I find the most interesting observations on this topic come from those who have experienced deprivation from full sensory experiences. Helen Keller:
Benjamin Riley
@benjaminjriley.bsky.social
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Founder of Cognitive Resonance. Advocate for humans. Newsletter: buildcognitiveresonance.substack.com To support Cognitive Resonance: ko-fi.com/cognitiveresonance
![He didn’t care about the education. He cared about…creating businesses that he could be part of.
It seemed like he was more after the ideas of the students, profit-wise, than the actual learning the students had.
[The guides] had very little power. Their entire job was to enforce what Joe Liemandt wanted them to do. Alpha sort of markets itself as being student run, where you have control over your own learning. It is not student run. It is exclusively run by Joe Liemandt.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:igq7ccju2a4uzz5uma7ewav7/bafkreify4edkqejavn6mdc7wwivuwbos6a7p5252rtssxnkwouj6e3evma)
![Not a single one. I had one English class where we were told to read a book. No one did. I just read the Spark Notes.
Not full books. We read some poems, because I asked to.
We never had a curriculum of books to read. Never a full book, only passages [on the software app].](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:igq7ccju2a4uzz5uma7ewav7/bafkreigvw4vllela6ie3invjoeaohwq5p7ntdbjeynabztdzim2sbbwkdm)
![Basically it would shut down your entire computer [other than the 2-Hour Learning app], and just show a jokey screen of a mushroom cloud. “You’ve been nuked.” You’re doing something you’re not supposed to on the computer right now because you didn’t get yesterday’s accuracy high enough.
[Adults at Alpha School] would have to communicate with the people who ran the software side of things, who were not in the building. A lot of them were in India, outsourced to other countries, and it would take forever for them to get back to us, and it would make it really hard to actually complete my work.
I remember getting nuked, and I remember all my friends getting nuked.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:igq7ccju2a4uzz5uma7ewav7/bafkreicabanq63woajpmulwastepkvlyya37bzkiw4fjf5wm4fjwuviquu)
![Some people could never even finish the list [of Pirate Ship requirements] because some of it was unbelievably difficult. We had to type at 120 words per minute or something like that. Some people can’t type that fast.
The Pirate Ship, it felt like you were bad. It’s like you were being labeled as someone’s idiot.
Some students never left the Pirate Ship.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:igq7ccju2a4uzz5uma7ewav7/bafkreieqo66xllwcpnqw3npbqfcq64o7337dqyl5tdg5uocpeojpwvs7zi)
![Really all it was was a group of students they thought were elite, and better than the rest of the students. They had more privileges. They had really no rules. They could do whatever they wanted. They didn’t really have to come to school during the school day. They could choose to do work when they wanted. They were given like snacks for free. All these other privileges that were completely separate from the [non-Rocket Ship] students.
They had certain rooms they could go in without asking. We could not go in them. The regular students could not go in them. So they pretty much segregated these higher students, and they had more privileges.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:igq7ccju2a4uzz5uma7ewav7/bafkreibswfkxqvls3zirtocsu7isefbx5lrgeinqcnsr2e7vrrskpdx6xm)
![They hired this data team of people that didn’t live in the U.S. and they would watch us through our computers and it felt really sketchy and scary. It felt like it was more of a science experiment, and I was more of a lab rat rather than [having] someone that actually cared about my learning.
I was getting really frustrated about that throughout the year. Every time they would change something, I would be like, why are we changing this?
We couldn’t tape over the computer or anything like that. They would get really frustrated if we taped over it. We had to keep the camera on.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:igq7ccju2a4uzz5uma7ewav7/bafkreibghw2riwjzbzlrg364vl7m56oxt5nbx74hcnnqe5lyg7fx2hdli4)
![Going to Alpha was not good. It was rough, very rough. There was two months where I cried every single day.
It was very harmful to my mental health at the time. I was so distressed by it that my mental health was going downhill real fast.
After the first week [of high school], which was fun, everything changed. It was like lockdown. It all started to change, like the science experiment [had] really started.
The best way to describe the vibe was dystopian. Computers, technology, very futuristic, but also very distant and cold.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:igq7ccju2a4uzz5uma7ewav7/bafkreigmdh43mucfs73wloocydtailrpwv4vljhpqpuluaaka2ztivogh4)
