Latest / 100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project / Jo Boaler: When the World Tells a Story About You | 100 Stories Ep. 25
Transcript
- Paige Williams: Welcome to 100 Stories, the Narrative Intelligence Project. I'm your host, Paige Williams. I'm talking with 100 thinkers, creators, researchers, leaders, and people shaped by profound change as I explore the emerging field of narrative intelligence. At the center is one question. How malleable are the stories we live by? And what does it take to change one? What I learn will shape the field and the foundational book that I'm writing about it. This is one hundred stories. Today I am speaking with Dr. Joe Bowler, who's a Stanford professor and co-founder of You Cubed and Struggling. She helps people know that they can learn and do anything and that the human mind is limitless. She's the author of Limitless Mind, the book that helps people remove barriers that keep them stuck. Joe, thank you so much for being with us today. Jo Boaler: Thank you. Thank you for having me, Paige Williams: Will you tell me about the work that has most shaped how you see yourself in the world? Jo Boaler: I think that is the work I've done to share mindset ideas, particularly with educators. I first learned about Carol Dweck's idea, she's also at Stanford, and realised that we really need to get these, particularly to maths teachers who really often think that some kids can do maths and some can't. So I made a little online class, this was back in maybe 2013 and... I didn't know if anyone would take it, but I really wanted to get these mindset ideas to teachers and 40,000 teachers took it that first summer and it really spread. And that caused me to also develop U cubed with my U cubed partner and get the ideas out. And now really millions of people have seen and heard what we're sharing for educators. So that's been a my life's work to date. Paige Williams: That's awesome. What's the main message that you're sharing with educators about that work? Jo Boaler: Two things really, of course the mindset ideas, we don't have any limits for what we can learn and we need to share that with kids. Anybody can develop mathematical pathways in their brain and struggle is a really important time for that. That's when your brain's on fire with making and building connections. So we share those messages, but we're also aware that you can't really change someone's mindset just by telling them things. Those mindset ideas have to infuse through the culture, whether it's a school or a workplace. You can't tell people we can do anything, but then cut them down every time they come up with an idea. Same as teachers can't say to kids you can learn any maths, but then present maths as this fixed subject with lots of small questions that kids get right or wrong. That's not how we should teach maths. It's really about how do we get those mindset ideas really infused through everything we do. Paige Williams: How should we be teaching math? Jo Boaler: As an open subject, so we share on UQ lots and lots of tasks that invite kids to come up with their own ideas and collaborate and problem solve and see things visually and make connections. Instead of just answering numerical questions, I actually work with neuroscientists at Stanford and they've shown that we have five different brain pathways that we can use to work on maths. Two of them are visual pathways. And it's really important to see maths and experience maths in different ways. Maybe you're building something or moving or drawing or seeing something visually and talking with other people about their ideas. Just a more multi-dimensional experience for people. Paige Williams: Wow. I'm one of those kids, Dr. Joe, growing up, I thought I wasn't good at math. and there's a lot of different stories that told me that. But I'm a visual learner. Jo Boaler: So many people do, yeah. It's You would love our activities. They're nearly all visual. They invite you to think visually about maths. And I mean, the story you're saying, Paige, sadly, it's so many people's story. And not just from when you were growing up, still, still kids experience this narrow. version of maths that turns them away from the subject. Paige Williams: Those five neuropathways that we can develop our math skills, so two are visual, what are the other three? Jo Boaler: So there's pathways that are more used for writing and reading and writing about maths is also really important, writing down ideas. There's a pathway that's more numerical and obviously numbers are a part of maths. Then there are pathways that are more sort of analytical about how you might organise something. what we know is they have brought really high achieving people into labs, people who have been trailblazers in their fields and looked at their brains and what they see is they have more connectivity between pathways, the connections are firing. So we know we want people to experience not just maths, everything really, in different ways. But maths does happen to be probably the most narrow subject that's taught in schools and it really needs those ideas more than others. Paige Williams: That's true. Like if someone had actually put a three D cube in my hand, I might have been able to understand geometry better just by looking at it. And then if I wrote about it, I can't even imagine. Jo Boaler: You would. You would. Yeah, exactly. And we know that actually to develop mathematical ideas, you need to develop what they call these mental representations. What is this idea? What does it look like? What does it feel like? So we should always be giving students things to touch and hold and move around. this idea that you're not good at math, so many people have it. And the tragedy of that is I think when people think I'm not good at math, it actually affects them quite deeply and they start to think, well, I'm just not good. It makes them think they're not intelligent. And one of the reasons I've really come under attack for my work is, give you the big picture. There are... I don't know, 40 AP courses in the US. You can get to high school and aim for that AP course in every single subject except for math because calculus has, they have probably decided who is going to get to calculus much, much earlier in school. So in our work in California, we said we've got to stop doing this. We are actually deciding for kids often when they're in third or fourth grade, they get put on different pathways. Those pathways really decide a lot in their lives and they're based on some time tests that students don't even, they're not even aware of. So our framework said we've got to stop this. We've got to teach higher level math to more kids and not make it just for a few kids. but unfortunately the people who benefit from the few kids approach don't want that system changed. And they are a group of very powerful people. So they decided to come out against the framework and they particularly targeted me because they saw My work has been very influential in California. So it's been really an interesting journey. Talk about your story that you're telling yourself being important. Paige Williams: tell me a moment in your life that transformed how you well, transformed your life. Jo Boaler: I mean, I've definitely had a few, but that I know was really kind of that moment did so much was it was a Friday night and I was just kind of starting to relax the week it ended. And my inbox, my email just went berserk. I was literally getting thousands of messages, all of them abusive. And I was like, what on earth has happened? And I texted my sister, I was like, I don't know what's happened. And she texted me back and said, I'm sorry, with a link. And I clicked on that link and Tucker Carlson had put my picture on his Fox News show saying I was promoting social justice in maths. And that was the start of what actually continued for some years after that. Once you've become someone's target and the people. sort of develop it and try and find more and more ways of stopping your work it can become really unpleasant. Paige Williams: Yeah, what happened after that? Well, first of all, I'm sorry, let's back up. What was it that he was responding to and what's wrong with social justice and math? From his perspective. Right. Jo Boaler: What is wrong with social justice? Yeah, so he went on to say, yeah, numbers are racist, right? That was what he followed it up with. But it was in response to the fact that I'd been asked by the state of California to help with a new maths framework. And that framework actually came from a committee of 20 elected people. It was very carefully written. I was one of the writers, so putting their ideas into writing. This group thought we've got to stop this framework. They chose me. And often when people try and stop things, whether it's climate change or racial justice, whatever, they will choose a person, particularly an academic, and just go after them. We've seen this with a few academics lately. They'll just go after their work. So my research, they hate more than any other. because I actually studied schools that took away tracking and had much more equitable outcomes, higher achievement, kids doing really well. So they have done everything to try and discredit that study. They've accused me of academic misconduct, which can get you fired at a university. Stanford dismissed it. A few years later, during the California Maths Forum, they accused me of academic misconduct again. Stanford dismissed it, but it's just been crazy. can't even tell you all the things that have happened. I was getting death threats. The Stanford police started including my house in their patrols. And I tell people this story and they're like, a math educator? Like math education professor? How is this even possible? Paige Williams: I'm so sorry that that happened to Jo Boaler: Yeah, it's Paige Williams: you. Jo Boaler: definitely been rough, but I'm trying to turn it into something good. And because I did a lot of work during this time for like, how do I protect my mind? How do I not just fall apart? And that work I've done, which, you know, involved a lot of things, therapists and reading, reading a lot and putting into a new book to help other people. Not just people who are under attack from a big social movement, but just how do we deal with all the negativity in the world? We're all in it now. There's so much out there. Paige Williams: And what are you learning from your own experience and what are you teaching in your book? Jo Boaler: Well, I think the biggest learning for me is I have spent years sharing mindset ideas with people, sharing that struggle is really good and you know, that helped me. Sharing that good thinking is more complex and multi-dimensional, but I hadn't done so much work on my own sort of emotional, how fragile I was emotionally. And what I came to learn during that time is, you know, there's all these things that happened to us in the world. And then there's our response. And in between the two, there's actually our mind. What do, what is, how are we making sense of what's happened? And that is so important. And it's in that space that you can either find great freedom or you can decide you're not good enough, that this, you know, is something reflecting on you. So, yeah, how we protect that space, I do think it's partly to do with emotional ideas and support emotionally, but also to do with our cognition and our thinking. And my book is really about the intersection of those two. Paige Williams: So when you think about your book and you think about this field I'm studying, narrative intelligence. Jo Boaler: Yeah. Paige Williams: So emotional, cognitive, where would narrative intelligence fit into your experience of coming to understand what happened to you and your relationship of what happened to you and how that might protect us from the negative experiences that we go through? Jo Boaler: I mean, I think narrative intelligence is all about that. And it also sits in that intersection. That's why I really wanted to support what you're doing and come on and Paige Williams: Thank you. Jo Boaler: talk with you. It's really very important. The stories we tell ourselves are everything. And I had the experience and I've watched other people who've had this horrible experience where you're targeted on social media. You've got newspapers writing about you. and you're cancelled. I've been through all of that and you see a version of yourself people are writing about and they may include your name or even your picture and it isn't you. This has been people's horrible experiences with social media where they've made a mistake in something they've said and they've been completely destroyed by the waves of... those people who want to bring people down. So yeah, I've had to really think about that, that identity that's out there, that's not me. And I don't want to take that on. And I have to really connect with who I am, who I really am. So part of my mind journey was really doing that work. Who am I really? I'm not what they're saying I am, not who they are saying I am. So who am I? Paige Williams: so you research, you write some academic papers, you say, Jo Boaler: Mm. Paige Williams: we're discovering that in the classroom people have better math outcomes if XYZ. Somehow Jo Boaler: Mm-hmm. Paige Williams: that is targeted and turned into socialist rhetoric versus just looking at the data. And Jo Boaler: Yeah, I mean... Paige Williams: you are attacked personally and a persona about who you are is created based on that. Jo Boaler: Mm-hmm. Paige Williams: And then you receive Thousands of emails, even death threats. That's insane. So two things Jo Boaler: Yeah. Paige Williams: I'm curious about. You said you went through therapy and maybe read a bunch of books. So, like that personal discovery about who am I really? What's the true story of my life? Jo Boaler: Mm-hmm. Paige Williams: And then also the parallel of why in the hell are journalists using this to permeate a story and a belief system. Both Jo Boaler: Yeah. Paige Williams: are about narrative. Jo Boaler: Yes. Paige Williams: This one is about your internal narrative about who you Jo Boaler: Mm-hmm. Paige Williams: are. And this is about how narrative affects society. And journalists know it and they can say anything and move Jo Boaler: Mm-hmm. Paige Williams: people down a path evil. Jo Boaler: Yeah. I mean, honestly, that whole experience with the framework has given me such a negative idea about journalism in the US. I'm really wary now of any journalists. I read articles with a very skeptical lens. I mean, I am absolutely sure what journalists want is controversy. What journalists want is clickbait. and something that they can share as something that will get people's attention. It's something bad or something saying somebody's bad. mean, those are the things that get clicks and reads. They don't care about what's accurate Paige Williams: Or who's on the other side of it? Jo Boaler: or who is suffering from that. I don't know if you saw the horrible tragic case of A colleague I knew, Jason Arday, who recently was a Cambridge professor, one of the youngest black Paige Williams: Yes. Jo Boaler: Cambridge professors they ever had, and Paige Williams: Yes. Jo Boaler: was just targeted by the media. my gosh. It was awful. And he took his own life. I mean, The only thing that is good coming from that is the institutions are now having to do some kind of self reckoning. Like, why did we not protect him? Cambridge had announced, we're going to do a review of why we hired him when all the media went after him, which I'm sure was awful for him. This last week, they've changed it. We're not going to review that anymore. We're going to review what the support we give people when they come under that. Well, good, bit late, but good. Yeah, the media now can literally, they can certainly ruin people's lives. They can even take people's lives. And that's the society we're living in now. Media want stories about controversy. They don't care who they put at the center of that. Paige Williams: What you have to do to survive this moment in your life and then choose to Jo Boaler: Mmm. Paige Williams: make some good come out of it? Jo Boaler: You know, there was a time when it was literally survival. Like, how am going to get through this? As I was seeing like my name everywhere, with all these horrible stories about me. And you know, I listened to one of your stories, interviews with Angie Lipsky and it totally spoke to me because one of the things I realized during this horrible time was I was literally healed by water by swimming. So I've always been a swimmer. I swim every morning. And what I found was when these people were, when I was just all over everywhere, I got in the water and I just swam and stayed there. And I've always known that swimming could sort of clear my mind and help me think better, but it literally healed. me during that time. I'm not sure how I would have got through it if I hadn't just kept swimming. I know it sounds crazy, but... Paige Williams: I love it. I'm a swimmer too, so I deeply resonate. How when I think of narrative intelligence, I think of goodness, right? Like Jo Boaler: Mm-hmm. Paige Williams: emotional intelligence. Like if getting more narratively intelligent, then we're we're showing up better in the world, we're showing up more Jo Boaler: Yeah. Paige Williams: alive and aware about ourselves, and then we can be better in relationship to others. But then I've also been thinking about some of these interviews I've been doing, specifically one with Nichelle Carr, who was Went to Stanford Law and she's been in media and AI recently. And we were talking about how narrative can also be used for bad. And that can you be narratively intelligent? And use it for bad. And I want to say no. but Jo Boaler: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Paige Williams: what I mean by that is politicians and the media understand the power of narrative and they have used it for clickbait, they have used Jo Boaler: Mm-hmm Paige Williams: it for fear, and Jo Boaler: Mm-hmm. Paige Williams: we know that fear can create many negative things in our world. When you Jo Boaler: Yeah. Yeah. Paige Williams: think about narrative intelligence. And what happened to you? how would you define narrative intelligence and would it have a basis for goodness? Jo Boaler: I don't think narrative, true narrative intelligence can be used for bad. I mean, I don't know whether I have the same definition of it as you do, but yes, media understand the power of narrative and yes, they're willing to spin. a narrative to get clicks and they're willing to do that even to share misinformation with people. But Vanity is a kind of narrative, that's a different kind of narrative than intelligence. It's almost like a mal narrative, a narrative of trying to trick people and I think really true now, your own narrative intelligence is how in touch are you with your own story? What, who are you deeply? Who are you? What do you believe? What makes up you and what do you understand about yourself? Now, some of those reporters, maybe they could have a more deeper narrative intelligence and they wouldn't do the work they're doing. Paige Williams: we should come up with a term for Jo Boaler: Mmm. Paige Williams: misused narrative Jo Boaler: Yeah. Paige Williams: and relying on the power of narrative to move unethical and even dangerous initiatives forward. And it should just be separate. It should not be in the world of intelligence. Jo Boaler: Yeah. Yeah, it's like narrative misinformation. Paige Williams: Yes. I should speak one of my next interviews should be with an ethicist, someone to talk about the ethics of the word intelligence. your recent research suggests mathematical mindset isn't one uniform thing and can vary by context. Does that change how you think about mindset as something a person has? Jo Boaler: I think a lot of the beginning work in mindset was sharing the value of mindset. Isn't it amazing when people share their ideas about themselves and that's all to do with your own thinking. But more recent research on mindset is really showing the need for a mindset culture to develop in homes, in schools, in businesses. And that mindset culture is... all about changing how mindset is experienced through your day. So many people have different kinds of mindsets about different things in their lives. You might feel really good about writing and have a very growth mindset around writing, but feel terrible about maths, for example, and think I can't do it. Actually, Carol Dweck has shifted her thinking a bit about mindset and talks about how You know, she used to believe people had a fixed or a growth mindset, but now believes that we all have different mindsets at different, with different things we do. And it's really good to get in touch with those different mindsets. I heard her, I was with her one day and she was saying that in a big company she was working in, she had shared with people that they should give a name to their fixed mindset. And the company CEO had said. I'm going to call my fixed mindset Dwayne. And then a young woman in the company said, yeah, and when your Dwayne comes out, I feel really stressed and anxious and my Iana comes out. And so this is good. They're having conversations about what causes people to feel they can't do something. And she suggests, you a name to it so you can talk to it. you know, go away. Go away, Dwayne. or Iana or whoever your fixed mind set is, just really getting in touch with, this is me engaging in fixed thinking and I need to work on that. Paige Williams: What does fixed thinking mean and what does the opposite of it look like in a person's life and how they live and make decisions? Jo Boaler: Yeah, you know, I really think after all these years of sharing and observing mindset that the defining quality of a growth mindset is how you approach struggle and difficult times in your life. People can sort of believe that their intelligence is not fixed, that they can learn new things, but when they find something really difficult, they lapse into thinking, I can't do this. So how do people approach those difficult times? And that's when a mindset, a growth mindset really needs to kick in. And people need to know, okay, this might be hard, but that's good because things that are hard are the best things for us. And if I can keep going, if I can get through this, I'll get to the next thing. I mean, that single message that struggle is really good, I have found to be really transformative for students. When I teach students, whether they're undergrads or grad students at Stanford or children in schools, I'll say to them, okay, we're to do some really hard maths now. I'm giving you a difficult challenge because I want you to struggle because struggle is really what's important. And when kids hear that, they're more free. They're more, they are more willing to keep going. I had an undergrad last year. I teach an undergrad class at Stanford called how to learn maths. And it's always full. It's filled with a long waiting list of all of these undergrads who are terrified of maths usually. But one of the young women last year, she was like, you know, I can't struggle. I mean, a lot of these students come to Stanford, they haven't had a lot of experience of struggle. They've, you know, always got A's and she's like, I can't struggle, I'm not going to struggle. And so I pull out my most challenging thing for them. And she did it really quickly. was like, this is not good. I've got to find something that gets this young woman in the pit of struggle where she's, did eventually find something for her. She wrote to me the year later saying, you know, that experience of getting me to struggle and feel good about it just is what kept me in the classes I'm doing at Stanford this year. So I know it's important, it's important for all learners. It's not some people think, it's just for low achievers to make them feel better. It's not, it's for, in fact, the people they've found have the most fixed mindsets are high achieving women and girls, high achieving girls in the school system. Yeah, I don't know why, where that comes from, why. Why is it women and girls who are more likely to have fixed mindsets? We could chat about why that might be, but high achievers are particularly vulnerable because they're often praised so much for being smart, which is a terrible label. We could talk about that. And for being gifted, another terrible label. And so... What they hear is, I'm smart and I'm gifted. But then when they mess up on something and everybody does at some point, they think, I'm not so smart. So we damage these high achievers by giving them these fixed labels. We damage other kids by giving them fixed negative labels, but those fixed positive labels aren't so good either. Paige Williams: Is this part of the work and the research that was so revolutionary that got you in hot water? Jo Boaler: Yeah, mean, I think the biggest thing that they come after me for is saying that high achievers don't need to be put in their own classes just with each other and separate from other kids. Actually, some of the greatest schools, the most successful approaches in different countries, the most successful schools in the US. are ones who really don't use those labels with kids and they really try and push as many kids as they can to higher and higher levels. But some people think, well, I am gifted and, you know, I want that label and you're telling me everyone can get there? That is, it's their identity that I'm threatening by saying everyone can learn maths. These high maths achievers are the people who come after me because of our message that anyone can get there. That threatens their deeply held identity that they are somehow special and better than other people. Paige Williams: Identity is one of the pressures against narrative intelligence. Identity, power, culture. And that's so interesting because you threaten their identity, you got threatened. Jo Boaler: Exactly right. They lash out. Paige Williams: What do you see yeah, what do you see in schools who don't label kids? what are the results of doing it in a new way? what does the research show? Jo Boaler: Amazing. mean, the research is very clear on that, that we've got to get rid of these fixed labels and deciding you can, you can't. And really, everybody is on a growth journey. Everybody. There's no sort of cutoff where people up here have a gift and people down here don't. Everybody is on a growth journey and their brains are growing and changing. and developing all the time. Paige Williams: And you Yeah, and and so you say anyone can learn, anyone has limitless ability. So tell me about that. we talked about identity threatening that, but tell me how you came to that knowledge through the research and through your own journey. Jo Boaler: I mean, as a teacher, I started my career as a teacher in London schools. And I knew then that all kids could learn maths. In fact, I've talked about in some of my work, my very first lesson in London, I was given the bottom set as it's called, like the lowest group of kids. And I walked in, they'd just been put into the lowest group. I walked in on my first day, I was like 21 and the kids were 13 and they looked at me and said, why should we bother? And that was a really hard moment for me because they were in a group that meant that they could, the highest exam grade they could get three years later was a D. That's how we do it in different countries. And one of the kids came to me. And said, I've got to get a higher grade. I really want to do something different. So we sat after school and I just taught her the higher level work and she got that grade and she went into an engineering school program and she's now an amazing sound engineer in Bali. And she talks about, you know, if I hadn't got that maths grade, my whole life would have been different. So I knew from the early days, even these kids have been written off, they can do it with the right teaching. Everyone. can do it. but then it was years later when I was at Stanford and I heard Carol Dwick for the first time that I realized, we have neuroscience behind this. This isn't just something I've learned through my teaching, but there's actual evidence we can see brains growing, changing. I mean, some of the things we share with kids is people who've had half their brain removed. A lot of people have had this operation now. They've had literally one side of their brain taken out and they have gone on to master's degrees to great success. And the neuroscientists say, wow, their brain literally grew back. Our brains are so plastic in effect. They were able to keep going and keep, because their brain just rewired. And so, When I show that kids and we look at these images of half a brain, they say, wow, if that girl with half a brain can do it, I know I can do it. So it's pretty overwhelming. And when the neuroscience first came out saying, you everybody can learn and we can all develop pathways, there was a lot of pushback of that. people went after those scientists. They said that can't be true. Our brains are fixed by the time we're adolescents. That's it. and they just didn't believe it. Now we're sort of 10, 20 years beyond that and they've had to say, yes, it's true. Our brains aren't fixed. Paige Williams: What is fixed? that made me think our narratives are fixed. That's what we have to shift. Jo Boaler: narratives can be fixed. Yeah, it Paige Williams: Can be, yeah. Jo Boaler: is what we have to shift and understand. I mean, that's one of the messages of this book I'm writing. Identity, which, you know, when that came out as a concept in psychology, that was fixed. We all develop an identity. But more recent work is saying, you know, we have different identities depending where we are. And that isn't fixed either. Your identity, your narrative, all of these are up to you. Paige Williams: I am thinking of doing an interdisciplinary PhD around this research that I'm doing. But one of my potential fixed identities is well, I'm a woman of a certain age. I know my brain works in the morning, it doesn't work as well at night. Will I be able Jo Boaler: I'm the same as that. Paige Williams: will I be able to retain the information and will I have enough rigor to be Jo Boaler: Mmm. Paige Williams: able to do the studies because my brain in perimenopause is just, you know, it's different than it was before perimenopause. So what is fixed, what is real, and what can we overcome? Jo Boaler: Yeah, we can. mean, learning is ageless. You definitely should get rid of those ideas about age and your brain. I've had PhD students work with me in their 50s, 60s. In fact, some of the incredible neuroscience is evidence comes from retirement homes where they see incredible brain growth where they see it is people who take on new things. You don't get so much brain growth if you're doing the same thing you've always been doing, but if you do something new, that's going to really develop a new part of your brain. So definitely get rid of any ideas about age, menopause, all of that. I mean, this is a societal message that you're not as good when you get older and you're not as good after perimenopause or menopause. None of that is true. I'm exactly the same actually. My brain is great in the mornings. By late afternoon, I feel like it's fried and I just don't do really my best work then. And I've just Paige Williams: Yeah. Jo Boaler: recognized that about myself. There are times I can really do good thinking and the times I'm not going to do good thinking. Paige Williams: But it doesn't mean we can't grow. Jo Boaler: And we're all like that. You work out. what works for you, but absolutely, yeah, it doesn't mean that and you should do that PhD. Paige Williams: Thank you. You said you love to put people in the struggle. Talk about what it teaches them and why you love to put people there. Jo Boaler: Yeah, so scientists talk about being at the edge of your understanding. It's the most important place to be. It's where you're making mistakes, correcting them, making more mistakes. That's where creativity lives. It's where the greatest knowledge comes. So we've got to get people more comfortable in that zone. It's the zone of, they call it the zone of accelerated learning. I've seen this in classrooms. We taught a summer camp a few years ago and I still remember there was one student, she came in as the lowest achiever, but she was so willing to struggle and she would always, she was always willing to share her answer. It was nearly always wrong. And then she would argue for her wrong answer and there'd be this battle going back and forward and eventually she would shift but. At the end of the camp, she was the student who had accelerated more than any other student, not just in our class, but in all of the camp classes. And I thought about her and she was in that zone. She was in that zone of accelerated learning where she was pushing always at the edge of her understanding. So as a society, we have made people feel good, feel bad about times of struggle. We've made people feel that's a sign that they are weak or don't have some understanding when it's actually what we should really be encouraging and valuing. Paige Williams: it brought up for me creativity in Jo Boaler: Mm-hmm. Paige Williams: problem solving in that moment of struggle and how they're in relation to one another and what it means for us? Jo Boaler: One of my chapters of this new book is about creativity because that was also something that really helped me under attack and I've seen it help students so much as well when you give them the opportunity to come up with their own ideas, their own thinking and I really went to that when I was when things were really bad and we were getting trashed I was like I'm gonna make something new and put that out there. and I'm just going ignore all of this that's going on and just create something new for people. And I realized that creativity was also helping me. And that's why this book is really about both our emotion and our thinking, because what we think changes how we feel and what we feel changes how we think. So bringing those together is really important. And I think when people are in... trying to be creative and making things that gives them different feelings about themselves. So I'm a big proponent of having kids have creativity in maths. Seeing their own ideas spark into something new is an amazing feeling for kids in maths classrooms. Paige Williams: When you think about the struggle of what happened to you and being attacked nationally. Jo Boaler: Mmm. Paige Williams: What did you think about what you teach students and why it's important to struggle? And then here you are with an existential struggle. One Jo Boaler: Yeah. Paige Williams: that, you know, another professor decided to end his life over. talk about your own narrative about the usefulness of struggle in relationship to this very personal story of something. Jo Boaler: Yeah, Paige Williams: Very negative that happened to you. Jo Boaler: yeah. I mean, I was thinking that as I was going through it. Like, you know, I'm always sharing the struggles really good and here I am, here I am in the pit of struggle. I love Brenny Brown and she talks about how you shouldn't listen to critics unless they're in the arena with you. where if they're down on the floor getting kicked on and they're sweating and dirty and getting their ass kicked, then maybe they have the right to critique. so all of these ideas were helping me knowing that struggle is really good. But as I said, I did become aware. that I sort of had these ideas about knowledge and learning and I had applied them less to my emotions and how I felt. That was the work I really needed to do. Paige Williams: So the struggle brought you to the internal personal work that you Jo Boaler: it was really something that made me realize there was kind of a divide for me. Okay, I see struggle as being really good for knowledge and learning, but what about when you're struggling emotionally? And I had it really bad. I mean, a lot of people say to me, how on earth are you still standing after all of that? It was not as bad as what Jason had. was just like, ugh. can't even imagine what the media did to him was just should be illegal. But yeah, it was pretty, it was really bad. And a lot of people have said to me, they're amazed I'm still standing and they get strength from that. I mean, I think courage, we can share courage and women need to this in particular. I got courage from reading about courageous women. And I think whenever people are courageous, it helps other people. And I've had people come to me after presentations when I've shared some of this and said, I had no idea, but if you went through that, that is going to help me go through what I have to go through to, you know, change things in my school. Paige Williams: My gosh, that's exactly the story you shared about the people with half a brain. If they can do it, I can do it. Jo Boaler: Yeah. Right. Paige Williams: You've challenged the idea of reducing complex learning to a single number. And Jo Boaler: Mmm. Paige Williams: I'm wrestling with a similar question. As I develop a potential measurement. of narrative intelligence, which I'm not sure I should even be doing, by the way. Jo Boaler: Mmm. Paige Williams: How do you decide when a complex human capacity should be represented by a score, a multidimensional profile, or perhaps not scored at all? Jo Boaler: Hmm. That's a great question. And one of the things that I battle against in my work is the whole performance culture of maths. It's not about learning. It's about performing for a lot of kids. And the grading and the testing, they have a lot to do with that. Constantly grading kids, constantly giving them scores. So I don't think learning should be reduced to a score or a grade. And identity and narrative, even less so. That would be terrible to score somebody on their narrative intelligence. And, you know, I'm all for portfolios that show people's thinking and work if we have to measure something. And a narrative story really lends itself to a rich, multi-dimensional kind of portfolio. because it might have photos or pieces of art or sculpture or it might have words. I don't know that we need to measure it at all. Maybe we can do some self thinking about that but I wouldn't like my narrative intelligence measured by someone else. Paige Williams: I love that. And I think you're right. When I hear something and it's like truth with a capital T, it just lands right in my gut. And I've been moving Jo Boaler: Mmm, yeah. Paige Williams: in that direction. And the reason that I'm doing these 100 conversations is I don't know. Like I had an idea, I had an hypothesis, I created a few things, and then I was like, I'm Jo Boaler: Mm-hmm Paige Williams: gonna go test this and make sure it's right. Jo Boaler: Perfect. Paige Williams: And I think that this is the biggest shift in the work so far. Jo Boaler: Mm-hmm. Paige Williams: Is that actually we shouldn't measure it? Maybe it's a profile. Like we understand we can come to know more about our archetype we may be making a decision from and that that is flexible. But when we Jo Boaler: Mm-hmm. Paige Williams: think about flexibility, which I love and the open mindedness that you're bringing to this conversation, that's exactly my intention for narrative intelligence. So why would I limit it? Why would I give it a score? Jo Boaler: Yeah. Why would you give it to school? You could understand the dimensions of it. That would be really important work and help people. And I love the idea of a hundred stories because you know, the stories we tell are everything. Paige Williams: And what we learn is from story, I believe, Jo Boaler: Yeah, I mean, when I teach my undergrads, the first thing I ask them to do before they even come to the first class is write a maths history for me. What's made you feel good about maths or bad about maths or shaped your thinking about what it is and just share it in a little essay. So and those essays tell me a lot about what these students are thinking and feeling. And I recommend teachers also give their students maths histories to write. And some of them do that. Paige Williams: That's fascinating. what percentage are negative and what percentage are positive feelings? Jo Boaler: Well, you know, one of the things I always notice before they know me and they write this maths history, they immediately start by ranking themselves. It's unreal to me how that happens. I have an online class for students and I went out on the streets of San Francisco making this class and I asked people, how do you feel about maths? And every one of those adults immediately ranked themselves. And tell me how they felt about maths. They said, I wasn't very good at maths. I was really good at maths. was, it's like, that's all people think maths is, is some evaluation about Yeah, or not, you are. And I really had to push them. Like, what do you think about it? Not, not where are you ranked, but what do you think about it? And so my student essays always start like that too, or a lot of them. This is where I. This is where I'm ranked and this is why. Paige Williams: And you're right, there isn't another field of study that would show up in that way in our brain. Jo Boaler: There really isn't. And there's a strong movement that wants it to stay that way, wants it to stay to be about student ranking. And, you know, it's the same people who really want SAT scores and really Paige Williams: when I started this NQ score very naively, my idea was why do we take a Myers Brig and get fixed in this like INTJ? Because I can test as an INTJ one day, and in five years, because I have changed, all Jo Boaler: Mmm. Paige Williams: of a sudden I'm an INFP. And so, shouldn't narrative intelligence be like that, where we are constantly in flux based on how we are in relationship to the story of our lives. And so my Jo Boaler: Mm-hmm. Paige Williams: intention was good that we can show that we can increase. Jo Boaler: Yeah. Paige Williams: but what I'm realizing is that it really shouldn't be measured in that way in the first place, because what you just identified and why this is ringing true to me, it's a fixed identity. Jo Boaler: Yeah, it's IQ, you look at the history of the IQ test, it dates back to white supremacists Paige Williams: Ugh. Jo Boaler: who wanted to show that the white race was superior. I mean, the people who created it, that's what they were doing. Paige Williams: snap, I didn't know that. Jo Boaler: Yeah, so this is all woven into how people think about learning. The people who want to give kids fixed scores and... and why I get a lot of pushback is I push back against that system. Paige Williams: I did not know that. Thank you for telling me I have two sons who are great at math Jo Boaler: Mm-hmm. Paige Williams: and love math. And my eldest son just went to college, thank God. We barely got him to college, but because he didn't do well in school because walked into the ACT unstudied and scored a perfect score. Jo Boaler: Mmm, Paige Williams: School didn't work for him really. just opted out. Like he did his high set, he didn't do his senior Jo Boaler: Yeah, not interesting. Paige Williams: year, it wasn't interesting, he was bored, and he was irritated by the people in his classroom who didn't care. Jo Boaler: Mm-hmm. Paige Williams: And he was always like that, even from kindergarten. the disruptors disrupted him. Jo Boaler: Mm-hmm. Paige Williams: So knowing that as a parent, that's my background asking this question, and also that I believe completely in equity. what does the data say about when we put a kid like Jack in a room with a kid like me who was kind of middle school? I kind of had to work hard at math to get a B. And then a kid who had no one spent one on one time with them teaching them. And so they struggle. And when you put those kids together, Jo Boaler: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, Yeah. Paige Williams: what happens? Jo Boaler: Well, what I would say is those kids are together in every other subject in school. and Paige Williams: Except for maybe AP courses. Jo Boaler: well, when, yeah, as things get into AP, it changes a bit, Paige Williams: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Jo Boaler: and kids who you might think, or people might think of as disruptive or they don't care about their learning. Very often those kids have been given the message that they can't learn and it's easier to mess about than it is to again show that you can't learn. It's like a protection mechanism. So I'm very attuned to those kids and don't want to write them off. But I would also say that the way it works when you have kids at mixed kind of levels is they're not doing the same work. If you give them these more open problems, kids can take them in different directions and they do. So your son was probably super bored by these pages of short questions that don't go anywhere. But if he had had complex problems, he might have taken them to amazing places. And this is what we see in schools that do this. I actually studied a school for my PhD in England that was working this way. So the kids didn't have achievement groups. There were very high achievers, very low achievers. They would give them these open problems and the high achievers would take them so high. They were like breaking new ground. It was incredible. They loved doing the work. They weren't bothered by, okay, somebody else isn't doing this or they're doing something differently. I mean, you have to be a good classroom manager. You can't let kids disrupt other kids learning. That's not okay. But when a teacher knows what they're doing, and most teachers do, amazing things can happen when you give more open content. So it's really not about holding anyone back. I'm all about high achievers getting high, challenging work. But I don't Paige Williams: That's right. Jo Boaler: think we have to put them into a separate place to get that to happen. Paige Williams: Right, because it is the only place you get separated. You're right. Jo Boaler: Yeah. Paige Williams: And if you use the teaching method give their highest level where they struggle, then it actually gets interesting and creative. Jo Boaler: know, we are going to have, we're going to have different classes somewhere. Maybe it happens in AP or kids get the option of what do I really want to focus on? So then they start to get into classes where I'm just with other kids who love maths, but let's not do that to young children. That's... Paige Williams: Yeah, it starts so young. with our educational system, which was great. So the first graders and the second graders were together and the second graders taught the first graders. And boy, did that work. That worked. Jo Boaler: Love that, yeah. Teaching is the best way to learn. Paige Williams: That teacher got Montana Teacher of the Year for the way she organized Jo Boaler: nice. Paige Williams: her classroom, which everything goes back to the teacher. So my other son, who is great at Jo Boaler: really does. Paige Williams: math, struggles with English. But he has Jo Boaler: Mm-hmm. Paige Williams: a teacher this year in tenth grade English Benny is in all the way because his teacher shows up in a way that he can learn. Jo Boaler: Right. Teachers are so important. It's so much to do with a teacher. And this is Paige Williams: That's so exciting. Jo Boaler: what bothers me in education that we spend all our money on textbook companies, giving them more more more money, these for-profit groups. And we're like, it's not working in this district. Let's get a new textbook. When we know that if you spend that money on teacher education, that is what brings about better education. But... doesn't happen and instead all the money is poured into these textbook companies. Paige Williams: Wow Wow. Okay, this has been fascinating and eye-opening. let me ask you one last question before we wrap, and that is, if you were writing the book on narrative intelligence, how would you define it? Jo Boaler: I would define narrative intelligence as people who are really in touch with their own story, who've done that deeper work to work out who are you as a person, what drives you, what do you need, what is your story really about? And somebody to me who has really got lot of narrative intelligence is somebody who's really developed that understanding. Paige Williams: The first thing I'm doing after this interview is deleting the score from my Jo Boaler: Ha ha. Paige Williams: NQ assessment. I'm gonna keep the questions because I think they're important for people to wrestle with how they believe and what they think in the relationship to story, but we're gonna take a score off of it. So thank you for getting me there. Jo Boaler: Great, I'm glad. Paige Williams: Before we close, here's what I'm taking from this conversation about narrative intelligence. Joe has spent years studying what happens when people internalize a story like I'm not a math person. What starts as an experience in a classroom can become a story about ability, and then intelligence, and then identity. And once that story takes hold, it can start shaping what someone attempts, avoids, and believes is possible. She also made something else very clear. Changing the individual story is not enough if the environment keeps reinforcing the old one. You can tell someone they can grow, but if the culture keeps sorting, labeling, ranking them, that message may never take hold. That matters far beyond math. And then Joe's own story brought another dimension into this conversation. After becoming the target of a national public attack, she had to confront a version of herself, being created by other people. One that carried her name and photograph, but did not feel like her. Her work became Who Am I? Independent of the story being told about me. But this is episode 25, and I think this conversation marks a real turning point in the project. I started this inquiry with hypotheses. I had five emerging capacities that came from the first few, and I had built an assessment. I even called it the narrative quotient and gave people a score. And I came into 100 stories because I did not want to simply defend what I had already created. I wanted to search, sort, test, complicate, and change my thinking. about narrative intelligence as I learned from other people. It's really a curiosity project. And today that happened. I asked Joe whether something as complex as narrative intelligence should be reduced to a score, and her answer was essentially no, it shouldn't. She challenged the idea of turning something as fluid as identity and narrative into a number, because the score itself can become another fixed story about who we are. She suggested that understanding the dimensions may be useful, reflection may be useful, a profile may be useful, but reducing a person to a number may work against the very thing that we are trying to develop. And I agree. So 25 conversations into this project, I'm making a change. Today I'm taking the score out of the narrative quotient assessment. The questions stay, the capacity stays, the inquiry stays, but the score goes. Because if narrative intelligence is about becoming more conscious, more flexible, more discerning, and agentic in relationship to the stories that we live by. Then I don't want to hand someone another fixed story about who they are. And this is exactly why I'm doing these 100 conversations, to learn, to grow, not to prove narrative intelligence is what I thought it was when I started, to find out what it actually is, what it should be, what all it can do for humanity. And so the question I'm leaving with is. What have you been treating as a fixed truth about yourself that might actually be a story? And what becomes possible when you stop ranking yourself inside it? If this conversation gave you something to think about, I know it did me. Subscribe to 100 Stories and tell me in the comments what ideas stayed with you. May we all grow in flexibility and in relationship to our story to really let it go.