A conversation with former LWS middle school teacher, founding board member, and parent Gary McSweeney.
Q: What do parents typically ask you about the middle school grades?
Gary: Of course, they ask about academics, specifically math, and then they might ask how it works to combine the three middle school grades, as we’ve done.
I learned recently that the local public school district has decided to do away with separate advanced math classes and combine sixth, seventh, and eighth graders in a single math class.
I’m guessing they had seen the research that suggests it’s a better system than the older model where advanced students are separated from the rest.
It was interesting to me because we’ve combined the grade levels in math, science, and language arts for more than fifty-five years.
Our experience is that with any cross-section of students, you’ll have kids who can absorb the subject seemingly without effort, then kids who can get it if you explain it, and kids who will struggle. Of course, they all need to be helped at their level, so the teacher’s work doesn’t change much when the classes are combined.
Today I led a math tutorial for two eighth-graders and a sixth-grader, and it became clear that the same concepts applied across levels. It was a simple question involving the algebraic method, but whether you’re in seventh grade or twelfth, you’re still applying the algebraic method, but at deeper levels.
Our former school director, Helen Purcell, grew up with nine brothers and sisters. Her father, an attorney, would propose a question at the dinner table. The younger kids would listen and learn, the in-between kids would chime in occasionally, and the older kids would lead the discussion.
It’s the same in our classes, where some kids will be helping other kids, and the teachers and aides will be walking around and working with the individual students, and the students who are a little reticent will be listening in on the conversation.
A great benefit we’ve seen from mixed classes is that it helps their relationship to math. Our kids have a positive and wholesome relationship to math, because we help them at their level.
We find that when the older kids help the younger ones, it benefits them both. The kids are constantly helping each other, and it’s been shown that when you explain a concept, it helps you interiorize it, especially when you know the person and care about them.
Maybe they’ve understood a concept, and a friend raises a hand. They’ll come over and explain it; and whether the student who asked for help gets it right away is almost secondary, because by explaining it the first student will become clearer on the concept. So the learning is deeper when you combine classes.
Q: Do you have math aides and assistants?
Gary: We’ve always had them, and it’s been a wonderful experience for the kids. When you have someone like Tandava helping the kids, with a degree in symbolic systems from Stanford, and several years at Google, and a great deal of enthusiasm for teaching, it’s completely amazing for the kids.
We’ve been fortunate to have very good math assistants. I’m thinking of Richard Fouquet, who had degrees from Stanford and Harvard, and Eric Munro, who retired from the tech industry and graduated from MIT.
Teaching math at LWS takes a personal touch, because you’re forming a relationship with the child and learning what works best for them individually. In Education for Life there’s less emphasis on the curriculum and more on the person – it’s about the teacher’s ability to reach the individual student in the way that will be most helpful for them.
When the private schools in our area advertise, it’s usually about how many teachers have advanced degrees, or the wonderful textbooks, or the online features. But I don’t think those are anywhere near as important as being able to answer a simple question, “Who is this child?”
The important questions are: How are the children able to relate to their teacher? And what is the school environment like? At Living Wisdom School, we offer a wholesome environment where the kids can be relaxed and receptive.
Q: The median high school grade point average of the LWS graduates over the last five or six years has been 3.85. So something seems to be working.
Gary: That’s another question parents often ask. How will their children do when they leave our school?
It’s why we track their high school grades after they leave us. Our alumni often come back to visit us, and we always ask them, “How’s it going for you at Saint Francis or Harker or Menlo?” They always report that they were very well prepared, because they know the material and they’re thriving socially.
We’re also pleased that they do extremely well in their personal interviews. The high school counselors often take time to call and tell us how impressed they are by these young people who demonstrate so much relaxed and natural centeredness, self-possession, and poise.
Too much of education today is concerned with superficial things. With the excessive focus on absorbing information, we’ve strayed very far from giving kids what they truly need.
Q: There seem to be fewer discipline problems and classroom control issues at LWS. Do kids rebel when they feel that the teachers don’t understand them, or that they are neglecting their real needs?
Gary: We were talking about this recently with the teachers. At the End of Year Celebration we award each child a “Quality” and they give a short talk about their quality. Then, at the end of the ceremony, the eighth graders give their graduation speeches.
We’ve held the ceremony for thirty years. It’s one of the most inspiring events of the year. But we were speculating, half-seriously, what would happen if a student stood up and went on a tirade against the school.
I expressed a thought, “There isn’t a pent-up energy here that’s waiting to explode, because there isn’t an adversarial dynamic between the teachers and the children.”
The children are encouraged to think for themselves and voice a wide diversity of opinions as a necessary part of their learning. If they say, “I don’t believe in God,” they are free to express their ideas and think them through, because we don’t shrink from facing life’s tough themes.
It’s true that we don’t have the usual discipline problems. I think it’s because we spend a great deal of time with each child, getting to know them so that we can help them individually.
If you’re being guided at your own level, it means that you’re having success experiences every day at school. It’s a very enjoyable experience, so you’ll want more, and you’ll be channeling your energies into the work because you enjoy that feeling.
I’m aware that what I’m saying may sound airy-fairy and overly idealistic. And of course it has to be tempered by my experiences laboring for twenty years in the trenches as a teacher.
We’re keenly aware that we cannot hold out bright shiny ideas that aren’t solidly grounded in what the students are experiencing every day.
We know that we have to be very real with the kids, or they will simply tune us out. It’s why we hire teachers who are capable of having a real relationship with the kids, a relationship that makes the child feel that they’re actually being seen. And as a very welcome side-effect, it eliminates a lot of the discipline issues.
Our founder had a dream that became the driving motivation for his book, Education for Life. In the dream, he saw a group of teenagers lounging about, looking surly, and he started a conversation with them. He talked with them about how the adults in their lives were not giving them anything to be hopeful about. He wrote Education for Life to help teachers and parents reach children and give them reasons to be positive and hopeful about their lives.
One of our graduates asked me to write a recommendation letter for her. I wrote, “You should consider this student, because she is very bright. She has real gifts, and her thinking is outside the box. She’s very creative and able to come up with fresh perspectives. I marvel at her abilities. Many times I’ve thought that she is the definition of what a good school should be looking for, a student who is engaged and who thinks for herself.”
The girl in question had needed some discipline when she came to us. But I believe we’ve shown that you can offer discipline in a way that doesn’t get the students’ backs up, because they know that you’re genuinely on their side and wanting to help them.
When you give them discipline with kindness, it frees tremendous energy. We aren’t stressing the kids to pass a test. We’re working with them, encouraging them, and inspiring them. We would rather help the kids reach a point where they are showing initiative of their own, because they’ve discovered what they enjoy and what they really want in life. It’s much more effective to educate the child from the inside out, instead of from the top down or from the outside in.
Q: We talked earlier about how the students help each other in math class. Do you feel it’s a key to the success of the school? I remember helping friends with math in high school and college, and what a happy experience it was.
Gary: Parents sometimes have trouble wrapping their heads around how our math class works, and I can understand why.
We go straight into math first thing in the morning after a brief Circle Time, and I don’t lecture during math class, because we’re all working independently. Everyone is sitting at a desk or table working on their math, and if they have a question we will go over and help them, or we’ll ask them to come over.
The ability to work independently, with complete focus, requires a great deal of inner motivation on the students’ part, and it’s, again, why we spend so much time working with them individually. Because once you start giving them success experiences daily and they’ve got that personal energy and enthusiasm flowing, you’ll have many successes that you can celebrate, and it becomes a self-feeding cycle that breeds motivation and initiative.
Some of the kids will occasionally be unbelievably advanced, while others might struggle. This morning I helped a student who struggles in math, and when he finally solved the problem we celebrated it. The reason it happens is that I’m free to work with each student and make sure they’re having success experiences. I don’t have to answer to an administrator: “Why is he behind? Why aren’t you making him keep up with everybody?”
His parents told us that it’s a brain issue – brain scans had revealed that he is simply unable to process math, so it’s like a foreign language for him. But in our school I’m able to help him where he is. I’ve never for moment had the thought, “He’ll never be good at math.”
Some years ago, we had a student who felt that she wasn’t able to succeed in math. I kept telling her, “No, I think you are good, you just haven’t realized it.” Now she has a PhD in genetics, a field that requires advanced math skills, and she has mastered them.
We give them the safety to be okay with themselves, and to be very real and work with themselves where they are. It’s something we don’t just talk about in our marketing. We live it every day, for the simple reason that it works.
When you’re making your own progress, helping the other kids, and feeling good about it all, I see countless moments where the light goes on, “Wow, yeah, I know how to do it!” – whether it’s math, guitar, drama, sports, or language arts.
I’m talking about math because parents tend to ask about it, but the principles are equally true in history, language arts, or personal development. “Wow, I’m learning how to make friends.”
After Morning Circle, and just before math, we meditate briefly, and I doubt that any of the children would be able to say much about what they get out of it. But over the years I’ve seen that it serves them well. When they’re confronted with one of life’s countless tests, they can look back and remember, “When I got focused and calm, I could see things from a solution-oriented perspective.”
It’s not a mental exercise, juggling words. It’s an experience of learning to control energy in the body, heart, and brain. It helps them access mental resources that will be there for the rest of their lives. I don’t have any illusions that they will be lifelong meditators, but when we meditate briefly together in the morning there’s a tangible power in the room, of calmness, focus, and joy.
Q: In visiting the school I’ve observed that the students know how to be very serious and concentrated. It’s amazing to me, to see the kindergarteners and first, second, third, or fourth graders being really serious and intent about what’s going on, and in the next instant they’re laughing and happy. But they seem happy when they’re laughing and happy also about being serious.
I saw a fourth-grade girl sitting at a table reading a book during recess. She looked completely absorbed, and I was curious to know what kind of book had captured so much of her attention. I had my camera, and I said, “Can I take your picture?” She said, a little impatiently, “Okay,” and she immediately turned back to her book, as if she didn’t want to be distracted for a second. When I looked over her shoulder I saw that she was studying math.
It seems a plus that the kids know how to be serious and happy. You can tell the parents, “We have a happy school,” and how are they going to process that? It may be a completely foreign concept, or they could form the wrong impression, imagining that you’re indulging the kids, just letting them play.
Gary: It’s unfortunate that it’s so foreign in education today. On the other hand, there are forward-looking companies where cooperation and happiness are becoming a major part of their cultural goals, and where people are living these principles. And that’s what we have at our school, including the culture among the teachers.
Joseph Chilton Pearce, an author I greatly admire, said that when you’re dealing with children, you have to be what you’re saying. You can tell them to be good, but you have to model the behavior. Our faculty spend a great deal of time discussing how to be models for the kids, and it helps that we genuinely enjoy each other’s company.
There’s a spirit that you can feel when you walk onto the campus. It’s harmonious and joyful.
Of course, we have the usual issues. Putting on the play is a very intense experience for everyone, for example, and this year we only had a single dress rehearsal after seven weeks of intense preparation before we had to pull the plug because of COVID. It’s something we’ll revisit with the kids, because it’s full of life lessons. Even though they may be very young, there’s a soul, and you can’t just brush these things aside, because they need to learn about life by talking about what’s happening around them.
I’ve had interesting conversations with five-year-olds here. You might think that after twenty years of teaching I’ve been asked virtually every question a child could come up with. But there’s a group of kids that will always surprise you with something new and fresh, and that’s the teenagers. They will invariably find a way to come at an issue from a new direction, and maybe the ideas are crazy, but just as often they will be fresh and insightful.
I’ll give an assignment, and I’ll find myself asking a student, “Where did you come up with the idea to do it that way?” (Laughs) But then I’ll have to admit, “Okay, it works.”
It’s a wonderful environment. My son attended LWS from kindergarten to graduation. He’s in India now, developing Education for Life schools there. [Aryavan McSweeney now serves as director of the Palo Alto Living Wisdom School.] As part of his work, he has visited lots of other schools, and he says that these principles are showing up all over the world.
There are principles that schools are tapping into everywhere. The advantage we have is that when the entire faculty is dedicated to working in this particular space all the time, something very special happens, where you’re no longer just being a good teacher who happens to listen to the students, but where there are also lots of great teachers around you. So you develop a faculty and a community and a school environment that are all supporting these methods, and you begin to see extraordinary things happening.
Q: In the middle school, the students are at an age when they’re beginning to flex their willpower in preparation for adult life. How do you deal with that energy? Parents send their child here for nine months, six hours a day, and how do the teachers find ways to help the kids turn their willpower in positive directions?
Gary: I’ve spent a great deal of time giving this a lot of thought. Whatever you’re doing, you’re going to have to set boundaries, and with the middle schoolers it often translates to something as simple as telling them, “Come on, guys, when you walk in the door, you’re in silence. No, I mean silent!”
They’re going to need a certain discipline to weed out the distractions in their life and accomplish their goals,
One of the most interesting things I’ve experienced is that I’ll set a firm boundary, and I’ll wonder, “Gosh, did I go too far?” But invariably the next day the child will be right next to me during our morning walk, because they feel safe. I’m sure it’s a cliché in education and parenting, but there is no avoiding the fact that the kids need you to set boundaries.
When you set fair boundaries, in a spirit of love, it nearly always works to the child’s benefit. And if it doesn’t seem to be working today, it will work in the longer term. When the kids come back to visit us, they nearly always tell us how grateful they are for what they received at LWS.
Helen, our former school director, taught language arts, and she definitely had the students’ respect and full attention. Doug, our science teacher, rarely raises his voice, and whenever he says the slightest thing in the way of correction, I’ll revisit it with the kids. I’ll say, “You guys, Doug never says anything.” And because they know it’s true, they’ll correct their behavior, because they realize they’ve stepped over the line.
The need for correction is an integral part of our process, especially in the upper grades, because otherwise the kids feel adrift without a compass, and it doesn’t serve them.
Great teachers, whether they are school teachers, sports coaches, drama directors, or spiritual teachers, discipline the people who are able to receive and benefit, and those working under them love them for it.
I find that when the discipline is given in a spirit of kindness, it’s essential. I’ll say, “You have to put out more energy. You don’t have your homework.” And the kids will push you, because that’s what teenagers do – they want to know where the boundaries are.
I think of Steve Jobs, who was famous for the creative discipline that made so many contributions to Apple’s success. Bruno, our music teacher, is relaxed and cordial in his manner, but he’s super-dedicated to his craft, and the same is true of Claudia on recorder and keyboard, Rose in drama, and Helen in language arts.
We hire teachers who are serious and have high expectations. Our fourth and fifth grade teacher, Craig Kellogg, is right on top of the kids when it comes to practicing good sportsmanship, putting out energy in math, and being neat in their work.
The kids have to learn that there will be a need for an appropriate discipline in everything they will ever do. It doesn’t have to be oppressive or depressing, because the tradeoff is that when you develop self-control it’s empowering, and it opens doors to success experiences that come with a significant amount of joy.
You can’t just tell every kid, “Oh, you’re empowered, let me give you a trophy.” That model doesn’t work. In truth, it’s good to include all people in your sympathies, but you have to be real and let them know, “You can do better.” Because it’s what will serve them.
Q: You see kids blossoming at the school, and maybe they haven’t blossomed before, or maybe their way of being is naturally upbeat and positive. I’m thinking of Gaurav, a boy who graduated last year, and who did everything well – sports, guitar, academics, theater, friendships.
I see lots of kids here who are excelling, and I get a feeling that it’s because they’re in touch with who they are at their core, and they recognize what’s needed to achieve something in their own way and feel the glow of success. I assume from what you’ve said that you don’t just try to help them develop those qualities in math, but that you’re watching them on the playground as well, and all the time.
Gary: There’s a term we use in Education for Life, “specific gravity.” Gaurav is an excellent example. He had initiative, and it didn’t matter what challenges he was facing, he would always try his best. His whole family is structured that way. It’s an amazing family, very happy and wonderfully generous of heart. His sister Pooja graduated this year, and another sister is coming along in middle school.
We have a student now who, if you put a challenge before her, you know she’s going to rise to it. Maybe she doesn’t have the natural outward bubbliness of some of the other children, but when she sees a challenge, she meets it, because she likes the feeling of accomplishment.
There’s another girl who has a hard time accepting any sort of praise, even though her results are impressive. She’s always driving, driving, driving. You have to work with the child’s nature individually, and try to help them find a little joy in the mix.
We only get the kids for a few years, and we try to guide and encourage them and show them what’s possible – as opposed to just helping them claw their way to a good grade-point average in a culture where it’s all about the numbers – the grades and test scores, and admission to prestigious school X. Of course, those are good things, because doing well in school is good, and exercising your will power to excel is good.
But there’s an entire separate side to the education equation, where you’re looking at whether the child is happy. Because when you can bring the whole child to school, so to speak, you find that they all have tremendously important tools that will help them succeed as students and people, beyond just warehousing facts in their brains.
The high school acceptance counselors are always asking us how a specific child has been able to react to criticism or setbacks. It’s a classic question they all ask. Some of the kids frankly haven’t had a setback, so we don’t always know how to answer the question. But some kids have had big challenges, and the point is, one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to evaluating a child’s potential and helping them.
Some kids will come in with a heavy load, while some are able to breeze through, and some will exercise their initiative from day one, and others will not. So, again, you have to work with the individual, and you have to build a relationship with them so you can know where the gaps are, and what will work best for the specific child as you’re helping them develop their own unique strengths.
Q: I’ve noticed that the children here aren’t overly concerned with trying to conform to an image. When I observed in Ruth’s third-grade class, I noticed that there was a group of girls who were close friends, yet they were very unique and different. One seldom smiled and was serious all the time, and one was always bubbling with laughter, and the third was somewhere between. It was interesting that there didn’t seem to be any sort of student-run culture where a child is always feeling pressured to fit a certain mold, for fear of being excluded.
Third-grade friends pose for a photo taken by second-grade teacher Kshama Kellogg.
Gary: No, you’re allowed to be yourself here, and it sometimes means that the individual child may be a bit withdrawn, always thinking serious thoughts, and some are more naturally bubbly and every day is amazing.
Of course they do change. A child who’s here for the full nine years will go through lots of changes. They’ll be dealing not only with school but with life’s challenges, and that’s a strong part of an Education for Life, too. At LWS, it’s part of what the school is about. Parents ask, “What math book are you using?” Or “How do you teach three grades at once?” And those are important questions that deserve thoughtful answers, but it’s ultimately about how well we’re working with the kids’ energy.
This year there’s been a lot of parental interest in the middle school, with a waiting list, so we’ve had several shadow students. When I talked to two of them at the end of their shadow days, I said, “So what do you think of the school?” One of them said, “All the kids are so happy here. It’s really unusual.” He hadn’t seen that in his previous school. The other child said, “Everyone is so open.”
I observed one of the shadow students running around with the kids as if she’d been here forever, and I assumed she knew them from outside of school. She was playing and laughing and hugging the kids, and I asked her, “Do you know these girls from your neighborhood?”
“Never met them!”
But she was wide open. In this school there isn’t a consciousness of constantly measuring people, “Oh, you’re just a shadow student.” There’s a deep acceptance that is really quite amazing, and it’s been there from the first days of the school.
Q: In many schools there seems to be a culture of power, where if you have the power of prestige or of being really smart, or of belonging to an inner circle, or you’re from a wealthy family, you’re accepted, but if you aren’t, you’re a nobody and you’re excluded and maybe mocked and shunned. “Maybe I’m not a jock, but I’m smart.” You have these categories, and you have to defend your self-definition and be really good at something, or else you’re seen as a sort of shadow person, like a mole.
Gary: After talking with prospective parents, our former director, Helen, would often remark that the bullying issue is really not small in the school culture today. Many parents say, “Well, he’s been bullied” and it’s not about a small measure of teasing, it’s really nasty. This ties in to exactly what you said, that it’s about power, or feeling un-empowered and turning into a bully to get power. And it’s very sad.
Our practices on exclusiveness are clear, and we go a very long way beyond only giving them lip service, as some schools do. Every one of the teachers is continuously modeling inclusiveness, and if they see that it isn’t happening, or if there’s the slightest hint of exclusion, they address it immediately, right on the spot, because we take it very seriously, and we put real effort into it.
Q: I’ve heard many stories about how a teacher will notice something negative going on, whether it’s a tiny hint of bullying, or a kid in a bad mood, or someone saying something hurtful, and they’re all over it immediately, starting in kindergarten.
Gary: Oh, yes, and our kindergarten teacher, Lilavati, is exceptionally gifted and sensitive that way. We give it a lot of attention in our faculty meetings – “Have you noticed so and so this year?” “Oh, yeah, and what can we do about that?” “Well, I’ll see him on the playground.”
Because among the teachers it’s “all hands on deck,” like an extended family of teachers, each of whom might have different connections with the kids, and maybe someone can reach a particular kid better, so they’ll reach out to them and respond, even if they aren’t the child’s classroom teacher.
Q: On the issue of test-taking, it seems artificial to study to the test, because it implies that you’re going to stay up late and ace the test, but then it’s gone. I’ve observed in the middle school during math that there appears to be a culture where each child is immersing in the subject not only because the school has an individual approach to teaching, but because of the approach to math specifically, which is that you’re constantly reviewing with the individual child and insisting and ensuring that they get a sound understanding of the principles at every step of the way.
Gary: The question of depth came up recently during the pandemic, because we’re teaching remotely and the school is shut down, and some kids will say, “Oh, I went online and did some math.” And maybe they’re watching videos from Khan, and I have no complaint about Khan, but if I’m doing math online I’m naturally going to drift toward the problems I know how to do, and I’m going to avoid the harder word problems about percentages because I don’t like word problems.
A student said, “I haven’t been doing the math textbook or the curriculum, I’ve just been online.” I said, “My experience is that when you do that you end up jumping around.” He said, “You know, that’s right, I was kind of jumping around.”
There’s a superficiality in education now, where you’re skimming the surface, touching all the right buttons because you’re being dragged along with one eye on the mandated curriculum and the other eye on tests and grades. And every math teacher I’ve met feels this way. But what it neglects is the student’s need to understand the principles and concepts in depth. Have you actually mastered them, or are you just gliding over the surface? Because if you’re just skating over the surface it’s bound to catch up with you.
Any book you’re using, whether it’s CPM or Envision or Singapore, will help you build a solid foundation in math, just as when you’re learning guitar or keyboard, you want to learn the basics thoroughly and soundly – finger placement, chords, and so on. And in math, too, you have to build a solid foundation, because there are no shortcuts.
In any good math curriculum, you need to keep circling back so that the students are constantly getting exposed to the underlying concepts.
I may allow the students to go forward for a while, even though I know they haven’t fully mastered the concepts, because in our school they will always get a chance to fill in the gaps, instead of being dragged along by an externally mandated schedule. At some point, the gaps in their understanding will begin to show, and it might be a humbling experience to realize that, wow, I never really got it.
A student asked me why he needed to do proofs if he knew the answers. I said, “Don’t take my word for it. Go talk to our math aides, Eric or Richard.” Richard went to Harvard and Stanford, and Eric went to MIT. And sure enough, they gave him the same answer: “Proofs are good.” Because it isn’t only about getting the right answer, it’s knowing how to get the answer, which is the more valuable skill.
That’s what math is ultimately about. It’s training the brain to think clearly, and to analyze things and come up with answers. Those are skills you can apply in any area.
Computers can do math a lot faster than we can, but math class is also about developing clear thinking and logic. Knowing how to solve any kind of problem is as important as being able to jump straight to the answer.
We have a student who can go straight to the right answer, because he’s very gifted. But it doesn’t really work at Living Wisdom. And in language arts, too, if you’re wanting to analyze a poem or write an essay with originality and spark, you can’t just check off the bullet points and say, “Here’s the answer.” We want them to experience depth in everything.
Q: You mentioned Haze, who graduated from LWS and now teaches math at the Living Wisdom High School. When he was twenty, he had basically exhausted what the American universities could teach him in math, so he went to Germany where they’re more advanced in math education. Now he’s come back after a long time away, because he said that he was getting along fine academically in those other school environments, but he realized that he had started to become depressed because he was accepting other people’s standards of behavior and values. In his mind, he felt that he urgently needed to refresh the principles that had made him happy at Living Wisdom. He was in graduate school in Germany when he had the crisis of faith, and he decided to return and become a teacher at LWHS.
Gary: He said something interesting to me recently. He said that kids nowadays are asking their teachers, “What do I need to do to get an A in your class?” He never answers the question, because we’re here to learn math and master principles. It’s not about following the steps to get an A – that doesn’t fly at Living Wisdom, because we all know it doesn’t work in life.
When we had him as a student, Haze was so precocious in math that the only way I could help him was to tell him to be a bit neater in his work. That was about the only help he needed. But he’s very grounded, perhaps because he’s also been active in martial arts since he was three years old and was a world champion in karate at age 14. So he has a great deal of discipline, and he insists that the students learn the math foundations. It’s a healthy approach, because there are no shortcuts in life.
Q: Kids who are as smart as Haze can sometimes become isolated at school, but he never was. When I interviewed him, he told stories about being very socially connected all the way through school, even though he was often a great deal smarter than everyone else in math.
Gary: He was part of an interesting class that included several very advanced math students. He had two buddies in particular, and they were rowdy and did wacky things, and after those three left, another group of three came, and now there’s another threesome. There’s a professor at Stanford who’s the leading expert on groups of three, and I always imagine that he’d be very interested. (Laughs)
There are many teachers today in other schools who are Education for Life teachers whether they call it that or not. Most of us have had an EFL teacher at some point in our lives. My high school history teacher didn’t have a great delivery, and he wasn’t there to please us or be funny, but I remember him for his fairness, and the respect we had for him, because he was deeply engaged with his subject, and he made it alive for us.
I remember my geometry teacher who was so kind, even though he was a former Marine drill sergeant. You might imagine he would be a terror – a drill sergeant yelling at the recruits. But he was so gentle. “Mr. McSweeney, you fell into the latrine on that one!” You know, “Let me show you where you made your mistake.” (Laughs) He was so nice, and I still love geometry as a result. I’m less fond of algebra, possibly because my two algebra teachers were drill sergeants, always yelling.
I believe education is gradually coming back to its senses, where the teachers, administrators, and parents have started to understand that you can’t just educate one part of the child for thirteen years and expect them to be happy and successful and well-prepared for life.
One of our LWS parents is applying to Nueva School for her child’s high school. When we asked her, “Oh, what’s that like?” she thought about it, and she said, “You know, they do a lot of the same things Living Wisdom does. They don’t give letter grades anymore, and they emphasize the individual approach.” As she ran down the list of similarities, I was thinking, “Well, that’s good.” They’re positioning themselves as a cutting-edge school, and we’re hearing about many other schools that are trying to be more humane.
Lots of schools went off the rails for a while with test scores and grades, and even the University of California system is thinking of doing away with the SATs, or making them optional. And that’s no small thing, because it will have major repercussions.
The cynical side of me is thinking that education today is basically an industry, with powerful players, including the testing services and textbook and test-prep course and test publishers. So there’s an element of greed in it. But parents can override that in a heartbeat by switching their vision. “I’m not putting my child on those cold and inhuman rails, I’m choosing a well-rounded school.” If enough parents do that, the market will respond.
Q: I’m friends with a retired teacher in Illinois who taught honors chemistry for thirty years. He’s also an extremely successful track and field coach. He has extremely strong views on how education has taken a wrong turn, to the point where he felt he had to become an advocate for the students.
He saw that education was basically creating unhappiness concentration camps for kids, partly because everybody was so intimidated by the prevailing idea that success will come for kids at some indefinite point in the future if you make them suffer enough now.
As a result there’s this ridiculous thinking that every child has to get into Harvard or they’re a failure. It’s extremely polarized thinking, and it’s so unrealistic that it’s heartwarming to hear that people are waking up and beginning to come out of that hypnosis.
Gary: I think they’re trying to. It may be unrealistic to expect the education mainstream to change overnight. But there is a grassroots movement that seems to be leading to a shake-up, because people are looking for alternatives.
Many of the kids at our school are really bright, so it’s not as if they couldn’t cut it in a mainstream school. But the parents have very carefully chosen not to do that. “I don’t want that competition for my child. I want my child to do well. I want them to learn the basics and excel, but I don’t need them to be indoctrinated with the wrong self-image: ‘I’m so great, I got an A in science and I’m going to make lots of money and be happy when I grow up.’” And all the attitudes that go along with that kind of thinking.
Q: There are some LWS parents with impressive credentials – they include tech executives and Stanford professors who’ve brought their children to Living Wisdom because they want them to have a balanced education.
Gary: We have friends in the School of Education at Stanford, and they applaud what we’re doing. Jack Dieckman told me, “What’s really important when a kid graduates from middle school is their relationship with math – how do they feel about math?” It’s not, “Are they doing geometry? Are they doing algebra?” It’s how they feel about their math ability. And if it’s intact, you’ve done well.
You do have to plan for the longer term. I mentioned the student who hated math, and who earned her doctorate in genetics. Some kids struggle until after high school, and then the light goes on.
A teacher wrote a letter to the editor of a local newspaper. She said, “I’m very sorry that I’m going to have to give up teaching. It’s been my whole career, and I love teaching. I love seeing the students, but this pressure to give standardized testing is taking all the fun out of it for me, and I can no longer teach.” She was a kindergarten teacher, and she was horrified that they are giving timed standardized tests to the kindergarteners.
Q: They aren’t letting them have recess because it’s time away from math. It’s insane.
Gary: Well, again, there’s a huge profit motive when you get into that system, with the standardized tests and the textbook industry. So it’s not brain surgery to see where the impetus is coming from to keep the system going. There’s an industry around standardized testing, and when you start talking about how each child has unique gifts, I can’t imagine how you’re going to monetize that, but I’m sure they’ll try to figure out a way. (Laughs)
The book Education for Life begins by asking a question, “What do you want for your child?” And you might say, “Well, I want them to receive a good education.” And then the author asks, “What is a good education?” And he talks about how it includes questions of values, and how the child will grow as a person, and how this completely unbalanced view has come in, where it’s entirely about academics.
What you want them to become is people who tell the truth, who have integrity, and who know how to work as part of a team.
When Google looked at the personal qualities of their most successful employees, they found that the most successful employees and research teams expressed qualities of cooperation, an ability to listen, an ability to change when proven wrong, and so on – all “soft skills.” And way down in eighth place on the list were STEM skills. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math.)
They discovered that success at Google depends very strongly on the values we emphasize in EFL. I believe the proof is in the power our kids have when they get to high school. My son did very well in navigating high school and finding his way.
When our graduates leave college, we don’t want them to be thinking, “Wow, I got all these good grades, yet I’m poorly prepared for this job!” Because they don’t have the skills that Project Aristotle discovered people need to be successful at companies like Google.
Q: When I talked with your son recently, he said that when he graduated from St. Francis High School he knew everybody in the student body. So he was socially very well-adjusted.
Gary: (Laughs) When he went to his first dance, he didn’t know anybody, so he went out on the dance floor and met one kid, and she had a couple of friends, and the next thing you know fifty of them were dancing together. He ended up becoming the student body vice president and hosting a radio talk show.
He wanted to be involved in theater, but he didn’t get the part, so he said, “I’ll do tech.” And that’s pure EFL, where you learn to be resilient and optimize your options and resources. He ended up studying film, and it became his livelihood. Most important, he just kept putting out energy. In his freshman year he got cut from the soccer team, but he went out again the next year and made the JVs. Through it all, by being resilient and always finding opportunities, he had a lot of fun, and he’s been successful.
Q: You can hear it in his voice, which is strong and centered and aware of other people’s realities. You sense that there’s an ability to navigate any environment he’s in.
Gary: I would say you’re describing the typical LWS graduate. There’s a self-possession. There’s an ability to deal with life that is palpable when you meet these kids regardless of their grade level.
I’ve been involved in the middle school for twenty years, and when I meet the kids from the other Living Wisdom Schools, they all have this awareness. They’re aware of others and they’re aware of situations and how to deal with them maturely and objectively.
Q: People in education don’t always visualize what they’re going to accomplish with the standardized curriculum and tests. Because what kind of people are they trying to graduate? They’re going to graduate millions of people who are good in math, okay, and millions of people who know how to manipulate the system of the academic world. And again, okay. Yet when they leave school, you find them doing lots of things where math and STEM might not be the focal point.
Your son has made films very successfully in India, and he helped start EFL schools there. But you also have Living Wisdom graduates like a young man who works at Motley Fool, a leading financial research and consulting company, and he’s a senior counselor because he’s a financial wizard. Then you have the young woman who’s doing genetics research, and you have Haze who’s in love with math, to the extent that he was doing extremely abstract advanced math that didn’t have anything to do with the real world, but he loved it because it was his nature.
Who’s to say that any one of those people isn’t successful? Who’s to say that the geneticist was a failure because she wasn’t initially good at math? But she saw that she had to learn it, and she had the help of a foundation of personal qualities that allowed her to solve the problem and succeed.
Gary: We give them a foundation that serves them well as they go along, and when life throws curves at them they know how to cope. That’s what any parent would want for their child. That’s what a true education is. Are you ready to deal with what life is going to throw at you?
It goes back to when Yogananda laid out the principles for an Education for Life that would train young people to be successful in their relationships and at work, with all of the emotions and feelings and willpower and self-control that are required, and that we emphasize from a young age.
Q: Your life is going to put you in those situations, in school and after, and if you aren’t trained to deal with them, they’re going to smack you, and maybe you’ll be spinning. But these kids know how to navigate the situations their lives might put them in.
As Aryavan and Haze said in my talks with them, whenever they got into those situations they could look back and remember, “I know how to be happy, and here are the qualities I need to manifest right now. I need to manage this with a little kindness, or a little inner strength, or a little resistance, or perseverance.”
If you’re working with your academic skills at Google, you’re going to need those life skills, too. Otherwise, the ability to be a computing machine isn’t going to get you through, if that’s all you’ve got, and it’s going to isolate you, because you won’t know how to get along with people.