61: Ryan Delk, Founder and CEO of Primer

This week we dug into the future of education, but a bit differently than in ways we’ve previously explored - we talked homeschooling. COVID-19 has placed 74 million children in the US in some version of homeschooling overnight. Innovation in education is a massive opportunity. Thriving in a complex world requires creativity and original thinking, but our education system is designed for mass production — not unlocking imagination and individuality. We won’t be able to solve 2050s challenges with an educational supply chain built for the 1950s.

Now is the time to dig into homeschool from first principles. It’s why I was so excited to chat with Ryan Delk, Founder and CEO of Primer. Simply put, Primer is homeschool with superpowers. As Ryan described to me in our conversation, the education system is systematically underestimating our next generation; Primer is building a learning experience well suited for 2020.

We dug into a number of topics in this conversation: (1) the growth of homeschooling, (2) distance learning vs. homeschooling pedagogy, (3) the benefits of unencumbered creative time, (4) why homeschooling gets a bad reputation and (5) how teachers are the current heroes of our time.