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15: What School Could Be w/ Ted Dintersmith
17 Plays7 years ago
Ted Dintersmith is an accomplished entrepreneur - from serving as a top venture capitalist and running an incredibly successful business, to working in our government as an analyst and representative to the United Nations - as well as being an advocate for innovative education. Dintersmith offers a profound, visionary look at changing educational practice to be applicable, relevant, and creative and is well known for co-producing and co-writing Most Likely to Succeed as well as his latest book, What School Could Be.
Dintersmith, in our view, has written a fantastic piece of work that covers all elements of - and most importantly exemplifies - progressive education with What School Could Be. You can read an extensive review on our blog. You can read more about Ted Dintersmith on his website.
If you've read the book and want to discuss more (or just to see what all the fuss is about!) check out #EdCoChat 's upcoming book talk on Twitter on May 10th at 9:30PM EDT.
Also, check out the accompanying video from What School Could Be surrounding (and entitled) The Future of Work. For more information on the exponential growth of AI (and its potential impact on education) check out AlphaGo - the story of a robot that could defeat the world's best Go players.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the podcast and themes
00:00:09
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome to Things Fall Apart, the podcast here at the Human Restoration Project.
00:00:14
Speaker
This is Michael.
00:00:14
Speaker
And I'm Chris.
00:00:16
Speaker
And today we're going to do a little bit of housekeeping here first.
Exploring innovative education with 'What School Could Be' by Ted Dintersmith
00:00:19
Speaker
For usual, we're going to start with a book review.
00:00:21
Speaker
Chris, go ahead.
00:00:21
Speaker
Alright, so we recently finished a book review over What School Could Be, Ted Dintersmith's book, which of course is who we're joined by today.
00:00:30
Speaker
We really, really liked it.
00:00:32
Speaker
In fact, if you read that, you'll probably find a very glowing review with very few, if any critique, which I don't know if that makes for a good book review or not, but honestly, amount of experiences that Dinter Smith has where he chronicles going across the entire United States, every single state and visiting a lot of very innovative schools.
00:00:50
Speaker
It's very inspiring.
00:00:52
Speaker
And what we hope to learn today and what we hope to talk about today is if all these schools are doing all these great things,
00:00:58
Speaker
What can we as progressive educators do in order to spread this message, to make it more normalized, to impact teachers who maybe aren't adapting to it or are hesitant to adapt to it?
00:01:09
Speaker
And overall, what we can do in order to facilitate and incorporate progressive education and its importance?
Project-based learning guidebook and community support
00:01:17
Speaker
The question really is, is how do we get those books or those ideas into the hands of people that truly need them and need to see that and read that stuff?
00:01:27
Speaker
Sure.
00:01:28
Speaker
So in a second here, we'll be joined by Ted.
00:01:31
Speaker
But in the meantime, really quick, a quick promo.
00:01:35
Speaker
We just released our project-based learning guidebook over experiential learning.
00:01:39
Speaker
You should go check that out.
00:01:41
Speaker
It's beautiful.
00:01:41
Speaker
It's like 34 pages or so of pure templated PBL.
00:01:45
Speaker
Not templated in the sense that it's like step-by-step on insert project title, insert project.
00:01:51
Speaker
It's not that.
00:01:52
Speaker
It's really just a method of thinking.
00:01:54
Speaker
It's design thinking.
00:01:56
Speaker
incorporated into designing the thing that you're designing, if you will.
00:02:00
Speaker
Uh, go check that out.
00:02:02
Speaker
Even if you don't use it, share it to someone who maybe doesn't know much about PBL.
00:02:06
Speaker
We wrote that with the intent that it would be shared so that more and more people could adapt into hands-on learning and things that will really make our classrooms come to life.
00:02:15
Speaker
That it really is hard to put a price on a resource or a book when you know for a fact that that progressive method that you're talking about is, um,
00:02:24
Speaker
of just absolute importance and that we need to have these things changing in our systems, especially our public schools and our traditional system desperately needs to totally revamp its mission and its idea.
00:02:35
Speaker
So all that stuff is free.
00:02:37
Speaker
And like Chris said, please grab it and share it with everyone else you possibly can.
00:02:41
Speaker
Feel free, obviously, to donate to Patreon.
00:02:44
Speaker
For as little as a dollar a month, though, you can't keep us going because it takes a lot of work, sadly.
00:02:50
Speaker
So a special thank you to our patrons, Cynthia Jester and Matt Laughlin.
00:02:54
Speaker
Two little shout-outs.
00:02:54
Speaker
Shout-out.
00:02:55
Speaker
Thank you so much for keeping us afloat.
Interview with Ted Dintersmith
00:03:00
Speaker
Just like Leonardo DiCaprio and The Door.
00:03:03
Speaker
Got him.
00:03:03
Speaker
Good one.
00:03:04
Speaker
Got him.
00:03:04
Speaker
That was pretty good.
00:03:08
Speaker
Today, we're with Ted Dinnersman.
00:03:17
Speaker
An amazingly accomplished entrepreneur, whether serving as a top venture capitalist, running an incredibly successful business, working in our government as an analyst and representative to the United Nations, or advocating for progressive education, Ted has been innovating.
00:03:30
Speaker
Dintersmith offers a profound, visionary look at changing educational practice to be applicable, relevant, and creative, and is well known for co-producing and co-writing Most Lately to Succeed, as well as finishing his latest book, What School Could Be.
00:03:44
Speaker
So, yeah, thank you so much for giving up your time to talk to us about your book.
00:03:48
Speaker
We really, really liked it.
00:03:51
Speaker
I was thrilled with your write-up.
00:03:53
Speaker
That was really nice.
00:03:54
Speaker
And, you know, I tell people it, it,
00:03:58
Speaker
may not be the best book you ever read, but it's the best book I'll ever write.
Ted Dintersmith's personal journey and book insights
00:04:04
Speaker
I mean, I agonize over these things, but, um, you know, people ask me that I have a ghost writer and I, not only did I write every word, but, um, the copy editor for my publisher, they, they said you'd use track changes.
00:04:15
Speaker
I said, you don't have to because, you know, I look at, I know immediately when somebody's changed a word because, you know, I've spent, I probably have tried it that way three times.
00:04:26
Speaker
And, uh,
00:04:27
Speaker
and decided for whatever reasons to go with the way I went with it.
00:04:32
Speaker
So anyway, I'd say if nothing else on this book to have covered, I think in many ways, the broadest of broad sweeps of U.S. education and do it all in a little over 200 pages, at least I was disciplined in my choice of words.
00:04:47
Speaker
Oh my goodness, yeah.
00:04:48
Speaker
I mean, I'm sure that many educators will feel obviously inspired while reading each account of these fantastic opportunities that exist throughout the country.
00:04:57
Speaker
However, then again, I could also see people, frankly, almost being depressed because their school environment might be draining their desire to innovate in the manner in which you kind of go about.
00:05:08
Speaker
I know towards the beginning of the book, you described the pseudonamed Eisenhower High School, people that are in that kind of environment.
00:05:15
Speaker
So as you stated as a businessman,
00:05:18
Speaker
workers tend to know more about what to do or what was going on rather than maybe the higher ups.
00:05:22
Speaker
And it seems like your goal through the book was to showcase that teachers should be the ones given control over how education should change.
Empowering teachers and resources for change
00:05:29
Speaker
So what kind of suggestions then would you offer a more progressive educator who works currently in a more traditional environment who might feel limited or discouraged?
00:05:39
Speaker
Yeah, it is the question.
00:05:40
Speaker
You know, it's the question of the ages for our
00:05:44
Speaker
country, for our democracy, for our education system.
00:05:47
Speaker
You know, how do you change an existing school?
00:05:50
Speaker
And, you know, one of the things I've been struck by is that, you know, anything you try to do in education has challenges, you know, nothing's easy, but starting a school from scratch is actually a lot easier than trying to change an existing school.
00:06:05
Speaker
And so what I really try to highlight in the book are elements that sort of lead to a resource we have on the website, but we're, you know,
00:06:14
Speaker
Any given school has its change agents.
00:06:20
Speaker
This gets my whole strategy around how I distribute the film most likely to succeed because we turned down, I turned down Netflix.
00:06:27
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:06:28
Speaker
I don't think, for this reason, I don't think people really learn by watching something on a laptop.
00:06:35
Speaker
And I don't think you can change schools if five people in a school or 10 people watch it on a laptop.
00:06:40
Speaker
And so the book is really not a practical guide.
00:06:44
Speaker
I mean, I, you know, at one point, you know, I had a section written at the end that was sort of, you know, here's some tips or practical things.
00:06:52
Speaker
I just felt like it detracted from the book.
00:06:54
Speaker
But on the website, we have this resource we call an innovation playlist.
00:07:00
Speaker
And I think when you read it, if you're excited and you sort of feel like you want to have more of that in your school and you are maybe a progressive teacher at an Eisenhower high type of school, we lay out a set of things that can really help you energize your community and start making the kinds of changes you need to
Innovation playlist and overcoming resistance
00:07:18
Speaker
make.
00:07:18
Speaker
And it's all around the mantra of small steps leading to big change.
00:07:22
Speaker
But, you know, we recommend simple things.
00:07:25
Speaker
You know, ask as many people as you can in your school community to watch Ken Robinson's TED Talk.
00:07:30
Speaker
It's funny.
00:07:31
Speaker
It's great.
00:07:32
Speaker
It gets you thinking that maybe everything isn't completely right with the way we're doing it.
00:07:37
Speaker
Organize a screening and most likely to succeed.
00:07:40
Speaker
Work with Ken Kay and Valerie Greenhill and then Leader 21 to...
00:07:44
Speaker
Define the profile of your graduate.
00:07:47
Speaker
These are all groups I love and I support, but work with School Retool at Stanford in their Shadow a Student program to start to get a sense of which school experiences reinforce the very profile characteristics you target in EdLeader21 with that process.
00:08:03
Speaker
And then start just doing smaller things that lead to bigger change.
00:08:06
Speaker
And so I hope somebody, if they read it and they feel like, you know, I do feel it's
00:08:13
Speaker
at its core, a very optimistic book.
00:08:16
Speaker
But in the context of the acute urgency, I think we all need to feel about change.
00:08:21
Speaker
But I hope somebody who reads it feels like, man, there are a lot of teachers in a lot of places making this kind of progress.
00:08:29
Speaker
And then if they go to the book's website, we'll have some things that can really kind of unblock the resistance and start helping schools make the kind of progress they feel they want to make.
00:08:40
Speaker
That's actually...
00:08:41
Speaker
perfect segue.
00:08:42
Speaker
I wanted to ask about what you just said is unblock.
00:08:45
Speaker
I like that choice of words, almost like there's a chakra or something being blocked.
00:08:49
Speaker
Most of us, I guess Chris and I especially, what we often see is there are so many tools out there, as you mentioned, that like PBL guides and there's Buck Institute and just, you know, there's so much.
00:09:02
Speaker
What are some of your ideas as far as unblocking for the teachers or the educators or the administrators or even the parents and oftentimes even the kids who
00:09:11
Speaker
they can't seem to wrap their head around the fact that things are truly broken and there is something wrong.
00:09:18
Speaker
So, you know, showing them the documentary or the giving them these tools is almost like, you know, talking to a brick wall, I guess, if that makes sense.
00:09:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:26
Speaker
Although, you know, the, the upbeat aspect of this is I find that whenever a school screens a documentary, most likely to succeed, they just look at things differently and we get great feedback from,
00:09:38
Speaker
not just around the country, but around the world, with the impact of the film on school communities.
00:09:43
Speaker
And so we've been supporting school-wide communities.
00:09:47
Speaker
We've got this innovative committee of 10 offering where 10 people can watch it for, rent it for a month
Technological impact on education and job markets
00:09:53
Speaker
for a grand total of 15 bucks.
00:09:54
Speaker
So it's basically as close to free as my distributor and filmmaker would let me make it.
00:10:01
Speaker
And I think once people start to think that way, as I say, you watch Ken's TED Talk and
00:10:06
Speaker
you know, at a certain point, no, people are nervous about change.
00:10:11
Speaker
People, you know, have concerns, but I think once they kind of cross that line and say, wait a minute, you know, if I keep pushing my kid to, you know, the, the, in my talks, I say, you know, in most places I visit, unfortunately, the way you get on the honor roll is by being able to memorize content, replicate low level procedures, you
00:10:32
Speaker
write formulaically and follow instructions.
00:10:35
Speaker
You know, if you can do those four things, you will in most schools be an honor roll student.
00:10:40
Speaker
And those are the exact four things the machine intelligence excels at.
00:10:45
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:10:45
Speaker
And I think once people start to emotionally, and I think that's one of the issues about the, or one of the characteristics of the film I love is it affects people emotionally.
00:10:54
Speaker
And I think the reason I intentionally wrote this book is
00:10:57
Speaker
in the context of these remarkable stories, I hope I do them justice, but they are when you go visit these classrooms, they're remarkable.
00:11:06
Speaker
I feel like that gets people more emotionally bought in than if I had just quoted John Dewey or cited a bunch of statistics.
00:11:13
Speaker
And so what I've attempted to do in the book, and I hope I did, but I attempted to make the overarching important strategic points about the issues that are at the crux of what we need to be doing in school
00:11:25
Speaker
but in the context of very relatable, you know, but powerful stories about people and the things they've done.
00:11:33
Speaker
And also, in many cases, I explain their motivations.
00:11:37
Speaker
And it often gets back to heartbreak, you know, just a feeling like if we just keep doing this to kids, you know, grinding through, getting good at the things machine intelligence is already excellent at, taking the soul out of learning, the joy out of learning, the trust out of the classrooms,
00:11:55
Speaker
It won't end well.
00:11:56
Speaker
It's already not ending well.
00:11:57
Speaker
We see that.
00:11:58
Speaker
As you mentioned that, I was just talking to Chris.
00:12:01
Speaker
I feel like that is a major, not to get too much into like AI or down that path, I suppose, although I guess that is sort of the 21st century.
00:12:10
Speaker
I do agree with you completely that so many people, maybe even educators, I'm not sure if they're turning a blind eye because they don't want to believe it's happening or maybe because it just seems so...
00:12:22
Speaker
2001 Space Odyssey-ish to sci-fi.
00:12:25
Speaker
But this notion of sort of roboticizing careers, especially careers that people are used to getting out of high school or, I mean, a lot of them even out of college, is absolutely happening.
00:12:34
Speaker
And I don't think people realize how much they're currently happening.
00:12:37
Speaker
My neighbor worked at a candy factory called Esther Price.
00:12:41
Speaker
It's a local date and shop.
00:12:44
Speaker
Ohio.
00:12:45
Speaker
And he'd worked there for over 15 years.
00:12:47
Speaker
He just recently quit.
00:12:49
Speaker
And it was the only job he'd actually had for that long.
00:12:51
Speaker
But he quit because some new owners were coming in.
00:12:55
Speaker
And essentially, I don't know if you ever watched, I Love Lucy, but it was a lot of that, you know, the candy factory line.
00:13:02
Speaker
If you kind of picture that,
00:13:04
Speaker
I mean, that's essentially what they were for decades since they've been around.
00:13:09
Speaker
And new owners have just recently sort of roboticized a majority of the jobs in the factory, creating the candy.
00:13:16
Speaker
Obviously, you can't yet at least roboticize the delivery drivers.
00:13:20
Speaker
He quit because of some other changes and also the fact that he just saw so many people that he's grown to know over the course of 15 plus years just be laid off because of that exact issue.
00:13:31
Speaker
And I think I just...
00:13:32
Speaker
I'm very nervous that many educators or people in education don't truly see that for the threat that it actually is.
00:13:40
Speaker
Or parents or students.
00:13:42
Speaker
I mean, I think it's one of those deceptive things about exponential growth is if you look at an exponential curve, which I'm always amused by how many people.
00:13:52
Speaker
I'll ask people questions in my talks about exponential growth and no one ever knows anything about it, even though everybody had to study it in high school.
00:14:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:01
Speaker
Which sort of makes the point that we have kids study all this math that they just, they don't remember, they never know what it means, it's just kind of gone.
Critique of traditional education paths
00:14:09
Speaker
But the problem with exponential growth is if any point on that curve, if you imagine yourself being a little insect on an exponential curve, when you look to your left and your right, it looks flat.
00:14:22
Speaker
But if you step back and look at it, it's got this really sharp knee in it that's really taking off.
00:14:27
Speaker
And we are at that point.
00:14:29
Speaker
When you just do the rough exponential calculations, what it means is, and I say this in the book, is that the amount of disruption in the coming decade will be 10x what it was in the last decade.
00:14:40
Speaker
And that doesn't sound like, oh, I think I kind of get that.
00:14:44
Speaker
Or as you say, people could be fairly complacent or not really feel the urgency.
00:14:49
Speaker
But then you start saying, okay, 10 years ago, just a little over 10 years ago is when the iPhone was introduced.
00:14:55
Speaker
Think of every aspect of our world that's been affected by that in 10 years.
00:14:59
Speaker
And now can you really imagine what 10x that disruption is going to be in the next 10 years?
00:15:05
Speaker
And as you say, the I Love Lucy factory line for Kent, that's already being automated.
00:15:11
Speaker
The drivers are being automated.
00:15:12
Speaker
But it's not just that.
00:15:14
Speaker
It's like we've got this video –
00:15:17
Speaker
called The Future of Work.
00:15:18
Speaker
I don't know if you've seen it, but I can send you a link and you could put it on your, if you've got a website that goes with the podcast.
00:15:24
Speaker
But it's three minutes and it just shows category after category after category and all the things that are already taking place and being rolled out today that will, if not eliminate every job, you know, for every 10 jobs, they'll go to maybe one job that's really quite different.
00:15:41
Speaker
And it's
00:15:43
Speaker
It's minimum wage jobs, but it's also lawyers, dermatologists, oncologists, radiologists, surgeons.
00:15:51
Speaker
Think about that.
00:15:52
Speaker
You bake yourself into a path where it's four years of college and then three, four years of graduate school and then two years of residency.
00:16:00
Speaker
Well, that's a 10-year path to get to a career.
00:16:04
Speaker
What I believe is that in 10 years, every career will be quite different.
00:16:08
Speaker
And so we just can't have those kinds of
00:16:10
Speaker
lengthy, painful approach line, you know, paths to careers that by the time you get there are going to be really different.
AI's role in transforming education
00:16:17
Speaker
The law is an interesting one.
00:16:19
Speaker
There's a podcast with Sam Harris.
00:16:22
Speaker
And I think he was talking to, you know,
00:16:27
Speaker
I don't remember now.
00:16:28
Speaker
It was either Max Tegmark or another MIT kind of institute of person looking at AI, and they were discussing that exact idea that people think it's only just going to be factory line jobs, but in reality, you will also see courtrooms slowly but surely utilizing AI.
00:16:45
Speaker
And the argument was, of course, that imagine...
00:16:48
Speaker
justice system that is actually completely objective and it's one that is not subject to any sort of opinion at all, which is very intriguing.
00:16:55
Speaker
There's an interesting documentary, it's on iTunes, called AlphaGo.
00:17:02
Speaker
People need to look at that because if you're underestimating the impact, I mean, general artificial intelligence is both remarkably powerful but also, at a certain level, very frightening.
00:17:16
Speaker
And
00:17:17
Speaker
And so you have them basically program this so it knows the rules of this very complex, quite strategic and creative game called Go, which is, you know, as chess is to checkers, Go is to chess.
00:17:29
Speaker
I mean, it's that much more.
00:17:31
Speaker
And, you know, in four hours, you know, something, you know, general AI program goes from being a novice to being competitive with the world's best Go players.
00:17:40
Speaker
They show them, you know, the AI program playing the world's best Go player and winning.
00:17:45
Speaker
Right.
00:17:45
Speaker
Spoiler alert.
00:17:46
Speaker
Sorry.
00:17:48
Speaker
But but but since then, they now have this this, you know, program playing concurrently 20 go players that, you know, it's close to the 20 best they can find in the world and beating all 20 every time.
00:18:00
Speaker
And that's a very complex, ultimately quite creative game.
00:18:04
Speaker
And so when somebody says, you know, I.
00:18:07
Speaker
customer service jobs are safe.
00:18:09
Speaker
I say, you can't, you've got to be kidding.
00:18:11
Speaker
You know, um, uh, you know, um, I don't know, you know, you just list a lot, you know, one of the things everybody says, let's just take refuge and teach everybody how to code, you know, that, that, that would be a safe haven and many, many coding jobs will be done by AI.
00:18:27
Speaker
Um, and so, so if you look at it that way, it's, it's actually is quite frightening.
00:18:31
Speaker
You know, I think the one thing that, that,
00:18:33
Speaker
we need to understand and really focus on is the fact that when you couple a person who is skilled in understanding and how the software, the machine intelligence functions, that human plus, you know, machine or human plus computational resources, you know, will be the world's best,
00:18:53
Speaker
software solution or robotic solution.
00:18:56
Speaker
We'll beat the world's best human.
00:18:57
Speaker
So it's that teaming that's really interesting.
00:18:59
Speaker
But we, by and large, purge that kind of teaming out of our schools.
00:19:04
Speaker
And you think about grade 7 through 12 math.
00:19:07
Speaker
I mean, honestly, you could replace six years of painstaking, difficult, frustrating math with about two weeks to three weeks on PhotoMath or WolframAlpha.
00:19:20
Speaker
The rest of that, you know, five years, eight months would just wish it's all gone.
00:19:24
Speaker
All the low level mechanics are taken care of.
00:19:26
Speaker
Then we could spend five years and eight months teaching kids how to actually use math in conjunction with their iPhone or whatever phone they have to start actually solving problems, to open career doors.
00:19:38
Speaker
You know, and
Rethinking college and career success
00:19:39
Speaker
you know what?
00:19:40
Speaker
Who wouldn't like that?
00:19:42
Speaker
the textbook companies, the college board with the SAT, the ACT, all these people that just are making a large amount of annual money by pushing out onto our schools a bunch of low-level material that I think is far closer to teaching somebody to crank start a Model T in driver training school than it is something really useful and constructive.
00:20:07
Speaker
Yeah, I want to talk about
00:20:09
Speaker
A huge section of your book focuses on that re-imagination of the college experience, especially on the track that we're placing on high school students to college, like AP programs.
00:20:19
Speaker
So AP programs, as we both know, are extraordinarily fact-based.
00:20:23
Speaker
They focus on test prep really more than any other class.
00:20:25
Speaker
I know as a teacher, teaching an AP course is probably the death sentence of teaching in terms of all other subjects.
00:20:33
Speaker
You said they cover so much information, and they really do expect you to cover it because...
00:20:37
Speaker
It is test based more so than any other class.
00:20:39
Speaker
However, obviously performing well on AP tests doesn't really have much relevance to how successful you are in real life.
00:20:46
Speaker
So how do we therefore go about communicating this message to parents and students that AP courses or IB classes or just even going to college, a traditional four year college and college prep in general is not necessarily what's best for them because it's been rooted in for so long.
00:21:04
Speaker
that you just go to high school, you go to college, you get a good job, and that's it.
00:21:07
Speaker
But really, that's not the society that we live in.
00:21:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:10
Speaker
No, it's not the world we live in, but it's the world most people think we live in.
00:21:14
Speaker
And, you know, as I write and as I travel, you see the well of high schools, they go directly to which college are these kids going to.
00:21:24
Speaker
And I'll encourage them
00:21:26
Speaker
you know, and they gasp to start that discussion with kids saying, do you really think you need to go to college?
00:21:32
Speaker
You know, why go to college?
00:21:33
Speaker
What do you want to get out of it?
00:21:35
Speaker
Which, if nothing else, would relieve a lot of the pressure kids feel about, you know, getting into a slightly more selective college, which is, you know, I think ultimately quite corrosive.
00:21:47
Speaker
And then the schools that are in tougher circumstances want to be like the well-off schools.
00:21:51
Speaker
And so there it's all, you know, like every kid's getting a college acceptance letter or,
00:21:56
Speaker
And we just have sort of baked into society some deep sense that someone with a college degree, not someone who took a few college courses selectively and got to a much better point in terms of their understanding of an area, but actually going through the four-year process with all the distribution requirements and everything else and all the expense to get that quote-unquote college degree
00:22:23
Speaker
somehow makes you just a superior person.
Education reform and democracy's survival
00:22:26
Speaker
And it's propagated, by and large, by a lot of people with great college credentials who just pass that off as just a given.
00:22:35
Speaker
And if we continue to believe that,
00:22:40
Speaker
I think that directly leads to the undoing of our democracy because college's cost is out of reach for many, many families.
00:22:48
Speaker
There's actually not that much data.
00:22:51
Speaker
There's certainly very little data that people are learning that much in lecture classes in college.
00:22:57
Speaker
And you can replicate that online.
00:22:59
Speaker
So you can not learn as much online as you can not learn in a large lecture hall that you're paying a ton of money for.
00:23:05
Speaker
And by and large, when I ask audiences what really made a difference for them out of college, it was the interactions with people, the side bullshit discussions.
00:23:17
Speaker
You know, it's like people don't really offer
00:23:23
Speaker
the fact that their lecture courses made much difference.
00:23:27
Speaker
And so then you have to ask the question, can you accomplish the same thing for a lot less than 75 to 300K?
00:23:33
Speaker
And do you really want to continue to penalize somebody who doesn't go that path?
00:23:40
Speaker
And do you want to sort of set up this schism in society between those, particularly those who have
00:23:47
Speaker
are in fortunate circumstances where it's just a given you're going to college and the family doesn't blink an eye to write those checks.
00:23:54
Speaker
I think if we continue to hold out that that person is in some way, shape or form, a superior person to someone who takes a different path, it's unfortunate for everybody.
00:24:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:06
Speaker
I mean, I think this really puts into perspective how important this educational movement really is.
00:24:12
Speaker
I mean,
00:24:13
Speaker
if no one really does anything to start fixing these things, which they have, but if people don't continue to push, it kind of seems like society might unravel itself.
00:24:22
Speaker
I mean, it kind of already started as... Yeah, arguably already is.
00:24:26
Speaker
I mean, you know, when I got going on these issues, which goes back now eight, nine years ago, and started to connect these dots, you know, with these three words that sound like they have very little to do with each other, you know, innovation, education, democracy...
Student debt and societal pressures
00:24:40
Speaker
You know, I'd start to say initially to my family members and then close friends that if we don't get education right, given how fast innovation is racing ahead, it's not obvious to me that our democracy will survive.
00:24:52
Speaker
You know, seven, eight, nine years ago, I think people actually thought
00:24:57
Speaker
something was wrong with me.
00:24:58
Speaker
You know, like, like who, what's happened to Ted?
00:25:01
Speaker
You know, he's gone off the deep end.
00:25:03
Speaker
I, you know, how could possibly have this view?
00:25:05
Speaker
I mean, you know, I, I would be at a dinner party and you're like the last two seats to fill were the one on my right and the one on my left.
00:25:12
Speaker
You know, and I, I would say, if you don't want me to ruin the way you look at your kid's school, just ignore me.
00:25:18
Speaker
And, uh, you know, but, but,
00:25:20
Speaker
I don't get pushback on that now.
00:25:22
Speaker
I mean, I've probably given 100 talks where I've addressed that issue and nobody's raising their hand to saying you're all wrong.
00:25:29
Speaker
And you just realize when you're on the, if you in fact put this barrier of 75 to 300K of actually immersing yourself in very academic, not terribly real world connected, not terribly career connected coursework, that we all need
00:25:50
Speaker
idealize the experience there.
00:25:52
Speaker
And that this is suddenly making this person just a dramatically different person because they, they will suddenly view everything in their daily life in the context of, of how Hamlet might've seen it or what Hegel may have thought about it.
00:26:04
Speaker
You know, like that's what we're there.
00:26:06
Speaker
And then somehow that makes you a, just a, just a,
00:26:08
Speaker
flat out, obviously superior person.
00:26:11
Speaker
That's not the reality.
00:26:13
Speaker
I mean, you know, maybe for a few people, you know, maybe for David Brooks, maybe for, you know, but by and large, a lot of people are, you know, doing a lot of partying, you know, sort of checking off the boxes on courses, you know, taking notes, cramming, spending a ton of money.
00:26:31
Speaker
And the people I really feel a great deal of empathy for, pain for, are the ones who,
00:26:38
Speaker
are told they need to do this, are told they won't be a worthwhile person if they don't, head off to some anonymous college that doesn't do a particularly good job, that sort of in some ways has preyed upon them with a modest amount of scholarship money and a lot of student loan debt, and they realize two years into it, I'm learning nothing.
00:26:58
Speaker
And then what do they do?
00:26:59
Speaker
Do they double down on their student loans to finish?
00:27:03
Speaker
and often have no real outcome to point to that they're proud of or happy about, or drop out.
00:27:09
Speaker
And for the people, the education PhDs that advocate this position, 25, 30K of loans, they don't think that's a big deal.
00:27:19
Speaker
But if you leave an anonymous college as a dropout, you get no credit for that.
00:27:25
Speaker
And if you're doing 30 hours a week in a minimum wage job, do the math.
00:27:30
Speaker
you won't pay off that 30K of loans.
00:27:34
Speaker
And in all likelihood, you'll go into the penalty zone and start paying 10% interest rates.
00:27:39
Speaker
And we're doing a short on this.
00:27:40
Speaker
We interviewed a bunch of people.
00:27:42
Speaker
And 10, 15 years later, you have a bigger loan burden you're carrying.
00:27:47
Speaker
And you just sort of say, I may never get out of this.
00:27:52
Speaker
I mean, that's a fair thing.
00:27:54
Speaker
That's the American dream.
00:27:56
Speaker
That's leveling the playing field.
00:27:58
Speaker
I mean,
00:27:59
Speaker
That's something we better get right and get right soon.
00:28:02
Speaker
Yeah, that description of university is pretty much spot on, although I do have a bit of a hard time picturing you doing a keg stand.
00:28:12
Speaker
Yeah, I was a pretty serious student, but mostly because nobody wanted to do anything.
00:28:19
Speaker
I was like, the guy that was not much of a party animal, that's for sure.
Resistance to change in education
00:28:27
Speaker
So maybe I was a good student, not by choice, but by the way.
00:28:31
Speaker
The social climate voted for me and said, you're better off studying.
00:28:36
Speaker
Hey there.
00:28:42
Speaker
We hope you're enjoying the podcast.
00:28:44
Speaker
The Human Restoration Project stays alive because of generous donations by our patrons.
00:28:48
Speaker
Take a second and check out our website at humanrestorationproject.org for more podcasts, our blogs,
00:28:54
Speaker
and all sorts of free resources that we've designed for educators.
00:28:57
Speaker
And if you love what we do, consider supporting us on Patreon.
00:29:00
Speaker
For as little as $1 a month, Patreon supporters receive goodies from being listed in the credits of our resources to early access to what we do.
00:29:06
Speaker
Thanks in advance.
00:29:08
Speaker
Those who don't quite see the necessity for that change are the educators.
00:29:15
Speaker
I mean, it's not to dismiss all, you know, education educators in the collegiate level, but a lot of that is the same idea of, um,
00:29:24
Speaker
they're setting a lot of educators up for disaster by sort of continuing that same cycle.
00:29:30
Speaker
But I almost want to argue that it seems like most people who are in education who fail to see the change or fail to see the necessity of this very necessary change come at it from either a perspective of money or fear.
00:29:48
Speaker
And by that, I simply mean like maybe they have money to be made, for instance,
00:29:53
Speaker
I think of teachers, paid teachers, the website where you can just buy lesson plans that sully up, I guess, curricula, make something fun or how to play a game with vocabulary.
00:30:05
Speaker
And there's some money to be made in there.
00:30:07
Speaker
So no one really wants to see education change and be put in the students' hands where there's less money to be made potentially.
00:30:13
Speaker
And also, I think it could potentially come from, well, obviously fear.
00:30:17
Speaker
You've been doing this for this long.
00:30:20
Speaker
No one wants to see that change, whether you're a lawyer, a doctor, a teacher, a mechanic.
00:30:25
Speaker
When there's a big change happening and you're not used to it and you don't feel like you're ready for it,
00:30:31
Speaker
You're deathly afraid of what that change could be, what that means for you, I guess, and your field.
00:30:37
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, people just sort of gulp and say, my gosh, if you miss the Crimea War in history somehow, you're set back irrevocably as an
Criticism of AP testing and school success metrics
00:30:45
Speaker
adult.
00:30:45
Speaker
And, you know, and the reality is that most of what these these kids, particularly in middle and high school, study is.
00:30:53
Speaker
it's gone.
00:30:54
Speaker
It doesn't stay with them.
00:30:55
Speaker
It's not really learned.
00:30:56
Speaker
It's just, you talked before about AP and the film.
00:31:02
Speaker
We call out AP.
00:31:04
Speaker
The idea of going from 1491 to present day in one school year and spending 20 minutes on the Constitution and two days on the Civil War and two class periods on World War II.
00:31:16
Speaker
I mean, when you just point that out, people say, well, that's preposterous.
00:31:21
Speaker
But most people, if you say, what's the absolute pinnacle of history study in K through 12, they say, oh, my gosh, you know, like AP U.S. history, that's got to be the best it can be.
00:31:31
Speaker
And, you know, it's like if we don't get these things right, if we don't start understanding it, if we don't start baking, for instance, AP course coverage into ranking a school, you know, like to me, a school that's got the courage to walk away from AP should be getting extra credit in the rankings.
00:31:48
Speaker
But they don't, right?
00:31:50
Speaker
A student that applies to a college and happens to go to a high school that offers a lot of AP, if a student wrote a thoughtful note that said, I didn't take a single one of these courses because I think it's a profound waste of time, that ought to boost their prospects in a college application.
00:32:05
Speaker
But it doesn't.
00:32:06
Speaker
And so when we just buy into a set of these measures that really when you dig both
00:32:12
Speaker
you know, below the surface realize are, are not only not beneficial, they're actually harmful.
00:32:19
Speaker
You know, we owe it to our kids.
00:32:21
Speaker
We owe it to the message we deliver our students to be more thoughtful about that.
00:32:27
Speaker
Based off that, what you, what you just said about AP testing, I'm curious to know your thoughts about, so we do tend to rank our schools based off their standardized test ranking or about their attendance rates or what have you.
00:32:39
Speaker
Um,
00:32:40
Speaker
Do you believe that there's any way or should there be a way to rank schools based off of what they're doing, say, with the community or about how authentic their work is?
00:32:50
Speaker
I know that's incredibly subjective.
00:32:51
Speaker
But then again, I mean, the grade in the first place is incredibly subjective.
00:32:55
Speaker
I'm wondering if there would be a way logistically to promote what schools are doing.
00:33:02
Speaker
and make it competitive?
00:33:03
Speaker
I don't even know if that would be a good solution.
00:33:05
Speaker
Well, there's a great deal of difference between ranking and assessing.
00:33:10
Speaker
And, you know, I talk about New Hampshire where it went competency-based and performance-based, and they're looking at authentic portfolios of student work to make those assessments.
Fostering creativity and diverse career paths
00:33:20
Speaker
And you can roughly get a sense of the kids at school X are doing actually flat-out remarkable work and the students at school Y are doing
00:33:31
Speaker
solid work, but maybe not up to the standard of the first school.
00:33:35
Speaker
But that's course rankings, which is probably about all we're capable of doing, if we were honest about it.
00:33:43
Speaker
And it's tied to
00:33:46
Speaker
relatively expert review of direct bodies of evidence.
00:33:51
Speaker
And I think what we've done, because that might take some more time because it's not as superficially precise, we tend to gravitate toward, we've got this little formula, you'll get
00:34:06
Speaker
your ranking is X weighting times SAT scores plus Y rating times AP courses taken maybe with a spin for some extra pop for a fours and fives and maybe Z ranking for attendance.
00:34:23
Speaker
Everybody's got their different algorithm.
00:34:25
Speaker
But we might as well just say we're gonna rank you by the average income level of the district and we get the same rankings.
00:34:34
Speaker
And so that's where I think.
00:34:36
Speaker
And then the message you send to kids, right?
00:34:38
Speaker
Because you can go all the way through high school.
00:34:41
Speaker
You can do really well in a lot of high schools without having anything you've really created or produced during high school that somebody from the outside would look at and say that's really original creative work.
00:34:54
Speaker
I mean, you know, in a lot of high schools, the only thing you're doing that arguably is even somewhat original might be some short essays you do for an English or history class, maybe social studies.
00:35:05
Speaker
But it's very difficult in a lot of places in high school to find anything original or interesting that's done in a science or math class.
00:35:15
Speaker
And and even in in courses that require essays,
00:35:20
Speaker
very often the students figure it out, right?
00:35:23
Speaker
They know that if they write a nice prose with a safe set of assertions or safe hypothesis, they'll do really well.
00:35:31
Speaker
And so that's what they do.
00:35:33
Speaker
And so is it original creative work?
00:35:35
Speaker
Is it something that somebody might actually say, none of that makes sense?
00:35:39
Speaker
I mean, are they taking an intellectual risk with it?
00:35:42
Speaker
I think we actually tell them the opposite.
00:35:44
Speaker
I think we tell them don't.
00:35:45
Speaker
Certainly if you're doing
00:35:47
Speaker
You know, and it's a whole different long discussion about the essays for some of these standardized tests and and how they're graded and how deeply flawed that whole process is.
00:35:57
Speaker
But but if you're a tutor and somebody asks you for advice, you know, the whole focus is, you know, four to five paragraphs, four to five sentences per paragraph, barrier sentence structure, use some vocabulary words that, you know, will impress them.
00:36:13
Speaker
And, you know, and don't, don't, don't ever say anything controversial.
00:36:17
Speaker
Sure.
00:36:18
Speaker
It's very interesting, too, that we tend to gauge the success of our schools based off of college acceptance rates or how many students are doing well in these tests.
00:36:29
Speaker
And there's really not a point where anyone's asking, are the students happy?
00:36:34
Speaker
Have they found their passion in life?
00:36:36
Speaker
Are they even if they are worried about college?
00:36:38
Speaker
Are they actually getting a job after college?
00:36:40
Speaker
Are they having are they learning in college?
00:36:43
Speaker
It's very odd that we don't have any kind of data on a large scale that showcases any of that.
00:36:49
Speaker
I know one thing that our school has been talking about, for example, has been if we go with a portrait of a graduate, we don't have one yet.
00:36:55
Speaker
Would happiness be one of those things?
00:36:57
Speaker
Because that should be a major part of a child's experience at school.
00:37:01
Speaker
You would think.
00:37:03
Speaker
When I talk to parents, and I talk to a lot of them as I travel, they will all say, you know,
00:37:10
Speaker
something like, well, you know, all I really want is for my child to be happy.
00:37:15
Speaker
Right.
00:37:16
Speaker
But they don't behave that way.
00:37:18
Speaker
And they often make that child feel like a failure because they didn't, you know, they didn't get into the parents' dream college, not the child's.
00:37:28
Speaker
And you think about just the contrast.
00:37:30
Speaker
I mean, I was in Finland three years ago.
00:37:33
Speaker
And, you know, in Finland, it's just incredibly healthy, you know, and people sort of view the college path
00:37:40
Speaker
in the right light, which is if you've got a really strong academic interest, if you're in a field that really requires a college degree, you know, it's like a path.
00:37:52
Speaker
And a path with, yep, it's expensive, not nearly as expensive there as it is here, but it's a path for certain people with certain objectives.
00:38:00
Speaker
It's not the mark of quality of the kid.
00:38:04
Speaker
It's not the seal of approval for parenting.
00:38:07
Speaker
It's just a path
00:38:09
Speaker
with trade-offs.
00:38:10
Speaker
The cost are X and what you get for it is Y. And in Finland, about half the kids self-select for careers directly out of high school.
00:38:18
Speaker
And it's not the low-income kids that do that and the high-income kids don't.
00:38:22
Speaker
It's the kids.
00:38:23
Speaker
And when you think about it, and I write about this in the book where I contrast, one of my favorite sections is when I talk about the exercise I was part of
00:38:32
Speaker
where they gave a bunch of educators an essay.
00:38:34
Speaker
And the goal of the essay was to provide constructive and creative problem-solving advice to a mayor of a Bangladeshi village about how to prepare for a potential earthquake.
00:38:46
Speaker
And the essay, you read it, and it's very well written.
00:38:50
Speaker
I mean, four to five paragraphs, four to five sentences per paragraph, varied sentence structure, lots of quotes and facts and data.
00:38:58
Speaker
I mean, it's a very well-written, articulate essay.
00:39:01
Speaker
that says absolutely nothing.
00:39:04
Speaker
Zero insight, no constructive advice, no sign of creative problem solving.
00:39:11
Speaker
And when the educators were asked to evaluate the essay on the criteria of creative problem solving, most gave it either excellent or quite good, four threes on a scale, one to four marks.
00:39:26
Speaker
And then when you ask them to reread it,
00:39:29
Speaker
and say is, highlight where in this, if you were the mayor reading it, you would now have advice that you could act on.
00:39:34
Speaker
They all hold up their papers and there's none.
00:39:39
Speaker
And the point I made was, if your life depended on it, if lives of the people in your town depended on it, would you turn to an AP English student or to a kid taking construction arts in a CTE program?
00:39:54
Speaker
And I think we would all say, I think,
00:39:57
Speaker
boy, in a second, I'm going to take the kid taking construction arts.
00:40:01
Speaker
And then I say, well, who the hell is the gifted student?
00:40:05
Speaker
I mean, if your life depended on it and you choose the second student, why in at least some way, shape or form wouldn't you view that student as gifted?
Aligning education with student passions
00:40:17
Speaker
And I think that's what we've got terribly wrong.
00:40:19
Speaker
And it just permeates all the distortion in our education system is because we have put college on a pedestal
00:40:28
Speaker
Because in many ways, the colleges are every bit as adept as De Beers was with diamonds.
00:40:37
Speaker
They've just made it feel over and over and over again in our society that if you don't have a college degree, somehow you're a zirconium.
00:40:47
Speaker
And why?
00:40:48
Speaker
You think about somebody today that's, pick a random thing.
00:40:52
Speaker
You're an electrician.
00:40:53
Speaker
You've got to be very entrepreneurial.
00:40:55
Speaker
You've got to know increasingly large amounts about technology.
00:40:58
Speaker
You're creatively problem solving.
00:41:00
Speaker
You're critically analyzing.
00:41:01
Speaker
You've got to collaborate.
00:41:03
Speaker
But you never went to college, right?
00:41:05
Speaker
Yeah, right.
00:41:06
Speaker
And you just say, well, why?
00:41:09
Speaker
I mean, like, I don't really, and back to what you said before, if you interview that person, you say, are you happy?
00:41:16
Speaker
And they say, you bet your life I'm happy.
00:41:19
Speaker
You know, I can support myself.
00:41:20
Speaker
I've got to
00:41:21
Speaker
Every morning I look forward to the challenges I'm going to face.
00:41:24
Speaker
I know if I blow it and do a bad job, people's lives depend on it.
00:41:27
Speaker
I'm not saying it's better than college, but I'm saying it's, it's, why should one be viewed as better than the other?
00:41:36
Speaker
Why would we view a kid who went through the motions in college, actually managed to get through and had it all paid for by a well-off family and got a degree and is now sitting at home doing nothing,
00:41:47
Speaker
as, you know, a good outcome and a kid that became an electrician out of high school as anything other than a kid that just found a great path and is making the most of it.
00:41:58
Speaker
Right.
00:41:58
Speaker
Chris and I have talked about that many times in our classes, attempting to help students like find passions or do these kind of passion driven projects.
00:42:08
Speaker
What we sort of settled on is this idea that most kids truly do believe that
00:42:15
Speaker
an academic, I guess, career is the best one.
00:42:18
Speaker
So all of our schools, really, almost if not all traditional public high schools or schools in general, and of course, universities, all sort of cater to the interests of maybe 20% or less of the people who are attending them.
00:42:34
Speaker
And so I guess the worst part being is that
00:42:38
Speaker
those 20% and the rest of the other 80 obviously believe that that's the only way you can be successful, which is just so unfortunate.
00:42:46
Speaker
Like you just mentioned, and Chris and I have talked about this in our classes before, but
00:42:50
Speaker
You mentioned to the students, like imagine, raise your hand in this classroom of 25 right now if you would love a school only focused on athletics.
00:42:58
Speaker
If it was always athletic, always kinesthetic, and you were always running, maybe five or six kids raised their hand.
00:43:04
Speaker
And that's the whole point is that imagine now that you're those five or six that truly just love academics.
00:43:11
Speaker
You love reading from textbooks, memorizing information, and that's just what you love.
00:43:15
Speaker
Like you said, it's not that college is bad.
00:43:18
Speaker
It's that there are so many more options.
00:43:20
Speaker
But the fact that we know this about our children and they can even say it out loud but still don't quite believe it, I think is incredibly detrimental and actually really scary.
00:43:32
Speaker
And it reminds me as well, some time back, I remember I had students, I was teaching, you're probably familiar with the whole idea of College Credit Plus.
00:43:39
Speaker
So I got caught up teaching that for about a year and then I instantly, I just...
00:43:43
Speaker
philosophically couldn't.
00:43:44
Speaker
I hated it so much.
00:43:45
Speaker
So I ended up not doing it.
00:43:47
Speaker
But while I was doing it, I had students just focus on the word success.
00:43:50
Speaker
And I had them do some interviews with somebody and just sort of look at what does success mean?
00:43:55
Speaker
Let's try to define that.
00:43:57
Speaker
My plan sort of worked, despite the fact that the plan was rather dark.
00:44:00
Speaker
Most of the kids ended up talking to their parents or grandparents, and a lot of people were shedding tears solely because exactly like you said, when you ask the parent, hey, mom, hey, dad,
00:44:13
Speaker
Like, what do you believe is successful for me?
00:44:16
Speaker
Usually they respond, I want you to be happy.
00:44:18
Speaker
Like you said, exactly like you said, I want you to be happy.
00:44:21
Speaker
And then the student or the kid would say back like, okay, well, if that's true, I don't want to go to high school anymore.
00:44:28
Speaker
I hate it.
00:44:28
Speaker
I hate high school.
00:44:29
Speaker
I don't want to go to college.
00:44:30
Speaker
I want to drop
Empowering independent learning
00:44:31
Speaker
out right now.
00:44:31
Speaker
I'll just get a GED and I want to start, you know, learning how to do art, engineering, dance.
00:44:37
Speaker
I don't want to do this anymore.
00:44:39
Speaker
the parents instantly just, well, happy to an extent.
00:44:44
Speaker
That's not exactly what I meant.
00:44:45
Speaker
Yeah, it's really me that's got to be happy here, not you.
00:44:50
Speaker
And, you know, it's one of the points I make in the book is, you know, and sort of I make the point both in the context of parents but also education, which is ultimately I think we need to define our goal.
00:45:04
Speaker
So let me start with as a parent.
00:45:07
Speaker
our goal is to make ourselves not, you know, an essential part of the child's life, you know, to make ourselves dispensable instead of indispensable.
00:45:16
Speaker
Now, you know, when you've got a newborn, you're indispensable.
00:45:18
Speaker
If you don't take care of a newborn, you know, that's it.
00:45:24
Speaker
But, and this has been, it's certainly been my approach.
00:45:28
Speaker
I've got two kids that are, that are out of, out of high school.
00:45:32
Speaker
And I just felt like the best thing I could do as a parent is,
00:45:36
Speaker
is to get them to the point that by the time they were 18, they knew they could make all their decisions, not some, not the inconsequential.
00:45:45
Speaker
Every one of their decisions they could and would be making, and they would be confident that they could make it, and if they felt like they needed to ask for advice from me or somebody else, they were good at asking for advice, but ultimately it was their decision.
00:46:01
Speaker
And I think that's what leads to happy, independent, fulfilled kids.
00:46:06
Speaker
And same thing with school.
00:46:07
Speaker
I mean, supposing we just turned it upside down and said the purpose of school is to get kids to the point as early as possible where they don't need us anymore.
00:46:17
Speaker
You know, they have a mission and a drive in life.
00:46:21
Speaker
They've learned how to learn on their own.
00:46:22
Speaker
They can manage their own time and resources and efforts and draw on things selectively around them.
00:46:29
Speaker
And if they can do that earlier instead of later and move forward in life successfully, celebrate it.
00:46:36
Speaker
instead of penalize them?
00:46:38
Speaker
And I just sort of say, well, what's wrong?
00:46:42
Speaker
What am I missing with that view?
00:46:43
Speaker
I mean, when in fact parents and teachers everywhere tell me
00:46:49
Speaker
some variant of this, they'll say, you know, it's interesting.
00:46:51
Speaker
These days, if a kid is really focused and wants to learn something, they can be an expert in a matter of days.
00:46:57
Speaker
And I know what they mean, but I'll say, well, what do you mean by that?
00:46:59
Speaker
Well, they just, they can go online, you know, they just learn a million things.
00:47:02
Speaker
They Skype and find experts.
00:47:04
Speaker
You know, they do, they're really resourceful and if they really want to know about something, they are just off to the races.
00:47:12
Speaker
And I'd say that should have monumental consequences for how we organize school.
00:47:18
Speaker
Right.
00:47:19
Speaker
And and it doesn't, you know, I mean, it doesn't in some places.
00:47:22
Speaker
I try to celebrate the places it does.
00:47:24
Speaker
But by and large, the mindset is, you know, that we're going to keep preparing you for the next round of even more courses that then prepare you for the next round and then the next round.
00:47:36
Speaker
You know, and so so, you know, kindergarten prepares you for one through six, one through six for middle, middle for high, high for college, college for graduate school.
00:47:44
Speaker
graduate school for the first dreary job you don't really want so you can get the second dreary job you don't really want so that that you know and there's on and on and and before you know it your life is you know largely behind you and you've never found the thing you want to do and and i just say my gosh is that a model is that an approach is that a set of values in a and sort of a process you want your child to follow i mean that sure as hell seems like a bad idea to me
00:48:12
Speaker
I mean, exactly that point you bring up about self-directed learning, the trust that we should place more in children in general, let alone as students.
00:48:21
Speaker
And I know that you visited Acton Academy, the school where I think it was like third and fourth graders, I mean younger, who are just working in a room, getting things done, researching things.
00:48:30
Speaker
They understood what they were learning.
00:48:32
Speaker
They were doing more than they probably would have if they were just being lectured.
00:48:37
Speaker
In fact, we know that they were learning more because they're actually finding all this information.
00:48:41
Speaker
They have it all available to them.
00:48:43
Speaker
I think a huge part of this is understanding that that trust that we can give to students is not just when they're in middle or high school or college or whenever.
00:48:51
Speaker
It
Ted Dintersmith's commitment to education reform
00:48:52
Speaker
happens really early on.
00:48:54
Speaker
I mean, kids start learning.
00:48:56
Speaker
Any Montessori school could tell you that the point of responsibility to young kids is being lost.
00:49:02
Speaker
If we want to teach them those soft skills of responsibility and leadership and creativity and all these things that we desire, that is not taught by the teacher.
00:49:10
Speaker
That's taught by kids learning on their own.
00:49:13
Speaker
with the teacher there just as a mentor, if you will.
00:49:15
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:49:16
Speaker
And, you know, and acting was a particularly bold example, but it's permeated all the things I write about where the students have agency, the teachers have agency, the students and the teachers are both trusted.
00:49:32
Speaker
And, and I think there's just this basic aspect of human nature that are the bureaucrats and policymakers and, you know, all the outsiders that set
00:49:42
Speaker
the agenda for our schools have just blown right by, which is, you know, if you are working on something you think is important, if you set your own goals, you are so much more motivated and push yourself so much harder.
00:49:57
Speaker
And instead, we feel some sense of comfort in insisting that all kids memorize and forget the same information.
00:50:05
Speaker
And
00:50:06
Speaker
And to what end, right?
00:50:08
Speaker
To what end?
00:50:09
Speaker
Speaking of Acton, I feel like I have to ask this question, even though you've answered it a million times.
00:50:15
Speaker
You are a businessman.
00:50:16
Speaker
I'm sure that you're probably tired of answering this.
00:50:20
Speaker
But obviously, you're not someone originally from the educational field.
00:50:23
Speaker
And that view of outsiders in education is always something that scares people, especially with the amount of charter schools that
00:50:31
Speaker
are giving all other charter schools a bad name.
00:50:33
Speaker
Like, for example, I think it was last week, Noble Charter Schools had a huge documentation in NPR about people and how controlled they were to the point of, I mean, issues with females not being able to get to the bathroom in time.
00:50:49
Speaker
Just serious, controlling, authoritarian schools that are disgusting, to say the least.
00:50:55
Speaker
And
00:50:55
Speaker
You've responded in the past by stating that your vision obviously is not to do that, of course, but it's to help kids.
00:51:00
Speaker
You don't have some hidden agenda of sponsoring some financial need to promote kids.
00:51:08
Speaker
So basically, not only how would you reassure educators that you're not trying to manipulate the education system as someone in finance...
00:51:17
Speaker
in the past, but also how do we get rid of this negative stigma that's associated with all charters as opposed to just a few charters?
00:51:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:29
Speaker
Those are all great questions.
00:51:31
Speaker
And actually, I'm glad you asked them and happy to address them.
00:51:35
Speaker
You know, when I first started spending time on this, I was I was I
00:51:41
Speaker
You know, people would introduce me as a person who had a career in business now interested in education.
00:51:46
Speaker
And I'd see, you know, the reaction of the audience, particularly if it is teachers, which was not enthusiastic.
00:51:54
Speaker
Let's just say that, you know, sort of one of those blood draining out of their faces or, you know, kind of like if it had that thought bubble, it would be, oh, no, here we go again.
00:52:03
Speaker
And I do write about the fact that a bit to my amazement, I think most business people,
00:52:12
Speaker
I have to be careful about how I say this, not, not the kind of businesses that I talk about, like in Charlotte, North Carolina, where school asks the business community for support and the business community totally steps up and helps.
00:52:24
Speaker
Or what I saw in Pittsburgh earlier this week with remake learning.
00:52:28
Speaker
So there are a lot of businesses that are very generous and supportive, but, but fundamentally a lot of the, you know,
00:52:35
Speaker
people that made a ton of money, I made maybe a couple pounds of money, the people who made a ton of money in business have been anywhere from irrelevant to harmful.
00:52:46
Speaker
And I wish I could say otherwise.
00:52:49
Speaker
I really do.
00:52:50
Speaker
I mean, I feel like in many ways, I not only have to try to help, but I've got to try to reverse damage done by people that from a distance, probably the average person in a classroom might
00:53:04
Speaker
say they're pretty much like me, you know?
00:53:06
Speaker
And so, so yeah, I think that's true.
00:53:08
Speaker
Now, you know, what do I say?
00:53:10
Speaker
What do I write about?
00:53:11
Speaker
I mean, I think two or three things, um, I hope set me off.
00:53:15
Speaker
I mean, first I get my butt out and I travel, I'm traveling about 275 days a year.
00:53:22
Speaker
And, um, and I visit school, I mean, the trip, you know, that I write about was a lot of schools in a nine, I traveled every day for nine months school year.
00:53:31
Speaker
But it's not like that's the only time.
00:53:33
Speaker
I mean, I'm traveling all the time still.
00:53:36
Speaker
And I listen and I genuinely respect and I write about, you know, and how many business people say this, you know, we should be trusting teachers to lead the way.
00:53:44
Speaker
And so so when somebody's first reaction is, I know, here we go again.
00:53:49
Speaker
This is some business guy that thinks because he went to school, he's the one who should tell us what to do.
00:53:55
Speaker
All I can do is hope and courage and.
00:53:57
Speaker
you know, ask, read what I say, read what, I mean, listen to what, great, great.
00:54:03
Speaker
Um, listen to what I say, read what I write because I, yeah, I do feel like I, I have done my homework.
00:54:09
Speaker
I have worked really hard to listen, to learn from and capture stories of, of people that honestly, at the start of this process, it wasn't like when I got going on this, I said, my mission in life is to, um,
00:54:26
Speaker
validate and support and celebrate some really great things that teachers are doing.
00:54:33
Speaker
I was just trying to figure out this stuff.
00:54:34
Speaker
It's a complicated system.
00:54:36
Speaker
But as I traveled, that's kind of the conclusion I reached.
00:54:39
Speaker
I mean, I really feel like they're the heroes, that they are consistently dedicated and passionate about
00:54:46
Speaker
that they want to do great things for their kids, that they entered the profession to engage and inspire their students, and that we've largely given them the worst of all marching orders.
00:54:55
Speaker
And through it all, you know, not all, but many, many, many have stuck with it and just are not going to give up on their kids despite the really ill-conceived conditions we impose on them.
00:55:09
Speaker
And so, you know, I mean, what can I say?
00:55:12
Speaker
I mean, I do feel...
00:55:14
Speaker
that this is an enormously important issue.
00:55:17
Speaker
I do feel that it's always gratifying to me to hear a teacher tell me, thank you for saying this, that you as a business guy are saying something
00:55:31
Speaker
And you, you know, and I'm very open.
00:55:34
Speaker
I say, when I say these things, I don't expect a teacher to say, oh my God, I'd never thought of that.
00:55:39
Speaker
Oh, I never, I never realized it'd be better if I were given the trust so I can engage and inspire my kids.
00:55:45
Speaker
Thank you for telling me that.
00:55:47
Speaker
I don't expect that that's, they're not going to think that.
00:55:50
Speaker
I mean, I'm telling them things that by and large, I'm not really actually trying to tell them, but I write about things that I think teachers, when they read it, say that's fairly obvious in some respects.
00:56:01
Speaker
But I think it is important to have, not that I'm well known as some of the names that come immediately to mind when you think of education, you know, billionaire philanthropist, because first I'm not a billionaire, you know, and that is, and I'm getting further away from that number every day.
Challenges and optimism for educational change
00:56:20
Speaker
But, you know, it's like, I do, I do feel like it's important to have other voices join on the side of trusting teachers.
00:56:28
Speaker
And I feel like
00:56:30
Speaker
I can have a discussion with legislators with some level of credibility, you know, having spent my career in the innovation world and having been top ranked in the industry for several years in a row, you know, I'm not somebody that they're going to say, let's just check this guy out the door because he knows nothing.
00:56:47
Speaker
I actually think I, I'm quite credible when it comes to where the economy, where society, what innovation will do to those where they're headed.
00:56:56
Speaker
And so all I can say is I hope that, um,
00:57:00
Speaker
I hope I'm not overstepping.
00:57:01
Speaker
I don't think I am, but if I am, I apologize.
00:57:04
Speaker
I hope that people don't say, here we go again, another guy telling us what we have to do.
00:57:09
Speaker
But really, somebody that's, at the end of the day, you know, I mean, the honest truth is, you know, I mean, I never charge.
00:57:19
Speaker
You know, I travel 275 days a year.
00:57:22
Speaker
I donate money.
00:57:23
Speaker
I could easily take all the money I'm donating and
00:57:27
Speaker
spend my time on barges in France or some bullshit like that.
00:57:31
Speaker
And so if you believe that I do, that this is the most important issue our nation faces, and that if we don't get it right, our democracy is in real jeopardy of collapsing.
00:57:44
Speaker
Then I think, I hope that people will say, we need, we need to have as many allies in this fight as we can, and that it is helpful to,
00:57:54
Speaker
when teachers strike in Oklahoma or Arizona, that somebody from a business perspective is saying they do deserve fair compensation.
00:58:03
Speaker
They work like hell.
00:58:04
Speaker
This isn't somebody that's trying to pick an easy path because they get the summer off.
00:58:08
Speaker
This is actually an incredibly demanding job.
00:58:11
Speaker
And these people are fighting every single day for the future of kids.
00:58:16
Speaker
So that's my hope.
00:58:17
Speaker
And if I fall short, if I failed in that in some ways, I apologize.
00:58:22
Speaker
But
00:58:24
Speaker
I believe it's the most important thing I can do with my life, and I'm doing the best I can.
00:58:29
Speaker
When I make mistakes, I'm sorry for that.
00:58:31
Speaker
I think that for me, when I read your book, the major thing that it did, kind of as you said, it didn't necessarily give any new ideas per se.
00:58:40
Speaker
It's normalizing those ideas that everyone else is doing it.
00:58:44
Speaker
I think that part of a challenge for progressive educators is that sometimes you feel like your school or your small collective or
00:58:53
Speaker
let's say your small Twitter PLN, whatever it is, is not something that you're seeing at large.
00:58:59
Speaker
It feels sometimes like you're in a bunch of little pockets and there's nothing really connecting us all together as something cohesive.
00:59:05
Speaker
And I feel like your book does a really good job of showcasing that there are hundreds of schools that are doing all these amazing things.
00:59:12
Speaker
And the more and more we see those things, the more normal it is.
00:59:15
Speaker
And therefore,
00:59:16
Speaker
the more it seems like, oh, things will definitely change.
00:59:18
Speaker
We're starting a movement, if you will.
00:59:20
Speaker
A movement that's existed for, I mean, over a hundred years since really all this started to become more standardized.
00:59:26
Speaker
People pushing back against it, of course, starting with Dewey.
00:59:30
Speaker
Kind of based off of that, I know you have a very optimistic approach.
00:59:33
Speaker
And I'm curious to know, do you see that the wave is starting to turn towards critical solutions and openness for true education reform?
00:59:44
Speaker
Do you feel like that's going to be done at a national level or is it going to be done very slowly district by district?
00:59:49
Speaker
Because, I mean, obviously we've had Dewey, we've had Montessori, we've had Holt, these people over 100 years that have really tried for this.
00:59:57
Speaker
And we saw a little bit of progression, but nothing that would be a nationwide major change.
01:00:03
Speaker
In fact, we've almost seen doubling down a lot of the standards.
01:00:07
Speaker
So what are your thoughts on kind of where we're going from here?
01:00:11
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:11
Speaker
And just to put it a shout out, I'd add to your list, you know, Ted Sizer and Tony Wagner, who I think have been giants and have been on these issues for, you know, decades.
01:00:25
Speaker
You know, I'm really encouraged.
01:00:26
Speaker
I mean, our film has done 5,000 screenings, at least.
01:00:29
Speaker
I mean, at this point, we've lost track around the globe, 35 countries.
01:00:34
Speaker
But I want to
01:00:36
Speaker
I'm going to talk about why I think that we could see a real groundswell change in the U.S., and then I want to talk about international for a second.
01:00:45
Speaker
But lots of progress in schools, lots of encouraging things in districts.
01:00:50
Speaker
I spend a lot of time in two states now, North Dakota and Hawaii, in very different ways, but both are making enormous strides, not
01:00:58
Speaker
again, not in a school here and there, but across all their schools and sort of embracing a, you know, permission from the top teacher led small steps lead to big change, you know, sort of an innovation change model instead of a top down central planning model.
01:01:14
Speaker
And I'm very encouraged by the progress and the energy and the excitement there.
01:01:20
Speaker
I was just in Pittsburgh this week, and they do this remake learning.
01:01:24
Speaker
It's actually now nine days, remake learning days coming up in two weeks.
01:01:30
Speaker
And it's just a community-wide celebration of exactly the things I write about and that I think people really need to embrace.
01:01:38
Speaker
So there's a lot of progress.
01:01:40
Speaker
Now, I don't think we have infinite time here.
01:01:44
Speaker
And if, in fact, you know, this future work video I alluded to before shows category after category that employs today two to 10 million people and all those jobs are going to be gone in 10 years.
01:01:57
Speaker
And, you know, and so we don't have the ability, you know, like we just say, we'll get there.
01:02:02
Speaker
You know, it's hard to change schools, but we got plenty of time because.
01:02:06
Speaker
I think if we just put in a nice, polite request, the guys involved with innovation will just put it on pause for a decade or two to give us time.
01:02:14
Speaker
They don't have any problem with that.
01:02:15
Speaker
That, of course, isn't going to happen.
01:02:19
Speaker
And so I do feel there's urgency.
01:02:21
Speaker
I wouldn't throw myself at this.
01:02:23
Speaker
If I thought it was hopeless, I wouldn't do it.
01:02:26
Speaker
Why bother?
01:02:27
Speaker
If I thought it was inevitable, I wouldn't do it.
01:02:29
Speaker
Why bother?
01:02:30
Speaker
I think it's possible.
01:02:33
Speaker
I think there's a growing sense of
01:02:35
Speaker
commitment and understanding that we need to do something different.
01:02:38
Speaker
And the phrase I use is change happens slowly right up until it happens quickly.
01:02:43
Speaker
And when I start to see districts in two to three years completely transform themselves, and when I see kind of remarkable innovation in public schools and public districts that have been put into no-child-lifed-blind straight jackets, but then when they have a chance to actually do it, run with it, that's very encouraging.
01:03:02
Speaker
International, I just want to explain that, is
01:03:05
Speaker
I've been kind of in touch with, I've got some contacts that go to and spend a lot of time in China.
01:03:10
Speaker
And they say, you know, will you come?
01:03:12
Speaker
I'm not going, I don't want to go to China.
01:03:13
Speaker
And, you know, I've been there once and I, when I left, I said, I'm not coming back.
01:03:18
Speaker
And I mean, and no, no, you gotta come, you gotta go.
01:03:20
Speaker
I don't want to go.
01:03:21
Speaker
And they said, well, can you give us some DVDs?
01:03:23
Speaker
So I gave them some DVDs.
01:03:25
Speaker
And then in January, three people flew to the U S to meet me and said, you really need to go.
01:03:30
Speaker
I said, I'm not going, you know?
01:03:31
Speaker
And they said, but you know,
01:03:33
Speaker
Well, we need to explain this to you.
01:03:37
Speaker
Your film's been pirated.
01:03:40
Speaker
It's being shown online.
01:03:41
Speaker
Groups are organizing big online screenings.
01:03:44
Speaker
And they regularly get 10,000 to 25,000 people to sign up and watch your film online and then have online chats and discussions or a Hangout equivalent discussion about it.
01:03:55
Speaker
And we think in four months, easily a million people have watched this film online.
01:04:00
Speaker
And so you ought to come and see how serious China is about rethinking school.
01:04:06
Speaker
And so I'm going.
01:04:07
Speaker
So I'm going June 8th to Tokyo for a few days and then June 12th through 27th to China, conveniently missing my anniversary and my birthday.
01:04:19
Speaker
Smart move.
01:04:19
Speaker
My wife's not next to me, so she'd be staring daggers at me right now.
01:04:24
Speaker
But I really think it's important to see that because machine intelligence is not going to slow down.
01:04:29
Speaker
Other countries aren't going to slow down.
01:04:31
Speaker
And so any anybody who's sitting there in a position to influence education, whether you're, you know, Tweedledee or Tweedledum in the Department of Education or, you know, in a senior position in your state or a legislator or whatever, if you really do think it's OK.
01:04:50
Speaker
to continue to drive the classroom behavior around these state mandated tests.
01:04:54
Speaker
If you think that you're doing kids a service, if they only are getting good at memorizing content and replicating procedures and writing formulaically and following instructions, if you think all that, you are, you know, completely and totally responsible for the bad outcomes that those kids are going to suffer and they will.
01:05:14
Speaker
And so,
01:05:15
Speaker
I feel like both from a peer point of view, we need to make sure people understand that the stakes are incredibly high.
01:05:21
Speaker
And then honestly, when people see what this looks like, when they see kids who can't wait to get to school, when they see teachers that are just thrilled to be guiding and supporting and encouraging, and when you look at what these kids are doing and you say, this is so relevant to what they're going to do as adults,
01:05:40
Speaker
You know, there's no turning back.
01:05:42
Speaker
And I think that's the vision, the aspirational vision of what's possible.
01:05:47
Speaker
We need to promote
01:05:49
Speaker
you know, everywhere we possibly can, which is why I spent so much time traveling.
01:05:53
Speaker
I feel like you might make the same amount of waves that you did with Most Likely to Succeed, because I feel like it has the same cohesiveness and the same narrative that book does.
01:06:00
Speaker
I like the message of optimistic change, that it's not just a doom and gloom philosophical book about what we're doing wrong in education, it's more about what we're doing right.
01:06:10
Speaker
And I think it should be something that many, many, many schools should be reading.
01:06:15
Speaker
So far, I've been really thrilled with the response.
01:06:18
Speaker
But back to China, they've already translated it there in Mandarin.
01:06:23
Speaker
If I weren't going, they would have released it before we released it in the US.
01:06:28
Speaker
And they're now holding it up for the first day I get there.
01:06:31
Speaker
They're going to officially release it and then do a bunch of events around that.
01:06:33
Speaker
But
01:06:34
Speaker
But they're like saying, we think, you know, you, you know, I said, well, wait, really?
01:06:38
Speaker
I mean, this is about U.S. classrooms.
01:06:40
Speaker
You know, I mean, how much interest is there going to be in China in this?
01:06:44
Speaker
They said, you, we will sell way more copies here than you'll sell in the U.S. And, and, you know, I write in the book, you know, that, that, you know, Pasi Solberg, a good friend of mine who really made amazing amounts of progress in Finland with education, was,
01:07:01
Speaker
And you ask him, how'd you come up with these great ideas?
01:07:04
Speaker
And he said, well, we didn't come up with them.
01:07:07
Speaker
Every country gets its great ideas from the US.
01:07:10
Speaker
We just do something about them and you don't.
01:07:12
Speaker
And I think that's the risk we face if we do just sort of say, we're doing fine or why change or it worked for me, why doesn't it work for them?
01:07:24
Speaker
It's like these 10 year olds look in your eye and they're trusting you to make good decisions
01:07:29
Speaker
we owe it to them to make a good decision.
01:07:31
Speaker
And to say you should work for the next 6, 7, 8, 10, 12 years in your schoolwork on stuff that you don't care about, you are unlikely to retain, and even if you do, you're never going to use this as an adult.
01:07:44
Speaker
You know, you can do so much better than that.
01:07:47
Speaker
And let's do it.
01:07:48
Speaker
That's my attitude.
01:07:50
Speaker
Sure.
01:07:50
Speaker
It reminds me of, I'm not sure if this is in what school could be or not.
01:07:54
Speaker
I know it's in a lot of different educational texts, but that idea of
01:07:57
Speaker
if we just framed what we're doing right now as a war on education, as opposed to just being problems in education, perhaps we would compete in order to ensure that places like China or Finland don't surpass us in critical thinking.
01:08:14
Speaker
It's a great point because what they all envy is the creativeness of our society, the ability to invent, the boldness, the audacity.
01:08:23
Speaker
I mean, that is...
01:08:25
Speaker
an inherent enormous advantage that our country has.
01:08:29
Speaker
And then they marvel.
01:08:31
Speaker
They say, like, why would you ever do No Child Left Behind or Race to the Top?
01:08:35
Speaker
Why would you intentionally impose on your classrooms, on your students and teachers, a regimen that actually handicaps you in the very thing?
01:08:45
Speaker
Not only do you have a global advantage in that area, but it's the essential thing you're going to need, every kid's going to need going forward.
01:08:52
Speaker
Why would you do that to yourself?
01:08:54
Speaker
And I think it's actually a very good question.
01:08:57
Speaker
And so, you know, when I was at a conference two weeks ago and George W. Bush spoke and talked about the incredible benefits of No Child Left Behind, one of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation ever.
01:09:08
Speaker
And Arne Duncan talks about don't believe it when they say the reform agenda isn't working.
01:09:13
Speaker
Look at all the great progress because NAEP scores, you know, we won't mention the fact that NAEP scores are flat as a pancake since we put in No Child Left Behind.
01:09:22
Speaker
But
01:09:22
Speaker
But if we look from 1979 to 2017 or whatever, there's been modest upticks.
01:09:28
Speaker
Isn't that incredible?
01:09:30
Speaker
It's like, you've got to be kidding.
01:09:31
Speaker
You guys just need to go away.
01:09:36
Speaker
You don't know anything about education.
01:09:37
Speaker
You never have.
01:09:38
Speaker
And it's time for you to just check out.
01:09:41
Speaker
Go play basketball or clean up brambles on a ranch.
01:09:46
Speaker
But stop talking about education because you had your chance and you blew it.
01:09:56
Speaker
Hope you enjoyed this podcast.
01:09:57
Speaker
We want to connect with you and hear your thoughts.
01:10:00
Speaker
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01:10:07
Speaker
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01:10:14
Speaker
Thanks again.