S4 E2 Agency

I was in my 30s when I went to film school. When my teachers and peers read the first draft of my thesis script, they all noticed the same thing. My story had a main character, but it didn’t have a protagonist.

And guys, that’s a big deal in storytelling. Because if you don’t have a protagonist, there’s almost zero incentive for your audience to watch the film, because they don’t have anyone to care about. They don’t have anyone to root for. Because protagonists lead their stories.

Mine didn’t.

Protagonists make decisions. They stand up for what they believe in. Mine didn’t.
Protagonists speak up when their boundaries are crossed, and they take action when their needs aren’t met. Mine didn’t, because I didn’t know how to do those things for myself.
Because until then, I wasn’t living my life for me. I was living it for everyone else.

So, today, I want to talk about how this is relevant to our education systems, who it benefits, and why it ends up costing everyone. This is Sun from episode 70.

“I think we’re just taught not to think. I actually think that I don’t know if you heard the story, but, you know, like the Rockefellers funded, the Department of Education in the beginning. And their whole concept was, I don’t I don’t know if it was Henry Ford or Rockefeller, but their whole concept was to make people not think took to create a generation of workers. Right? When I look at schools right now, I do feel that way. I feel like they’re they’re training. It’s almost like, you know, when you go to trade school. And they just teach you how to weld or teach you how to do specific skills so that you can put them to work. That’s how I feel like that’s how education I feel like is it’s not far from that.”

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Now, some might argue that this system wasn’t about preventing independent thinking, but about efficiently transferring the knowledge and skills society needs. After all, aren’t schools supposed to prepare people for jobs?

Are we? Richard Riley, a former US Secretary of Education said “We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist.”

So it makes me wonder, which of the skills we’re teaching our children now will survive the economy of the future? This is Raymond from episode 10.

“I think for our generation, we’ve all been we’ve been fed with this notion of the hard skills to be technical. You need to do this, do that, learn the skill, get the certification, everything. And it helps because, you know, those certifications, those hard skills, they get the the job that you need, the money that you need in a fruitful career. But I think right now we are shifting towards the importance of soft skills, the importance of knowing how to navigate through a conversation, through all the different levels of hierarchy in the corporate career.”

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This is in line with something that Adam Grant, organizational psychologist and author of many books like Originals and Think Again, recently said on the World Economic Forum’s podcast, Meet The Leader. He emphasized adaptability, curiosity, collaboration, openness to new ideas, and dot-connecting (or bridge-building).

I’ll add to this list what Yuval Noah Harari, author of books like Sapiens and Homo Deus, said in a conversation he had at Google. We need to teach our children emotional resilience and mental stability.

Now, earlier we heard from Sun about the genesis of the US Department of Education. Sun is an entrepreneur—the founder of an award-winning digital agency in New York. His list of clients include the American Red Cross, Mel Robbins, Spotify, and Jay Shetty to name a few.
When I asked him where he learned the skills to be good at his craft, this is what he said.

“Throughout the last ten, 15 years, as I built my business, I’ve I’ve become really confident in myself and my capabilities. And I think, you know why? Because I think I’ve been in so many situations in my life where where I’m like, oh, to a situation where people would be like, I’ll this it’s over. Like it’s it’s like rock bottom, right? Like that. Oh, there’s no way I’m going to get out of this right. And sometimes, like in a small way where I have this huge deadline coming up and I have no time, but then, like, somehow I’ll stay up all night and somehow, like, miraculous, make it happen or, you know, like or like I have no money to pay my employees and somehow I’ll pull all the strings that somehow, like, borrow money or whatever it is and figure it out and then, like, so I’ve gotten out of so many situations like that where I’ve figured it out that I’m so confident in myself now that you can, you can drop me off in the middle of an island. I’m not a survival tactics guy or anything like that. You dropped me in the middle of an island with a bunch of people. I’ll figure it out and I’ll. I’ll figure out how to survive in there. Right? Like, I don’t know how, but I believe that I can.”

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I asked him what he thinks confidence means. He said,

“For me, confidence has to do with, like seeing seeing evidence that I have. I am competent at something or something like that. Right? Like I can’t just be confident out of nowhere.”

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It reminds me of the first 3 or 4 years of my teaching career. I didn’t really know what I was doing. I was just following the formula that I had learned by watching how others teach. Feeding the information I thought my students should know to them, but not helping them create their own systems for gathering information. It wasn’t until I discovered project based learning where I transferred the responsibility of learning to the student, that I saw them fully apply themselves. In other words, it wasn’t until I started experimenting for myself that I developed the confidence needed to become a good teacher. This means that the type of success that enables trust in ourselves is built on the lessons we learn through failure.
But do our education systems give students enough space, time, and practice to “figure things out”? Or does it encourage our students to find the one “right” answer? The one “right” method? The one “right” perspective? This is Rosie from episode 61.

“I wasn’t supposed to have my own opinion or more, maybe more accurately, when expressing my opinion, because I did have to write analysis of and talk about English papers in particular whenever I think. But but I already knew that to get the grade, I had to have the right opinion. So I don’t know if I ever felt like I was supposed to express my own opinion or, you know, what my opinion would have been, because I was probably trying to figure out what my opinion should be according to the teacher.”

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There’s a lot of talk right now about how AI is taking away our student’s critical thinking ability. This is a really complex topic with a lot of nuance, so stay tuned for an exploration in a future episode.

But for now at least, I want to focus on a book by Professor Noam Chomsky—Manufacturing Consent—about how the perception of free speech within democratic societies is actually an illusion because the range of acceptable topics for public discourse is intentionally limited or narrowed. This is Joyce from episode 27.

“You’re taught to never talk back. Never ask stupid questions. Never ask questions that cause an inconvenience to others. … It’s been ingrained to not ask questions because you don’t know when you’re going to ask the wrong one. It’s better just to not ask any questions.”

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And it makes me wonder if it’s our use of technology that’s thwarting critical thinking, or if it’s the environment that discourages dissent which prevents the need for critical thinking. But more importantly, whether or not the prerequisite for critical thinking is the psychological safety to make mistakes?

Here’s Maryn from episode 30.

“Learning is all about trying and making mistakes. But the environment doesn’t foster that because it shames you and punishes you any time you make a mistake and it just doesn’t prepare you for the real world. I think that’s where kids really lose interest in education, you know?”

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Now, it’s easy to see how our education environments stifle independent thought. But, to be fair, the system is complicated, and there’s immense pressure for results from all sides, with educators facing the brunt of it. Here’s Taylor from episode 79 to paint a part of that picture.

“There’s way too many tasks being placed on teachers. Every year it grows and we like we literally have no time to do our job. Which is why the system benefits on an unpaid teacher work. It doesn’t benefit. It runs on unpaid teacher work. You’re given 45 minutes to plan five classes, and that’s just to plan them, right? That’s not to put in accommodations for kids. That’s not to email parents grade paper, look at papers, grade them and put them in the grading system like I’m missing a million things because there’s just so much to do.”

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Here’s Adrienne from episode 85 to fill in some of those extra million things.

“You’re trying to meet, curriculum needs, you’re trying to operate within the budget. You’re trying to, appease parents. You’re trying to be, you know, counselor, speech pathologist, social worker, like all these things at the same time. It was just this impossible job. And then me coming home to my own family, to my own kids with nothing left.”

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And because there really are a million things, some might argue that strict rules and clear expectations, while potentially limiting, are simply necessary for managing a learning environment and ensuring everyone learns the required material.

But there is so much required material. There is no time during the day where our students are allowed to process all this input, and even apply what they’re consuming in any meaningful way, let alone the time to experiment with what they’re interested in. Justin, a 5-time Emmy-award winning filmmaker who works with a lot of youth throughout the year, says in episode 19.

“The thing about our education system, it’s kind of just like the way it is right now. It’s just kind of just like getting people used to this whole like, you know, work day mentality was like, you go, you get up, you go to a place, you’re there for the whole time you do stuff and then you go home. The difference is, is that like your work at work, you have to take, you know, work home with you and do homework, which is like the biggest scam in the history of the world. Like, how dare you take my free time to make me do math and, like, stay for a spelling test or something? This is so rude, But. But I think but I think that’s part of what the thing is like. There’s very little time within there, depending on what your school is like, to be able to have time to yourself, to learn to have that free time to like, you know, discover and you sort of have that. And like those early days where it’s like, you know, kindergarten, I’m sure you have like, you know, nap time, you have like coloring and things like that. You have that free time. You’re learning some things. We also have at times, like, you know, yourself. But once you get start growing on that scale, you get to certain points like that sort of stuff that goes away. Like sort of like how recess is a very elementary school thing, but like once you get to like middle school, high school recess isn’t really a thing, but like, you know, you can like go outside or something during your lunch periods. I mean, it’s not really the same. It’s not that same free play times, like, you know, just have fun with your friends. Just kind of like de-stress from like what you’re doing is guy like keep going in the system. And I think that’s not really working.”

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So why is it that we cram our students’ schedules with so many required activities? It’s almost like we don’t trust them to pursue goals that can prepare them for their future.
This is Phyllis from episode 65.

“We tell kids they’re irresponsible, but then we expect them to choose what they were supposed to do, what the rest of the what the rest of their lives while they’re still irresponsible. What are you going to major in? How the fuck do I know? I don’t even want to go to school today. And you want me to figure out what I’m going to do for four years after I leave you? You told me I was irresponsible, and I’m not old enough to make my own choices, but I have to I to have to declare a major. Really? You tell me. I’m legal at 18, but I still can’t buy beer. But I can get a credit card. But you tell me I’m irresponsible. How about if I’m irresponsible? Stop giving me fucking responsibilities.”

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This reminds me of something my late stepfather used to say. Whenever he’d had a bit to drink, he’d laugh incredulously at the fact that we send children to war before they can buy alcohol. Or that they can drink alcohol, a highly addictive substance, before their prefrontal cortexes—which plays a part in inhibitory and impulse control—have fully matured. “Isn’t that ridiculous?” he’d ask—as someone who fought in the Korean War, and was separated from his family when Korea was split in half.

Yes, I’d say. It is ridiculous. Because, the cognitive dissonance between what we protect people from, and what they should be protected from is the narrative formula that fuels dark comedy. We let them take on debt, but don’t teach them financial literacy in school. We let them buy cigarettes and alcohol, but don’t teach them how to take care of their health in school. We let them go to war and die for us, but we don’t teach them how to prevent wars in school.

Why? Could it be because our system prioritizes the economy over humanity? Profit over morals? Or maybe it’s because we don’t want them to learn for their sake. But because we want them to learn to serve the system. And how do they do that?

“Before he smacked you, he will ask, how many mistakes do you have? Then someone will say three. And then someone will say four. And then I was really, really scared because I had seven mistakes. So as I was listening one by one, I was thinking, “No one has more mistakes than me.” So, when it was my turn, I was like, I can’t remember. I was crying already.

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That was Leah—spelled L-E-A-H- from episode 17. When I asked her about what kind of fear it was, she clarified that she wasn’t afraid of the physical pain, but rather, “the part where you were being singled out for not being good enough.” Leah 017 S1 E16

Although Leah grew up during a time where corporal punishment was legal, and public humiliation was common practice, fear-based motivation tactics are still widely in effect in homes and classrooms around the world today. This is Adrienne again.

“I went to a French Catholic school, and I was raised Mormon and then raised in a pretty dysfunctional home. And so the general narrative was, if you’re like quiet and obedient, you will get love.”

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When I asked her what she thought was the common thread between her childhood home, church, and school, she said,

“It was about conformity and obedience, like obedience being the number one law at school and at church. That’s how you knew if you were a good person is how obedient you were. That love tied to that very conditional love and acceptance. Or maybe not love at school, but certainly acceptance or that approval you would get at school, at home, and at church from how obedient you were and how well you conformed. So all those, all those traumas are so interconnected and honestly parallel each other so well because it’s it’s about given being given a set of rules and seeing how well you obey them and not rocking the boat and any kind of self-advocacy, any kind of looking around. Well, this doesn’t seem fair. Any kind of, voicing against authority. It was all the same reaction and the same response, which is you’re unfaithful or you’re not a good student or you’re not a good child or, you’re not a faithful member, right? And you aren’t here to ask questions. You’re not here to doubt. You’re not here to to hold any of us to any kind of standard. Criticism is evil, right? And that Satan or that, backtalk. And that’s rude and that’s impolite. So it was to me, the systems were essentially the same, even though the name of the religion was different.”

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Adrienne is part of a developing community of alternative schooling moms and dads who are fighting back against such oppressive systems. Fran is another member, and is currently back in school pursuing a degree in early childhood education. This is what said about her research focus on student autonomy in episode 64 about her findings so far.

“The ways that we parent and educate in a lot of these countries are essentially like rooted in, like the dehumanization of children. And I think when it, when these big things, like how we raise our children, how we treat children in society, how we view them and how we educate them are rooted in a sense of they are not fully human. Like, you’re never going to get a good result that like, it’s never going to be your practices are never going to be humane and respectful. Because you essentially think it’s okay for adults to exert their power over children, right? They’re not part of our calculation, of, of humans generally, you know, a lot of the time they’re just seen as kind of a nuisance, and just, you know, little, not quite adults who need to be told what to do and, and I don’t think we’ve really reckoned with, the kind of assumption, the assumptions that we make as adults of, like, the ways that, like, we think we know best and therefore it’s okay to impose whatever we think is bad for sure.”

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Now, some of you might hear “dehumanization” of children and think, that’s too extreme, or not realistic. Or you might be wondering how you’re creating a culture of obedience in your home or classroom. But either way, it’s true that children need guidance, and that societies have norms. Many would argue that teaching discipline, respect for rules, and the ability to function within a group requires adults to set boundaries and expectations. Right?

But there are a lot of ideas (often very opposing ones) about what those boundaries and expectations should be. And while I’ll share more of those perspectives in a future episode, I’d like to switch gears a little bit to assess whether or not the use of extrinsic rewards and punishments to elicit compliance actually works. And what I mean by that specifically is, does our use of fear and shame-based tactics to educate our children, even lead to the long-term results we want? Or are we trading long-term success for short-term gains in what is merely performance? This is Stella from episode 51.

“You know, I actually find a lot of anxiety deviating from standardized path. And that’s potentially why I could succeed academically, because even though I wanted explore, I always was anxious about not meeting the standards of what was expected of me. So having a mom with your helped because I didn’t really have to do this by myself. I was I had an external force pushing me, so she was my motor and I still remember Summer before going into college, I was absolutely petrified of going to college because I knew I had set myself up for failure because my mom wasn’t going to college with me and it was the first time I was doing anything by myself. And I knew I knew so deeply that I wasn’t going to do well because I had never learned how to fall. I failed so hard in college. I was so lost. I mean, what I could do in high school, you know, cramming for exams, pulling all nighters, and then just memorizing like half a textbook overnight. Those kind of things don’t work in college. Right. Especially like at an institution where I want to Those kids are prepared and they’re they’re kids that have been doing it by themselves since, like a young age.”

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I’m going to replay a snippet of that to highlight something important.

“It was the first time I was doing anything by myself. And I knew I knew so deeply that I wasn’t going to do well because I had never learned how to fall.” Stella 051 S215

Stella’s story shows the profound cost of relying solely on external motivators.
And, many people argue that grades, degrees, and the promise of a good job are necessary drives. They might say, ‘Look, not everyone has a burning passion or the clarity to follow their curiosity early on. Sometimes you need those external goals to push you through difficult but necessary learning, and to open up practical opportunities down the road.’ Right?
But when I spoke with my guests, the external pushes they benefitted from were focused on their strengths, and not their shortcomings. This is Sonia from episode 72.

“The one person that played a pivotal role in my life was, was miss Crystal Blanc, and she was a pharmacist, so I had been certified as a pharmacy technician, and I was working, at, at a pharmacy. And in that pharmacy, you know, I, I served in many different areas as a technician. And I remember I remember her asking me one day, you know, what career was I going to pursue? Or, you know, what else was in line for me? And I looked at her and I was like, I’m going to be a certified pharmacy technician for the rest of my life. That was my plan, right? Like, this is it. I’ve made it right. I’m the first one in, in my family and and I’ve made it, you know, I’ve made it to college. I’m now a certified pharmacy technician. I have a good enough paying job. And I remember her looking at me and just bringing this to the forefront. She said, you are young, you don’t have any kids. You are smart. Why would you not continue? Why would you not continue? And, you know, get your bachelor’s degree? Like I remember that moment so clearly that I just stopped and I thought, yeah, why not?”

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That was a moment that happened later in her education journey. Here’s Kentaro from episode 73 sharing about his experience from middle school.

“I ended up actually applying to this private high school myself. I remember calling yeah. I mean, this is back in the day where you call and you. I remember calling and asking, would you please send me an application? They sent it to me. I remember filling it out and then my parents just signing it and writing the check for an application. And I’m sure they probably did other things that I don’t remember, but, I remember sending it in. So I think there was just an element in me of, of like, motivation. You know, a teacher at my middle school had actually talked with me about this high school her husband had taught there. So that that was definitely, she had also put the idea in my head.”

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Unfortunately, rather than encouraging our students to focus on their strengths, we often focus on leveling up their weaknesses. And this is the problem with using extrinsic motivation and validation.

Earlier in my conversation with Stella, she shared that her mom had been priming her since elementary school to get the necessary grades and extracurriculars to get into a top university. And because Stella could meet those expectations and follow the formula to actually make it to a top university, the external validation that came with walking that path worked for her—at least, until she got to college. Because, when she got there, she realized in many ways that this was not her dream.

As soon as our children realize that the path they took to get to the real world was not their own, they have to start over from scratch—often after all of their support networks have expired.

This is Lia—spelled L-I-A-from episode 39, telling us about her breaking point.

“Well, what do I need or what do I stand for? What do I want? And when you’re at a place where you can’t articulate that, you can’t ask For what you actually need, right? When you can’t ask for what you actually need, you know, something doesn’t feel right, but you don’t have the clarity to express it. And that’s where I was so many times, so many times I watch and I react to and it seems like I’m overreacting to like one incident. And it was hard for me to pinpoint like, no, like this is a pattern. This happens to me so many times. Why do you do this? like all of the things I was just like, Is this really all there is to life? Like I worked so hard to get here and it didn’t make sense to me. And I went probably for a year, like reading leadership books, reading self-help books, reading, you know, like just trying to, like, start to figure out, like, what is it? What is it that I was missing or what did I actually want?”

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And because our entire life was manufactured by our caregivers, teachers, the government, we often find that we still need to outsource our agency. This is Lia again.

“I remember the call. Like I remember driving home from work one day and calling my parents. I’m like, So what would you think if I enrolled in this design program and got my master’s and did web design? And I remember being so scared of that call, and I was like in my twenties already. I was living on my own and I still needed my parents permission, right? They granted it to me, right? They’re like, Well, you’re an adult now. Like you make your own choices. But I honestly inside feel like there is a sense of failure. If I pursued something more creative, right?”

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Lia is now a senior design executive who manages a team of creatives. When I asked her what guidance would have been helpful to her during that rough time of figuring out what she wanted, this is what she said.

“Follow your curiosity, right? That’s that was my year long reading books. All the things was to understand while growing up, what was I interested in, Right? It’s always like, think back to when you were a little and no one told you like anything about what to expect. You know what interested you? What brought you energy, you know, what did you find yourself always drawn to open their kids. You already see that. You see that they’re like, attracted to like, kicking every ball they see or that, you know, they like to seeing or they like to act. Right. And it’s, you know, then you guide them on that way.”

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Now, following your curiosity sounds like the ideal path to agency. But what about the practicalities of life? Some of you might be thinking, ‘That’s fine for some, but what about needing a job? What about the fact that sometimes you just have to do things you aren’t curious about to pay the bills?’

And that’s a valid argument.

But if you’re not following your curiosity or what you at least enjoy doing, are you living your life for yourself, or for all of the expectations of status and approval that society has told you that you need to be successful and happy?

This is Jae from episode 37,

“I don’t want my kids to grow up as the society designed them to grow up. I want them to write fine something while they’re in school, what they want to do, what they’re good at, and then try their best to become that person that they want to be. Not just like every other kids. Go to a good university and go to work for a big company and earn a lot of money and, you know, just like everybody else. So there’s no color. I don’t know. I sometimes use this word when I look at the society in Korea, it’s black and white, and only very few people are color. So it’s like watching a black and white TV. And very rarely you’re going to see some people with some color. Whereas when you go to other countries, some other countries that are more free, you’re going to see all these people with their own color. And I think that’s what we want everybody, should want.

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So, what can we do to help our children find their color, find their own agency, and take ownership over their lives from the start?

I’ll explore this more in future episodes, but before we part, I’d like to leave you with a clue from Bernd in episode 78.

“We need to build failure into education, not as a a red flag. Don’t mess up. Otherwise you will get a bad grade and you will not graduate. Failure is useful. Failure is good to if as long as you learn from it. And so we need to build that into the system so that people can fail intelligently and learn from it. And, and all these, all these little things. But the basic shift is towards the learner. So in a way, traditional teachers may feel that they’re giving up control, but all they do is they give up control over the contents. But they never had any control over the learning. Right? Never. So here, when learners themselves are in charge, and if we help them take responsibility for their own learning, the content may go a little bit all over the place. Even though we can, of course, guided and influenced that. But in general, there is much more learning involved and so we have more control over the outcome.”

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