MacKenzie Price’s “future of education” looks more like a Silicon Valley fever dream than anything resembling a classroom.
In videos that the Austin, Texas–based influencer and entrepreneur shares of students at her dozen or so K-12 schools, a ten-year-old boasts that he is a successful Airbnb manager, while another constructs a miniature Cybertruck. High schoolers take “business calls,” lounging in a WeWork–style open office space.
Academic instruction in Price’s schools is delivered via a suite of online education apps for two hours per day, leaving the afternoons free for Cybertruck construction and tech CEO make-believe. This is the brand around which her work revolves: 2 Hour Learning, which is billed as an “AI tutor” that can entirely replace all classroom teachers via a few hours spent glued to a laptop screen.
“The traditional education system is poisoning our kids’ minds,” Price told her Instagram audience of 750,000 in October. She delivered the prognosis calmly, sitting under a blue neon sign reading “Future of Education,” the name of her podcast and social media channels.
While Price tends to deliver dire warnings, she is also selling a silver bullet: her own AI-based education model, which she claims is the answer to the many woes of our education system.
“Technology has changed everything,” Price explains in one Instagram reel — a constant refrain of hers. “Students can use technology and learn more in two hours a day than students who are sitting in a regular classroom for six.” She pauses and smiles for the camera. “Can you believe that?”
Price, armed with growing online fame, is the face of an expanding web of private and charter schools that are deploying 2 Hour Learning tech…
Auteur: Katya Schwenk
