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Welcome to Talk About Tuesday of Arts and Ideas in the Air, Under the Tent, and Around Baltimore.
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This is not the daily news podcasting. That comes in a separate, smaller bit.
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Instead, this is a segment where I, and perhaps others in the future, talk about some topic of the school.
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For those who are interested in hearing about that.
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I thought today I would just start with sort of my thoughts as to how this education kind of really works.
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It's something I've been thinking about for years, of course.
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The past year or so I've had a pretty clear idea of something I want to convey,
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but I've always found it very hard to convey it whenever I tried to write it.
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So maybe talking about it will help.
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So one of the key differences between our school and conventional schooling,
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I mean there are many differences, but one of them is that we really cherish not only exploration, but failure.
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And even failure to do, right?
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We really want to let our students explore the full range of experiences, emotions, success, failure, negotiations,
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you know, emotions, every emotion under the sun, right?
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All of that is, you know, we consider to be extremely valuable in the importance of this schooling.
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We don't view knowledge, you know, like a particular set of knowledge as that valuable.
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Instead, what we think of is this is the time for our students' brains to fully form
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and so that they can model the world and they can navigate it.
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They can make choices and decisions and really figure out, you know, what they want,
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how to get it, and then actually doing it.
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You know, these things seem like they're fairly simple ideas.
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You know, like, doesn't everybody get this as they grow up?
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But it really takes a lot of experience of trying all these things out to acquire it.
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It's not natural. It's a lot easier to just sit and listen to somebody talk about some stuff,
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remember it for a little bit, and then, you know, write it and then forget about it.
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What's much harder is coming up with that stuff, right?
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And that's something that we allow our students to really do here fully.
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And that really means, you know, taking a step back.
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Now, I think that's all fairly standard.
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My contribution to this is inspired by a mathematical technique called Newton's Method.
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In Newton's Method, it's basically trying to answer a question, a hard question.
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For those in the know, it's trying to find out when a function is zero, but it doesn't matter.
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That's a hard question.
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And instead of answering the hard question, you answer a simple question.
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And so, you know, that simple question, you get the wrong answer to the original question,
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no question about it, but then you get a new kind of starting point from that simpler question.
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You get closer, right?
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And then you do it again.
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So now you've got a better starting point because you answered a simple question that gave you the wrong answer,
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but it's a better answer than the one you started with.
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And you just keep doing that.
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With Newton's Method, it's basically approximate the function with the line.
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We can do stuff with lines because lines are easy.
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You find the, you know, where the line crosses the x-axis, that's easy.
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And then you take that as a new guessing point.
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That's the business of calculus.
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That's fine.
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Now, what happens with Newton's Method is the precision, it doesn't like just slowly get to the answer, right?
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It could have, right?
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And in fact, sometimes it does if you have a really bad guess or you're in a particular weird situation
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that leads to poor convergence, as they say.
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But typically what happens is you start with a not great guess.
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And then every time you iterate, you double the amount of precision.
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So when trying to teach this method, and I've been teaching it for decades,
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it's really hard because you can't get enough steps.
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I mean, oftentimes three or four steps, you're done.
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You've got like 16 digits.
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You're just done, right?
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It's amazingly effective.
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So what is that process?
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It's try something stupid, get a wrong answer, use that answer to do something a little less stupid,
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but still pretty stupid, and get a much better answer.
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And like a few times with that, you're done.
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And that really feels to me like what we see happening with our students here.
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You know, they have no idea about something.
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They try something, it fails miserably, but they get a little feedback,
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just a little feedback from that failure.
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And now if they choose to pursue it some more,
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they've got a much better starting point than they did before,
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and now they do a much better job, still not great.
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And by the third or fourth time, if they're still pursuing it, you know, boom, they're experts.
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You know, that is fantastic to see that, and for them to experience that.
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You know, and that's, I also think what's behind laughter, which we hear all the time here, of course.
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Laughter is this notion that you're saying, "I'm going to fail at this.
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I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm figuring it out."
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So don't be, you know, mucking about.
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And so it's an invitation for people to kind of stay out unless they want to join in that goofiness,
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which also means, like, don't tell me the answer, right?
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If you don't know how to do something, you want to join in and have some fun, great.
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But if you know how to do something, don't spoil the fun, right?
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That's the key of laughter.
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It's also an opportunity, I think there's a difference between, you know, laughing and stressing.
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Stressing has, you know, generally the conventional education.
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Students often experience a lot of stress.
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Stress also allows for some kind of learning, but it's a very focused, tight learning that has no depth, right?
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Or generally has no depth.
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It's just like I am walking this very narrow beam across this vast chasm and I got to get one foot in front of the other.
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I can't be jumping around. I can't be dancing. I'm just doing that.
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So there's, like, very focused, very tunnel vision.
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It's an effective, you know, really great tool to have when you really need to get something right.
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But when you're trying to really get a broad perspective and get a broad set of skills, you know, stress is the wrong thing.
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So I think, you know, laughter is like this expansive, failure-driven mode and then stress is no failure, right?
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Do not fail. If you fail, you will fall.
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And so it's very focused, it's very limiting, and it has its uses.
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And in fact, to really get mastery over something, you know, you'll see somebody when they're, you know,
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like, you see it with students, like, who've really mastered something.
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I'm not going to say that they're, like, stress stressed, but they're, you know, they're really focused.
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They're, you know, they're right on that, they're tight on the target of their interest, right?
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So they're, you know, I kind of like call out good stress.
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It's self-driven stress, but it's like trying for that perfection, right?
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That comes much later after the whole laughter and silliness and, you know, doing whatever.
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So, I don't know, I hope this makes some sense to people.
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Bottom line for me is that one of the greatest benefits of a Sudbury education or, you know,
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really self-directed education is just that ability to really embrace, well, failing, goofing around,
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being silly, and learning how things really work and what to do and how to achieve it.
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So, I hope this was enlightening and, look, I look forward to future Tuesdays with you
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where I will talk about some other topics hopefully and hopefully some other people will join.
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If you have questions about the model, please let me know and I will answer some of the questions here.
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This is an attempt to fill in the gap of not having to talk about Tuesdays
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where we would gather and talk about the model.
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So, maybe this will fill in just a little bit about that.
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Thank you, have a nice day, and see you later.