Read the full transcript of Episode 36 of the NAIS New View EDU podcast, which features Michael B. Horn returning to the show to share the findings from his new book about education after the pandemic, From Reopen to Reinvent. Horn is the co-founder and distinguished fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, a nonprofit think tank, and an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.
Tim Fish: We are so excited to have Michael Horn joining us again on New View EDU. You know, as I look at my bookshelf behind me and I, the books, other places where I've got books piled up, Michael's books have been foundational to how I think about education. It all started with Disrupting Class and then Blended. And also, Choosing College was super powerful because in that book, Michael really used the jobs to be done theory and process that is so embedded in the work we do at NAIS to look at the topic of college. And his latest book is, I think, one of the ones for me that has really sort of spoken to where we're going.
This notion of Reopen to Reinvent, recreating school for every child. You know, the biggest challenge I have in thinking about this is where to start. I mean, this could be seriously a 10 hour podcast. So I have done, this has been all about pruning to think about what it is that we want to talk to Michael about.
So I'm, Michael, I am so excited to have you back on New View EDU with us today.
Michael Horn: Tim, it's always a pleasure and it's, it's awesome to get to reconnect, whether it's about one of my books or about any of the amazing projects y'all are working on and you're helping communities spearhead, it's always a joy.
Tim Fish: You know, Michael, I was reading your incredible bio, which we'll put in the show notes, and at the end of it, one of the things that came to me, which I'm curious about, which maybe we’ll start off with a bit of a personal question, is why education? You know what, what brought you to education? Because you could have done so many kinds of different things in your career.
Michael Horn: Yeah, it's a good question. And I think there's two answers, right? There's the retrospective and there's the, at the time answer. So I'll, I'll give you the job to be done, if you will, at that time answer and then, and then we could say what it has amounted to. But I mean, the, the reality right, is I went to business school to get away from writing, to get away from public policy, took Clay Christensen's class. Didn't know who he was, candidly, and it totally transformed the way I saw the world. And he had this opportunity to co-author a book with him on public education. And I said, OK, I'll, I'll do that. And you know, he, he obviously had to think about it for a little bit before he signed me on, but the deal was it'll take us a year to write the book and then you know, Michael, I'll help you find whatever job it is you want to do.
Well, the book took two years to write, and at the end of that, a few things had changed. One, we started the Clayton Christensen Institute, and I had gone to business school wanting to start and run some organization that would have a meaningful impact in the world. I, I was more focused on media in the developing world. But, this was like, OK, this is staring you in the face. And two, I became so passionate, Tim, about the fundamental ideas, right, that we are not operating a system writ large, if you can call all the schools we have a system. We are not operating one writ large that allows every individual to build their passions and fulfill their human potential.
And a book is nice, but that's not going to create change. Like, you gotta stay at it. Right? And I think over time I've learned my part of the space, if you will. And, and where I can have the maximal impact in that. But, but the mission has not changed. And every morning I get up and I'm just like, there's never a moment I'm not excited about the fundamental work of like, how do we help unlock innovators and educators to make progress on behalf of children. And, and that just is all consuming, I think, at all levels.
Tim Fish: I think you're, I think you're right. It's very similar to what gets me up in the morning every day. And as I look at what you've done and what you're doing, I think you are among a very small group of thought leaders that are deeply knowledgeable about K-12, about early childhood, about higher ed.
I mean, Future U is one of my all time, must listen to podcasts. I'm wondering at this moment, we're kind of coming out of the pandemic. I think we're in a sort of, a different state economically. There's a lot of things going on. Politically, there's a lot going on. What's your assessment of where education is at a high level?
Michael Horn: Yeah, it's a good question. At a high level, and you can address it at any point, you know, along that continuum. Obviously I think at early childhood we know the importance of engaging kids early, right? But I think we also saw the importance of supporting parents and having an option for them for a place to go, and a more resilient set of options in the long run. And so I think there's a lot to grapple with there. There's an incredible amount of technology to reach parents to help them learn how to engage their children when they're babies. But I think we need to think more seriously about what's a more flexible, robust system. You know, things like Wonderschool that have popped up, right, that are creating platforms to allow educators to create their own businesses, to create a continuity of care, if you will, I think, is a big question.
When you think about K-12, you know, it's such an interesting moment. You must see this, like, parents, I think this is the optimistic side, parents feel empowered in a way I've never seen in my career, certainly, and I think in my life, where they feel like we get agency over where our kids get to go to school. We have say in the philosophies that they engage in. Right. And I think it's easy as the, you know, in the public system to say, Oh no, that's a negative. Like they're not going to take our, you know, one-size-fits-all way of doing this. But I think it's an incredible positive, cuz what I see happening is educators and independent communities popping up to say, OK, let's build something around that. And so there's a lot of innovation and excitement I think. And I think that's going to be an awesome thing.
You know, I think in the traditional public schools, it's a much more mixed bag, right? Where they've just sort of tried to batten up the hatches and get back and started. And it's, there's some days where it's pretty depressing, frankly. And then in the higher ed, I think the shakeout is really going to start to occur now. You know, we sort of had this pause, right, of, of COVID Federal relief dollars and the like, but I, I think we're, we're sort of going to accelerate where, where the middle, if you will, falls out of that space and becomes a lot less viable or attractive to many individuals who have already been voting with their feet for, you know, alternative to college credentials or short-term certificates or things like that. And I, I think entrepreneurs are going to start to stitch this together in a whole new set of ways that yes, drives towards skills and competencies, but, but maybe more empowering is, is, is putting individuals in the driver's seat to be able to make choices as their career and lives change and what they need to make progress shifts. And so that's the optimistic side, I think on that, on that front as well.
Tim Fish: You know, I think you're right on about this being a moment of empowerment. Right. And I think empowerment for parents. I think I'm seeing more empowerment in higher ed too. You know, we had your good friend Jeff Selingo and Adam Weinberg on an episode of the podcast, and we were talking about the future of education and we were talking about the full experience of a residential college experience and what that can be, certainly in the classroom, but also way more outside the classroom.
Michael Horn: Yeah.
Tim Fish: And I'm looking at this moment, you know, I, I wonder in each of these new episodes of the podcast, how long it will take before we mention ChatGPT, right? And sort of what its impact on the world is going to be. But I, you know, I think we are in a moment where the sort of ability to leverage technology, right, ChatGPT and many others, is creating all kinds of opportunities to think about design differently. Like how do you design school when you have that tool available to the world in one way or another?
Michael Horn: I think that's exactly right. And, and you think about it, you know, the, the reflection I've had in—back to Disrupting Class—was we sort of hypothesize that this facilitated network would come along that would allow you to learn any concept or micro, you know, learning objective or whatever, and you know, and find the way that it spoke to you in essence, and allow creators and educators to spring up and create alternative explanations and tutor like things.
And you look at like traditional schools and you're like, that hasn't happened. But then you look outside the schools and you're like, whoa. Where do teens go to learn something? They go to YouTube. Tim Fish: That's right.
Michael Horn: It's, it's booming, right? And then you think ChatGPT over that and frankly all the editing tools that AI is going to bring to the fore and so forth to create much more, you know, not just video based, but like much more active learning experiences and micro chunks.
And it's not hard to imagine a, a really cool, informal learning ecosystem popping up. And then the question is exactly what you said, which is schools, how do they adapt? How do they innovate? How do they build from scratch, new experiences that say, OK, that's the baseline, that's the given. What do we want to do here together when we have a community coming together to, to use these things to enhance people's understanding of how the world works, to enhance what they can do with these tools, to level up what we can create and build and so forth with each other?
You know, it's like...it's not like ChatGPT now obviates learning knowledge, because you gotta fact check it and know what questions to ask and all the rest, but it does significantly lift the bar on the creation of your English essay or what you're going to do, right? It's like, you have this cool tool now alongside you that can, like what else can you build and do with that now? The schools that are forward thinking won't run from it. They'll embrace it and think about what can we create now to unleash students to, to, to do more and be more.
Tim Fish: I think you're spot on with that. You know, I was talking with my friend Michael Nachbar from Global Online Academy today.
Michael Horn: Love Michael.
Tim Fish: Michael's great. And he, and we got in this whole chat about it and he was basically saying, what I loved about it is he said, look, the, the core thing that's going to emerge is the, is the imperative for curiosity, right? That if you approach ChatGPT with curiosity, it can be this incredible thinking partner. Right? And I'm just asking questions of it. You know, I've been really fascinated by the leadership of Winston Churchill, and so I decided one day to just say, who was Winston Churchill? And it gives me a little bit of stuff, and then I just kept asking it more questions and kept diving deeper and deeper and deeper, and got on this whole sort of ChatGPT, you know, thing with like, Dunkirk and the, and the key leadership decisions that were behind that moment. And you know, what it was like, and it went from being this like, content creator writing my essay for me thing, right? To being this true thinking partner, right? That I was bringing to it curiosity, and then from that I was able to learn, right?
Michael Horn: Yeah. And that's the cool thing, right? I, I think your example's awesome, right? Because you're now asking it a set of questions about what you're curious. It's giving you back the information it can glean. You have to sort some of that, it's not all going to be correct, right? And so you have to sort of parse that.
But now you're taking what you learn and you ask more and you're learning more. And it's like this virtuous circle, right? That uplevels everything and gets you to a set of questions that are deeper, much quicker. And, and, and that's the cool, I, I think that's the cool part of it. I mean, I, I even use it for practical stuff now. I was like, a friend from, who lives in Asia was asking me, are there boarding summer school experiences in Massachusetts? I don't know. I didn't know off the top of my head. I asked ChatGPT what it knew, and it started spitting things back. And then, you're right, it's like the fifth question that's the most interesting one, when you keep going deeper, and that's when you start to find some things that you, you wouldn't have otherwise found.
And so it's, it's as a, as a companion, if you will. I, I think it's, you know, it, it, it's going to teach us what we've learned over and over again, through history in my mind, which is that it's not technology versus people. It's what happens when you combine the two together and the magic that gets created there. And I, I know that including many of my friends are all sort of like, technology's going to replace human labor and blah, blah, blah. I, I just don't think that's the case. I, I, I think we, the complement is always where this is most powerful, and it's more of us learning how it works and how to do exactly what you did with it to run down these areas of curiosity and then to assimilate that in a larger, you know, set of knowledge and what you can do with it and, you know, you lead. Right? So, distill those lessons from Winston Churchill and be able to utilize them. You're not trying to conduct an army trying to escape a, you know, being pinned in on a, a peninsula or whatnot.
But, you know, you, there's applicability to helping schools navigate certain challenges or helping schools innovate in a community that maybe is fractious, right? And so that, that's valuable.
Tim Fish: It is valuable. And I think it, it's this whole notion of sort of, I think, nuanced learning and, you know, it gets to me then if we look at school structure, right? And I, as I read the book and I finished it and it just, again, it's just so good. I just, everyone really needs to read From Reopen to Reinvent.
One of the things, I came back and I often, when I finish a book like yours, I say, OK, what's the bumper sticker? Like, what's the, what's the core thesis here that really is coming up? And, and for me the core thesis was like, school as we know it is not really serving anybody. Right. That was, that would be kind of the bumper sticker that I took away. And I wonder, A) is that an effective bumper sticker? And then, what do you mean by that? When we talk about the structures and maybe, and in some ways I think we were just hitting on it.
Michael Horn: Well, I, so I love that you took that away because one of the big I, I, I think there's probably two or three messages that I really wanted people to take away from the book, and that is one of them, which is that this is not a book about like, oh, quote unquote, those kids who are poorly served, but mine are OK. Like it's working for me. I want parents and educators, regardless of where they live, who their kids are, the communities in which they are, to walk away and be like, this could be better. Like, I want to expect more from schools and we can do more together. And here are the tools for the educators, by the way, to take that and, and, and do something really neat.
And I did not want this to be a book that just says, oh yeah, we poorly serve low income kids, but you know Michael's mom in Montgomery County, you're OK, right? I, I want Michael's mom in Montgomery County to be like, oh. You mean what I thought is rigorous is not in fact rigorous? You mean what I thought is unleashing his potential is actually hurting his sense of growth mindset and not preparing him for the executive function skills that he's going to need in the world of work, and is just causing him to sit there trying to compete on a very narrow metric of success and not figure out his purpose in life? Oh, I don't want that. And I, I hope everyone walks away from it and says, Wow. This is not like a “some” problem. This is everyone. We can be doing better.
Tim Fish: Absolutely. I think that's the key, right? Is this notion, and I, and I also took it away that we're not talking about tweaking around the edges, we're talking about structural redesign. Like we're talking about things like how we assess, we're talking about time, we're talking about the role of the adult in the, in the school, we're talking about, you know, how we really, what's the role of content, right? What is the, how do students work by themselves, and with others? Just the whole thing, and it leads me to this idea, right? The sort of challenge that I wanted to sort of take on with you for this podcast was, all right, Michael, you and I, we've both been thinking about education for a long time.
Let's design a school, right? Let's just say, all right, what are we going to, what are we going to put in this school? And what are we going to, what do students do during the day? And like, what is the role of all these different things that we have talked about? And so for me, I wanted to start with, OK, if we, you know, clear everything off the table and we start from scratch, we get a, we get a building.
One of the things I'm curious from your perspective is, I've always wondered about this. How big should it be? Should it be kindergarten through 12th grade? You know, what do you, what do you think? Like what? Like if you were starting from scratch and we were inventing, what do you think?
Michael Horn: So I love the question. Let me start with that. I will say, and, and not to duck the question cause I will answer it for you, but I do think part of it is like there's no one-size-fits-all answer to a lot of these questions, right? That, and, and that's what I hope people also take is that like, this is a, let me put it this way. A very fair criticism of the book is this is not like a top-down policy blueprint for solving education's woes. It's a very grassroots, bottoms up community by community. But it comes from, like, something I took away deeply from the pandemic, frankly, deeply from having been on the board of NAIS for, for a few years there, which is that like, there are, just as there's no one-size-fits-all way to educate a kid, there's no one-size-fits-all solution for communities and parents and educators either. And so we need to have some pluralism, if you will, pluralistic solutions for what schools can be and look like. And, and so I think it starts with the community that you're innovating for having a very serious conversation about like, what's the purpose and what are we trying to achieve here, and, and, and, and so forth, and get to those first principles.
That said, I will not duck your question. You know, if, if I'm doing it for me, right? I'm super intrigued by a larger community, but with subsets in between. And what I, what I mean by that is I picture the school of the future to be sort of a community center. Where students are coming, educators are coming, but also the outside world is coming in. Like parents might even be co-working there and, and, and we're, we're plugging into this community center and we might have like the micro-school of Hogwarts over here, and we might have the micro-school of Montessori over here and the micro-school of Waldorf or, or you know, whatever else, right?
Or you know, the, the STEM factory over here where we go deep with the, I'm in Arizona with semiconductor, you know, fabs and intel or something. But at some level, like we're part of this larger community that we're plugging into and connecting to. And so I really like this, these places where you can sort of get the best of both worlds and have some of that smallness that I think comes from having a community of 150, say, individuals, you know, that magic number of relationships that we can hold, but also allows you to do bigger because we know that so much of opportunity and cohesiveness and culture and a sense of belonging come from feeling like you're part of something bigger and that a lot of opportunity comes from your weak tie connections.
You know, that person you pass in the hall, but you never are in the same class with, and then 10 years later they're like, Oh, I remember that dude. Like, I, he's calling me up. I, I'll pick up the phone. Right. And so to me, I would try to, for, for my preferences, I would try to have some of the, the best of both worlds to answer your question.
Tim Fish: I love it. You know, it makes me think about, I was reading something recently about the re-imagination of Best Buy and how Best Buy was like, headed to be a disaster. Headed to close, right? The big box concept, it couldn't compete with Amazon, and it was the new CEO who came in and said, you know, we're going to take a Best Buy, a big box, and we're going to break it into a whole bunch of micro stores. There's going to be an Apple store in there, there's going to be a Microsoft store, there's going to be a Samsung store, there's going to be, you know. And we're going to create micro stores in a big store and we're going to focus our talent on working in one of those micro stores as opposed to having to try to know every appliance in this entire place.
Michael Horn: And they thought about where they could add value that other, that the online couldn't.
Tim Fish: Exactly. You know, you can come in, you can lay your hands on things, you can walk from little area to, and I think that notion, right, could be a really powerful concept. Right? Sort of a big environment, a big community. But I think you hit it on it for me, that sort of smallness is that 150. I think 150 is a very, very powerful number. But you could find economies of scale in the bigness as well, I think, which could be really powerful, right? Because it's hard to make the business model of a 150 work.
Michael Horn: Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And you can have fluidity between the communities. You can have the leverage on technology or digital learning experiences. You, you know, I'm not wild about magnet schools that make you focus at an early age on a very specific set of subjects. Cuz like preferences, interests change over time as you're exposed to new things. And the cool thing about technology, to your, the conversation we were having earlier, is you can follow your curiosity in all sorts of ways. And so now I get access to that in this larger community. Great. I mean, there might be common times where we all come together at, you know, 11 in the morning for assembly or something, right?
Like you, you can imagine the, the rah rah parts of school that sometimes some of us roll our eyes at, but are actually really cool cultural phenomenon. Like, we like to belong to tribes. and we get the benefits of that smallness cuz I, I do think, you know, there was that whole thing in New York City 15 years ago with Gates and the small schools and whatever else, and like they shuttered it. But afterwards the research showed actually smallness really did help. And I think that's right, because like you get to know people really well, you have a personal connection. If Tim's my head of school, like he sees me going in, he knows who my parents are. You know what my, maybe what I was grappling with yesterday, maybe why I didn't, you know, I took a mental health day, whatever it is, right?
Like you have a sense of that, that you can't really do in large in, in at least a, a human way.
Tim Fish: Yeah, I think it's great. What would you put in the center of the design? Right. And, and I don't mean physical design, I mean sort of programmatic design. Like what would be either the core competencies, the kinds of things we'd want to make sure that all students leave with at the end. Just sort of riffing what kind of what, for me, one that comes to mind is like curiosity, we were just talking about. Like how do we design to instill and to inspire curiosity?
Michael Horn: So I love that. And, and if I, if I were to take it at a higher level. One of the analogies I've been thinking a lot about lately is that a lot of people look at a school and they're like, how can we scale that to the world? And their sort of mental model is software engineering, right? I think like you take, copy the billion lines of code, paste a billion times, we have scale. But I think schools are much more like civil engineering. Right? Which is to say there's certain principles that scale as we implement, but how we connect and construct them are different in different localities. Like if I were to build a bridge in San Francisco versus a bridge in Boston, the conditions in terrain are completely differently. But the law of physics, right? The laws, they, they don't fundamentally change.
And so I, I, I guess where I start with your answer is, to me, mastery based or competency based learning is one of those principles that I think should undergird all schools. How that plays out and what the precise curriculum is, I think can change a little bit from community to community, depending on what's important in your local area, what's important for your country, what's important—right, like there's certain nuance.
That said again, I think, you know, the inarguable thing is that we insist that students learn how to read when they're young. Right? Like that's, that's critical. We want them to learn math. And I think that is through, I would argue pre-algebra, probably. And then, let's let them branch, would be my argument. I would say I do think the civic function of schools is incredibly important. A sense of at least baseline shared history and how laws are made and, and, and the country works, and how you can play a role in that I think is incredibly important. And then obviously scientific literacy and computer, you know, digital literacy I think are incredibly important.
That's the stuff to me that I would put in there, the knowledge. And I'd have some baseline of competencies I think around those that I'd say everyone needs to know. I'd have probably a looser set of definition on the knowledge around like music and arts and things like that, that I think are also really, really important. But I might create a little bit looser of like, you know, if, if Tim, after he gets basic exposure, wants to go geek out on jazz and Michael wants to go geek out on classic rock era, like that's fine, right? But what, you know, whatever. I'm sort of using that loosely.
And then the part that I would require then comes back to where you started, which is to me the habits of success. Curiosity, executive function, agency, growth mindset, grit, perseverance, a sense of self-efficacy and self-esteem. A sense of attachment. Like those things I would say are the baseline. And I wouldn't call them social emotional learning, although that's a common phrase for them. I use the phrase habits of success. Some people use life skills. I would actually name each of those things, cuz I think some of the fights that we have in communities right now are, they're like, you know, there's truly some like weird stuff being pedaled under each of those monikers, but I don't know any parent that doesn't want their kids to be curious about the world.
Tim Fish: Right, right. Exactly.
Michael Horn: So when you talk at that level in plain English, I think parents get excited and, and want that. So that would be non-negotiables to me. And then I, the last part I would say is as you're learning the knowledge that I referenced earlier, and you're learning the habits of success through your, your mastery of knowledge, I would want people to be able to take that to a higher plane. Right? Which is to think critically with it, to solve problems, to communicate, work in teams and so forth, and make that very scaffolded. And, and in each discipline we are working to make that explicit. And, and something you do as you learn a new body of knowledge. Not under the assumption that like, critical thinking in coding is the exact same thing as critical thinking in writing an essay, but more that we are building these habits of mind that people are expected to do. And, and so that knowledge isn't for its own sake, but how you apply it and put it into the real world. And so I think that'd be the last thing I would say. I would require that in any discipline you're mastering, you're working toward being able to use these skills.
Tim Fish: Yeah, I'd, I'd love the blend there of both the sort of the content structure and then the skills that are deeper. I was working with a school recently, and we talked about this idea. They said when they, when they walked into a classroom, they all had this sense of agreement that when they walk into a classroom and they were thinking about their future they want to see for what learning can look like in their community, they said, yeah, yeah, we know what it looks like when we walk into a classroom. Right? And then they, and I said, oh, really? Well, do you know what it doesn't look like when you walk into a classroom? And they're like, oh yeah, if you walk in and that's not it, we know what that is. And I was like, all right. What is it, right? What? Let's, let's put some words around what it is. You know.
And I think one of the things that came up in that conversation I thought was interesting was this sort of what they were calling the essential nature of struggle. And, it gets back, I'm a big fan of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's work on flow and like the whole sort of the depth of focus and the relationship between deep focus and flow and complexity and challenge.
Right. And one of the things actually that I'm also interested in is this notion of like the, the blend between those things you talked about as those habits, right. And rigor and excellence. Right. Two words that I think we have gotten defined poorly in most schools, right? And so I'm like pro rigor and I am pro excellence and I am not pro rigor and pro excellence in the model that we have seen currently. Right? I think we have to recapture those words. We have to take them back.
So my favorite work from Ron Berger is around that notion of deep quality, beautiful work, instilling craftsmanship inside of what we do. And so I'm just curious how the struggles, this thing I've been playing with recently in my mind, and I'm curious what your thoughts are on its role.
Michael Horn: Yeah, I, so I love the frame, right? And to me, struggle's where the innovation happens and where the light bulb moments occur in people's lives constantly. And obviously that's the jobs to be done concept, but I think it's also well backed in the learning research around whether it's zone of proximal development or, you know, in terms of gaming or in terms of the concept of flow, that you want to be right at that edge, right? Where it's not too hard that you just shut down. It's not too easy that you're like, you know, you're bored outta your gourd, or, you know, it's like right in that sweet spot where it's productive struggle. You feel like you can attain the goals so that your motivation doesn't sap and, and you're working at it and, and you are uninterrupted to do so. and that's the other piece of this.
And so, you know, it's interesting, I was trying to replay myself saying all the things I just said I would have in the curriculum. But what's interesting about that is, I actually don't care if schools themselves are the ones offering all those things. So if you come to me, Tim, and you have already mastered how to read, and, you know, a sense, not the facts, but like the sense of right, the sweep of history and like how, how civics work. Great. That's awesome. Cuz now we're going to do a project where we apply this in this really cool way that's an area of interest. And you're like, actually Michael, what I really want to do is figure out like this thing of fission around the atom and like how it's going to create all this new energy stuff and blah blah. Great. Let's go do that. But another kid may come to us and be like, I can't read. And so I want them to have the, be working hard, right, on their phonics and phonemic awareness and, and fluency and et cetera, to like dig into that so that they can master that.
And then, they can now take this and they can go onto the next challenge, right? OK, now you're reading, what are we going to go learn with this? What are we going to go write with this? Right? Because those things should be integrated together as well. And to me, struggle is, is the exact right frame. Cuz now I'm setting it at each individual. where's the right, you know, struggle and excitement, like you're in it? And I love it when my kids come back and, and they're like, I didn't like today because it was too easy, so tomorrow this is what I'm going to do about it. I love that they have that agency where they have that expectation, right? And sometimes I think it's fine for them to be a little bored and sometimes I think it's fine for them to be like, that was a little too hard.
But I love that most of the time they're just heat seeking for that sweet spot and they feel like they can go get it from school. And I think each child should be able to have that on their journey, which by the way, when you do that, all these things around curiosity, agency, et cetera, that we were listing before, those get built in now. Like, I don't have to sit there being like, Tim, it's really important you're curious and you look up in the encyclopedia lots of things. That ain't going to instill curiosity, right? It's gotta be integrated into the actual experience you're having so that everything you're doing is rewarding those habits that we say are important and we want kids to leave with, because, like, the talking at ain't going to do it, right?
We, kids watch what we do, not what we say, and it's, it's the actions that speak louder than the words. And so that's how we do it. Like if you're struggling and engaged, you're going to get the positive feedback cycle and the endorphins and so forth that come from then successfully completing something, getting feedback, and being able to improve it, on and on and on. That's really cool.
Tim Fish: That's really cool. You know, and it makes me think, one of the things I love about what you're saying and, and your, your great answer to my challenge of let's build a school, was that, well, the magic is in lots and lots of different kinds of schools, right?
That, that's, that's the really, the beauty, right. And that there isn't one size that fits all and that certainly speaks to the jobs to be done research that we've done on, on the parent jobs and many other types of jobs. But also Michael, it speaks to one of the core things I talk to schools about, which is this idea of like, be you, like figure out who you are and then like be obsessed with being the best in the world at that every day.
I think that's, that's my thing. Like I ask school heads all the time, what are you obsessed with? Like what element of what you're trying to do are you're obsessed with. And it, it's, ultimately, it comes down to this idea about what I sort of call the, this sort of relationship between vision and strategy, right?
And the relationship about where, where are you trying to go and then what are you going to have to do, what trade offs you're going to have to make, what choices are going to be there? What are you going to have to do more of and less of to live into that vision for your future?
And I’m curious about your sense of, of both vision and strategy in education, where you've seen it work and where you've seen it go off the rails. Cuz I, I don't believe that the five year strategic plan as we've done them in the past, is the answer to get where we want to go.
Michael Horn: So I totally agree with that. And the big thing I was trying to teach my students at, at, at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where I'm teaching in the fall these days, is, your strategy is not what you write down. It's what you actually do. Like, like and, and what you don't do. Right.
Tim Fish: Yes. I love that.
Michael Horn: Not these words you write down somewhere, you know, that, that's your deliberate strategy, but now what are you actually doing?
That's what I want to know. And I agree, like it's, it's what are you obsessed with and what do you intentionally say we're not going to do or we are going to suck at on purpose because that's not who we are. And you look at, I'll just use a higher ed example cuz Joseph Aoun, president of Northeastern, told me and Jeff this on the Future U podcast, where he said like, we have lots of different schools that are not differentiated. And it's a disaster, I think, for higher ed. Right? And what makes Northeastern so magical, I think, is that like it's the co-op school, right? Like you go there for this in class and then ex, you know, basically externship experience that is alternated in effect, and that they connect with each other. That's what they do.
Like, that's what they're good at. Right? And that means they don't have to be like Harvard. They don't have to be like MIT. I actually wonder how Harvard would answer that question, by the way. What, what, what are they excellent at? Cause as I'm playing this forward, I'm not even sure what they would say. But MIT I know how they would answer that question, I think, right, around applied research. But like being super clear about that helps you to say, OK, this is what we're not going to do and this is what we will lean into.
And so, you know, let's go back to some of the examples we had before. If you're a classical education school, awesome. Like, dig into the classical education. That's what you do. By the way, I think all those habits of success should be integrated into the learning of the classics, but great, like you go deep on that. If you're a Montessori, you're doing the habit stuff, but maybe your, your North Star is the cosmic education stuff. Great. Go deep on that. If you're Waldorf, right, you, it's the integration of nature and rhythm and so forth, right? In the life. I think they would do well to benefit from pulling in the mastery based and all those things as well. But like, you do that.
And so, like, be specialized on that and, and having these choices is awesome because like families look around, they don't have the same beliefs. They don't want the exact same things for their kids. Like they want their kids to find out who they are. They're living in communities with lots of different demands and opportunities and exciting struggling moments themselves, and problems to go solve, and like different schooling philosophies and emphases have different, really positive things to contribute to all of that, that makes it a way more interesting world in which to live. I want that pluralistic vision of schooling and, and learning and pathways.
Tim Fish: And I think for me, getting back to what we were saying, what's most important is that you geek out about something.
Michael Horn: Be passionate.
Tim Fish: Right. I was the moderator or whatever you call it, the partner, of the investing club at McDonogh when I was there. Right. And we'd come and like, we'd all talk about what stocks we'd buy, and I remember saying, I was so scared to pay $40 a share for Google when it had just come on the market and oh, I wish I had at that time, right.
But the whole thing that was, was so interesting is that those, many of those students, they were passionate, right? They were, we would argue about stuff. They were like, all lit up. They were studying everything. None of those students, I've stayed in touch with many of 'em, none of them are in investing or finance or anything, but they're all really passionate in whatever they're in today.
Michael Horn: I love all that, and I want it in the school classes themselves as opposed to the extracurricular. Right.
Tim Fish: Yes, I agree with that. It's gotta be in the core, that's what school is. Right. And I think we often say Rocket Club meets after school, right? And during school, when you and I would walk up and down the hallways, we would be like, no, this is not it. And I think that's an important thing to, to your point, of schools have to know what their It is, right?
They have to know, and it, and it is, we're going to suck at some things on purpose. And I just think that terrifies schools, I mean, it is the one thing that we run away from, this idea that some parent will come tour our school, and they'll leave and get in the car and go, there's no way we're sending our child there. Right? The idea that somebody would say that just, just at our core, freaks us out. And every school, and I think Northeastern's a great example. Every school that has found their thing and honed in and been obsessed with it and done it incredibly well, that's what actually leads to success.
Michael Horn: I 100 percent agree. I mean, I think you lean in on it, right? And you dig in and you find your tribe that matches you, and for those that are not your tribe, what a cool opportunity. Cuz you get to do two things, not taking a family that's going to force you to dilute what you do well. And two, you can be an awesome partner to them to say like, Hey, I hear you. This isn't the right fit for you, but guess what, the right fit is over here. Right? And what a cool opportunity to help someone make progress and not screw up the secret sauce that makes you special. And, and I, I think yes, there's going to be, competition is healthy between schools, but even more so, I think matchmaking is, is more important and we don't spend enough time thinking about that and the fabric or the network of of, of, of different options to, to create really cool opportunities.
Tim Fish: Yeah. Yeah. And, and I think that is exactly it. So it's this, you know, Roger Martin, I'm a big fan of his on strategy, and his whole notion of sort of where are you going to play and how are you going to win, Right. And for me, win is not win. Beat your neighbor, beat the other school. Win is be the best of us that we can possibly be. How are we going to win at being us, right?
Michael Horn: Yeah, and that's the other message of the book, by the way, I think the bumper sticker, right? Which is that we framed schools for kids as this zero sum experience. I win. I get the seat in the precious college, you lose. You don't. Or I, you know, you get the A, I got the C. We're doling out scarcity. And I want us to shift to a positive sum system where the goal is not to, for you to beat me on some narrow yardstick, but instead for you to be the best version of Tim Fish that there is, to be the most unique version of you that has a place to contribute in the world.
And, and I'm not saying like, that means you're going to be like the best underwater basket weaver cuz no one cares about that, right, in the world. What I am saying is like, you're going to find yourself and figure out how you're going to contribute, and holy cow, you're going to lean in on that because as Mr. Rogers told us all like way back when, right? It's you I like, and each of you is different and special in your own special way, and that's what we want to develop.
Tim Fish: That's what we want to develop. Exactly.
Michael, this has been such a gift, such a gift of time. I knew this conversation, I literally had pages of questions and things to talk about and I, I don't know that we got to any of those. And I couldn't be happier with where it ended up. So I just want to say thank you so much.
Any final comments? Anything about what you hope for the future that you might want to speak to?
Michael Horn: So I guess what I would say is first, thank you, because the questions are, are fun. And as most people know, the real art of unlocking progress is the question, getting the question right, not, not necessarily the answer. So thank you. But two, you know, the thing that I've really enjoyed and appreciated, I think, of my time really getting to know the independent school world, is just how much of this is going on, right? In terms of certain schools and certain communities really finding who they are and just running at it. And I think that's a really cool model and I suspect that all of them can be even more intentional and clear about what that looks like and what that means. And to your point, really codify the rigor around curiosity, the rigor around agency, the rigor, and what does that mean to not just talk it, but instill it in a way that is lasting and durable for kids. That's the best gift we can give 'em right now. Cause we know this foundation is important, yes, of knowledge. But this foundation is important of continuing to learn because the world is changing awfully fast on us. And so we want to make sure we're preparing kids to enter what is an increasingly complex and exciting, but in some ways daunting, world.
Tim Fish: I couldn't say it better. Michael, thank you so much. We'll stay in touch and hopefully have you back again at some point to continue this great conversation.