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KindlED | The Prenda Podcast
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments through microschooling. Powered by Prenda, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle curiosity, motivation, and well-being in young learners. Do you have a question, topic, or story you'd like to share with us? Get in touch at podcast@prenda.com.
KindlED | The Prenda Podcast
Episode 70: Beyond One Size Fits All Learning. A Conversation with Yong Zhao.
Dr. Yong Zhao challenges us to keep children at the center of education by acknowledging their uniqueness and building learning systems around that core idea. His approach aims to give kids the skills they need for meaningful future work instead of the synthetic tasks often imposed throughout traditional K-12 education.
• Education should build on student strengths, not force mastery of every weak spot
• Meritocracy fails by judging all kids with the same yardstick instead of honoring diverse talents
• Schools lost the race with tech by neglecting to prepare students to use it well
• “Personalizable education” means kids drive their learning journey, not just receive “personalized” lessons
• Real learning happens through solving authentic problems, not completing artificial assignments
• Humans are natural learners who need autonomy to discover strengths and interests
• Tech isn’t good or bad—what matters is how we teach kids to use it productively
• Systems should avoid one-size-fits-all and give schools more freedom
• Nothing works for every child—education must adapt to differences
• We should help kids create the future, not just prepare for it
About our guest
Dr. Yong Zhao is a Foundation Distinguished Professor in the School of Education at the University of Kansas. He previously served as the Presidential Chair, Associate Dean, and Director of the Institute for Global and Online Education in the College of Education, University of Oregon, where he was also a Professor in the Department of Educational Measurement, Policy, and Leadership. His works focus on the implications of globalization and technology on education. He has published over 100 articles and nearly 40 books, including: Duck and Cover- Confronting and correcting dubious practices in education, Teaching students to become self determined learners, What works may hurt -side effects in education, Never send a human to do a machine’s job.
Connect with Yong
zaolearning.com
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About the podcast
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments.
Powered by Prenda Microschools, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle young learners' curiosity, motivation, and well-being.
Got a burning question?
We're all ears! If you have a question or topic you'd love our hosts to tackle, please send it to podcast@prenda.com. Let's dive into the conversation together!
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Then you use your ability, you solve the problem. In a new age, learning is doing, doing is learning. You do not learn in preparation for something. You actually learn to do and knowledge is right there. That's what I'm hoping schools will do better.
Speaker 2:Hi and welcome to the Candle Podcast. Today we're talking to Dr Yong Zhao. He is a Foundation Distinguished Professor at the School of Education at the University of Kansas. He previously served as the presidential chair, associate dean and director of the Institute for Global and Online Education in the College of Education at the University of Oregon, where he was also a professor in the Department of Educational Measurement, policy and Leadership. His work focuses on the implications of globalization and Technology on Education. He has published over 100 articles and nearly 40 books, including Duck and Cover, confronting and Correcting Dubious Practices in Education, teaching Students to Become Self-Determined Learners.
Speaker 2:What Works May Hurt Side Effects in Education and Never Send a Human to Do a Machine's Job. Absolutely fascinating conversation with Dr Zhao today and my main take home is that whatever we do moving forward to create educational learning environments or systems for kids needs to keep the child at the center and to acknowledge that every single human is a different human, and when we believe that and when we build learning systems around that idea, we're going to actually be able to get kids the skills that they're going to need in the future to do meaningful work instead of fake, synthetic work that often we force upon kids for the 13 years of K-12 education. So let's get to our conversation with Dr Zhao. Dr Yong Zhao, thank you so much for joining the Kindle podcast. We're super excited to get to know you and learn from you today. Welcome.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, Katie.
Speaker 2:All right, so tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell me, like, your personal story. You have a really incredible story and I just want everyone to really understand who you are and where you're coming from when you approach, like the educational space. You've done so much. You're such a prolific author. Just take us back. Tell us the story.
Speaker 1:Well, I think my story probably will fit the Pranda story quite well, in that I am doing what I'm doing because I was not good at what I was supposed to do. You know, I grew up in a remote, rainy, mountainous area, in a small, tiny village in China, southwest Sichuan province, and in the 1960s you know, this is my 60th, actually anniversary of my birth, you know, so I'm 60 years old. So you know, when I was born? So I'm 60 years old. So you know, when I was born, that was during a cultural revolution and there was no real school, you know, and education, and so I was really a bad farming kid. So everybody was farming and Mao Zedong, you know, the chairman of Communist Party, decided to open schools in villages in 1970s. When a teacher came to recruit students, the teacher probably was just recruited from the farm field anyway, you know. But at that time my father said you know, you're not very good at farming, why don't you go to school? That was the good reason. So I've always followed that idea of if you are not good at something, go try to find something you're good at and follow that.
Speaker 1:Then, of course, later on, china opened up and China has a college entrance and I passed some exams and went to college and, trying to become an English language teacher, taught English and then, just as accidents would happen, I've always, you know, kind of credited. You know, accidents, serendipity in my life. I came to the US, I was a visiting scholar in Oregon, oregon, and then went to grad school in Illinois and then got a job in various universities Michigan State University, university of Oregon, university of Kansas. Also had jobs in the UK, university of Bath in Australia, university of Melbourne. So I've had a lot of experiences in many, many different countries and I just got back from Portugal, but all my life has been around the issue about what is good education. I think you know we have a traditional view of education is that we judge students based on what they do and what we think they should do. I think that's the big problem.
Speaker 1:I was just writing an article this morning, and not finished yet, about what I call the end of meritocracy. Meritocracy as a term actually was first invented in 1956. And then a book came up it's called 1958, called the Rise of Meritocracy, as a term actually was first invented in 1956, and then a book came up it's called 1958, called the Rise of Meritocracy. But the book was really just making fun of meritocracy.
Speaker 1:Meritocracy is a stupid idea but has been adopted by society to say, oh, this is great, we can determine a person's merit based on IQ plus efforts and then give them resources, give them social status, give them positions.
Speaker 1:But actually it does not work. I mean, actually, the guy who wrote the book, michael Donald Young, who is a sociologist and a politician in Britain and he was predicting his book, actually said that in about 2034, in his book actually he said in about 2034, it's a satire there will be a populist rise against the meritocratic elite, which has happened right, I mean actually it happened earlier. Anyway, because when you judge merit, you judge based on the traditional standards. You know what is considered merit is IQ plus effort, but then the merit is not necessarily your independent ability. Your parents, your community and your school and everything determines what your merit is. And also there are a lot of people who might fail the IQ test but do great on EQ. You know the emotional quotient. So, anyways, all my life has been looking for opportunities, looking for systems, looking for policies that would not discriminate against people who have different talents and different passions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's interesting. So what would you say? Your big why is Like? What change in the world are you seeking to make through your research, through your books?
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, I think you know there are the big change I'm hoping to happen, which actually has happened, but schools have failed to deal with it. Schools have lost the race against technology. I mean, look at today, the Generation Z are suffering a lot. They're not living a better life than their parents, which they should, but they're not. And then we are complaining about them, I mean basically around. You know, since 1970s, 1980s, education should have changed and to meet the needs of the society. And when technology changes so fast, we know we needed different kind of talents but we did not prepare them.
Speaker 1:You know, technology is not a good or bad thing necessarily. It can be both good and bad, but depends on the people. If we had people who can smartly utilize technological advancement to create new possibilities, it would have been great. But most people have been disabled by technology. Because when technology comes in to take jobs away, it creates new opportunities. But if people don't have the ability or interest in translating those potentials into newer jobs, newer economy, we live a sad life.
Speaker 1:And now the world is truly not offering the best to our kids. But I would not blame the world. The world is made by people who went to school and if the school did not prepare them well. And that's what we live, you know, when people always complain about extreme politicians, you know horrible business people, you know. But I said, no, you can't just blame them. The society endorses them and so we are the society, you know. People say you cannot complain about traffic jams, you are the traffic jam. So that's what I'm hoping schools will do better, education will do better. You know I care so much about education. Another reason is that you know people always say, well, get your kids ready for the future. No, we'll get your kids to create the future, and their future is my retirement. I want to be careful about that. I want kids to create a better retirement for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're invested in that. I am too for sure. I think that's an interesting way to look at it and I'm wondering you've worked in educational systems all over the world. Like what do you see that has worked? What do you see that does kind of future-proof kids? We don't know what the future is going to be like. Right, like the jobs that we're doing now could not have been predicted by our parents or grandparents. So, like how do we, how do we, build systems, educational systems that enable kids to adapt, to take advantage of those opportunities that you're talking about? What have you seen that works and what isn't working?
Speaker 1:Well, I mean in terms of systems themselves, I haven't seen many systems working great. You know I was. You know I said the same thing. I was in Portugal. Portugal was hosting an education conference, which was nice, you know, a media outlet hosts that, and one of the reporters interviewed me. We talked a lot about this. I said, you know, if you look at education systems, there's no good system Right now.
Speaker 1:So far, for over the past several decades, everybody was reforming at the system level, trying to improve education, but none of the reforms has made much difference, has changed anything, and so I've been arguing for devolution of power, that I think schools should have a lot more autonomy. One of, if you know, one of the things I would say is that you cannot compare school educational systems across different countries, because they have different needs, they have different reasons, they have different communities, different parents, different students, different culture, all kinds of different things. You cannot use one, you know, like a test score to say, oh, our kids are falling behind, our kids are doing better, we are more globally competitive than others. That's like judging, you know, ranking restaurants based on one dish globally. You know you can't do that, but systems like to do that and then, once they do that, they come out with again one-size-fits all curriculum for all children, one size fits all testing for all students, which is probably the worst in the age. You know, some systems give schools more autonomy, some systems are more controlling, and so the controlling systems seem to drive higher test scores in comparison to other countries, like East Asian education systems. And then some systems seem to more laissez-faire you know they don't control education as much. But then there's a danger. We got to watch out because some systems to say, I think actually the US, I know US, of course has got more than 50 systems, you know, but in this country and in the UK, because some system leaders like to say, well, I don't care how you run your school, but as long as you pass my test, then that is actually very dangerous. That is because you do not want to monopolize the kind of students you want. You know you want Because I think now I go around I ask policymakers, teachers, school leaders one question I said you know, how do you know what you work so hard to teach or to test to want the students to have when they graduate from school will be meaningful in five years?
Speaker 1:How do you know? You know like we've been talking about 21st century skills, reading skills. We fight over reading, for example, for a long time you know whole language or science of reading, all those. It's nonsense, you know, but we fight over them because there's money, there's politics behind all of that. But how do you know that you are helping kids learn or you're forcing children learn will be valuable in five or 10 years. To learn will be valuable in five or 10 years. Nobody checks on them, nobody, and then nobody is responsible. But yet you look at schools. We force kids to learn all those things. Actually, right now I'm running some experiments to say what's worth learning.
Speaker 2:Do parents know?
Speaker 1:Do students know? Do teachers know? But when you force kids to learn, is that truly valuable? So I think that's really every education system needs to consider. But, katie I, I would say I don't expect systems to take actions to innovate, because systems are more of the stabilizer, not the innovator. They stabilize, you know, they have to keep everything the same. They can react to educational innovations, but I don't think they can lead educational innovations.
Speaker 2:Interesting. Yeah, that's an interesting concept. I think I mean systems. When it comes down to it, it's just human decision right that we've set up. The teacher should say these sentences when the students are this like old and then give this test. Like we create, but like that was made by a human right. Like trying and I mean Prenda in and of itself is kind of like a learning system. So like I'm very interested in how we can set up incentives and programs and patterns and like beliefs. Honestly, that will keep the student at the center and help us all stay focused on the goal of creating like not just a kid that can pass a test, but a kid who feels a certain way about himself and learning and their capacity to achieve and overcome and figure things out, make a better world, like what you're calling us to, to take care of your retirement we're all very focused on getting you the retirement that you deserve.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, I think what you said is quite interesting is that education systems are man-made, yeah, and also I literally meant man-made Women were not part of it in the beginning. You beginning, and I think the question is really in this Do we treat students as individual human beings or do we treat them as subjects to an emperor or king or a system? Because right now, if you look at schools traditional schools very much as a prison, that is, we define what you do. We judge you based on what you do. We lock you in a place in terms of what we think schools need to be efficient. We really do not allow a lot of autonomy in students. We don't value individuals. We value what they produce based on what we want them to produce.
Speaker 2:Something I've heard you say, I can't remember where. I heard you say this was something to the effect of we treat every student that is the same age as if they're the same person. And if we can't treat them as this same person, then we like call them gifted and talented, or we call them like they need special education. There's like three buckets, but you're calling the world to something that is much more personalized. You call it personalizable education. Can you go into the difference between what Well, tell us what personalized education is, and then what is personalizable education? How are you kind?
Speaker 1:of reframing that. I've read quite a lot about that. I think right now it's very popular to say we have personalized learning. But mostly when they talk about personalized learning they're talking about personalizing the learning process. That is, we define what you should learn and when you should finish that. But then you know you can personalize. You know you can learn this in the day, you can learn this in the evening, you can learn this tomorrow morning. Or you can say okay, you can do the test this way or that way.
Speaker 1:But that's not really personalized learning. That kind of personalized learning following computer systems is no different than the teaching machine. You know a BF Skinner's teaching machine. It's basically you. You know I give you a question, you give an answer. If it's correct, I give you, you know, a more difficult one, or I will advance you. If you don't, I will make you repeat that more difficult one, or I will advance you. If you don't, I will make you repeat. That's not personalized learning.
Speaker 1:In my mind, personalization of learning should be driven by students and learning, education or schooling should be personalizable. So you offer all the potentials to enable students to follow their passion or interest and to say you know like, for example, you know, students today in generative AI, on chat, gpt, say, okay, I really want to learn more about electricity and I don't care about electricity, I care about the history of how electricity has been developed. You should, yeah, go for it. You know, then you should say, okay, as teachers, you know I will support that how much you want to learn. You remember, a student can learn for 10 years about great electricity and become very creative about it. You should let it go. And if you want to read novels about electricity I'm sure there's plenty of novels about that, actually History, biography they can do it. If a student wants today, you know, they want to deal with dinosaurs, they can do a lot more. And dinosaurs, you know, it's not only dinosaurs. Dinosaurs has to do with a lot of, you know, evolution of the world and environment, environmental impact, it can go on. So it's driven by students. But you make learning, you make education personalizable. That means you allow the students to personalize. I think that's a big difference, you know, because I'm very tired of schools to say, oh, we're doing personalized learning, they just buy some computer software and students can, you know, punch this in. That's not. You know, that doesn't help students at all. You know that actually you're still driving students who might be slower in learning to do the same thing. You know, actually.
Speaker 1:You know like in the US we talk about reading. Reading is a very interesting concept and but there are all kinds of different reading. You know why American student reading scores have not changed so much since 1970s is because there's too many. There are too many remediation. You know we force kids to say you got to be able to read to pass the reading test by third grade. If not, you cannot advance to fourth grade. Who says that? You know, I might just be playing around hanging out, I'm listening, I'm talking, I can drive AI using my natural voice.
Speaker 1:Why what's so great about reading? But I'm not against reading. If you can read, go for it. But if a child has reading issues and takes so long to correct that reading problem, I don't think we should do it. It should be just like my father. You can't do farming, go to school. You know it's the same thing. If you cannot read, go do something else. And today you can actually do that. I mean, you were talking about neurodiversity. That's just true. Human beings are different in the wild. It's amazing, right. And that different wild, you always have something you're great at. Yes, schools have prevented children from discovering what they're good at, and so personalizable education creates the opportunity for students to do that.
Speaker 2:So I'm thinking like is there a subset of skills that we can say almost certainly? I mean it's a little hesitant. I'm a little hesitant about this now with AI, but I mean, five years ago I would have said no, there's a subset of skills that, like I'm 90% sure that kids need to be able to do whatever they want. And you've said that in order to be creative, you need deep knowledge right, and to be able to like have a foundational, have foundational skills to be able to interact with the world and to learn.
Speaker 2:If we're, you know, you give the example of kids hopping on AI and saying I want to learn more about electricity, they have to want to do that, and then they have to know how to interact with a robot. You know which there's. There's a learning skill set there. I'm trying to like build different AI models and stuff right now personally and through work. I'm like this is a skill right, Like this is not just magic, but how. I mean I think I hear what you're saying and I actually like agree with a lot of it, but I'm wondering if there are listeners thinking like, no, my kids have to learn how to read and I'm never going to send them to a school or trust them to a system that doesn't like prioritize reading and writing and math.
Speaker 1:Are you saying like we should throw?
Speaker 2:all of that out or like.
Speaker 1:That's a fabulous question. I get that question all the time. First of all, we got to think about this. Let's assume there are some basic skills. Are those basic skills part of our education or not is questionable. You know, a lot of times human beings develop abilities without being taught. You know, that's something I think we sometimes forget about that. You know, human beings develop abilities, and without being taught, okay.
Speaker 1:The second thing is that human beings do not necessarily learn when you think you are required them to learn. You know that's not. We need to accept that Totally. They don't need to be proven, that's just a fact, right? So when you think you're forcing your kids to do something, are they actually doing that? Are they actually learning that to do something? Are they actually doing that? Are they actually learning that? And then the third question is that how do we know what is worth, what you need to require? You know I mean.
Speaker 1:Another example I learned English because I was bad at math. You think Chinese can be bad at math too, so don't worry about it. I know people have this stereotype. I was horrible at math. I got a three out of a hundred in my college entrance exam. That's quite. If you know math. That's pretty bad, okay, and I've survived. I've survived well. I do statistics very well. I was a teaching assistant for statistics. I do computer programming. So is what you're judged by a test, truly judging your ability? So now I'm questioning am I really bad at math? But there's so much math. So which part of math algebra, calculus, statistics, probability there's a difference.
Speaker 2:Or maybe you were just bad at sitting still and like listening to a lecture, like learning that way.
Speaker 1:The test.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So that's another thing. How do we judge? So that's why I've emphasized human beings as human beings, if they have a reason, if they have a purpose, they will learn what's needed and today, in this world, they have resources to do that. So I'm not going to argue with any parents, argue with anyone. I said what you should do is you should follow your children, believe most human beings are genuinely good and social and you need to support them. I think a lot of times we get so-called bad kids because we force them, because we pressure them. You know, from our perspective rather than from their perspective.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So two things I'm thinking here. One, the brain is unique. The human brain is uniquely positioned to solve real problems, not fake problems, and a lot of the things that we do to kids in schools we give them fake problems. You have essentially 13 years of fake problems and your brain is supposed to.
Speaker 2:I remember learning math and I'm like wait, so I'm moving all these numbers around and you're telling me that I'm moving them in the right way and sometimes I move them in the wrong way and I have no idea why one way is right and one way is wrong. It has no bearing on whether or not, like, I'm happy or I'm safe or I can provide for myself in the future or any of this. It's completely disconnected, right. But then as soon as I get into, you know, like I discovered that I'm very passionate about education and like building print and things like that, as soon as I have a real problem, my brain becomes very good at using numbers to like to build the things that I care about, to solve the problems, to solve real problems, and not just to solve my problems but to solve the problems of others. Right, and I think that you've done a lot of writing about this, like giving, giving kids and adults real problems and doing like problem-based learning instead of fake.
Speaker 2:I just feel like the whole world we created for kids is very synthetic, and they know that it's synthetic because they're very, very smart, and it's like we don't trust them enough to invite them into the real world to participate in solving real problems, and we're kind of like babysitting them for so long that we miss the point where they can actually become very effective and efficient and helpful in solving the real problems of today. And maybe we're just worried that we don't have enough problems for everyone to solve, but I can't imagine that that's actually the truth, but we act as if that's true. Well, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I think you're absolutely right. I think the popular problem-based learning unless it's a problem students found interested in, it's not a real problem. It's your problem, it's not my problem. My problem is to solve your problem. You know, in schools I got to do this thing. You know it's the idea. So you know, a lot of my work now is really about three things. One is personalization of learning or personalizable education. Number two is teach students how to find the problems, find meaningful problems for others, for the world. And number three is trying to help people understand human interdependence. If you combine the three things, you have developed unique abilities through personalized learning, unique. Everyone can be uniquely great, and then you use that greatness to find and solve problems for others, then you'll be happier. You know, because of purpose, you have reason and then that when you solve problems for others, you're creating interdependence because you are helping others, and then you have weaknesses, others can help solve your problem. So that's what I'm really right now thinking a lot about.
Speaker 1:The HIP human interdependence paradigm is that people cannot be selfish. They can be self-interested. You know, in a traditional school we teach kids to be selfish because the traditional forces you to compete against each other. You know you have to be. You know, remember in college admissions? Oh, you're the top 5% in your class top 10% but someone has to be the bottom 5%. What's going to happen to them? That's why meritocracy is wrong. You cannot do that. You have to rank people. Why do you have to rank people? You can be top 1% in this. That person can be top 1% in that. They can be different. So when you are talking about uniqueness, that is where human beings might have a hope of doing better in the future. If everybody is unique and they use their uniqueness to solve other people's problems, that creates human interdependence instead of trying to compete against each other.
Speaker 2:So what are the ingredients then? And like, I hesitate to say an educational system, because we know systems don't innovate or solve problems. But how should we set up like, let's just pretend we're building a school. What would it look like if we wanted to do personalizable education and we wanted to give kids real problems, help them fall in love with problems and serving the needs of others and not relying on competition. What's it look like?
Speaker 1:I had a problem that does not work anymore with AI Because before I was really thinking a lot about you know 2018 or 19,. I wrote a book about personalizable education. So at that time, I was thinking about a lot more about how do you offer a personalizable curriculum, for example. Right, I mean, you know schools, you have to teach the like you said, basic, you have to offer, but you have to offer some time. We just wrote an article about this, called Time Available for Autonomy.
Speaker 1:So I think today, in this new age with generative AI, with all these new tools, the big thing is autonomy. So a personalizable education should give students time to make autonomous decisions, what they would like to learn and use that autonomy. You should always ask but why do you want to learn this? You know what problems you're going to solve, what problems you will solve. So the first one is really give autonomy. Second thing, teaching and learning should always start with finding problems, and we're running a bunch of experiments in actually, k-12 school and colleges and undergraduate school to say what problem do you want to solve? We spend a lot of time first to say discover your strength, discover who you are. Second thing is really find out what problems you want to solve and why. So students spend a lot of time to refine those problems. You know problems can be observation-driven, can be theory-driven, you know, can be stakeholder-driven. Right, and you observe something. Oh God, you know we don't have good food. Can our food taste better? You know that's observation. But then how does food taste better? It can get into chemistry, it can get into biology, it can get in all kinds of things. Stakeholder. You know my mom wants a better, you know kind of dessert. And then how do I meet that? So then you use your ability, you solve the problem.
Speaker 1:In a new age, learning is doing, doing is learning. You do not learn it in preparation for something you actually learn to do. And knowledge is right there. And third is that you always want to find out who cares. You know you want to write a novel who cares? You want to write a poet, who cares? You want to write music who cares? You always want to find.
Speaker 1:You know, have an entrepreneurial thinking about your audience. You know, I mean even the audience, even the greatest painters, artists, they are trying to learn to find out. I'm painting. But you've got to have a sense of audience. You have to have a sense of audience. Who does this? My son works in the Chicago Art Institute. He puts up exhibits of photographers. He has a PhD in art history, you know, and he has to think about why do people want to come to watch it? I'm putting this photo versus this why.
Speaker 1:So purpose matters. So I think in new learning, you always want to get children to be the driver of the learning. That's the most important. And not all children necessarily want to do it, especially after they've been educated in schools, and so you need to cultivate that confidence.
Speaker 1:You can do something, you can solve real problems and, like you said, you know, education can fake problems. But in human society we have so many real problems and, trust me, solutions get more problems. You will never run out of problems. Any solution gets new problems, and that's how human beings develop right, and human beings develop this ability, this passion for solving problems. I mean this is, I think, a lot of times we treat K-12, especially early years, as, oh, you're a kid, you cannot do something. You know how many young people have done amazing things already, right? I mean, if you give them that opportunity, they are creative. They might need your help, of course, to better their work, you know. But they want to solve real problems. If you have young, you know three or four year olds would love to wash your dishes for you. You may not like it, but they'd love to do it. Love to prepare food, love to bake a cake. You know they want to do something 100%.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that need for competence is strong in all humans, right? We all want to feel like we can participate in meaningful ways. I was just. I have four kids my youngest is almost six and the other day I let her help me make scrambled eggs, or like we were making dinner. Everyone else was gone, it was me and her. We were making breakfast for dinner and we were doing very simple things. But she came away from that experience with the story, the narrative in her mind, that she had made dinner for her family, like independently, and that she was now not only had she mastered this meal, but she was now a chef. And so when everyone came home, she was like I'm a chef now.
Speaker 2:I is now a chef, and so when everyone came home she was like I'm a chef now, I'm a cook, yeah, exactly, and she was just like beaming, so exciting and like walked back in the kitchen. She's like what's next, mom? Like I am here to like like help me become this right.
Speaker 2:She's so like full of motivation, full of curiosity, and I think sometimes as parents we worry, like we kind of. You know, we paint this almost idealistic world of kids who just want to learn things and they're creative and they're passionate and things like that. But then we look at the kids. We have to realize is that that lack of engagement is actually a product of forced learning, right there. That's beautiful.
Speaker 1:Exactly I completely agree with. I mean, everybody can play video games and then they get tired of playing video games if they have autonomy.
Speaker 1:You know kids actually get tired of it. You know, like, if a kid says I don't want to watch TV, let him watch how long. You know it's very hard to stay connected to something without learning anything. You know human beings are learning machines. If you don't learn anything, it's really boring. And that's why some families do timeout. You throw them in the bathroom. I mean, actually funny thing. If you threw them in the bathroom for too long, they will become inventive. They invent something. They will draw something on the mirror. They will do something Human beings cannot stop. I mean we have to do something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that we just haven't trust, like parents and educators, we're so used to a system that engenders mediocrity, yes, but it's a mediocrity that we've accepted because there's a safety in that, because it's like normalized right, it's like well, at least I did the normal, responsible thing that got me these mediocre results. Or a kid that hates learning but knows how to read at least, or you know like. But it's hard to get off of those train tracks when you don't have a lot of societal models for like there being a different way and that you can give kids more autonomy and more freedom and give them real problems to solve, and that it will work. And so what would?
Speaker 1:you what's your I think that's another thing is. I mean, you're right, it's the faith. Education is a faith business. Right, Because you are, Because you cannot get immediate results.
Speaker 1:You know, I'm sure parents have a very hard time looking at their children watching TV or playing video game without doing. They really want to interfere. Right, Patience, but human beings now you live to 90s, 100 years old, my God, you know life should be enjoyed. Why do you want to force them? You know, I've seen families oh, you can only play five minutes of video game, so why do you do that? You know, let them learn to manage their own, Let them make mistakes as early as possible.
Speaker 1:You know, like, you know, you know, even like, if they're in first grade, they make some mistake, they forgot to turn in homework, they're playing too much video game. They will learn. They will say oh God, you know, could you help me control my video game so I can do my homework? And also, is this homework that important? You got to really think about it. You know what's more important? I think a lot of times we need parents to have a better understanding of the learning process, of the upcoming world, the new one, the new future, what's like. We also have to think about children as creators of the future they create. They do not just accept the past, they have to enter the future, and what are they going to make of it is very important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, going back to video games and screen use, that's a very hot topic right now and we've been thinking a lot about it at Prenda, because we do use educational technology to provide personalized learning. I won't call it that piece personalized, but we actually do both. Half of our like our learning model is half mastery-based, where we use educational technology to drive those key skills but we give kids. They choose what programs they work in. They set their own goals, and every time they set a goal they have to define a purpose for how they're going to use that math. And so, funny, I'll go through sometimes and read the purpose statements of our kids and some of them are like I want to master fourth grade math so that I can do fifth grade math, and I'm like nope, you've missed the point here. What are you going to do? They're so caught in this fake synthetic world that they can't even imagine a purpose outside of just jumping through the next hoop. And so we have to do a lot of intentional, like mentoring with them to get them to reimagine their future and to reconnect with who they are. And that is the work I think of the future teacher right, helping kids want to learn, like to make that shift. I'm like, oh, this is such a good story.
Speaker 2:So in one of our very first Prenda Micro Schools, kelly had a kid. We do this project called Explain it to Future you, so all of the kids make a little model. You can draw it, you can sculpt it, whatever you want, make a model of your future self. And this kid created a model of himself sitting on the couch eating chips, playing video games. And Kelly, our founder and CEO, was the first guide. He was like, oh, that's awesome, that's going to be such a cool future. Who pays for the chips? And just that little question that he asked there, that, like little nudge, got this kid to realize like I am going to grow up and I am going to have to provide for myself, and like three like this kid was given the time and the autonomy to spend his school time figuring out what he wanted to do, and he landed on pediatric oncology and he figured out what college he wanted to go to and what scholarships he needed to get, and all of this as a fifth grader Just because he went from my future is playing video games and eating chips to.
Speaker 2:I have this like very meaningful passion to now when I, when I turn around and I'm doing my fifth grade math, I have it has a purpose and it's real to me and I think that when educators get better at narrating that for kids and reflecting back, yeah, we played a lot of video and so in my house, before I met Kelly, our founder, I didn't even allow my kids to play with toys that had batteries. I was like very, very low stim and I still, honestly, keep that rule because mostly I just get overwhelmed with all of the beeping and the noises and stuff like that. It's mostly a me thing. But we also don't have video games and mostly still just a me thing. But my kids are allowed to play, like when we go to our cousin's house or a friend's house, like they can play video games ad nauseum. I don't I police, like what it is, because I don't think violence is good for the young brain. But they can play as much as they want.
Speaker 2:And then when we were coming home, I'll reflect back with them Like how was that, you know? Like, should we get video games in our house and how do you feel after you play? And they're like blah, like we don't like this, please don't put this in our house. Like you know, they're asking me to not provide video games and I'm like all right, cool, so this is a team decision to not have video games in our house because you don't like how, you feel it's hard to control and you'd rather do other things.
Speaker 2:And so when my kids come home from school, they're on screens but they're like coding or they're creating presentations about things that they're interested in. I'm like, okay, this is absolutely possible if we play our cards. Right, like we can have kids that are curious and are developing. Still, they're still developing the core skills, because those are the skills of our society, right, if they want to communicate something like right now in the world, like they're going to write an email to their friend or they're going to make a presentation in Canva, and those they're using their literacy skills and their problem solving skills and their creativity skills and it's a beautiful thing to watch. And I just I want to inspire this next generation of parents to lean into that instead of like just continuing to beat the drum of mediocrity and like fineness. You ask parents how their kids are and they say, fine, like new goal, fine is not the goal.
Speaker 1:It's not OK to be fine, absolutely, and that's why you know I've been, you know, writing about it, I've been talking about you want your. You want individual, unique greatness or you want mass mediocrity. You know traditional schools produce mass mediocrity, when education should be helping individuals grow to become really great. And in the age of AI, really, unless you're great, probably, the value of mass jobs don't exist anymore, and the more you do it, any kind of massive jobs don't exist anymore and the more you do it, any kind of massive jobs repetitive will be replaced.
Speaker 2:So you've written a book called let's dive into this for a few minutes. Here You've written a book called Never Send a Human to Do a Machine's Job, which is such like a. When I read that title I was like, oh my gosh, I have to read this book. Talk to me a little bit and I know it was written a few years ago, kind of before AI became normative but talk to me a little bit about just that title and what you're.
Speaker 1:Well, the title was really because it's really about education of teachers is that you know human teachers. You know we've been investing a lot of them in school technology, but if you look at schools, technology really has not transformed a lot of learning. One of the reasons is that teachers tend to do mechanical jobs and they have to do it Like. Now. I'm sure a lot of teachers are not doing that anymore. They use AI to create homework. They use AI to score homework, to grade homework, which is great. You know you don't need human beings involved. Homework should not exist anyway. But so that's the. I think the idea was at that time to say if teachers allowed machines to do what machines can do, they can become a lot more human. I mean, this is true today, right, this is true in the future? You know, we should always.
Speaker 1:If a student can watch YouTube to learn math, why do you want to teach them? There are so many different ways of learning math. There are many different ways. You know, I don't like people to say, let's send to Khan Academy, khan Academy, just one. There's so many ways of learning math. There are many different ways. You know, I don't like people to say, oh, let's send to Khan Academy. Khan Academy just won. There's so many ways of learning math. Let them do it. You know, so you do not have to repeat what machines can do already. But if you go to classrooms now I mean a lot of teachers still you know teaching history. They're still reading a history book. Why do you want to do that? So I think that's the idea for the book.
Speaker 2:And so we've talked a lot about educational technology, Like would you say you're pro educational technology or against educational technology if you had to pick one?
Speaker 1:Well, I cannot pick one, because I'm both pro and against.
Speaker 1:I know me too I mean, like any tool, it's there. If you make good use of it, it's wonderful, but you can absolutely abuse it. I think technology has been abused and it can be abused all the time. You're like, actually this is another big topic. I'm sure your parents ask it Social media. Social media has been victimized, honestly, by a lot of say well, it's bad because it teaches students, you know. It depresses young girls, you know. I said you haven't done any research about the positive side. Another thing is that no school has taught kids how to deal with social media.
Speaker 1:You know you cannot blame, you know. But also you know at the same time, like with artificial intelligence, people say it hallucinates, has biases, isn't it? You know? Human beings are born with biases. Human beings are born to hallucinate. You know how many people tell you lies, deliberately or unintentionally, so you just have to deal with it. You know you deal with it and it evolves all the time.
Speaker 1:So you know, like when I first started using GPS it's funny thing like GPS, remember, I think, at 20, maybe 10, 15, 20 years ago GPS are not very good, so I always get lost. I was not good at reading GPS. I say well, you know, getting lost is a good tool, very good, so I always get lost. I was not good at reading GPS. I say well, you know getting lost is a good tool, you know. So you just treat it differently. How do you learn it right? You cannot blame it, you have to rely on it. So I think you know I'm not pro, I'm not against. I'm really here for smart users.
Speaker 1:Don't do what technology can do, but also keep thinking about. Technology can do a lot more than we think, because I mean actually, for example, generative AI. It all depends on how you use it. You know people. If you use it as an answer machine, it may not give you the correct answer, but if you use it as a reasoning partner, you might get much better answers. You kept questioning it, you know. You kept playing with it. You give it more data. You know it's like a conversational partner, Even like teachers can. When you go ask a question, teachers can give you a wrong answer, but if you keep probing, how often do you get an expert to probe? Allow you to probe like that without getting emotional. It's quite nice, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because educational technology is such a hot topic right now and we do use this at Prenda. So I'm kind of just in this state of like learning more and just read something somewhere. I think Jonathan Haidt, anxious Generation, that's like kind of the big book right now.
Speaker 1:I think he's completely wrong. Interesting.
Speaker 2:Interesting. Okay, talk about that.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, you cannot blame something that you cannot change. What are you going to like? You know, let's say, 60 years ago, you can't blame cars. There are too many cars in God. You know what are you going to do. You know, like, 120 years, a hundred, uh, 20 years ago, uh, we will blame horses. They are they. They carry horse poops in the, the, the pollute the city. What are you going to do so?
Speaker 1:So I don't think it's a solution like, oh, ban the phones ban. I don't think that's the cause. I think the real cause for our depressed generation is school. Schools are meaningless, you know so. They have no purpose and therefore, you know, when they have a real purpose in school, if the school is a meaningful, authentic life living experience, they're happy. I mean, you know why do they use TikTok? It's they used to relax if they're hooked, because they have no time to check something else. You know, we used to read nonsense books and when I was born and raised in my little village, people were starving but we were still having fun. We never watched any violent movie, but we're still using like a corn stalk to to try to pretend to kill each other. We just you cannot blame the, you know, corn stalks.
Speaker 2:Ban the corn stalks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean so, it's just so. I just think you know it's popular to think like that. You know people's oh, now I can buy my phone, I can put my phone in this. That's just, it's something you cannot do and I, in my mind, I just you know kids should always have phones and they need to learn how to manage the use of it. I mean, if you ban their use, will they not use it?
Speaker 2:They just won't let you know that they're using it.
Speaker 1:They'll just try to invent ways to steal the way to use it. Right. So I'm not protecting, I'm not arguing about to say you should not be watchful. You should, but you should not just blame this device. That's an easy excuse to have.
Speaker 2:Sometimes we get a lot of parents that come to us like worried a little bit about like how we use screens at Prenda and worried that they they just trust that a human saying the same sentences to their student is going to be better than a screen delivering those same sentences. And I totally understand like there are dangers around screens. And the analogy we use at Prenda is like a computer is no different than a stapler, right, but it's a tool that you can use and you can use a stapler in a dangerous way and you can use a stapler in a very productive way. It was made for productivity and we teach kids how to use that stapler safely and productively Like they. Actually it helps their executive function skills, like I remember. So my kids interesting kind of case study, like my kids have never been to normal school before and they've always only used educational technology to learn. They've never had a teacher. And I have four kids kindergarten through. My oldest is in sixth grade right now and we've always done this and my kids have. I've watched them struggle, I've watched them get really far behind and I felt the panic as a parent to think like, oh, no, like is my whole like educational philosophy or what we're doing wrong. And then I see them experience that, like they don't like feeling behind and that they are going to, you know, carve out some after school time to practice more or to like work on their curriculum more, to like work on their curriculum more. And they have, like my third grader, my fourth grader, like little kids. These kids are nine, 10. They are making better decisions for their future self.
Speaker 2:One time my six-year-old daughter said she was frustrated with math. She was okay, so I was after school, no one was making her do math. Right now she's after school. There's no homework at Prenda. She's independently choosing to do more math. So that's the first thing she's frustrated. She's independently choosing to do more math. So that's the first thing she's frustrated. She's like in tears, she's very stressed about this. She cannot figure this out. And I she's like mom, I can't do this. And I give her the suggestion that she quit, like why don't you just quit, you know? And I kind of meant like quit for the day, like take a break. I didn't mean like quit math entirely, but she took that to mean that I should, that she should give up on math. And she looked at me appalled and she was like mom, that would not be good for my future self as a six-year-old.
Speaker 2:And I'm like okay, if you let kids experience this, the weight of owning their own education and using this tool productively, they can learn to manage it. And that doesn't mean that we aren't like we have all of the safeguards on those screens and that we're. You know. Sometimes they're like can I work on my math after school? And sometimes I'm like no, I just don't want you sitting down.
Speaker 2:The opportunity cost of you sitting down here at a screen, even if you're learning, isn't worth like I need you to just be outside, go play, go like knock on neighbor's doors, start a pickup game of baseball, like you know, just go outside, and my kids are so happy to do that too. But it really is possible to to raise well-rounded kids who can manage the tools of today. Just like you learned to manage those corn stalks and we've somehow managed to learn how to manage staplers in the world. It's like, whatever the tool is of the day, like we need to teach our kids how to manage it. So, even from the perspective of like don't allow batteries just just for my like very.
Speaker 2:I feel like I have kind of an extreme position because I don't allow battery toys in my house. So it's like even from that perspective, like I, I am finding myself embracing more a teach them how to use it, kind of mindset.
Speaker 1:I think every family can have their own style. You know no battery powered toys, it's not a bad idea can have their own style. You know no battery, you know powered toys, it's not a bad idea. I mean I think every family choose. So that's why kids coming from different families have their different uniqueness. I mean families can decide, but you know the learning environments you create, caught with different kind of students. I mean it's nothing wrong or right, I think it just.
Speaker 1:But you know, like you said, your kids can go play video games other places, but they may not even want to play video games. Some kids just want to go outside and play baseball. I mean, I think again, I think we need to understand children are different. You know there are children who do not like video games. There are children who do not like social media. I mean, children are very different. But I think what you said just now, maybe 10, 20 minutes ago do not make video games or something like, create that escape for kids. We force them too much. They are looking for an escape. If that is the case, that's for kids. When you force them too much, they're looking for an escape. If that is the case, that's the problem.
Speaker 2:Yes, totally, 100% agree with that. Let's create learning environments and childhoods that don't need to be escaped from.
Speaker 1:Exactly, you want them to go to that place, but not want to escape into that place.
Speaker 2:Love that I love video games.
Speaker 1:I sometimes can cultivate great friendship for kids. You know they play together, they exchange, they're collaborating, You're definitely proud to do it.
Speaker 1:But again, whenever I say something, I want to really caution every parent and every your parental guides to say nothing works for all children. Nothing works for all children. I just finished a book. When it's published you might want to talk to me again. It's called improve the past or invent the future. For example, I look at data. Does social and emotional learning work for all children? Of course not. Does growth mindset work for everyone? No, sometimes growth mindset is simple stupidity. You should give up instead of trying to do more. So you got to really rethink about nothing. So whatever we're discussing here, we're talking about student autonomy, personalizable education.
Speaker 2:Love that. How can people learn more about your work?
Speaker 1:education, love that. How can people learn more about your work? Well, I think the easiest is to read my articles, and you know most of them. I now choose to publish in only open access places. People can read them online. And my books you know I've kind of written almost about 40 books and all of them are relevant to actually parents and education and take a different perspective on this. And they can find a list of my books and articles, my writings, on my website is zaolearningcom.
Speaker 2:Love it. Thank you so much for your time today and for coming on the Kindle podcast.
Speaker 1:Thanks, Katie.
Speaker 2:The Kindle podcast is brought to you by Prenda. Prenda makes for your time today and for coming on the Kindle podcast. Thanks, katie. The Kindle podcast is brought to you by Prenda. Prenda makes it easy to start and run an amazing micro school based on all the ideas we talk about here on the Kindle podcast. Don't forget to follow us on social media at Prenda Learn, and if you'd like more information about starting a micro school, just go to Prendacom. Thanks for listening and remember to keep kindling.
