Manifesto
Hello,
My name is Anand, a co-founder of Forge Prep.
This was going to be our About Us page but after sharing with our Founding Families, many said it sounded like a manifesto which sounded cooler so I’m going with that.
After you read it, let me know what you liked (or even disliked). My email is at the end.
Let me start by giving you a window into the conversations I’ve consistently had with my 2 kids (now 15 and 10).
Daughter: “When will I ever use this?“
This is a 2-3 times per month question when she’s exasperated about homework, a project, studying for a test, etc.
Me (mumbling): “You won’t. I learned it too. You just gotta do it.“
In my response, I told her 2 things about the activity she spends 7+ hours per day on.
- It is, at best, of questionable value
- It is the same stuff I did 30+ years ago
And, oh yeah, keep doing it.
For my son, the conversations were a tad different.
Me to him: “This is the 4th time in 6 weeks we’ve heard from your teacher about your behavior in class. What the heck are you doing?“
Son: “Daddy, I was sitting still all day. And then we do word problems that are so boring.”
Me: “Listen. I don’t want to hear from the teacher. If she needs you to sit, you gotta sit.”
Here’s the recap:
Both of my kids brought me their legitimate questions and challenges, and I did what any good parent would do.
I dismissed them as character flaws.
After all, I endured it.
They can (and should) too, right?
My parental wisdom boiled down to “suck it up”.
Then, in an effort to understand if it was “just my kids”, I got curious and talked to other parents.
The good news (kinda) was it wasn’t just my kids.
Sidebar: Selfishly, this was great news as it meant I’m not a bad parent after all. Big relief!
It was the same stories, over and over.
Kids asking “why does this matter?” and getting some variation of “do it anyways” or “that’s the way it’s always been done”.
Kids fidgeting through lectures and being labeled as problems when it is the boredom and pointlessness that actually breaks them.
Bright, curious children slowly dimming their own light.
And parents, like me, unsure what to do.
That’s when I realized the problem isn’t our kids.
The problem is school itself.
The Truth About Our Kids: They’re Chronically Underestimated
Today’s news about young people is almost exclusively negative.
- They’re anxious.
- They’re unmotivated.
- They’ve got no attention span.
Instead of asking why we hear these things, we believe them.
I know I did.
But if you go and really talk to young people, you will see a dramatically different picture.
And over the last 2 years, I’ve done just this.
In 2025, my co-founder and I launched a program called the Forge Fellowship that gives $1000 grants to middle and high school entrepreneurs.
Because of this program, I started meeting middle and high schoolers doing incredible things.
- Lincoln was a straight-A student who felt trapped by school’s one-size-fits-all approach. While classmates memorized concepts from textbooks, he built a $60,000 Christmas lights business by going door-to-door, running online ad campaigns, and hiring and managing people. Real customers, real stakes.
- Claire, a 14-year-old, taught herself to program NFC keychains, built relationships with local retailers, and generated $3000 in revenue as a freshman. When I asked her where she learned to code, she said, “YouTube University”.
- Ayaan discovered he needed a cottage industry license to sell his insanely delicious cookies to schools. So this 9th grader navigated government bureaucracy (something that frustrates most adults), got his license, and built a $30,000 cookie business.
Here’s what struck me:
When young people have work that is relevant, impactful and where they have agency, learning becomes urgent, personal, and natural.
When they find something that matters to them, they become unstoppable learning machines.
- They’ll stay up until midnight figuring out taxes.
- They’ll read about the Maillard reaction to understand why their cookies brown and develop flavor
- They’ll become fearless speakers by cold calling potential customers.
- They’ll use advanced analytics to optimize ad spend.
- They’ll learn leadership and management by hiring people
I saw firsthand how we chronically underestimate young people.
At this point, the question changed from “Can young people learn and achieve at high levels?” to “What does an environment that unleashes this natural drive look like?”
The System Is Broken By Design
But here’s the thing: this energy & drive never left our kids. The system just doesn’t give them anywhere to put it.
Think back to your child at five.
My daughter wanted to build a ninja warrior course in our house. My son spent hours building Lego machines. (My favorite: a valiantly attempted but unusable card shuffler).
That drive to build, to create, to figure things out. It doesn’t disappear.
But here’s what we do to it:
Imagine being 5 years old and told to take a drug for the next 12 years. The experts prescribing it promise it will make you smarter and more capable.
You take it faithfully.
Day after day.
Year after year.
Then, after 12 years of this treatment, those same experts shrug and say, “Not sure it worked. Good luck out there.”
That drug is our modern education system.
It’s not that kids lost their capacity for brilliance. It’s that we put them in a system that actively punishes agency, risk-taking, and original thinking.
The rows of desks facing forward.
The teacher lecturing while kids pretend to listen.
The memorization of facts only to forget them 10 seconds after the test.
The asking permission to use the bathroom.
It’s a system engineered for averageness, not achievement.
We Already Know What Works (Schools Just Won’t Do It)
To really understand this, I went back to school to become a Montessori teacher focused on adolescents. I talked to hundreds of families, students, teachers, and school administrators. I studied the modern research as well as education philosophy (My list of the most influential people in education is here).
And I learned something surprising:
Education doesn’t need a breakthrough.
We actually already know what works.
Making education exponentially better doesn’t require revolutionary inventions or miracle technologies.
It just requires doing known things extraordinarily well.
The reason schools don’t adopt what works isn’t ignorance. It’s because implementing what actually works would require dismantling everything they do.
They’d have to build something new and shed the 100+ year old practices they still follow.
Sadly, our existing schools are unwilling and unable to do this.
So We’re Building What Should Exist
When you’re not constrained by “that’s how we’ve always done it,” you ask different questions.
Instead of “How do we fit more subjects into the day?” we asked “What qualities should a graduate actually have?”
Instead of “How do we get kids to sit still?” we asked “How do we design learning around how students naturally develop?”
Instead of “How do we prepare for standardized tests?” we asked “How do we offer an education that can withstand forces like AI?”
With these questions and knowing what actually works, you design education totally differently.
It’s an education where students are given dignity.
Where they have agency and where the work is relevant and impactful.
Where they are not just academically miles ahead but where they can walk into any room, irrespective of who is there, and contribute and even lead it.
This isn’t fantasy. This is what happens when you design education that works for them, not against them.
And that is what we’re building.
Your kid is capable of more than you know.
They’re certainly capable of more than school is asking of them.
The young people I’ve met – Lincoln, Claire, Ayaan, and hundreds of others – aren’t exceptions. They’re a window into what’s possible when we stop underestimating young people and start building education worthy of their potential.
The only question left is whether we, as parents, are brave enough to expect more.
Let’s go.
Anand
P.S. I’d love to hear from you. My email is anand (at) forgeprep (dot) org.
