What should school cost?

Akimbo: A Podcast from Seth Godin

Midroll Media

Society & Culture

4.8 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Plus, stop stealing dreams.

Akimbo is a weekly podcast created by Seth Godin. He's the bestselling author of 20 books and a long-time entrepreneur, freelancer and teacher.

You can find out more about Seth by reading his daily blog at seths.blog and about the podcast at akimbo.link.

To submit a question and to see the show notes, please visit akimbo.link and press the appropriate button.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	How much should school cost? Hey, it's Seth, and this is Akimbo.
0:14.1	Hey, it's 2025. The last time I did a short rant about school was 12 years ago.
0:22.5	I'm going to include the audio of that at the end of this podcast.
0:26.3	That was about what is school for.
0:29.6	But a more urgent short-term question is how much should school cost?
0:36.2	If it's your kid or if it's you, what should the school be like? Should it be clean and safe? Well outfitted? Should the science lab have the tools the science lab needs to have? Should the teachers be well trained andined and well-compensated?
0:55.0	When we ask just about anybody across the planet about what school should cost,
1:03.0	I think that we can agree that almost everyone, when talking about their kids' school,'ll say we shouldn't make important compromises,
1:13.8	that education is so important to the family, to the future of our kids, that we're not going
1:21.4	to squimp on it. Okay, well, that's a case for people who have means to invest in things like private school.
1:30.1	Next question. How much should your kids friends schools cost? Meaning, do you want your kids to
1:37.6	grow up and hang out and be friends with people who go to schools that are well-outfitted,
1:47.6	efficient, leveraged, filled with good cheer,
1:57.4	well-trained people, et cetera. Most people are also going to say yes. So then we move on to the community at large, and then our nation or the whole world. Is school worth it?
2:07.4	What is the difference between the world of 1400 and the world of 2025? Well, we could say
2:14.4	a big part of it is the infrastructure we've built, the culture that exists.
2:21.7	But I think education is at the heart of this, that when we have doctors, people are healthier.
2:28.3	When we have engineers, bridges don't fall down.
2:33.1	Go down the list. Education builds the world.
2:38.0	So now consider the case of an organization like BuildOn, a nonprofit founded by Jim Zilkowski in Connecticut.
2:45.2	You can find out at buildon.org. Buildon visits communities in some of the poorest parts of the world and works with the community
2:55.3	and for the community to build a school, a concrete school, a school that will last. They build it.
	...

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