The Big Shift

How useless detail ruins a positive learning experience

I was initially impressed with my son's high school statistics class. It taught him how to produce graphs and charts that represent data. He did very practical projects, such as polling people on their tastes in music and correlating it to their age or geographic location. He was learning how to do stuff that's done routinely in nearly every profession.

It was the first time that I felt that a math class--to the degree you can even call statistics math--was taught at the appropriate level of detail for the non-mathematician. Math classes tend to start out with basic mathmatical concepts but then take the students into absurd levels of detail that no one but a mathmetician or scientist will ever encounter in his or her career, spawning that all too apt Facebook meme: "another day and I didn't use algebra."

Then I started noticing the exact same thing happening to his statistics class. It moved away from broad, useful concepts into intricate methodologies befitting a statistician. It went from providing something entirely practical to providing something entirely impractical. The class got really boring.

 

Why is it that the education system insists on providing such a scourge of detail and thus killing off any interest in the subject matter? Here are two bad but true reasons:

1. We have a system based on grades. In order for everyone not to get an A, the material must get harder and harder. God forbid everyone gets an A. Thou shall sort out students.

2. The school system deems a general subject matter important, and thus thinks that it has to spend an entire year on it, rather than moving on to something else or allowing certain kids to go deeper if they wish. The education gods have decreed that all subjects must last a certain length in time and become absurdly arcane.

How is it that no one asks: do we really need to teach this subject at this level of detail right now? Does that make sense?

Yet we've been teaching the same subjects in the same way for more than a 100 years. We are indeed a product of our school system.

 

School Reform Gone Awry: The Problem isn’t Corporate Greed, it’s Corporate Data

Fellow critics of high stakes standardized tests (and the education systems built around them) love to lay the blame on corporate greed for the current education insanity. One version of the corporate greed narrative imagines that big corporations make money off the education status quo. Another version posits that corporations seek to produce mindless robots for their profit-making schemes. They imagine Bill Gates thinking: “how do we advance standardized tests so I can make more money.”

While it’s true that there are vested business interests in the education status quo and in privatizing public schools, that’s not what’s driving the business community’s obsession with education. It’s an overreliance on the wrong kind of data. We measure the wrong things because they are easier to measure and we don’t know better, and then do the wrong things because we are measuring them.

Business leaders fear that America is slipping compared with other countries on the world stage. They imagine that lower test scores compared to China and other countries must mean that China is doing a better job of educating its kids for the workforce. They home in on a piece of data—standardized test scores—and assume, wrongly, that they are an accurate indication of educational achievement.

Chinese-born education scholar Yong Zhao points out that the Chinese are moving in the exact opposite direction. Obsessed with the fact that they cannot produce a Steve Jobs, they are trying to re-fashion the education system with a lesser emphasis on standardization and a greater emphasis on creativity and critical thinking.

Zhao also points out that countries that produce the highest standardized test scores produce the lowest entrepreneurship rates. Our fixation on crude metrics is taking us in the exact wrong direction.

Corporate leaders, generally speaking, are not evil, they are clueless.

An ADHD Doc’s Unintentional Indictment of School

I was recently reading a piece in ADDitude magazine by Yale Professor Thomas Brown expounding on his rather conventional views of ADHD as a developmental disorder (yawn) when I was stopped dead in my tracks. Here’s what he said:

Often the most problematic period is during junior high, high school, and the first few years of college. That is the time when the individual faces the widest range of challenging activities without opportunity to escape from the ones in which they have little interest or ability. After that period, some with ADHD are fortunate enough to find a job and a life situation in which they can build on their strengths and work around their cognitive weaknesses.

In other words, career and life offer opportunities to build on strengths and work around weaknesses, but school insists a child downplay strengths and concentrate on weaknesses. Work allows for and even demands people who are great at certain things but fall short at others, but school demands people who are competent at a wide range of activities. And here I thought school was supposed to be preparing kids for life! Silly me.  

Given that school is much less tolerant of ADHD than the workplace, perhaps the “disorder” does not reside with the ADHD child but resides with the school. Perhaps a new diagnosis of school is in order: Institutional Maladaptive Disorder. Perhaps the school needs the medication, not the child.   

New (School) Year’s Resolutions for Square Peg Parents

School is about to start, a nerve-racking time for square peg children (those who don’t easily fit into the school system) and their square peg parents (those who are willing to buck the system and advocate for their children’s long-term well-being).

If you, like me, have “square peg” children who do not easily fit into the round peg school system, then you just might find these resolutions of interest.

If you, like me, believe that schools need to change to accommodate alternative learning styles and to emphasize alternative skills, such as creativity and critical thinking, then these resolutions just might speak to you.

Five New (School) Year’s Resolutions:

       (1) I will not get angry at my kids for their performance in school or allow my family life to be dictated by school

Commentary: As the famous Pink Floyd song tells it, school is just “another brick in the wall.” Yes, it’s an important brick. But more important than school is providing a supportive family atmosphere that gives our kids the time and space necessary to identify their passions and become their best selves. Not every kid is on the same growth trajectory--thank goodness!--and parents need to allow for these differences even if schools don’t. Family, more than school, is the foundation upon which all other bricks are laid.

  

      (2) I will not give my children the impression that their future success relies entirely on their grades

Commentary: Square peg kids must know that they have more than one bite at the apple. A grade is a teacher’s assessment of a kid’s ability to regurgitate information, not the penultimate commentary of a child’s self-worth. Many, many “poor students” become highly successful adults.  A kid not ready for their college of choice at age 17 may be ready in two years. The world is far more forgiving of late bloomers than school. Let’s help our kids know that.

(3)  I will approach meetings at the school with the principal, guidance counselor and teacher with a sense of proportion and humor, and not feel guilty because my kids don’t perfectly conform

Commentary: A meeting with school officials can be very stressful for square peg parents because they know the purpose of the meeting is for the school to do everything they can to get their children with the program, and that the meeting will force the parents to walk a fine line between allowing children to grow at their own rate and placating the school. School officials mean well. They genuinely (but wrongly) believe that your child’s ability to conform to the system is hugely important to their future success. But they also want to make it as easy as possible on themselves. The classroom is set up for average kids not outliers. Your goals for your children and the school’s goals may not perfectly align. School officials are not your boss. You have agency. Listen to their advice but take it with a grain of salt.  

      (4) I will help my kids identify their passions and become better at what they care most about.

Commentary: Schools are set up to get every child to code, not (unfortunately) to help your child develop a love of learning, identify a sense of purpose and to become passionate. We parents have a critical role to play in guiding them.

       (5) I will work to transform the educational experience for my children and other children, for my country and the world

Commentary: Let’s channel our passion for our own children to help improve learning for all children.

 

An Ode to the Status Quo in Education

I've always been fascinated by the fierce loyalty some people have to the current school model. You'd think that it had been around for millennium and codified in the Bible, rather than a century and fashioned by mere mortals. Any time you suggest that it's time to rethink education you hear from the status quo chorus 101 reasons why what we have now works fine. I've collected some of these rationales and turned them into this ode (yes, I know, it does not technically qualify as an ode).

There are great teachers who teach great classes. It is good. Kids need to learn how to function in the system. It is good. The school is well respected. It is good. Some kids are critical thinkers and creative. It is good. Many kids are happy. It is good. Most kids don’t need medication to get by. It is good. Kids work with a tutor on their weaknesses. It is good. Early bloomers excel. It is good. Kids learn with others the same age. It is good. There are certain things we should all memorize. It is good.  Every subject we teach has value. It is good. We can measure what students learn. It is good. Some aptitudes are higher value than others. It is good. Grades motivate some students to study harder. It is good. Children don't know what they're interested in. It is good. Colleges want us to do it this way. It is good. Parents want us to do it this way. It is good. My daughter got into Princeton.  It is good. Some teachers don’t know another way. It is good. Doing it another way may not work. It is good. Changing the system would be very difficult. It is good.  I am content with my role in the system. It is good.  

How not to teach someone to be a baseball fan (Seth Godin)

This is a powerful short excerpt from Seth Godin's Stop Stealing Dreams (free downlaod), a manifesto on transforming the education system. 

Teach the history of baseball, beginning with Abner Doubleday and the impact of cricket and imperialism. Have a test.

Starting with the Negro leagues and the early barnstorming teams, assign students to memorize facts and figures about each player. Have a test.

Rank the class on who did well on the first two tests, and allow these students to memorize even more statistics about baseball players. Make sure to give equal time to players in Japan and the Dominican Republic. Send the students whodidn’t do as well to spend time with a lesser teacher, but assign them similar work, just over a longer time frame. Have a test.

Sometime in the future, do a field trip and go to a baseball game. Make sure no one has a good time.If there’s time, let kids throw a baseball around during recess.

Obviously, there are plenty of kids (and adults) who know far more about baseball than anyone could imagine knowing. And none of them learned it this way.

The industrialized, scalable, testable solution is almost never the best way to generate exceptional learning.

Can everyone really be creative?

“My starting point is that everyone has huge creative capacities as a natural result of being a human being, The challenge is to develop them.”

--Sir Ken Robinson, Author and Creativity Guru

At a recent staff party, a young staffer—call her Alisa--challenged me on my views on education and creativity. Alisa was dubious that schools could scale up creativity among the masses of students.  “I don’t believe that the vast majority of people are capable of creativity,” she argued. “Most people need a basic education just so they can get by. Given my background (born in Russia), I’m suspicious of all utopian claims.”

It was a fair challenge. After all, while there are numerous examples of instilling cultures of creativity in particular schools, it’s never been done in an entire American school system. How do we know that Alisa is wrong that such a shift is unattainable?

Let’s take a look at the evidence:

Children are creative. Several studies show that vast majorities of children start off creative and gradually become less creative as they get older. Ken Robinson, among others, suggests that the rigid, one-size-fits-all education system routinely kills creativity. Skeptics like Alisa might argue, however, that the loss of creativity is a natural if regrettable by-product of the brain’s maturing control functions. Perhaps. But how much of that childhood creativity must be lost? Longitudinal studies show that learning environments that promote imaginative play are associated with enhanced creativity later in life. In an interview with Barbara Walters, the founders of Google cite their creativity-inducing Montessori education as a major factor in their success. Evidence clearly suggests that we can preserve some creativity.

 

Some schools are creative. Numerous alternative schools have successfully inculcated creativity. San Diego-based High Tech High, for example, utilizes a project-based learning approach that seeks to turn its diverse student body into “savvy, creative, quick-thinking adults and professionals in a modern world.” The school's students, many of whom are economically disadvantaged, not only produce highly creative projects way beyond what you'd see from students at typical schools, but virtually all get into college.

Again, Alisa might argue that while High Tech High may be a model of excellence, it relies on a charismatic leader at the helm, hand-picked teachers predisposed to such an environment and more motivated parents, all necessary conditions for success. There’s no reason to believe, she might argue, that such schools can be brought to scale. But even if not every school can attain the level of excellence of a High Tech High, I don't see why we can't develop a school model that is far better than the current system at bringing out creativity. Finland, for example, has created a school system that places a much higher premium on creativity than school systems in other industrialized nations. There's no reason that it can't be done here too.

Some societies are creative. According to the book "Start-up Nation," Israel, for a combination of cultural and structural reasons, leads the world in start-ups on a per capita basis. It has more companies listed on NASDAQ than all European countries combined and more global venture capital entering the country per person than any other country. Its Middle Eastern neighbors, by contrast, have stifled the creativity of their populations. The UN-commissioned Arab Human Development Report in 2002 asserted that Arab societies are being held back by a lack of political freedom, subjugation of women and “an isolation from the world of ideas that stifles creativity.” If nothing else, freedom is a necessary condition of creativity, and societies, history shows, can be made more free.

 

Yet even among democratic societies there are major differences in creative output. Education scholar Yong Zhao points to the link between societies with rigid education systems that rely heavily on standardization, and lack of entrepreneurship. “Correlational analyses show a statistically significant negative relationship between test scores in math, reading, and sciences and aspects of entrepreneurship,” he said. This suggests that more rigid social and educational systems allow less room for creative pursuits and produce less creative kids and adults.

Alisa might counter that if Americans are already more creative than the citizens of the vast majority of countries, why mess with success? Be that as it may, we are not creative enough to assure prosperity in the 21^st century. With the growth in international competition and the automation of tasks once performed by humans, our remaining competitive advantage is our ability to separate ourselves though innovation. We will sink or swim on our ability to become more creative.

While Ken Robinson may be right that everyone possesses the ability to be creative, it’s safe to say that not everyone is capable of being creative in equal measure any more than everyone is capable of doing math or playing the violin at the same level. There’s no reason, however, for creativity to remain as rare of a human trait as webbed feet. That we are not all capable of being Picasso or Einstein or Steve Jobs does not mean the average person cannot become far more creative than she is today and that we cannot increase society’s total creative output.  

Alisa is justifiably doubtful about building a creativity utopia, but such realism should not deter us from aspiring to a better dystopia. We can become much more creative.

Book Recommendation: Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World by Tony Wagner

Dina Needs to Take Her Creativity Meds

Dina, age 11, is not doing well in school. She has been getting C’s and D’s in her divergent thinking classes and, despite all of her hard work, received a disappointing C+ in science.  Her project on plant life showed, according to Mr. Riley, “little original thinking.” Mr. Riley said, “It’s meticulous, but hundreds of kids have done something similar.” Dina is losing her confidence and feels inferior to the majority of kids who are much more creative.

Dina attends the Simon Academy for Creativity which, like nearly every other school in the country, focuses on creativity and divergent thinking. Despite being superb at math, reading and memorizing factoids, Dina is forced to attend a traditional creativity school. The one alternative school in the district that focuses on competency in math, science, reading and writing is too far from Dina’s home and costs a hefty $18,000 per year.

Dina has always felt out of place at school. While the other kids are bouncing off the walls, Dina sits still at a desk (a special accomodation), waiting for instructions from the teacher. Going all the way back to first grade, Dina’s teachers expressed concern about her “lethargy.”

“All she seems to want to do is sit down and read, while many of the other kids are running around the class, learning by doing,” observed Mrs. Weller. “Dina also has a strong need to receive instruction and is not sufficiently self-directed.”

Now that Dina’s in middle school, the school suggests that Dina take a battery of psychological tests to determine if she has a learning disability.

After the testing, the school psychologist, Dr. Schmidt, called a meeting with Dina’s parents for 3 PM, showing up late as usual. “The good news is that Dina has a wonderful working memory, which is undoubtedly an asset. But the tests also indicate that Dina is a classic case of Creativity Deficit Disorder or CDD. Have you seen the new movie on Jackie Robinson?” Dr Schmidt interrupted himself. “Oh, yes, back to Dina. The excessive control functioning in her brain often makes Dina unavailable for learning and is holding her back academically.”

“Among the many questions Dina was asked on the test was how many uses she could think of a hard-boiled egg and a spoon. Dina could only think of 14, which was significantly below the average of 21, putting her at the 35th percentile in Creativity Quotient (CQ). These numbers suggest Dina is an at risk child,” he stated. “The test also revealed a glitch in her conceptual understanding of ideas. While Dina scored in the 96th percentile in short-term memory, she scored much lower in critical thinking. Because school is so much more focused on critical thinking than memorization, this is going to hurt Dina’s performance on tests.”

“What can we do about it?” Dina’s parents asked. “Well, fortunately, there’s a new medication out called Freeal, which relaxes the prefrontal brain systems, and allows for more creativity and less self-editing. While we can’t mandate that she take it, I can say from experience that it will make her a much better student. I think it’s important that Dina catch up with her peers, lest she develop an inferiority complex. Also, these learning difficulties, unaddressed, will, as she goes into the world of work, make it hard for Dina to start her own company and innovate.”

“Dina’s pediatrician prescribed similar meds once before and Dina does not like the way she feels on them,” her mother said. “It makes her feel out of control.”

Dr Schmidt assured her that Freeal has fewer side effects than previous medications. “Teachers are seeing immediate results. Normally quiet kids are now calling out. Several of the CDD kids are finally able to come up with original ideas and are doing much better in school.”  

Dina’s parents sat down together to discuss Dina’s predicament. “I can’t stand that the school is so one-size-fits-all,” her mom says in frustration. “This world still needs line managers, and I can’t imagine anyone better cut out for that work than Dina.” Her dad counters that “ultimately Dina has to adapt to the existing system. We all do. She needs to go to creativity college if she is going to start her own company someday. Let’s ask her to try the Freeal.” 

 

How the 'Pursuit of Happiness' can save our economy

This piece also appears on Nikhil Goyal's blog in Psychology Today 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”

--The Declaration of Independence

A few months ago, I met a high school senior who had recently been accepted to Princeton. “I really wanted to go to a small liberal arts school where I could focus on creative writing in an intimate environment, but my parents said I should go to the best school that I get into,” she related to me. She went on to say that her parents were also pressuring her to consider a more lucrative profession. What ever happened, I wondered, to the right to pursue happiness?

America’s founders believed that God instilled in every individual a sense of purpose, and it was the right of each person to discover and live out that purpose.  For them, happiness was the deep sense of satisfaction growing out of living a life of passion and meaning. So strongly did they believe this that they enshrined the pursuit of happiness into the American creed, deeming it one of three rights worth mentioning in the Declaration of Independence.

The right to pursue happiness has always been an odd bird, but somehow still central to America’s sense of self. The other two rights cited in the Declaration of Independence—Life and Liberty—establish our freedom from those who would harm us. With these two rights there is a corresponding legal obligation not to interfere with an individual’s freedom. But with the right to pursue happiness, there’s no corresponding legal obligation. No one goes to jail for failing to make another happy. The right does, however, imply a duty to create the conditions that best enable the pursuit of happiness. It’s a demand of our culture not of our legal system.

At the time of the nation’s founding, freshly liberated from British rule, Americans fully embraced the right to pursue happiness. They were fiercely independent of established authority, masters of their own destiny. One-hundred years into the American experiment—with the onset of the industrial era—Americans summarily abandoned the right to pursue happiness in exchange for unparalleled affluence. And another one hundred years later, with the industrial era on life support and a less hierarchical and more dynamic socioeconomic order on the ascendency, we have yet to fully reclaim it.  

As the industrial era set in, assured of unprecedented prosperity, the doyens of industry went to great lengths to snuff out the right to pursue happiness. The education system quickly followed suit. America’s emerging economic model required the creation of a massive and docile workforce engaged in monotonous and menial work. Henry Ford’s assembly-line reduced the once independently-minded American worker into a mere component part of a giant machine.  While at first not every worker acceded to these conditions, eventually, as other industries embraced scientific management practices, workers had little choice but to comply. The new culture of compliance not only affected factory workers but, in due course, shaped the self-image of all but the most entrepreneurially-inclined. It was hard to argue with the results: the standard of living of the average American increased by a factor of fifty in the succeeding decades.

Not long after, compulsory education, designed to move the child of the farmer from the fields to the factory, became the mirror image of the factory, complete with ringing bells and shift changes at regular intervals. The American education system did not enable the pursuit of happiness—far from it —nor did it advance critical thinking or independent thought. Kids were provided the skills, with a special emphasis on reading, writing and arithmetic, necessary to be compliant workers in the industrial economy. Despite sweeping economic change in the past three decades, the vast majority of schools still adhere to the factory model.

More than a century after Ford introduced the Model T, the majority of industrial jobs are long gone. Those that remain are vulnerable to more advanced machinery and a growing semi-skilled workforce in Asia. Even many of the information-age jobs are at risk to lower paid tech workers in places like India.

Notwithstanding this big shift, America's core institutions—family, school and work—are stuck in the old industrial mindset, unable to see and adjust to the new economic reality. These institutions are predisposed to moving people along, like a factory conveyor belt, into fulfilling the perceived needs of declining industries. Fearful of change, they conspire to set our sights low. Too many workplaces, counter to their own interests, still place a premium on employing the unimaginative but dependable worker; nearly all schools educate students to be that unimaginative but dependable worker; and most parents dutifully oblige, preparing their children to take their place in this decaying social order. Our core institutions continue to insist that young people trade their potential for happiness for the promise of wealth, status and stability, which, tragically, will make them both less happy and less wealthy.

When Americans finally become unstuck, they will find a whole new universe of opportunity waiting. The very forces that are wiping out the old economy and the old work are giving life to a new economy and new work. The technology that destroyed jobs creates the possibility of mass private enterprise. There’s greater opportunity than ever before in human history to innovate and connect with new markets. In the industrial age, the potential for entrepreneurship was scarce, requiring large amounts of capital or super-human initiative; today it's abundant, requiring nothing more than a laptop, a creative eye and an adventurous spirit.

In this new era, raising and educating our kids to obtain basic skills and follow a once defined path to success went from being a good bet to a bad bet. Raising and educating them to bring out their creativity, chase their dreams, and dare to be different is both less risky and potentially more rewarding. Far from being an obstacle to productivity as it was during the industrial era, the pursuit of happiness is key to thriving in the emerging connection economy. Our economic fortunes will likely grow in direct proportion to the number of people who throw off their industrial-era shackles, figure out what they were meant to do, and bring their talents to the marketplace.

We gave up the right to pursue happiness in the 20th century and desperately need to get it back in the 21st.

Devaluing Individual Differences is the New Bigotry

Jeremy, now 18, has always been a bit different. He was a dyslexic child who didn’t always click with his teachers and classmates. Jeremy was frequently bullied in school. He consumes fantasy literature and movies, and has a flair for creative writing. He’s not very interested in school. A couple of his English teachers have noticed his writing abilities, but still gave him low grades in their classes. Because of his lackluster grades and SAT scores, Jeremy was not accepted into the creative writing programs at his liberal arts colleges of choice, even though the admissions officers were quite impressed with his highly imaginitive writing samples.

We typically think of bigotry as prejudice against a group, such as African Americans, gays, women, or Jews. In each case, the group has experienced a pattern of mistreatment by large segments of society or the government. In labeling this pattern of mistreatment as bigotry, we highlight the need to support and protect the victims and to censure the behavior of the perpetrators.  We include the victim group in our understanding of diversity.

But why do we limit our understanding of bigotry to groups? Aren’t individuals who deviate from the norm, who learn differently, think differently, and act differently, also mistreated by large segments of society? Isn’t mistreating and bullying a "quirky" individual such as Jeremy every bit as insidious as mistreating a member of a group? Doesn’t the victim suffer just as much and need the same level of protection? It’s time that we recognize cruelty against individuals who are different as a form of bigotry. Indeed, with astounding progress in gay rights in the past decade, overcoming bigotry toward individuals may well be the next big social project.

All forms of bigotry are both bad for the victim and bad for society. The victim bears the brunt of the hatred, but the larger society deprives itself of the victim’s full contribution. Slavery in the American South, for example, was first and foremost a crime against the slaves, but it also severely hampered the South’s economy. In providing itself slave labor, the South denied itself consumers with purchasing power. Northern states, by contrast, boasted a more expensive labor force that could afford to purchase goods produced by the burgeoning industrial economy. The North flourished while the South languished. Racism turned out to be an economic as well as a moral scourge.

The same principle applies to gender equality. When Bill Gates spoke at a Saudi university, a Saudi man asked Gates if Saudi Arabia will ever achieve its goal in becoming a world leader in information technology.  Gates responded that “well, if you’re not fully utilizing half of the talent in the country, you’re not going to get too close to the top ten.” Societies and institutions that exhibit gender inequality are poorer and less innovative than those that include women. By the same token, a business dominated by an old boy’s network is handicapped by its failure to use the entirety of its human resources. Women employees are the primary victims, but the company pays a price in profits for its sexism.  

With the onset of the civil rights era and the feminist movement, America began to come to terms with its legacy of racism and sexism. It passed new laws and classified victim groups as protected classes. It was no longer permissible to discriminate against minorities in employment or socially acceptable to hurl racial epithets. Human resources departments began diversifying the workforce, which meant including people of various protected classes. Diversity itself became a value. While America still has a ways to go in overcoming its legacy of racism and sexism, at the very least it has a robust legal and social framework in place enabling progress.

There is no such framework protecting individuals who are different. As with the victims of other forms of bigotry, the Jeremys of the world are the primary victims, but in mistreating them, in underestimating their value, in shutting them out of the discussion, society deprives itself of their talents. We need people who are different, who bring a fresh approach and an alternative point of view. In being different, they think differently, and bring incredible value to our society and economy.

There's an ugly streak in society, however, that wants to purge such diversity from its ranks and wants everyone to be the same. And just as bigotry against groups can be embedded in the fabric of society, so too can bias against individuals with differences. The very structure of formal education, inasmuch as it upholds a single definition of intelligence and talent, devalues their attributes and potential contribution. The talents of those who deviate from the norm are often invisible to those around them.

Cruelty to individuals, like other forms of bigotry, is a cultural pathology that stifles the contributions of its victims, and suppresses human creativity and the growth of knowledge. It hurts not only the victim, but society at large. The purpose of the diversity ideal—the antidote to bigotry—is not just to protect the individual but to advance society. It calls for using everyone's talents. Up until now, we have mostly limited the definition of diversity to including protected groups. Top learning expert Mel Levine notes, however, that “the growth of our society and the progress of the world are dependent on our commitment to fostering in our children, and among ourselves, the coexistence and mutual respect of these many different kinds of minds.”

In making the case that mistreating and denying people who are different is a form of bigotry, and that our concept of diversity should include people with individual differences, I’m not arguing for the creation of a new protected class under the law or a new form of political correctness. I’m simply trying to raise our collective consciousness of kids like Jeremy, who have so much to offer the world but are precluded from fully offering it. They are the victims of systemic discrimination. We all pay the price.

Book recommendation: The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies by Scott Page