weekly Go Flip Yourself

If the culture in a school is at odds with its pedagogical goals, energy will be wasted trying to deal with the friction between these value systems: You get disruptive students and motivation issues. An educator might have an easier time if they found a way to align the peer culture with the pedagogy. But crafting aligned cultures is not how mainstream education works.

Culture is a catalyst. It multiplies the effectiveness of all other interventions and tools. A kid that grows up in an academically oriented family might use the internet to accelerate their rate of learning. The same kid in a different context might use the same tool to distract herself. Knowing how to scale up cultures that support us would be immensely useful, but it is a difficult problem.

“Children are biologically programmed to imitate the behavior of our older peers. There are no actions that an adult can take to rival the effectiveness of older children modeling desired behaviors for younger children.”

Reflecting on these historical events and predictions, I am reminded of the importance of envisioning a future — preferably a hopeful one. However, accurately predicting the timeline and eventual impact of these innovations is challenging. This perspective has consistently nurtured my optimism in science and technology.

A place is not the sum of the projects and missions unfolding within it. It is about life itself unfolding in a fuller way, dominated mostly by activities that are not comprehended by the logic of specific missions or even the positive sum of all the missions.

what you truly really want is wealth; not money