Is MasterClass the New Public School?

What if young learners were able to learn what they wanted to learn, when they wanted to learn it? What if young learners had an adult learning leader to assist them in their learning quests? What is the adult learning leader and the young learner had access to the best expertise, online or in-person, the world could offer to help them master their learning goals? How would this change how we approach learning, and what our public school system might look like?

A few years ago, I read an article in The New Yorker, written by Tad Friend, titled “Watch and Learn: What is MasterClass teaching us?”

Friend writes,

“We turn to the Internet for answers. We want to connect, or understand, or simply appreciate something – even if it’s only Joe Rogan. It’s a fraught pursuit. As the Web keep expanding faster and faster, it’s become saturated with lies and errors and loathsome ideas. It’s a Pacific Ocean that washes up skeevy wonders from its Great Garbage Patch. We long for a respite, a cove where simple rules are inscribed in the sand.”

“You may have seen one advertised online, among the ‘weird tricks’ to erase your tummy fat and your student loans. It’s MasterClass, a site that promises to disclose the secrets of everything from photography to comedy to wilderness survival. The company’s recent ad, ‘Lessons on Greatness. Gretzky,’ encapsulates the pitch: a class taught by the greatest hockey player ever, full of insights not just for aspiring players but for anyone eager to achieve extraordinary things. In the seminar, Wayne Gretzky tells us that as a kid he’d watch games and diagram the puck’s movements on a sketch of a rink, which taught him to ‘skate to where the puck is gonna be.’ Likewise, Martin Scorsese says in his class that he used to storyboard scenes from movies he admired, such as the chariot race in ‘Ben-Hur.’ The idea that mastery can be achieved by attentive emulation of the masters is the site’s foundational promise. James Cameron, in his class, suggests that the path to glory consists of only one small step. ‘There’s a moment when you’re just a fan, and there’s a moment when you’re a filmmaker,’ he assures us. ‘All you have to do is pick up a camera and start shooting.’”

“When MasterClass launched, in 2015, it offered three courses: Dustin Hoffman on acting, James Patterson on writing, and Serena Williams on tennis. Today, there are a hundred and thirty, in categories from business to wellness. During the pandemic lockdown, demand was up as much as ten-fold from the previous year; [in the fall of 2020], when the site had a back-to-school promotion, selling an annual subscription for a dollar instead of a hundred and eighty dollars, two hundred thousand college students signed up in a day. MasterClass [doubled in size in 2021] to six hundred employees, as it launches in the U.K., France, Germany, and Spain. It’s a Silicon Valley investor’s dream, a rolling juggernaut of flywheels and network effects dedicated to helping you, as the instructor Garry Kasparov puts it, ‘upgrade your software.’”

“Although MasterClass has 1.5 million subscribers, its adherents pride themselves on possessing secrets vouch-safed only to the elite. The halo of self-satisfaction has inspired a recurrent bit on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ and has been parodied by Kevin Bacon (‘Even if you’re playing a baby, or the Pope, or a woman, it’s necessary to have some facial hair’). MasterClass is easy to mock, because it traffics in our lordliest tropes. The musicians wear pork-pie hats; the writers wield fountain pens; Aaron Sorkin walks at length and talks at greater length. The site’s vaunting ambition echoes the boast of Cyrano de Bergerac: ‘I’m going to take the simplest approach to life of all…I’ve decided to excel in everything.’ We privately long to be ennobled, but we doubt that most people have the stuff of genius – anyone who’s looked around a first-grade gym class knows that. Mastery can be measured only against a vast backdrop of bungling.”

Friend concludes the article by writing,

“[David Rogier, MasterClass’s founder and CEO] told me that ‘the main goal is still to have somebody use the classes to become a master. We do also hope for the well-rounded person who expands their horizons. And if I had to choose between the two I guess I’d choose lots and lots of well-rounded people.’ The set of subscribers on the mastery track is a shrinking minority; MasterClass has perfected the art of beguiling people with an array of delights that distract them from pursuing a single discipline. There is always going to be more money in distraction. But, Rogier said, stubbornly arguing against his own company’s business case, ‘A master, one master, is worth a lot.’ How much, exactly? He focused, his stutter subdued. ‘Norman Borlaug – who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his agricultural innovations – ‘saved a billion lives. Or look at the people who developed the COVID vaccines.’ He did the lonely mental arithmetic. ‘I’d say a master is worth ten million happy, well-rounded people. Maybe a hundred million.’”

When is comes to resourcing learning (accessing quality online or in-person expertise to help us learn), why would we limit ourselves to seven teachers a year? As a school district, in the business of finding primarily the best in-person expertise, for a thousand, or two-hundred thousand kids to learn from, why would you limit yourself to a hundred, or ten-thousand individuals who may or may not possess the expertise to help young learners achieve?

Why wouldn’t you access the millions of experts around the world?

It’s now possible to do this, as creations like MasterClass continue to perfect.

Is it possible that a new system of learning has started to appear with innovative practices like MasterClass and beyond?

Friday News Roundup tomorrow. SVB