The Flourish Blog
Every child is a genius. These are their battles. Their breakthroughs. Their journeys.
Who Is Homework Really For?
Schools assign homework.
Parents expect it.
Children do it.
Nobody asks why.
The Hardest Part Isn't Finding a Different School
It's trusting your child.
Every instinct—shaped by your own schooling—screams to intervene. Correct. Direct. Protect.
That's what "good parenting" looked like where we grew up. Obedient children. Finished homework. Polished projects—whether the child cared or not.
The Genius Factory (Running in Reverse)
Every six-year-old knows they're a genius.
By twelve, most have forgotten.
This isn't natural. It's engineered.
We built a system that takes confident explorers and produces anxious permission-seekers. A factory that runs backwards, dismantling instead of building.
The Myth of the All-Knowing Teacher
The teacher knows. The student doesn't.
That's the script we've been following for 200 years.
What if it's backwards?
The Permission Slip
You need your school's permission to take your own child on holiday.
Think about that.
So you lie. You teach your child to lie. "Tell them you're sick." You get a fake doctor's certificate. Everyone knows it's fake. The school knows. You know. Your child knows you're teaching them that lying to authority is necessary.
Easy to Measure
I spent twenty years gaming the education system. Maximum marks, minimum effort. The perfect student.
Except I wasn't learning. I was performing.
The Shark Tank Massacre
Last year, thirteen-year-olds pitched their business ideas to parent-entrepreneurs.
The parents destroyed them.
Six weeks of work, demolished in minutes. In public.
The kids weren't ready. The judges said so. To their faces.
And every parent in the audience was grateful.
Not for everyone
That's not a bug. It's a feature.
Flourish isn't trying to be better at what schools do. We're doing something else entirely.
If you need the neighbours to understand your choices, we're not for you.
If you believe what worked in 1995 works today. If you've outsourced parenting to an institution. If you're teaching your kid to grab the biggest slice instead of baking a bigger pie.
Keep looking.
The birthday problem
We sort kids by their manufacturing date.
Born in 2015? Room V-A
Born in 2016? Room IV-B.
As if learning cares about your birthday.
The assembly line worked perfectly
For factories.
Same input. Same process. Same output. Quality control at every stage.
Schools copied this model. It worked perfectly too.
For creating factory workers.