[0:00:09] Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Arthur Carty, and I'm a member of the board of the Waterloo Global Science Initiative, as well as being executive director of the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology at the University of Waterloo. It's my pleasure to welcome you this morning to the first of three plenary sessions that will help, we hope, spark conversation and the exchange of ideas at the Equinox Summit Learning 2030.
[0:00:38] Before we begin, a few brief announcements. This panel discussion will run for approximately one hour, after which there will be a question and answer session. If you have a mobile phone or a device in the theater, please turn your ringer off, because this event is streaming live and is being recorded for future broadcast. WGSI would like to acknowledge TVO,
[0:01:06] are presenting Media Partner for their efforts in bringing these events to you online and on TV. And lastly, there are several other interesting lectures and panel discussions coming up this week. And if you can't be here in person, you can always tune in online at wgsi.org and tvo.org. Today's panel discussion features four young people who, unfulfilled by their learning experience,
[0:01:38] Dared to strive for better and as a result took their education into their own hands to get there. They will talk about their motivations, experiences, the reaction or the reactions of those around them and the difference it has made or possibly hasn't made to their lives. So let me now introduce to you Dr. Michael Brooks, the summit's curator and the moderator of our plenary sessions throughout the week.
[0:02:09] Michael has a PhD in quantum physics, in addition to being an author, journalist, and broadcaster. A consultant at New Scientist and a columnist for the New Statesman, Michael has written for The Guardian, The Independent, The Observer, and even Playboy. He has written several books, including bestsellers 13 Things That Don't Make Sense and Free Radicals, The Secret Anarchy of Science. His reach has even extended to politics.
[0:02:39] And in 2010, he set up the Science Party to contest the UK general election on a pro-science platform. So please welcome the very talented and versatile Michael Brooks and, of course, our entire panel. Thanks very much, Arthur. I thought some of those things were secret. So in the first few rows of this theatre are the...
[0:03:11] The courageous people who've come with me on this journey of learning 2030. They're education innovators, thought leaders and young people striving to create change in the world. And together we're working to create a joint vision of what really matters in education and how we can best equip the high school graduates of 2030 to realize their full potential.
[0:03:36] And each morning, we're going to begin with a public plenary session like this one to set the tone for the day and to provide the primers for our further discussions. So let me introduce to you very briefly our panelists, and then I'm going to get them to introduce themselves properly later. So here is Sam Levin at the end. Sam is the founder of two innovative student-centered programs at Monument Mountain High School, Project Sprout and the Independence Project.
[0:04:06] Through both projects, he created a pathway for students to pursue individual endeavors and explore conventional academic subjects in a new, investigative way. And he is currently studying biology at Oxford University. Next to him is Noor Siddiqui. Noor is the founder and CEO of Remedy, a video conferencing application on Google Glass. The product is being used to help paramedics deliver hospital quality care in the ambulance. And she's also a 2012 Thiel Fellow.
[0:04:36] Next to Noor, we have Chris Ola. Chris is also a Thiel fellow, meaning that he's been awarded 100,000 pounds, dollars, sorry. Pounds would be better, obviously. From PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel's Thiel Foundation to devote entirely to his own projects.
[0:04:54] He has a self-confessed obsession with mathematics and 3D printing. These passions cross over at hacklab.to, where he is a member and director, a space where software and hardware hackers share, develop, and collaborate on new projects, which for Chris includes 3D printed visualizations of complex mathematical functions. Next to me is Kendall White. Kendall is a community activist with a passion for aboriginal and environmental issues.
[0:05:23] She grew up in Ontario's Temagami First Nation. On her home reserve, the elementary school consisted of a one-room classroom spanning four grades. So at the age of 13, she left home for the nearby city of North Bay to pursue further education. She serves as the Aboriginal youth leader for the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada, raising awareness for Aboriginal issues and participating in programs across Canada.
[0:05:47] As the youth director of the Temagami Community Foundation, she ensures that youth are engaged, involved, and feel that they have ownership in community decisions. So here we have a group of people who did their schooling differently, and we're going to hear from them about their experiences, but first we're going to watch a very short video. All 134 million children born this year started life with largely similar potential.
[0:06:28] So why isn't the end result of their education similarly consistent? The simple and disappointing answer is that who you are and where you come from matters far more than it should. The 19th and 20th centuries saw huge increases in global inequality. The pathways through education have become similarly uneven. Geography is an issue. At the moment, the gap between the best and worst performing OECD countries
[0:06:57] is equivalent to holding back a student for two years. Another major obstacle on the learning highway is gender. Two out of three countries in the world face gender disparities in primary and secondary education. In northern Uganda, for instance, female enrollment in secondary education is 9%. And 66% of mothers in the region have no education at all. However,
[0:07:26] The greatest divide is between rich and poor. Simply being rich can put you a learning year ahead of students from average backgrounds. In fact, family income is the best predictor of children's success in school. But we know we don't have to continue along this road. 7% of 15-year-olds in OECD countries are unable to demonstrate basic reading skills. But measures put in place in Finland have brought this down to 1%.
[0:07:55] We need to adopt more such measures to learning. We know this is possible because in some regions it is already happening. In places such as China and Korea, some of the best performers can be found among the poorest students. In small pockets of success around the world, innovative approaches to learning are enabling disadvantaged students to succeed against all the odds. And in today's economic climate with a focus on jobs and prosperity for all,
[0:08:25] There is good reason to pursue improvements in learning. Studies suggest that a ripple effect could create radical improvements in economic performance. The US alone could see a gross domestic product increase adding up to $72 trillion over the next two decades if all its students could meet a baseline of achievement. And if its students could perform, say, to the average performance of students in Finland,
[0:08:50] The US GDP could climb to $103 trillion over that period. Given the importance of education, it makes sense to identify the successful insights and programs, work out which of them can be scaled up and rolled out globally. It's time to make learning work for everyone, everywhere. So some interesting ideas there. And essentially our theme for today is to confront the idea that change is possible, that we can make education work for everyone, everywhere.
[0:09:30] And I'm going to start our discussion by asking each of the panelists to describe very briefly what they did to move their own educational experience away from the norm. I think you'll be impressed by this bunch of people. I'm going to start with Sam Levin. Can you just tell us what you did with your own education? Yeah, sure.
[0:09:50] Well, basically I designed and implemented a school within a school at my public high school. So towards the end of my high school, I was frustrated with the way things were happening, with the fact that I felt people weren't engaged and weren't happy with what they were learning. So I designed my own school, and it ran as a pilot for 10 kids that first year, who spanned the whole spectrum of kids who were struggling and on the verge of dropping out.
[0:10:18] High flyers, straight A students. And yeah, it was a student-led school within a school. You say that as if it was an easy thing to do. I just started my own school within a school. Did you have any resistance from the people in the school, the staff?
[0:10:36] No, none at all. It was smooth sailing the whole way. No, I mean, yeah, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that there are some teachers in my school who hate me now. It was a year-long struggle to get it approved. Committee after committee, school board, curriculum steering committee, getting parents on board. It was a year-long process to make that happen, and I was lucky that it did, because it might not have happened in some schools. It wasn't necessarily easy, but, you know.
[0:11:05] Harder things have been accomplished. And was it worth it in the end? Yeah. I mean, it's one of the most worthwhile things I've ever done. I think, if nothing else, it changed the lives of these 10 kids. And, you know, I don't think it's the solution to schools. You know, the solution. But I think it asked some interesting questions and explored some ideas about how maybe we could change.
[0:11:33] Thank you. Noor, tell me about the decisions that you've made to kind of change up the way you were schooled or are going to be schooled even. Sure. So I feel like I'm probably more fairly conventional compared to the rest of the panelists here. But I went to public school. I did the IB diploma.
[0:11:54] And the biggest change in my decision making was after I graduated from high school, deciding to put university acceptance letters aside and to do this crazy program called the Teal Fellowship that Chris and I are part of, which basically gives young people the freedom to sort of work on whatever they want for two years. So that's probably the most unconventional thing I've done regarding my education.
[0:12:18] So what you're doing now is effectively taking a perfectly good education and not proceeding any further with it. I guess you could call it that, but I think that I'm using my education in a different way. So I've used the education I got from high school and sort of distilling that into this company that I'm working on right now and understanding sort of what are the biggest gaps here and pursuing graduate education that is very directly aligned with what I see the needs.
[0:12:48] That I want to fill are. And what made you decide that you wanted to do that? Did you find school dull? Did you want to just stop that whole education thing and do your own thing? I didn't find school dull. I think that the biggest problem was that I wasn't making an impact directly on problems in the real world. So it was great that I was learning and observing all this knowledge, but I guess it was frustrating that there wasn't enough time. I mean, I did side projects. I worked on a nonprofit while I was in high school.
[0:13:18] Yeah, I wanted to spend 100% of my time hitting the pavement, hitting the real world. Okay. I mean, that's an interesting thing about wanting to make an impact already. Most people might wait until they've kind of started their careers to do that. We'll come back to that. Let me just hear from Chris. Tell us about your experience through school. Well, sorry. I suppose that things started to get a bit strange in grade 9. In grade 9, I went and I started...
[0:13:46] I got access finally to all of these real science books and I started reading through all of them. I read all the ones up to grade 12 and I started teaching myself calculus. And at that point, well, some people were worried that I was going to confuse myself, but I learned all this really interesting stuff. And then one of my neighbors gave me a copy of Feynman's lectures and I started reading through those. And in grade 10, I started spending time... So you were how old at this point? I guess if I was in grade 9...
[0:14:16] Maybe 14 or 15, I'd have to actually do some arithmetic. I can't believe it. I study mathematics. I don't know what mathematical objects simpler than topologies and differential forms and things like that. So you need to 3D print the answer to that question. So around that point, the University of Toronto had this really wonderful program called the Mentorship Program, where talented high school students could go and do research under a professor at the University of Toronto.
[0:14:41] And this ended up leading to me getting a job doing programming first at the Department of Forestry and then for Environment Canada. And I also started auditing courses at the University of Toronto. And I went to U of T for one year after high school. And they were very kind and they allowed me to go and take advanced courses. But some other stuff came up in my life. One of my friends was arrested doing security research during the G20 and I documented his trial. He was found innocent at the end.
[0:15:10] And I was going and writing software for 3D printers. And I'd started spending my time at an organization called Hack Lab, which is a hacker space. So the idea is it's sort of, you might even think of a library for technology or something like this. And I had access to 3D printers and things like that there. And so during this, I was writing all the software. And I applied to the Thiel Fellowship, which Nora's in as well.
[0:15:34] And I received it, and that gave me two more years to go and continue working on really interesting things. It's hard to complain about being given two years to work on whatever you want. No, I can understand that. So during all this time when you're 14 years old, you're reading the Feynman lectures on physics. I can't believe you waited until you were 14 to do that, but there you go. And are you still in contact with school? Are you still...
[0:15:59] Are you still going to classes at this point? No, occasionally I go and audit lectures at different universities. But you're done with high school at this point? Yeah, I finished high school and then I went and I did one year at university. And I occasionally write to professors and universities are an excellent resource in a lot of ways.
[0:16:19] But that's not the primary thing that I'm doing and I'm not going and monitoring any courses or entire courses right now or anything like that. Were the school happy with you just kind of getting so far ahead of yourself and kind of then moving on doing something else? Did you encounter anyone saying you should just stick with?
[0:16:36] Yeah, well, there were some people who were kind of frustrated. Some people felt that I was neglecting my high school education for all these university courses. There were a lot of worries that I was going to confuse myself because I wasn't intellectually sophisticated enough to learn calculus, apparently. I think that people also started getting worried when, for my physics project, I went and I did Maxwell's equations and I tried to teach everyone multivariate differential calculus.
[0:17:04] Did that go down well? It didn't go down as badly as it could have. Great answer. So you're in this position where you've kind of done things differently and sort of had very different accelerated experiences, I guess. Do you sometimes feel like you missed out on just being a kind of normal high school kid? So I regret that I feel like I missed out on some social things.
[0:17:33] I think that part of it is that I felt somewhat... It maybe isn't so much that I was focused on other things, but that I found it difficult to relate to some of my peers. And I think that oftentimes it's very valuable for people who are doing more advanced things or are more deeply interested in technology or science or things like this to interact with each other. Just because they're...
[0:18:02] A lot of the things that my peers cared about, I didn't, and my values did not align very well with them. Right, okay. There's lots of issues there. I want to come to Kendall and ask you, your experience is actually very different. So tell us about your experience growing up through school and what happened to you. Well, as you heard, we had teachers from grade 1 to 4 and a teacher from grade 5 to 8. So starting off in elementary, we initially started with a more negative education.
[0:18:30] We didn't have the financials to bring in teachers, especially special needs teachers for learning disabilities, and learning disabilities are very common in reserves. So I struggled, especially when I had that transition to high school. So when I went to high school, I had a lot of personal problems with depression, and I couldn't socially adapt because I'd grown up on an island where
[0:18:58] I had only three other kids in my grade, and I went to these classrooms where there were 30 other children in one classroom, let alone 150 students in my own grade. So I had a lot of issues academically as well, and even in college now, I struggle extremely hard with English and math.
[0:19:17] So because of that, I have developed this passion to help remove those boundaries and help the transition for First Nation children to high school so that they don't struggle and so that obtaining a post-secondary degree or diploma is much easier for them. Right. And what was the big springboard for you? What was the thing that changed everything for you? I think the thing that changed everything for me was when I realized that what happened to me as a child
[0:19:45] It wasn't necessarily appropriate and that the prevalent three abuses on reserves which were substance, mental and physical abuses weren't things that were actually supposed to be happening to people and when we were younger social media wasn't as prevalent so we didn't realize that these things weren't supposed to be happening. So when I went to high school and I began to realize that this shouldn't be going on anymore that was the kind of thing that made me realize
[0:20:11] That maybe I should be getting involved and speaking about my experiences and how these have had a negative effect on my life and how that we should pay more attention to them and how they're impacting youth. And are there still people in the situation that you were in that you're hoping to bring out and give them a better experience? Yes. And the thing is that my reserve actually, it isn't even that terrible of a reserve.
[0:20:37] We're actually one of the better ones. So the fact that there was this amount of negative experiences coming out of one of Ontario's top reserves was a huge thing. So I feel like we should, I really want to help northern communities. And I'm sure maybe you've heard of and things that the issues they're facing. So I really want to.
[0:20:59] Help with those communities that are geographically isolated and don't have the economics and don't have the social media to portray what is happening in their communities. Right. So you, at 13, moved away from home? Yeah, I was 13. I had just turned 13. I have a 13-year-old daughter. I can't imagine how that is. Was that difficult for your parents or more difficult for you, would you say?
[0:21:24] Well, I'm a part of the child welfare system, so I actually didn't move to my... I was adopted back to my reserve when I was five. So actually, I've only ever lived with a family...
[0:21:36] So it was very difficult to be 13 and be going through that emotional stage, especially when that's when most teenagers are having puberty, and not being mentally stable and mentally able to understand this culture shock of living from an all-Aboriginal community to suddenly being in a place where there's multiple cultures. And it really had a negative impact because you're too young to be on your own.
[0:22:03] These people we lived with, they didn't care about us necessarily. They cared about our money that they were getting for us to be there. So it was extremely hard, and it helped me grow as a person, but it's something that you shouldn't have to be facing when you're 13 to be on your own dealing with racism and culture shock and academic instability. Yeah. So school, for you, it's not just about the provision of academic...
[0:22:29] It's not about lessons and learning. It's about an environment in which you can grow up and feel safe and feel valued. And that's missing for a lot of people all over the world, I would say. Yeah, especially Aboriginal youth who often were not engaged with non-Aboriginal youth, especially for geographically isolated. There's a lot of shyness for Aboriginal people and often...
[0:22:56] Don't speak out. So having to transition to these, it's difficult. Right. I want to ask the rest of you, really. Obviously, we talk about a 13-year-old being in high school. And normally, that's quite a safe experience in terms of you go home at the end of every day or whatever.
[0:23:15] Sometimes, though, parents really struggle with anything outside of that norm. So, Noor, let me ask you, I mean, you made certain decisions about moving away from the normal sort of track for somebody of your academic ability. Did you have issues with your parents? Do you have rows? Yeah, definitely. My parents were deeply skeptical of the fellowship throughout my application process and, you know, being accepted and all that. And it was a very, very hard sell to immigrant parents who came to the United States for the excellent education
[0:23:45] A system that is in the States. So it was a really hard sell to them. But, you know, luckily it worked out. They're very supportive of it now. But there's actually, you know, there's continuing conflict throughout the fellowship. Okay, like, is the decision that you're making now a good decision or a bad decision? You know, really justify it to me. And I actually think that, you know, the fact that they're so skeptical and they're so, you know, they demand very...
[0:24:11] Strong reasons for why I make decisions that I make is actually great for me because you know harsh criticism leads to you know doing doing better things and that's not to say that they aren't very very supportive and loving and always you know they're always my biggest fans as well.
[0:24:26] Right, okay. And Chris, let me ask you, I mean, you're in a position where you do things very differently. And I know you know lots of people in similar positions. Is it generally a problem? You know, parents tend to think they have ownership of their children and they should get to make the decisions until they're 18, at least. I mean, that causes conflict, doesn't it, when young adults, teenagers are becoming agents of their own future? Absolutely.
[0:24:53] I have heard many different stories from different people to this extent. People want to go and they're not learning very much in high school. They'd rather go and do their own stuff. I know one young girl who recently just left high school to do astronomy research.
[0:25:10] Persuading her school to cooperate with that and so on. Clearly what she's doing is much better to be going and doing astronomy research in some lab than in high school. It seems really trivial. There's an assumption there, isn't there, that it's better to do it. Some people would say it's better to hold back. You've got the rest of your life to go and do astronomy research. Enjoy school. I can't recall really enjoying school.
[0:25:37] You know, high school wasn't as bad, but in grade school I was bullied. I think that this is extremely, extremely common for people like me. I found it difficult to relate to my peers. Some courses were interesting, many were not. And I think that this is, I mean, I don't want to claim some sort of universality to this experience, but I think that it's not uncommon.
[0:25:59] And I think it's almost cruel to some extent to go and do this. And then it's very frustrating to me the idea that adults for some reason have an intrinsic right to go and control my life. I mean, this pops up in all sorts of contexts. And it's not at all obvious to me that adults have a more clear
[0:26:24] Or know better than I do what it is that I... I mean, now obviously I'm an adult and I'm allowed to go and make my own decisions, but for many years it's not at all obvious that they were better qualified than I. As a parent, I can tell you you're categorically wrong. I'm sure you can. I mean, this is what you're fighting, though, isn't it? This sense of ownership and you want to do your own thing. But parents, you know, we have an expectation of...
[0:26:52] Probably colored by our past and our education of what we want our children to achieve and the path we want them to follow. That's a conflict. Parents and also teachers and society at large. No, you wanted to come in on that. I was just going to say that parents are inherently going to be more risk averse than their kids are, right? Right. Because they share the...
[0:27:13] They share their hardships equally, but they don't share their highs as equally. When you have a huge success, your parents don't feel it because you're off celebrating. But when you're stuck and you don't have a job, you're living in their house. So they feel that. So they're just going to be inherently less risk averse than you'd be. Sam, let me bring you back in. Did you have any parental opposition to setting up this school within a school?
[0:27:39] Well actually you know it's really my mom's fault because I mean I came home one day and was complaining about how frustrated I was with school and she sort of said offhandedly you know why don't you start your own school then. Oh okay. And I said okay. So actually you know they couldn't really be opposed because they were guilty. But no I mean I think you know it's not as though they knew it would be a success. I think they were my parents were aware that it could be a huge failure but they were comfortable with letting me
[0:28:09] Attempt that and they knew that that failure was a possibility. Certainly, I got much more opposition from faculty and administrators than I did, you know, from my parents. I think they supported it. Let me dig in a bit deeper onto the independence project. So there was roughly 10 of you did it. And did everyone have a positive outcome from it or were there negatives as well? You know, that's a tricky question.
[0:28:37] I guess, you know, one of the issues is, you know, the title of this plenary is Smart Kids Are Doing It For Themselves. And for me, you know, the independent project was very far from that because, you know, it wasn't just about smart kids. It was kids of all abilities, you know, kids coming in from very different backgrounds and different capabilities.
[0:28:59] And doing it for themselves. And actually, they weren't really just doing it for themselves. They were doing it for each other and for the world, trying out this experiment. So I guess maybe more accurate for me, the title would be, Kids Are Doing It. We didn't want to go there. So, you know. Okay. I understand.
[0:29:24] But no, so I guess, you know, were there negative outcomes? Of course. There were failures, there were hardships, there were challenges. And did all the students end up at Oxford? No. And that would be, we'd be sort of freaked out if they did. I mean, we wouldn't want that. That wasn't the goal. So the positive outcomes looked different for each student. But I would say, you know, what we saw was that.
[0:29:46] These students challenged themselves more. They became more open-minded. They became more thoughtful. And maybe most importantly, they became more passionate about learning and their own education. They got some agency. And I think that's a positive outcome for everyone. Right, okay. I think Sam is making a really good point because I think the same logic really applies to...
[0:30:07] To the fellowship, there's really deceptive messaging around the fellowship that's like, oh, these kids are too good for school, or smart kids are doing it for themselves. And I don't know. That's not really the reality of the situation, right? The fellowship is a very different option than school. The endpoints are different. The objectives are different. The amount of time that you get to explore and have agency over your work is very different than school. So yeah, I agree with what you're saying a lot. I think there's a lot of resonance between that and what the fellowship is trying to do.
[0:30:37] Kendall, let me just come back to you. Were you aware of the lack of provision that you had? Were you aware that you could look at other schools and other kids would have a lot better provision, a lot better experience than you? Did you feel jealous or let down by the system?
[0:30:55] When I was on before high school I had no idea really and then when I went to high school I found out that all of these students had they had such higher academic levels and I did find it unfair because um they people say that you are what you know but like what if you're denied the right to
[0:31:15] Education. And in a sense, we were denied the right to education because we didn't get to learn about things that other students did. Additionally, I never got to learn about Canadian history. So when I went to high school, I was definitely jealous because I felt that I was being put down as a person and that I didn't deserve the education that they did. And it just didn't seem fair to me because I was just like everyone else who was there. Right. Okay. So, I mean, do you think...
[0:31:44] There's a problem with the kind of flexibility of the system. Part of me would look at it and say, well, schools have limited resources. You have extremely high achievers who are very self-motivated. You have other kids from different backgrounds who have it hard. I mean, it's a very difficult thing to provide for all of that, isn't it? I mean, is it an unreasonable expectation that everybody has a positive school experience? Let me ask you that first. I don't think...
[0:32:12] I don't think so. I think in some sense everyone should have a positive experience, whether it be academically or socially or culturally. I didn't necessarily get any of those three, so I think that I understand that geography-wise it's hard for reserves especially to have all three of these aspects.
[0:32:37] I think if people worked hard enough, it could definitely be implemented in all areas, not even just in Canada on reserves and Aboriginal communities, even urban areas where non-Aboriginal youth are suffering from the same inequalities. Okay.
[0:32:51] It's an interesting question about this expectation. Is it ridiculous to expect that we can make schools work for everyone? You talked about the fact that schools have limited resources, and they do, and they have shrinking resources. It's costing more to educate people. We don't have an unlimited number of teachers and supplies and technology in these classrooms, but I think the first thing you see that we have in common, the four of us, is that the education that we got...
[0:33:19] Didn't require a lot of resources. I think that's the good news, is that if you ask Noor how much money she spent on this work, it's been in her mind. And for me, the Independent Project, it didn't require a bunch of fancy technology or gadgets or resources. It required a bunch of kids getting some freedom. And in fact, if anything, I think that's the exciting news, is that I think some of the solutions that we have to sort of improve schools and make them work for more people.
[0:33:47] Are the low resource kinds. There will always be kids who struggle. There will always be challenges and failures. But I think we can expect a lot more than what we're doing now. We can expect a lot more success than what we're seeing now. Okay. Sorry, did you want to come in on that? I'll go in a little bit. Okay. You wait. Okay.
[0:34:13] Is there a sense in which something like the Independence Project is disrespecting the role of teachers? Or do you think the role of teachers maybe just needs slightly kind of recasting? Yeah, I mean, I worry sometimes when teachers or parents, students call me and say, oh, great, I'm so on board with this. I hate teachers too. And I'm like, whoa, got to back up a step there because I think teachers are the salt of the earth.
[0:34:38] I think they're one of the most important resources, if not the most important resource we have. And I don't want the independent project to do that. It's just, like you said, re-envisioning their role. The role of teachers right now is an outdated role. It's a 20th century role. It's standing at the front of the classroom with a lector and imparting information. And that's not what our students need as we move further into the 21st century. We need a teacher...
[0:35:06] In the middle of the classroom and in the back of the classroom, you know, there is more of, you know, opening the doors to the enormous amount of hunger and curiosity, you know, that lies sometimes dormant in students. It's certainly, that's in some ways that will be an even more challenging role for teachers. Sometimes that's trickier to just be there and help find what's in the student and unleash that and guide it than it's easier sometimes maybe to just stand at the front.
[0:35:33] I hope that this doesn't come across as disrespecting teachers. It's, if anything, saying that there's even more value in teachers. We need even more from them. We just need to re-envision it. We can't do it the same way we've been doing for the last 150 years. Kendall, I know that for you there was a big input from a guidance counsellor. Is that right? Yeah. I had a guidance counsellor.
[0:36:02] They were very supportive, and I had a lot of troubles, and there was multiple times throughout high school where I thought, I can't do this. I just want to drop out of school and go home. I miss my family. But they were like my family, and they were very supportive. And because of that, I think that guidance counselors are someone who should be mandatory in lives.
[0:36:23] Especially Aboriginal youth should have the option to go see these people, especially in elementary, to focus on these issues that are also going to transfer to high school at a young age so that when they do transition, they have that support. So my guidance counselor was extremely supportive and helped me through a really rough time where I didn't believe in myself, I didn't believe in academically succeeding.
[0:36:53] I think guidance counselors are just extremely important. And I'm very thankful that I was able to have that guidance counselor in my life because I'm not sure if I would even be here if I had not been able to communicate with them as frequently as I did. And I actually kind of annoyed them a lot because I would spend some days, four hours in there with them because it was hard to be with everyone. So I just had a great experience because of my guidance counselor.
[0:37:20] Okay. Chris, let me put that to you. When you move outside of the system, there's a lot of support stuff that isn't there. Do you think you would have benefited from some of the non-academic aspects of school? We've been talking a lot about teachers, and I think that people have been talking about a lot of roles that they're not things associated with a traditional teacher, so emotional support and so on. I think it's important to have these things, and I think that mentorship is important.
[0:37:46] But I don't think it necessarily needs to come from somebody who identifies as a teacher. So I received lots of really valuable support from people at the University of Toronto, from people at Hack Lab, from people at the TL Foundation, recently from Michael Nielsen, who used to work at Perimeter Institute. And it's just incredibly valuable to work with somebody who knows an area well or to talk to somebody who knows your subject or what you're trying to learn really well and to talk to them.
[0:38:11] So I think that that's extremely valuable and that's something that you can get outside the system. And I think it's something that's very difficult to provide actually as well within the system because it's people who are interested in the same things and care about the same things as you and can invest probably a lot more time than a teacher can in 30 students. I think there's other things within schools that it's nice to replicate. Although again, I don't know if they can be provided as well within school. I think that community is really important and having a community that...
[0:38:39] Values the same things as you is really important. But it's challenging for a school to go and find people who are sort of similar to me in some ways and enough of them to be a community. So I think that there's lots of things that you could sort of point out in school and say that they're really valuable. But it's not clear that they actually are best provided by school. Right. I mean, we tend to think of school that way as these kind of four walls.
[0:39:06] You know, containing thousands of teenagers effectively. And school doesn't need to be like that. I mean, it just needs to be a support network. It doesn't have to be a physical space. Well, and I wonder if we're going and... It feels like we're stretching the definition of school quite a bit to go and make it... Are we going and redefining school to go and continue to say that... If we want to continue claiming that school is important because that's sort of socially...
[0:39:33] The flip side of that coin, Chris, is that you sought these amazing resources outside of school, people at the University of Toronto, Perimeter Institute, but you're incredibly bright and ambitious, so you were able to find those and seek those out. Imagine if we could bring some of those resources and some resources like that, people like that.
[0:39:58] Within the four walls of schools. That even the less ambitious, the kids who might not be able to, or might not think that they can go out and find it on their own, would then get it in the classroom. I mean, that's where I envision that public education system could have enormous potential. Because if you bring some of those amazing resources you're talking about within the school, you could do wonders. I only really feel qualified to speak to my own experiences and what's valuable to people like me.
[0:40:27] So I have a few anecdotes, and so I feel like maybe I can shed some light there. I'd want to be speaking on something more rigorous to talk about people at large. It occurs to me that perhaps some of the reason why we see people not being very ambitious and not seeking out resources is because of the present education system, but I wouldn't want to assert that with any confidence.
[0:40:53] Okay, that's very honorable. When we start to move into the education sphere, egregious generalizations are okay, apparently. So, Nora, let me ask you, what did you think of school? Did you enjoy it? Did you like it? Did you have good friends? Was it a positive experience for you? Sure, I mean, I...
[0:41:16] I did really well in school. You obviously enjoy things that you do well at. But I would definitely say that throughout high school, I started attending less and less because my extracurriculars started taking up more and more of my time. And I started feeling that those types of activities were more meaningful than necessarily what I was doing in school. And luckily, I had some great teachers who I talked to about these commitments. And they were like, you're right. These are really important experiences for you to have. And you know how to learn.
[0:41:45] You can absorb a lot of this material outside of school on your own time. Luckily, I was able to do that. If I were in a school or had teachers who weren't as flexible or as willing to give me that time and that space to develop these other projects, I probably wouldn't have gotten into fellowship. I probably wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now. What would you change? If you could go back and change one thing about your experience of high school, is there a change you'd make?
[0:42:14] So, you know, the system needs to do this. Sure. Well, I think you could look at that question from two angles. One is what kind of school have provided me to prepare me more for what I'm doing now? Or you could look at it as what would have made school better, a better experience for me then? So I guess, which is your question? What would have made school better for you? At the time? Yeah, at the time. Okay. I think one thing that I would have really enjoyed would have been sort of...
[0:42:42] You being allowed to go whatever pace you want. So if you finished something that took you twice the time as everyone else, let it take you twice the time. Let you go into as much depth and detail as you want. And if something comes to you quickly, then let it come to you quickly and finish it quickly. And I also think going along the same lines is that there should be less of a focus on where you're weak and more on your strengths, kind of like what we heard yesterday.
[0:43:10] People who are well-rounded are, I think, mediocre, and I think that people should specialize and work on things that they're really exceptional at. The Hemingways of the world should write, the Picassos of the world should paint, and the Michael Phelps of the world should swim, and I think the same approach should be taken in education. But the Michael Phelps of the world still need to be able to add up.
[0:43:28] The calories they need to consume every day. I think he has a very good nutritionist who does that for him. We can't all afford that, though, can we? But if you become Michael Phelps, you can. That's the point. People should become exceptional, very exceptional at things. Don't you think there's a baseline of achievement, of core competency that people should always have to achieve? Sure, but people shouldn't be catering to the common denominator. People shouldn't try to be common or basic, right? Okay, great.
[0:43:55] I've seen it written that people shouldn't be allowed to leave school without a certain level of arithmetic ability. People should have a driver's license for math to go out into the real world. That can seem like a sensible idea in theory. In practice, it seems... It seems like a grievous assault on people's right to personal freedom. That's what it seems like. Are we going to imprison people in school? People would say it's for their own good. You can't go out into the world not being able to add up.
[0:44:25] Or read and write. I'm pretty sure that this would be in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
[0:44:39] Okay. I'm pretty sure that people have, at least adults, have a fundamental right to... I mean, I think that there's sort of an important issue of youth rights and people's children's right to autonomy and to control themselves, but let alone proposing that we're not going to let adults go and live their lives because they... I mean...
[0:45:01] It may be that there are some people who struggle so much with learning math that they won't ever be able to, even if they work hard. I don't know. This seems like a very, very deeply disturbing idea to me that we will lock people in schools until they can pass the test. I'll let you read the book that I read. It seemed quite convincing to me at the time, but I'm easily swayed. So you think education should be not an imposition. You don't impose education. You let children, students have the education that they want to have.
[0:45:30] That's kind of what you were saying as well, Nour. Sorry? Both of you seem to be saying you should let students have the education they want to have. Well, I think when... Again, with should, it makes it sound like I'm making some sort of prescription and I don't feel confident to do that. But I do feel like there's an... that valuing the freedom of people is important. And I don't think it's... I think it would be quite widely accepted. I think that it's a very...
[0:45:58] Very broadly accepted idea that, at the very least, adults should not be forced to go and continue. I don't know. This reminds me very much of imprisoning people, except now their crime is not being good enough at math, which is an alarming thought. Kendall, do you think that there are changes that need to be made to curricula, to what we focus on in terms of academic achievement versus...
[0:46:26] Social abilities and things like that. Just being able to sort of get on well in the world, being a priority for when you graduate high school. I think we focus a lot on strictly just academics. And a lot of people, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, not all of us excel in academics. So I think that high schools, the post-secondary, secondary schools should definitely focus on different aspects as well.
[0:46:54] So that people who don't necessarily have the intellectual level aren't being put down. They're achieving as well because not everyone's good at math. So putting someone who's good at English in a math school, you can't expect them to be great at math. So why are we expecting students to go into an academic school and be great at this when maybe they're
[0:47:17] They're really good at public speaking and maybe they're really good at networking. So I think that definitely needs to be put into schools as another aspect. Is the problem that we're not very good at assessing networking skills? You don't get a grade for that. I think we're not good at assessing a lot of things. But definitely networking and social abilities are definitely something that are important in our lives as soon as we leave a secondary school. So we need to assess
[0:47:47] Real life skills as well, not just academic skills. Right, okay. Sam, how were you assessed at the end of the independence project? Or were you assessed? I mean, what happened there? Yeah, we were assessed. I mean, I think assessment is critical to see if what you're doing actually works. But certainly not by the standard test. You know, you were assessed by your peers and by the faculty advisors that were associated with the program. So you had to present.
[0:48:16] Your work in the term. And it wasn't just one assessment at the end. It was constant assessment and feedback. More formative assessment than summative assessment. But being assessed by your peers, a lot of people would say, well, that's the route to soft grades. Yeah, it might be. So there's two elements to that. One is that...
[0:48:41] Peers assessing each other was a really valuable part of the program because of what it taught students. Learning the skill of being able to give critical feedback to another person. Talk about social skills, teaching those. That's one of the best ways to do it and a valuable skill that we're not otherwise learning in schools. Learning to give that and learning to receive that was a huge part of the program. So in that way, some of our assessments...
[0:49:05] Weren't just for the purpose of assessing, but for what they taught the students. And in addition, that's why, you know, again, I'm not against teachers. There was a role for these experts, these faculty advisors, to be there to bring their expertise to this table and say, well, you know, this just doesn't cut it. So certainly peer assessment on its own might, would be, I think, would be a mistake. But having peer assessment a part of the assessment, I think, was an enormous addition to the program.
[0:49:33] Okay, but you're in a position where you're now at Oxford. So were your assessments by your peers, for instance, taken seriously by anybody at Oxford? I don't think anyone at Oxford saw those assessments. But in a way they did. So to get into Oxford is a series of interviews. And how I did in those interviews was a result, you know, indirectly of my assessment in the independent project.
[0:49:59] So in that way, I guess Oxford was assessing it. But no, Oxford and, you know, universities still use the traditional measures. And that's, you know, the independent project couldn't be institutionalized tomorrow, you know, across the education system. Right. And did you do any peer-to-peer teaching? Were you sort of teaching each other? Yeah. You know, so the main goals of the independent project were for the students to learn how to learn.
[0:50:24] To learn how to work and to learn how to teach. So that last element, you know, at the end of every week, you had to teach the rest of the students what you had learned that week. It was a huge part of the program because I think that the students, other students learn from that and you learn a lot by teaching something that you've learned. Just said learn a lot in one sentence. Noah, did you feel that you left school with life skills that you needed, like being able to do interviews? No.
[0:50:52] There's really key things that you should teach in school that are key to starting a business. It was disgusting how much I didn't know about finances and accounting and we do taxes now. Didn't know anything about that. But I think in a lot of ways, school did prepare me in some ways. So for example, I think that the way that you go about extracting information, like reading and things like that, of course, those are...
[0:51:19] Really key things that you're going to use later in life. But in terms of practical skills, like specifically just starting a business, yes, you need to know stuff about finances. Yes, you need to know stuff about incorporation and legal things that you don't learn in school. All right. Okay. Chris, did you feel equipped for the world when you went out into it at 14? By school, no. I feel like I learned a lot from other people, though, and by organizations. I mean, I also learned valuable things in school. It's not clear that that's the only place that I could have learned them, but there's lots of valuable things that I learned there.
[0:51:49] But I learned lots of other important things from other people and from books and talking to people. So if you imagine you were given a school to set up, and aside from all the academic... I fantasize about this all the time. Aside from all the academic stuff, which I'm sure you would have very strong ideas about, are there key parts of the curriculum that you would say, this needs to be it, there needs to be guidance, there needs to be assessment?
[0:52:17] Sorry, not assessment. Interview skills, presentation skills, that kind of thing. I'd also make a point that I think is really amusing, which is that I interviewed many TEAL fellows and found that many of them also had similar fantasies about struggling schools. Yes, common theme. It is. It seems maybe less essential to me than it...
[0:52:39] I suspect that a lot of the things that Noor was talking about, knowing how to incorporate and so on, they're very specialized skills. I think finances generally, I think that that isn't really a specialized skill. I think everyone should know about that. Sure, so maybe we should go and mention debits and credits. Except that you don't want them to be able to add up particularly. I didn't say that. Sorry, Karen. I don't know that I... I guess you're asking me at this...
[0:53:08] I don't feel qualified to really comment on these sort of things. But you have this fantasy of setting up a school. What's it like? I specifically have a fantasy about hijacking a math and computer science class and doing that in a way that I think is better. Okay, so do you think that somebody should be coming in and teaching things, like hijacking a class?
[0:53:31] I know that if you introduce a bunch of science students to real working scientists, research scientists, it changes the whole perception of how they view science. And so should we have our schools being visited, hijacked by people who are specialists and enthusiasts? I'm particularly worried about mathematics. There's this really lovely essay by a mathematician named Paul Lockhart. He's a really, really interesting figure. He stopped out of high school to study mathematics, got into university, stopped out of that to study mathematics, got into a PhD program.
[0:54:00] Simon got his PhD and then decided that he wanted to teach middle schoolers mathematics. And it's a really, really lovely essay. And there's this lovely quote that I like in it.
[0:54:12] Sadly, mathematics education is precisely this kind of nightmare. In fact, if I had designed a system for the express purpose of destroying a child's natural curiosity and love of pattern making, I couldn't possibly do as good a job as is currently being done. I simply wouldn't have the imagination to come up with a kind of senseless, soul-crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education. Everyone knows that something's wrong. The politicians say we need higher standards. The educators say we need more money and equipment. Teachers say one thing and educators say another. They're all wrong. The only ones who understand what's going on
[0:54:42] And the ones most often blamed and least often heard, the students, they say math class is stupid and boring, and they're right.
[0:54:54] I think what's really deeply alarming about math education is that students come out of it, they go and they do things by road. It's like magic. They know the spell, but they can do the algorithm, but they don't understand why anything's true. They don't understand what they're doing. And they don't even understand sort of what mathematics is. There's mathematicians who don't work with numbers. But if you go and you ask a high school student,
[0:55:17] What does a mathematician do? They can name fields of biology. They can tell you that there's people who study zoology and people who study anatomy and people who study plants and molecular biology and all these things. But who can name algebraic topology or partial differential equations or number theory or all of these things? What high school student knows that?
[0:55:44] I can tell this is something you thought about quite a lot. Yeah, I don't even remember where I started with that. I just went off on a tangent. We're going to move to audience questions in just a moment. But let me just ask, Kendall, I mean, do you think back to school now? Or is it something you just kind of put behind you and you've moved on?
[0:56:01] Yeah, there's a lot of negative experiences that I've faced in my life and I've realized that why dwell on them when you can move forward and bring those, rather than forget them, bring those experiences with you and apply them to the future and apply them to other people's futures so that they don't have to go through those experiences. So rather than just forgive and forget, carry these negative experiences with you so that people learn about them and so that it becomes public and people are aware of them.
[0:56:30] So our theme is really that change is possible, and you really see that as a real thing. We can change things. We have ideas. Clearly, Chris has lots of ideas. There are things we can do. I'm not super confident about it. So you see change as possible. Yeah, I see change as possible. And even though we don't...
[0:56:52] We don't financially have the money to put multiple teachers in every classroom. I think even just change as possible by motivating students and motivating that by working hard, they can succeed despite inequalities in every type of educational institution. Okay, thank you. That's great. We're going to move to audience questions now. I want to start with somebody in our panel of experts that maybe has something they'd like to ask these four outstanding individuals.
[0:57:23] I have a question here from Eric. I think there's a microphone on the other side of the theater. Sorry, Eric. It's a recording issue. I think Chris can just give us another quote. For Sam, I'm wondering what did a typical day look like for students in your program? Okay, that's a good question. I'll give the shortest answer as possible. The day was split between...
[0:57:58] The morning was for academics and the afternoon was for something called an individual endeavor, which was a semester-long project. It could be anything. The only requirement was that you were excited about it. So you could build a boat or write a book or do a science experiment. The morning for academics, the two academic subjects were the sciences and the arts. The sciences including the traditional science and history and the arts including the traditional
[0:58:27] English and mathematics, so the art of reading, writing, and the art of mathematics. So for the sciences, on Monday morning, you'd come up with a natural science and a social science question. The group would critique your question. You know, say this question is in...
[0:58:42] When I was a student in college, I started learning piano, and the piano teacher didn't
[0:59:13] Stand in front. I mean, it's true she sat next to me or was not too often behind me, but I wanted a piano teacher who said, this is wrong, this isn't so good, here you need to do this this way, try these exercises. So I question the model you have of get the teacher off the stage and have them roam around and just be in the middle and the back.
[0:59:34] There's a reason we need teachers, and they have expertise, and it's unreasonable to expect students to re-derive what took thousands of years of cultural evolution to figure out. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you bring that up, because you probably learned piano by pressing the keys on the piano, not by having someone at the front of the classroom telling you what a piano was. That I agree with.
[0:59:55] The role of the teacher should be to help the students do stuff, but the teacher's expertise needs to come in. Completely, entirely. And it's just a matter of how that expertise is manifested. I don't think, and it's funny that you say piano because one of the students' individual endeavor was learning to play the piano. And again, he needed the expertise of a pianist to help him learn that. And certainly he was better for that. And just like anyone is better for having expertise in the room, and that's why I say we still need teachers.
[1:00:25] But what made it special was that, again, there wasn't someone at the front of the room telling him, this is what a piano is, this is how you play it. But he was out there adventuring and trying it on his own and seeking out the expertise of the pianist when he got stuck, when he needed to be pushed. And it's funny, he now is in a jazz band.
[1:00:47] I think the key thing about that question is really are you going to be passive or are you going to be active about it? So I think it's definitely true. Why re-derive things that have already been learned? Like let's just learn from other people. That makes perfect sense, right? But I think like for me anyways, like having mentors and learning from them has been like a very active process. I ask them a question and I say, okay, how do I do this? How have you done it? What mistakes? How can I avoid dead ends? And I think...
[1:01:09] The same thing would go for the piano, right? So instead of someone pushing you and saying, no, no, no, press the keys this way, you asking. You wanted their feedback in this specific way. And that's the real dichotomy. It's between being passive and being active, not between teacher and no teacher, I think.
[1:01:26] I also feel like there might be an important variable that varies between subjects based off of how well it's suited to a feedback loop and how direct the feedback is. So an example of a subject that's really, really good for this sort of thing is computer science. There's this really tight feedback loop. An algorithm works or it doesn't. The website looks the way you want or it doesn't. And so programming and computer science are subjects where
[1:01:54] It's really remarkable how well it lends itself to self-teaching, and many of the best people in the field are self-taught, or if they went to university, it was largely for a diploma. But it seems perhaps maybe going, if you want to learn to be a good writer, that's much harder to get feedback on, and you really need somebody else to go and critique your work, and there's subjects in between.
[1:02:20] And so it may vary quite a bit between subjects how important it is to have somebody there to go and correct you and how important it is to, well, yeah, whether the subject itself gives you feedback. So let me ask you Sanjoy's question from your perspective. Do you think teachers are, you know, we would be foolish to cast teachers out of the classroom or put them in a different place in the classroom?
[1:02:43] I'm not entirely sure what we mean by teachers. There's lots of things where it's really valuable to go and talk to somebody, but I'm somewhat more skeptical of the teacher. As with everything that I'm saying, I also feel somewhat uncomfortable. Nothing I'm saying is really strong. Okay, as I said, generalizations are fine. Well, but they're not fine to me. Okay, thank you. Thanks for that, Sanjay.
[1:03:14] I encourage you to come and bring some questions. Anybody in the audience who wants to line up, that would be great. Thanks. My question is in reaction to something that Noor said, but it's a question to the four of you. Noor, you mentioned that it's mediocre not to specialize. But my question is, so at what age are students ready to specialize? No matter how many experiences you have, should you not wait until an older age to decide that you really want to focus on a certain thing for the rest of your life?
[1:03:43] So I don't think at any time anyone makes a decision, I'm going to focus on this for the rest of my life. I think the point is, right now, what do you care about most and what are you doing to get better at that, right? So again, I think it boils down to, are you being passive or are you being active? And when you care a lot about something, when you're really good at it, when you want to gain competency, you want to become an expert, you're very active and you, you know, you...
[1:04:05] Absorb knowledge very quickly. So that's what I mean when I say that. I don't think that people ever really in practice only do one thing for the rest of their life and should never learn anything else beside that one thing. But if I may ask you a follow-up question, do you not think that interdisciplinary studies help you decide what you want to study in the future? And so if we do decide to focus on a specific thing at a young age, that we may be leaving other doors closed for the rest of our lives?
[1:04:32] So I think that, of course, there's a certain amount of exploration involved in deciding what it is you want to become an expert at, right? So I think everyone needs to decide independently how much they want to explore and how confident they are that this is something that they want to work on for a long time. But I think you're definitely making a valid point. I think, of course, some of the most exceptional things that happen are cross-disciplinary.
[1:04:54] Yeah, I think we're all amazed at your abilities and skills, and we've already heard from Sam's experience that you used peer teaching in your schooling, but I was wondering about you others, like Chris, for example, because when you were already so advanced in your high school years, were you ever asked to help out with teaching your peers, or did you volunteer? At one point, I went and did it for several months in a row.
[1:05:21] A presentation every day for a physics class. And I've done a lot of classes at different workshops at Hack Lab, which end up being on very non-technology related things like cardinal and ordinal numbers and stuff like this. So I guess that answers your question. I've done a little bit in high school and elsewhere, but schools aren't always very accepting or don't necessarily like the idea of a student going and teaching things.
[1:05:49] Me going and suggesting that we should be teaching calculus to do introductory physics was also something that they disagreed with. Okay, thank you. Hi, I haven't really formulated my question very well. I'm concerned about issues of what I remember most about school is power relationships. And I wonder if the panel would just like to individually or as a group play with that idea that if we're talking about
[1:06:22] This or that approach to this or that academic subject, perhaps we're not belling the cat, and perhaps we should be looking at school as an institution and how power is exercised and felt within school systems. Let me ask that for you, Kendall. Did you feel that there was sort of an imbalance of power for you? What exactly do you mean by power? Well, did...
[1:06:51] School staff or people, were they too able to determine your future? Or dictate your day-to-day behavior? It's hard to say because I had a half and half experience where negatively I didn't like the thought of people saying where I should be going with my future and saying those types of things. But in a positive way, I almost enjoyed that sense of people telling me where I should be going because...
[1:07:20] Being myself and coming from a negative situation, I didn't have that confidence to see what I excelled in. I think that power actually helped me become who I am because teachers helped push me in a direction that they thought that I would succeed in that I don't know if I would have succeeded in. Right. It's a question of understanding. If you've got people with the power but who care about you and want the best for you, then that works in some ways. Okay. Thank you.
[1:07:47] We've talked a lot about being able to pursue what you're good at, but I think as someone who's gone through a lot of interdisciplinary education, I've spent a lot of my education not quite being sure what exactly I am good at, and I'm wondering if you could address the notion that a lot of people don't necessarily have a specific thing that they are good at or that they want to pursue, and how you suggest those people be allowed to realize that.
[1:08:10] If I could add to the question, or that they become good at something later and what they're originally good at isn't their ultimate strength. I think what's more important than letting people focus on what they're good at is letting people focus on what they're excited by. And it's true that often those things align, but not always. And that's the exciting thing. And what I discovered in the independent project was even kids who came in thinking, oh, I don't know what I'm excited by, I'm not excited by anything,
[1:08:40] They were wrong. They were excited by things and they just needed some time to be allowed to step back from the system and think about what they're excited by and explore a bit. That's not to say people shouldn't be pushed out of their comfort zones and I do think that there are things we want.
[1:08:56] All high school students to be introduced to no matter what, like interest in reading or an interest in appreciation for evidence in forming ideas. So I do think there are some things that everyone should be learning, but I think if you allow kids to explore what they're excited by, they will find those things. I'm pretty sure about that. Noah, do you want to comment on that? Oh, sure. I would just say there are specific questions you can ask yourself, like who do you admire and what have they done, right?
[1:09:24] So if you answer both of those questions, you'll pretty quickly come up with a skill set that they have that you might not have, and then you can go and develop those. So I have a question for Sam. You said in your classes you had students of all abilities attend. As an educator, I'm just wondering how you were able to recruit those low-achieving students, or did they volunteer themselves?
[1:09:48] That's a really good question. So we had this very strong support from day one of a guidance counselor, as Kendall mentioned. And one of his roles early on was starting these conversations with students saying, hey, this school is going to try this experimental thing. What do you think? And even quite a few of them, you know, one of the really successful kids in the independent project, he admits now that when he first heard about it, he said, that's stupid.
[1:10:14] That sounds stupid. So it did require some seeking out, some probing by a guidance counselor to get these kids interested. And I think, yeah, but that's certainly a difficult, a challenge. All right. This question is mostly for Chris. So you alluded to this somewhat when you were talking about social interactions within schools and then also expertise in finding people who knew things. How do you feel?
[1:10:43] Hacklab, makerspaces, and other such hackerspaces fit into that kind of a model. Did you feel a lot more associated and did you learn a lot from the people and the experts there? Absolutely. So Hacklab and other hackerspaces and makerspaces were really valuable in that regard. I don't know if they're... I mean...
[1:11:08] It feels like there's also lots of people who I would have benefited from interacting with. I'm speaking now to the social aspect. And at HackWeb, I usually, at a given time, two or three people under the age of 20 hanging around there. And it would be nice to have a larger group. And perhaps if you sought out a broader group, you could do better than that. But definitely, hackerspaces and makerspaces are a really valuable asset to people who are interested and excited about technology and science and want to interact with people who share those values.
[1:11:36] Okay, so just a quick round-up question, really. Do you feel that one of the most important things is to find like-minded people, people in the same situation? We heard this lecture yesterday where having somebody who's a best friend with you is an important part of the journey. Sam? I think it's very important to have people to be with people who are like-minded and people who aren't. I think you need both. I do think you need, as we saw from the keynote yesterday, I think you need to feel supported.
[1:12:07] Thank you.
[1:12:30] Ladies and gentlemen, we're coming to the end of this session now. So I'd like to thank Sam Levin, Chris Ola, Noor Siddiqui, and Kendall White. And also to our other summit participants who will now move into their day of collaborations as they sift through the ideas that we've been talking about and more. For those of you who are watching online, the next plenary tomorrow is 8.30 a.m. And I'll be joined on stage by Taking It Global's co-founder, Jennifer Corriero.
[1:12:59] Journalist, Erin Miller. And Data Wind CEO, Sunit Thule. You can find details of that at wgsi.org and tvo.org. So thank you for taking part. But I'd like to take a moment. Can we thank the panel?