Going beyond political intervention, Elon Musk is trying to rethink the education system in the United States. The South African billionaire is currently funding a Texas preschool called Ad Astra, which recently received state approval to educate up to 21 students. The private Montessori school’s website states that it is open to students ages three to nine, but a detailed Bloomberg report says there is no sign of children or teachers at the facility yet.
The school is located outside the city of Bastrop, Texas, which is becoming the center of Elon Musk’s business. The tunneling business Boring Co. is based nearby, as well as the production site for SpaceX Starlink satellites. A building owned by Company X, the former Twitter, is also under construction in the area.
Bloomberg notes that Musk has often offered educational services, sometimes with the same name Ad Astra, related to his business, so this new preschool may be for the children of his employees. The ad for an instructor at Ad Astra reads: “Parents support breakthroughs: “As long as their parents support breakthroughs that expand the realm of human possibility, their children will grow into the next generation of innovators that only a true Montessori can provide.”
Musk has been an active and financial supporter of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, and both have made comments disparaging recent initiatives on diversity, equity, and inclusion in education.
He is hardly the first tech figure to apply his views on education to American schools. Mark Zuckerberg tried to personalize the experience with Summit Learning. Jeff Bezos has invested his name and resources in a number of preschools. And Bill Gates has a long history of proposing ideas for public education that have yielded questionable improvements for students, such as charter schools and the Common Core State Standards.
