Karie Fiorello

[Karie Fiorello @Kariefiorello]

@TheHost_ But did you stop at the ATM machine on the way home?

[Karie Fiorello @Kariefiorello]

@HippyMomPhD Tell me mpre about this! I want to do a hands on weather unit and was looking up fun projects, and I wondered if it’s even a learning experience or just fun messes!

[Karie Fiorello @Kariefiorello]

@DeAngelisCorey CT is doing all kinds of ridiculous new legislation around education too!! Prob all the same agenda

[Michael Strong @flowidealism]

Something is happening in education that most people have not noticed yet, and I believe it is worth understanding, even if you never change a single thing about your child’s schooling.

To understand what is happening, it helps to know what came before.

In 1920, there were about 200,000 school districts in the United States. For most Americans, the one-room schoolhouse was a reality. Districts were small, local, and responsive to parents. By 1970, due to the school consolidation movement, that number had fallen to about 20,000. Today, there are public high schools with 2,000, 3,000, or even 5,000 students. They are monstrosities. New York City schools spend approximately $40,000 per pupil each year. The results are mediocre at best and catastrophic at worst.

For the first time in American history, that monopoly is beginning to crack. Educational Scholarship Accounts now allow families in multiple states to use public funds for private education, tutoring, homeschool materials, and other educational services of their choice. If you had a ten-student microschool and could access that money directly, you would have $400,000 a year to educate ten students. The resources exist. They always have. They were simply locked inside a system that could not use them well.

At the same time, the homeschool and microschool movement has grown tremendously.

These are not isolated families doing worksheets at the kitchen table. They are organized communities of parents, often led by mothers and former teachers, who saw their children struggling and decided to build something better. Learning pods allow families to share the teaching load. I know families in which each mother watches the children one day a week, and the kids rotate among homes. Microschools bring eight to fifteen students together with a skilled guide. The models vary, but the underlying principle is the same: small groups, meaningful relationships, and genuine learning.

What has not changed, and what technology cannot replace, is the human element. A child needs adults who know them, who take their thinking seriously, and who create an environment where they feel safe enough to take intellectual risks. A child needs peers who share their curiosity and hold them to a higher standard. A child needs to feel that what they are doing matters, that their education is not merely preparation for some future life, but a meaningful part of their life right now.

This is where I have spent thirty-five years: building environments in which the human element is the foundation and everything else serves it. Small seminars where every student speaks every day. Mentorship relationships develop over the years. A culture built around genuine intellectual engagement rather than compliance or credentialing.

I am sharing this because I believe we are at an inflection point. The families who understand what is happening and act on it in the next few years will give their children an extraordinary advantage. Not an advantage measured merely in test scores or college acceptance letters, though those often follow, but one measured in how their children think, how they relate to others, and how they approach the world.

Putting more money into the system will not change it, because the problem is structural, not financial. Every meaningful change in education has come from families and educators who chose to build something new outside the existing structure. That movement is now larger and better funded than it has ever been.

If you are curious about what this looks like in practice, or if you simply want to talk about your child’s situation, reply to this email. I have been at this for thirty-five years, and I still find every family’s story worth hearing.

[Karie Fiorello @Kariefiorello]

@simongerman600 @Zigmanfreud Music too

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Went down the rabbit hole on this. Your brain treats a physical book like a landscape. It builds a spatial map of the text, the same way it maps trails, rooms, and city blocks. When you scroll on a phone, that map breaks apart.

Seven large-scale research reviews and direct brain scans confirm what you already feel.

A 2023 study in PLOS ONE attached brain-activity sensors to children’s heads while they read the same text on paper and on screen. Paper reading produced fast brain waves, the pattern linked to focused attention. Screen reading shifted the brain into slow waves, the pattern linked to mind wandering and daydreaming. Same kids. Same words. Measurably different brain states.

A separate 2022 study from Showa University in Japan scanned the front of the brain, the area that manages focus and comprehension, during phone versus paper reading. Smartphones sent that region into overdrive, meaning the brain was straining just to keep up with basic processing. Paper reading produced a moderate load that triggered natural deep breathing, which helped regulate brain function and sustain focus. The phone suppressed that breathing pattern entirely.

Since 2017, researchers have published seven major reviews combining hundreds of individual studies. Six of seven reached the same conclusion: people understand less on screens. A 2018 review of 54 studies and 170,000+ participants, literally titled “Don’t throw away your printed books,” found paper outperformed screens across the board for non-fiction. A 2024 follow-up with 49 more studies confirmed it. The gap has grown steadily every year since 2001. Being a “digital native” doesn’t help.

The best explanation is how your brain tracks where you are. Your short-term memory can only juggle about 7 things at once. A physical book gives you constant location cues: the weight shifting from right hand to left, where a paragraph sits on the page, how thick the remaining pages feel. Your brain hands off the “where am I in this text?” job to those physical signals, leaving more room for actually understanding what you’re reading. On a phone, every screen looks identical. Your brain has to track position and process meaning at the same time, and something gives.

A Norwegian eye-tracking study analyzing 25,000+ individual eye movements found screen readers processed text more shallowly. The students had no idea they were reading differently.

In 2019, nearly 200 reading scientists from 30+ countries signed an open letter warning that screen reading was degrading deep comprehension. Since then, Scandinavian countries, among the most digitized school systems on Earth, have started putting physical books back in classrooms.

[Karie Fiorello @Kariefiorello]

@gotrice2024 My grad kids can stay in my house forever/til marriage as long as they work/go to school full time, do a reasonable about of reg chores/cleaning/help w cooking/etc & pay their own phone, ins, clothing/fun. I am trying to help them be successful, &fam unit is high value!

[Karie Fiorello @Kariefiorello]

We need more of this! So many systems will soon fail because of pride and an inability to pivot.

[Dustin @r0ck3t23]

A guy with a YouTube channel just accidentally redesigned the most complex machine in human history.

Not an aerospace engineer. Not a SpaceX executive.

A guy with a camera who asked one obvious question.

Tim Dodd was walking around Starbase when Musk proudly explained how the Super Heavy booster eliminated its entire cold gas thruster system. Instead of a separate, heavy, complex mechanism, it just vents hot gas directly from the propellant tanks.

Elegant. Zero added mass. Zero extra failure points.

Dodd asked one question.

“But this is only for the booster, right?”

Musk stopped.

Not to defend. Not to explain. Not to reframe the question so it didn’t threaten what he had just said.

He stopped because something clicked.

Musk: “Yes. Although arguably, now you mention it… we might be wise to do this for the ship, too. Now that… we’re going to fix that.”

Mid-sentence. In real time. On camera.

No pause to protect his pride. No deflection. No “good point, let me circle back on that.” Just the immediate, unfiltered acknowledgment that a better path existed and they were going to take it.

Seven months later, Musk confirmed it was one of the biggest improvements ever made to the vehicle.

Think about what just happened.

To change a fundamental flight system at a legacy aerospace company requires years of environmental reviews, safety committees, and budget approvals.

Musk deprecated an entire subsystem in 15 seconds because a podcaster asked the obvious question that nobody inside had dared to ask.

In a traditional corporation, that cold gas system gets built anyway.

Because admitting the architecture is flawed is politically expensive.

The VP doesn’t want to lose the headcount.

The engineers don’t want to scrap the work.

The manager doesn’t want to explain the pivot to their director.

And so the mistake gets a budget. Gets a timeline. Gets a team assigned to it.

The machine gets heavier. The flaw becomes load-bearing. And eventually the flaw becomes so embedded in the structure that fixing it would require tearing down everything built around it.

So nobody fixes it.

Now think about the last time someone pointed out a flaw in something you built. Something you were proud of. Something you had already explained to twelve people without anyone questioning it.

Did you stop the way Musk stopped?

Or did you feel that heat in your chest. That reflexive need to explain why they were missing the point. Why the context was more complicated than they understood. Why the question, though interesting, didn’t really apply here.

That heat is the most expensive thing most organizations will ever pay for.

A failed launch at least tells you the truth.

A defended mistake just compounds.

This is the organizational architecture required to win the AI arms race.

The ultimate moat isn’t compute. It isn’t capital.

It is the velocity of error correction.

The geopolitical AI race will not be won by whoever starts with the best blueprint.

It will be won by whoever can feel that heat in their chest and choose the truth anyway.

A journalist asked a question. The best answer won.

The rocket got lighter.

Most egos don’t.

[Karie Fiorello @Kariefiorello]

@AlBuffalo2nite I can’t help it, but I only hear the top gun theme song here!!

[Karie Fiorello @Kariefiorello]

@lyndseyfifield I agree-we have fixed sooo many appliances in our house! Some
Multiple times & they are all less than 12 years old. For a freezer, I highly recommend a temp alarm (connects to phone). At least if it fails, you know b-4 everything defrosts & can switch to other freezers/friends!

[Karie Fiorello @Kariefiorello]

@Khensi_20 I have a friend who had her daughters on the same date about 3 years apart.
My cousin was born on the parents anniversary and then 3 years late lr a littler sister was born just 4 days after the birthday/anniversary

[Karie Fiorello @Kariefiorello]

@courtneyellis That was me. Def still recovering. One early reason I have distrust of main stream media…

[Karie Fiorello @Kariefiorello]

@NevinLawrence She should prob prioritize getting in her 10,000 steps and lose some weight

[Karie Fiorello @Kariefiorello]

#HPInstantInk #HPcomputers How can companies function when they are so fully broken. Weeks of problems with HP, customer support chat not working, ink connectivity not working, hours and hours spent trying to fix printer connection with our own IT dept

[Karie Fiorello @Kariefiorello]

#Amazon has screwed up so many items this season, that I am considering shopping elsewhere for the gifts I still need for x-mas. Gifts for parties, meds for sickness, tons of stuff days later than said. What are you all doing?!

[Karie Fiorello @Kariefiorello]

@dogluvr3333 @HippyMomPhD What curriculum would be best to teach this way? What are good resources?

[Karie Fiorello @Kariefiorello]

@feyiszn Lost and 24. We watched “Jack Bauer Power Hour” each week with friends and were watching Lost separately. Man, I could go back to those days in a jiffy! Shows were soo good! And life was so simple.

[Karie Fiorello @Kariefiorello]

@RichardHanania The Erika statement is correct.
Trumps reaction is more like ‘I can’t do it Erika, I can’t forgive like that yet, I’m not even a Christian yet… maybe someday. I know Charlie would be mad (but with a joking tone) and Erika is gonna give me some words’

[Karie Fiorello @Kariefiorello]

@mtracey @emilyjashinsky The best memorials/funerals preach Christ sacrifice and resurrection and give people a chance to make that commitment. If they do not do this… something is missing

[Megan Basham @megbasham]

My sweet girl, 16 years old, asked me before our town's prayer vigil in Charlie's honor if she could say a few words on behalf of the high schoolers who would be in attendance. I was surprised (she's never shown any interest in public speaking before). But I was also touched. She loved Charlie's boldness and his sharp arguments. She, like so many young people, has been deeply effected by his death. And as I watched her, I was thankful again for the impact his ministry (yes ministry) has had on the next generation.

Thank you Charlie for all you did to model the life choices and values my husband and I have worked so hard to impart to our children. They are indeed your legacy.