Hola and Happy New Year,

First of all - thank you.

I asked for your support in making the Honey Badger the mascot of Forge Prep and you all delivered.

Your emails helped me convince my co-founder.

So we are officially the Forge Prep Honey Badgers.

The Honey Badger is the perfect rep for the type of students at Forge Prep.

They are famous for being tenacious, taking on challenges 10x their size and disregarding conventional wisdom about what it ‘should’ be able to do.

Perfect, right?

So now say it with me loud and proud

Huh-knee Bah-jers (clap, clap…clap, clap, clap)

Alright, now it’s time to get serious.

Stanford word salad

I enjoyed these non-answers by Stanford University's President.

I loved that Stanford Review asked him a question that applicants to the school have to answer and his reply

"There's no answer to that question."

And then when pressed, offers a bunch of word salad to this question (and most of the others).

The full interview is even more "enlightening".

The jobs we had are going away

MIT estimates 11.7% ($1.7T) of the labor market can already be displaced by AI (source: The Iceberg Index: Measuring Workforce Exposure in the AI Economy)

And just yesterday, Utah became the first state to allow AI to renew medical prescriptions with no doctor involved.

This is a safe first step for AI to take on, but it is not ending there.

This reminded me of an exchange from Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” that goes like this:

“How did you go bankrupt?"

"Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly."

We are in the gradual part of this AI transition now.

Suddenly is coming.

So for those with kids graduating in the next 3-8 years (and beyond), the opportunities you and I looked forward to or as safe are changing fast or going away.

And so wherever you are, ensure their education also looks different and prepares them for this.

Opinionated works

The big mistake I’ve made in the past and I see other founders make is trying to cater to everyone.

The thinking goes “the world is big. Why not go after all of it?”

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work.

Every time I did it, it backfired.

It made us plain vanilla.

It made us sand down all of our edges to try to be smooth and likable to everyone.

And so people liked us, but nobody loved us.

It’s the equivalent of that guy a girl goes out with and then when her friends ask how it went, she says “he was nice.”

#friendzone

And so we didn’t do that with Forge Prep.

We like to say “We are a school for anybody, but we are not for everybody.”

We have a clear viewpoint on what education for 2040, not 1940 looks like, and we ensure that comes through in everything, including our website.

And it’s working.

Since my last email to you in mid-December, 1007 families have signed up to learn more about Forge, and by the end of next week, I’ll have had 137 conversations with these families.

Our early decision applications close on January 15th, and we’re seeing the right types of folks apply mostly because we have a viewpoint and it resonates w/ them.

They look like:

• Students who are creative and curious (and often bored/disengaged in school)

• Parents who want their kids to be resilient, adaptable and independent especially in a world being reshaped by AI (aka the non helicopter type)

If that is you, the application is here.

Less trivia, more systems

When I went to school, I learned a lot of trivia.

• Dates of battles of the Civil War

• Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell

• There are 3 types of rocks - igneous, sedimentary & metamorphic

And guess what?

Today, our kids learn the same isht.

(Except they do it on Chromebooks which makes it even worse.)

Schools continue to treat the brain like a warehouse where:

• teachers lecture & transmit

• students are expected to stack those facts on mental shelves AND then

• be ready to recall them

But the recall never happens because the information is purged right after the test.

Instead of a warehouse that stores information, how do we develop a student’s brain into a factory that transforms it so they can make sense of the world and themselves?

At Forge Prep, we do this by helping students understand that the world runs on systems. We focus on 6:

• The Human System. How your body and mind manage energy, attention, and emotion, and what happens when they fall out of balance.

• The Social System. How people cooperate, compete, and build trust, and how these same forces create conflict or exclusion.

• The Economic System. How people create and exchange value, and how those flows both lift and divide societies.

• The Technological System. How people invent tools that let us do more, and how those inventions reshape our environment, work, and attention.

• The Governmental System. How societies make and enforce rules, and how power drifts or stalls when feedback breaks down.

• The Ecological System. How energy and matter cycle through nature to sustain life, and how those cycles strain and recover.

More on our systems approach here.

Living in my head rent free

In the last newsletter, I had a section called “Living in my head rent free” which people liked so I’m going to try this again.

This time, I’ll ask it as a question.

I’m going to give you 2 facts and ask you to predict the future of the USA:

▪️ 78% of HS graduates are not proficient in math

▪️ 65% not proficient in reading

This is our data today

And it is getting worse

What do we look like in 10 or 20 years with these results?

The big question for me is why education is not getting the same attention as climate change, the border, healthcare, etc

Why do you think that is?

I would think that we'd want a capable citizenry (or perhaps all the conspiracy theories about it being easier to control dumb citizens is true?)

If you're a parent or patriot, I implore you to to start asking hard questions about education wherever you live as we're going very fast in the wrong direction

If you have thoughts on what we can do to make the educational crisis 'front page news', I'm all ears.

I know people who'd get behind the right ideas

BTW, the answer to solving this is not more funding. (see graph below)

Alright. That’s it for today.

If you like what we’re doing with Forge Prep, please tell all your NJ peeps esp since early decision apps close in 1 week..

And if you got ideas, talent, etc to make education a top priority in this country, please do what you can.

Love,

Anand

P.S. Got any new years resolutions? My 4 are:

• Stop checking X and LinkedIn (btw, how the F did i get addicted to a professional social network? This is the lamest thing ever. I’m embarrassed to write this tbh)

• Get our next 3-4 Forge schools ready for 2027.

• Get my achilles fixed once and for all. It’s been 2 steps forward, 1 step back for the last 24 months. It’s tendonitis, not a tear.

• Hire 3 more amazing Guides (aka teachers) for Forge. If you know anyone, let them know. We provide a $10k referral bonus if someone you know applies and you referred them.