process itself is very interesting because it's a window into how they're doing that.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_03: That is holistic assessment for us.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful, beautiful.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: So, so you uh, where do you get teachers?
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because you really uh, you know, I I have seen you right saying that getting a good teacher is a treasure hunt, right?
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: So, therefore, uh, you know, so therefore, uh to do something like this, uh you need a fundamental uh understanding of holistic assessment, right?
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: So, because uh if I'm going to teach you science, uh uh again you need you're talking about holistic assessment because the way you uh approach the problem, the way you uh you know address the uh address the problem, the way you uh see the problem, you're kind of observing and actually giving them a holistic assessment, right?
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: So, given that, where do you get these teachers and how do you train these teachers and how do you prepare teachers and how do you scale this?
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I've got three questions in this, you can answer it in multiple steps.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's I I think that's a very important and the most fundamental piece of this.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_03: I think alternative schools uh exist but do not scale for these two reasons.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_03: One is finding the right set of teachers is hard, then setting up the The right training paradigm, if there's one the right learning paradigm, uh putting systems around it, right?
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_03: So conventional school schooling for whatever its education system, for whatever its flaws are, the system is really well oiled.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_03: So you have all the tools in place.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_03: With alternative schooling, we have to build those, and that's what we're doing too.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_03: So while we run a micro school, uh so I have a technology background, so we're actually building systems as well.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_03: We've built something called Zippy, which is a micro school in a box, which really enables us to run everything associated with the school, which is uh operational logistics, uh, assessments, everything, everything.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_03: How do you personalize this?
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_03: How do we uh get observations from uh facilitators and educators?
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_03: How do we learn from them?
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_03: All of that in a typical alternative school, it is done by this very exceptional set of teachers who become cultural institutions who retain all of this.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_03: But for us to be able to scale this, for us to be democratize and make this more accessible, we have to build systems.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_03: And conventional learning LMSs, for instance, I've again sort of we discussed how the structural design of a classroom is so informed by the philosophy.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_03: LMSs are exactly the same.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_03: The design of an LMS is informed by the philosophy.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_03: And if the philosophy is that you know it's knowledge acquisition, everything is centered around that.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but there are systems for it.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_03: So it's a flawed, it's a flawed philosophy, it's a especially given this context, this world's context.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_03: But there are systems for that.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_03: But what we what we have in the alternative schooling system is that we want to personalize education, but systems are few and far because no one's building those.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_03: So we are actually building that, you know, the the the new age LMS which will allow us to be personalized, flexible, and all of that.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um coming back to teachers, how do we find them?
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_03: So our belief as uh you know the guiding metaphor for us is we have to be gentle guides at the side.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_03: Now, guides can have expertise, but expertise is not the only thing they the idea is not that we have to get them because they have this pre-acquired expertise, right?
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_03: We can we can get them to acquire this on the job, right?
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_03: So you can learn exploration on the fly.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_03: What is what we've seen, what we've seen over and over again, is the most fundamental aspect is that they have to absolutely love spending time with kids, right?
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_03: That is very important because a large part of the job is literally seeing that okay, I'm going to spend time with kids, learn along with them, almost be able to see the world through their perspective.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_03: And this is very important because unless you see the world through their perspective, you're not able to see the problems of the way they are.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_03: So a lot of unlearning that is required, seeing that, hey, you know what, this is the old way, but we don't have to do that, right?
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_03: There's a new way to do this.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_03: So if we look at, I think the people that we work with, the people who have really excelled at being educators within our small setup, it's really, I'd say it's smart people who have a love for kids, and the most important thing is willing to unlearn the kids and learning a lot, right?
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_03: This the idea that it's we are never going to reach a stage where we say now we know everything there is to know about teaching kids, and therefore we do not have to acquire anything kids.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_03: It's going to be a continuous process because the world changes, kids change, changes, so we have to just we keep learning along, but we have to be able to keep using the experience and the expertise that we get along the way.
• 47:24
  unknown: Okay.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so a lot of people wonder, hey, like, you know, they don't have degrees.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_03: But degrees come from the old perspective, right?
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_03: We are rejecting the very perspective that you know the the process of acquisition of degree somehow equipped you to become a teacher.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_03: No, some of them obviously will end up as great teachers, but the mere fact that they have that degree doesn't work.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: So tell me uh how are you building a platform for scaling this?
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because an interesting uh point that you made that uh obviously these uh these need to scale, right?
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_01: So therefore, if this needs to scale, uh what's your learning platform like, and what are the ways in which you're thinking of the components of this learning platform and how are you using technology for enabling this learning platform so that it can scale?
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's a very, very important uh I would say uh direction that you are taking.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you're you're almost moving uh almost uh 180 degree uh you know opposite uh direction that you are taking, and how you know we have to learn.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_01: So if you were to do that, as you rightly said, there are assets, skills, uh tools, methodologies which are there.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, how are you building all of this as a part of this platform or technology that you're talking about?
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_03: So we we are building something called Zippy, which internally we call our microschool in the box.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so fundamentally, our guiding non-star principle is it should enable personalized learning and allow us to have visibility into this process.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_03: So everything and anything that allows for this.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_03: Now there is the added context that we are in a world where learning resources are there's an abundance of them.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_03: The the world's best uh resources for learning anything is they're now on YouTube, right?
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_03: So there's channels like three blue, one brown, which is exceptional if you want to learn any math concept.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_03: There's veritasun uh for anything that's on the engineering uh side.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_03: You you have all of those, and exceptionally engaging.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_03: So it's not about uh just collating these resources, right?
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_03: That's the old world.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_03: So an LMS will say, okay, here are your video lectures, yeah.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_01: What are the resources you said is available on YouTube?
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: Can you repeat that once more?
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_03: The the two channels that I mentioned specifically are three blue, one brown.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_03: That's a math uh channel.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_03: Then there's Veritasim.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_03: Veritas both are super popular.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Veritasiv takes some interesting concepts from our world.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_03: It could yes, something like, okay, so how complex is it to learn to balance a bike, for instance, right?
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and then really does a deep dive into that and shows us how you know what we take for granted actually involves uh fair amount of skill and understanding, intuitive understanding of physics, for instance.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um Three Blue, One Brown is a channel which ties into topics like calculus.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_03: And because of their love and passion, and of course their expertise in doing this, they're exceptional.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think that anyone teaching this offline.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the greatest teachers probably can come close, but this is you know uh multi-sensory uh teaching, right?
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_03: It's exception.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_03: This is all there, it's all out there.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_03: So our job is not to just simply curate this and say just go ahead and go through those.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_03: It is to focus on something more fundamental, right?
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_03: Where are they right now?
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_03: What are their attitudes like?
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_03: The attitudes toward learning become so much more important than the resources for learning.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's still there, but our learn, our management system has to say, okay, so we have to be able to finally understand where each kit is.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_03: And that requires gathering a large set of data about each kit.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_03: What are their days like?
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_03: If you have a group activity, for instance, what was that activity like?
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_03: What did we as facilitators learn from that?
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_03: So we we we actually have a system where each facilitator can actually make observations about each kit, about each group activity.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_03: Uh they can you know use a voice or use text, it gets automatically recorded.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_03: Then at the end of the month, uh, the end of the year, we actually synthesize these, we create holistic reports.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_03: So that's part of the system.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_03: The other part is then allowing us to plan.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_03: Now, as I said, so it's not all about letting the kids off on this vast landscape and saying, okay, let's go explore, and we're gonna be sitting.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's coming up with like we should so we learn based on our context, right?
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_03: So, for instance, no kid in India is going to be interested in baseball because baseball is non-existent.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_03: Every boy, now amazing girl, uh, a lot of girls are interested in cricket as well because that is our context.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's what we are exposed to.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_03: So, what we're exposed to matters.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_03: So, our choice then is to figure out what the kids' interests are, then find interesting things, interesting experiences that we can uh invite them to participate in.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_03: So that's the planning aspect, right?
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_03: And the way we do that is uh now this ties into some fundamental learning ideas again.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_03: Anything and everything can be explored in absolutely any level of detail.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_03: So if you take uh if you take an apple, right?
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_03: An apple is a portal into history, an apple is a portal into economics, an apple is a portal into math, an apple is a portal into color, everything is embedded within that.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_03: You can explore all of this.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so therefore, the world does not lack for things that we can uh get the kids to be interested in.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_03: It is more about okay, so understanding okay, what are they interested in right now?
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_03: Let's say they're very interested in uh music, it also happens to be the monstrous, they have the interest in the rain, in the rains and what's happening in the city.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_03: Tying those things together and finding activities about them.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_03: It could be worksheet-based activities, it could be science projects, it could be all of these.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_03: So this requires planning, right?
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_03: So every month we have a theme based on what the kids are interested in, what the facilitators think the kids would type.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_03: But so this month it's gardens and uh garden, right, based on what the historical kids were.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_03: Now, this again, as I said, is a portal into everything, right?
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_03: So you can actually explore biology, chemistry, everything through this.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the question is what can we curate as a set of experiences?
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_03: This takes a lot of work, right?
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_03: So this you can, you know, if you are a if you're a homeschooler, you're sitting alone, you know, the the mom or dad can then spend a lot of time doing that.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_03: But the moment you have 10 kids, right?
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_03: Figuring out how to find something that's interesting for all of them and for a different ability level, that's a lot of work.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_03: And we are building tools again to help with this, right?
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_03: For instance, like if you have a theme idea, can we tie the theme idea with all the observations we made about our kids with what all the competencies that we want to explore and automatically come up with certain suggestions as to what can be done?
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_03: So these are the sort of things that our system enables.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_03: So, our what we're doing now in the two years that we've been running this is to first do this manually, right?
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_03: So, first, okay, how would we do this?
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you know, let's do this the hard way.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_03: Then we do that and then realize okay, these are the efficiencies that are possible.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_03: So, if you're going to be able to create a theme, we know that there's a series of 15 steps.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_03: Correct.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_03: And 12 of those can be automated, right?
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_03: That that crucial step is now missing.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_03: Alternative schools are not scaled because no one has taken that step and saying that you know what, human creativity is absolutely crucial, but there's so much that we can uh automate, help accelerate with the right user technology.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_03: That's what we are uh enabling with.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_01: So is there a lot of underlying AI workflows, uh, you know, uh tools and uh assets for learning, and therefore the micro school in a box that you talk about has these kinds of things, and therefore, over a period of time, that this itself almost becomes like an LLM for every little micro school that you would actually uh scale up across the country.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_01: Is that the kind of vision that you're talking about?
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so we we do not want to think too far into the distance, but absolutely, yes.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_03: So uh the idea is if you're able to build a system that is truly meaningfully personalizable for every kid, it's automatically got scale built in because it works for just about any kit.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_03: That means that every kid can use this to find their own.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_03: So to give you an example of how so we use AI across the board, it's been a boon in terms of what how it actually things.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so we use a lot of board games as well.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_03: Uh existing board games.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, big fans of board games because we we spoke about okay, how do you how do you get kids to uh explore critical thinking, ambiguity, uh working with limited information, sometimes incomplete information.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_03: Actually, board games have all of this, right?
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_03: So if you take Settlers of Catan, very popular board game, uh so it's about how do you use resources to get ahead in this game, right?
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_03: So building settlements and cities.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_03: And it's great, it's fantastic.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_03: It it just gets the kids to participate socially, think about all of these things, understand how to uh complete, cooperate all of this.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_03: Now, what we also do is build our own board games, uh, build our own card games.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_03: So we actually done uh three versions, uh three three different ones.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_03: I'll give you an example of how we're using AI.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_03: So we're actually using tech and AI in the complete stack at the philosophy at the philosophy level down to the practical level in terms of what we're waiting.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we have a card game called Stitcher Story, where this is to help kids learn to read.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the idea is it's a deck of cards where there are words on each card.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_03: So each card is each kid is dealt a bunch of cards.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_03: They have to build a story with the words of these cards.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_03: And then the idea of this is that they have to remember as many of these cards as possible.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_03: So let us say you've used 10 cards, which is 10 words, you have to try and remember, remember the story and these 10 words.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_03: And the what we do is to make it hard, we we have a distractor period in the menu where we say that okay, it's it's not like okay, if I give you a random number right now, 9745, right?
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_03: You're gonna remember it right away.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_03: But if I ask you to remember this after I rattle out how many digits, it will be exceptionally hard because you'll be distracted.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_03: So we build this in into the card game mechanics, and then the idea is that they are able to use the very act of creating a narrative around these words to help make these words memorable.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_03: So that's the card game.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_03: Now, how do we use AI?
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_03: We actually built these cards, built all these words, figured out all the images to go along with these words.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_03: Everything has been done with AI.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_03: So we are actually built this.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_03: Uh there's another map game that we've built, which involves uh a free market like situation where uh kids have to, you know, uh use a series of it's not free market, sorry, it's in the I think they have to feed their pets.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_03: They have to pick what pet they want to feed, and they have to go along a particular journey, pick up money to be able to do that.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_03: Now, all of these, there's one aspect which is human creativity, which is uh us working together and saying what are ideas that are interesting and meaningful to kids, then how can we quickly come up with you know an entire world, mini world around things, right?
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_03: So that's us using here.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, we've used so we have these, another one is a spotted game.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_03: Spotted is a very cool game, which actually uses a very, very interesting mathematical uh mathematical uh idea, which is that when you have uh a set of images or numbers or whatever it is, you can come up with a particular permutation such that any seven of these, when you when you partition this, will always have one thing in common.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, right?
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_03: And and the way they've converted this into a game is so you have one, two cards, one has seven animals, uh, the other other card is seven animals.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_03: Only one of them is common between the two.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_03: It's it could be a pink elephant which is bigger on this and bigger on this.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_03: You have to spot it, you have to be the first to spot it, and uh you have to be able to say that, right?
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_03: It's elephant elephant.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_03: We have then we have created our own version of this where we have replaced this with the with the pictures of kids to make it more meaningful for the environment, right?
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_03: Again, using AI, where uh we're seeing that this is the idea, let's actually create a set using this, let's create an algorithm for this.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_03: So that is us again using AI to create learning resources.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_03: So we've done that with learning resources, we've done that with our planning tools, we are doing that with our observations.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_03: Observations are end-of-the-assessment reports, actually us synthesizing about 50 to 100 observations about each kid and creating a covering report.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_03: So using it across the board.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_01: So all these over a period of time become your learning assets, and then there are assessment uh models and patterns that would be there, and you probably will have the background of the kids again in the system, and therefore, over a period of time, it could become a learning model, and you can then take it across multiple uh you know uh schools if you were to run it like a platform.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, imagine learning as a platform, and therefore, you're really looking at it using the AI, using the models, using the workflows, you're just then ensuring that if I were a teacher, I could pick up my learning assets and then apply it in the school depending on how contextually I'm looking at the kid, and therefore, can I pick up my library of learning assets for the kid?
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's really how you're looking at it.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, it's very interesting that you mentioned that because it it's we've also seen the evolution of our own thing.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_03: When I think Chat GPT came out, uh I was absolutely fascinated by what it enabled.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_03: It's a writer of the time we started our schools, we're creating our own things.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I wrote this post uh I think the title was One AI Tutor for Every Child.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_03: And that actually went viral.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_03: So it was, you know, it uh there's a very popular tech forum called Hacker News, uh, by Y Combinator.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_03: So it was it was it ranked number one there.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_03: It's now I think read by 20,000 people.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_03: In many ways, it that led to us being uh funded as well.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but our evolution, like thinking has evolved since that, right?
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_03: So when when I wrote that piece, the idea was they could be a tutor for each other.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_03: But now when we see, when we've you know looked at learning at a very deep level, what we're seeing is learning is always, especially with us, fundamentally human.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_03: So what we're doing is now what we have is a learning assistant for every facilitator.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_03: So the learning loop still is very human.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_03: It's the child and the facilitator and the parents, it's it's all the humans involved in this, right?
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_03: With their shared context and uh shared culture.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_03: But this is being enabled by an AI assistant at the back, and that's what we're building.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_03: So I think, yeah, even going ahead, we will have VMs, we will have all of this, but for us, the focus always has to be about the child being inspired and learning along with and with a human, with a with a mentor uh a guide.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_03: But who could in turn be uh assisted by this?
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's like you know, uh to use a very geeky metaphor, I think, is like an Iron Man suit for your uh for your teacher.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic, fantastic.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_01: Given all this, uh uh Sai, uh if I were to look at uh uh you know, probably you're doing this till say grade three, grade four, and uh I come to grade ten and you know I start moving into college, and uh how do I ensure that I'm ready for say college or say uh say uh you know uh say for my masters?
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because there uh you have to somehow merge yourself to uh you know to that type of education.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_01: So uh how do I uh you know uh if you ask me, uh chart my path towards that because that's the uh maybe that's not the end goal, but uh you know that's probably what you're really saying is that's not the end goal because that's really not what you may want to do, but assuming that I want to do that, you've got a new education policy, there is an open school which is there.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_01: So, how do you really uh you know bring all of that together to ensure that uh you know you're able to take these kids and make them successful in a world of assessment when you start realizing that now that they have started learning so beautifully, they're able to meet the kids who actually have learned by templates and they are actually doing better than them.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_01: So, uh, do you think uh that's the path that could be taken maybe in the next five years using this model?
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_03: I think that uh there will be a fraction or a significant fraction of the kids who go through this who will want to go down to the natural paths, they want to they want to become doctors or engineers, and then you'll have to have these assessments.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, what we are seeing, what we are betting on, and this is again we have we have you know a vast history of democratic schooling and unschooling and unschooling to look at, to see that this is true.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_03: And what is true is that currently we have a flip model.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_03: We're saying that uh whoever has gone through a conventional treadmill of assessment has become successful in the real world.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_03: We are flipping it and saying, you know what, if we equip them for the real world and with the things we do, they will automatically pick up their necessary skills to also be able to ace these conventional cells, right?
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and speaking of flawed systems, I think as adults we all know that we have to live with flawed systems, right?
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_03: We have to work with them, right?
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_03: We all have to pay our taxes as a tax system and we all have our issues with that, but we still learn to navigate that.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that's part of becoming autonomous, having the agency to say, okay, you know what, if I really want to become a doctor, if I really want to do this, I have to go run through these hoops, and therefore I will do that.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_03: But if we flip it and say that let's just run through these hoops without even knowing what we want to do later on, I think we are taking away the agency and autonomy, which is comfortable.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_01: So when you actually uh want to run a company like this, where do you find the talent?
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because the technology mindset is very different because you're asking them to work from the first principles, right?
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, therefore, uh, where do you find the talent?
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_01: How do you uh you know groom the talent and you're a funded startup?
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_01: So, therefore, clearly uh how do you really uh what principles do you follow for hiring?
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_01: What principles do you follow for grooming?
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and how do you see this organization?
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, moving from a startup to a scaler.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_03: So, as a startup, I think we have there are certain trade-offs which are in our benefit, which is that we can be very slow in our hiring because we are, I think we're growing slowly.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_03: We don't have to hire 100 people each week.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_03: We have a very small team, and we use the exact same philosophy, right?
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_03: We do not care about their degrees.
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, that is being that is something we state up front, and the way we do our assessments is actually give them something in the world, something meaningful that is related to what they would end up doing.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_03: So if it's a design project, for instance, for our curriculum design, we had someone who's working with us actually design a board game for uh and we craft it in such a way that it does not take too much time, it's not too trivial, but also not something that will soak up you know a month of their life.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_03: And that is because we're saying that look, the only way you can actually tell if someone is right for this work is to actually have them do this work.
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_03: No other proxy works, right?
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_03: Their degrees don't matter, none of these matter.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_03: And that's easier to do with technology, we could create interesting problems.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_03: This is something, in fact, uh we've been doing for a long time.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_03: So when I started first started running uh startup, this was 10 years back, 12 years back.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_03: I'd moved back to India and worked here for a bit.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_03: So I didn't really have a network.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so what I did was create coding puzzles and actually advertised them nationally.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_03: So Facebook was much cheaper.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_03: And uh and our I think our first 10 hire, in fact, every single hire was someone who discovered us through those puzzles, solved those puzzles, and joined us.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_03: Uh one of them is now the CTO of a company elsewhere.
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_03: He's easily the most exceptional person I've worked with.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_03: He had I think he failed out of college.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_03: He not even completed his uh his degree.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_03: He was it worked for a couple of weeks, I think, in Enforces, and he felt like it was sucking the soul out of his life when he saw our ad and he immediately applied it, cracked that, and he joined us.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_03: So there is so that's that's the sheer talent of India now being an advantage in some ways, right?
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_03: We have so many people who, for many reasons, were not succeeded in the conventional pathway, because as we said, right, that's flawed.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_03: So even now, among our colleagues, so we have someone who is, I think, has 20 uh I I forget the term what that is.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_03: Basically scale 20 subjects, uh he's trying to take them again, but an exceptional talent when it comes to the work, right?
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_03: And for us, it's about hiring for that, hiring for this work and not based on what they've done.
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_03: Now, how do we do that at scale?
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's doable.
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, uh, you know, if you look at companies like Google, so they of course now Google has other issues with their hiring recruitment process, they do these seven rounds, which is and whiteboarding, which again is a bad thing in tech interviews.
• 1:08:52
  SPEAKER_03: But a lot of them will innovate in different ways.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_03: And uh typically all of it comes along with this, right?
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_03: Rather than trying to assess them based on proxies, like degrees, or where they work, or what school they've graduated from, just try to get a sense of what their actual upload of is.
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_03: And then there are the other things like okay, they have to believe in the uh you know the philosophy we're doing uh and chair with the team all of that.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_03: So we've been lucky so far, uh, but also given that we're small and we've scaled slowly, I think that's worked so far.
• 1:09:22
  SPEAKER_03: So but yeah, so as we go along, we'll have to figure out how we innovate and uh create larger scale.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_01: So looking uh say a couple of years ahead, uh if you're if you're scaling up this model, uh so do you see a lot of micro schools, comedy micro schools, as uh you know hubs and spoke that are there, and uh a lot of uh I would say teachers who come out of an academy of comedy academy, and do you see as that as the business model as you're moving forward?
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because I would love comedy to succeed given the fundamental philosophy that you have, which I believe is very, very important because you're moving from a craft age to an industrial age and back to a craft age, right?
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_01: So, given that uh situation that we are in, uh what's the business model and how do you see this uh in us uh panning out?
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_03: We would love for there to be tons of microschools that's already happening in the US.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_03: How that happens in India, we have to see you know the new educational policies more flexible.
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_03: Uh systems are always very hard to change.
• 1:10:30
  SPEAKER_03: Often change has to come from the outside, and then I I think that change is right now at our doorstep in terms of what EI is doing.
• 1:10:37
  SPEAKER_03: EI is rapidly eroding so many models of education.
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_03: Uh you know, colleges in the US are just wondering what to do with uh their take-home essays which they've been giving to green kids because now the Chat GPT will put that together.
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh they're thinking that you know there'll be AI detection tools, but that's just nonsense, that's not gonna happen.
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the point being that I think that change is required, but change is always tough because systems are so stable in their equilibrium, even if it's flawed, till something, some external force rushes it.
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_03: That's happening now, and I think that will create a great I think splintering in our system.
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_03: It would be amazing if we had a lot of microschools, we have to figure out how we enable that.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but that's a challenge in India, it's not as easy as elsewhere because we have our only our own unique set of challenges.
• 1:11:25
  SPEAKER_03: Um Bombay is you know ridiculously expensive when it comes to real estate, and for private education, we have to have a model where we are renting space or we own our space, right?
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_03: And that becomes a significant uh cost part of your fee structure cost.
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so we have to figure out how to uh you know work around that.
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_03: But and and scale has helped for this as well, right?
• 1:11:49
  SPEAKER_03: So typically you do scale because there is scale always means efficiency.
• 1:11:53
  SPEAKER_03: The question is where is the efficiency?
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_03: Scale is coming in in terms of efficiency, in terms of economics and everything else, but not in terms of efficiency for the child's life, right?
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_03: So here this is a harder, I think, challenge, but people are doing interesting things.
• 1:12:09
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so Dr.
• 1:12:10
  SPEAKER_03: Anu Dhu Malpani, who is uh an investor, he runs something called Anipar Shara, which uh they've set up, I think, 50 to 100 pods, small pods uh around India now where they're seeing that look, you know what, there's an abundance of learning solutions, so let's just give kids access to computers, right?
• 1:12:29
  SPEAKER_03: Let's put them on the autonomous path.
• 1:12:30
  SPEAKER_03: So there are microschools in and that's a very interesting one.
• 1:12:34
  SPEAKER_01: It was on our podcast.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, really?
• 1:12:37
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:12:38
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and I think that's that that's a very interesting initiative.
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so there are going to be microschools, and I think that is going to accelerate the the whole splintering of our schooling system is going to happen in the next five to ten years.
• 1:12:51
  SPEAKER_03: What happens at the end of it, how much of that is going to be microschools?
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_03: We'll we'll have to see.
• 1:12:57
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 1:12:57
  SPEAKER_01: On that note, uh uh let me uh ask you the last set of rapid fire questions.
• 1:13:05
  SPEAKER_01: So my first question to you is uh what does success mean to you?
• 1:13:11
  SPEAKER_03: Success means that we have uh been able to in a professional setting uh carve out a space for this new uh way of learning, new way of personalized learning, that you know people believe in this idea, that greater numbers come around seeing that okay, this can work, this can actually work.
• 1:13:31
  SPEAKER_03: That's what it is.
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 1:13:34
  SPEAKER_01: So if I were uh uh 18-year-old in a university today, uh what would be your advice to that 18-year-old?
• 1:13:44
  SPEAKER_03: Get to the real world as quickly as possible.
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_03: Figure out how you can get to the real world, whether that's getting an internship, a job, figuring out all the world.
• 1:13:53
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I think that's the most important thing.
• 1:13:56
  SPEAKER_03: It's very funny.
• 1:13:56
  SPEAKER_03: So I was recently reading that uh you know IIT Bombay has undergraduates who are not placed, and for me that is I think to have gone through that system for 18 years and to not be equipped enough to find your own way in the real world, uh, if you're not you're not giving them that advanced support.
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, so I tell any 18 year old out there, just yeah, find find your path to the real world as well as possible.
• 1:14:22
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic, fantastic.
• 1:14:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, what is uh one piece of advice that you have received?
• 1:14:29
  SPEAKER_01: You may have received a lot, but uh one that has remained till today, which you continue to uh apply and probably remember.
• 1:14:38
  SPEAKER_01: What's that piece of advice that you believed that you remember and really value?
• 1:14:43
  SPEAKER_03: This is something someone told me, I think fairly recently, but it resonates with me because of my own inclination, which is that it is fine to be get something to a perfectly acceptable level rather than getting it to perfection.
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_03: I think that perfection is a news remote.
• 1:14:59
  SPEAKER_03: And especially given what we're doing, I think that this resonates a lot both at the personal level and uh you know at the level of the work we're doing, that no one knows what is the ideal world or the perfect world, right?
• 1:15:11
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's important to do something, put it out there, understand what the reaction to that and the feedback to that is.
• 1:15:17
  SPEAKER_03: So yes, perfectly fine and perfectly acceptable code of fiction.
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful, beautiful.
• 1:15:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, what are the couple of books that uh you recommend uh you know that you've been inspired by?
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_01: So can you name a couple of them which you believe uh the audience can uh really uh learn from and which can make an interesting new perspective for them?
• 1:15:43
  SPEAKER_03: So I mentioned Phantoms in the Brain, which is now an old book, but one of my favorites.
• 1:15:47
  SPEAKER_03: Journey of the Mind, our book uh biased, but I do think that it is the best introduction to neuroscience you'd find.
• 1:15:55
  SPEAKER_03: But it was inspired by a book called Vehicles by someone called Valentino Greenberg.
• 1:16:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's an old book again, perhaps a bit outdated, uh, but a book I've loved and clearly lingered enough for us to make it the model of a journey of the mind.
• 1:16:09
  SPEAKER_03: In terms of recent books, uh if I just go through this, I read something by Vikram Chandra, who's an Indian author who's written Dead Earth in Pooring Rain.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_03: He has a very lovely book about code and programming.
• 1:16:21
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 1:16:22
  SPEAKER_03: So he's someone, I don't know this, he's someone who's uh actually funded his uh life as a writer by actually working as a programmer on the site.
• 1:16:31
  SPEAKER_03: So he has a very interesting con interesting perspective into the intersection of code and code and writing.
• 1:16:37
  SPEAKER_03: And another book which I read, which I happen to remember now, is a very recent book by Shashitaroo on Ambedkar.
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_03: So Ambedkar I think is one of the uh I mean he's obviously well known, and after Gandhi FR probably has the second most number of statues, but in terms of his body of work, it's like what it's done for India, I think it needs to be celebrated so much more.
• 1:16:58
  SPEAKER_03: And this book actually helped me realize many ways how much it's done.
• 1:17:02
  SPEAKER_03: Both his book and I think there's a book by Amdati Roy, Gandhi and Ambedkar.
• 1:17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 1:17:07
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful, beautiful, thanks a lot.
• 1:17:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, if you were to invite uh a couple of people for a dream dinner, uh they could be alive or dead.
• 1:17:18
  SPEAKER_01: Who would you invite and why?
• 1:17:21
  SPEAKER_03: Very interesting.
• 1:17:22
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Daniel Dennett comes to mind, he passed away recently.
• 1:17:27
  SPEAKER_03: Uh legendary philosopher, uh masterful coiner of phrases, uh, but also someone who made philosophy, I think, very accessible to so many.
• 1:17:38
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I think that would be someone.
• 1:17:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I'm wondering if there's anyone in the technology field that I would the saying never meet your heroes comes to my it comes to my mind.
• 1:17:54
  SPEAKER_03: Uh great.
• 1:17:56
  SPEAKER_01: So fantastic.
• 1:17:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so what's one piece of advice?
• 1:18:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh what what is one piece of uh uh you know belief that you really uh have which uh others others really don't uh you know agree with you?
• 1:18:12
  SPEAKER_03: That we are in a non-zero-sum world.
• 1:18:15
  SPEAKER_03: I think the the very phrasing itself is a little abstract, uh so perhaps a little hard for people to get.
• 1:18:21
  SPEAKER_03: But it's I feel like that's a very profound and important thing for us, everyone to remember, right?
• 1:18:28
  SPEAKER_03: That there's there's always something out there that you can find your path in peace in.
• 1:18:35
  SPEAKER_03: And uh especially now more than ever.
• 1:18:38
  SPEAKER_03: So we're fortunate to live in the HBR despite all the flaws, despite all the risks and emails.
• 1:18:43
  SPEAKER_03: Uh yeah, so I don't think people truly appreciate that.
• 1:18:46
  SPEAKER_01: Brilliant.
• 1:18:48
  SPEAKER_01: So thanks, I it was a lovely conversation.
• 1:18:51
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't realize the time that went by, and it was really, really uh beautiful the way you explained learning, the way you explained how education is changing and how education ought to be delivered uh in this new age.
• 1:19:08
  SPEAKER_01: So, all the best to you and really looking forward to being in touch and thanks a lot for uh sharing your thoughts with us.
• 1:19:16
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much.
• 1:19:17
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much for this opportunity.
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_03: It's absolutely been a pleasure to be able to talk about what we're doing.
• 1:19:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I realize that as we are talking, uh there's often thoughts that are inside, but I've not really been articulated at all, also particulated that really helps.
• 1:19:34
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much.
• 1:19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks a lot.
• 1:19:37
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening to this episode.
• 1:19:40
  SPEAKER_01: For selected links and detailed show notes, visit www.contraminds.com.
• 1:19:46
  SPEAKER_01: Follow Contraminds on social media and let us know who you would like to see next on the podcast.
• 1:19:52
  SPEAKER_01: If you are listening to Contraminds on Apple Podcasts, do share your comments and give us a rating.
• 1:19:58
  SPEAKER_01: We are keen to know what you're thinking.
• 1:20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Contraminds is also on YouTube.
• 1:20:03
  SPEAKER_01: If you are listening to the podcast on YouTube, hit the subscribe button and stay up to date on all our videos.
• 1:20:10
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening and stay safe.