Right Educators + Minimal Technology = Deeper Learning

We believe that the 'learning process' is a mystery and we as a society pretend to fully understand it. The reality of learning process is a dynamic interplay between the learner and environment. Humans are a key part of this environment and increasingly technology is becoming a prominent part of the environment (regardless of the opinions one may hold about the technology). The notion 'technology in education is distracting to learning' is not completely accurate. For years, this notion has prevailed largely due to the constraints around the human interactions available and user experiences borrowed from other fields of life. We believe that keeping human educators at the center and powering the learning experience with minimal necessary technology can lead to engaging and deeper learning experience. We believe that depth matters not just for more or faster academic progress, but more importantly when tables stakes of education are handled well, energy is available to explore and discover life. We believe that self discovery should be the true north of education.

While 'academics' is a key part of total education, the words 'acaademics' and 'education' have become synonyms. So much so that academics now consumes almost all of child's energy.

"Education is like downloading data and algorithms to your brain and this process is amazingly bad in conventional education. It shouldn't be this huge chore that it is currently." - Elon Musk

Ofcourse, Elon is referring to academics only and not the whole process of education in its broad sense. And his assessment is accurate on one specific aspect. The reality of today's education is that vast amount human energy is being deployed towards the academics portion. Imagine a product company investing 100% of their resources in tablestakes features of product but never having resources to do anything innovative. The educators and children face exactly this situation, largely due to how the tools and ecosystems around them are designed. The tools available to educators are usually a remake of productivity tools used in other areas of life. But learning process demands something else. We at Sunlight want to take a first principles approach and embed technology in the process such that liberates energy from academics portion of education and then allows human educators to harness the conserved energy towards real education of life.

For tech nerd friends out there, you can imagine entire problem of academics as a matching  problem which has been solved very effectively in other areas of life via recommendation systems. Academic development is largely a problem of building a virtuous feedback loop in the process of learning. However, in education, there are two main barriers.

1. Signals are not readily available (and one could argue some of them should not be). 

2. Technology got a bad rep in last decade and triggered a resistance from educators.

We aim to reimagine this landscape with fresh approach to education that involves different educator philosophy, use of technology in ways that do not compromise the human to human connection and deep sense of inquiry towards life.