The Ad Astra School meaning “to the stars” in Latin launched by Elon Musk inside his company SpaceX back in 2014, California. The school was developed by him to educate his childrens and children of SpaceX employees more in line with the realities of what the kids will face in their future. The school has almost 50 students between seven to fourteen years old. The main purpose behind creation of school was that Elon Musk was not satisfied with regular education system that was focusing more on tools and formulas rather than developing interest and skills. To present his analogy, he meant to focus on finding the students interests whether it is painting, music, robot buildings or plans. He wanted to match their aptitude level to that. In this article, you’ll learn about Ad Astra School in detail.
1 History behind creation of Ad Astra School
Elon Musk didn’t like the way of teaching is imparted in the schools. He saw that his sons are not been taught what they are supposed to be learning. So he decided to begin the school named as Ad Astra School. He took all of his children out of Los Angeles private schools and employed one of his child’s teachers as the principal, that man being Josh Dhan. Elon Musk asked him to teach his sons in Ad Astra School.
2 Why Ad Astra School?
There are many schools already then why Ad Astra School? Let’s take a look. The CEO of Tesla named Elon Musk believes in the following two principles –
- It is very unfair to judge students based on their grades coming out on assignment tests because different student has different interests. Thus, education can be imparted to them based on their aptitudes and abilities.
- The method of teaching should be based on problem-solving and it is not tool-based. It is mandatory that children should first introduce to the problem and then show them the solution. In this way, students can understand and learn in a better way.
Therefore, Elon Musk found that the schools where his sons were studying aren’t following those principles mentioned above. He took all of his children’s from school and thought of developing Ad Astra School. He successfully created his school and admitted his five sons and kids of SpaceX employees into it.
3 What is the difference between Ad Astra and Regular School?
Ad Astra School is different from Regular Schools due to following reasons mention below
| Basis | Ad Astra School | Regular School |
| Method of teaching | Modern | Traditional |
| Classroom | There is no classroom. All kids explore, learn and grow together. | Separate classrooms for kids of different age groups. |
| Grade System | There is no grade system. Kids are totally free from the pressure of scoring higher marks in school. | School run on grade system. They give grades to kids based on their marks obtained in the classroom. |
| Basis of Teaching | Problem-solving based | Tool based |
| Mode of Teaching | More thinking and less paperwork | Less thinking and more paperwork |
4 How things work inside Ad Astra School?
There is a class inside Ad Astra School named as Synthesis where kids get complex team-based challenges. The task provided to students is more like games. Here they work together as a team to solve complex problems. After the class, certain questions are asked from kids like how did you feel? Did you take on the role you wanted to be a part of? etc and many more. So in this school, kids gets experience with deep learning. They are also taught to raise their voice for decision-making process. Joshua Dahn took the synthesis model further after experimenting with this novel way of learning and developed an online learning platform. He is further thinking to expand the model more and courses will be available in different languages as well. So that kids around the globe become a part of it.
5 Ad Astra School Programs
Currently, Ad Astra School offers three major programs
- Single-day program: which is only Fridays every week.
- Full-time program: is 5 days week comprehensive program.
- Special session: It is once a monthly session for half a day on Saturdays. This special session of program is for those kids who want to get exposure to the Astra Nova method of learning.
To summarize the above work, we can conclude that Ad Astra is a laboratory school that embraces advancements in the fields of science technology and education launched by Elon Musk. The goal of Elon Husk behind the creation of Ad Astra School is that kids must have problem solving thought process, have deep respect to solve the challenges and understand the complexities.
