School measures whether a child can remember an answer. It rarely teaches them how to arrive at one. YoungThinkr is 17 short modules that teach children how to think, adapted across four age bands from eight to sixteen, and we are opening the first four modules free to a founding cohort of families.
Key takeaways
- Most of what school tests is recall, and most of it is forgotten by the summer holidays
- The skills that quietly decide a life - spotting a con, weighing two sides, handling money, coping when things go wrong - are not on the syllabus
- YoungThinkr teaches 17 thinking modules, each written in four versions from playground-simple at eight to genuinely academic at sixteen
- We teach the real work of more than ninety of the world's sharpest thinkers, including where a famous idea was later proven wrong
- Every topic ends with something your child does away from the screen, usually with you
What every parent actually wants
Ask any parent what they most want for their child and, somewhere near the top, you'll hear it: "I want them to be able to think for themselves."
Then look at what school actually measures. Recall. Dates, formulas, spellings, facts, most of them forgotten by the summer holidays. We test whether a child can remember an answer. We almost never teach them how to arrive at one.
The gap I couldn't stop thinking about
My children could read and add up. What I didn't know was whether they'd grow into the kind of people who could spot a con, question what a video told them, weigh up two sides fairly, handle money, cope when things went wrong, or use AI without letting it think for them.
None of that is on the syllabus. And it turns out those are the skills that quietly decide a whole life.
So we built the missing subject
YoungThinkr is 17 short modules that teach children how to think, not what to memorise.
- First principles reasoning, the one Elon Musk used to rethink rockets, taught to an eight-year-old as a story about building a den
- Spotting the mental shortcuts that fool everyone
- How money is really made
- How algorithms decide what your child sees
- How trust is built and broken
- And, the one I wish I'd had at school, how to actually learn, so revision finally works
Three things that make it different
It adapts
Every lesson exists in four versions, from playground-simple at eight to genuinely academic at sixteen, so it meets your child where they are and grows with them.
It's honest
It teaches the real work of more than ninety of the world's sharpest thinkers, and where a famous idea was later proven wrong, it teaches that too. We treat children as clever enough for the truth, footnotes included.
It's active
Every topic ends with something your child does away from the screen, usually with you, and a short guide gives you the questions to ask over dinner. It has made our family talk more, not less.
Come and test it with us
We're now opening YoungThinkr to a first cohort of families to test. Free access to the first four modules, in exchange for your honest feedback about what works and what doesn't. If you have children roughly eight to sixteen, we'd love you to be one of the first.
