Originally posted on LinkedIn
Today I visited a potential school for my kids for the first time. What a crazy decision 🫠
We went to Colegio Bilingüe Ekirayá Montessori (loved it). Pablo Lipnizky is incredibly inspiring, the facilities are amazing, and the philosophy of freedom and autonomy resonates deeply coming from someone who went to a rigid, religious school.
But we left with doubts too. Is this the right one? This is a decision that spans more than a decade!
Education needs to be more flexible — not just in pedagogy but in time and structure.
What if you could pay tuition for a group of schools (instead of just one) and switch between them?
What if students could choose their subjects with much greater freedom?
What if there were micro-credits at the K-12 level, so you could piece together your high school diploma from a variety of different experiences?
What if it didn’t have to take exactly 11 years — what if it could be 13, or a lifelong process?
The Ekirayá is already doing a lot differently — for example, mixing 3 grades in the same environment gives much more flexibility. But regulations don’t allow going much further.
At Ignia we’re changing higher education — we can’t tackle the whole pipeline. Does anyone know of truly innovative K-12 models, ideally in LatAm?