Schools Are Teaching Kids the Wrong Things — with Ted Dintersmith

23:57And that just ripples on through the system. And that said, I think that nobody wins in this, right? I think girls are more responsible. They're more vigilant about their assignments. They do far better in school. You know, all this angst about diversity and equity in colleges. You know, if you ask a college admissions officer, if you were gender blind in your admissions, what would your entering class look like? Nobody's willing to say, but they tell me 75 % female. So we may go after race or ethnicity or something, but that gender difference is enormous. But I'd also say that boys have different ways to react.

24:35And some just peel out and they are in a world of hurt going forward. But others just say, screw it, right? They go rogue. And they don't take school that seriously. And they sort of dodge the meat grinder of school that erases that creativity and that entrepreneurial initiative. And so you look at girls do way better in school. Girls ought to be three-quarters of our college student bodies. But then you look at the world of entrepreneurship, and I think that's for a lot of reasons. I don't want to oversimplify it, but it is heavily male-dominated. And most of the guys that do really well, and I backed a lot, and you'd be a perfect example, kind of just chucked it in school.

25:14They just said, like, I'm not into this, right? And I've got enough self-confidence to feel like I can come through. But I don't like being told I've got to do something I don't see a point to. and how many of them, you know, that's the irony, right? So many of the people that dropped out of school are the same ones that want more kids to, you know, to take calculus in high school. It's like, wait a minute, like you sort of went rogue. I think that actually proved to your advantage, you know, like why don't we begin to think about what conditions led you to run with your entrepreneurial nature?

25:46How can we foster and develop that in kids? Because, you know, it's there in every kid. It's not a girl or a boy thing. You know, you hang around with five-year-olds. they are like bursting with, you know, curiosity and creativity and they'll do almost anything. They don't mind failing and failing and failing. It's just the more we say, buckle down and do what school tells you to do, the more we drive out of kids certain characteristics and reinforce others. And as I say, that model made all sorts of sense in 1950. And I think we're in very difficult times now. And I think differentially, because of that latency in the development of brains among boys and girls, there's a differential impact that does a lot of damage, I think, in both cases, right?

26:32I think we're losing a lot of great female entrepreneurs because of this. And I think we're losing a lot of boys through the system that they just don't finish. And it's just like, and it's heartbreaking. What's interesting is your view is a little bit different than the public discourse I'm hearing. There's a lot of talk about going back to the basics. Look at Mississippi and Louisiana. Let's return to the basics. And what you're saying is there needs to be an evolution, not a devolution, not a return to the basics, but we need to kind of unlock the beast. And I say the beast in a positive way.

27:04We need to unlock the creative animal. How do you do that? How do you, especially at scale, recognize that not everyone is going to to go to Stanford and get a master's in engineering. Two-thirds of our kids are not going to end up with traditional liberal arts college degrees. There's a path for the kid going to college, right? You go to college, you get a degree, you interview with one of the 50 firms that come to the Career Services Center, and you think, oh, my roommate wants to be an investment banker, so I'll be an investment banker. I don't like it. I go to business. I had a path. And what you're suggesting is that, especially on entrepreneurship, there is an alternative path for the rogue.

27:47And what's interesting, what you said about, you know, the rebel has a role in this world. I think I read somewhere that the Baker scholars, the top performing academic scholars at Harvard, actually 20, 30 years on, weren't doing as well as everyone else. I guess the question is, how do you institutionalize and scale this ability to unlock the creative beast in our educational institutions? You know, and that study was verified. And I have to say, as a venture guy for years, I love to back people who had gone rogue on school. You know, I avoid it. You're like, somebody said to me, Exeter, Princeton, Harvard Business School, I'd say, like, go get a job at McKinsey.

28:31You know, because, again, it's not that they're not talented. It's not that they're not hardworking. They are. But going through that process and jumping through the hoops put in front of you isn't conducive to a mindset that says, I'm going to go rogue and change the world. So how do you do it? I'd say three things. One is you don't have to change. I mean, I spent 15 years hoping that schools would be very innovative and it's proven to be difficult. But I say, you don't have to change everything. But what if we said each kid coming through school by the end of their school year would create a capstone project that shows them at their best?

29:06You know, something that they viewed that would be an important problem to solve or opportunity to create, where they would be learning important skills in the process, trying it, failing, trying it, failing, trying it, failing. But by May, damn it all, they have something they could display. And the school does an entire display. And we show that in our in my first film, Most Like Could It Succeed, where these kids are bursting with pride and the adults are coming and saying, like, wow, you did that. Like, if we did that, we'd start to at least nourish the entrepreneurial aspect of all of our kids.

29:38Some will do really well, some won't, but I think they would all benefit from that. That would be the first point. The second thing is to really rethink accountability. And we talked about that a few minutes ago. When we obsess about these very narrow measures of math and reading scores, and I see this over and over and over again, it pushes aside innovation. You know, like we would like our kid to do X, but that may take some hours away from drilling on, you know, irrational numbers or something. And then we have a film out. So I've been busy, but I've got the new book out, Aftermath. But I also have a film out called Multiple Choice that shows, and it's fascinating.

30:14I mean, I do these films. They're not cheap to do, but I visited this school, a public school in Winchester, Virginia. I just love what they were doing. I just, when I left there, I said, we're going to make a film about this because mainstream public school, brilliantly they create something they call the Innovation Center. Career-based learning across a whole range of skills, you know, from plumbing to carpentry to welding to cybersecurity to healthcare to AI to digital media. But the key and the reason I made the film is this is important for all kids to do, not those kids. And so you have this center that almost serves like a microcosm of national service.

30:54So you might be really good at 10 things and I might be bad at all those 10 things, but maybe I'm good at one thing you're not good at. And we're side by side. And suddenly we both develop some appreciation for the ways we're talented, the quite distinctive ways we're talented. And they build those skills, by the way, based on what the local economy needs. So suddenly they're developing a pipeline of kids that come into their community. Some go away to college because all kids have to do it. They're not penalized for welding instead of AP chemistry. So the college kids actually benefit, But the ones that go directly to the workforce, which in their case is half, have explored careers, developed skills, and they're off to a running start.

31:34And I think we've sort of convinced ourselves, and it's been a colossal mistake, that there's either the college academic path or the career workforce path. Not only are they different, but one is way better than the other. You know, and you look at the college signing days and the pennants and the, you know, I mean, I was a big supporter of No Brock and Michelle Obama well, but I used to just almost break my heart when it would be college signing day. You know, you can do it. Every kid, you know, and a lot of kids just, they're not academically inclined or they find their passion in different ways.

32:12And it's like, if we respected all these paths and if kids, I give this, I use this video on my talks. We didn't do it in the video production quality is terrible, but a guy named Woody Flowers, I don't know if you met Woody, but he co-founded First Robotics with Dean Kamen. And he taught at MIT for 45 years and became convinced, I have to say this slowly because people don't believe me, Woody became convinced that MIT graduates had learned very little science and engineering. And to make his point, graduation day, caps and gowns, world's most prestigious engineering institution in the world, we're proud graduates, they go up to all these grads and they hand them a light bulb, wire, and battery and say, can you light up the light bulb?

32:51And these kids are like, of course, like, wait a minute, why are you... bothering me with something so pedestrian on this big day. And then they can't light it for light bulb. And the point I make is, had those kids along the way shatter an electrician or done a summer internship with an electrician, they'd be way better MIT engineering students. And other kids might go on to be electricians that do incredibly important work to hold their community together. And everybody else would at least know when the power goes out at their house. Here's what we do about it, right? And so that sense of career over there, get on a bus, you're stigmatized.

33:28This is a consolation prize. College, yes, bingo, you did it. I think that's been very destructive to the way our nation moves ahead. And I think, quite frankly, incredibly destructive to the Democratic Party because that Democratic Party has been for years, of course, you need a college degree to be a first-class citizen. And of course, if it doesn't work out, taxpayers should cover the cost. And I'm not against college. I'm just in favor of exposing kids during those precious free years of high school to gain experience across a range of career areas, to understand what it means to learn things that are tied to real world impact and to make better choices as 18 year olds.

34:08It sounds like you're a big proponent of vocational programming. I would say, well, first, I love calling it innovation. You know, vocational is such a stigma. I think it's important for all kids. And I think because that's where the learning gets real. Now, in my case, you know, it's a personal thing for me. So I grew up, my dad dropped out of high school to fight in World War II, discharged with a nervous breakdown, never went back to high school, kept us afloat as a carpenter, was always kind of looked down on. It's like, you know, no high school degree, no college degree. But, you know, like you still go back to that neighborhood.

34:45He did all the work for the local church convent. He built family rooms and porches for friends. He was a great citizen, hardworking dad, you know, doing an honorable profession. When I was in high school back then, we still had to take shop. Here's what saved me. Like, had my shop grade counted, my class rate would have just dropped through the floor. I did not get any of those genes from my dad. I am terrible at that. But being around him, I really appreciated the fact that the way he was really talented had nothing to do with school, had nothing to do with standardized tests, but it was impressive.

35:20It wasn't something I was good at, but it certainly wasn't something I should look down on. And having seen other people around him who did, I feel like we're just being grossly unfair to people whose talents lie more in a hands-on profession. And so, yes, I'm a fan of it. And it is not to say school should be all about career, but I feel like if a kid spends 18 years, 12 years of school or 14 years, 16, whatever, how many years of school? If they leave and they don't have a sense of purpose and a hireable skill, I think we've sort of let them down. That's a lot of years to make sure they feel some sense of purpose in their life and at least have that safety net of knowing I'm really good at something that could help me move forward with a career I find fulfilling.

36:10We'll be right back.

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37:16We're back with more from Ted Dinter-Smith. Ever since I've been in education, we've been predicting the end of higher education or a massive disruption. And every year, the industrial higher education complex gets stronger. Any thoughts about is there an upcoming disruption? And if there is, is it from AI or something else? Well, you know, you go back to, and I have a high opinion of Clayton Christensen, but what was it, 20 years ago when he predicted the demise of higher ed and it's rolling? Yeah, he was wrong. And, you know, I think a few things. I would love to see higher ed be more innovative.

37:58You know, I, you know, and I go back. I mean, I got a lot out of college. I went to a public college in Virginia. But when I got my senior year, the tuition for the year was 250 bucks. You know, like my summer job, we had similar, we both worked at grocery stores for summer jobs. But, you know, my summer job, I made enough to cover tuition, room, and board for my last year of college. Yeah. And so that ratio is really unfavorable now. You can no longer, even for a public college, a kid can't in a summer job unless they're an AI consultant or something. But if you just work a standard summer job, you're going to still be way underwater.

38:34water, I think you're going to see a lot of the, you know, we tend to just say higher ed as though it's one universal basket of schools offering similar experiences for their kids. You know, I'm a big fan. I don't know if you've read any of Paul Tufts books, but Paul is a very thoughtful guy and wrote a book called The Inequality Machine. And so where you teach or the Ivy League schools, their budget per student year to take care of and educate those students is six digits. You know, So, you know, they charge 80K and they spend 100, 110, 120K. There are a lot of colleges where that budget per student year is like 2 ,500 bucks.

39:11And I think those are very vulnerable today. And what I'd love to see for the colleges that really do a great job for their kids, I'd love to see them expand the student body size. You know, like why is selectivity such an important factor other than it flows into the U.S. News and World Report? But wouldn't it be great if these colleges said over the next five years, we're going to accept 10x the number of students? I think that would be interesting. They certainly could hire great faculty for it, and they've got the money. And I do like, when I first started working in Boston, you know, to be really direct, Northeastern was sort of like a third-tier college.

39:49And now it's unbelievably hard to get into. And I just love what they're doing, right? You know, five years instead of four, two to two and a half years out in the real world in co-ops where you're often making money. And kids leave with a real sense of what they want to do and a great job path. But they also have a really strong liberal arts program. So it's not, again, career only, but it's sort of like that connecting, learning to the real world. And so I think there are real opportunities there. But I do feel like we send such a bad message. You walk around college campuses, right? And they're like, kids will complain because they have to share a bathroom with three other kids.

40:27I mean, when I went to college, you know, like there were an entire hallway. I went to one bathroom, you know, like, and it wasn't plush and it wasn't cushy. And I think we send a message to these kids, you've made it. You know, a school I visited and wrote about is in Washington State, Evergreen College. I mean, it's bare bones. You know, their campus is not. UCLA in the 80s. Yeah, yeah. The whole place should have been condemned. It was, but it was$400 a quarter. I'll take it. As long as there was beer. I mean, we were fine. And Evergreen does a great job with its kids, and they produced a number of outstanding, you know, graduates, and it's very affordable.

41:03And also, it's very easy to get into. And so I think that we need to make some changes. But I think, I do think, you know, and I think we're mostly in agreement on this. I mean, if you can go to college, not go into enormous debt, you know, actually have a sense of what you want to get out of it, you know, like, those are great years, you know, right? If you don't like academics or, you know, it's just not for you or you have a real passion for something else, I think we need to celebrate that path as well. I do think that this whole mantra of you've got to go to college no matter what it takes.

41:40I go to some of these colleges, some more mid and low tier colleges where, you know, a certain time of year, every lawn is plastered with, you know, sign up for FAFSA, you know, renew your student loans. and so many people are just dealing with student loan debt they're never gonna get out of. And because we told them, this is your ticket to success and it can be, but it is not a guaranteed ticket to success, that's for sure. So let's talk about kind of magic wand test. Two or three policies you could implement that you think would change higher education or just education for the better. What would you like to see happen?

42:18Yeah, I would say first, I would say put weight in terms of course requirements and graduation on real things you create and invent and stick with it until you've done something you're proud of, unless on multiple choice exams. So I would start looking for authentic portfolios of progress, of impact, and make that at least part of what we expect kids to do through school. That would be the first thing. The second thing is, I think it's grossly irresponsible today to forbid kids from using AI. You know, like, I don't think it should be in all classes, but I think if a kid spends 12 years in, you know, in school, 14, whatever, however many years they spend, a kid that comes out of school really good at using AI can create or pursue almost any career they want.

43:07And a kid that can't, I think is going to be hurting. So we can do that, right? And we don't have to teach them. We just have to let them use it. But I'll give you an example. I give a guest lecture every year to a very well-known public college, about 100 juniors and seniors. And two months ago, I asked them, how many of you consider yourself today to be really good at AI, to be able to use AI to make yourself and those around you more productive? 100. Nobody. I said, no, no, no, wait. I'm not here. Like, this isn't a witch hunt. I actually hope everybody holds your hand up. So let's do this again.

43:41Because by the way, this is going to be really important. still no one. I mean, you know, like my head's exploding. And I just explained to them, you can spend your next four months here or 16 months here or, you know, 28 months here trying to eke out a 0.1 or 0.2 increase in your GPA or allocate time. So you get really good at using AI, whether it has the blessing of your prof or not. And the difference is going to be enormous because if you do the first one, no one's going to care. And if you get good at using AI, write your own ticket. I got so many thank you. I mean, how many college kids write thank you notes?

44:15No one, right? I got this whole bundle of thank you notes from these kids who, so much to my amazement said, I never really thought of that. You know, like, okay, so that'd be my second one. And then the third is, I think, investing a lot more money in our teaching force. You know, a good friend of mine is a guy named Posse Saulberg. He wrote Finnish lessons. He architected all the changes in Finland. And interestingly, you asked Posse, what made all the progress in Finland possible? It was a budget crisis. You know, the oil revenue tanked, they were under the gun, and they had to make a choice.

44:49You know, we could do everything sort of half-assed, or we could put our dollars on data, or we could put our dollars on teacher training. We can either have more data tracking how our kids are failing on goals that don't make sense, or we could put it into making our teachers amazing. They shut down a bunch of the colleges of education. There's a joke in Finland, you know, three people go into the bar, a doctor, a lawyer, and a teacher. And the bartender asks the doctor, why are you a doctor? And he said, I didn't get into the school of education. And I asked the lawyer, why are you a lawyer?

45:19They turned me down, so I'm a lawyer. But you know, it's like our teachers, we just wail on them, right? I mean, it's just heartbreaking. And it ripples down. When I ask teachers in schools today, what drew you to the profession? It is often my parent did, often the mother. And then I say to them, would you encourage your child to teach? And they say, nope, nope. And I'm living that. I've got a 27-year-old daughter who does teach. And I mean, like when I track how her hours are and how little she's paid, I'm not going to, I hope she doesn't watch this podcast because I'm thrilled. But I'm like, wow, it's a good thing she's incredibly frugal because no one could live on that salary.

46:03It's hard to argue against paying our teachers more. But we live in an economy that's supply and demand in a labor force. And is there a teacher shortage? Because at the end of the day, at some point, if they're not paid well enough, people aren't going to go into the profession and they're going to have to raise the compensation.

46:22So in sum, as long as people are willing to teach for low salaries, you're going to keep your salaries low. I ask this generally as a question, not as a comment. What are the employment and participation trends in teachers across public schools? It's grim. I mean, the pipeline's shriveled up. There are a lot of openings. So there is, I think anybody in that world would say there's an acute shortage of teachers. And it's just, we've made it very unattractive. You know, if you're not on this page on October 19th, we'll wrap your knuckles. You know, I'm a supporter of and I've visited several times.

46:59There's this National Teachers Hall of Fame in the middle of nowhere in Kansas, Emporia, Kansas. And when I went all over the country, my wife and I are driving on a highway and we see this sign, National Teachers Hall of Fame. I didn't even know it existed. We just said, like, ah, turned the car, drove off, went and visited, met the woman who ran it. And I've been back several times, and they've been, you know, unbelievably great in every respect. The museum itself, like, compared to, you know, Canton, Ohio, or Cooperstown, New York, I mean, this is dinky, right? It's one little room, but at least it's there.

47:33But, Scott, you go up on a hill. There's a knoll and a little chapter, and there are these obelisks. And the obelisks have the name of all the educators who've given their lives to protect and defend their kids from a shooter. And they're raising money. I just gave them the grant to finish it, but they have to put a whole new obelisk. And, you know, it's 200 teachers. And the point I say is we trust them with the lives of our kids, but we don't trust them with their lesson plans. And how, you know, like if nobody likes to be scripted every minute of the day. Nobody likes to fear that if they say it's not quite the right thing, that some crazy parent will dox them on social media.

48:16You know, I don't know. You know, it's like this is the foundation of our country, right? Strong education is the key to a successful democracy. And if we get it right, things fall in place. And if we botch it up, things fall apart. And I feel like we're 40 years into the botch-up zone with this. because the world's racing ahead and we stay stuck in time, which is why I wrote the book Aftermath. I think it just is perfect, right? It says thousands of hours on math that no adult uses. At the same time, never getting to the math ideas that define our lives in ways that tell kids, yeah, we don't have an answer to your question of when will I ever use it.

48:56There really is no point in this other than it gives us a nice way to rank and sort you, but do it anyway. And by the way, your goal is to out-compete the people next to you. and then we say, and wow, they're disillusioned and they leave school with no sense of purpose and most of them feel wailed on. It's not okay, right? And I wish it weren't like that. I mean, I'd be traveling and having fun. I mean, I did fine in venture, but I just feel like once you know that, you just say, darn, sorry about that. Those who know have to speak out. And that's what I try to do because these kids, I mean, you look at these eight, 10-year-old kids, they kind of look up at you and you just know they're trusting the adults to make good decisions for them.

49:45And I don't think we are. So the last question, after learning everything you've learned about education, how does it impact your role as a father and what you try to teach your kids? I mean, a lot of education or the pretext or the context or the pillars for them succeeding in school happen at home. What advice would you have for parents in terms of what happens at home, helping set them up for success in the classroom? Well, I generally don't talk much about my own kids, but I've got a 29-year-old son and a 27-year-old daughter. In some ways, a microcosm of what we talked about. You know, our daughter loved school, loved the ideas, did a lot of other things besides study, but it just was easy for her.

50:31And so, So you look at her and you say, you know, she did incredibly well through the school process. Our son, from about grade three or four, just hated it. And mostly he hated having, being told what to do. You know, there was just something about this is what you have to do that he just didn't respond to. And so he, you know, he spent a few weeks in college and just pulled the ripcord and, you know, sort of bootstrapped his way up to creating and directing music. videos. And, you know, he's done things for the Grammys, things for the college football. I mean, like he's bootstrapped his way up, but he's done well.

51:09Yeah, he's done fine. But I think, and my advice to parents is this, kids will tell you what works for them. Kids have their interest, understand that. But I know with my son, if I had waged war and beat the bejesers out of him to get a slightly higher GPA, our relationship would be broken. He probably would have at best turned one B minus into a B or something. And I think he would have gotten a drumbeat of somehow people didn't admire him. You know, people didn't respect him. So I say to parents, I mean, I think it's easy, right? Do you care more about the decal on the back of your car? Or do you care more about helping your kid find their lane and supporting the heck out of them?

51:51And most parents will tell me, of course, all I want is for my kid to be happy. A lot of parents act in the exact opposite way. They just like, you know, I reconnected with my high school. And so I went to a public high school in Northern Virginia. I gave a very controversial graduation speech. It was so controversial. I was booed by the audience. And when I went to school the next day, they called the police to arrest me. So that wasn't maybe my best moment in high school. But they approached me. I was giving a talk at a conference. and a bunch of people from that high school came up to me. They had seen my work, my films, and read some of my books, and they brought me a framed picture of me from the yearbook.

52:31That was kind of cool. But I've gone back there, and interestingly, one of the teachers had the kids watch, you know, my first film, Most Like to Succeed, and read some of my book, What School Could Be. And then each of these kids gave talks to their classmates, to their teachers, to parents, and to the principal. 36 kids, not one said, school is a source of joy for me. I mean, many were in tears. And at the end, the principal said, like, we, I just have to ask, how do we let this happen? And I say some things. So you have a sense of what I might say to that group. I try not to like totally diss it, but I sort of say like, we need to have schools of creativity and joy, not schools of drills and worksheets.

53:13And this mother and dad come up with their daughter. And, you know, I try to be very specific. I said to the daughter, your talk was really interesting. You made these two points. I thought they were great. Boom. The mother says to me, we really just are interested in this. Like, we know our daughter is not college material for this class of college. But what kind of AP course coverage and scores do you think she needs to get into this tier with the daughter right there? And I say, like, wait, your daughter just gave this great talk. Like, you need to be excited. Like, don't let your view about your daughter be defined by some anonymous 28-year-old college admissions officer who's probably there because their family gives a lot of money or they were an athlete.

53:59Like, help this kid find their lane. She's great. And it's, again, all I want is for my kid to be happy. And then what happens, right? And I just say, believe that. If that's your goal, and I'll put it into a metaphor that you and I can understand, and I hope people listening to this can. I'm a venture guy through and through. I am a venture guy. Venture guys don't tell anybody what to do. As a venture guy, if we do our job and I tried to do my job and I think I did it well, I try to find out what your dream is and support the hell out of you, right? What do you want to accomplish and how can I help?

54:36And if I don't think you want to accomplish something that I care about or is important, I don't work with you. But that ripples through my view about education. Adults should figure out what that kid really feels they're put on this planet to do, which won't happen at age five, may not happen at age 10. But if we work with those kids, by the time they leave school, they ought to have a clear sense of what problems they want to solve, what's important to them, what drives them. And then I think just support the heck out of them on that mission. And don't sweat if they want to be an electrician versus being, you know, whatever.

55:10at an Ivy League college. I mean, like, help them find out their dreams and purpose and support them. That's what I would say to parents. Because kids don't want to live the life you tell them to live. They want to live the life they want to create. And I think our role as adults, whether we're parents or teachers or friends or relatives, is to just help those kids blossom. I, yeah, it's impossible not to nod when you say you just want your kids to be happy. but in any, well, I won't project this on other parents. And honest, when I really am honest in my own self-assessment, getting my oldest son or him getting into an elite school was hugely important to me deep down.

55:58And of course I want him to be happy, but I've talked myself into believing. I think if we're honest as parents, It's sort of the first real time a neutral third party or a fairly neutral third party not only assesses the kid, but assesses you as a parent. And we need to break out of that. We need to have more qualitative assessments of what it means to be a successful parent. And that doesn't necessarily mean getting your kid into an elite school. But I'm hugely guilty. I know exactly what you're saying. I know a lot about education. I think I'd like to, I know I love my kids. and I want them to be happy.

56:40But I still think the majority of us, when push comes to shove, really hope our kids get into an elite school and are disappointed if they don't. I think that's fair to say. I mean, my film, Most Likely to Succeed, it came out in 2015, and a group in Palo Alto just was on me like a dog on a pork chop to do a community screening, Gunn High School, because that year they had five student suicides. And these were normal kids, right? But these were kids that were told that, of course, you've got to get into Stanford and I'd be crushed if you go to. Oh, this was in the Bay Area. I remember reading about this.

57:15So I just would say, you know, you always have to ask at what price, right? You know, I mean, I had a daughter who loved the ideas of school. You know, like I didn't say anything other than go with it. Right. And that unfolded in a way that worked for her. But I mean, I tell you, you know, if a kid is telling you that I don't enjoy it or I don't like it or I don't see the point in it or my interests are somewhere different, you know, I don't know. You're like, caution. That's all I'd say. Caution. Ted Dintersmith is an education advocate, author, and filmmaker focused on how schools can better prepare students for the future of work.

57:54His new book, Aftermath, The Life-Changing Math That Schools Won't Teach You, is out now. Ted, very much appreciate your work and enjoy the conversation. Yeah, this was great. I appreciate it. And thanks for all you're doing. It's really fantastic. This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Laura Genere. Cami Reek is our social producer. Bianca Rosario Ramirez is our video editor. And Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G pod from Prop G Media.