Jonas Koblin was born in 1978 in Munich, Germany. He received a Waldorf school education and had a stint with FC Bayern. At the age of eleven, Koblin was invited to live with the then-richest family in America—an experience that taught him the good and bad sides of ultimate wealth. After dropping out of high school, Koblin traveled to India, where he was confronted with real poverty. Age nineteen he then started a nonprofit and a series of charity events. By 2007, Koblin was juggling college and three companies simultaneously. After some commercial success (Madonna became a client), Koblin prioritized personal growth over commercial success and took a step back. He completed the Hoffman Process, met his wife and pursued his interest in education. In 2016, Koblin began producing educational videos aimed at introducing aspiring educators to the social sciences. In 2020, he co-authored a lesson on Active Learning with Nobel Prize-winning physicist Carl Wieman, and in 2021, the Sprouts channel reached 1 million subscribers on YouTube. Today, Sprouts Schools' video lessons are available in over ten languages, viewed by millions of students each month, and are integrated into university curricula worldwide. In 2024, Jonas Koblin was awarded a prize for Best Open-Access Education by TREFF–the Education Film Festival in Tromsø, Norway. Besides Sprouts Schools, Koblin also founded Mali, a virtual companion that has helped over hundred thousand new parents through the first 1,000 days of their child's life, and the Sprouts Kindergarten that is focusing on early project-based learning. He lives in Bangkok with his wife and their three children.
“Children are unique individuals, and schools vary from wonderful to disaster-zone. So while schooling can foster a child’s development—it can also destroy a child’s potential. Jonas Koblin’s lively resource helps us think through the complex of schooling/unschooling factors that every caring parent and educator must consider.” —Professor Stephen R.C. Hicks, philosophy, Rockford University “If you are looking for guidance in the welter of alternative approaches to education, this is THE book! A fantastic guide for one of the most important decisions we can make: The right school for a child.” —Barbara Oakley, PhD, author of A Mind for Numbers and co-instructor of Learning How to Learn