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Every writer who chooses to write in English as opposed to their mother tongue, every filmmaker who leaves their country for Hollywood, every founder who creates a business in the US instead of their own country, may be making an excellent decision from an individual point of view. They are likely to gain more personal influence that way. But they’re also increasing the influence of globalized American culture more than they are helping their own home culture.

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.”