Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

One of the key issues is that it seems to be less a matter of us not knowing how to teach cleverness and imagination to children, and more about our policies destroying the innate cleverness and imagination OF children.

This is entirely accurate, from my regrettable experience. I feel like my parents & teachers (all well-meaning) actively discouraged me from ever doing anything exceptional or interesting. Those things were by definition outside the syllabus, and therefore not important/valuable.

I was held back from AP courses because I had bad grades. I had bad grades because I didn't do my homework. I didn't do my homework because it was unbearably boring and repetitive, or if it was novel, I was terrified of getting "wrong" answers. There were always "wrong" answer.

"Stored and bored" is now a meme about school life

Two things I regularly think about. First, I went to a public school that started a “Gifted” program as early as Kindergarten. It was literally called “Gifted”, and not being a part of it, I distinctly remember 6 year old me thinking I wasn’t smart enough for it. Six. Years. Old.

The other, when you incentivize with grades on BOTH the faculty and student side, you build the system we have today of maximizing short term gains (e.g. good grades) at the sacrifice of true learning.

Recently had a conversation w/a friend about church. I said you need to have services (prob Sunday morning) where newcomers can find out what you're about and be brought into the faith--if you truly believe your stuff is awesome, you want it to be accessible, not offputting. 1/

And yet if all you have is stuff that's palatable to neophytes, the dedicated believers will never grow and reach their potential in Jesus. So, you need to have other services (Sunday night? Wednesday?) where people can deepen. 2/