0:00
Welcome to an I in the air talk about Tuesday where I talk about some kind of
0:05
topic related to Sudbury School. So this following phrase kind of came into my
0:13
mind I'm not entirely sure how to make it into something to say but believing
0:19
in one's ability to succeed and the confidence to fail safely. I feel like
0:28
this is something you know that our school is almost uniquely suited to
0:40
really foster and you know because you know we we do this radical thing of here
0:50
is your day you get to live your life and that's how how it goes and so what
0:59
do people do with that when they have that? Well they do stuff and you know
1:07
what we see with human beings particularly children but a lot of human
1:12
beings when they're left by themselves they are going to seek out something to
1:19
do probably something they have not mastered or have not mastered to the
1:24
sufficient ability that they want to and they're going to figure out how to
1:30
succeed at it they have this belief that they can see succeed at least to some
1:35
more degree than they are currently and you know they also being in this
1:42
environment failing is you know there's no like like failing from an external
1:49
authority no one saying you you failed here maybe the students failed to follow
1:54
our rules but that system is you know is done with an expectation of failing to
2:04
follow the rules and then eventually getting better at them and so forth
2:07
assuming they want to right I don't think we have any rules that are
2:11
impossible for someone entirely to follow but so you know what it is is
2:21
they try and then they fail and it's okay so they can fail safely and you
2:27
know this is you know important thing and one thing that comes to my mind is
2:33
like social right when you talk to someone new you've never met before you
2:40
have to have some amount of belief that you'll succeed in talking to them
2:43
otherwise why would you talk to them right so you there must be this belief
2:47
that it's okay to to talk to them but there's no guarantee that things are
2:52
going to work well that's why most people are nervous when they talk to
2:54
somebody they don't know because they don't know it might fail but they also
2:58
have hopefully the ability to if it fails to go well that it doesn't become
3:04
a disaster that you know that they are confident in failing safely and that is
3:13
I think you know important thing that that one thing that happens at
3:20
conventional school is that when people fail there are dramatic negative
3:24
consequences so the idea of conventional school is failure is bad here we don't
3:31
say failure is bad we don't really also say that failure is good like you're
3:34
trying to accomplish failure it's just that failure failure happens and you can
3:39
you can fail at something in a safe way in a way that you can learn from you can
3:45
build on and that's what puts the mind at ease failing unsafely you stress down
3:53
right you clamp down you try not to experiment and so I think you know this
4:00
is something that our school really offers and that's you know something I'm
4:09
very proud of I think for all of our students were to leave here believing
4:16
that they can succeed with you know effort and confident that they can fail
4:23
safely whatever they try that's you know I think you know I'd be pretty satisfied
4:32
and believe that they would you know do well in life just with that kind of
4:38
basic foundation I mean it really seems like a you know minimal starting point
4:48
for being a successful person in life but it's also perhaps all you need so
4:55
yeah believe that you can succeed with some effort and confident that you can
5:03
fail safely is what I would hope for everybody all right well that's probably
5:10
a lot more to say about that and I also wanted to tie it into a previous talk
5:17
about Tuesday with labels you know and how that can mess with people and it's
5:23
kind of the opposite of it this is just it's living past labeled it's not being
5:29
labeled it's it's like you know you're just there I remember in my graduate
5:37
days there was this math physics seminar where they made bringing people from
5:43
various things and they would just basically tell them look assume we know
5:47
nothing but that we have infinite ability yeah I always thought that was
5:52
so nice and so you know it's like like it's it's not an assumption that we know
6:01
that there's this arrogance or anything right but it's just the assumption that
6:07
we can figure this out and you know let's proceed with that there's also a
6:13
little bit you know impossible aim to achieve to I mean come on like someone
6:20
spends like years studying something and they're trying to communicate to us and
6:23
you know it's like yeah it's a pretty tall order to say something meaningful
6:32
to people who don't know anything about what you've done usually it's just like
6:36
the background of the field and never and rarely getting to the point of what
6:41
it is they did but so it goes I still like the image anyway you all have a
6:47
good one and I will see you when I see