Latest / ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence / Brandon Hendrickson on Making Education Engaging (#053)

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Brandon Hendrickson on Making Education Engaging (#053) · ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_08: We need to uh express to our kids, we need to help our kids experience this whole thing of education as an adventure that they uh are entering into.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_08: That they we are embarked, we are already embarked um uh on this on this adventure.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_08: We can't we can't take it back now.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_08: Um people have come before us trying to understand the world, trying to live well, trying to create harmonious and just societies.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh we gain our strength from tapping into that rich tradition of people who have come before us.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh and that the truth of the world, which is true because of the brains that we happen to have evolved, is that, as Egan said, and as I said, as I quoted before, that we are surrounded by mystery.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_08: And what we know is fascinating.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_08: That there is that there seems to be nothing in the world that is not terribly interesting once you get through the crust and get into the gooey inside of it.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_08: And so uh our primary task as parents when it comes to education, which is deeply connected to the kind of people that we want our kids to be, um, but uh but is not but is not the same thing, it's not identical with it.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_08: Um but insofar as education comes into it, we want to help them experience this.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_08: Part of this is by um demonstrating a maybe I should uh say uh cultivating a omnivorous uh uh hunger for to learn about everything in the world, um, ourselves, uh, is to uh in in my context, right?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_08: Like one of the things that I do with my kids is I bring them as much as is possible into um uh contact with people who are really great at explaining things about the world, who have themselves already fallen in love with weird things in the world and can help them fall in love with that too.
• 2:29
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• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's fascinating uh to talk to you.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: I have heard your book review on the educating mind, uh, October 2023 in uh you know the uh the podcast, and it was one of the best ones that I've ever heard, and it's a long one, but a fantastic review of the book.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks a lot for accepting my invite.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_08: Thank you so much for inviting me on to this.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, uh Brandon, I wanted to uh you know kick off this conversation with the hero that you look up to, the the book that you figured out in the library that you start with, right?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so talk to me about your hero first and tell me what are the things that uh you found amazing uh that uh that allowed you to kind of look at and say, hey, I need to look at schooling in a new way and I need to transform the way I think I need to teach to kids.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: So talk to me about your hero, tell me a little bit about it because people in this part of the world may not know about him.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't want to name him, but I want you to start off with a tribute to him.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_08: I I think the way to talk about that is to say a little bit about where I was when I discovered the work of Kieran Egan.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_08: Um I uh I was the sort of student who never was told that I was actually supposed to care about the grades that I got in my classes.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_08: I just, whatever I studied, I just studied it because I fell in love with it.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_08: I'm now diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, ADHD.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_08: Uh, and looking back, I see that I had an ADHD-fueled childhood where I would just get really interested in some new topic and go to the library and read a dozen or three dozen books about that topic.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_08: And I was able to connect, because I sort of developed this well-rounded understanding of the world, I was able to find what was exciting about any of the topics that I was learning in school, with almost no exceptions.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_08: The exceptions were the interesting things, the hard things.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_08: Um, but then I got really good grades when I was in high school, and I got uh a free ride to an undergraduate education, um, a really great honors college where I was trained in the grade books tradition, and uh was never probably somebody told me at some point that I was supposed to care about grades, but I never was able to make myself.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and so I just took whatever classes.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_08: I think probably somebody else told me that I should care about what my major was in college, but I never cared about it.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_08: I uh I had no plans for what I was going to do after I graduated.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_08: I just saw college as an opportunity to take whatever the shiniest classes were at any given uh beginning of term.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_08: Um and uh so three years into college, the the university sent me a letter and said, you really are obligated right now to declare what the topic is that you are studying.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_08: And so I picked World Religions.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh and then after two years of that, I realized when I was right when I was about to graduate, I realized, wait a second, I can't get a job with a degree in World Religions.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_08: What am I gonna do?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_08: I need to do something practical.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_08: And so I decided to stay on a fifth and very expensive, not covered for by my scholarship um uh year, um, and uh and got a very practical degree in history, which is obviously not actually a practical degree either.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_08: I thought I could maybe become a history teacher.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_08: And uh this just showed I was the first person in my extended family to go to university um and uh uh and just shows like the absolute naive say that I was approaching the world with.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_08: Um but then I I graduated in those things um and loved, you know, virtually every class that I took.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_08: And I I learned so much and learned to fall in love with so much of the world.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_08: And then my final year of college, I I happened to read a book by um but by someone that you and and members of your audience may know, a man named John Taylor Gotto, uh, sort of the font terrible of uh American education, a man who had gotten the um the New York City Teacher of the Year Award uh sometime in the 1990s, and then the next year quit teaching uh in a huff with an essay called like why uh why I'm quitting teaching or why schools suck, or something like that.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_08: And he became the face of um of this this uh this sort of intellectually quasi-respectable camp that said, Okay, schooling doesn't actually work, it's actually bad for students.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_08: And I found his ideas tremendously exciting, and I still wanted to be a teacher, um, but I didn't have an education degree, and so uh, you know, what does one do in that sort of situation?
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_08: One becomes a tutor.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_08: And so I became a test prep tutor, and I opened a couple businesses um with some people um uh uh with with test prep and ended up specializing in high very high-end test prep for people who have uh ADHD.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_08: Um but then along the side, I I realized that I couldn't keep scratching my intellectual itch just by doing this, even though it was an opportunity to get into cognitive science and get into well, honestly, mostly cognitive science, performance science, and uh and the psychology of memory and the psychology of working memory and the psychology of um of of uh how people learn educational psychology.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_08: And uh so I started teaching on the side just a whole mess of different classes.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_08: Again, whatever sounded the most interesting with our local homeschooling community in Seattle, where I was living at the time.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_08: Uh, and um, so I teach classes in history, because I actually had a degree in that, European history, world history, American history.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_08: Um, but I hated teaching the same thing twice.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_08: And so I would go out of my way to find opportunities to teach classes in, oh, you know, big history, you know, history from the Big Bang to the present and looking into the future, future studies, um, uh courses in world religions, courses in philosophy, courses in uh worldviews, um, uh uh from theism to naturalism to nihilism to existentialism to pantheistic monism to postmodernism, uh, classes in the philosophy of evil, uh, courses in happiness, right?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_08: All these intellectually very rigorous courses that I would teach with very brilliant, thoughtful, such cool kids, high schoolers mostly, but also preschoolers, also elementary schoolers, also college students, um, some middle schoolers, even sometimes.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_08: Uh, and um uh I would teach all these things and teach all these subjects, science, um, uh reading, um, literature.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_08: And um, and I would I would fall in love with again and again this or that approach to education.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_08: And what always happened was that I would learn about classical schooling, or I'd learn about Montessori schooling or Waldorf or uh unschooling or whatever, and I would you know read a book or two on it, and I would get so excited, and I would so naturally see what was beautiful about it.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_08: And I would then finally get around to meeting some people who did it and found out that the thing that they understood, the piece of education that they understood that really was beautiful, was just that one thing.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_08: And it was never any of the other insights that anybody else had had.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_08: And it would be very disorienting and confusing for me.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_08: And so I figured that, okay, what do I need to do to actually understand education?
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_08: Is I I need to go back to school.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_08: I need to get a degree in this.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_08: So I enrolled in a uh on paper, very good master's program in uh the social and cultural foundations of education.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, sort of aiming toward a philosophy of education sort of element, but also integrated with um with how education actually works through history and through sociology and through economics and all of those things.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_08: Um and I found it to be an intellectual wasteland.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_08: Um, with some important exceptions, but most of my classmates were not thoughtful about education.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_08: They were doing it because it was prof because it was a professional degree.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_08: Most of my professors were not intellectually interesting people.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_08: Uh some of them were just there to, you know, get a job to do a job.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_08: Uh, here's what the book teaches.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_08: Let me push this into you.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_08: Others were ideologues of one sort or another, um, who were very close-minded about uh who came into the class with, you know, there is one exact answer to the questions that we will ask in this.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_08: And my job is to give you the illusion that you are have that we are having a uh exciting open conversation while bringing you to this answer.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_08: And if you do not get to this answer, um uh bad things will happen.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_08: I they wouldn't have put it that way, but that was very much my experience of that.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_08: Um, with to be clear, um a handful, a small handful of very excellent exceptions.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_08: Um but the overall story was that.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_08: So I was in this funk, I was in this dark period of how how is how do I make sense of education?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_08: But I was in an academic library and I was looking for one book, and I happened to run across this book by this thinker who I'd never heard about before, named Kieran Egan, called Getting It Wrong from the Beginning.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_08: Is it is it okay actually if I share my screen with this and thank you very much.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_08: Let me just pull this up right now.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_08: Getting it wrong from the beginning.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_08: Here I go.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_08: Okay.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_08: Our Progressivist Inheritance from Herbert Spencer, John Dewey, and Jean Piaget by by Kieran Egan.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_08: Um and uh and I read it and it it asked the questions that nobody else was asking, and it put the big picture of not how like just this or that or whatever philosophy kind of worked together, but these meta-philosophies of education.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_08: And shown how the last hundred years had been this fruitless war, this this uh this pointless battle of arguing over the things that were not the most important things between the educational traditionalists and the educational progressivists.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_08: We can and probably need to talk about what we um what at least I am talking about when I when I say those things, because people use different phrases.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, um, but this was like the hidden war in education.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_08: And he identified the problem of school more better, uh, at least that I had experienced, uh, more clearly than anything that I had ever read, um, including the affonte terrible, um, which is that everything in the world is interesting, but we portray the world in schools to students as mostly no is is is as dull.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_08: Um, but we are surrounded by mystery and what we know is fascinating.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_08: And uh and I was hooked, and then I found after having read this that he did not just raise the questions, he did not just identify the problem, but he had his own unique, um, uh very unique way of trying to answer this and set up a new foundation for education.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_08: Uh and that he chronicles in a number of books, um, uh, most sort of officially, uh, the book uh The Educated Mind, um, How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_08: And I suppose I'm obligated, having shown one, to show that other one.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_08: Where are you?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_08: That's funny.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_08: Oh, here it is.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_08: Okay.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the educated mind.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_08: And this is the book then that I ended up doing my uh my book review for the Astral Codex 10 book review contest.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Correct, the Astral Codex 10 uh book review, which you won the best uh award, also, right?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_08: It is still the biggest thing to have happened in my life thus far.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_08: I have three wonderful children, and I have an amazing wife and wonderful friends.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_08: And probably I should put all of those things before the book review contest, but boy, it's it's it's it's a it's a close match there.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_08: Uh um this uh it's a good thing I will say that I had previously read and gotten hooked on his uh his identification of what the problem was in education.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_07: Okay.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_08: Because famously, and this is famous even among people who are partisans of Kieran Egan's way of approaching education, it is impossible, it's all but impossible to express what his ideas actually are.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_08: He strived, strove, he strove to do it, and I think mostly failed at doing it.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_08: And there's a bunch of reasons why that is the case.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_08: And my quest in doing that book review contest from last year was to spend about three months of my life where I did absolutely nothing else except for study his book, summarize his book paragraph by paragraph, do workshops on his book, use the tools that he talked about to better express what his ideas actually were.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_08: And I did a, I would say, fair job of it.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_08: Uh the what I've devoted the rest of my life to is continuing to unpack uh his ideas and more importantly bring them into action, actually getting homeschoolers, uh, helping homeschoolers uh uh make turn his ideas into things that they can practically do, actually helping people who found micro schools um uh turn his ideas into things they can practically do, which is the purpose then of the Substack that I opened um uh when I found out that my book review was one of the 10 finalists uh for that, which is called The Lost Tools of Learning.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_08: Fantastic.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: So uh what a story, what a story, Brandon.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, uh and the it's a must listen for people uh in the Astral Codex 10 podcast to listen to this review.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's phenomenal, it's a two and a half hour review, but the way you've done it is quite amazing.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so one of the questions uh you know that puts me uh uh you know to ask you is uh when you did this research and when you look at schools and when you say you know open schooling versus micro schooling versus the traditional public and private schools, uh so where have schools uh you know really uh failed to deliver for uh uh you know for kids and therefore the education is therefore broken.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you think that's the case today?
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_08: I think there's a long answer to that, and let me try to give the shortest one.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_08: Schools, both of the traditionalist and progressivist varieties, have failed to understand the very first thing about what learning is for human beings.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_08: Uh that sounds big, but I think I can I think I can back that up.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and that is that for a human being, and I think this is actually also true of everything going down to at the very least fish, um, and maybe down to bugs too.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_08: Um but for uh but for a human being, definitely the most important thing if we want to help someone learn something is that we have to make it matter.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_08: And that schools, and and this is true, microschools and and and homeschooling approaches and tutoring and so many so many things uh frequently forget this or pr make this sort of a a small thing, or don't think it's realistic to even try to do that at all.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_08: When a human being we we and we can talk about how to do this, right?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_08: Egan's entire approach can be interpreted as a way of making anything matter to a student.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, but um, but uh but when but the payoff of all of this is that if you make something matter to a student or to yourself when you are trying to learn something, um then you will bring your full thinking to it.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_08: Your your attention will be geared in, your uh your all of your working memory will be opened up.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_08: Things will fall into your long-term memory more easily.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_08: When you are, you know, waking up in the morning or when you're in the shower, you're going to be thinking about these things if they matter to you.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_08: That there is this, there is a royal road to learning, and it is to make something matter.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_08: I sometimes imagine that inside of everyone's brain, we have a button that if you just push it, it makes it, it makes it matter.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_08: We can talk about cognitively what is going on when something matters to people, um, or neurologically, what is happening when something matters to people.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_08: Um, but uh, but I imagine there's a I imagine it like there's a button inside of there.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_08: And as long as we can hit that button and keep that button hit when we are teaching, when we are we ourselves are learning, then we are geniuses.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_08: Um or something that maybe is is not as august as the word genius, but I I think really the word genius does come into it, right?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_08: There's that fake quote by Einstein everybody is a genius, but if you uh expect a fish to climb a tree, I mean you're gonna get this quote wrong, but if you but if you Expect a fish to climb a tree, it will live its entire life thinking that it's an idiot.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_08: I'm really butchering that quote.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_08: Um, but uh but there really is something that can be called genius that is natural to the human condition.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_08: And of course there is, because it's the only thing that we have going for us.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_08: We don't have claws, we don't have thick hides, we don't have horns, we don't have uh plates on our back.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_08: Um I think I'm getting dinosaur here.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_08: Uh the only thing that we have going for us is the the three pounds of slimy uh slime uh that is uh the seed of reason inside of our heads.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh and and so it makes sense that we should all be kind of genius.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_08: And uh but it we're only that when something matters to us.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_08: So I think that that is the major mistake, the major missed opportunity of both progress uh traditionalist and progressivist approaches to school.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_08: Um if I okay, so can I I'm actually curious about this because I'm I'm never sure in conversations how much I should use those terms or whether I should reword them or whether I should do whatever.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_08: So I'm curious when I say the educational traditionalists and the educational progressivists, um, what comes to your mind, if anything?
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: So uh the traditionalists are the people who probably uh you know uh have a certain framework uh uh which is standard templates, which is what I call as the uh you know a production mindset to education.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: Which is uh, you know, there are certain grades, there are certain subjects, you go through the process, you get your degree, you get your uh, you know, uh you make uh them job ready, if you if I were to call it.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh the uh the progress progress progress vis as you call it, right?
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: Progress as you call it, are a little more saying, you know, you don't need to do what the world does, you know, uh, you know, go through open schooling, go through uh, you know, a different form of education, uh, you know, it could be a discovery method, uh, and that's probably uh not many parents are ready to accept because they're very worried that what will the kids do after having this education, right?
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: So therefore, you are at the both ends of the spectrum, and traditionalists approach it from a job mindset.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I think the progressivists approach it from okay, learning is important, but there is a very, very small percentage who basically are very worried that okay, if this kid does this, what's the future?
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_08: Yes.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_08: So that's good.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_08: That aligns quite closely with the way that I break these words down.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_08: And I need to say that in some ways, these words, these categories lie to us, right?
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_08: Like all categories are uh are false, some categories are useful to quote um uh an important statistician.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh so this category has its problems.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_08: Um the way that I think about the traditionalists is that the traditionalists can be it seems like you're emphasizing the um the job ready for this.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_08: I think that there are also traditionalists who don't care about jobs at all.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_08: Who and I think that uh the people that I studied under in college, right, like they didn't care what job I was going to get.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_08: They wanted me to learn and understand the most important things in the world, the most beautiful things in the world, uh the truest things in the world.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_08: It was all about ideas, ideas, ideas.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_08: And that was very much a traditionalist sort of education.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_08: Um so but you can have uh uh uh uh you can also have uh very jobs uh uh uh big people uh in the traditionalist camp also.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_08: In the Progressivist camp, uh that includes people I used to work at what I referred to in very lovingly as a hippie school uh outside of Seattle, and it truly is a very good school.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_08: They have wonderful people who are working in it, they get wonderful families.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_08: Um it is I would happily send my kids to the school.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh but they did not particularly care about what jobs, preparing kids for jobs there.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_08: Um what I would say, the way that that these schemata work inside of my head, what I would say is the difference between traditionalists and progressivists, is that for a traditionalist, an ideal teacher is a presenter of information.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_08: Whereas for a progressivist, the ideal teacher is a really good coach who can help you kind of learn for yourself.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_08: A student for a traditionalist is kind of a bucket for information to be put in.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_08: And a student uh for a progressivist is something like I wanna I this sounds like a mean way of saying this, like a calculator.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_08: Like somebody who can do anything um uh on their own and they don't need uh they don't need information to be put inside of their heads.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_08: Um they need to be taught how to think, they don't need to be taught information.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh the basic uh goal of a traditionalist is to push the kids, get them to focus, give them a rigorous curriculum that is really hard, and then like just push them as hard as you can, uh, and maybe help them push themselves as hard as they can to learn this stuff.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_08: Um whereas for a progressivist, it's about setting kids free to do what comes more naturally to them.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_08: This uh traditionalist will see education as a very artificial thing.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_08: A progressivist will see it as natural.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_08: Um and um and then very much in line with what you said, a traditionalist will say, okay, we should take this curriculum and in so insofar as we're able to, we should standardize it.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_08: So we can measure it, so we can help people across, you know, our country do it exactly the same one best way.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh whereas a progressivist will say, well, do we really need a curriculum at all?
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_08: Or they the word curriculum is sort of reinterpreted to mean like, well, like a series of kind of loosely done activities.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh we should customize you know the curriculum as much as possible for people.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_08: So that's what I mean by the both of those.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_08: Uh and I have been an arch traditionalist before, and I've been an arch progressivist before.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_08: And um, and I think I think in some ways, like these are poles of the human personality.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_08: And I think that we never really uh get totally beyond these things.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh I think in some ways even that uh that if one is uh follows Kieran Egan's paradigm, one can still sort of be a prog uh a traditionalist or sort of be a progressivist.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_08: Um but I do think that Egan points out that both of these are built on very stupid foundations.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_08: Foundations that maybe made sense a hundred years ago when like the big fight between traditionalism and progressivism was happening in America and in Europe.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_08: Um and now we look at this through cognitive science, we look at this through anthropology, we look at this through sociology and sociobiology, and even biology sometimes, and we say, oh my gosh, both of these camps are stupid.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_08: Nobody would ever invent uh uh uh an educational philosophy like these um based on what we know now.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, what was Swami, what was the question?
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the question, the question really was uh, you know, why are schools broken, right?
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's really where I think uh people are talking.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so one of the things uh that I'm challenged with schooling, right, is uh I compare it with uh say uh a profession like say music or say sports, where I think uh when I look at Kerry Negan's uh framework, we'll uh you know talk to us about the framework.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: But one thing uh when I see the framework is there is this whole uh you know space that he talks about heroes, right?
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so when I'm a musician or when I'm a sports uh you know, I'm preparing for a profession like a tennis or golf or whatever, I have a hero, and then what I do is I then start to uh you know uh the somatic one that you talk about, and then you move into uh you know the uh uh you know the romantic and then philosoph and then the irony.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: There's a whole framework that you talk about, but when I know what I want to achieve in my profession, yeah, okay, yeah, then I basically then spend years trying to become an expert at it, and I have a love for it.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: But somehow, when I go to a school today, I'm not very sure what career I'm going to take up.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, therefore, I'm actually served what I call as a buffet.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: Take physics, take math, take uh you know, social studies, take history.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: You figure out your interests, and suddenly I do not know what I'm good at, and you know, I'm I lose confidence, and then I I'm actually not sure what I'm going to do.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: But imagine if I were to say, okay, this is a class for uh computer scientists, this is a class for architects, this is a class for uh so now I know a mental model of what I want to be, and you can keep switching, right?
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, therefore, when I look at schooling, probably the challenge 100 years back was you're preparing factory workers.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, the challenge 100 years later is you are actually want people with cognitive capabilities, right?
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so what worked 100 years back may not work today, and therefore, do you think schooling is a problem?
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_08: So let me make sure that I understand the question.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_08: It's how do I it's do I think that the problem is that schools are made for essentially to churn out factory workers 100 years ago?
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_08: Is that basically what you're asking?
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think it was designed around that, okay.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but today, when you look back, you you you're you're saying oh no, people should think, okay.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: But there, I think you are not supposed to think.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: What you are supposed to do was I'll give you a certain task, you get it done.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, therefore, you you get it done very well.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think you are performed.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: But today, I actually put you into things which I do not know how you will solve the problem.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so uh so therefore, when most schools prepare you for, I would think, problems that are known, therefore, you can solve it.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: While today the world is more and more becoming, I do not know what the problem itself is.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: Go figure it out and solve the problem, okay?
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay, and now the kids are not ready for something like that, and that's the reason where the where the philosophy of Carl Egan uh you know appealed to me because you're saying no, go and figure out the world, right?
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and uh I think that is really what appealed to me.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: So is my understanding right?
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_08: I think your understanding that I'm hearing right now is looking at Egan from the parts of Egan that agree with progressivist and a progressivist approach.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_08: Um and right, like I think that there are a lot of progressivists who um who love Egan.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and I think that he brings out some of their best elements.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_08: So yes, let me just say that uh much of what you are saying, maybe all of what you are saying is is uh is is in Egan uh there.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_08: But I think that there's a bigger picture for what Egan is suggesting um that is missing from from what you're suggesting right now.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_08: Is it okay if I if if I if I uh uh uh uh say that on your podcast?
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, uh you know, of course you've got to contradict and uh correct me, and uh that's fantastic.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's the expectation.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_08: I'm suddenly reminded of the uh title of of the the the name of the podcast.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_08: In fact, I feel like maybe I am uh in fact fulfilling fulfilling the the name of it.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_08: Um okay, I wanna can I first back up just because I have uh ADHD, and if I don't say this, if I don't address this part right now, and it's not a very it's not important, but I think it's so interesting, and nobody nobody ever says this.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_08: I never heard anybody say this.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_08: And I think it I think it's yeah, is that is yeah, so let me let me let me just jump in and uh and say um something that I want to address with this.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_08: When I first fell in love with education and fell in love specifically, like I said before, with the work of um John Taylor Gato, the guy who wrote uh um the underground history of education, who wrote uh a different kind of teacher was the book I originally read, the font terrible.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_08: Um he was actually one of the major voices who was bringing this sort of story of education, that schools were designed to pump out factory workers.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_08: Um he was bringing that into the educational conversation.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_08: And I think to a large extent, to whatever extent that that is a common thing that we can hear smart people say now is is because of because of him.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_08: Um I think that there is a I think that his perspective on this is uh is is largely true.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_08: Um I uh used to see this as actually as a villainous thing because factory workers, that's terrible.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_08: And then I worked in a factory.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_08: I had a lot of odd jobs, um, and I realized, oh, like the it's actually it's actually hard to work in a factory, and I'm terrible at it.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_08: It's not easy.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_08: Um it's not putting people down.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_08: It's actually, it's actually like was the most helpful economic thing to help uh them rise up.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_08: Um so I came to appreciate that.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_08: I think in America right now we're actually seeing the effect uh in behavior and in students' behavior in classrooms.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_08: I know personally um uh uh people who are also personal friends with teachers who um have left the the teaching uh profession because of discipline problems by being like punched by students and having um the uh their their heads of schools not back them up.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_08: Um because I think in some ways even the heads of schools are saying, well, but we don't want to make schools into just you know training to be a factory a factory worker.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_08: We need to treat the students as moral agents.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_08: They've gone so far in that direction that now schools can't even run.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_08: Schools are so chaotic, at least in some situations.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_08: I I don't I feel like this is a moral panic right now in the United States, and I'm always skeptical of moral panics.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_08: Um but um I think that also I think that that was seen as a problem in education a hundred years ago, that oh no, we're just pumping up factory workers.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_08: And I think that in some ways, educational traditionalism and educational progressivism arose to try to fix that problem.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_07: Okay.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_08: And the traditionalists said what we need to do is pump these kids full of the most important, most beautiful, uh, most true ideas um that humanity has ever has ever had.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_08: Um and that explains why a lot of um uh at least in America and Europe, um uh the upper high school um curriculum is given to such ac so many academic things.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_08: Um and uh then the progressivists kind of in the big divorce of education, of schooling, they got the elementary school curriculum.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_08: Um which is why uh at least in America and uh much of Europe, the elementary sorry, I should say the English I should say England.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_08: I do I don't I don't know the rest of Europe.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_08: France is a very different place educationally, um, where so much of the younger elementary school curriculum is very low content, academic content, very low rigor.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_08: It's a lot of let's open up these opportunities for you to express yourself, to become curious, to fall in love with things.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and uh so this is sort of the Frankenstein monster that we have now of schools that begin with six years, five or six years of traditionalism and end with five or six or seven years of uh, well, at least four years of of uh of traditionalism.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_08: And uh I will say that this is the worst of all possible worlds.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_08: I think maybe if you flipped it actually, it might work better.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_08: Um you had traditionalism first and progressivism second.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_08: Uh, I'm not sure about that.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_08: Um but I will but so let me I will push back on the idea that the problem is that we're just pumping up factory workers because I think that we've been trying to fix that problem for a hundred years.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_08: And I think that our attempts to fix that problem have now become the problems that uh that we've been trying to fix.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_08: And we've never been able to fix the problem.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_08: We've never been able to make schools into the places that everyone agrees that we want them to be, intellectually vivacious, vibrant places where kids are learning all sorts of new ideas, learning about themselves, learning about um the uh the grand world uh around them, catching up with the biggest insights of science, uh, but also learning about their local communities, right?
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_08: Learning what it is to be a human being.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_08: Um, everyone more or less agrees, they'll talk it, they'll use different words to describe this, the these two camps.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_08: But they I think that there is a beautiful vision of education that that incorporates all of that, uh, that everyone more or less agrees on, and everyone more or less agrees that we are failing terribly at that.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_08: Whew, okay, sorry.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_08: That is that is my response to the uh the factory sort of thing.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_08: You want to respond to that?
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_08: Because I can also um I can piggyback off of the other thing that you said about um well there's a there's a crucial word, a secret word that you said that I think is the the secret to solving everything.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_08: But do you want to respond back to uh to what I just said?
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: No, I I I I agree with that because uh so one of the things that uh that makes me think about this uh is because uh so when you when these kids end up in a workplace, uh uh they are not uh you know, they are actually trained to address a problem, uh, but uh the workplace does not you know the uh does not give you the problem, you've got to comprehend the problem, right?
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly when you're when you have to comprehend the problem, they're asking a question saying, tell me what to do, okay, while their bosses are actually telling them, Go figure out the problem and solve it.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and therefore, I agree with you that whether you are a factory worker more or whether you are a knowledge worker more, the challenge today is comprehending the problem versus solve the problem or fix the problem, okay, uh, is actually the biggest problem uh that education is unable to solve, right?
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, uh I would agree with you, and hence the fact that uh you know you talk about this whole uh you know big picture thinking, looking at metaphors, looking at uh you know, thinking about one thing and doing it for 12 years, okay.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah uh the framework.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, can you talk to me about uh you know the framework uh and why that will ensure or that will be a good, let me not use the word ensure, but that's a good starting point for kids uh in schools loving what they do, and therefore they start to learn and it sticks to their uh memory, right?
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's what you talk about, right?
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: So talk to me about that framework.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_08: Yes.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, so I think that I want to jump up right now and make a sort of meta point toward this, which is that I always find that when I talk about Egan's ideas to people, I end up having very different conversations if the people are one, if they're parents, whether they be homeschoolers or whether they're just parents who want to offer their kids um uh new opportunities for learning, very different conversation for how to apply Egan's ideas than if they are an actual teacher who is tasked with given uh uh with with a specific thing or set of things to teach and then how best to teach those.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_08: Um and is still very different from um uh what uh the conversations that are appropriate to have with people who are designing um new kinds of schools, um, which is essentially what a position that homeschoolers are in because they can typically choose their own um is homeschooling a thing in India?
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's catching up, it's a very, very small percentage.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: We are largely uh what I call as uh big label college education syndrome, right?
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so that's the uh that uh that I would call as 90 95 98% of India sure is about let me go to a big college, an IIT, a Stanford, a Cornell, then your your that shiny little thing, I'm actually successful, right?
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so therefore I think homeschooling is something that people are starting to appreciate.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but I don't think there is so much of uh, you know, uh I would say uh uh I would say the take rates are far more lower, but everybody understands there is a problem of education, but nobody knows how to solve it.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I think in that context, uh the fact that they should enjoy schooling, right?
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then they start learning versus understanding, right?
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, what you talk about.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I can uh you know education is one thing, learning is another thing, understanding is another thing, right?
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I think there is a struggle in India uh about this, and uh kids go through this problem, and therefore, this concept that you talked about appealed to me, which is the reason I thought we should have this conversation.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_08: Well, then maybe a good way for maybe a question that I should ask you is um would you like me to answer this question as if I'm Talking to a teacher or talking to a school founder?
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I would say I would take three, not two.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: So one is to a teacher, one is probably to a school founder, and three is to a parent.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think parents also need to take cognizance of the fact that they have to prepare these kids for the world, right?
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, just grades alone don't make kids successful.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: And they then suddenly realize realize this 25 years later, right?
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: So therefore, the fact that these three things are so important.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: So talk to me about a teacher being a coach, okay.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: Talk to me about school providing uh ecosystem for learning through understanding, and talk to me about how parents need to create an environment and not worry too much about uh you know uh uh you know labels, but if the kid starts to understand, they'll figure out the way to succeed, right?
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I think these are three important problems I think we are talking today, and I would like to address them specifically in these three tracks.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_08: Sure, sure, happy to do it.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_08: Um I would say that so then good that with this going back to your earlier, pardon me.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_08: With this, going back to your earlier question of what is this whole big picture?
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_08: How does one tap into it to make learning meaningful, to make learning matter?
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_08: I would say that from the perspective of a teacher, the best that one who's has a curriculum that they are obligated to teach, the best that one can usually do is to say is to start when one is thinking about every lesson, to start by saying, not what is the most important piece of this information for uh my students to understand academically, which might be the traditionalist approach.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_08: And it's not to say, what is the most practical element of this for that students can use?
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_08: Um both of these are not terri neither of these are terrible.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_08: Um but if you take this uh in this understanding of human psychology seriously that we need to make things matter, we say, okay, if I have this lesson on, I don't know, the Pythagorean theorem, right?
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_08: Um but what about this matters emotionally to me.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_08: Um one of the things that we've been finding uh through the last 30, 40 now years of psychology is that we used to think that there was cognition and there was emotion.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_08: There was thinking and there was feeling, and that these things were relatively separate, and insofar as they insofar and that education is about the thinking part, and that insofar as the emotion comes into learning, it's bad.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_08: It gets in the way of learning.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_08: Um so much educational psychology has been written that absolutely ignores emotions.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_08: I was told once in graduate school when I was bringing up some Egan ideas, they said, yes, yes, it's but that's motivation.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_08: That's separate.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_08: I'm like, no, that's never, ever, ever separate.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_08: You are fundamentally misconceiving of what learning is.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_08: What is wrong with this place?
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_08: Um, but uh so then a teacher sits down when I'll say this like when I sit down and I and I think about a lesson, right?
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_08: Uh I say, okay, what is the most emotionally affecting aspect of this to me?
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_08: And how can I make that the center of the lesson?
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_08: Um, how can I make that like something like a hook at the beginning?
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_08: How can I I I uh how can I I make that the payoff at the end of the lesson?
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh what I do with we haven't talked at all, but the the the the company that I that I run have we so I should say at this point that um at the beginning of the pandemic, I started a company called Science is Weird with the explicit purpose of being a publicly accessible, a globally accessible um instantiation example of Kieran Egan's vision of education.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_08: Because I saw that one of the biggest limits in people talking about Egan was that people didn't have um uh many examples that they could look at.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_08: And you know, I know that some people like us, like we can understand things through ideas, just through the intellectual work of a thing.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_08: But most people like and honestly, me when I'm learning about something that's not about education, like I just need lots of examples of a thing.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_08: And so what I've been doing with Egan education is coming up with so many examples of what Egan education looks like.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_08: Every lesson is designed to be a you know carefully crafted um uh uh instantiation example of uh of what Egan can look like.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_08: So with those, I actually start with a riddle, and then the um the ending is this revelation that upsets your view of reality, that is in fact the exact opposite of something that you'd always assumed about the world, but that uh and that you know you you just never assume I guess that's the definition of an assumption, right?
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_08: That you did not think that uh that it would ever ever could be um flipped around.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_08: Um and uh so sorry, I guess what am I answering?
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_08: I'm answering the question of uh what should a teacher do to bring the big picture in.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_08: One should imagine that your students are meaning makers, that what that they try, that they that they have this view of the world, this emotionally charged view of the world, and um you should find the aspect of your lesson that most is exciting, shocking even um for that.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_08: Uh and uh and then you should have the whole lesson be a way of sort of pulling out and exploring um that one insight, or at least that is a way of bringing Egan in.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: Beautiful, beautiful.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna st I'm going to intervene here, uh Brandon, and uh say imagine I was teaching something like calculus, and you run a company, science is weird, right?
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_00: So uh so you're talking about, say, calculus, and you say, hey, uh as a kid, uh I really uh and I'm assuming you're you're in the you know middle school or uh you know maybe uh high school where you're really talking about calculus.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: And uh one thing you talk about is bringing emotion and relevance and uh you know the impact of calculus, how it can help in the world, right?
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I think one of the articles that you write about is uh about even about the eclipse that you've written saying is okay, sun is uh, you know, uh uh you know how far is sun, you know, how big is sun?
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I you have to give it as metaphors and you explain it so beautifully.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine I was teaching calculus, uh, so if I was a teacher, uh if I have to bring emotion into the classroom, yeah, okay, and make it exciting for the kid to go back and start thinking about calculus.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so what would you suggest as the path to you know take this into uh Egan's principles?
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_08: So I love that you use the example of calculus because calculus is the one branch of math that I understand the least well.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_08: I I um uh but let's stick with it because I think this is maybe interesting for both of us to explore.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_08: I um I should say that I got a um uh 800 on my GRE quantitative.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_08: Like I'm I'm able to do math.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh but I uh just I took a one course in brief calculus in college.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_08: I um I uh got a C B minus in it.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_08: I'd earned a C plus, and the professor was kind to me.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_08: Um and uh that is the lowest grade I ever got in any college course.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh but you know, I but I know a bit about it, which is probably good enough for what we're talking about.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, so how would I teach calculus?
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_08: And how would Egan suggest that people approach calculus?
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_08: So uh one of the things that Egan suggests is um, like I said, like thinking about like how does how does calculus like make you feel about the thing?
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_08: Like what is what is the what is really cool about this?
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_08: So, from what I understand about the history of mathematics, um, that calculus is about instantaneous change.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_08: How to how to uh and what I vaguely remember from my calculus course is how to measure essentially a um a curve or the area under a curve um uh without just having to approximate it by uh by understanding uh by by by drawing straight lines.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_08: How how correct is this?
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_08: It must be correct because I'm as bad as what do you are.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, great, great.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_08: We're just gonna run with this.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_08: Um so uh so the first thing that I wonder is who the heck cares about this, right?
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_08: And I remember coming into you know our pre-calculus course when I was in high school.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_08: Um math really like was what in science, honestly, too, were the subjects when I was uh growing up that in school just seemed pointless to me.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_08: The way so it's I very ironic that I now teach a science uh company.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh but um uh but I remember thinking like who cares about this?
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_08: Well, so a way then of trying to figure out who cares about this is to look back at the history of um of uh of of where this even comes from, right?
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_08: And famously, at least in math history, this comes from two different minds at roughly the same time, uh uh uh Leibniz and um Isaac Newton.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_08: Um okay, so why did they care about this?
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_08: Because this was thought to be, you know, like one of the biggest breakthroughs in all of mathematics.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_08: Exactly.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh that um uh and I I don't know why Leibniz uh invented his method of calculating it, his better method of calculating it, um, I'm told.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_08: Um but I know that I believe that Newton did it in order, almost as an afterthought, in order to figure out where the planets were, to draw his elliptical pat uh orbits of the planets.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_08: Okay.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_08: So um uh you might think then that I would say, okay, so I should just tell this story to students.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_08: And honestly, like telling the origin story of a thing is very Iganian uh to do.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_08: But even still, like one could do this and it would be fine.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_08: It would be fine, but the kids wouldn't care.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_08: We would not actually have succeeded in making this matter to students.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_08: Okay.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_08: So, and this is where I've not yet solved the problem of uh of how to um of how to do this with calculus.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_08: I have solved this problem with a bunch of other uh pieces of the map.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_00: So why don't you take something that you have solved so that that'll be an interesting perspective?
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_08: Sure.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_08: Let me uh uh uh uh think of something that you want me to name for that, but let me just jump in and say that like the way that I would then try to solve this for um uh to make a lesson on this or to introduce this in in college or high school would be to look at, okay, like what were the methods available to Newton beforehand?
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_08: Um and uh was it even thought that you would that you could never solve the uh for the area under the curve?
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_08: Um there's an element of like then telling students the story such that they actually care about it.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_08: Framing this, you know, imagine that this was made into a movie.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_08: And imagine that we are hearing the trailer for the movie in a world where no one, where everyone knew you could never compute the area under a curve comes Isaac Newton.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_08: Right.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_08: And you see the picture of him staring off into the sky and seeing the moon go around the earth and the apple falls on his head, he goes, Oh my gosh, it's the same thing.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_08: The moon is falling.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_08: Ah um and uh so you need a good story for this, but then you need to you need to make it such that when the students like see the insight that he has about like here is how you calculate the area under a curve, they go, Oh my gosh! Right?
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_08: This is how you do it.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_08: So now go ahead and give me something in the something else in the high school curriculum or in the uh or in the uh middle school or even the elementary school curriculum.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_00: You can pick up you you can pick up what you have done because I know science is weird, has some fantastic courses.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_00: So pick up one that uh you know that uh you're doing right now and actually uh put out the framework of uh uh Egan saying that this is the way uh you know you've improvised on it and you have used some fundamentals out of Egan's philosophy.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, sure.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_00: Pick up pick up one course and talk to us about it.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_08: So I guess I'll use um kind of riffing off of uh of Newton here.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_08: Uh let me pick um the solar system.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_08: Um is it okay if I'm going to to science then?
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_08: Because we've done some math courses too.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_08: We did one on the history of algebra last year.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: No, I think I think uh a solar system will be a great way to do it.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, okay.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_08: Um so uh think about the way I mean here, how how have you what were you taught about the solar system when you were presented either in uh in elementary school or later with uh the understandings that you got about the solar system?
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_08: Like what were you taught about?
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: So uh the uh so it's a traditionalist approach.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_00: How many planets are there?
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how is it uh how are the planets uh revolving around the sun?
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so how many of them are there?
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so it's like uh like what you really said about the traditional traditionalist educational saying, okay, dump enough information into Swami, and there'll be some questions that are asked, and Swami should be able to answer that question.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was never uh, you know, imagine if I were to, you know, would it have excited me to become an astronomer?
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's the question that I would ask you.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I was not, right?
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_00: I was saying, okay, there is an exam question, and I need to go out and uh, you know, memorize it so that I can then write it and get my grades.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, yeah.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_08: And what you were saying is so perfectly indicative of the traditionalist approach, where it sort of boils, it says the traditionalist approach says that learning is unnatural, or at least academic learning is unnatural.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_08: So what we need to do, and and and we're we're dumb.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_08: Students are we should basically assume that students are dumber um uh than you might otherwise assume.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_08: And so we should boil down the information to just be as simple as possible and to give us um the um the most important, uh, the most important concepts uh or or pieces of data.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_08: Um and so the number of planets, the fact that they orbit the sun, the fact that the sun is in the center, right, that the earth is not in the center.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh, you know, if you got a more advanced course, right, uh maybe you've been taught to learn the distances or even the relative distances between this sort of thing.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how many uh and how many moons are there for every planet?
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_08: Sure, sure.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_00: So that's really what I would have learned.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, yeah.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_08: Um so uh an Egan approach, at least when I did our Egan approach, um I as part of science's weird sort of like mission, we are making this giant six-year-long comprehensive curriculum that's starting when kids are really quite young, about eight years old, um uh they can start to uh to take that goes through, you know, when they're then um 14 years old or whatever.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh but it teaches them, you know, like a a college level and a a real profound adult level understanding of things.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_08: Um so we started off with the universe, our very first course.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_08: Then we went to smaller things like water and lungs and snails and whatever.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_08: Um, but we decided to start off with the big picture of life, the universe and everything, or at least the universe and everything.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_08: Um and uh one of the first uh lessons, I think the second one, was on exactly like, okay, so what is the solar system?
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_08: And we started with with this exact riddle that I asked students, okay, what is the solar system?
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_08: And you know, to a person, they said something pretty close to, well, it's a bunch of planets that are moving around the sun, that are orbiting the sun.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_08: And what I showed them then, I told them that we wrote that sentence and I said, every, almost every word in that sentence is wrong.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_08: That these every one of these words has these bad understandings kind of baked into it.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_08: And the modern scientific understanding that we have of the solar system is uh is incredibly different.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_08: Um, such that, like the word planet is a terrible word.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_08: It's a Greek word for a wanderer.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_08: And back in the day, the moon was considered a planet too because it wandered through the sky.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_08: The sun was considered a planet too because it wandered through the sky.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_08: They're just these things, right?
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_08: We used to imagine that the world was flat and that there was a dome of the sky and that all these things were moving across it uh faster than the stars were.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_08: That's why the stars aren't wanderers.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and uh, and so like, no, like it's not that there's a sun and planets, right?
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_08: Like, like at least there's not sun and wander.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_08: They all are wanderers through that.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_08: Okay, so that's probably not a very helpful thing to say with this.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_08: But it's also not true that the sun is in the center.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_08: Not exactly.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_08: Because what Newton realizes, and we talked about the story of Newton a little bit, um, what Newton's breakthrough was, was it's not, it's not just Galileo's universe where the sun is in the center and the other things are going around it.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_08: It's it's recognizing that all mass pulls on other mass.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_08: And the bigger something is, that the m more massive something is, uh, the more it will pull on things.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_08: So the sun orbits the planets a little bit.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_08: They're all orbiting each other.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_08: Um, this is crucial because kids want to have just naturally, right?
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_08: We have these this sort of essentialist understanding of the world where we want to imagine that um like the sun like is in this one role and it does this thing.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_08: No, like the atoms that are in the sun are not special atoms.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_08: They're doing just the thing that atoms always do wherever they are, they're pulling on other things, and the sun is something that gets created out of that.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_08: I apologize.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_08: I cut you off a second ago.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, that's okay.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think I think it's beautiful.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think that the real question is you're you're you're going back and telling a story, the big picture.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_00: From the big picture, then you start to build the riddles and the metaphors.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh, and then you actually uh go back and uh give examples.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's really how you are building the story so that I get inspired by the story, and therefore I then start to get more curious, right?
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's really the role of the teacher, is what you're talking.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_08: I I think I think yes.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_08: I think if I I think the what's been missing in in in in that in that take on it is that it's not just examples, because examples can be terrifyingly dull.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_08: It's that what um Egan suggests that we do, and this is particularly true with science.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_08: This is actually less true with something like history.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_08: Um in history, I think he has he was actually he invented his whole system based on history.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_08: So he actually in some ways has more to say about history than he does with science.
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_08: Um but um but but in in history it's it's a it's a it's a different thing.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_08: Um but in science especially it's about what are the students' assumptions let us flip that over.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_08: Um so then you know, by the end of that lesson, um, and uh by the end of the lesson, you realize that wait a second, like even the word orbit is wrong.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_08: The word orbit means orbit, means sphere, means ball.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_08: Once upon a time, we thought that they were that the planets were moving on these literal glass crystalline balls uh around us all all of the time.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_08: We just couldn't see them.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_08: We saw through them to the stars behind them.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_08: Um and uh uh and so like the word orbit has has a misunderstanding baked into it, and you think, oh, who cares?
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_08: Right?
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_08: I don't care about the etymology of that word.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_08: But we do when we understand that the old way that we saw the universe was that the um was that the earth was in the center and that everything was going around the side of us.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_08: Um and then we switched that, we said the sun is in the center and the earth is one of the things going around, but we never switched the perspective.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_08: But what Newton does for us is recognize that what the thing that is happening on Earth with the apple falling is the same thing that is keeping the thing that pulls the apple down is the same thing that holds the moon up, which is to say that nothing at all is holding the moon up.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_08: Gravity means falling.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_08: Gravity was a word that he invented.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_08: It beforehand meant seriousness, right?
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_06: Grave.
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh but um but it just means that everything is falling, everything is falling together and missing each other.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_08: And how do we so how can we, Egan would have us say, connect that in a really visceral way, somatic way to students.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and the way is is to recognize that wait a second, we're using the wrong visual metaphor here.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_08: If we think about like the planets going on the side, I can talk to college students who understand that, okay, the planet's orbits, and the equation for that is exactly the gravitational orbit is exactly the same as the equation for you know how far a ball will be thrown if I throw it up in the air or whatever.
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_08: Um But they do not understand that gravity by definition pulls things down.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_08: So that a more scientifically accurate way, according to Newton, to picture the universe, picture or sorry, our solar system specifically, is to imagine that we are above the sun and we are always falling down toward the sun and we are just happened to be missing.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_08: Lots of planets weren't so lucky.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_08: They just fell down in the sun and that's where they stayed.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_08: But we're falling around the sun all the time.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_08: The amazing thing then about going to see, I took a vacation the last couple of weeks to go see the uh eclipse and uh that came across uh North America.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_08: Um we managed to just barely see it.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_08: A cloud had uh covered the entirety, almost the entirety of uh of uh of uh North America.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_08: But um uh the friend uh that we were with uh is a weather snob um and was able to read the meteorological charts and with walkie-talkies come uh uh uh uh making uh talking between two different minivans, we were able to jet around the hinterlands, um, uh the boonies of uh of Texas in order to find a very small spot um that the sky was visible for for that those crucial five or whatever minutes.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_08: But anyway, the amazing thing from that was not just looking up and seeing, oh, look, it's really cool in the sky, right?
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_08: My my year old daughter was able to appreciate that.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_08: She was pointing up to the sky, going, ah, waah, wah, right?
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_08: And that is really cool.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_08: But then when you bring together this understanding of the solar system, where you realize, wait a second, in some important way, it's more scientifically accurate for me to say, not say that I'm looking up at the sun in the eclipse, but I'm looking down at the sun.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_08: And the moon is 400 times closer than the sun, it's 400 times smaller than the sun.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_08: It's as if I'm at the top of a skyscraper, and I'm looking down at the ground below.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_08: That's where the sun is.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_08: And I have a P in my hand, and I'm stretching out the P, and that is just about perfectly blocking this giant sun that is down at the bottom of that um uh of uh of uh of the skyscraper.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_08: Um and uh the the P is the moon, they're right there, and like the the Earth in this situation would be about the size of a tennis ball or something.
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_08: Um that I'm like taught I'm looking from the tennis ball to see the moon, and it's blocking the sun, and then to recognize that in the eclipse you can not only see the stars, you can always see the stars at night.
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_08: That's not particularly interesting.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_08: It actually is in some important ways if you know what stars you're looking for.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_08: But the amazing thing is that you can see you can see Venus and you can see Jupiter.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_08: And I didn't think of this before I saw the eclipse, I only thought about that afterwards, so I'm only doing this now in my memories.
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_08: But you can see the entirety of the solar system with your own eyes.
• 1:08:58
  SPEAKER_08: You can see Jupiter going around the sun, you can see Venus going around the sun.
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_08: And if you actually like then look at a 3D model and like look at like how far away these things actually are, oh my gosh, you can see everything.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_08: It is the closest thing that we have in predictable human experience to having a religious experience.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, I guess psychotropic drug drugs might be something similar, but this is something that like it's like going to like the Grand Canyon or like some sort of natural feature where you're just overwhelmed and you know you're going to be overwhelmed, a giant waterfall um by the size and immensity of it, except that this is literally tens of millions of times larger, you know, hundreds of millions times larger than the so pulling back, Brendan.
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_00: So therefore, this is the this is how you teach, right?
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_00: Everything, uh everything.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_00: So therefore, you just kind of uh uh give it uh uh uh give it a beautiful sketch, uh a big picture, uh ability to build imagination, if I were to call it, right?
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and I think that's what you're talking about.
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_00: But tell me, I'm gonna ask this question saying, okay, now that you have built this perspective in me as a kid, yeah, how does it matter and how is it meaningful and how do I use it in my life?
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_08: So I guess there's a few different things that come out of this.
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh one of them is that the kids that go through, insofar as anybody goes through an education that is like this, and it doesn't need to be called Egan education, right?
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_08: They're just Egan thought that the thing that he was doing when he would go to classrooms and like look at the best teachers is he was just trying to find some way of systematizing what they were doing, what they were doing naturally, intuitively, you know, so he could train other people to do it.
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_08: Um looking back through history and and doing and looking at the same stuff.
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_08: Um insofar as people go through this kind of education, what we find is that they know a lot.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_08: Because once again, right, these these tools uh uh uh because they make things matter to them, um, they pay attention to them, they um they uh they think about them even when they're not in class um and they remember them better.
• 1:11:14
  SPEAKER_08: So these kids end up uh getting there's there's no specific data that Egan's team has collected for this.
• 1:11:21
  SPEAKER_08: One of the things that I find just exasperating about Egan, um, and I I I met the man a number of times, um uh he's he's now deceased, um, but uh uh but I met him a number of times and I loved him.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh but I find totally infuriating about what he did was that he he he thought that educational um measurements were bunk and so he didn't do the data on this.
• 1:11:43
  SPEAKER_08: So part of my quest is to actually find somebody who can do, in fact, if anybody in your audience right now um uh is somebody who is accustomed at doing um educational uh measurements or measurements of educational interventions.
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_08: Um I'm about to launch one this summer, uh, a big one for self-learners, um, that um that I would love um to get uh even at this iteration of it, um, some some good data on.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_08: Um but um uh I'm sorry, I'm I'm I I keep getting distracted.
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_00: So therefore uh I have the question that I had was how does it matter?
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and therefore, how is it meaningful?
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_00: And what's been uh what's been your uh experience of how uh you know kids who go through this, yeah, uh how do how are they successful vis-a-vis the traditionalist approach or whatever?
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's really the question.
• 1:12:29
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very thank you very much.
• 1:12:30
  SPEAKER_08: Um so I would say that uh one of the things that we just see is that kids learn a lot, which is maybe that doesn't sound very important, but that's the entire aim of traditionalist education.
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_08: Um this is in some ways ironic because traditionalism says we want to be efficient about this, we want to standardize things, right?
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_08: So we want to pluck out the most important things and then you know push kids to really learn those things.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_08: From that perspective, I feel like the kind of lessons that we've just been talking about seem terribly inefficient to them.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_08: Wait, why are you asking riddles?
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_08: Wait, why are you talking about these why are you sharing these stories of these things?
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_08: Surely you could do this more efficiently.
• 1:13:19
  SPEAKER_08: But you know, human minds are not designed to be efficient.
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_08: It sometimes, I don't want to sound like we should just try to be as inefficient as possible.
• 1:13:26
  SPEAKER_08: That's stupid.
• 1:13:28
  SPEAKER_08: Um you will learn nothing that way.
• 1:13:30
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and I uh and um but uh but if one uses Egan's tools of stories and heroes and up-ending metaphor systems and things of that nature, shocking revelations, um, then um uh one can end up being doing a much better, more efficient job than the people who try to be efficient.
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_08: So that's one thing.
• 1:13:49
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh uh one might assume that in the future, things like better scores on tests, on reading tests, which end up being knowledge tests, um, uh on math, which end up rewarding people who paid more attention in math class, that these things will go up.
• 1:14:05
  SPEAKER_08: I do not have the specific data to back that up right now, um, but it seems like that is almost definitionally true insofar as one thinks that one thinks that tests measure the things that kids remember and have thought about.
• 1:14:18
  SPEAKER_00: If I was if I was a school founder, uh so I think uh you talked about how a teacher does it, and we then uh saw that how a kid benefits because of that.
• 1:14:27
  SPEAKER_00: So if I was uh running a school, uh you know, uh running a traditional school, the challenge I have is I don't have so much of time, right?
• 1:14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I don't have the uh uh the wherewithal to give attention to one kid at a time.
• 1:14:44
  SPEAKER_07: Sure.
• 1:14:45
  SPEAKER_00: So therefore, if I was a school founder, how would you suggest uh this whole uh way of education?
• 1:14:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I I did see something like the whole school project kind of a thing uh you know that I uh that I read about.
• 1:14:59
  SPEAKER_00: So can you talk to me if I was a school founder and if I want my kids to really have a meaningful education, how can I apply these principles?
• 1:15:08
  SPEAKER_08: What I believe the ultimate way of bringing uh Egan into the world, Egan's vision of the world uh is uh because one of if insofar as Egan is right and the ways that we naturally think about the world, that we make sense of the world, are through things like stories and things like like metaphors, then we have this opportunity to put at the beginning of education so many of these of these tools so that we can have kids doing intellectually vibrant, deep, rigorous, rich education from the very earliest ages.
• 1:16:00
  SPEAKER_08: Okay.
• 1:16:00
  SPEAKER_08: And and so then when we're talking uh school founders or or even homeschoolers, or honestly, maybe even parents, maybe I should put parents in the same category here, um, because parents, uh as parents, we have the opportunity to introduce things to our kids that are not being done in class.
• 1:16:21
  SPEAKER_08: Um so one of the things is starting with the history of the world and making sure that there is a strong history of the world curriculum even early on, especially when kids are able to understand simple stories very easily, um, so that these things can be anchors, right?
• 1:16:39
  SPEAKER_08: Starting from the Big Bang and going up to the present day.
• 1:16:42
  SPEAKER_08: Um, so when we talk about Newton, you know, later on in the curriculum, kids already not only have a sense of who Newton was and what he did, but also they care about Newton, right?
• 1:16:55
  SPEAKER_08: That's the trick of a story, and it it gets us to care about things.
• 1:16:59
  SPEAKER_08: Um and they have some sense as to what his intellectual milieu was and uh and uh what kind of person he was.
• 1:17:07
  SPEAKER_08: It means that if we make a uh very rich curriculum from the very beginning, um uh then we can we can just build on that.
• 1:17:18
  SPEAKER_08: And you know, understanding grows like a snowball rolling downhill.
• 1:17:24
  SPEAKER_08: It can just get bigger and bigger and bigger if we start by using these techniques that matter, the tools that matter to make things matter from an early age.
• 1:17:34
  SPEAKER_00: So talk to me about the cognitive tools and the framework of uh Egan.
• 1:17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Can you talk to me about that?
• 1:17:41
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, this is the hardest, this probably is the hardest part of Egan.
• 1:17:45
  SPEAKER_08: And I've been working even since writing that book review, um, which is available in text for any of your uh your listeners who prefer text.
• 1:17:53
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh if they go to my um my Substack, uh losttools.substack.com, there'll be a button near the top um where you can uh access the book review either in the audio format or in a couple different um couple different written formats.
• 1:18:08
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh I've been struggling to how to express Igan's big idea more simply.
• 1:18:15
  SPEAKER_08: And here's what I have, and then I can put it in terms uh that I that I said in the book review.
• 1:18:22
  SPEAKER_08: We might imagine that there are two basically human ways of understanding the world.
• 1:18:29
  SPEAKER_08: The way of logic and the way of stories.
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_08: The way of logic is the way that people have been that in some ways people always have, um, but uh that people have really been sort of opening up since the ancient Greeks 2,600 years ago in Turkey.
• 1:18:50
  SPEAKER_08: Um it flourished especially in ancient Greece.
• 1:18:53
  SPEAKER_08: Um, it flourished again in the Renaissance in uh in Europe, it flourished in um the uh in the Enlightenment, maybe more clearly than ever.
• 1:19:04
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh one of the uh my perpetual um holes in my understanding is Indian history, but I know that uh India has a uh to say rich is to uh is to underserve it, uh a rich philosophical analytical uh uh tradition.
• 1:19:21
  SPEAKER_08: Um and uh one of the things, one of my little side projects that I'd like to do in the future is see how historically we see this kind of way of logic developing in India.
• 1:19:32
  SPEAKER_08: You see pieces of it developing in China too, you see pieces of it developing in um in the Americas also, um, but um in other places.
• 1:19:40
  SPEAKER_08: Uh but uh this is what schools have been set up to teach kids how to reason, how to know the results of science and modern math and uh and in even modern history, understand the way that the world really is, truth is important here, um, concepts are important here, abstractions are important here.
• 1:20:00
  SPEAKER_08: Um but meanwhile, there has been from you know probably going back uh at least 100,000 years, maybe 200, maybe maybe a half million years for human for humans, um, this way of story.
• 1:20:15
  SPEAKER_08: Where when people in, you know, suddenly be able to are are these apes that begin to be able to speak, we suddenly are able to tell stories.
• 1:20:25
  SPEAKER_08: And our sentences are small stories.
• 1:20:27
  SPEAKER_08: And the things that all cultures that anthropologists have chronicled, um, that they literally all have in common, are things like they tell stories, they have riddles, they ask questions, um, they do role-playing, they have metaphors, they have songs, they do dances, they have poetry.
• 1:20:50
  SPEAKER_08: I'm probably forgetting a bunch of really important ones.
• 1:20:54
  SPEAKER_08: Um, they have the ability to think in terms of vivid mental images.
• 1:20:59
  SPEAKER_08: Um we carry with us as some sort of mysterious combination of our biology and our deep, deep, deep, deep, deep cultural history.
• 1:21:08
  SPEAKER_08: Um, this uh this ability to reason, to think about the world uh using all of these tools.
• 1:21:15
  SPEAKER_08: Um, schooling, modern schooling, and even ancient schooling, if you look back at ancient Sumeria, basically ignores these things.
• 1:21:23
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh in fact, when uh Egan points out when in history we start to really develop this way of logic under people like Plato, they say that the problem is that these things are too powerful.
• 1:21:38
  SPEAKER_08: And that what we need to do is we need to destroy these things because these things are compelling, and these things are not, do not necessarily point us to an accurate way of seeing the truth of the world.
• 1:21:52
  SPEAKER_08: They are illusions, they lie.
• 1:21:54
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh, and uh and so there is this attempt to uh by the people who advocate this way to um to destroy these things at worst, and at best to see these things as, well, maybe they're healthy.
• 1:22:08
  SPEAKER_08: Maybe sure you could tell a story, you know, you could use some metaphors.
• 1:22:12
  SPEAKER_08: Sure, sure, that's good.
• 1:22:14
  SPEAKER_08: You could you should you should do that.
• 1:22:15
  SPEAKER_08: You should do that a bunch, these people will say.
• 1:22:18
  SPEAKER_08: But they don't understand that these ways of story, that they are the ways that people became brilliant, routinely became brilliant to survive in a world that thought that they were delicious.
• 1:22:33
  SPEAKER_08: Um, uh, that they were the way not only of individuals being smart, but I mean the way that individuals become smart, right?
• 1:22:40
  SPEAKER_08: Arguably Neanderthals uh had uh higher IQs uh than us.
• 1:22:43
  SPEAKER_08: They definitely had bigger brain-to-body ratio than we do.
• 1:22:46
  SPEAKER_08: Um but our language and these tools, these stories, they allow us to become, to connect up with the people who are around us, to make the things that they care about become the things that we care about, um, and to learn to understand like what the whole world is by being part of a group, by being part of a tribe.
• 1:23:07
  SPEAKER_08: Um, Egan's basic idea can be stated as it's not that this is good and this is bad.
• 1:23:16
  SPEAKER_08: It's not the way of logic is good and the way of story is bad.
• 1:23:19
  SPEAKER_08: It's not that they're both good.
• 1:23:22
  SPEAKER_08: It's that the way of story is the fundamental way.
• 1:23:26
  SPEAKER_08: They're the tools that come relatively naturally to they come naturally to children when those children are raised in a healthy society, in a healthy group.
• 1:23:35
  SPEAKER_08: Okay.
• 1:23:36
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh and those end up being the foundations of the way of logic that all of our modern abstract intellectual academic ways of understanding the world of history and science or whatever, they they historically they even came from these things like stories and these things like um like vivid mental images.
• 1:23:57
  SPEAKER_08: If you want to create genius in science or math or history or reading or spelling or whatever, uh computer science um uh uh what you what you want to do is you want to build the way of logic on top of the way of story and then to integrate these things together.
• 1:24:17
  SPEAKER_08: Whew! Okay, so even says it in different terms, but that's the basic idea.
• 1:24:21
  SPEAKER_00: So so it's almost like you stacked them in towers.
• 1:24:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, right?
• 1:24:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:24:26
  SPEAKER_00: In your model, you stack them in towers, and uh, you know, there are squibbles which keep coming here and there, but what do you really say is stack them in towers, and that's really what you're talking about.
• 1:24:35
  SPEAKER_00: So if I were a parent uh uh Brandon, uh uh what should be the way I uh you know I should prepare my kid, and uh what are the things that I should be ready for?
• 1:24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because this is not the traditional thing, so it's you're almost uh you know putting them in a treadmill, right?
• 1:24:53
  SPEAKER_00: Today, you know, I have a kid, I put them in the treadmill, I hope something will come out of this treadmill, right?
• 1:25:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but if I were a parent, what would you advise uh uh that I need to experiment?
• 1:25:07
  SPEAKER_00: How should I approach this education?
• 1:25:09
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, what would your advice to parents be?
• 1:25:14
  SPEAKER_08: So I just found out a couple weeks ago that I got a grant to write a book this summer on Egan for Parents.
• 1:25:24
  SPEAKER_08: Beautiful.
• 1:25:25
  SPEAKER_08: It's I'm very, very excited about it.
• 1:25:28
  SPEAKER_08: And I'm I'm just beginning to sniff around the beginning of that.
• 1:25:35
  SPEAKER_08: And so is it okay if I just say one thing that I've been thinking about?
• 1:25:41
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, please, please.
• 1:25:43
  SPEAKER_08: I think it's that we need to express to our kids, we need to help our kids experience this whole thing of education as an adventure that they are entering into.
• 1:26:01
  SPEAKER_08: That they we are embarked, we are already embarked um uh on this on this adventure.
• 1:26:08
  SPEAKER_08: We can't we can't take it back now.
• 1:26:10
  SPEAKER_08: Um people have come before us trying to understand the world, trying to live well, trying to create harmonious and just societies.
• 1:26:20
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh we gain our strength from tapping into that rich tradition of people who have come before us.
• 1:26:31
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh and that the truth of the world, which is true because of the brains that we happen to have evolved, is that, as Egan said, and as I said, as I quoted before, that we are surrounded by mystery and what we know is fascinating.
• 1:26:51
  SPEAKER_08: That there is that there seems to be nothing in the world that is not terribly interesting once you get through the crust and get into the gooey inside of it.
• 1:27:07
  SPEAKER_08: And so uh our primary task as parents when it comes to education, which is deeply connected to the kind of people that we want our kids to be, um, but uh but is not but is not the same thing, it's not identical with it.
• 1:27:24
  SPEAKER_08: Um but insofar as education comes into it, we want to help them experience this.
• 1:27:30
  SPEAKER_08: Part of this is by um demonstrating a uh maybe I should uh say cultivating a omnivorous uh uh hunger for to learn about everything in the world, um, ourselves.
• 1:27:50
  SPEAKER_08: Uh is to uh in in my context, right?
• 1:27:53
  SPEAKER_08: Like one of the things that I do with my kids is I bring them as much as is possible into um Uh, contact with people who are really great at explaining things about the world, who have themselves already fallen in love with weird things in the world and can help them fall in love with that too.
• 1:28:14
  SPEAKER_08: This is the sort of thing that back in the day you would have needed to be an aristocrat and to hire, you know, a tutor for your son or daughter in order to do this.
• 1:28:22
  SPEAKER_08: Um and uh and nowadays you need to be able to go to a library and figure out, you know, what are the 10% of children's books that are actually good, as opposed to the 90% which are scams, which are garbage books.
• 1:28:37
  SPEAKER_08: Um it means that you need to know how to go onto YouTube and uh and to find the educational channels that are actually good educational channels, that are, which is maybe 10% of the educational channels, um, that are not just here is what the um here's what the standards say is most important to know.
• 1:28:58
  SPEAKER_08: And so I will teach it to you in a very efficient way.
• 1:29:01
  SPEAKER_08: Terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible.
• 1:29:03
  SPEAKER_08: Um, but actually is made by somebody who has themselves fallen in love with uh biology or zoology or physics or math or whatever.
• 1:29:12
  SPEAKER_08: My son is in love with uh uh a number of physics channels on YouTube.
• 1:29:16
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh Kurzgesucht, for your for your uh listeners, uh just like the two that are the most uh wonderful and and still unknown by a lot of people is the channel Kurzgesucht, which is German for in a nutshell, K-U-R-Z-G-E, S-A-G-T, quick wise, quick smart in German, um, which is about um science writ large, it's animated and it's amazing.
• 1:29:42
  SPEAKER_08: And then the uh the channel um Tierzoo, T-I-E-R-Z-O-O, which is about zoology.
• 1:29:50
  SPEAKER_08: Uh which um which are the most Eganish channels ever.
• 1:29:55
  SPEAKER_08: They they I'm sure they've never heard of Egan.
• 1:29:57
  SPEAKER_08: Um, but uh they're so Egan-y without realizing it, and they they just help kids fall in love with the topics that they talk about.
• 1:30:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, so as parents, you're saying prepare that environment and spend time uh in actually getting them to love what they are learning and what they are studying, and build the uh you know, build the big picture for them uh and get the best experts to keep talking to them so that they are able to imagine.
• 1:30:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's really what you're talking about, yeah.
• 1:30:30
  SPEAKER_08: Right?
• 1:30:30
  SPEAKER_08: Yes, yeah, yeah.
• 1:30:31
  SPEAKER_08: And I would say that the word and I would say that using the definition of the word imagine that Egan used.
• 1:30:36
  SPEAKER_08: Egan, Egan named his method imaginative education, which is a name that I will never forgive him for inventing to because imagination means all sorts of different things to all sorts of different people.
• 1:30:48
  SPEAKER_08: For him, imagination was his code word for when you love something and you think about it using naturally using um stories and concepts and your body and um uh and uh and an understanding of of how it is heroic and just all of these kinds of understandings combined and mixed together was his word for imagination.
• 1:31:12
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:31:13
  SPEAKER_00: So tell me, uh tell me, uh uh Brendan, uh, you know, my last set of questions are uh you know, there's one thing that uh Egan talks about and which you also talk about, which is all the subjects are connected, is what you say, right?
• 1:31:27
  SPEAKER_00: There is, for example, there is some connectivity between mathematics, chemistry, uh, you know, physics, and uh you beautifully put it in your website, Science is Weird, where you say, you know what, these are all made up of atoms, and you know, chemistry is about actually this, and you know, I read that it's so fascinating.
• 1:31:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, do you really believe that uh you know uh this the way these are all connected is fundamental to how you then start to think about the concept of science itself?
• 1:32:00
  SPEAKER_08: Yes, absolutely.
• 1:32:03
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh one of the images that we use on our website is is a tower that at the bottom says um physics, and then the next layer is chemistry, and then biology, and then earth, sorry, earth science, then biology, then anatomy, then zoo uh then uh zoology.
• 1:32:23
  SPEAKER_08: Um that every one of these things is is based, is grounded in the thing that comes before it.
• 1:32:28
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh that all of these sciences are meant to fit together.
• 1:32:34
  SPEAKER_08: The way that we have made schools, uh that we have designed these things in schools, um, comes from the way that these disciplines have evolved over the centuries.
• 1:32:45
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and they all come from sort of different starting points.
• 1:32:49
  SPEAKER_08: They're all sort of connected to each other, but they they have their own sort of origin story, zoology does, and and and uh in even different than microbiology or whatever.
• 1:32:56
  SPEAKER_08: They have their own ways of doing things, they have their own terminologies and their ways of thinking about um about the universe.
• 1:33:03
  SPEAKER_08: Uh and you know, even different kinds of people tend to go into into these different subjects, which is even inside of the sciences, which I think is really interesting.
• 1:33:11
  SPEAKER_08: Um But what uh we have learned throughout the 20th century, especially is that all of these subjects are one subject.
• 1:33:22
  SPEAKER_08: That atom we didn't know that we didn't even know that you used to know that atoms made up molecules, the chemicals were just molecules, right?
• 1:33:31
  SPEAKER_08: Um these were things that ideas like chemicals and cells and neurons and organisms and organisms and organs, like we we we figured these out in different ways, and what we finally knit together is that all of these things are made out of one another, and that the only way to understand a thing is to break it down and to put, you know, look at the level, uh, the smaller level of it.
• 1:33:55
  SPEAKER_08: And sometimes the only way of understanding that thing, then it's the also the smaller thing is to look at what its function is uh in the larger whole.
• 1:34:05
  SPEAKER_08: Um and that when you do this, when you see that in uh all the sciences are one thing, it's first of all, it saves a heck of a lot of time.
• 1:34:17
  SPEAKER_08: Second of all, it opens up so much curiosity to the students because they can understand one thing in a chemistry lesson and then start using it.
• 1:34:27
  SPEAKER_08: Um one of the fun things that we do in science is weird is every year we go through physics and chemistry and earth science and anatomy and zoology and uh and and microbiology or botany.
• 1:34:38
  SPEAKER_08: Um so we keep doing these things, keep having these ideas, and then we connect them up together that when you see science as one giant thing, you get to um you just you it opens up the whole world to students so they can ask questions between these different disciplines.
• 1:34:54
  SPEAKER_08: But your question was a bigger one, I think, not just inside of science, but inside of everything.
• 1:35:02
  SPEAKER_08: And this is like the real function, I think, of a good education is that you get the humanities, and the humanities are integrated with the sciences that are integrated with the arts.
• 1:35:12
  SPEAKER_08: And all of these things you see like are this one thing.
• 1:35:17
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh this is something that um uh that uh Indian metaphysics classically gets much better than um than European metaphysics.
• 1:35:28
  SPEAKER_00: That absolutely no, in fact, uh, in fact, uh, you know, I'm just uh reading this out, uh, you know, Kirinegan's definition of being educated.
• 1:35:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm quoting him.
• 1:35:40
  SPEAKER_00: He says you must know enough things about the world, and one must know something in depth, right?
• 1:35:48
  SPEAKER_00: So, therefore, this whole Indian metaphysics where you pretty much want to know multiple things they are interconnected, and yet you need to know one thing in depth.
• 1:35:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's really what I think you are also talking about.
• 1:35:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that's just fantastic.
• 1:36:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so my last set of questions uh uh for you, uh, which is like a rapid fire questions.
• 1:36:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so the first thing is uh, what does success mean to you, Brandon?
• 1:36:14
  SPEAKER_08: Do you mean in the sense of like what is success for students, or like what does success mean for Brandon Hendrickson?
• 1:36:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:36:21
  SPEAKER_00: What's success for yeah, Brandon Hendrickson?
• 1:36:25
  SPEAKER_08: I feel really um like I've just lucked into an amazing spot in life where I'm embarked on this adventure to make a new six-year-long curriculum for that any science curriculum that any student across the world can use.
• 1:36:41
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh I I don't think there's only been, I think, one other attempt that I know of to do something like this, and it's really hard to use.
• 1:36:48
  SPEAKER_08: And ours is funny and is video-based and doesn't require much of parents or teachers.
• 1:36:52
  SPEAKER_08: So I'm really excited that I've gotten to achieve this level of success where if I stay alive for the next five years, I will, I will succeed at this.
• 1:37:00
  SPEAKER_08: Um, but uh the um uh then what success looks like for me after that would be uh getting the funding, finding the funding uh to um uh to then remake these so that any classroom across the world for the indefinite future can piggyback off of these lessons and we can totally reinvent the science curriculum for students across the world.
• 1:37:24
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic, brilliant.
• 1:37:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what are the uh you know couple of books that you recommend uh that uh you found absolutely uh inspirational reading reading them and getting them uh you know into your DNA after you've after you've kind of uh read them?
• 1:37:47
  SPEAKER_08: I'll give two right now.
• 1:37:49
  SPEAKER_08: Um one of them is a book titled The Journey of the Mind, How Thinking Evolved from Chaos, which is a book that I have wanted to see for about a decade.
• 1:38:02
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh I felt like there's a story that no one was telling about the big picture of cognition um and of feeling and of all of that.
• 1:38:12
  SPEAKER_08: And this book, oh my gosh, gets it in it's such an insanely well-written book.
• 1:38:17
  SPEAKER_08: It is the most, it may literally be the most Egan-ish written book that uses more of Egan's tools in a sensible way.
• 1:38:24
  SPEAKER_08: Stories and diagrams and humor and metaphors um to uh to simply explain something that no one has ever held in their head before, I think.
• 1:38:34
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and it's by um two authors.
• 1:38:37
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh one of them, Saiga Dam, is um is Mumbai-based, as you are.
• 1:38:42
  SPEAKER_08: Um, I would be delighted to put the two of you into conversation with one another if you'd be interested in that.
• 1:38:47
  SPEAKER_08: Um so I recommend that book so highly.
• 1:38:52
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and then the other one that I do is by um an uh American psychologist, psychological researcher, who is uh since this book become very famous, uh named Jonathan Haidt.
• 1:39:04
  SPEAKER_08: Um have you heard of him before?
• 1:39:06
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:39:07
  SPEAKER_08: Um his new book, The Anxious Generation, um, is like what everybody is talking about in the States.
• 1:39:12
  SPEAKER_08: His previous book, The Righteous Mind, Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, is a tour de force.
• 1:39:18
  SPEAKER_08: Um, but the book of his that I fell in love with, uh, and the one that um that I think is is really his best one, is one that nobody talks about anymore, uh, which is The Happiness Hypothesis, Finding Modern Truth and Ancient Wisdom.
• 1:39:31
  SPEAKER_08: And it takes um uh he started as a positive psychology researcher, looking at like what does it take to live a good life?
• 1:39:38
  SPEAKER_08: This is one of the books that I read with high schoolers and college students um back when I did those classes.
• 1:39:43
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and it takes uh about a dozen of the um of the biggest, most clear, most well-sourced, um, well-researched uh uh insights, controversial insights into what it means to live well.
• 1:39:55
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and then he examines those um from the perspective of uh an idea from some ancient wisdom tradition.
• 1:40:02
  SPEAKER_08: So Buddhism gets one, Hinduism gets one, Christianity gets one, Judaism gets one, um, I think Confucianism gets one, Nietzsche gets one, Schopenhauer gets one, I think, um, uh, and uh Plato gets one, Socrates gets one, um, and um, if I'm remembering that correctly.
• 1:40:17
  SPEAKER_08: Uh, and uh, and it's the sort of book that teaches you so much about world religious and wisdom traditions, and teaches you so much about psychology, and teaches you so much about how to live.
• 1:40:29
  SPEAKER_08: So I'll say those two.
• 1:40:31
  SPEAKER_08: Fantastic.
• 1:40:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what would be uh your advice to an 18-year-old in college today?
• 1:40:43
  SPEAKER_08: Find one thing and learn the heck out of it.
• 1:40:46
  SPEAKER_08: Learn it through um uh story, learn it through whatever.
• 1:40:51
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh do all those things because you're what it you will be changed and your understanding of what it means to understand something will be changed.
• 1:41:03
  SPEAKER_08: I had an experience kind of randomly a little bit like this when I was in high school, and it really upped the bar for what understanding meant to me, which fueled me for the rest of my life.
• 1:41:13
  SPEAKER_08: And then I had another deeper experience where I studied um uh the historical figure of Jesus um uh for three years in college, and it upped the bar even more for what it means to understand something, what it means to be confident or whatever of something.
• 1:41:26
  SPEAKER_08: I would say I would say do that.
• 1:41:30
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 1:41:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what's uh you would you would have got lots of advice, but what's one piece of advice that has stayed with you, which uh which you almost uh think and practice and uh live, uh given the fact that you got that advice which you remember even today.
• 1:41:58
  SPEAKER_08: I've been fortunate enough to have so many wonderful people, caring, loving, wise people around me.
• 1:42:04
  SPEAKER_08: Um I uh I'm gonna say this.
• 1:42:06
  SPEAKER_08: I I I feel like if I were my own PR agent, I would I would tell myself, Brandon, stop, stop, Brandon, don't do it.
• 1:42:13
  SPEAKER_08: Uh if you want to edit this out later, that's perfectly fine.
• 1:42:17
  SPEAKER_08: Um But uh uh I was about to propose to my wife, and I asked my grandfather um what advice that he had for marriage.
• 1:42:27
  SPEAKER_08: And he said, treat her like a queen.
• 1:42:31
  SPEAKER_08: Which my grandfather was a recovered alcoholic who was like a bad boy um when he was younger.
• 1:42:39
  SPEAKER_08: Um and uh so like this was this is not like the most erudite, it's not the most like sophisticated piece of advice, but uh I have striven, strove, strived to um, I've tried hard to to bring to to follow that every day of my now almost 17-year marriage, and I have a really good marriage and uh and I love my life dearly, and uh, and uh I feel like that is actually the basis who she uh uh she has sacrificed to um to watch the kids um and and not pursue her own career in part so that part because that's what she wanted to do, frankly, but also in part so that I could could do that with my career.
• 1:43:26
  SPEAKER_08: And has uh in the years when we were the opposite of successful, and we were I was just spending my time, you know, teaching whatever class sounded most interesting to teach and making almost no money, she sacrificed for that.
• 1:43:39
  SPEAKER_08: Um and I I feel like maybe at the end of the day, the thing that allows me to do everything that I do now intellectually is that I followed my grandfather's advice.
• 1:43:48
  SPEAKER_00: Great, great, great, what a piece of advice.
• 1:43:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if you were to have a dream dinner and uh you want to invite them for that dream dinner, who are the one or two people who you would want to be on the table and they may be living or they may be dead, but who would you want uh uh to be on the dinner table and why?
• 1:44:15
  SPEAKER_08: I love big conversations where people build and build off of each other's ideas and play together, but those are hard to orchestrate.
• 1:44:24
  SPEAKER_08: And I feel like the more interesting the people would be, the more likely uh the they would be to not work well together like that.
• 1:44:32
  SPEAKER_08: So I also excel at like really like rich, deep, one-on-one conversations.
• 1:44:37
  SPEAKER_08: And uh I'm gonna I'm gonna here use the cheaters answer.
• 1:44:40
  SPEAKER_08: Um, I uh would probably talk to I'm I'm I'm not at this moment in my life a theist.
• 1:44:46
  SPEAKER_08: Um I was raised a very devout Christian, and I'm not at this moment in my life a devout Christian.
• 1:44:51
  SPEAKER_08: Um uh but I I would I would choose Jesus for that.
• 1:44:54
  SPEAKER_08: And in part that's because I um uh I spent three years like trying to understand what we could know about his life.
• 1:45:03
  SPEAKER_08: Um so yeah, yeah, that's my that's my cheater.
• 1:45:05
  SPEAKER_08: I feel like everybody would say that.
• 1:45:06
  SPEAKER_08: So I'll I'll say it too.
• 1:45:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, great.
• 1:45:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh my last question to you is what's one thing that you believe in that others don't agree with you?
• 1:45:17
  SPEAKER_08: I think that we are within striking distance of making the greatest world, the greatest schools and the greatest types of education that the world has ever seen before.
• 1:45:29
  SPEAKER_08: I think we could not have done this um uh a hundred years ago before you know the sciences sort of coalesced together and joined up with history and sociology and psychology and all of that.
• 1:45:39
  SPEAKER_08: I don't think that we could have done this 30 years ago, maybe 40 years ago, um before Egan um figured out how to uh how the the the smartest people in the world, the wisest people in the world have learned and how to replicate that in classrooms by making things matter, but the stories and and concepts and um I think we can now, and I think that we are actually, even in the last couple of years, uh in a spot with um LLM AIs, with chat GPTs and uh and and what have you, um, where it is not beyond the grasp of an ordinary teacher who knows how to teach like this and has experienced, crucially has experienced this kind of understanding, this kind of education for themselves.
• 1:46:31
  SPEAKER_08: Um it's not impossible now with with LLMs for them to get the information quickly to be able to craft lessons that sets students on fire.
• 1:46:44
  SPEAKER_08: So I think that everyone's like, ah, you know, schools, uh IQ is pretty important.
• 1:46:49
  SPEAKER_08: So I don't know.
• 1:46:50
  SPEAKER_08: People have been arguing and promising schools, you know, like better schools for the last hundred years and what's come of it.
• 1:46:55
  SPEAKER_08: And I feel like, yeah, you're you're right.
• 1:46:57
  SPEAKER_08: Like we should be really dismal about this.
• 1:46:58
  SPEAKER_08: But I think there is excellent reason to think that we are, in our generation, able to finally succeed uh at uh providing a a truly human education to almost everybody.
• 1:47:14
  SPEAKER_00: On that note, uh thanks a lot for being a fantastic guest on the Contraminds Podcast.
• 1:47:22
  SPEAKER_00: I really love the conversation, the counter questions, and uh the provocative answers that you gave, and it was brilliant.
• 1:47:31
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks a lot, and really lovely having you as a guest on the Contraminds Podcast.
• 1:47:36
  SPEAKER_08: Swami, your questions are second to none.
• 1:47:40
  SPEAKER_08: Thank you so much for asking these.
• 1:47:42
  SPEAKER_08: Thank you so much for this conversation.
• 1:47:45
  SPEAKER_08: Thanks.
• 1:47:47
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening to this episode.
• 1:47:50
  SPEAKER_00: For selected links and detailed show notes, visit www.contraminds.com slash blog.
• 1:47:58
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• 1:48:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening and stay safe.