Transcriber: Amna Ahmed Reviewer: Eunice Tan
As a culture, we love ratings.
We love marks, measurements, percentages;
we love to quantify and qualify;
we love the guarantee and the warranty -
especially when it comes to our products.
Our meat, bedding, cars all have a mark, a rating,
so that you feel like you’re getting the product that you deserve.
We do this in all areas.
When our baby is born,
we measure the head circumference, the weight, the height,
and we give you a percentage:
95th percentile - very healthy baby.
It makes us feel safe.
I understand why we like those, right?
Lets us kind of know where we stand and how to move forward.
And I certainly understand this when it comes to our children, right?
I have four children of my own -
beautiful boys.
I love them; they fill my heart with so much joy.
And I also worry.
I want to know if I’m doing a good job
in this vast sea of responsibility of parenthood.
I want to know if they’re going to grow up to be good people.
So one night, I’m making dinner,
and my seven-year-old son comes downstairs, and he says,
“I’m going to set the table for us tonight.”
And I was like, “Great! Thank you.”
So he gets out all the things -
he’s got the plates and cups and bowls and spoons -
and he’s really giving it the, like, 100% effort on that one.
And when he’s finished, he turns around, and he says, “OK, Mom. I’m done.″
And I said, “Thank you!”
And he said, “Did you like that?”
I said, “Yeah!”
He said, “For $20 every night, I’ll do that.”
(Laughter)
And I said, “Well, that seems like a lot of money for setting the table.”
And he said, “Well, Mom, like, how much do you value your time?”
(Laughter)
So two things went through my head at that moment:
Number one - pretty sure I just got hustled by a tiny genius
for a responsibility I’ve been asking him to do every night for two years.
And the second one was,
I really have nothing to worry about.
Like, clearly this child is going to be fine in life;
like, he’s got a lot of things figured out.
Right?
But I do worry,
because my same, sweet seven-year-old boy
performs below grade level in reading, writing, and math.
So why do I take myself out of that sweet moment
and begin to worry about who he’s going to become in the future?
It’s what I call the “fear timeline,”
and the fear timeline goes like this:
You have a child that’s this age at this time,
and they should be hitting this mark.
And if they don’t hit that mark, they definitely won’t hit the next mark.
If they don’t hit that mark,
then you’re not setting them up for success.
And it’s this domino effect of worry that takes you out of the moment
to worry about the future
and not trust the child that’s sitting right in front of you.
Now, traditional education has put a lot on the marks and the measurements
and the grades.
It drives funding;
it drives when they learn about something, what they learn about, and for how long.
Now, any scientist or mathematician can tell you
that there are always variables to every percentage.
And the variable here
is the presupposition that we all learn the same way, at the same pace,
and for the same amount of time,
and that we’re all interested in learning about the same things at the same time.
Now, we all know that’s not true, right?
So what happens if we change the game?
What happens if we say
instead of “Here’s what you’re going to learn, for how long, and in this way,”
we say, “What do you want to know about?
What are you really curious about?
Where can you find out more information about that?”
and then also, “How are you going to share that information with others?”
I was the poster child for that traditional education.
I was very eager to get up in the morning
and come to school and sit and listen and take it all in
and regurgitate it on the right day at the right time.
And I loved the feedback.
I loved knowing where I stood.
I wasn’t really concerned
about going back and correcting the answers that I may have gotten wrong.
I was good with my, like, 90 percent. Cool.
I played that game very well, and after 12 years -
I had played the game very well for 12 years
and then had the opportunity to go to a four-year university of my choice.
Right?
And after one year, I left.
I was a very highly rated educational product
with no real-world experience.
I didn’t really know who I was,
I didn’t really know what I liked to learn about,
and I didn’t really know how to navigate the world around me.
Now, everyone loves a good dropout story, right?
(Laughter)
We do.
We have Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey -
like, highly successful people
who ditched whatever educational institution they were at
to go follow their passion.
And we love these stories because we know that they’re true.
We believe somewhere inside
that if you are curious and you are engaged,
that you will try harder, you will try better,
you will fail, but you will continue to get back up again,
because we know that that real-world, hands-on experience
is truly the best teacher.
We learn to roll over, sit up, crawl, and then walk.
No one gives us instructions on how to do that.
No one stands above you and says, “OK, now do this, and now do this.”
And we don’t do it all on the same timeline at all -
all of that happens on our own personal timeline.
So we may not need instruction,
but we absolutely need somebody who will hold our hand,
encourage us when we fall,
and celebrate with us when we take those next big steps.
So don’t get so concerned with following the grades and the timeline
that you miss the boundless potential of a personal growth timeline.
It takes a lot of time to learn who you are.
It’s a very important skill.
The average adult in the US in 2021 has had seven careers.
So can we please disrupt the narrative
that the entire purpose of learning in childhood
is to grow up and get a good job.
(Laughter)
We need less lectures and more leadership.
We need less talking and more student leading.
The current job market today
requires ingenuity, creativity, leadership, teamwork, right?
It doesn’t require us to sit at a desk by ourselves
and be tested on our knowledge in the next few weeks.
We’re not going off to the factories any longer.
We're not holding a job for 30 years.
We are forever changing in an ever-changing world.
We're forever learning and growing.
So the best educational environments today are the ones that engage these students
on a journey of learning about who they are,
the process of finding out what they’re interested in
and what they're passionate about, what they love to learn about,
how to manage their time, how to set goals and achieve them,
how to be peer leaders,
how to be on a team, how to have constructive feedback.
A lot of us, as adults,
can’t stand to hear negative feedback from our peers, right?
But what if we started doing that
when we were just six and seven years old?
What if we learned how to give positive feedback, encourage growth,
to one another?
Let’s give this next generation
some immeasurable skills that they can take out into the world.
Let’s teach them accountability, responsibility, independent thinking.
Let’s give them courage to grow and change and be more than expectations,
to exceed and excel beyond the measures.
We don’t need to create an educational product of marks and measures.
What we need to do
is take our students and engage them in the process of learning
so that they can learn their immeasurable greatness.
That’s all.
(Applause) (Cheers)