The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

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00:00:57.420 Hello everyone watching and listening.

00:01:10.960 Today I'm speaking with Zach Lane, the co-founder of Wonder, a Socratic-based school system, K-12, in Wichita, Kansas.

00:01:20.680 It's a follow-up to a discussion I had with Jeff Sandefur, who's an innovator on the educational front for K-12.

00:01:30.000 And I wanted to talk to Zach today about the details of the educational process so that parents and other people interested in childhood education could understand more thoroughly the mechanics of the process.

00:01:41.980 First of all, I have holes in my memory, you know, because I was ill for a while, and I don't remember how we met. We met through Jeff, eh?

00:01:51.800 Actually, it was the opposite.

00:01:53.280 Oh, okay.

00:01:54.100 It was, I was working in education and became a listener to a lot of what you were doing and a follower in some ways.

00:02:03.760 And then you had explained how you had so much interest in revolutionizing education in various different ways.

00:02:10.220 And so with that, I reached out to you.

00:02:13.180 I sent a cold email to you, and we met Father's Day, maybe 2018 in Minneapolis.

00:02:19.360 And we sat down and we talked about education.

00:02:22.960 And from there, it sort of spurred into this, hey, we're very aligned.

00:02:27.160 We have similar interests, and we're wanting to see similar change.

00:02:31.200 And from that, then introduced you to Jeff, and we started kind of working with the Acton MBA, the Acton Academy.

00:02:39.220 And that's how it all started.

00:02:41.440 I see, I see.

00:02:42.440 Now, so you're deeply involved in educational transformation.

00:02:46.100 Yeah.

00:02:46.520 You have a school, and you're going to be taking over the Acton program at some point in the future.

00:02:52.400 Well, we're taking a leadership role in the Acton program, for sure.

00:02:55.380 Our school, we have an independent, decentralized network, is what I would say, of schools.

00:03:01.780 And our school is called Wonder.

00:03:03.800 Okay, and who's we?

00:03:05.620 So I would say, well, my wife and I co-founded our school.

00:03:10.540 And so that's when I say we, that's usually who I'm talking about.

00:03:13.140 Well, we founded Wonder.

00:03:14.360 And the process for me was, Acton wasn't actually the first place I looked.

00:03:19.800 But this whole thing started for me out of necessity.

00:03:24.160 And the reason was, when I was a young kid, I didn't fit in the box.

00:03:28.420 I had too much energy.

00:03:29.700 I was probably too enterprising.

00:03:31.100 My parents and principal didn't know what to do with me.

00:03:33.620 I can remember a parent-teacher conference when my principal, who was a teacher at the time, told my parents,

00:03:40.080 if I was ever stuck on a desert island, I'd want to be with Zach because he'd find a way off.

00:03:44.340 But that wasn't necessarily a good thing.

00:03:45.900 It was sort of like, how do we solve that problem?

00:03:48.200 And so when my first son was born, I had a call from an uncle.

00:03:52.200 And he said to me, hey, congratulations, I was still at the hospital.

00:03:55.440 And as a joke, he said, well, now you need to start thinking about schools.

00:03:58.460 And I'd spent my entire life trying to get out of school.

00:04:01.100 Basically just wanting to be done with education, get into the world, get into business or whatever it might be.

00:04:07.060 And when he said that, it was one of those times that something strikes you.

00:04:10.380 And that struck me, and I hadn't thought about it.

00:04:12.380 And so that kicked off what was about a five- or six-year journey, which was traveling the country, visiting schools.

00:04:19.420 I probably visited over 70 schools around the country and in other countries as well.

00:04:24.700 And one of those was Acton Academy.

00:04:27.880 And so that's how I got connected there.

00:04:30.500 So what did you see when you went and saw all these schools?

00:04:33.180 So mostly it was this.

00:04:38.340 There was varying flavors or the attempt to put a different maybe screen over what was essentially the same model.

00:04:46.540 Almost all of them were the same direct instruction model that we see.

00:04:49.640 Teacher at the front of the classroom, lecturing to students, students in desks all day, and days broken up by periods.

00:04:56.840 Now, some were working more in vocational skills.

00:05:01.780 There's some that were, like, helping young people, you know, learn the trades and things like that.

00:05:06.060 Great.

00:05:06.900 Others were quite innovative.

00:05:08.100 There's some, we worked with a school on the campus of MIT that was for middle school high schoolers.

00:05:13.980 That was quite innovative.

00:05:14.940 They were very hands-on, very project-oriented, very project-driven.

00:05:18.160 But what I noticed is that it was still something that was ultimately led by adults.

00:05:24.340 And so that seemed to be the trend.

00:05:26.460 Everywhere went, no matter how innovative the school was.

00:05:29.420 So the basic model that you perceived was teacher in the front of the room, rows of desks, regimented periods, the children as absorbing knowledge, essentially.

00:05:41.260 Knowledge as something delivered as factual.

00:05:43.640 You saw a lot of variations on that, but no fundamental transformation.

00:05:47.460 Oh, yeah.

00:05:48.100 Variations on that.

00:05:49.220 Also variations on socioeconomic status within the school.

00:05:52.600 That was something.

00:05:53.300 Because when many people think about school, they think public and private.

00:05:57.340 What they don't understand is 99% of those schools operate the exact same way.

00:06:01.280 Just what you described.

00:06:02.660 One teacher at the front of the classroom and students listening, trying to absorb, taking notes, and not being necessarily engaged in hands-on learning or taking ownership over their own learning.

00:06:13.700 Yeah, well, it's an interesting model.

00:06:16.200 It's an interesting epistemological model because it presumes that the most appropriate knowledge, the most necessary form of knowledge that children will gain is factual and descriptive.

00:06:29.440 Right?

00:06:29.980 That it's semantic.

00:06:31.860 It can be transmitted through words.

00:06:34.040 That it's memorization predicated.

00:06:36.100 That it comes from a central authority that the children should be socialized to sit immobile, essentially, and listen passively rather than actively.

00:06:47.260 That they should do that in a group.

00:06:48.720 That they should be regimented in time.

00:06:52.940 Right?

00:06:53.160 So you might say, contrary to that, while children should be actively engaged in exploring, they should be questioning, they should be moving around.

00:07:01.840 There's no necessary reason for that regimentation.

00:07:04.500 They should be developing their own vision.

00:07:07.120 The enterprises could be project-focused.

00:07:11.220 And that education should be much more about the acquisition of skill rather than the acquisition of regurgitatable knowledge.

00:07:19.240 And that's a few transformations that you might consider.

00:07:22.360 And so, okay, but you said that while you were investigating all these schools, you came across the Acton Academy.

00:07:29.420 And what made it stand out in your mind?

00:07:32.640 Well, all the things that you just mentioned are all what I would call, there's some about the process that you go through within the school.

00:07:41.660 And much about the content that you're going to absorb in the school or that you're engaging with.

00:07:46.280 What I think that we need to step back and look at is that when we're talking about different schools, what we look at is not so much the content, the academic content.

00:07:56.820 Like, we know largely what young people should be engaged in as far as, like, the basics.

00:08:02.380 Like, we know that.

00:08:03.020 But what we talk about is a system.

00:08:05.740 And what I mean by this is, let me give you an anecdote.

00:08:09.440 I've probably talked to over 1,000 parents at this point about our school, about what they want from education for their child.

00:08:17.460 And one question I always ask is, what do you dream your child will be able to do when they're 18 or when they leave the house?

00:08:23.880 And without exception, I do not get an academic answer.

00:08:29.460 I do not get, I hope they can do complex math.

00:08:32.160 I hope that they've mastered calculus.

00:08:33.860 I hope that, you know, I don't get academic answers.

00:08:37.160 What I get, especially the younger the child is, is I hope they can go out into the world with courage.

00:08:42.200 I hope they can know how to be, work well with other people.

00:08:45.320 Touch on in that list of alternatives was character development, moral character development, and motivation, right?

00:08:54.220 And so, all right, so the parents have a vision that's more aligned with that.

00:08:57.880 They want their child to be of good character, to be able to go out into the world forthrightly.

00:09:03.120 And so, what do you make of that when you hear parents tell you that?

00:09:06.880 Well, what I make of it is that almost all parents want that.

00:09:10.160 However, when you try to marry the idea of the traditional school with what I would say parents are actually asking for is agency.

00:09:17.560 They want their child to have agency over their life, which is having the power and resources to fulfill their potential.

00:09:22.880 Something like that.

00:09:24.240 And so, when I look at the traditional model, you look at it's predicated on compliance.

00:09:29.100 It's predicated in control.

00:09:30.960 Permission to speak.

00:09:32.320 Permission to move about.

00:09:33.800 Permission to work with others.

00:09:35.400 What I say is those two things don't marry.

00:09:37.540 You can't put your child in a system like that and expect that they will fulfill this potential of agency within that.

00:09:45.360 Because those are some of the most formidable years of your life.

00:09:47.880 You think three to 12 especially from the development of the brain.

00:09:52.520 Like you're learning what system you're within and how to operate within that system.

00:09:57.080 And Jordan, it's actually quite a conundrum for people, especially with conservative beliefs.

00:10:01.020 Because we say, hey, this is what we want.

00:10:03.220 We talk about it at home.

00:10:04.140 We talk about agency and freedom and responsibility.

00:10:06.940 And yet, we send our children to a school that doesn't advocate for any of those.

00:10:12.240 Yeah, well, I did some background research into the origin of the public school system.

00:10:19.620 Partly because I developed these programs, the self-authoring programs.

00:10:23.900 And one of them is an exercise that helps people develop a vision for the future.

00:10:28.000 And I implemented that with my university students first.

00:10:32.120 And so, it asks them to imagine their lives five years down the road.

00:10:38.840 They could have, if they could have what they needed and wanted.

00:10:41.920 Assuming they were taking care of themselves properly, what might their life look like?

00:10:47.340 They write about that for 15 minutes.

00:10:49.100 And then they write about the hell they could produce around themselves for, in five years,

00:10:53.400 if they let their bad habits take the upper hand.

00:10:56.160 And then they go through seven major domains of their life and write out a vision and a strategy

00:11:01.460 for that.

00:11:02.000 So, it's intimate relationship and family, friendship, career, resistance to temptations

00:11:08.460 like alcohol and drug abuse, use of time outside of work, let's say productive and generous

00:11:14.400 use of time outside of work.

00:11:15.820 And care of themselves physically and mentally, we're going to add civic responsibility to

00:11:21.580 that list.

00:11:22.280 And so, it's an attempt to help people derive, create a differentiated vision of what their

00:11:30.740 life could be like and who they could be.

00:11:33.260 And also to conceptualize themselves as the sort of person who can derive a vision.

00:11:39.860 And I used that in my classes for years.

00:11:42.780 And I conducted three research studies using that program.

00:11:47.840 And we showed that if you had students do that exercise for 90 minutes in their orientation

00:11:55.700 session before they went to trade school, they were 50% less likely to drop out, which

00:12:01.520 is like an absolutely staggering result.

00:12:03.960 And their grade point averages of students already enrolled went up 35%, right?

00:12:08.420 Which is crazy, right?

00:12:09.520 For 90 minutes.

00:12:10.220 But the crazy thing, really crazy thing was, as far as I was concerned, and it took me probably

00:12:15.700 a year or two of thinking to really notice this, was that, well, this isn't rocket surgery

00:12:23.100 as a ridiculous Canadian comedian would put it, right?

00:12:27.040 Of course, people should have a vision for their life.

00:12:29.820 You talked about character development, moral developments, like, well, that's what parents

00:12:33.660 want for their children.

00:12:34.480 We would like our children, we would like those, we love to be active, engaged, moral

00:12:40.920 agents, aiming upward.

00:12:43.700 And yet, we do nothing whatsoever in the school system to foster that ever, even once, even

00:12:49.600 for one day.

00:12:50.320 So my students, despite having gone through 14 years of education and being top of the class,

00:12:58.020 all things considered, because the University of Toronto was a fairly selective school, no one

00:13:02.620 had ever asked them to do an exercise like that.

00:13:05.620 And that, the more I thought about that, the more I was dumbfounded by it.

00:13:09.060 And then I did some investigation into the derivation of the American, North American, European, for

00:13:15.200 that matter, public education system, and found out that it was based on the Prussian model.

00:13:19.120 And the Prussians produced a universal education system in the late 1800s, because they were afraid

00:13:28.840 they were losing military superiority, and they wanted to produce a cadre of mindless, obedient

00:13:35.400 soldiers.

00:13:36.540 That was expressly the purpose.

00:13:39.040 And then that model was adopted by prototypical fascists in the U.S., again, in the late 1800s,

00:13:44.720 this is before Mussolini and all of that time.

00:13:46.580 And corporate types, mostly, who wanted to produce cadres of obedient workers.

00:13:51.800 And that's why the desks are in rows, and that's why there's factory bells, and that's

00:13:56.120 why it's top-down leadership.

00:13:57.880 But what was really stunning about that wasn't only that that was the model, but it's worse

00:14:03.220 than that, because the people who built the schools were consciously aiming at eradicating

00:14:10.240 the will of the students who were part of the system, because they wanted them to be

00:14:13.860 obedient.

00:14:16.960 Now, you know, we did need we.

00:14:18.960 There was a demand for factory workers at the time, and there were a lot of rural people

00:14:23.000 flooding into the cities, and no one really knew what to do with the kids, because they

00:14:26.540 didn't have farm work.

00:14:27.560 And there was some need for an education system, and there was some utility in producing people

00:14:32.840 who knew how to abide by a clock, and who could therefore take on factory jobs.

00:14:37.420 But that, as a model, especially now in the modern world, where things change so quickly

00:14:43.320 that you can hardly keep up, and people have to be dynamic, and that sort of nine-to-five

00:14:48.600 lifetime factory work is maybe, well, it's a dream of the past in some ways, even though

00:14:54.760 it might not have been that desirable to begin with.

00:14:56.880 It certainly has nothing to do with the way people live now.

00:14:59.500 But, well, the education system hasn't changed, except perhaps for the worst, in 150 years.

00:15:07.420 It's just, it's absolutely jaw-dropping, the fact that this is all the case.

00:15:14.260 Okay, so you saw in the Acton schools, you saw a completely different model, and walk us

00:15:18.300 through that.

00:15:18.860 Like, I don't even understand what a school day would look like in a decentralized system.

00:15:23.840 I went to London, I saw Kate Burblesing's school, the Michaela school, and she's taken

00:15:32.580 that teacher-dominant, let's say, teacher authority, student listening model, to its

00:15:39.420 ultimate degree.

00:15:40.720 I mean, she's very, very good at it.

00:15:43.200 The teachers are handing out information at a rate that's absolutely staggering, and the

00:15:47.860 kids are awake and listening, although they're responding a lot.

00:15:50.820 They have an opportunity to talk to each other that's structured, and they do a lot of responses

00:15:55.220 to the teachers, so they're really engaged.

00:15:57.480 And I can see that a model like that can work, right?

00:16:01.040 There may be a variety of models that would work for kids, but your model is very different.

00:16:04.660 And so, what would a child experience, what would a classroom, do you have classrooms, what

00:16:10.980 would a classroom look like, what would a typical classroom look like, and what's the

00:16:15.520 typical experience of a child in a school like yours?

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00:17:56.280 Yeah, so I think you have to start with understanding the role of the adult in the classroom.

00:18:00.740 And when you understand that in today's age, with the tools we have available to us and

00:18:06.040 the systems that we use, we do not have a need for an adult to be the transmitter of

00:18:11.080 content knowledge to a child.

00:18:13.140 In elementary, middle school, high school, we've proven that.

00:18:15.960 We know that.

00:18:16.540 It's been going on for over a decade.

00:18:18.420 So at our school, young people are broken up into different ages.

00:18:22.620 It's not a monoculture, which that exists nowhere in nature.

00:18:25.740 You don't ever see a buffalo only with like one set of ages roaming the plains.

00:18:31.100 So we have varying studios that somewhat line up with what you'd say like lower elementary,

00:18:37.120 upper elementary.

00:18:38.120 Some of this comes as well from an understanding of what Maria Montessori has done and did.

00:18:43.000 And a lot of that has withstood the test of time.

00:18:45.480 And really quickly to digress for a second, what you mentioned about, you know, 1894,

00:18:50.560 the gang of nine got together, I think it was, and decided,

00:18:54.240 this is what people should learn, physics, biology, chemistry, and this is how they should

00:18:59.140 learn.

00:18:59.540 And that largely has not changed at all.

00:19:02.040 But it's important to know at that same time, there was a debate being waged about how young

00:19:09.320 people should be educated.

00:19:10.480 Some of these models like Montessori, even the first idea of kindergarten, things like

00:19:14.580 that, those came out of those similar times.

00:19:16.620 But this one took root and took hold because it had maybe utility in the moment, but has

00:19:23.420 stayed largely unchanged.

00:19:26.060 And that's, I don't think anybody could argue that's not to the detriment of the generations

00:19:30.600 that have come before.

00:19:31.800 One of the things I hear often is, well, I went to a school like this and I turned out

00:19:36.020 fine.

00:19:37.060 Well, first of all, no, you probably didn't.

00:19:38.620 Yes, and is it the thing that we're doing to say, we want to institutionalize the limit

00:19:45.680 of potential, of reaching potential.

00:19:47.640 It's not, did you do fine?

00:19:48.720 It's what could you have done if people knew, saw, and understood the gifts and abilities

00:19:52.840 that you could bring to the world.

00:19:54.360 So, if you're in our school, you'll see a school that's not run by adults.

00:20:00.140 How many students about?

00:20:01.380 So, we could have one studio, say an elementary studio that has maybe 30 learners and one

00:20:08.800 adult.

00:20:09.560 And that's a good thing.

00:20:10.780 The more adults that get into the classroom, we say, the worse the experience gets.

00:20:15.140 And that's for kids how old, that ratio?

00:20:17.520 That's about six and a half to around 11.

00:20:21.660 Okay, so you have 30 kids from six and a half to 11 in one room.

00:20:25.640 Yep.

00:20:26.160 And there's one adult in there.

00:20:28.220 Yes.

00:20:28.540 Okay, what's the adult doing?

00:20:29.780 So, the adult is what we call a Socratic facilitator.

00:20:33.520 So, they're operating in an inquiry-based fashion.

00:20:36.160 Primarily, what they do is we launch every day with a Socratic discussion.

00:20:40.500 And that's where we put young people in the shoes of a hero, facing a tough decision or

00:20:45.100 dilemma.

00:20:45.880 And then we provide two choices, A, B choices, or maybe more, that are opposed, very opposed

00:20:52.800 to each other.

00:20:53.360 But both could be seen as equally acceptable answers.

00:20:58.500 And then that facilitator, their job is to allow the young people to engage in a discussion

00:21:04.700 and a debate.

00:21:05.720 We do this for 15 minutes every morning.

00:21:08.180 And that's how things start.

00:21:09.360 That's how every day launches that way.

00:21:10.800 It launches intentionally, which is, I think, something we can talk about, too, is that a

00:21:15.040 bell ringing to start a day is not an intentional launch.

00:21:18.640 Right.

00:21:18.960 It's a forced launch.

00:21:19.940 Yes.

00:21:20.380 And so, with us, what we do is we say, hey, we're here.

00:21:24.080 Maybe the studio is facing something like there's a lack of respect or something like

00:21:28.680 that.

00:21:28.840 Or they're upcoming to an exhibition that we hold.

00:21:32.080 I'll talk about those.

00:21:33.180 And it's like crunch time.

00:21:35.140 So, we'll put them in the shoes of a hero, usually a real hero from history that faced

00:21:39.480 a similar situation with high stakes.

00:21:42.160 Discuss and debate.

00:21:43.620 And then...

00:21:44.100 And there's two sides to the argument.

00:21:46.060 Oh, yes.

00:21:46.420 There's always two sides to the argument.

00:21:47.760 And all the kids from six and a half to 11 participate.

00:21:50.740 Absolutely.

00:21:51.440 Yeah.

00:21:51.660 You know, in my graduate seminar, what I used to do, as I learned how to run seminars rather

00:22:01.960 than lecturing, because I like to lecture, and that worked well for me, I would assign

00:22:07.900 a paper to students.

00:22:10.620 They would read it in class, because often they wouldn't read it.

00:22:13.900 They'd say they read it, but they wouldn't have.

00:22:16.080 So, they'd read it in class.

00:22:17.760 And then, we would derive alternative standpoints from the paper to opposing viewpoints.

00:22:26.300 And I would assign a viewpoint to one group of four, another group of four.

00:22:32.140 It was usually 16 kids in the class.

00:22:33.800 The other two groups would evaluate and grade and provide feedback.

00:22:37.900 And then we'd go around the room.

00:22:39.200 And I assigned it arbitrarily.

00:22:40.420 And the goal was to form a group of four and to lay out your argument and then to conduct

00:22:49.340 something approximating a debate with the other team.

00:22:51.580 And it was really useful for the students.

00:22:53.500 It was engaging for them.

00:22:54.620 And they had a chance to lay out their argument and to make it publicly and to learn how to

00:23:01.680 speak publicly, but also to learn that because the sides, so to speak, were assigned arbitrarily,

00:23:08.600 they learned how to understand that there was many things to be said on multiple sides of

00:23:14.160 an argument, right?

00:23:14.940 And then to really put that in place.

00:23:16.200 And that was a very effective model.

00:23:17.560 And so, you're doing something like that in the first 15 minutes.

00:23:21.040 First 15 minutes every day.

00:23:22.620 And these are…

00:23:22.920 Okay.

00:23:23.000 Why is that the first thing the kids do?

00:23:25.300 Well, I think…

00:23:27.060 Well, one, it's an intentional way to start the day.

00:23:28.700 But I think you have to back up and understand that, you know, something I like to say to

00:23:33.340 parents is that, look, young people are embedded in a story, in a narrative.

00:23:38.800 They wake up every day in a story.

00:23:40.780 And so, we, as parents, and I think as adults, we should just be very thankful.

00:23:45.100 We get to be a part of this story.

00:23:46.680 It's so much fun to be a part of the story.

00:23:48.980 And so, when we talk about entering into our school, there's this idea in game-making

00:23:52.600 about the magic circle.

00:23:54.060 The magic circle is essentially you enter a place.

00:23:55.900 And when you enter that place, the world changes.

00:23:58.440 It's that world.

00:24:00.060 And so, our world as a school, we are heavily embedded in stories and narratives.

00:24:03.600 The hero's journey is something that, like, really is tagging and cataloging the way we

00:24:08.880 operate the school, that you're a young person on a journey to find your calling and change

00:24:13.780 the world.

00:24:14.700 And that's a true calling on your life.

00:24:16.960 And the world needs something of you.

00:24:18.960 And so, what we're doing in these Socratic discussions is really embedding them in story

00:24:24.220 because, you know, can I digress here just for a second?

00:24:27.380 Okay, digress away.

00:24:28.380 So, we talk about the idea of building character or a moral education.

00:24:33.820 And I think that's somewhat of a misnomer because, number one, parents are the primary

00:24:38.480 people that should be helping to impart a moral education on children.

00:24:42.600 But, and what role does a school have?

00:24:44.840 So, it's actually very interesting.

00:24:47.180 If you look at the work of Martin Buber, he was, he talked about in his essay, the education

00:24:55.800 of character.

00:24:56.880 He talked about this idea how he would try to teach character lessons in a classroom.

00:25:01.380 And he would actually say the opposite would have the effect.

00:25:04.260 It would be that he would talk about how you shouldn't lie.

00:25:07.140 And then he'd get an essay from a person in the class that was the biggest person that

00:25:12.260 would tell, not tell the truth about how you shouldn't lie.

00:25:16.020 Right, right.

00:25:16.460 He'd talk about how you shouldn't bully the weak and you'd get the strong ones snickering.

00:25:21.140 He'd say how you can't teach ethics in an ethics class.

00:25:24.500 Yeah.

00:25:24.980 You teach ethics and morals in a number of ways, experience, relation to others, but also stories.

00:25:30.920 Yeah, yeah.

00:25:31.460 And so, embedding people, young people in stories from the start, in the start of the

00:25:36.160 day, to let them know, you're here on an important journey.

00:25:39.040 And there's going to be like a right and a wrong in the way that you operate.

00:25:44.920 And it's not always that we're doing a discussion like that, but often it can be, how do we treat

00:25:49.940 other people?

00:25:50.600 How do we act with respect?

00:25:52.260 And what do you see when you watch the kids engage in this debate?

00:25:55.500 You have kids from six and a half, you said, to 11.

00:25:57.980 And so, what would an observer see if he or she was watching this interaction?

00:26:03.760 Oh, this, you know, actually, I have a great story to share.

00:26:06.260 Akira the Don, who we both know, he came and visited our school.

00:26:09.640 And his son, Hercules, sat in on some Socratic launches with us.

00:26:14.260 And I brought, Akira came back to the office.

00:26:16.320 We did this big show with him, with learners, and he was a DJ, a world-class example that

00:26:21.700 we brought in.

00:26:22.200 And he was so gracious to come work with us.

00:26:24.040 After, Akira went and observed a launch with his son in it, and he came back and I said,

00:26:30.420 hey, what'd you think?

00:26:31.460 And he said, it brought a tear to my eye to think that these young people can treat each

00:26:35.420 other with such respect and that they can disagree so politely and that they can have

00:26:41.000 their views heard and understood.

00:26:44.660 Why don't the 11-year-olds dominate the six and a half-year-olds?

00:26:48.240 Often they do in the sense of they discuss more.

00:26:51.720 They'll verbalize more.

00:26:54.100 However, if you have been a six and a half-year-old that's been in that position and you've grown

00:26:58.280 up in the system, you understand that it's to your advantage to help make sure the younger

00:27:03.000 ones have their voice heard as well.

00:27:05.220 And so what you'll see if you observe a Socratic discussion at Wonder is, one, we start off

00:27:10.160 with a polarizing topic, two different choices that is embedding them in a story.

00:27:15.300 But we follow what's called the rules of just conduct.

00:27:17.900 And those rules of just conduct are how do we operate in Socratic discussion?

00:27:20.760 So the discussion leader might say, hey, which rule of just conduct do we want to focus

00:27:24.700 on today?

00:27:25.540 And it might be listening with our whole body.

00:27:28.200 So it's like, and then they'll hold each other accountable throughout the discussion

00:27:31.400 to say, hey, remember we promised to listen with our whole body.

00:27:34.780 What does that mean?

00:27:36.240 It means that they're not turning around or they're not, you know.

00:27:39.280 Oh, they're paying attention.

00:27:40.180 They're paying attention.

00:27:41.060 And how do they call each other out on that without that becoming bullying or dominating?

00:27:45.060 It's, see, those are, I think what you'll find is those types of things are a product

00:27:51.080 of a different type of environment.

00:27:52.640 When you're in an environment that's based on mutual accountability and based on peer-to-peer

00:27:57.220 learning and you're building a tribe, you see people within the tribe as like, not as

00:28:02.720 an enemy or somebody that's competing with you, but somebody that you're trying to help

00:28:06.520 the whole tribe move up.

00:28:08.000 And that's what we do see.

00:28:09.200 Now, I tell parents all the time, hey, when you have a child that's six and a half or seven

00:28:13.720 just entering into the elementary environment, like, and they're in a Socratic discussion,

00:28:18.280 they're absorbers.

00:28:19.620 They're observing and absorbing information.

00:28:21.480 It's one of the best ways they learn how to interact in one of those discussions by watching

00:28:25.700 a 10-year-old or 11-year-old in those discussions.

00:28:29.060 Right, right.

00:28:29.800 And that's interesting too, because the 10-year-old, 9-year-old, 10-year-old, 11-year-old, first

00:28:36.660 six and a half year old is someone who's close to their proximal zone of development.

00:28:41.280 So my kids tend to hero worship kids who are slightly older than them, old enough so that

00:28:47.680 they can appear as a model for their behavior forward.

00:28:52.460 I mean, kids in grade four really admire kids in grade six.

00:28:55.260 They're a little afraid of them.

00:28:56.480 They think they're mighty beings.

00:28:59.060 That's the term Larry Arden.

00:29:00.440 He's the president of Hillsdale College used, which I think is quite funny.

00:29:03.680 But you have them in your class.

00:29:05.440 And I would imagine too that the 10- and 11-year-olds also come to regard themselves as role models

00:29:11.940 for the younger kids, which is a really good responsibility to put on them.

00:29:15.960 But they're treating the little kids properly.

00:29:18.700 They're learning how to do that.

00:29:19.880 And you're saying that they do that more or less as a consequence of being embedded in

00:29:24.560 a culture that's promoting exactly that kind of interaction.

00:29:28.260 Absolutely.

00:29:29.040 And you mentioned that the older ones see themselves as role models.

00:29:32.560 It's not just that they see themselves.

00:29:33.780 They're in positions elected by younger ones to lead.

00:29:37.640 So we have each, in our elementary, it's broken up into squads.

00:29:40.840 And each squad has a squad leader.

00:29:42.220 So each, so the class is broken up into a squad?

00:29:44.840 Yes.

00:29:45.140 Not in the, during the day.

00:29:46.680 It's just, you're a member of the squad.

00:29:48.820 And so you might have a meeting on a Monday.

00:29:50.680 And how many people would be in a squad?

00:29:52.780 Around six, something like that.

00:29:54.300 Okay, so you have your little squad and they have meetings.

00:29:57.160 And what do the meetings consist of?

00:29:59.400 They talk about wins and losses from the week before.

00:30:02.620 What people are hoping.

00:30:03.740 Performance review.

00:30:04.260 Yep.

00:30:04.540 Something like that.

00:30:05.600 What you hope that you want to accomplish the next week.

00:30:09.060 Maybe, are you stuck somewhere that your squad leader can help you in that?

00:30:13.180 So you really, these older learners that have earned it, because remember, they have

00:30:17.000 to get elected by the younger ones in the squad.

00:30:19.000 Elected meaning what?

00:30:20.180 That they're into a group and they elect the leader of the group.

00:30:23.360 And how does that work technically?

00:30:24.800 What does an election look like?

00:30:25.480 Technically, the beginning of the year, it looks like they get together and they have

00:30:29.800 a vote while they write down who they want to lead their squad.

00:30:32.900 And there's also a process for impeachment of that squad leader if they're not upholding

00:30:36.800 the promises that they've committed to for the group.

00:30:39.540 And so the younger ones have a voice within there.

00:30:42.440 And it also helps to keep tyranny at bay.

00:30:44.620 Right.

00:30:44.820 So, okay, so you've got the beginnings of a democratic polity there.

00:30:48.960 And how do the little kids know who to vote for?

00:30:51.640 Well, that's a learning process.

00:30:53.060 Yeah.

00:30:53.300 Okay.

00:30:53.480 So they get to know the other kids.

00:30:55.280 Absolutely.

00:30:55.740 And sometimes it's following somebody that's a little bit older.

00:30:57.960 But you are correct in this.

00:31:00.320 It's that they see somebody older than them, but it's also that they see somebody they

00:31:03.920 could embody.

00:31:04.840 They're about to be there.

00:31:06.400 I'm going to be that person in that age group at some point pretty soon.

00:31:10.060 And that's a really powerful thing.

00:31:11.860 And is it a goal?

00:31:12.560 Do you think it's honest to say that it's a goal for the little kids to, well, obviously

00:31:17.220 they end up as bigger kids, but are your schools running well enough so the little kids actually

00:31:23.500 would like to be elected as a leader at some point?

00:31:27.080 That's actually a vision rather than something that teachers only dream the kids want?

00:31:30.640 I'll say yes, but here's what I say about that.

00:31:33.920 I think it also comes with cognitive development.

00:31:36.360 As they move away from social being the work that they do, because younger ones love to

00:31:40.720 play and they love to be in social groups with other people.

00:31:44.000 Schoolwork is not that important to them.

00:31:46.140 And if it's gamified, which we do, they love doing it.

00:31:49.120 But as they get older, what happens is they see their peers moving from one studio to the

00:31:54.580 other, and then they start to take on work as their work, so to speak.

00:31:58.740 Like they really want to accomplish this thing to reach this next level.

00:32:02.480 And then, yes, it's a rite of passage.

00:32:03.940 They see that.

00:32:04.480 And we see this development happen.

00:32:05.900 You know, if you're six, seven, eight-year-old, a lot of your work is social.

00:32:10.380 And a lot of it, and that's what it should be, rather than just academic, pushing academic

00:32:15.880 work onto a young person.

00:32:17.720 And this kind of goes back to the structure of how we operate, and I'll digress a little

00:32:21.420 bit here, is, look, part of what got me interested in doing this in the first place was that

00:32:28.100 I didn't believe that young people should be in a desk for seven hours a day.

00:32:31.800 I didn't fit in that at all.

00:32:33.860 And so when my son was born, and I heard that question from my uncle, I thought, I don't

00:32:39.360 care what I have to do, if I have to move somewhere or start something or whatever it

00:32:43.120 may be, I am not going to put my children into a system that doesn't understand the gifts

00:32:47.920 and abilities I have just because they don't fit on the conveyor belt.

00:32:51.200 And so at our school, when you look at that, young people have the freedom to work with

00:32:57.780 their peers.

00:32:58.440 They have the freedom to choose the work that they'd like to do.

00:33:00.700 Also, they have the freedom to be distracted as long as they're not distracting other people.

00:33:05.400 They can exit the room for a while if they need to be distracted.

00:33:08.340 And I think there's this whole idea in education, in the elementary especially, of young people

00:33:15.680 are so distractible.

00:33:17.400 Well, it's like we're thinking that, okay, we don't understand that the prefrontal cortex

00:33:23.280 has a protracted maturation.

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00:34:34.260 You can't force development in that way.

00:34:37.240 They're distractible if they're bored stiff.

00:34:39.240 Yes.

00:34:39.540 You know, kids can concentrate on something for a very long period of time if they're interested

00:34:43.560 in it.

00:34:44.020 Absolutely.

00:34:44.500 So, the distractibility, and this is the case for human beings more generally, is if you

00:34:50.500 see a pronounced trend across a number of people, the first thing to presume is there's something

00:34:54.820 situational driving it rather than something temperamental.

00:34:58.400 Yeah.

00:34:58.680 And so, you might say, well, little kids are distractible.

00:35:00.920 It's, well, maybe it's because they're bored to death in the conventional classroom.

00:35:04.840 And I would say that's particularly true of active boys.

00:35:07.540 Okay, so we've talked a little bit about squads, and we've talked a little bit about studios.

00:35:14.060 You started talking about what happens first thing in the morning.

00:35:17.820 Okay, so the kids have a discussion, and they're trying to iron out a complex moral conundrum,

00:35:23.420 and they're doing that as a consequence of Socratic dialogue.

00:35:25.760 And there's an age-graded, or what, there's a group of kids that spans quite an age, and the older kids

00:35:33.960 help lead the younger kids, and they take responsibility for it.

00:35:37.420 And the little kids have something to look forward to as they grow up.

00:35:40.760 And so, that's the first 15 minutes of class.

00:35:43.520 So, what happens next?

00:35:46.040 Let's continue walking through the day.

00:35:47.800 We break the Socratic discussion, and then the schedule is posted on the board.

00:35:52.360 So, there's different levers of control, as we say.

00:35:55.120 Things that the guides have control over, and things the learners have control over.

00:35:58.860 So, we put a schedule out, but we're not in charge of enforcing the adherence to that schedule.

00:36:04.300 They mutually enforce that.

00:36:05.840 So, the next thing you'd walk into is core skills.

00:36:08.500 On Mondays, we open the day with a meeting with a mentor.

00:36:13.240 So, each young person in elementary has a mentor from the middle or high school that's been elected

00:36:18.660 based on kind of exemplifying some of the traits that it means to be at Wonder.

00:36:24.080 And so, on Monday, they have a meeting with that mentor.

00:36:26.740 And that mentor is asking questions like,

00:36:28.920 Hey, what got you most excited last week?

00:36:31.620 What were you really proud of accomplishing?

00:36:33.460 What do you hope to accomplish this week?

00:36:35.320 Are there any social dynamics or things like that going on that we can talk about?

00:36:41.140 Things like that.

00:36:42.200 So, they have this.

00:36:42.560 And how old are the mentors?

00:36:44.140 They're, gosh, from 12 to 16 right now.

00:36:49.140 So, they're pretty young.

00:36:50.260 Old enough to do this, but pretty young.

00:36:51.920 And your experience is that they do a credible job at that?

00:36:55.220 They do an incredible job at that.

00:36:57.920 It's that, one, they use a system.

00:37:00.440 So, they've gotten together, as we've put this mentor program together,

00:37:04.180 they've gotten together to say, what are the questions we should ask?

00:37:07.800 They've got together to figure this out.

00:37:08.940 Yes, they've got together to figure this out.

00:37:10.620 They'll run those things by us.

00:37:12.300 But unless we see some glaring issue, which we don't,

00:37:15.940 because even if we saw an issue, we'd like them to test it and come to that determination on their own.

00:37:19.700 Right, right, yeah, yeah.

00:37:20.360 So, yeah, then they'll meet with the mentor on Monday.

00:37:22.920 One-on-one?

00:37:23.460 One-on-one, and then they break after that mentor meeting.

00:37:27.280 How long is the meeting?

00:37:28.380 It's usually 10 to 15 minutes.

00:37:29.900 That's it.

00:37:30.160 Okay, and they do that once every week with the mentor.

00:37:32.340 Once every week.

00:37:32.900 And it's setting your eyes to the horizon.

00:37:34.840 What are you here to accomplish?

00:37:36.300 What would you like to do this week?

00:37:37.920 And I often tell parents that goal setting is an interesting thing,

00:37:42.020 because at age seven, the proper time horizon for a goal is likely this afternoon.

00:37:46.560 Yeah, right.

00:37:47.000 What am I going to do?

00:37:47.480 Yeah, well, that's worth driving home,

00:37:49.480 is that the younger the kid, the shorter the future time horizon.

00:37:52.920 Yes.

00:37:53.320 Right, right.

00:37:54.080 And then we watch this move up when you're entering middle school.

00:37:57.240 They can accurately plan their entire year.

00:37:59.760 What do I want to accomplish in reading, writing, math, quests,

00:38:03.220 things like that for the year?

00:38:04.720 And it starts—

00:38:05.480 Your kids can do that.

00:38:06.460 Yes.

00:38:07.060 It starts because we start instituting this idea of,

00:38:10.140 hey, we're here to accomplish something.

00:38:12.320 And what is that thing we'd like to accomplish?

00:38:14.120 And the mentor is really—

00:38:14.920 I wonder how tight the relationship is between prefrontal cortical maturation

00:38:18.840 and length of time horizon.

00:38:20.880 I bet it's pretty tight.

00:38:22.460 Yeah.

00:38:22.560 You know, well, it's complex, right,

00:38:23.840 to calculate yourself across an expanding horizon of time.

00:38:27.780 And it means the replacement of motivation based on basic motivational states,

00:38:34.660 like hunger and thirst and temperature regulation, desire for play,

00:38:38.120 all of that, which are impulsive motivations.

00:38:41.080 It's the replacement of that with a higher-order vision

00:38:43.820 where all those competing demands are integrated, right,

00:38:48.480 integrated across time.

00:38:49.800 That parallels the movement from, say, subcortical dominance

00:38:52.860 to cortical dominance, something like that.

00:38:55.120 So you guys are facilitating that.

00:38:57.540 Okay, so they meet with their mentors.

00:38:59.680 And, well, now we're an hour into the day.

00:39:02.980 What happens next?

00:39:03.940 Maybe 30 minutes into the day.

00:39:05.660 Maybe 30 minutes.

00:39:06.280 Yes.

00:39:06.480 So next they go into their core skills work.

00:39:10.340 And this core skills work is we use adaptive platforms, like, for math.

00:39:14.500 You could use Khan Academy, Beast Academy, something like that.

00:39:17.840 We're reading...

00:39:18.520 What's Beast Academy?

00:39:19.660 It's a similar program to Khan Academy.

00:39:22.020 It just functions in it a little bit.

00:39:22.980 Who set that up?

00:39:24.000 You know, I'm not sure who set up Beast Academy.

00:39:25.860 But the point there is that some learners like using Khan.

00:39:30.240 Other learners like using Beast.

00:39:31.900 Okay, and they're adaptive.

00:39:33.020 What does that mean?

00:39:33.760 It means that as you get into them, like, so they can see where are you struggling,

00:39:39.280 what areas you're struggling with, and they'll serve you more of those types of problems.

00:39:43.260 And also, like with Khan Academy, and I say this to parents often,

00:39:46.700 I don't know that there's anybody that's had a larger impact on math in the world than Sal Khan.

00:39:51.420 Yeah, right.

00:39:52.140 Yeah, yeah.

00:39:52.700 You want to walk through that a little bit?

00:39:53.900 Well, just, I think there's 50 million active users.

00:39:56.900 Maybe that's an old statistic.

00:39:58.160 But he's essentially built a platform to allow for the complete self-direction of math learning.

00:40:07.340 Yeah, that's such a good deal.

00:40:08.620 It's unbelievable.

00:40:09.520 Yeah.

00:40:09.820 And each problem that you get, there's a video related to how to solve it with Sal Khan talking about how to work through a problem like this.

00:40:18.940 Yeah, yeah.

00:40:19.220 And I tell people, well, you can pause that person, and you can rewind that person.

00:40:25.180 I mean, the dynamic is so much different than a traditional classroom in that way.

00:40:29.500 And one thing I hear from people is that a lot of elite private schools are actually assigning Khan Academy as homework.

00:40:37.560 And I say, well, it's only a matter of time before we see the actual redundancy there.

00:40:40.680 Right.

00:40:41.080 It's like, they're kidding.

00:40:41.900 And so, yeah, so you might do Khan Academy or Beast.

00:40:46.120 There's Reflex Math, and there's different math programs.

00:40:48.660 Yeah.

00:40:48.880 We have it that when you're doing a unit test, for instance, to check proficiency, whatever platform you do your practice on, you check out on Khan.

00:40:56.760 And so there's a way to make sure—

00:40:58.440 So you use that as your standardized indicator.

00:41:00.360 Correct.

00:41:00.680 Yeah, and so how do you think your students are doing on the mathematical front?

00:41:04.120 I guess you know this.

00:41:05.320 Yes.

00:41:05.580 How are they doing on the mathematical front?

00:41:08.940 Well, I'd say overall they're doing quite well.

00:41:11.320 Now, it's varying, right?

00:41:13.040 Because at the younger ages, we don't operate anything that would equate to a kindergarten, college preparatory environment.

00:41:19.220 I say our goals for our elementary studio are very simple, and they're two things.

00:41:24.260 Love learning and learn to get along with other people.

00:41:27.580 Master those—love coming to school every day and learn how to work well in a tight-knit tribe with other people.

00:41:33.280 And so the reason we say that is if you took the whole corpus of elementary school work of what needs to be accomplished, it's actually not that much work, relatively speaking, if you're at the right developmental age.

00:41:44.740 So you can spend time learning the important work of how do I get into flow or how do I find something I love, how do I remove distractions, things like that.

00:41:55.880 You can spend that time—we have systems to help with this—and still be fully on track, so to speak, with doing core skills work.

00:42:04.320 Do you have any idea how your students at any given age are performing, let's say, in the mathematical realm, because that's quite easy to quantify, compared to students in a typical public school environment?

00:42:19.580 Yeah.

00:42:20.220 Well, here's what I say.

00:42:21.400 We don't talk about this much just because at Wonder, we do one standardized test a year.

00:42:26.760 And it usually starts around age nine, something like that.

00:42:29.120 And we give no administrative support for it.

00:42:32.120 We don't tell anybody it's happening.

00:42:33.780 They show up one day doing a test.

00:42:36.280 For our data that we see for the elementary age, it's around two and a half grade olds above where they should be.

00:42:43.220 Okay.

00:42:43.620 Are your kids selected on the basis of income or IQ?

00:42:47.560 Neither.

00:42:48.460 We do have tuition.

00:42:49.820 However, we really try to—when it comes to selection, it's much more for the younger ages based on do the parents understand what type of school we are?

00:42:59.120 Are they wanting to go on a journey that has triumphs and hardships?

00:43:02.860 Do they really understand what they're getting into?

00:43:05.120 Do you think that you have reasonable coverage across the socioeconomic spectrum?

00:43:09.220 Or are you tilted more towards middle class and upward?

00:43:12.080 Well, I would say that I think any school that charges tuition is likely tilted a bit more towards middle class.

00:43:20.560 Yeah.

00:43:20.780 However, we have people that are social workers, journeyman carpenters.

00:43:25.700 Many families in the school would fall—

00:43:30.080 Working class.

00:43:30.700 Yes, and it's a stretch to pay tuition.

00:43:32.840 But they see the value in what it is, and they say—they understand that one of the biggest responsibilities decisions we'll make as parents is how and where we're going to educate our children.

00:43:42.640 And once you understand that, you can't—once you see it, you sort of can't unsee it.

00:43:46.260 Yeah.

00:43:46.600 And it's sort of like, I will do—I've had parents say to me, I don't care if I need to take a second job.

00:43:50.400 Right, right.

00:43:50.980 I will find a way to pay the tuition.

00:43:52.400 Right.

00:43:52.580 And how much is the tuition?

00:43:54.080 Our tuition is $10,000 a year over 10 months, so it's roughly $1,000 a month.

00:43:58.820 Mm-hmm, and does that actually cover your expenses?

00:44:02.380 Yes.

00:44:03.180 And—

00:44:03.500 Okay, so that's worth highlighting.

00:44:05.460 Yeah, so—

00:44:06.020 So the cost of the education that you're providing the kids is how much a month?

00:44:11.200 The tuition is around $10,000 per month.

00:44:14.960 Yeah.

00:44:15.320 Right there.

00:44:16.000 We give a few—

00:44:16.840 Per year, per 10—

00:44:17.700 Sorry, sorry, $10,000 per year, yes.

00:44:19.720 Okay, so you know that in the New York State, the average cost per student per year is $39,000.

00:44:26.560 Yes.

00:44:27.580 Right.

00:44:27.880 So you can do it for a quarter of that.

00:44:29.880 I think that we could actually do it for around—

00:44:32.240 Our projection right now is that our all-in cost, when we're fully enrolled, about 130 learners,

00:44:38.000 will be about $4,500 a year per learner.

00:44:41.640 Hmm.

00:44:42.720 That's why—

00:44:43.040 Yeah, it would be interesting, the metric you need from a measurement perspective,

00:44:47.980 because you are selecting your students to some degree based on parental interest in education

00:44:54.320 and their ability to pay.

00:44:55.840 So you're going to be tilting it somewhat up the IQ and socioeconomic scale and probably

00:45:00.740 tilting it up the conscientiousness scale a priori.

00:45:04.720 The real metric would be how fast your students are learning compared to comparable students

00:45:08.860 in a public school system.

00:45:10.260 Very difficult metric to establish.

00:45:12.980 Yes.

00:45:13.080 So I'm not being skeptical of this.

00:45:15.480 It's just, you know, very interesting to derive performance measures, and that's a difficult

00:45:19.860 thing to do.

00:45:21.480 Well, and I would say there might be a difference in thinking, especially in elementary school

00:45:25.740 for us, in that if you took a learner from our school at maybe seven or eight years old

00:45:31.940 and tried to map them with an elite college preparatory school, you might find that our

00:45:37.040 learner is behind on certain areas compared to theirs.

00:45:40.460 Yeah.

00:45:40.900 That's not a bad thing.

00:45:42.120 It's because children need to be allowed time to be children, and they're not machines

00:45:46.980 to absorb information.

00:45:48.160 Yeah, yeah.

00:45:48.440 Well, that's a problem with measurement, is like if your only measurement rubric is standardized

00:45:54.180 testing, which is generally the only reliable and valid objective measure, there are things

00:46:00.640 that are important that you're not measuring that are hard to measure.

00:46:03.420 So, for example, it would be very useful to measure maturity if you could figure out how

00:46:07.380 to measure it, or if you could measure pro-social behavior.

00:46:11.060 You can do that using teacher ratings of pro-social behavior, for example, peer ratings.

00:46:15.300 So, you could derive that, but then you'd need a standardized sample of the same ratings

00:46:20.620 from other schools to compare yourself with, and the probability that you'd be able to

00:46:23.780 derive that is pretty much zero.

00:46:25.900 Well, you can also look at it this way, that you could compare yourself to another school,

00:46:31.660 or if you get down to the individual learner level, you could compare yourself to yourself

00:46:35.680 that was rated before.

00:46:37.060 Yeah, well, that would be the right measure.

00:46:38.680 And that's the way we do that.

00:46:39.960 Yeah.

00:46:40.340 So, we'll do that with end-of-week surveys, and it's warm, cool, warm feedback for other learners

00:46:45.200 in the studio, end-of-session 360 surveys, where you're rating people.

00:46:50.140 Oh, yeah, so you're using 360, you're using peer ratings.

00:46:52.820 Absolutely, and those are posted publicly.

00:46:54.800 So, it's not who said it, but here's how each person, like, the comments people had.

00:47:02.180 So, how does that, how did, okay, that's interesting.

00:47:04.820 So, how did the kids who are downgraded in a given week, let's say, respond to that?

00:47:11.680 You know, because they're being publicly evaluated.

00:47:14.480 So, what's the justification for that, and have you seen that go wrong?

00:47:18.380 Is there anything that concerns you about that approach?

00:47:21.020 Well, I think if you first start by understanding that we spend a lot of time building the tribe,

00:47:25.840 so in general, people are polite and respectful towards each other, but they might say that,

00:47:30.620 let's take my son, for instance, Hudson was distracting me numerous times this week.

00:47:36.000 Okay, if that's one thing on the survey that he was distracting, and these are the types

00:47:39.820 of things that you'll see, you don't, if there, we don't see malicious, you know, comments or

00:47:46.620 something like that.

00:47:47.320 We see, hey.

00:47:48.280 No trolls.

00:47:49.100 Yes, yes.

00:47:50.300 Troll-free environment.

00:47:51.280 Yes, troll-free environment.

00:47:52.100 We don't see things like that.

00:47:55.080 We see, Hudson was distracting me this week from this.

00:47:58.720 And if that comes up one time, that could be noise.

00:48:02.860 Yeah.

00:48:03.020 But if Hudson is going through, and he sees four times people mentioned how he was distracting

00:48:08.880 them, then it's like looking at that and saying a reflection point.

00:48:12.780 It's like, hey, I'm distracting.

00:48:14.200 It's useful tribal feedback.

00:48:15.560 Very useful tribal feedback.

00:48:17.080 Yeah.

00:48:17.400 And we put in time, using Socratic dialogue and examples of how to give feedback.

00:48:23.460 Let me give a quick example of feedback.

00:48:25.060 So, when we first started the school about half a decade ago, we had a number of learners

00:48:32.280 that came in from traditional school.

00:48:34.340 And maybe they were 10, 11, somewhere in there.

00:48:38.580 And our school year is broken into sessions.

00:48:42.260 They're four to six weeks long.

00:48:44.040 They have a quest that's like, you know, we put them in a simulation or they're solving

00:48:48.680 a big problem or something like, could be architecture, future of farming.

00:48:52.160 They're doing the American Revolution.

00:48:53.540 And those are the afternoons every day.

00:48:55.060 I'll get to that.

00:48:55.740 Okay.

00:48:57.520 And at the end of that quest, there's a public exhibition.

00:49:00.580 And the public exhibition is parents, grandparents, family members coming in.

00:49:03.680 And you're on stage, and this starts roughly at age seven, where you're presenting in front

00:49:08.480 of all these people.

00:49:10.480 Do you make sure the kids speak loudly enough so everyone in the audience can hear?

00:49:15.020 Audience feedback has made that happen.

00:49:17.140 Yes.

00:49:17.240 Good.

00:49:17.640 We actually had a parent offer to buy.

00:49:19.200 I used to go to my kids' presentations at their elementary school.

00:49:22.120 You know, there'd be all these kids on stage, and they were all mumbling so quietly that

00:49:26.460 people, even in the first row of the gymnasium, couldn't hear a damn word they were saying.

00:49:30.820 And everybody in the bloody gym was supposed to sit there for two hours pretending that this

00:49:34.740 was acceptable.

00:49:35.420 And while the kids on the stage were pretending to talk, and the teachers were pretending

00:49:39.980 to evaluate.

00:49:41.140 Yes.

00:49:41.380 Yeah.

00:49:42.060 Painful, to say the least.

00:49:43.800 I had a parent in the school, Jamie, that was happening, and he said, I'll buy you a

00:49:48.280 small PA system for this room.

00:49:50.000 And we bought it.

00:49:50.800 But that was solved.

00:49:51.620 So yes, they get on stage.

00:49:53.080 They speak.

00:49:53.520 We record that.

00:49:54.620 And then on Friday, so that happens on the last Thursday of a session.

00:49:57.940 On Friday, they get into a circle, a Scrat discussion, and they give each other warm,

00:50:02.860 cool, warm feedback on how they did.

00:50:05.180 What's something you did well?

00:50:07.100 What's something you could improve?

00:50:08.640 What's another thing you did well?

00:50:10.300 The learners that first came in from traditional schools called that Friday, Friday, because

00:50:15.880 it was so hard to hear feedback.

00:50:19.420 And when you come from an environment where basically there's only two grades anymore,

00:50:23.140 there's A and not A.

00:50:25.160 That's basically what there is now.

00:50:26.780 When you come from that environment and you hear you didn't do perfect or didn't do exactly

00:50:30.760 well, well, I just failed.

00:50:32.700 And so we give them the option of, hey, you could get written feedback or you could get

00:50:37.460 verbal feedback.

00:50:38.660 The wrong choice in there is written feedback because you don't have the context of the

00:50:41.840 kindness of the person giving it to you.

00:50:43.140 Right, right.

00:50:43.780 But they elected that for a little bit until they went back.

00:50:46.380 And so learning one of the, I would say, a very important lesson in life is how to give

00:50:53.000 and take the feedback and incorporate that.

00:50:55.580 And what constructive feedback is.

00:50:57.640 Yes.

00:50:58.200 Right.

00:50:58.620 And so in elementary, when they're learning to give the weekly survey, it might be that

00:51:02.960 we start off with like a dropdown menu.

00:51:05.320 Like you're selecting a different learner, then a dropdown.

00:51:07.240 Like, is what, is the issue you had somewhere in here?

00:51:11.560 And it's like a pre-written, hey, Hudson was distracting today.

00:51:15.580 I'm sorry, Hudson.

00:51:17.420 You're not sure.

00:51:18.360 Yeah, poor Hudson.

00:51:18.920 Yeah, poor Hudson.

00:51:19.620 Yes, I do.

00:51:20.180 Now this is there for the eternity.

00:51:21.980 Yes, for eternity.

00:51:22.720 Or they can write their own feedback if it's something specific.

00:51:27.900 So that starts at a very young age, this idea of, you know, tribal reinforcement.

00:51:32.140 Like, how do we operate in here?

00:51:33.740 Do we have an ethos of how we operate?

00:51:36.060 I'll tell one other anecdote about that.

00:51:39.900 We've learned at a school like ours, we cannot recruit.

00:51:43.440 We can't go out and say, hey, would you come to our school?

00:51:47.300 The reason is you have to be looking for what we're offering.

00:51:50.020 You have to believe young people.

00:51:50.740 I think that's true when you ever, almost whenever you do anything with anyone.

00:51:54.960 It's so much better to have someone come looking than to go sell.

00:51:59.560 Yes, exactly.

00:52:01.280 I made what I would consider maybe a mistake saying,

00:52:04.520 I met these learners and I thought, gosh, their parents were amazing.

00:52:10.240 I thought they'd do a great job.

00:52:11.700 We invited them to apply to the school.

00:52:13.800 And that was a hard lesson I learned.

00:52:15.580 But one of the most important lessons there was that these learners came in

00:52:19.640 and I often say there's two behaviors we can't incorporate as a school.

00:52:23.200 One would be a blatant disrespect for other people.

00:52:26.360 The other would be manipulation or lying.

00:52:28.080 So that's antisocial behavior.

00:52:29.480 Yes.

00:52:29.800 And I don't mean that you get into a conflict.

00:52:32.260 We have conflicts arise all the time and I'll talk about how we resolve those.

00:52:35.200 But these learners came in the school and for various reasons,

00:52:41.080 they were highly disrespectful, things like that.

00:52:43.520 The tribe came to me in my office one day, and it's usually the older girls.

00:52:48.380 They really value order.

00:52:50.580 And I think for some reason what we see is a lot of the older girls take leadership roles

00:52:56.500 somewhat younger than some of the younger boys would.

00:52:59.920 And they came to my office and they said, hey, look, here's all the things we've tried.

00:53:04.420 Here's what's going on.

00:53:05.720 They just don't understand we don't do those things here.

00:53:08.360 Right, right.

00:53:08.960 And I said, guys, what you're saying is that there's a way that we do things here.

00:53:13.680 That's an ethos.

00:53:14.460 We have something that defines us.

00:53:16.180 First off, that's amazing.

00:53:18.000 Like, how amazing is it that we have that?

00:53:19.400 Yeah.

00:53:19.880 And second, we troubleshooted different ways that we could solve this.

00:53:23.340 Ultimately, the learners weren't a fit for the school.

00:53:26.080 Well, one thing that's worth knowing on that front, by the way, is that if antisocial proclivities

00:53:33.100 are not rectified by the age of four, they're virtually impossible to rectify after that,

00:53:41.200 no matter what you do.

00:53:42.980 Right?

00:53:43.500 Antisocial behavior proclivities are more stable than IQ.

00:53:47.240 And psychologists have tried everything you can possibly imagine to rectify antisocial

00:53:53.700 behavior proclivities with either zero or negative success.

00:53:58.860 Right.

00:53:59.540 So your observation that if you have kids who are tilted in the overtly troublemaking direction,

00:54:06.500 and that would be associated, say, with that overt disrespect for others, the probability

00:54:10.880 that you're going to be able to do anything about that is extraordinarily low.

00:54:14.300 Yes.

00:54:14.480 It's one of the most dismal fragments, aspects of the clinical psychology literature, because

00:54:22.640 psychologists have thrown everything they had at the remediation of antisocial behavior.

00:54:27.140 The only, and with no effect, the only exception I've ever seen to that is the work of someone

00:54:32.420 named Dan Olwius, who went on an anti-bullying campaign in the Scandinavian countries and managed

00:54:39.280 that quite effectively.

00:54:40.140 But he did that really through a cultural transformation of the schools.

00:54:44.480 Rather than a focus on the individual behavior of any given students.

00:54:49.040 So anyways.

00:54:50.500 All right.

00:54:50.820 So let's go back to the days.

00:54:52.580 So we've gone through the Socratic dialogue.

00:54:56.000 We've gone through the meetings with the mentors.

00:54:59.440 And I think that's pretty much where we stopped in terms of progressing through an actual day.

00:55:04.420 And then you are going into what we call self-directed course skills.

00:55:07.480 Oh yeah.

00:55:07.700 We talked about the Khan Academy a bit there too.

00:55:09.640 And so you're going to self-directed course skills.

00:55:12.140 And now I think the important thing to understand about a school like ours, and this is where

00:55:16.260 my, what I mentioned earlier is so important, is the system is so much different.

00:55:20.400 And our school is largely ran by systems and recipes that we hand off to learners.

00:55:24.460 So for instance, people would say, well, you're saying that the guide doesn't have the traditional

00:55:30.560 role in the classroom, that they are not there for telling learners what to do.

00:55:37.120 How do you get learners to do work?

00:55:40.720 And so, well, number one, if something's gamified and it's fun, they want to do it.

00:55:45.800 And they actually really enjoy doing it.

00:55:47.400 So even something that's gamified like Khan Academy or some of these other platforms,

00:55:51.540 it's enjoyable for them to do.

00:55:53.300 And it's enjoyable for them to watch their progress moving up.

00:55:56.820 And I think it's a progress towards the goal that really gets them, you know, maybe it's

00:56:00.700 dopamine or something like that, that it triggers.

00:56:04.220 But also within the school, you think of the school as like being embedded in a game.

00:56:09.260 We have what are called freedom levels.

00:56:10.900 And so within the studio, you have the ability to earn your freedom solely by the work that

00:56:17.860 you do.

00:56:18.340 It's not subjective.

00:56:19.820 It's you earn this.

00:56:21.720 A guide cannot take this away from you.

00:56:24.020 And so for instance, say you move up 1% in Khan Academy in your grade level.

00:56:29.220 And the grade level is based on where are you at right now?

00:56:32.000 And you'll make goals towards where do you want to be.

00:56:34.120 When you move up 1%, you earn 20 points.

00:56:36.480 So this is the game.

00:56:37.240 If you earn 300 points within a week, the next week, you're at the highest freedom level.

00:56:43.120 It means that next week, you get to choose what you work on, when you work on it, and

00:56:47.100 where you work on it.

00:56:48.200 So it's sort of like life.

00:56:49.700 Yes, very much so.

00:56:51.440 And so, but also, if you say, hey, if you're distracted for a week, something like that,

00:56:59.480 you're getting less work done.

00:57:00.620 You might be on freedom level 1.

00:57:02.080 And that would look like, hey, you have a desk, and there's what you do, what the schedule

00:57:07.780 would look like on the board.

00:57:09.420 And what we find is that 80 to 90% of the learners are on freedom level 2 or 3.

00:57:14.700 They want the additional freedom.

00:57:16.260 It's enough of incentive just to say, I have the agency over my time in the day.

00:57:20.220 I know the steps I need to take to get it.

00:57:22.700 They've agreed and helped develop this system.

00:57:25.240 It's been a part of what they've done.

00:57:26.500 And so, it's how you incentivize, you know, maybe work or hard work.

00:57:32.900 But the true answer, especially the younger you are, is that gamification of work is enough.

00:57:37.680 You have fun game to play.

00:57:39.740 And I often ask people or talk to people if they say, hey, the studio is getting a bit

00:57:44.720 disorderly.

00:57:45.840 It happens.

00:57:47.040 I would ask, well, what's wrong with the game that we're setting up?

00:57:50.080 How can we make the game more fun to play?

00:57:52.460 And so, that's core skills in the morning.

00:57:54.680 What if I objected, well, life isn't going to be fun.

00:57:58.920 So, how do you know you're not setting up a microenvironment for children that isn't

00:58:04.480 representative of the macroenvironment to which they'll have to adapt?

00:58:08.460 No, I mean, I enjoy the descriptions of the programs that you're putting forward.

00:58:13.540 And I would love to believe that that was all true without any reservation.

00:58:19.400 But, you know, I'm trying to allow myself as many skeptical thoughts as I can possibly

00:58:23.160 manage.

00:58:23.580 And I am curious about this.

00:58:25.440 I mean, I know that Khan Academy has had a lot of success in their mathematics training.

00:58:29.820 And I know they use a gamified approach.

00:58:32.860 But what that really is, is a carefully designed system of incentives, rewards that actually

00:58:40.960 match the motivational structure of the learners.

00:58:43.480 You could call that gamified, but it's actually just adapted properly for learning.

00:58:47.780 But, but do you feel that, do you feel that you are preparing the kids for the realities

00:58:55.260 of the real, real world?

00:58:56.860 And what evidence do you have that that might actually be the case?

00:59:00.780 When you say reality is the real, real world, can you be specific on that?

00:59:04.380 Like what, what?

00:59:04.720 Well, that, that, that's a good, that's a good objection, actually.

00:59:07.280 Well, let's say, let's say that 30, 40% of your grad, your, your, your graduates at, you

00:59:14.060 know, at, after high school go and get a, just an ordinary job, a construction job, a job

00:59:19.760 in a restaurant, a job in a local store, a job.

00:59:23.320 Um, are they, are they going to be fit for those positions, given the experiences that

00:59:29.220 they've had in the, in your, in your school?

00:59:32.340 Well, I think we're maybe prematurely asking the question, and here's why I say that elementary

00:59:37.760 is very different than middle, which is very different than high school.

00:59:40.240 So there is a progression upwards.

00:59:42.540 So if I, okay, okay, if I gave you the goals of studios just ahead of time saying, if you're

00:59:46.900 under middle school, it's this love learning and learn to get along with people.

00:59:50.500 So elementary is, by design, about developing a love of learning.

00:59:54.860 Why is that?

00:59:55.640 It's because when you get into middle school, the, if I had to put one sentence goal, it'd

00:59:59.340 be, learn to work hard for three hours a day, which is hard for many adults to do if they're

01:00:05.960 honest with themselves.

01:00:06.720 So you're, you're, you're inculcating a more conscientious focus increasingly as they progress

01:00:11.980 through schools.

01:00:12.940 All right.

01:00:13.300 Okay.

01:00:13.540 Well, that's a very, that's a very good answer.

01:00:15.060 All right.

01:00:15.380 All right.

01:00:15.700 And so you've built that in where it's developmentally appropriate.

01:00:18.720 You said your goal is, yeah, actual on-task work for three hours a day.

01:00:23.760 In flow.

01:00:24.200 Yeah, you're right.

01:00:24.560 You can, you can, you can, you can have a wonderful life if you can work focused on

01:00:30.720 one thing for three hours a day.

01:00:32.820 Yes.

01:00:33.040 Yeah.

01:00:33.320 And that, that's actually a very, very high level of attainment to manage that.

01:00:36.440 Yes.

01:00:36.680 And they do it in middle school and I'll talk about how and why, but yes, the, the design

01:00:41.540 of elementary school is more exploration, love of learning, social, learning to get along

01:00:46.400 with other people.

01:00:46.940 And I'll give you an example of that about, and this applies to the real world and success

01:00:50.720 in the real world.

01:00:51.960 At a normal school, if you find that you have maybe a continuous conflict with another learner,

01:00:57.480 maybe at a large school, one of the most common things is they'll separate those learners

01:01:01.380 in different classrooms.

01:01:02.760 Yeah.

01:01:03.000 But that, that's not what you can do in life is that every time you have a conflict with

01:01:06.920 somebody that you, or a big conflict that you're going to just remove that person from

01:01:11.480 your life.

01:01:11.960 Yeah.

01:01:12.060 Well, it also doesn't necessarily eliminate the conflict, right?

01:01:15.120 It doesn't.

01:01:15.560 It actually does, maybe does the opposite of reinforcing the negative behavior.

01:01:18.860 Yeah.

01:01:19.120 Yeah.

01:01:19.380 And so at wonder, what happens is if you have a conflict with another learner, either learner

01:01:25.220 can call a conflict resolution session and you can have a 30 minute cool down period if

01:01:29.780 emotions are high.

01:01:30.860 Yeah.

01:01:31.040 Yeah.

01:01:31.360 They'll do a, what, so what, what happens is they will find a mentor, what we call peacemaker

01:01:36.760 from the middle school or high school.

01:01:37.840 Somebody that's earned their chops, so to speak, helping to make peace in the school.

01:01:42.260 And they sit across from each other at a three foot table with the mentor on the side.

01:01:46.560 And the mentor has a formal conflict resolution.

01:01:49.120 These happen two, three times a day that because conflicts happen in society, that's just the

01:01:53.760 way it is.

01:01:54.460 And so the mentor will read off and it starts like this.

01:01:57.840 Why are we here?

01:01:58.900 We're here because heroes solve problems.

01:02:01.020 They don't run from problems.

01:02:02.380 And then it goes into what you would consider like a speaker, listener exercise.

01:02:06.400 Each person gets a chance to be heard, have it repeated back to them and vice versa.

01:02:10.920 They negotiate a bit in there.

01:02:12.900 And at the end of it is, what's one concrete item the other person could do to make this

01:02:17.500 situation better?

01:02:18.240 Yeah, that's very good.

01:02:19.240 Yeah.

01:02:19.440 And that takes negotiation, by the way.

01:02:21.760 Absolutely.

01:02:22.520 That is negotiation.

01:02:23.700 Yes.

01:02:24.140 Because maybe something you propose the other person could do wouldn't be something they

01:02:27.960 think they actually can do.

01:02:29.420 Yeah.

01:02:29.620 But Jordan, we see this happen with six and a half year olds that are learning to get their

01:02:33.740 voice.

01:02:34.140 They'll call a conflict resolution on somebody that's older than them.

01:02:36.880 And they know that one of these mentors in the middle school or high school are going

01:02:39.980 to give them a fair shake.

01:02:41.540 And they get to have their voice heard.

01:02:43.280 Sometimes it's an intimidating set of circumstances.

01:02:47.980 But one of the most fulfilling things you can see in a situation like that is a young person

01:02:53.940 learning to know that if they can voice how they're feeling properly, that they can be

01:02:59.360 heard and issues in their life can be addressed.

01:03:01.120 Yeah.

01:03:01.420 Yeah.

01:03:01.760 Yeah.

01:03:02.260 Well, and you're moving the kids towards reconciliation.

01:03:04.640 Absolutely.

01:03:05.100 Which is, yeah, conflict is inevitable.

01:03:07.960 And reconciliation is possible, but it has to be negotiated.

01:03:11.140 And so the strategy that you laid forward there is very wise.

01:03:14.880 Yes.

01:03:15.000 Okay.

01:03:15.280 So back now.

01:03:15.940 So the kids are concentrating on exercises like Khan Academy.

01:03:19.900 That's on the mathematics front.

01:03:21.400 What else are they learning in elementary school?

01:03:24.300 Deep books.

01:03:25.300 They're going into deep books, badge books.

01:03:27.380 And so it's part of the reading.

01:03:29.560 So they'll be selecting books to read that they can earn a badge for.

01:03:35.540 How do they learn to read?

01:03:38.160 So usually in the younger studio, so we have a Montessori studio that starts before this.

01:03:43.040 That's where they generally learn to read.

01:03:44.880 One of the items of success in our elementary studio is a basic proficiency in reading.

01:03:50.680 So you either come in knowing how to read or we'll work with you on programs like Lexia

01:03:55.520 or something like that to build your reading proficiency.

01:03:57.560 And so these are programs that are external again, like Khan, that have been designed to

01:04:02.200 help kids run through a phonics training program.

01:04:04.340 How do they teach them to read?

01:04:05.320 Yes, basically.

01:04:06.460 And Lexia?

01:04:07.540 Yeah, Lexia is one of those that we use.

01:04:09.340 It's reading comprehension or just basic reading.

01:04:12.840 And you're impressed with these programs?

01:04:15.240 Well, I've seen them work very well.

01:04:16.780 Yeah, yeah.

01:04:17.340 But, you know, I think ultimately young people want to learn.

01:04:21.880 And I think something that's also very true about this whole discussion is that there's

01:04:27.500 something very different between teaching and learning.

01:04:30.340 And they're two completely different things in that sense.

01:04:34.320 I don't know that it's true.

01:04:36.060 I actually think it is true that all learning is self-learning, is self-motivated learning.

01:04:41.200 And so, yes, at the younger ages, getting into the exploration of learning, maybe three

01:04:46.640 through six age in the Montessori studio that we have, that's where they first get introduced

01:04:50.900 to reading.

01:04:51.700 And then they'll, as they get through middle school, they'll really master that level of

01:04:55.780 reading, but they'll start with books that are appropriate for their age level and for

01:04:59.600 their competency in reading.

01:05:02.580 How did you identify those books?

01:05:05.160 Well, it's not necessarily up to us.

01:05:06.640 We select a library of books, but they can pitch any book they'd like.

01:05:10.280 If they'd like a book to have in the library—

01:05:12.780 Right, so, okay, I see.

01:05:13.740 So, you crowdsource that problem.

01:05:15.100 Absolutely.

01:05:16.040 And here's the reason why.

01:05:17.300 You have to look at what is the goal of reading.

01:05:19.060 The goal of reading is to help somebody develop a love of reading.

01:05:22.140 And the way you develop a love of reading is by reading what you love.

01:05:26.520 And so, one surefire way to make sure that somebody doesn't like to read is to force them

01:05:30.940 to read things that they're not interested in.

01:05:33.020 And what I found young people especially learn from this is if you're forcing them to do this

01:05:39.480 work, something that they don't want to do, they might do it because maybe that, you know,

01:05:45.500 there's pressure to get this grade or something like that.

01:05:48.200 Usually, they'll memorize it rather than learn it.

01:05:49.940 Yeah.

01:05:50.120 But they often feel that they do resent it.

01:05:53.620 Yeah, you do.

01:05:53.860 And they also resent the adult that makes them do it.

01:05:55.700 Yeah.

01:05:56.200 Well, and then they'll resent the whole damn enterprise.

01:05:58.260 Yes.

01:05:58.580 You know, because you'll have kids.

01:05:59.760 I remember I had friends like this who said, I hate reading.

01:06:02.820 It's like, well, you know, that's a terrible thing for a child to say because to say you

01:06:08.780 hate reading is the same as saying, I hate exploring, I hate thinking, I hate discussing.

01:06:13.760 Right?

01:06:14.120 And, but I mean, they were very honest in their hatred and the reason they hated it is

01:06:18.380 because, well, they weren't taught how to do it well.

01:06:21.160 And then they were forced into reading things that they didn't want to forget.

01:06:24.880 Here's something I remember from grade eight.

01:06:27.200 I think this pissed me off more than anything that ever happened to me in junior high.

01:06:30.400 And there were a lot of things that happened in junior high that I wasn't very happy about.

01:06:33.500 And this was probably the top of the list.

01:06:35.420 So I was a very fast reader as a kid and I could generally read all the books for the

01:06:43.060 year in English class in the first two or three days.

01:06:45.740 And I would usually do that by reading those books behind a textbook in all the other classes.

01:06:52.380 And so I remember telling my teacher, I don't know, three days into the bloody English

01:06:56.280 course that I had read all the books.

01:07:00.140 And her answer was, read them again.

01:07:03.740 And I thought, you know, that's really a bad answer because what I just announced to you

01:07:07.360 was that I already did all the work for the year this week.

01:07:10.740 And I was basically asking you, you know, could you give me some more books?

01:07:15.200 And by the way, this is a school.

01:07:17.720 So you'd think that would be a place where that question could be reasonably asked.

01:07:22.120 And the answer was, do the work you've already done again and make sure that you don't have

01:07:28.120 any enjoyment whatsoever while you're pursuing it.

01:07:30.620 Plus, shut the hell up and don't bother me again.

01:07:33.420 Yeah.

01:07:33.680 Right.

01:07:34.180 Yeah.

01:07:34.720 I should say in that same school, I had a librarian there, Sandy Notley, who was the

01:07:40.040 wife of the socialist leader in town and the MLA.

01:07:43.800 And I used to go to the library and she would give me books and good books.

01:07:48.080 Yeah.

01:07:48.240 And she taught me a lot because she'd give me a book and I'd read it.

01:07:50.800 And then I'd tell her and she'd give me another book.

01:07:53.120 And that was unbelievably useful.

01:07:55.120 That was self-guided learning in some ways.

01:07:57.060 And so I really loved that.

01:07:58.760 My dad, too, he was teaching grade six at that point.

01:08:01.180 He used a system called SSRI, which was sustained silent self-reinforced instruction, something

01:08:10.460 like that.

01:08:11.200 I haven't got the acronym exactly right.

01:08:12.940 But it was graded texts in a file folder of increasing difficulty with self-evaluation.

01:08:20.840 And you could progress through that at your own rate.

01:08:23.380 God, I love that.

01:08:24.560 I would have had a fine time in school.

01:08:26.280 You had to feel empowered by that, too.

01:08:27.620 Well, plus there was a challenge constantly when I could find the edge of my reading ability

01:08:32.080 and start to play with that instead of having to read things that I had figured out how to

01:08:36.560 read like four years before.

01:08:38.900 So I suppose that was an early form of gamification.

01:08:42.580 But it isn't really gamification.

01:08:44.720 It's just using the processes of incentive reward properly.

01:08:49.720 Well, and that's a crucial part of gamification, is that, right?

01:08:53.220 Is incentive reward.

01:08:54.320 Yes, it's proper incentivization.

01:08:56.220 So maybe at a young age, it is gamification in some ways.

01:08:59.100 Maybe if that's like how...

01:09:00.460 Well, a game is actually an activity where the incentive rewards are lined up properly.

01:09:04.640 That's how you define a game.

01:09:06.320 So it isn't like a game exists outside that.

01:09:10.020 It's that a game is a microenvironment that's structured so optimally that people will engage

01:09:15.040 in being there voluntarily.

01:09:16.360 Yes.

01:09:17.020 Right.

01:09:17.320 I think that's a huge point of engaging, being there voluntarily.

01:09:19.820 Voluntary.

01:09:20.200 Yes, absolutely.

01:09:21.060 Yeah.

01:09:21.260 Well, you know, there's a moral rule in some ways that emerges out of that, which is that

01:09:26.100 if you haven't set up the environment so that the participants will engage in it voluntarily,

01:09:30.680 you've set up a pathological environment.

01:09:32.940 It's a tyranny or it's either tyranny or chaos.

01:09:35.740 Those are the alternatives.

01:09:36.980 I wonder we say something like this.

01:09:38.580 Look, if there's an issue in the studio involving two to three learners, okay, well, likely they're

01:09:44.300 going through something or they have, you know, like they have a lot of energy or they're

01:09:47.740 not interested in what's happening right now.

01:09:49.320 If it's 50% of the studio, what are we doing wrong with the game?

01:09:53.660 How are we making the game wrong?

01:09:54.760 Yeah.

01:09:55.060 Yeah.

01:09:55.180 But about reading this, I think this is very important.

01:09:57.360 I had a parent that was interested in the school say to me, you know, well, how do you

01:10:03.400 determine what they must read?

01:10:05.240 And he was very much in the classical education side, which I have a lot of like, I really enjoy

01:10:10.220 a lot of that.

01:10:11.540 And he said, well, you're telling me that they don't have to read these great books.

01:10:15.920 They don't, they're not forced to read these great books.

01:10:17.640 And I went through this idea of reading and developing a love for reading.

01:10:21.300 And also that I would ask, maybe pose the question something like this.

01:10:25.080 What's more important?

01:10:26.800 The four years, maybe of high school that you're engaged in reading deep books, making

01:10:30.460 sure they do that or making sure they love reading so much that the next 60 years is

01:10:35.580 filled with enjoyable reading.

01:10:36.580 Right, right, right.

01:10:37.200 And I think that's maybe-

01:10:38.660 Well, and people will, if you teach them to love reading, they will advance in their

01:10:43.920 reading to their zone of proximal development.

01:10:47.080 And they'll read the most complex books they can manage, assuming they have enough knowledge

01:10:51.900 to find those books.

01:10:52.860 People will do that automatically.

01:10:54.320 Yes.

01:10:54.520 And so you might say, well, you should instill a love of the classics.

01:10:58.260 And what that would mean optimally is that you inform people that great books exist and

01:11:03.140 you show them where they are, but you pretty much have to let them come to those books

01:11:07.640 on their own.

01:11:08.640 And they may not be able to do that, well, maybe ever in their whole life, because great

01:11:13.280 books tend to be relatively complex on the intellectual front, but they may have to come

01:11:17.360 to that obliquely.

01:11:19.220 Like, a lot of behavioral psychologists will give their clients self-help books.

01:11:24.280 And intellectuals in the popular culture are, they have derogatory attitude towards self-help

01:11:30.520 books.

01:11:30.760 I mean, the whole genre is like, well, that's self-help.

01:11:32.960 It's like, well, first of all, what's your objection to that exactly?

01:11:36.860 You don't think people should be trying to help themselves?

01:11:39.060 Yeah.

01:11:39.320 And then, I don't know if you noticed, but that's actually introductory philosophy, moral

01:11:43.400 philosophy.

01:11:43.980 That's what a self-help book is.

01:11:45.500 And you might say, well, I have contempt for it because it's introductory.

01:11:50.300 It's like, well, where the hell do you expect people to start?

01:11:52.400 Most people don't even read, right?

01:11:54.760 And then when you see people who are willing to take a step into the domain of self-help, it means

01:12:00.020 they've actually progressed in their reading enough, so they're starting to contemplate

01:12:03.260 the elementary ideas of moral philosophy and even theology.

01:12:06.080 It's like, you should do everything you can to reward that, right?

01:12:09.340 Well, it's an awakening of sorts for them.

01:12:11.020 And it's like, who are we to say that the point at which their awakening is not the point

01:12:16.400 that they should be at?

01:12:17.120 It's like, they're in a journey right now, and this is where they should be because

01:12:20.900 they've elected for that to be the place.

01:12:22.440 And how can we criticize them for not being in a different place?

01:12:25.880 Yeah, well, you do that by, you know, proclaiming your moral superiority on hypothetical intellectual

01:12:31.600 grounds.

01:12:32.200 Yes.

01:12:32.520 It's a pretty pathetic game.

01:12:34.880 So, okay.

01:12:35.960 So you've got your kids.

01:12:37.100 You're instilling in them a love of reading, at least in principle, by teaching them to read.

01:12:42.260 So, you know, the kids actually tend not to enjoy reading, so to speak, until they can

01:12:47.580 read a phrase at something like a glance, and they can start reading for meaning rather than

01:12:53.280 to have to struggle with word comprehension.

01:12:56.280 And so part of the trick with teaching kids, of course, is to get them past the point of

01:13:00.600 stumbling over words so that it becomes as easy to read as it does to talk or to listen,

01:13:06.940 let's say.

01:13:07.540 But you've solved that problem to some degree by using these sophisticated reading education

01:13:13.400 programs that are analogous in some ways to the Khan Academy.

01:13:16.280 Yeah, I would say that's part of the solution.

01:13:19.000 I mean, when I say solution, it's just we're providing them the tool to be able to unlock

01:13:22.640 something that they really want.

01:13:23.820 And they want to know how to read.

01:13:25.260 They want to be able to get a book off a shelf to be able to read it.

01:13:28.400 But I think also you have to rethink what you're thinking of as reading.

01:13:35.560 Why can't a comic book be there as reading?

01:13:37.580 Why can't a graphic novel be there as reading?

01:13:39.680 And it can be.

01:13:40.460 And the younger ones love those.

01:13:42.340 And so they can develop that love of reading by something that we would think, well, where's

01:13:46.840 the content value in something like this?

01:13:49.720 But many of these are great stories, not all the graphic novels.

01:13:52.760 Well, they're not popular novels unless they have a...

01:13:55.560 They're not popular literary endeavors unless they have the capacity to grip the attention

01:14:04.380 of the reader.

01:14:05.360 And they're not going to grip the attention of the reader unless they tell a good story.

01:14:08.580 So I think that is self-selecting.

01:14:11.720 I mean, a story won't elicit attention from a reader if it isn't doing something for them.

01:14:16.640 Yes.

01:14:17.420 So to the process of the school.

01:14:19.960 So yes, we'll engage in reading.

01:14:21.580 So what does the reading process look like?

01:14:23.380 Well, number one, they'll pick a book that would constitute a badge book.

01:14:26.360 Something that they would is maybe at their level of development that, you know, on the

01:14:30.540 cusp of being difficult, right?

01:14:31.820 Something that also maybe is interesting, possibly associated with their hero's journey, something

01:14:36.340 like that.

01:14:37.440 But this could be a who-is book or something like that at the younger ages.

01:14:40.920 Then they'll read that book and write a review on that book.

01:14:44.160 And then they'll read that review during a Socratic discussion or after one completes

01:14:48.640 before they break the circle.

01:14:50.620 The younger ages, that's it.

01:14:52.840 You read it.

01:14:53.660 You write the simple review on it.

01:14:55.300 The review, it doesn't have a word count-like requirement.

01:14:57.800 It doesn't have anything like that.

01:14:58.920 The idea is that you've read a book.

01:15:01.160 You've written and you've answered three or four questions on it.

01:15:03.860 What was your favorite character?

01:15:04.760 What surprised you the most?

01:15:05.920 Things like that.

01:15:06.920 And then you present it in front of the tribe.

01:15:09.480 Then as you get into the older studios, they'll actually vote on your book review.

01:15:14.140 Did it meet the requirements?

01:15:15.840 Do we feel like they really understood the plot line or something like that?

01:15:20.020 And also, is there evidence that they didn't read the book?

01:15:22.700 So there's some self-reinforcing here.

01:15:25.100 And if they deny the book, the book review, so to speak, it's not, oh, it's done.

01:15:30.080 It's like, hey, address these things and then come back and represent the book review.

01:15:33.900 That's good, yeah, yeah.

01:15:34.820 And what this, and then the next book they read for their next badge book, one of the

01:15:39.120 rules is it needs to be more difficult than the last.

01:15:41.660 So maybe they're not ready to do a badge book review for a while again because they're still

01:15:46.420 working on reading proficiency.

01:15:47.720 They have a goal of the book they want to do next, but they're not quite there yet.

01:15:51.040 And so they're striving for something there.

01:15:53.180 But what this tiers up to, if you look at, I'll give you a quick story about what I walked

01:15:56.280 into on the middle school one day.

01:15:58.200 And mind you, this is all from this system of not forcing reading, working to make reading

01:16:03.220 fun.

01:16:04.260 And so I walked into the middle school one day and it was during a time in the schedule

01:16:09.380 called Drop Everything and Read.

01:16:10.840 And so it's just, we're all, they're all reading.

01:16:13.480 I saw three girls and one boy sitting and we have kind of like a, it's more, it looks like

01:16:17.200 a shared workspace, something comfy like this.

01:16:19.480 They're sitting in different chairs reading.

01:16:21.360 And the books that I saw them reading were Atlas Shrugged, The Boys Who Challenged Hitler,

01:16:25.380 The Da Vinci Code, and Unbroken.

01:16:27.800 And this is all from, without us saying, you need to read any of these books.

01:16:32.580 This is from them going to the shelf.

01:16:34.560 And when you get into middle school, a deep book is a book that's won an award or changed

01:16:38.060 the world in some way.

01:16:39.280 And that's like kind of how you pitch a book that you'd like to be a deep book.

01:16:42.480 And so by giving them options and selection, they wanted to challenge themselves and they

01:16:47.260 wanted to read about like heroic stories.

01:16:50.180 And that was, that's just something that when I walk in and see something like that, I'm thinking

01:16:54.880 like, yes, this is the way this should be.

01:16:57.440 That they're moving up in this progression of excellence or maybe proficiency or something

01:17:01.880 like that.

01:17:02.640 And they're voluntarily choosing to go into these deep stories.

01:17:07.940 All right.

01:17:08.600 So back, how much more content should we cover, content process with regard to elementary school?

01:17:16.120 Well, I think one thing I failed to mention at the beginning is our year is couched in

01:17:20.180 what I call a badge plan.

01:17:21.880 And so a badge plan is at the beginning of the year, you're after a couple of weeks being

01:17:26.440 in the studio, because we really make the first session.

01:17:29.420 Remember our years are four to six week sessions and we take at least a week break.

01:17:33.260 So we take a four to six week session.

01:17:35.640 And in that first session, a learner will start working on a badge plan for the year.

01:17:39.860 And basically what they're doing on their own at first is saying, this is what I'd like

01:17:44.260 to accomplish in reading and math and writer's workshops.

01:17:48.080 So they're starting to envision goals for themselves.

01:17:50.640 And how young?

01:17:51.640 This starts at roughly seven years old.

01:17:53.540 Oh yeah.

01:17:53.880 That's really good.

01:17:54.800 That's really good.

01:17:55.380 And it's important for parents to know this is that that is not an accurate assessment

01:17:59.400 at seven years old.

01:18:00.340 It requires like feedback because say, hey, I'd like to accomplish four grade levels of math

01:18:04.880 this year.

01:18:05.260 Well, that's a great ambition, but what they'll get is then feedback from a guide and from parents

01:18:10.360 on saying, hey, do we think these are smart goals?

01:18:12.440 And we really use that rubric that they're specific, measurable, but what I really like

01:18:16.700 to focus on.

01:18:17.200 What is the smart goal?

01:18:18.540 Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time bound.

01:18:23.440 Yeah.

01:18:23.720 Okay.

01:18:24.020 So, and we're teaching.

01:18:24.700 Great, great.

01:18:25.320 So they have a rubric of evaluation for their vision and that's also peer evaluated.

01:18:29.940 Absolutely.

01:18:30.340 And that gives the peer something to evaluate.

01:18:31.780 Hey, this is really specific that you want to accomplish three grade levels of math this

01:18:35.620 year, but is it attainable?

01:18:37.240 Yeah.

01:18:37.500 And they'll walk through like what that could look like.

01:18:40.040 So at the beginning of the year, they set out a badge plan.

01:18:41.940 That badge plan is a signature is put on it by the student, a signature is put on it

01:18:46.320 by the guide once they go over it and say it's filled with SMART goals, and then parents.

01:18:51.660 And that essentially sets the stage.

01:18:53.520 Yes.

01:18:54.180 And that's another thing we need to talk about a little bit is contracts within the studio.

01:18:59.080 But that is one of them that then they have a document that says, here's what we've all

01:19:04.160 agreed I'm doing this year.

01:19:05.820 And so if you need to reflect back.

01:19:07.160 Now they have a plan.

01:19:07.940 They have a plan.

01:19:08.860 And a goal.

01:19:09.380 And a goal.

01:19:09.940 And we do a check-in on this halfway through the year, and they can adjust their goals

01:19:13.980 at that point.

01:19:14.760 Did I set too hard of goals?

01:19:16.400 Were they too easy?

01:19:17.800 Did I get all my badge book sons right away because I was so focused on the love of reading

01:19:21.620 that I have with Harry Potter or something like that?

01:19:24.380 And so they'll have that as their plan.

01:19:29.800 And then at the end of the year, they'll check in on that plan.

01:19:32.620 How did I do?

01:19:33.560 And that is not a graded process.

01:19:35.880 It's an iterative process to get better and better at making goals that you can attain.

01:19:41.040 Yeah.

01:19:41.300 Well, right.

01:19:41.840 It's also a great way of inculcating what the process of coming to self-knowledge, but

01:19:47.500 also accurate self-knowledge.

01:19:49.580 You know, we tend to think, especially in our idiot culture, that people are transparent

01:19:53.540 to themselves.

01:19:54.560 I can define who I am.

01:19:56.000 And that's simply not true because you're too complex to be transparent to yourself.

01:20:00.640 And so you're going to have all sorts of delusional ideas, some negative and some too

01:20:06.320 positive about who you are and what you're capable of.

01:20:09.260 And part of the way you modify that so you come to a realistic appraisal of yourself is

01:20:14.540 by smacking yourself up against the world and succeeding or failing, but also by encountering

01:20:20.420 other people who go, yeah, I don't think so, or who pat you on the back and say, good job,

01:20:25.580 right?

01:20:25.860 And so by having kids develop an unrealistic vision to begin with, which is what's going

01:20:32.600 to happen with young kids, because what the hell do they know?

01:20:34.840 And then by modifying that with peer evaluation and guide evaluation, you're also helping the

01:20:41.060 children come to a much more precise and accurate understanding of who they are and how they

01:20:46.980 can foster their own development.

01:20:48.400 Absolutely.

01:20:48.700 That's really nice to have that inculcated so young.

01:20:51.160 Okay.

01:20:51.700 So the kids have a contract and they develop a goal and the peers give them feedback.

01:20:55.580 Their teacher, their guide, their parents.

01:20:58.680 So they're coming to more accurate self-evaluation.

01:21:02.960 Let's turn our attention to middle school and high school.

01:21:06.280 We've concentrated a fair bit in elementary and that's fine.

01:21:09.160 So lay out the situation in middle school for me.

01:21:13.120 Yeah.

01:21:13.680 And I think just briefly, something I'd say about the reason I think there's a big focus

01:21:18.860 in elementary school is that most schools in the United States get preschool, kindergarten,

01:21:22.940 right.

01:21:24.080 Don't take it too seriously.

01:21:25.460 Have a lot of fun.

01:21:26.580 Explore the basics.

01:21:27.740 Be social.

01:21:28.720 When you get into elementary school, it's like there's a switch that flips.

01:21:31.540 It says, hey, college is coming.

01:21:34.080 School's not fun.

01:21:35.160 Homework is here.

01:21:36.360 And so I think what wonder does is we're able to take that period of childhood and allow

01:21:40.900 it to still be childhood.

01:21:42.200 But there comes a time when you need to like start to move up.

01:21:46.260 And that's why we say elementary, love learning, get along with other people.

01:21:50.360 In middle school, work truly hard for at least three hours a day in flow.

01:21:55.840 But, and then I'll add high school there too.

01:21:57.960 Have a tested and vetted idea of what you'd like to do with your life.

01:22:00.880 And so let me back integrate into that.

01:22:02.600 Yeah.

01:22:02.700 But in elementary or in middle school, you are doing far more, I would say, you're getting,

01:22:10.540 you're still doing Socratic launches every day.

01:22:12.520 You have the kind of core work that you're working on.

01:22:15.880 What's the age range for your middle school?

01:22:17.720 It's 11 to 13, somewhere in that range.

01:22:20.740 And it's a bit fluid because in a normal school, the constant is how long you can take to do

01:22:28.220 some work.

01:22:29.120 The variable is how proficient you are at it.

01:22:31.340 In our school with mastery, the constant is we master, we work for mastery.

01:22:37.060 The variable is how long it takes you to get that done.

01:22:39.700 And so if it takes you a few months or whatever extra, do that.

01:22:42.800 That's okay.

01:22:43.740 And it works within the system.

01:22:45.740 So they have a similar structure where they're doing morning course skills work, afternoon

01:22:50.000 quests.

01:22:51.140 It's very much built on challenges that are delivered from a guide to the learners.

01:22:55.280 And they go through on their own with challenges in Western civilization, with writer's workshop.

01:23:00.440 And they're building that body of work throughout a session, throughout six weeks.

01:23:04.760 The key, if I look broadly at middle school and high school, the key is that, and this

01:23:10.140 is maybe a thought about a protest against delayed maturation, is that if you look at

01:23:15.140 some people that we really respect in the world, like Da Vinci, you could look at Carnegie.

01:23:20.800 These people started apprenticing at age 12 and 13.

01:23:23.740 They were in the real world, getting real world experience at age 12 and 13.

01:23:28.540 Michelangelo.

01:23:29.340 Michelangelo.

01:23:30.040 And so there's no reason that young people today aren't capable of the same thing.

01:23:35.080 And so one of the defining characteristics of our middle school, as you're working on

01:23:39.180 hard work, and mind you, we have, if done properly at our school, there's no homework

01:23:43.940 at any point throughout the school.

01:23:45.100 This is all done within the timeframes that we have at school.

01:23:48.160 The progress from-

01:23:48.480 And how long are your school days?

01:23:49.580 Roughly 9 to 3.30.

01:23:52.360 Okay, so standard.

01:23:53.420 Standard schooling, yes.

01:23:54.400 Yeah.

01:23:55.040 And so what you'll start in middle school is your apprenticeship process.

01:23:59.400 So you're starting to confine, you're starting to constrain that.

01:24:02.780 You see exploration in elementary, as you get into middle school, you're really starting

01:24:06.240 to hone in.

01:24:06.920 Right, so you can work three hours.

01:24:08.560 And so this is also the unanswered to the question that I posed earlier, which is how do

01:24:11.980 you make sure that this is aligned with the real world?

01:24:14.080 Yes.

01:24:14.400 And part of your answer is, well, we put kids out in the real world.

01:24:16.820 They're in the real world starting at 11.

01:24:19.120 So starting at 11, you'll get your first apprenticeship.

01:24:21.760 And that apprenticeship starts like this.

01:24:24.000 And this is something I think is so important, is that, one, guides and parents don't secure

01:24:29.060 apprenticeships for our learners.

01:24:30.380 The learners do.

01:24:31.400 We help them with recipes for it.

01:24:33.220 And here's like what a recipe would be.

01:24:34.800 Number one, what do you love?

01:24:36.940 Take things that you've learned in the world, experiences you've had, experiences you've had

01:24:40.640 in elementary school where you explored through all these quests that we do in the afternoon.

01:24:44.180 Take all that and develop a list of 10 heroes that you have based on something that you would

01:24:53.500 love to do.

01:24:54.180 You'd love to learn more about.

01:24:55.160 Maybe it's videography.

01:24:56.500 Say in elementary, we did this quest on videography.

01:24:58.780 I loved it.

01:24:59.720 And in middle school, you'll take that.

01:25:01.840 You'll find heroes in that field locally.

01:25:04.020 You'll take those 10 heroes, narrow it down to three.

01:25:06.680 And then from those three heroes, you go through a process of finding their email address.

01:25:11.380 And this is local.

01:25:12.720 This is local.

01:25:13.360 It can be otherwise.

01:25:15.140 You can do it otherwise.

01:25:15.900 That's probably more what somebody might do in high school.

01:25:18.120 But to start with, those are these local.

01:25:19.760 I'll give some examples of these two because they're very powerful.

01:25:22.700 You have heroes.

01:25:23.620 You narrow it down.

01:25:24.220 You find their email address.

01:25:25.940 You have to write an email that will get opened first, which is not always easy for busy people.

01:25:31.980 Number two, in that email, you have to make the case for how they've inspired you.

01:25:38.360 Like, what work have you done to research this person?

01:25:40.960 What do you know about them?

01:25:42.480 And then how can you explain them?

01:25:43.720 So you're teaching them how to do a really high-quality job application letter, really.

01:25:47.600 Absolutely.

01:25:47.980 And if you get one of these, it's like I've gotten one from a learner in the middle school

01:25:52.280 unexpectedly who wanted to start a school like ours.

01:25:54.980 That's her journey in life.

01:25:57.000 And I read it and I was like, there's just no way I could turn this down.

01:26:01.100 There's just no way.

01:26:01.960 I couldn't do it.

01:26:03.400 So they're writing an email.

01:26:04.800 One, they'll get open.

01:26:05.640 Two, in that email, they're requesting a five-minute phone call.

01:26:08.420 In that five-minute phone call, they're requesting a 10-minute in-person meeting.

01:26:11.560 And in that in-person…

01:26:12.440 You guys are very sneaky.

01:26:13.300 Yes.

01:26:13.560 In that in-person meeting, they're requesting a six-week apprenticeship.

01:26:16.980 But it's all very genuine.

01:26:18.940 Meaning, it's like saying, this is a person that's inspired me in my life.

01:26:22.060 This is something that I want.

01:26:23.700 I have specific things I want to learn from them.

01:26:26.240 And so a couple examples of that.

01:26:27.740 In our school, we now have high school.

01:26:30.080 Our oldest age is 16 right now just because we grow with the learners that are at the older ages.

01:26:33.940 We don't enroll into high school.

01:26:35.340 You really need to start at the lower ages and work up.

01:26:38.220 You could probably guess why.

01:26:39.660 Yeah.

01:26:39.940 Have you tried it?

01:26:41.060 Yes.

01:26:41.680 And what's been your experience?

01:26:45.660 They're too cynical?

01:26:46.920 No.

01:26:47.240 What happens?

01:26:47.640 It's usually a lack of self-motivation.

01:26:49.820 You come into an environment where no adult is telling you what to do every day.

01:26:53.140 Right.

01:26:53.420 So you just slack off.

01:26:54.480 And you've been in an environment where everybody's been telling you all the time.

01:26:58.160 And this is why I tell people about the role of our guide.

01:26:59.700 Is that the reason our guides don't answer questions like they do is that in life,

01:27:05.740 there's not somebody standing over your shoulder all the time giving you answers to things.

01:27:08.920 But the information's at your fingertips if you know how to properly utilize it and you're motivated to do so.

01:27:14.160 And we know this.

01:27:15.640 Kids are doing this every day.

01:27:17.080 Right.

01:27:17.280 They're not doing it for their schoolwork because it's not interesting or fun to them.

01:27:19.740 But they're doing it for the things that they're passionate about in the world on YouTube and things like that.

01:27:23.260 So, for one example, we have a young girl in the school and her grandfather is somebody that works with the wrongfully accused.

01:27:34.720 And at a young age, that took hold of her and she's very inspired by that.

01:27:38.700 So at age 11, maybe 12, right in there, she decided she wanted to be an attorney potentially.

01:27:44.920 And so she did this whole process.

01:27:46.840 And she's went through this process now for three years, I believe, where she's validated this idea that, yes, this is what I want to do.

01:27:53.540 Which, by the way, one of the most important takeaways from an apprenticeship you could probably have is that I don't want to do this thing that I thought I did.

01:28:01.040 We've got stories about that too.

01:28:02.440 But she's done that.

01:28:03.600 And now at age 15, she's participated in jury selections, depositions, these things.

01:28:08.780 She's on the way to be doing the work that somebody that is graduated from college is just starting to do.

01:28:16.520 So, she's doing that work.

01:28:18.380 And one other example.

01:28:19.960 What sort of feedback are you getting about her from the people she's been apprenticing to?

01:28:25.200 Well, I would say that, I have a quick anecdote about that.

01:28:29.100 One of the girls that is in this studio as well, she wanted to enter an apprentice at this pet store.

01:28:36.700 She wants to work with animals in a zoo and things like that.

01:28:40.220 She was too young to be hired as an apprentice.

01:28:43.420 But they said, hey, we'll let you shadow.

01:28:45.360 And so, she went into shadow.

01:28:48.560 And it was just their personal policy that she couldn't be hired until this age, a certain age.

01:28:54.100 She went and did that.

01:28:55.680 And after that next year, they said, we were so impressed by the work that you did that we've changed our policy so that you can come work here.

01:29:04.320 And I think when you're coming up in this environment and you're learning how to work well with other people, and what these learners say, they understand is that be happy to do any job.

01:29:17.600 Right.

01:29:17.700 It doesn't matter if you're emptying the garbage cans.

01:29:19.960 Like, you're getting into somewhere, and somebody's giving you their time.

01:29:24.540 And Jordan, a powerful thing I might want to say here is I think this is a very important point, is that the role of a mentor is an opt-in relationship.

01:29:35.580 Meaning, I think that's often the confusion with maybe a teacher that's wanting to bring a personal thought into a classroom, is that that's a mentorship relationship.

01:29:47.500 Meaning, a young person asks you to be a mentor or seeks you out as a mentor.

01:29:51.680 Otherwise, the job is academic.

01:29:54.900 Like, parents are sending their kids to school to learn academics.

01:29:58.200 And I think that's what's so powerful is they're electing their mentors here.

01:30:02.120 So, the last thing I'll mention about apprenticeships, because mind you, they start at 11, and they'll go all the way through high school.

01:30:08.000 And there's a process for this.

01:30:09.260 But the last thing I'll mention is that we had one girl that was, and I'm mentioning girls here, we also have boys that have done great apprenticeships as well.

01:30:17.880 She thought, for sure, I want to be a veterinarian.

01:30:19.860 And she, at 11, interned with a veterinarian, is a surgeon.

01:30:25.480 She loves horses, loves animals.

01:30:27.560 The first sign of the surgery room and blood, couldn't handle it, almost lost it, so to speak.

01:30:33.840 And that was an amazing learning for her at a young age.

01:30:36.840 Because when might you learn that otherwise if maybe it's after undergraduate school or something like that.

01:30:43.280 And so, she knows, I still want to work with animals.

01:30:45.440 I love them.

01:30:46.440 But this direction isn't the precise direction.

01:30:49.040 What an amazing learning.

01:30:50.400 Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:30:51.840 So, that's how we look at apprenticeships in the school.

01:30:54.560 They start at age 11.

01:30:55.900 So, you're still doing your core skills type of work, still moving up in deep books.

01:30:59.980 You're doing chemistry, physics, biology.

01:31:02.540 Much more intentionally, I would say.

01:31:04.100 So, you're doing medical biology and chemistry.

01:31:07.360 And we're making it very relatable.

01:31:09.680 And then, in high school, this is where it really kind of everything comes together.

01:31:16.020 So, you have a love of learning.

01:31:17.960 You know how to work well with other people.

01:31:19.440 You have the habits of hard work.

01:31:21.340 And now, what is it?

01:31:22.880 It's, you've, in middle school, you've also tested this idea in the world.

01:31:26.700 You've gone out in the world to do things.

01:31:28.180 And so, what happens in high school is what we call the next great adventure.

01:31:31.540 And the next great adventure really is, you're declaring, after doing three to four years

01:31:36.020 of apprenticing, this is where I want to, this is where I fit into the world.

01:31:40.040 This is what I want to do.

01:31:41.300 So, you're declaring, you're putting a flag in the ground.

01:31:44.140 And then, with that, you're going on a journey of deliberate work through high school.

01:31:49.080 And that deliberate work is, number one, declaring it, saying, this is what I'm going

01:31:53.460 to do.

01:31:54.140 Number two, you're doing, you're finding people in that industry, and you're doing a minimum

01:31:58.700 of 10 interviews with these people that have done what you would like to do and have inspired

01:32:03.420 you in some way.

01:32:04.800 And then, through that, you're asking them, you know, tough questions.

01:32:07.900 These are long, pretty long interviews that people say yes to.

01:32:12.940 Then, from there, you're going into deliberate practices of this work.

01:32:17.960 So, it could be getting a credential on the work from a third-party source.

01:32:21.580 Or it could be, you know.

01:32:24.600 And the kids figure out how to do this themselves, essentially.

01:32:27.500 We have recipes in the process.

01:32:29.640 We hand off to them.

01:32:30.580 Yeah.

01:32:31.160 And that they engage in this process.

01:32:33.000 Absolutely.

01:32:33.800 But there's never a time when an adult's going to help you with your interview.

01:32:37.060 Or meaning, like, they're going to be there at the interview with you or anything like

01:32:39.720 that.

01:32:40.060 Yeah.

01:32:40.360 There's not a time when they're going to help you secure an apprenticeship.

01:32:43.140 And how are the high school kids monitoring themselves?

01:32:46.360 And why does that work?

01:32:48.560 Explain to me a minute.

01:32:49.160 Well, we walked through the elementary school situation where there were kids from six and

01:32:54.060 a half to 11 participating.

01:32:55.660 In high school, the age is, what, 14 to 18?

01:32:59.480 18, roughly, yeah.

01:33:00.400 And it's the same basic model.

01:33:02.100 The kids are self, the young people are self-monitoring.

01:33:05.960 And do they turn, the 14-year-olds, do they turn to the 18-year-olds for mentoring?

01:33:10.300 Is that…

01:33:10.800 Absolutely.

01:33:11.500 And it just happens naturally.

01:33:12.980 Meaning, like…

01:33:13.320 And they're already accustomed to doing this.

01:33:15.380 It's…

01:33:15.980 You know when you walk into an organization, you can see the culture is way different in

01:33:19.620 this place than it is otherwise.

01:33:20.980 That's how it would look.

01:33:22.120 Look, there's times when our middle school, high school guide will be out of the studio

01:33:27.120 for long periods of time.

01:33:28.980 And they've actually said to him, you know, he was gone…

01:33:33.780 Our middle school, high school guide is a stellar individual.

01:33:36.900 And he loves what he does.

01:33:39.040 He was gone for a number of days once.

01:33:40.500 And so, I was sort of doing the check-ins with the learners.

01:33:42.520 And when he got back, he said, hey, what did you like and not like about when I was gone?

01:33:48.060 And their response to him was, we actually like it when you work outside of the studio

01:33:52.040 more because it reduces the temptation for us to go to you with a question.

01:33:55.940 And it requires us to work together on these items.

01:33:59.320 So, yes.

01:33:59.880 Right.

01:34:00.100 It's similar.

01:34:00.860 Necessity.

01:34:01.200 Yep.

01:34:01.520 Peer-to-peer accountability.

01:34:02.620 Yeah.

01:34:03.020 And work.

01:34:04.960 So, now, have you had students graduate from high school and go on to colleges and

01:34:09.920 universities already?

01:34:10.660 Have you been in operation long enough for that to happen?

01:34:13.520 Our oldest right now is 16.

01:34:15.020 But in our network of schools, and we're just one school.

01:34:17.840 I only speak for ours.

01:34:20.320 Yes, absolutely.

01:34:21.120 There's been learners that have went up through this same model that have went on to

01:34:24.600 grade apprenticeships, go to different types of colleges, you know, start jobs, things

01:34:30.460 like that.

01:34:31.180 Do you have any idea how your kids are doing when they go out of the schools into the actual

01:34:35.960 world?

01:34:37.800 Well, I think we hear anecdotes about that.

01:34:40.660 About somewhat of what you talked about before, about, hey, there is sort of like, you're

01:34:46.500 leaving this environment, which is basically a civil society, is what we set up there.

01:34:51.100 That's governed by learners with appropriate handoffs of systems and recipes.

01:34:55.220 And so, there's comments about what they see, maybe that it's very difficult for people

01:35:00.660 to make decisions.

01:35:01.780 Like, not them, for other people that went through different models.

01:35:04.420 It's a very common thing that we see.

01:35:07.060 And that a lot of the work maybe in undergrad seems like fake work, which we know it is.

01:35:13.620 And so, those are comments.

01:35:15.100 But I think the idea is that they've developed agency to broaden to the world and aim towards

01:35:20.960 something that is very valuable.

01:35:22.380 Yeah, I wonder if your kids are going to be statistically more likely to be entrepreneurs,

01:35:27.400 right?

01:35:27.680 Because my suspicions are that they would have some, I wouldn't say difficulty fitting into

01:35:33.740 traditional environments, but unwillingness to do so and the proclivity to set up systems

01:35:39.320 of their own that actually function properly, which is one of the advantages, of course,

01:35:42.840 of setting up your own school or your own business, is that.

01:35:46.100 Yeah, I think that's, that is.

01:35:47.360 Hey, so if parents, we're running out of time on this segment, we're going to flip over

01:35:50.680 to the Daily Wire Plus side momentarily.

01:35:52.920 And I'm going to walk Zach through some autobiographical reminiscences and talk about how his destiny and his

01:36:02.080 calling came to be, let's say.

01:36:03.860 But let's close this off practically speaking.

01:36:07.040 So, a lot of the people who are listening to or watching this are going to be interested

01:36:10.760 in, while learning more, and also about how they might maneuver so that they can set

01:36:15.640 up a school like this in their local environment.

01:36:17.400 So, what are their practical, what do they need to know practically in order to manage that?

01:36:23.500 Well, I think number one, practically, you need to know the type of school and model that this is.

01:36:28.220 We've talked a lot about it here.

01:36:29.920 But being at Wonder is a journey for parents and learners.

01:36:34.480 And what I mean by that is the process that we're actually engaging in from a psychological

01:36:38.700 standpoint, a therapeutic standpoint, for parents might be something like differentiation.

01:36:42.060 And because you have to be able to be willing to let your learner succeed and fail.

01:36:48.700 So, if you're ready for a journey like that, truly ready for that.

01:36:51.960 So, yeah, you're teaching the parents how to let their kids be independent or how to foster

01:36:55.700 that independence.

01:36:56.800 Yeah.

01:36:56.980 That's a good deal.

01:36:58.200 Well, how else will we be able to, well, I would say this.

01:37:03.340 When you set up an environment like this where young people have agency, if we're taking

01:37:08.600 that agency away arbitrarily, we're not really helping them develop the agency.

01:37:12.500 Absolutely.

01:37:13.200 And so, you have to give them sort of like a space that's theirs that we all agree the

01:37:18.460 journey you're on.

01:37:19.000 We've made a badge plan as well.

01:37:20.220 Yeah.

01:37:20.920 Now, you go off and accomplish this.

01:37:22.620 We believe in you.

01:37:23.680 And I often say to parents that something I'll say to my kids is, look, this is your journey.

01:37:29.960 It's not my journey.

01:37:30.780 Yeah, right.

01:37:31.780 Yeah.

01:37:32.000 I am just so glad to be a cheerleader on the sideline.

01:37:34.600 And I cannot wait to see what you do.

01:37:37.400 Right.

01:37:37.520 So, if a parent is really ready to say, hey, I want my child to be one of the people who

01:37:42.980 leaves school with agency and ready to launch off into the world, I think you can look at

01:37:48.840 Wonder.

01:37:49.340 We're looking to expand our schools as well.

01:37:51.940 And you can look at Acton Academy.

01:37:54.220 And there's many schools around.

01:37:56.080 There's maybe 300 schools in the Acton Academy network.

01:38:00.060 And there's plans to expand that.

01:38:03.600 Oh, well, it's consistently expanding based on parent entrepreneurs that wanted to be

01:38:07.500 to take on this hero's journey of their own.

01:38:09.640 And so, you know, right now we're looking specifically, we're in Kansas.

01:38:13.460 You know, we're looking in Iowa as well, my home state, to expand our schools.

01:38:18.420 And the purpose is just to allow more young people to have this experience in life.

01:38:23.100 Because I had somebody say to me once, man, these kids are so lucky.

01:38:26.440 And my thought to them was, no, this is what they deserve.

01:38:29.160 They deserve to be able to have agency over their life appropriately at a young age, to

01:38:33.740 have mentors and people that they look up to.

01:38:35.820 It isn't even though, you know, it isn't even only that they deserve it, right?

01:38:39.580 I mean, you could say, well, you're optimizing a juvenile polity that reflects how the world

01:38:46.520 could be and should be constructed.

01:38:48.200 But it isn't just that the kids deserve it.

01:38:50.460 It's that because they're such a stellar resource, it's appallingly inefficient and pathetic of

01:38:56.600 society not to utilize their full resources.

01:38:59.040 And so, because, you know, one of the things you made mention of early in our conversation

01:39:05.080 was that, you know, each person has something to offer in the world that's unique and people

01:39:09.480 are unique.

01:39:10.280 I mean, we're all human, but each of us has something about him or her that's not ever

01:39:14.980 going to be replicated.

01:39:16.060 And that needs to be brought forward.

01:39:17.880 And it's in everyone's interest to ensure that that's brought forward.

01:39:22.020 And you start that by not demoralizing children, right?

01:39:26.020 So, there's a social interest here, too, that isn't merely limited to the individual.

01:39:31.780 I think parents maybe don't understand how deep that extent goes.

01:39:35.280 And I'll just real quickly give this example.

01:39:37.620 Imagine you have an eight-year-old that's just starting to write.

01:39:40.080 And they're starting to write stories.

01:39:41.880 And they bring you this little book that they've written.

01:39:44.040 Yeah.

01:39:44.420 The appropriate response to that is, wow.

01:39:46.820 Yeah.

01:39:47.160 Like, was this?

01:39:48.760 Here's what you did well.

01:39:49.940 Yes.

01:39:50.220 Here's what you could improve on.

01:39:51.520 Boy, it's great you've done that.

01:39:52.820 Yeah, the appropriate response is, wow, how hard was this for you to do?

01:39:56.520 Looks like you worked really hard on this.

01:39:57.820 Yeah.

01:39:58.120 What we all have a tendency to do is say, hey, but did you notice you spelled this word

01:40:03.220 right?

01:40:03.340 Right, right, right.

01:40:04.120 And there's nothing that's more demoralizing to an eight-year-old that's just accomplished

01:40:08.280 something that they're proud of than to hear how they didn't do it right.

01:40:11.340 Yeah, yeah.

01:40:12.060 And so if, so I would just say for parents that have this belief, want this for their

01:40:18.520 children, there's schools out there like Action Academy, Wonder, and, you know, the idea

01:40:24.380 of-

01:40:25.340 Where can they go?

01:40:26.520 We can put the links and so forth in the description of the video, but where can they go to find

01:40:30.000 out more information?

01:40:30.880 So to find out more information about Wonder, our website is daringtowonder.com.

01:40:35.720 Daringtowonder.com.

01:40:36.860 And can I tell you a quick story about where that came from?

01:40:38.900 Sure.

01:40:39.080 G.K. Chesterton, I read something from him a long ago in his essay on authority and education.

01:40:45.960 And he said this, he said that even back then, one of the biggest problems that he saw was

01:40:52.320 that the newest ideas were being taught to the youngest people, meaning that they hadn't

01:40:59.640 been vetted, these ideas hadn't been vetted, but they're somehow making their way into the

01:41:02.620 school.

01:41:03.760 And he said that's the exact opposite.

01:41:05.820 That the oldest ideas should be the first things taught.

01:41:09.060 And he said, true education is to believe something so confidently, to know so confidently

01:41:15.280 that it's true, that you would dare to tell it to a child.

01:41:19.040 I just thought, thinking about what's happening in the world today and how the new ideas are

01:41:24.720 infiltrating quickly without being vetted.

01:41:26.660 Yeah.

01:41:26.880 It's going back to this idea of that you would know something so truthfully that you would

01:41:32.020 dare to tell it to a child.

01:41:33.040 Right, right.

01:41:33.180 I think that's the appropriate guiding principle.

01:41:35.100 Well, that's a really good place to end.

01:41:37.080 And it's a very good time to end.

01:41:38.380 So I guess what we'll do is end.

01:41:40.540 I'm going to thank you, everyone who's watching and listening, for your time and attention.

01:41:44.580 And, you know, I've been fascinated by what the Acton Academy and other sophisticated,

01:41:51.300 advanced, and forward-aiming schools have been doing, you know.

01:41:54.460 And I'm going to do an interview at some point with Kate Burblesing about her approach in the

01:41:58.880 UK, which is quite radically different than your approach.

01:42:01.240 And I was struck immensely by the success of her school.

01:42:05.200 It's a much more formalized system of learning.

01:42:09.120 But as I said, there isn't necessarily only one way to solve a complex problem.

01:42:14.280 And it's not like she's not teaching her students to be autonomous, because she's definitely

01:42:18.300 teaching them to be autonomous.

01:42:19.740 So that element is very much shared.

01:42:23.820 But, well, thank you very much for coming in and talking in more detail about what the

01:42:28.620 schools are doing.

01:42:29.300 For those of you who are watching, you might, if you like this and you're interested in,

01:42:32.800 you might also want to check out the discussion I had with Jeff Sandefur, which was more abstract

01:42:37.180 in some ways.

01:42:39.160 This, part of the reason Zach and I wanted to talk was to fill in the anecdotal details

01:42:44.220 and to describe in some more detail what was actually happening on the ground in the schools.

01:42:48.700 And so, you know, I think that was very useful and also very interesting.

01:42:51.600 I'd like to come down at one point and, you know, spend a couple of days watching your school

01:42:55.860 just to see, because I'd like to see exactly what's going on for myself.

01:42:58.980 I also think that would be very fun.

01:43:00.420 So maybe we'll do something like that in the future.

01:43:03.720 That'd be a good thing to plan.

01:43:05.320 And so, well, your website again?

01:43:09.440 DaringToWonder.com.

01:43:10.420 Yeah.

01:43:10.680 And the Acton Academy website for further information?

01:43:13.020 ActonAcademy.org.

01:43:14.480 ActonAcademy.org.

01:43:15.380 All right.

01:43:15.880 Well, thank you for everyone for watching and listening.

01:43:18.700 I'm going to flip over to the Daily Wire Plus side.

01:43:21.240 You can continue, consider joining us there if you want to hear more about the background

01:43:27.340 of Zach's life, for example, and to discover with us what motivated him to pursue the path

01:43:32.900 that he pursued, which is kind of what I do on the Daily Wire Plus side.

01:43:36.840 You might want to consider giving them some support because, well, if you like this sort

01:43:40.600 of discussion, they're the ones facilitating it.

01:43:42.980 And that's real good of them.

01:43:44.000 Thanks to the film crew here in Toronto today and Zach for making the trip up here.

01:43:48.460 That's very much appreciated.

01:43:49.800 Thank you.

01:43:50.100 And thank you all very much for your time and attention.

01:43:52.800 See you soon.

370. Your Children Are Schooled to Be Factory Workers ｜ Zach Lahn

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