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“They have to try on every single piece in the store,” Green said. “See where it’s made, what it’s made from, learn why it costs what it costs, the fit, the stitching, the trims, so they can talk about it all.”

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.”

if you want to be able to briskly climb stairs when you are 75, you need to be in the top 95th percentile of cardiovascular fitness.

And I think if we go further towards the convenience where there is no friction, then we don't make choices anymore. Then we're just consuming. I think USBs force people to make choices. And those choices define you. And that's what's beautiful about it.