Progress Studies and Apprenticeships
An announcement
Several months ago a post on Marginal Revolution caught my eye: the Roots of Progress Institute was launching a Blog Building Intensive. They invited progress studies writers looking to grow their substacks to apply.
I thought, I’m a writer looking to grow my new substack...but am I a Progress Studies writer?
As a long time MR reader, I was familiar with the progress studies movement. Back in 2019, Tyler Cowen and Patrick Collison published an Atlantic essay calling for a new discipline they dubbed Progress Studies. They defined progress as “the combination of economic, technological, scientific, cultural, and organizational advancement that has transformed our lives and raised standards of living over the past couple of centuries.”
When I re-read that article I saw that they included a list of things we could still be a lot better at - curing diseases, tackling climate change, raising living standards, responding to natural disasters, improving travel. And there at the end:
“We could be far better than we are at educating young people”
Yes. Yes we could.
After all, how can we progress on solving all of these other challenges if we fail to pass on what we know to the next generation?
So, I applied, and am delighted to say that I’ve been accepted!
Over the next 10 weeks I’ll join a group of 30 other progress thinkers and writers working to grow our skills and audiences. As part of the fellowship, I’ll be publishing 5 pieces:
An Explainer essay
A Learning in Public essay
A Steelman-Rebuttal essay
A Way Forward essay
A Personal essay
(If you have any ideas for these, drop them in the comments. I’d love to hear them!)
I’m unabashedly excited for this opportunity, both to improve my writing and pick up my publishing cadence. But I’m also grateful for the opportunity to share the apprenticeship movement with a new audience. Especially people who believe it’s possible to build a better future.
Excited to be in the program with you!
The overlap between the “Progress Studies” movement and readers of Marginal Revolution is probably rather high. Still, I agree with you Kelly, the pivotal moment for me was that essay in The Atlantic.
It was on the heels of that article that I launched Risk & Progress, though it had a different name back then.