The world's richest man wants to engineer better schools. There have been worse ideas.

Elon Musk has shifted a $2 billion dollar investment in his philanthropic arm that could be used to create an elementary through college system in Texas.

So, Elon Musk is at it again.

This time, he's set his sights on revolutionizing education, blending traditional learning with a strong emphasis on STEM and project-based approaches. It's ambitious, and in classic Musk fashion, it's making news.

But, be honest for a minute. When it comes to Musk's grand visions, I’m on the fence of skepticism. It's hard not to be, considering his history.

Remember the Hyperloop? That was supposed to revolutionize travel, turning hours into minutes, getting commuters from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30 minutes using magnetically levitating shuttles.

Now, it's more of a monument to unfulfilled promises.

And then there's the under-cooked idea of turning the dirt from digging hyperloop’s tunnels into compressed bricks for building affordable housing - a noble idea on paper, but practically, it hit a dead end. The bricks were too big and space in cities was too scarce to make the idea viable.

Musk's adventures often feel like a roller coaster - one moment, he's launching flamethrowers and the next, he's dabbling in candy production. And, of course, there's the Twitter saga. Under his watch, Twitter has transformed from a buzzing social hub to a platform that's lost its appeal to advertisers - its primary revenue source. The company’s financial dive has been existential.

His foray into education isn't entirely new. He founded Ad Astra, an experimental school, back in 2014, which was quite the outlier in educational approaches, prioritizing individual strengths and critical thinking over traditional grading systems. Public information on the school is sparse, and in a fickle mood, Musk moved it from California to Texas when he moved, effectively leaving students and families in the cold.

After saying all that, logically the next thing to say is that he has no business trying to take on the challenge of improving education. So, why am I not outright dismissing Musk's latest educational escapade?

Well, first off, despite notable missteps, and Twitter notwithstanding, Musk’s ventures have thrived. The win-to-loss ratio has been decent. Musk's pattern of investing and advancing innovative ideas, like electric cars, has not just pushed boundaries but leaped over them. Education, arguably stagnant in many ways, could use such a leap.

The challenge, though, is ensuring this isn't just another grand Musk narrative that fizzles out. Real change in education requires more than just financing admiration of the problem; it requires a fundamental shift in approach and execution - and a ton of scientific thinking rather than aspirational talk.

Money, of course, talks. Musk's approach, akin to his focus on Tesla's battery technology, could bring much-needed innovation to education. It's about channeling resources towards genuinely transformative models, not just surface-level reform.

Lastly, for all his eccentric quirks and ethical conundrums, there's something to be said about Musk's brand of creativity and perseverance. He's a risk-taker, a visionary in his own right, unafraid of failures. He believes in big ideas and the scientific processes that can transform them into reality. He's unafraid of trial and error, persisting until the product is a product.

The education sector, often bogged down in traditionalism, is too mired in futile attempts to gently fix systems rather than transcending their limitations with something genuinely new, superior, and effective. While many have attempted to reform teaching, learning, and schooling, few have had enough focused resources and time to experiment and scale solutions meaningfully.

Musk’s examination of a continuous program from elementary to secondary to college could be the way to fix a fractured system slowed by too many corrupted programs and counterproductive disarticulation between school levels. Given the Tesla or Space X treatment, there could be a real moonshot for better schools.

Yes, I’m going to sound like bananas for granting any runway to the possibility that Musk is anything but an intemperate, union-busting, narcissistic lout whose visions sometimes exceed what’s possible to the point of hallucination.

And still, I fail to see any person in history who invented anything that moved us forward who wasn’t problematic. Crazy people often bring the thinking we need to reach hairy goals. Education needs a major invention, and I don’t care who makes it happen.

Despite my inherent reservations and accepting all of the document shortcomings of America's big-dollar daddy, Musk's dive into education might catalyze a long-overdue overhaul. His track record suggests a blend of audacious failures and remarkable successes. This venture could fall anywhere on that spectrum, but it's certainly a step towards reimagining how we approach learning and teaching. It's a Musk-style leap into the unknown, and education, stagnant in so many ways, might need that kind of jumpstart.

In the end, we can’t hate the idea of a billionaire who tries to “fix” education in his own lab, using his own money, and having to live or die on his own merit without the luxury of blaming the existing system for his failure to produce real progress. The worst that can happen is that we all learn lessons without having to pay for them.