What I’m going to tell you in the next 15 minutes is how each of you can be as skilled
as the composer of that piece of music that we’re listening to right now.
Now, what is that music? That’s the second Brandenburg concerto in F major by Johann
Sebastian Bach. It was written in about the year 1710, when Bach was about 25 years old.
If you like classical music at all, you know that piece. You know Johann Sebastian Bach.
What you don’t know is how incredibly productive Bach was as a composer. That’s one of more
more than 1,000 pieces written by Bach – incredibly productive. Pieces fell off his pen – cantatas,
orchestral suites, chamber music, keyboard pieces. It’s awe inspiring what he was able
to do. He also, by the way, during his productive life had 20 children. That’s productive.
Now, you might be asking yourself, why do I know so much about Bach? Or, maybe you're
asking yourself, why the heck are you talking about Bach? Well, I’ll tell you.
This is not my first career. I didn’t start out as a think tank president. It’s not
even my second career. Before this, I was a college professor, but I started out my
career spending 12 years as a professional French horn player. I made my living playing
chamber music then I wound up in the city orchestra of Barcelona for a number of seasons.
And when I was in the Barcelona symphony, I listened to a lot to Bach. I played a lot
of Bach. Bach is my favorite composer. I took great inspiration even on my worst days from
listening to the great music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
And I want to tell you something about Bach that had a particular impression on me that
sort of changed my life. See, I was reading a book about Bach in the days that I was in
the orchestra, and, you know, he was recording some of his thoughts for posterity to a biographer.
And the biographer asked him a very simple question at one point. He said, why do you
write music? It’s an odd question. It’s not how do you write music or where do you
get your inspiration. Why do you write music? Maybe somebody has asked you that question.
Probably not. Why do you what you do. But that was the question posed to Bach.
And here was his answer. Actually, let me tell you the answer you’d expect. You’d
expect a 30-minute boring exegesis about composition from a professional composer or a glib materialistic
response like, it’s a living, right? That’s what people say. That’s not what Bach said.
Here’s what he said, quote: “The aim and final end of all music should be none other
than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.” That is his answer.
Now, that had a huge impression on me. Why? I asked myself, what would my answer be? What
do you play the French horn? Why are you a college professor? Why are you a think tank
president? What would your answer be to that question?
I found incredibly compelling what Bach said and I bet you do too. Why is that such a good
response? It basically was in a nutshell, I write music for the glory of God and the
good of man. And it just – he gave the answer like that.
What’s so great about that? Basically, it’s because Bach said three things in a few seconds.
Number one, he said that his mission was moral, not materialistic. Number two, he said that
he was in the business of helping people. Number three, he did it quick so that you
understood it. And, in fact, what I’m here to argue tonight is those are the ingredients
of the why of all of our work. Do you want somebody to understand you and your soul and
the importance of your work, you’d better make it moral, you’d better fight for people,
and you’d better do it quick.
I’m going to give you an example. And I’m going to give you an example in the case of
education reform, the subject of our talk here tonight.
First of all, why is it important that we reframe our mission in the education reform
world? Why is that so important? Well, look, this is a question that almost answers itself.
We have no end of good education reform ideas. They’re all over the place. We have all
kinds of ways to leverage technology, all kinds of ways to institutionalize choice,
but has it reformed the education system? Most places in America, the answer is no;
30 years of ideas and we’re doing the same things. We’re doing a lot of the same things
wrong. We don’t just need more ideas. We need better ways of describing our ideas so
that people can understand us. Poor people in this country need us to give better arguments
and win more debates.
So let’s take a lesson from Bach. Number one, make the moral case. That’s not what
we always do. I mean, I know that in education reform and in policy reform in general, we
think we’re making the moral case but we’re not. We’re always making the materialistic
case. In the case of education reform, what are we talking about? Test scores, spending
per kid.
Is that compelling? Think about it. Say you’re a single mom. You work hard, you’re very
concerned about the quality of your public school. Go to that single mom in a marginalized
economically vulnerable neighborhood and say, let me tell you the problem we have in education
in America. You know the problem? We have lower test scores than the Swedes. What? Oh,
and, you know what? Another big problem that we have is the Swedes spend less per kid than
we spend on your child.
That’s not compelling. Why? That’s not helpful at all. She’s not going to listen
to you. People are not going to listen to us. It’s not about money and test scores.
It’s about her child. That’s a deeply moral thing and we have to address it as such.
So talk about what? Talk about life, opportunities and a good education that come from a good
education, and don’t be embarrassed to talk about that first. Don’t talk about test
scores. That’s not part of your moral mission statement. Talk about earned success that
comes from getting an adequate education in a society based on equal opportunity. Don’t
talk about how expensive it is to teach kids. Talk about the moral right of parents to make
choices for their own kids. Through that, the people will know that our hearts are right,
not just our brains. And then, they’ll be willing to listen. That’s point one, make
the moral case.
Point two, fight for people. Always fight for people. I have a friend who’s familiar
to a lot of you because his name is Newt Gingrich. You’ve heard of him. Newt Gingrich is the
former speaker of the House. Now, he had a big year in 1994. What happened in 1994? The
Republicans led by Newt Gingrich, who was the incoming House speaker, had a huge year
and took back the House for the first time in decades.
Now, I asked Newt Gingrich one time, I said, what was the biggest problem that you faced?
You know what he said? He didn’t say an intransigent president from the other party
or the fact that the Democrats wanted to block everything I did. No, no, no. He said the
problem is the Republicans on my team were still thinking like the minority, that’s
what he said. They weren’t ready to win. They didn’t understand that they were the
majority and they were just being oppositional.
It’s weird, isn’t it? So why is that? Why is that? I asked him that. Why is that?
And he said, well, here’s basically how it works: in a democratic system, in a democratic
political system, the minority is also known as the opposition. What does the opposition
do? It opposes things. What does it mean to oppose things? You fight against the ideas
of the other side. You fight against things. That’s what the minority politically does.
So if you find yourself in a debate, take education reform, and what you’re all about
is fighting against things, you’re being the minority. You’re being the opposition.
You’re saying I’m not the majority point of view, just by virtue of the fact that you’re
fighting against things. Is that us?
Well, think about it. What are you in the business of? Fighting against unions, fighting
against bureaucracy? Fighting against spending? Fighting against waste? That’s an awful
lot of what I hear. I’m not primarily an education reform specialist. And those things
are important to deal with but that’s what I hear, and I hear people who don’t believe
that they’re the majority.
So how are you going to fight for people? Number one, in every debate, fight for children,
not against teachers unions; two, fight for parents, not against bureaucrats; number three,
fight for taxpayers, not against spending. See, these are the same policies. These are
all of the same arguments. What you’ve done is you transferred the locus of the argument
to the person you’re fight for as opposed to the thing that you’re fighting against.
That’s the secret to winning. That’s the secret to unlocking the majority, the majority
that is truly moral in the case of education reform. That’s two.
Number three, number three, do it quick. Make it quick. You know, I love talking to education
reform advocates because they’re heroes in our society and they’re interesting.
But when I say how would you fix our schools, ordinarily, I have to give 30 minutes for
the answer, right? Well, I’m going to hear an awful lot about how – you know, the difference
between vouchers and charters and about private and public approaches to the problem. And
I’m going to hear an awful lot about leveraging technology. I’m going to hear lots and lots
of jargon along these lines, right?
Now, that doesn’t work. That doesn’t work. I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t matter
if you talk about any kind of reform or any sort of issue or any sort of marketing. If
you take a long time, you lose. You lose when you’re not fast because that actually goes
against the way the brain absorbs messages. You have to get your point across seven seconds.
I’m going to tell you why.
Actually, I’m going to tell you first how I learned this, right? Here’s how I learned
this. I’m going to take you back to when I was a musician. I’m going to take you
back to when I was 24 years old. I was on a tour of the Burgundy region of France. I
was playing chamber music every night in little towns outside of Dijon, France. And one night,
I stepped out on stage and, you know, dark hall. I could see the first row. And I looked
into the first row, what do I see? I saw a girl. And she had black hair and dark eyes.
And here was the weird part. She was smiling at me, right, which didn’t happen all that
often in those days. And so I made a mental note: after you finish the concert, go talk
to that girl. And I did.
And, in the first few seconds, two things happened. Number one, I learned that she didn’t
speak a word of English, OK? It made communication a little more tricky. Number two, I had a
weird flash in my head. I had a thought that I never had before ever, which was, I wonder
if I could get that girl to marry me. Now, that really freaked me out because I’d never
thought that before.
OK. Now, what was going on? Fast forward to modern studies in the brain. Let me tell you
what was going on inside my brain. There’s a part of your brain and part of my brain
and everybody’s brain called the posterior cingulate cortex. You don’t have to remember
that. That’s not important. What is it? It’s about the size of a hazelnut. It’s
at the center of your brain. It’s very ancient. It was evolved more than a million years ago.
Now, that’s a really long time ago for the human brain. When you think about the characteristic
of your brain, you think about what makes you you, your personality, your sense of humor,
what you’re interested in, what you’re passionate about. That comes from your pre-frontal
lobes. That’s the stuff you find behind your forehead. You know, he’s a prominent
example of the forehead. Imagine, you know, my pre-frontal lobe is here, right?
But it’s the posterior cingulate cortex that does something really interesting and
it’s much more ancient. It’s that little nut like thing in the middle that helps you
decide if somebody you’ve never met is friend or foe. Now, that’s before conscious thinking
we were able to discern whether or not somebody is somebody we should trust or not, somebody
we should like or not. Now, that’s very, very practical 500,000 years ago. You hear
those footsteps behind you? Maybe it’s somebody who wants to hit you over the head and take
your stuff. Maybe it’s somebody who wants to mate with you. Important distinction. You
have an onboard piece of hardware to help you discern which is which. It’s amazing,
right?
Now, what do we use the posterior cingulate cortex for today? The answer is, in social
situations, we use it to decide whether or not we trust somebody. What do studies say
– how long do studies say it takes for that piece of hardware to make this decision? Seven
seconds. That’s how long you’ve got. If you’re going to make a case for education
reform or anything else, you have seven seconds to make your case or you blow it. you’ve
missed your window because the posterior cingulate cortex of people out in the audience have
said, boring, irrelevant, enemy, because you it’s something that you don’t want it
to say. Incredible. That’s the secret to making your case.
Oh, by the way, whatever happened to that girl? Last month, we celebrated our 23rd wedding
anniversary. Thank God for the posterior cingulate cortex. It changed my life in the most positive
way possible.
So, question: what’s your seven seconds? What are you going to say in your seven seconds?
How about this? I fight for every child’s right to opportunity in life, the opportunity
that comes only from a good education. It took me seven seconds. Can you say that? Can
you really mean it or something like it? If that’s your argument or something similar,
then it will open people’s hearts and it will make them ready to hear more. That’s
the cost of entry to winning the debate.
Now, at the very beginning tonight, I promised you something. I promised that you could be
as skilled as Bach. Now, there’s a little bit of sleight of hand, to be sure. I didn’t
mean you could be as great a composer as Bach. Maybe there’s someone who can. I can’t.
What I promised really, what I meant was that you can be as good a communicator as Bach,
and that’s important to every single one of us because we’re passionate about something.
We’re passionate about changing the world and helping people. And if you can’t get
your point across, you’re not going to get that job done. And the world needs you to
win. The world needs for your message to count and for people to listen. You have an obligation
to get your seven seconds right.
So if you want this to be successful, make it moral, fight for people, do it in seven
seconds, and prepare to win. Thank you very much.