We created the Collins Institute for families like us.
When we had kids, we took a look at the existing options for education and advancements that had been made to the system since we went to school. We were horrified to find that little had been tried in terms of new educational models and, if anything, many school systems had regressed into factories of conformity. Even newer "start-up" school models fundamentally educate in the same basic way, with a gimmick here or there.
The school system as we know it stems from a bureaucratic process designed to produce interchangeable colonial administrators for use within the British imperial empire. It was optimized to ensure any graduate could be slotted into a globe-spanning bureaucracy, competently replacing any other individual. In short, it was optimized to turn humans into replaceable parts.
While this system served its purpose adequately, we no longer operate within an eighteenth-century British empire. With the collapse of the lifelong corporate job, an individual's success is no longer assured through obedience to a hierarchy, but rather by ambition and self-motivation. This generation's ability to succeed will not be determined by how well-rounded they are, but by the skills at which they excel—so long as they do not fall cripplingly behind in anything.
Why, then, is our school system still optimized to produce obedient, interchangeable cogs?
A world-class mentor network
In addition to working with us and our tutors, Institute scholars have the opportunity to engage with a world-class mentor network comprised of best-in-class individuals who belive that they can positively influence the future by advancing the best and brightest of the next generation.
Founding Principles of The Collins Institute for the Gifted
Every action we take as an organization is predicated by these principles.
Free Thought
Rather than tell young scholars what to think, we equip students to think for themselves. "Experts" are not arbiters of truth. While a student may miss marks for failing to understand a field's going consensus, they will never be told what to believe.
Offense is Valuable
The feeling of offense is the brain's way of telling you something credibly challenges your world view. The ideas that offend us are those we must engage with most fervently—rather than the ideas that sit most comfortably in our minds.
Accomplishments Speak
The competency and privileges of a student are judged only by what they have accomplished. An especially gifted scholar could even find themselves managing our endowment. Adults are not better than students by virtue of age.
"School" is a Tool
School should be thought of as a tool wielded by young scholars to craft themselves.
School should not devolve into a factory working to produce a pre-prescribed product or uniform outputs.
Constant Iteration
The Institute is an active experiment, constantly iterating and improving through that iteration. In addition to measuring performance during a student's education, we follow the lives of graduates, adjusting our program based on knowledge of their outcomes.
Focus on the Individual
The Institute seeks to help students build the best possible versions of themselves. We refuse to deviate from that holistic goal by focusing only on traditional test scores. We care about and optimize around the manner in which students' skillsets are applied in the real world.
Why "The Collins Institute for the Gifted"?
While we are slightly embarrassed to have our family name in the school's title, when we ran a large survey around a dozen potential names, "The Collins Institute" outperformed the other more "fun" names.