Rethinking Education for the Innovation Era: Insights from Dr. Tony Wagner

• Highlights
• Transcript

• At the recent Pioneer Academic Summit, renowned education expert Dr. Tony Wagner delivered a thought-provoking keynote address challenging conventional wisdom on education and offered a fresh perspective on preparing students for the future. As a senior research fellow at the Learning Policy Institute and former faculty member at Harvard University, Dr. Wagner brought decades of experience to bear on the critical question: How can we reshape education to equip the next generation of learners for success?

  The Knowledge Economy is Dead. Long Live the Innovation Era.

  Dr. Wagner began by asserting that we no longer live in a knowledge economy, but rather an “innovation era.” With artificial intelligence now outperforming the average college graduate on many tasks, he argued that “the world simply no longer cares how much our students know. What the world cares about is what they can do with what they know.” This shift demands a radical rethinking of our educational priorities.

  Five Essential Contradictions in Education

  Drawing on extensive research, including interviews with young innovators and visits to cutting-edge schools, Dr. Wagner identified five key contradictions between traditional schooling and the learning environment needed to foster innovation:

  1. Individual vs. Collaborative Achievement: While schools reward individual performance, innovation requires profound collaboration.
  2. Siloed vs. Interdisciplinary Learning: Academic subjects are often taught in isolation, but real-world problem-solving demands interdisciplinary thinking.
  3. Compliance vs. Initiative: Many classrooms cultivate passivity, whereas innovation thrives on questioning and taking initiative.
  4. Fear of Failure vs. Embracing Mistakes: Grading systems punish errors, but innovation demands risk-taking and learning from failures.
  5. Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Motivation: Traditional education relies heavily on external rewards, while true innovation is driven by intrinsic passion and purpose.

  Cultivating Curiosity, Play, and Purpose

  To bridge these gaps, Dr. Wagner emphasized the importance of nurturing intrinsic motivation through three simple but impactful elements: play, passion and purpose. He encouraged educators and parents to give students space for playful exploration, support them in finding and following their passions, and help them see how their work can make a difference in the world around them.

  Practical Advice for Students and Educators

  Dr. Wagner offered several actionable suggestions for fostering innovation:

  1. Keep a “question journal” to nurture curiosity
  2. Make time for students to pursue their own research interests
  3. Engage in “disciplined play” – structured exploration of personal interests
  4. Focus on developing mastery of skills rather than simply accumulating knowledge
  5. Embrace responsible risk-taking and learn from failures

  A Call to Action

  In closing, Dr. Wagner challenged everyone – students, parents and educators alike – to consider: “What’s the difference in the world we care to make? How do we want to leave the world in some way a little bit better than when we found it?”

  As we navigate the complexities of the innovation era, Dr. Wagner’s insights offer a compelling roadmap for rethinking education. By encouraging curiosity, collaboration and a willingness to take risks, we can help students not just to succeed in the future workforce, but also grow into creative problem-solvers ready to take on the world’s most pressing challenges.

  Pioneer Academics’ new initiative to prepare students for the innovative era

  Pioneer Academics’ Global Problem-Solving Institute (GPSI) aligns perfectly with Dr. Wagner’s call for interdisciplinary learning and collaboration in the innovation era. GPSI offers high school students a virtual lab where they work with peers and university professors to tackle real-world challenges using systems-thinking and design-thinking methods. This unique program develops the exact skills Dr. Wagner emphasized—critical thinking, collaboration, and problem-solving—preparing students to thrive in a rapidly evolving world. 

  To learn more about how GPSI can help you or your student develop these crucial skills, visit the Global Problem-Solving Institute page and take the next step in preparing for the future.

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    Dr. Tony Wagner Senior Research Fellow The Learning Policy Institute

• 00:00:04

  Maya (Pioneer Academics): Hi! Everyone! Welcome to the pioneer Academic summit, where we hope to disseminate important information that seeks to leverage the reputation, rigor, and values of pioneer.

  I am so excited to be here today, and my name is Maya Al Sharif. I’m a 2020 pioneer alum, a recent graduate from the University of Pennsylvania, and a current 1st year at Duke Law. I will be one of your MCs. Along with Ryan, who is the academic engagement manager in the department of Scholar success at Pioneer Academics, and Adam.

  Adam is a 2,019 pioneer alum, and has worked for pioneer in different capacities over the course of the last 3 years, he recently finished his Master’s of engineering at Imperial College, London.

  00:00:47
  Maya (Pioneer Academics): So now that you know who we all are, I would like to introduce the founder and program director of pioneer Academics, Matthew Jaskol, Matthew founded pioneer 12 years ago very much with the idea of pioneer as a truly transformational educational experience, and not just one of those things you would add to a resume.

  He’s a strong proponent of pioneer’s social mission to offer need and cause based scholarships. As the company has therefore developed numerous partnerships with leading nonprofit organizations, many of whom will be here today at the summit.

  Matthew believes that passionate young scholars, if properly guided, can reach remarkable heights through their intellect, imagination, determination, and creativity dedicated to that belief. He drives pioneer to create opportunities for such students.

  00:01:33
  Maya (Pioneer Academics): I would now like to hand the floor over to Matthew, who welcome everyone to the summit by reflecting on the co-curricular space and our goals in bringing together such an esteemed group of leaders along with you.

  Our dedicated, passionate young audience members. Matthew, I will hand it over to you.

  00:01:53
  Matthew Jaskol: Thank you, Maya. Good morning, everyone! Welcome to pioneer academics. 3rd Annual Co-curricular Summit.

  I’m Matthew Jaskol, founder of pioneer academics and it’s inspiring to have so many bright young people, parents and passionate educators here with us today.

  On behalf of the pioneer academics, scholars, and our staff. I’d like to thank those of you who made donations to the Pioneer Academics Opportunity Fund. This year we have been able to provide tuition equivalent scholarships for over 380 students across our institutes, 93% of which were full scholarships.

  Your donations will add to the number of students who can access such opportunities next year. Thank you!

  00:02:43
  Matthew Jaskol: Looking around this room, I see the architects of tomorrow. Okay, let’s be honest. I can’t see any of you, but I have seen that there are more than 4,000 people on the registration list. So I know you are here. This generation of students — your generation. You are remarkable!

  You’re not here because you’re happy with the world. As it is, you’re here because you see problems that need solving questions that need answering and innovations waiting to be born.

  According to a study by Cambridge International, 70% of us students express a strong desire to pursue careers that enable them to make a positive impact on global issues. Your generation faces unprecedented challenges, but you also have unprecedented tools and knowledge.

  You’ve grown up in a world of rapid change, and that is fertile ground for developing adaptable creative thinkers.

  00:03:42
  Matthew Jaskol: Our theme this year is Imaginative, Interdisciplinary, and Impactful. Reshaping education for the next generation of learners. Imaginative, Interdisciplinary, and Impactful. These are not just buzzwords. They’re a call to action for all of us Imaginative, because the challenges of tomorrow will require solutions. We haven’t even thought of. Yet the World Economic Forum’s future of jobs report highlights creativity as one of the top skills needed in the workforce by 2025, alongside analytical thinking and innovation. Interdisciplinary, because real world problems don’t neatly fit into academic silos.

  The National Academy of Sciences and other organizations have published extensive reports showing that interdisciplinary research leads to breakthroughs that would not be possible within a single field. We need thinkers who can connect the dots across different domains.

  Impactful, of course, knowledge for its own sake is valuable, but knowledge applied to make the world better. That’s transformative.

  The educators, mentors and supporters among us here today have both an incredible opportunity and a profound responsibility. It’s imperative that we nurture your enthusiasm, fortify it through rigorous intellectual inquiry, and offer meaningful opportunities for collaboration.

  That’s the job of those roles of us, these people here today, you’ll hear from thought leaders, faculty members, admissions, professionals, and other experts across the educational landscape. They’ll share insights, spark discussions, and challenge us to think differently about learning and its role in shaping our future.

  But this summit isn’t just about listening. It’s about engaging. Let’s face it. A summit is a fancy word for a meeting as such, I encourage all of you, especially the student members of our audience to ask questions, share ideas, and make connections. Your voice matters in this conversation. It’s never mattered more than it does now.

  00:06:11
  Matthew Jaskol: Now I have an exciting announcement to make. Pioneer Academics have launched a groundbreaking new institute. While I can’t share all the details just yet. I can tell you this. It’s our newest transformational learning experience designed to help, designed to equip today’s scholars. That’s you!

  With innovative tools to tackle the world’s toughest problems. If you want to be at the forefront of change. If you are ready to push the boundaries of what’s possible, make sure you join us for the special session later today, and then go to visit the new Institute’s booth at the Program Fair.

  Trust me, you do not want to miss this announcement as we start this day of learning, collaboration, and inspiration. I want to leave you with this thought.

  Education – It’s not a script to memorize, it’s not a path to follow. It’s a toolkit that you’re assembling piece by piece to build a future that doesn’t yet exist – Your future.

  Each one of you has the power to shape tomorrow. So at this summit, engage critically, question boldly and when you leave today, take these new perspectives and tools with you, apply them to the problems that keep you up at night, use them to challenge the status quo in your communities.

  Remember, the most powerful innovations often come from unexpected connections and relentless curiosity. That’s what today is about, not just learning, but seriously considering how to reshape our world.

  00:07:52
  Matthew Jaskol: And now it’s my great pleasure to introduce our keynote speaker, Dr. Tony Wagner. Dr. Wagner is a globally recognized expert in education and currently serves as a senior research fellow at the Learning Policy Institute with over 2 decades of experience at Harvard University, including roles as an expert in residence at the Harvard Innovation lab and founder of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of education. Dr. Wagner brings a wealth of knowledge and insight to our event, but besides his status as an esteemed academic, Dr. Wagner is also a practitioner who has been in the trenches as a high school teacher, K through 8 principal and university professor.

  As the author of 7 books and a contributor to 2 widely viewed education documentaries, Dr. Wagner has been at the forefront of reimagining education for the 21st century and his expertise aligned perfectly with our theme of reshaping education for the next generation of learners.

  Once again, thank you all for being part of the pioneer academics community. We are thrilled to offer a summit experience that will foster your ideas and empower you with connections. And now please join me in giving a warm welcome to Dr. Tony Wagner.

  00:09:16
  Dr. Tony Wagner: Thank you, Matthew. It’s a pleasure to be with all of you this morning or this afternoon, depending on your time zone.

  Let me start with a kind of reflection, when I began my teaching career, it was the twilight of the industrial era, and people were talking about the new knowledge, economy, and how knowledge was going to be the competitive advantage.

  Peter Drucker coined that term knowledge economy, more than 50 years ago and a lot of people still mistakenly believe that we live in a knowledge economy. But we don’t. We no longer live in that era.

  Just to give a quick obvious example, ChatGPT, a year and a half ago. ChatGPT 3.0, we’re now on 4.5, I think. Did the top 10% score,  the top 10% on the universal bar exam. Scored 1,300 out of 1,600 in SATs, scored 5 out of 5 in half a dozen of the all of the AP courses and exams that it took.

  The average college graduate no longer can perform on most tasks as well as can AI.

  So we live in a profoundly different world. The world simply no longer cares how much our students know. What the world cares about is what they can do with what they know which is a completely different and brand new education problem.

  00:10:57
  Dr. Tony Wagner: Now, it’s interesting because some employers like notably Google, saw this coming a long time ago.

  You know, Google started out saying, Okay, how do we hire the smartest people in the world? Well, we go to Ivy League colleges, of course, and we recruit them.

  Well, along came Laszlo Bach, Senior VP. Of people operations at Google, and he decided to do a little research and decided to try to understand what difference their screening techniques were making and he discovered, in fact, that all of the indices they had been using for hiring and promotion were quote useless. His words, not mine.

  He went on to say, the skills you need to succeed in a competitive, conventional, academic environment bear no relationship. The skills you need to succeed in the innovation era.

  So we live in a very, very different world. The new coin of realm today is our skills. Knowledge in itself is inert. It’s what you can do with that knowledge that really matters. I mean, interesting kind of indicator of this is the shift in focus of the educational testing service, the largest nonprofit testing service in the world. They’re the ones who created SATs, APs and all of these other tests that so obsess our high schools, and too often our college admissions processes.

  Well, in fact, ETS is pivoted and quietly but firmly they announced a partnership with the Carnegie Foundation for the advancement of teaching a year and a half ago to design an entirely new generation of tests that assess the skills that matter most.

  And that’s what they’re working on today, and I used to be on the board of a mastery transcript consortium until just recently, when, in fact, that organization, that nonprofit was acquired by ETS. Why? Because NTC had developed a digital portfolio combined with an entirely different kind of high school transcript that assesses core competencies mastery.

  00:13:10
  Dr. Tony Wagner: That’s the new coin of Rome. So I’ve been really interested in the question, how do we prepare young people for the innovation era? Well, 1st of all, to clarify?

  There’s 2 kinds of innovation I discovered one is all about bringing new possibilities to life, whether you’re Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.

  Now, I don’t think you can educate someone to be those kinds of people. In fact, all 3 of them were college dropouts, as you may know. But there’s another kind of innovation that Matthew referred to earlier. That’s at least as important.

  And that is the capacity to identify and solve problems creatively. Creative problem solvers are the ones who really have the competitive advantage in the world today, today, no matter where whether it’s profit, nonprofit and education in social services in high tech doesn’t matter.

  So how do we prepare young people to be creative? Problem solvers? Well, let’s first of all acknowledge that we are born curious, creative, imaginative. That is the human DNA.

  You know. The average 4 and a half or 5 year old asks a hundred questions a day, and I’m regularly reminded of this by my 4 young grandchildren. But then, you know along about the age of 6 or so, something happens.

  We call it school because the longer kids are in school. The fewer questions they ask because there’s no time, the less curious they become as a consequence.

  00:14:47
  Dr. Tony Wagner: So what must we do differently in our education? Well, to really understand that problem. What I did was interview a wide variety of successful young innovators, most of them in their late twenties, early thirties from a wide variety of backgrounds.

  Some were innovators in the social domain, some were social entrepreneurs, some in the arts, some in tech, some were from privilege, some were from poverty. Some were first generation students, other countries. Others had been here for many generations, equal numbers of young men and young women and I wanted to understand what had helped them become the creative problem solvers that they were already acknowledged to be. And so I asked them, of course, about their parenting. I interviewed their parents, but I was most interested in their education and so that led to my first very troubling discovery.

  00:15:49
  Dr. Tony Wagner: You see, some of these young people have gone to what are so called leading universities, specifically Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Carnegie Mellon and they all told me they had become innovative in spite of their schooling, not because of it or reasons that we’ll come to understand.

  So then, I continued, I said, Surely you can help me, you know. Was there something we teachers do that made a difference, and the good news was they could all name one educator at least one who’d made a real difference in their lives and those teachers were from kindergarten to graduate school, and I know that because I interviewed all of them.

  Watch some of them teach and that led to my second troubling discovery. You see, all of those educators were outliers, teaching in ways that were fundamentally different. Then what you find in most schools and most classrooms, be they public or independent, doesn’t matter.

  I also then went to visit those schools that are well known for graduating young innovators. I went to the MIT Media Lab. I went to the Olin College of Engineering. I went to the D school at Stanford. I went to various high schools, new tech high, high tech high. I went to Montessori schools. I went to Regiamelia schools and the net result of all of this research over several years was that I came to understand. There’s 5 essential contradictions between the traditional culture of schooling which we’ve had now for more than a century and the culture of learning and teaching that develops the capacity for creative problem solving.

  00:17:42
  Dr. Tony Wagner: Contradiction number 1.

  Now, schools celebrate reward, and above all, measure, individual achievement. Well, that’s a fine. Of course, there’s a place for that. But the problem is innovation and entrepreneurship. Surprisingly, are team sports. There’s no innovation without profound collaboration.

  Contradiction number 2.

  Matthew alluded to this for all the ways in which we silo academic content knowledge. Well, as Matthew said, innovation is by nature interdisciplinary. There is not a single problem you can identify, let alone solve within the constraints of an individual academic silo

  Contradiction number 3. 

  Is the culture of classrooms, the culture of learning, culture of so many classrooms I walk into is a culture of compliance. It’s a culture of passivity. Sit and get, but the culture of the classrooms that I’ve described earlier was radically different. It was a culture where you expected to question received wisdom.

  You were expected to take initiative to try new things, to ask new questions and, above all, the teacher saw his or her role primarily as that of a performance coach. Coaching to higher levels of skillfulness rather than someone who merely transmitted academic content knowledge

  Now, Contradictions 4 and 5, I think, are the most challenging of all. You see, contradiction 4. It’s all about the ways in which we measure people in schools. He has grades, A through F.

  Well, how do you get a low grade? Well, you can make more mistakes than the people who got a higher grade on the bell curve. Right mistakes are how you fail. Lots of mistakes and you fail.

  00:19:41
  Dr. Tony Wagner: Well, here’s the problem. Innovation demands that you take risks, that you make mistakes and that you fail. I went to IDEO, the most innovative design company in the world out in California.

  The company motto, I learned was fail early, fail often. Other companies talk about failing fast, failing forward, failing cheap. What do they mean? Well, in fact, what they’re really talking about is the essential methodology of innovation which is trial and error or iteration. To put a fancy word on it. Moving from 1.0 to 2.0 to 3.0.

  So the problem we have in school, of course, is that you can’t make mistakes or you’d fail.

  And our grading system creates this kind of artificial ladder that often bears no relation to the reality of who kids are. And the stresses that this puts on kids is just unreal especially today with an increasingly competitive environment.

  00:20:49
  Dr. Tony Wagner: In so many schools you know, as a teacher, the only 3 grades I used for many years were A, B are incomplete. The B was my performance standard for that particular course and I assessed essential competence and progress towards competence or mastery through evidence of a body of work. Initially. It was paper portfolios, then became digital portfolios. I never graded individual papers.

  I made very clear what the performance standard was by showing a wide variety of work that previous classes of students had done. And then, I said, an A is reserved for real human excellence, which is generally very rare.

  The only FI recognized was the failure not to show up, not to try at all. Now, to do that, we had to transform education. Today education is measured by units of time. Carnegie units, credit hours, but who’s to say that someone has reached a level of proficiency in the allotted amount of time in a very real sense, a high school diploma, or even a college diploma today is too often a certificate of attendance.

  00:22:09
  Dr. Tony Wagner: A certificate of seat time served not a certificate of mastery. So that leads me to the 5th and final contradiction.

  See so often our grading system is actually a part of a carrot and stick punishment and reward system that we use to motivate learning. Now, what I discovered was that these young innovators, and then also in these schools that I visited. They weren’t using race in that way, if at all and in fact, they were relying much more on intrinsic motivation to motivate learning, to motivate the best work.

  So, as I mentioned to you, I also interviewed the parents and I discovered a pattern as I went back to try to understand this challenge of intrinsic motivation that we’re actually all born with.

  And what did parents do differently of these young innovators? What did these educators do differently? And I, in fact, did discover a pattern. All three, parents and teachers, I mean all of parents and teachers as really focused on three things. Play, Passion and Purpose.

  00:23:31
  Dr. Tony Wagner: Parents encouraged much more exploratory play, get outside more free range, childhood, less fearful constraints, much less screen time teaches the same created an atmosphere of kind of play and serious play and exploration in their classes made time for students questions the passion evolved out of the pursuit of real interest. The parents understood, as did teachers, that the play is important, because that’s how you discover interests and interests evolve into passions and passions become the key motivation for the development of grit, perseverance, tenacity self-regulation, self-discipline. 

  You don’t practice 10,000 h because there’s someone yelling at you to go practice. There has to be a spark there, but in every case with these young innovators whom I interviewed. Their passions morphed, they evolved into a deeper sense of purpose that was a desire to give back and to make a difference in some way again, as Matthew described. But that instinct was cultivated by parents and teachers who kind of instilled a simple moral lesson and the idea is that we are not here on this earth just for ourselves. We have some real responsibility to give back and to make a difference.

  So let me conclude with a little bit of advice. That sort of may seem obvious from all of this to those of you who are current students and to adults, to teachers, and parents in the audience. 

  Number one – the importance of curiosity. Curiosity is the wellspring of learning, of innovation. It is what leads to passion and purpose and the challenge, of course, is to nurture curiosity. It’s a muscle, so simple piece of advice. No matter who you are, or how old you are. Keep a question journal or a journal of the kind of concerns and interests you have in the world. And every so often make time or make time in your classes for students to pursue their own real questions, as indeed Pioneer Academy does so very well by structuring opportunities for real research around student questions.

  00:26:10
  Dr. Tony Wagner: So then, secondly, understanding the importance of a kind of disciplined play, that’s what so much of the research that I see these pioneer Academy students doing. It’s disciplined play. It’s taking a curious something that you’re curious about it, an interest and pursuing it with a kind of internal discipline, as well as coaching and mentoring and support.

  It is critical. So those are a few things that I think can make a real difference in one’s life. But above and beyond all of that, I think the question we need to all of us ask ourselves whether we’re young or older is. What’s the difference in the world we care to make?

  Well, what? How do we? How do we want to leave the world in some way a little bit better than when we found it.

  Well, thank you for your time, and I’m really looking forward to your questions and comments. Maya, take it away!

  00:27:09
  Maya (Pioneer Academics): Thank you so much, Professor Wagner, that was truly so informative. We have a couple of students who have submitted questions. So I’ll begin with those. But as I’m asking these questions, all of the beautiful students and parents please feel free to send questions. Via the chat box, and I will be monitoring that during the course of our QA. So you mentioned throughout your speech the concept of mastery. One of our scholars has asked, What does mastery look like for you?

  00:27:36
  Dr. Tony Wagner: Yeah, that’s a wonderful question. I certainly didn’t discover in school. It’s one of my earliest kinds of experiences with mastery was going to a camp. Believe it or not, that was modeled similar to scouting where you earned badges or ribbons. They call them right, and you know I was a miserable student. I’ve written a memoir, my most recent book, called Learning by Heart, where I describe this this experience at this camp, and also all of my horrible experiences in school. Fact, I became a teacher because I hated school. That’s a longer story. But here the short idea was, I was out in the woods with an older gentleman who was my advisor, and I was going to earn a badge in axemanship. Now, how do you earn a badge in axe manship. Well, you don’t study the history of an axe. Okay, you don’t study the physics of an axe. You don’t measure the axe blade, weight, you have to show proficiency in a variety of skills. 

  First and foremost, that you know how to sharpen the axe because people get hurt with dull axes, secondly, that you know how to carry it safely, but, above all, that you know how to use the axe in as a tool alright. So I’m out in the woods for this guy, and you know I he tells me to fell this tree, and it hangs up because I didn’t understand yet how to properly site a tree to fell it without hanging up in a tree nearby. So long, long story short, he never criticized me. He didn’t grade me. Oh, you got a C minus for that bad tree over there. No, you know. He just kept coaching me to a clear performance standard that was very well defined for that ribbon and all of the other ribbons.

  Well, that was my first experience with mastery. I could tell you many more stories, but that’s good enough, for now.

  00:29:37
  Maya (Pioneer Academics): I love that answer. One of our other scholars has asked, How do you recommend high school students find their intrinsic motivations and begin asking the questions, to stimulate curiosity.

  00:29:49
  Dr. Tony Wagner: I get asked that a lot. You know I’ve sometimes had parents come, come up to me after a talk and say, but my child has no passions, you know. It really starts with listening to yourself. Listen to that still, small voice within. Curiosity is innate. You don’t have to acquire it, but you do have to feed it. You have to nurture it. You have to listen for it. So you have to listen, for you know what? What during the day kind of strikes you as kind of interesting or something different, something you’d like to learn more about. And then, as I suggested, you know. Keep a simple journal of, you know questions that occur to you throughout the day. Don’t let them go there. Those they can be fleeting, so you got to hang on to them a little bit, even if it’s just 10 min at the end of your day, or what I used to do is I kept a teaching journal and I would write for an hour or 2 every Saturday, pulling up cards that I had made notes on throughout the week about something that puzzled me or troubled me in my teaching, or something I’d screwed up and wondered why, and occasionally, not very often, something I thought I might have done okay, and wondered why how that happened. So at any rate, my point is then being attentive to your curiosity and to your interest, and then making the time to develop it to pursue it. Whether you’re in the context of a classroom, you ask for some independent study time, or on your own time.

  00:31:15
  Maya (Pioneer Academics): That’s very awesome advice.

  One of our students and multiple students actually have asked about, how can you go about trying to change the education system and revealing the potential that there is flexibility within it.

  00:31:29
  Dr. Tony Wagner: That’s incredibly challenging.

  And again, isolation is the enemy of improvement. Isolation is the enemy of innovation.

  I’ve seen changes happen in schools where teachers and students work together for those changes.

  And maybe it’s just a mini-mester in between the 2 semesters, in a school where students have the opportunity and teachers as well, to pursue any topic of interest to them for a couple of weeks or an independent study time at the end of a semester. And I’ve seen this that happen in schools, and how transformative it can be even to have a very modest amount of time where teachers and students can work together on projects that they’re curious about, or that they’re interested in. So I would start there. You know the idea of lobbying for time in your class, individual class, or in your school to pursue an interest, to explore a question.

  But you know, don’t try it alone. That’s too hard.

  00:32:30
  Maya (Pioneer Academics): Couldn’t agree more. I think a lot of our scholars want to know that if they’re trying to explore what they’re interested in, how would you recommend that they balance the fear of failure with the demands of to getting good grades in our tests?

  00:32:45
  Dr. Tony Wagner: What? I am so glad you asked that question.

  Because I think that’s the biggest problem with grades. It creates a sense of risk, aversion.

  Fear – fear of failure absolutely.

  It is the disease that permeates so much of our education system and inhibits real growth, real learning, and real thinking. As I pointed out, innovation demands that you take risks, but not any kind of risk. Let’s distinguish between responsible risks informed by some knowledge, some wisdom, some advice, some mentoring and random risks. Now, obviously, I’m not talking about random risks, but I am talking about a willingness to sort of go out on a limb with a question, a thought, an idea. You know, with humility, obviously. But there is no innovation. I would even say there’s no real deep knowledge, without a willingness to kind of take intellectual risks. So ask yourselves, kind of what risk am I prepared to take.

  00:33:52
  Maya (Pioneer Academics): In line with that. I think a lot of our students and listeners want to know. What do you do to balance the demands of your tight schedule within the existing academic system, with the pursuit of what makes you intellectually curious? And taking these risks, how would you recommend balancing those 2 demands?

  00:34:11
  Dr. Tony Wagner: That’s again very, very challenging. Here’s what I found when I worked in an alternative public high school for at risk, kids who are on the verge of failing out and trying to help them find reasons to learn. And then I worked in a in a very elite private High School, Sidwell friend school in Washington, DC. And here’s what I discovered, the B students back then. A. B. was considered an honorable grade. I don’t know about today. But any rate, the students who were not obsessed with getting straight A’s were consistently more creative, more curious, more interested in the world around them. Why? Because they had deliberately decided they were not going to spend all of their time trying to over prepare. You know, overachieve, and we’re going to make time in their day for their interests no matter whether it was a school club. You know, or school sport, or something out of school, an internship or a mentorship or something like that. In fact, you know what over and over again, what I saw is that the students who were involved say, in an extra-curricular, co-curricular activity. Like, say, school newspaper. All of those students told me they learned far more in that activity than they did in their formal English classes.

  They learned to write because they were constantly having to produce work on a deadline. They learned to collaborate because they didn’t, couldn’t put out a paper or a yearbook without working together very closely. They learned kind of the self-discipline and motivation that that is required to pull off a project like that those are not things you learn in the classroom. So perhaps you need to render under Caesar that which is Caesar’s a quote. But do make time for your interests, your curiosity. Try to find that balance. It’s not easy but obsessing over getting an A in every single class is just not important. Look to be very, very clear. There is no longer a competitive advantage in going to the Ivy’s in the way that it once was.

  As I mentioned. You know, Google today doesn’t even ask for a diploma doesn’t even care whether you went to college. They want to see evidence of skills, evidence of mastery.

  That’s what matters today in the world of adults.

  00:36:40
  Maya (Pioneer Academics): In line with that question. A couple of people want to know whether you think the depth of knowledge is what’s considered mastery, or if you have breadth of knowledge across different domains, that would also be considered mastery.

  00:36:52
  Dr. Tony Wagner: You know I do think breadth and depth have both have their kind of rationales, I think, having some wide breadth of knowledge, like a liberal arts kind of background is invaluable, and, in fact, the evidence suggests that that is often a better kind of preparation for mid and higher level leadership and management positions than can be any kind of deep technical knowledge. But having said that, you also need technical and deep knowledge to make a difference in the world. Let me be clear. Knowledge still matters, but it’s your ability to apply knowledge that matters more, meaning skills. So pay as much attention to the development of your skills for critical thinking, asking good questions, the skill of oral and written communication, listening well, listening with empathy and the skill of collaboration as an essential element of going deep into any kind of learning.

  And then, lastly, knowledge matters, skills matter more. But motivation matters most. The development and nurturing of your own intrinsic motivation is absolutely critical in this world today.

  00:38:12
  Maya (Pioneer Academics): In applying to college. How do you recommend that students and I know you noted that the Ivy League versus other institutions don’t have the same effect that they wanted? How do you recommend that students showcase their mastery of different skills, even if it’s not based on just their grades?

  00:38:29
  Dr. Tony Wagner: Well, honestly, I think every student should have a digital portfolio and they should. It should begin in early grades, and it should be evidence of aggressive mastery over time. Whether it’s an internship or a project, a video, a musical composition.

  So, I would say to students, start collecting some of the work you’re proudest of and there are lots of ways to share it, even just basically using Google docs. But there are lots of ways to share it. As I mentioned to you, the mastery transcript consortium. Now, a part of ETS actually developed, and is a new kind of transcript that that shows evidence of mastery. It’s a 1 page kind, and you can, by the way, go to mastery.org, and see evidence of this. You, you see a very different kind of transcript there, and you click on one item and it takes you straight into the student’s digital portfolio.

  So I would. I would really encourage students to work on their own portfolios, obviously not just including school work, but go out and do internships in the summer, or volunteer work in the community and find, you know, document that work and find opportunities in the college application process to share them.

  More and more colleges today are looking for exactly that kind of evidence. You know, kids who get all fives on Aps frankly, are in great abundance. They’re a dime a dozen, you know, and that’s not gonna be the competitive advantage any longer than it once was.

  00:40:07
  Maya (Pioneer Academics): I think that’s really good advice. I think one thing that would be really helpful, too, is if you could recommend the ways that students can look for new programs, new internships, new opportunities in fields that they haven’t been exposed to, or perhaps skills that they have never tried.

  00:40:24
  Dr. Tony Wagner: Again. That’s an interesting question. I only point to a graduation requirement at High Tech High that I thought was kind of interesting. Two of them that I thought were interesting.

  This is a network of schools out in California public charter schools, but admission is by lottery. It’s not selective, any rate, all students in their 11th grade year are required to have an internship for academic credit and it’s an opportunity to discover a field that you might know very little about, but that you might be interested in. Students told me they learned as much about what they don’t want to do as they what they do want to do with those kinds of internships by the way, they were not for pay.

  So I would encourage students to seek opportunities for internship, be it, or even job shadowing, shadow somebody who’s doing work that you’re kind of curious about. You know, you, Maya. I’m sure you’ve shadowed lawyers and prosecutors, and to understand better what their work is, because that’s work you want to do. And then, secondly, in their senior year, these high tech High students had to do some form of community service in a team and what they did was 2, 3, 4, 5 students would go out and start visiting nonprofits in the area or government agencies, and say, well, what problem do you need solving?

  Well, you know, is there something that you haven’t gotten to yet that that maybe would make a difference. And in fact, there’s a whole new program for high schools that’s based on this concept of talking to companies and finding out what kinds of problems they have and putting students on the job. So in this group that I interviewed, they went to a food pantry. And I said, Yeah, you know, is there anything we can do to be helpful? And the pantry kind of point? The manager pointed around all the cans on the floor, the boxes in the corners, and said, You know half the time we can’t find all the stuff we have, it’d be great to have a set of bookshelves, you know, not bookshelves, but shelves for organizing and categorizing stuff. So that’s what the students did. They went back on the computers, and they designed, you know, a shelving system, and then they built it. I mean, what a wonderful way to give back to a community.

  00:42:41
  Maya (Pioneer Academics): Wow! That’s really awesome to hear. And I think something that’s definitely not emphasized in our current education system.

  What do you advise school teachers and counselors to do, to steer ambitions within students, and take the focus away from grades, to allow them to take those intellectual risks.

  00:42:59
  Dr. Tony Wagner: Well, what I did with these at risk. Students that I mentioned worked, and I’ll describe it because it was really simple. I met with each student once a week very briefly for a conference, or it became every other week over time and I would simply say, I know you hate school, you know. I know you’re hanging out down at the gym, or wherever they happen to be, hanging out in the drama room, wherever.

  But you know. What are you curious about? What are you interested in? What is one thing you would like to learn? One thing that involves some reading and some writing because I was an English teacher and you know I keep asking that question every week, and sometimes they come, they’d say, Well, I you know I want to learn about cars. Well, okay, you know. And then they come back a week later, did you? Did you? What did you learn? You know I was obviously vague, and the student kind of say, well, I don’t know.

  00:43:52
  Dr. Tony Wagner: Anyway, I persisted, and use that example. The student who hung out at the gym and wanted to learn about cars, he finally said to me, you know, I’m thinking of being a mechanic, and I want to understand the difference between a carbureted engine, an engine that has fuel injection. I said, well, that’s a good question. That’s an interesting question. Go research it. I went to the library and helped him find stuff. So he actually did the research, did the reading, and he wrote a paper for me on the difference, and it was a total breakthrough, because he finally found some kind of spark of learning that made a critical difference for him.

  Every kid has that, every kid has that and the job, I think of a caring adult, be it parent, teacher, or counsellor, is to help every child find their spark.

  00:44:46
  Maya (Pioneer Academics): I love that I wish all my teachers felt that way.

  I think one of the really interesting questions that people are asking is in the face of need or monetary constraints. How do you advise that they pursue their intellectual risks, or find ways to easily access those opportunities when they’re not necessarily readily available.

  00:45:07
  Dr. Tony Wagner: Again. I think that’s an important question, and I’m sure there are many people in this audience who might have a better answer than I do. But frankly, I would suggest that instead of thinking about it. A private college with the tuitions being as outrageous as they are, think about a state school or even community college for the 1st couple of years, and honors programs in state schools cost half as much or less and that provides you, then, with some freeing up of resources, you don’t burden yourself with debt which is, I think you know what so undermines student opportunities as they feel they’ve got paid this debt back.

  Even kids who don’t acquire the kind of student loan debt feel they have a debt to their parents because their parents paid. However, many $120,000 a year for this prestigious kind of education, and these parents say, well, I mean the teacher. The students say, well, you know I have to kind of give back and make a good living, so that my parents, time and money hasn’t been wasted. 

  Well, it’s your life, you know, and you don’t have to do kind of that kind of service to your debt and your parents. Generosity that’s fine good for them. But you have to find your own way.

  And then you can’t find it. You know, within the strict constraints of traditional schooling. It was Mark Twain who wants, I think he actually appropriated this quote from Rutgers. But Mark Twain said, Don’t let your studies interfere with your education. Still good advice.

  00:46:54
  Maya (Pioneer Academics): I love that quote.

  One of the things that you mentioned within your speech was that there is a transition between high school and college and the workforce that often doesn’t have these transferable skills based on our existing education system. How would you advise navigating these transitions with creativity and curiosity, and also finding the skills that would be transferable.

  00:47:18
  Dr. Tony Wagner: Well, first of all, I’d recommend all students seriously consider a gap year between high school and college.

  The data and parents frequently fear that if kids get off track they’ll stay off track. Well, the data and the research is overwhelmingly clear, which is that students who take a gap year and have an opportunity to both explore interests and develop skills consistently outperform students who don’t take a gap year. When they go back to college they get higher grades. They’re more motivated. They have a better sense of who they are and what do they want to accomplish.

  So I to me that’s the 1st step. And again, I understand that it’s a challenge to try to find. You know these opportunities frequently which do not pay. So it may be that you kind of split your time. You get some kind of minimum wage job, you know. Some of these fast food places are always hiring right? And then do that half time, and then half time you do some volunteer work or an unpaid internship. No, nothing wrong with that. It’s the way a lot of people made their way in the world.

  00:48:28
  Maya (Pioneer Academics): Thank you. Another question in regards to that is, what would you or what would you say students should do, balancing the demands of like their financial constraints, etc., during that gap year, but also pursuing those skills like, what kind of other activities outside of just the like job, would you recommend they do in that year.

  00:48:49
  Dr. Tony Wagner: Again, I would look for opportunities to do volunteer work and or internships at the very least. Consider some job shadowing you know. Find people in the community or doing work that you think might be interesting or worth learning more about. Ask if you can shadow them for a day or a week and you know it is about kind of seeking adult mentors.

  And in my experience, most adults in the world of work and elsewhere. Whether it’s for profit, nonprofit doesn’t matter, are really genuinely interested in young people and in being helpful in mentoring or coaching. So it’s a matter of making those connections and finding those opportunities.

  You have to take initiative. It’s not going to come to you. It’s not gonna come by just sending out resumes. You guys already probably know that by now you have to go out. You have to literally beat the pavement.

  Start with a listing of the nonprofits in your community. Start there.

  00:49:53
  Maya (Pioneer Academics): That’s really helpful advice, and the community does really benefit from it.

  I know you’ve mentioned this throughout your answers to these questions, but how much do you believe that the Ivy League and private elite institutions matter for successful careers and what do you think distinguishes how you view them from like the normative view that a lot of people are told in their high schools?

  00:50:16
  Dr. Tony Wagner: Well again, that’s an interesting, challenging problem. Let’s be clear.

  The name brand colleges provide you some slight competitive advantage in getting your first job interview. Not the job, the interview. There’s a very important difference. The networks and so on. They help. Yes, but what gets you? A job is evidence of skills, evidence of interests.

  What an employer wants to see is, where and when and how have you taken initiative?

  What kinds of problems have you solved? How have you failed? And how did you respond to failure?

  You know more and more and more employers are saying, I don’t even care about your college transcript, let alone where you went to college. I want to see evidence of skills.

  That’s where again, a gap year can make a difference, and even a gap year between college and going on to employment. 

  I’ll tell him a little story. I obviously, as some people know, got a master’s and doctorate at Harvard but I was a 3 time college dropout and I finally graduated from a small experimental college that nobody’s ever heard of. It’s called Friends World. I think it’s now part of Long Island University, where I had an opportunity to study social problems and to live and learn and study in Mexico for a year. The opportunity that that college provided to pursue real interests, and I had to write a senior dissertation and I had to keep a serious academic journal and show evidence of progress over time, no grades, no formal classes. There were seminars, discussions, field trips but that enabled me to discover those interests that, in fact allowed me to be able to apply to Harvard with the most unconventional transcript anybody can possibly imagine, you know, because I could talk knowledgeably about what I was interested in. I had written a senior thesis on the Implications of the Ecology Crisis in 1971 I published 3 or 4 articles by the time I was 22, so I had no problem kind of moving on in the world from a master’s to a doctorate, and then on to jobs because I had this grounding where I had developed a sense of discipline, play a real intrinsic motivation and intrinsic discipline, and had really things to show for the time I had spent as a student.

  00:52:57
  Maya (Pioneer Academics): And that brings us to our like last question. I’m curious to hear how you established your discipline and what it means for you to find and continue to have the motivation to pursue your passions.

  00:53:11
  Dr. Tony Wagner: My experience in schools, experiences plural,  were profoundly marking to me. That’s what finally motivated me to write my last book, my memoir and in a negative way, you know, I really had many teachers who were indifferent at best, some of them really cruel.

  One of them in particular profound motivation because I vowed that I would want to help create a very different kind of education system. One that where I might thrive, and students like me might thrive. And you know, I pursued that question seriously. You know I read Summerhill, a book about a school in England, an innovative school in England written by as Neil back in the 50’s. I think I read it in my senior year of high school and that kind of pursuit, you know, put me on a path and I’ve always kept a journal began in high school, and always made time to write, which is not just writing per se, but it’s listening to oneself.

  It’s attending to what the Quakers call that still, small voice within you. To me those are the essential disciplines. And then later, as a writer, you know, I’ve now finished book number 8. It’ll be out in about a year called Mastery. The future of learning in schools and the workplace.

  And so that discipline has carried over into my writing. So when I start researching a question, I get really deeply interested in the material and puzzled puzzlement is the beginning, I think, of wisdom so frequently. I’ll do all these interviews. It’d be very interesting. I have all these notes, no clue what to do with them, and I have to live with that ambiguity and that insecurity, knowing that over time, you know, I’m going to begin to figure it out, but only by writing every day I write, when I’m working on a book 3 hours a day every single day. I don’t have to think about it,  It’s not on my calendar, it is my calendar, and then afternoon is playtime. I go outside and go for a hike, go for a kayak, whatever. So to me, that intrinsic discipline becomes a habit and a pattern that you need to start cultivating at a very early age.

  00:55:35
  Maya (Pioneer Academics): Thank you so much. Is there anything else you would like to say to this lovely group of people before I get to send them off?

  00:55:43
  Dr. Tony Wagner: You know, I have to quote literature, being a recovering High School English teacher, and I’m reminded of the opening to Tale of Two Cities by Dickens it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

  I don’t need to remind any of us all the ways in which these are challenging times, both in school and beyond school. But it is also the best of times. As Matthew said, They’re just incredible opportunities today for young people to make a real difference in the world and for adults to make a real difference in the lives of young people.

  So thank you for your time. Thank you for your interest.

  Thank you, above all, for wanting to make a difference in the world.

  00:56:27
  Maya (Pioneer Academics): Professor Wagner. We could not be more grateful for all of your really insightful comments, especially in the face of the changing education times that we’ve seen in the era of technology.

  For all of the beautiful viewers. Please feel free to join us in exploring the impact of co-curricular engagement on student growth at our next panel at 10:30, I look forward to seeing you all there.

  00:56:49
  Dr. Tony Wagner: Thank you, Maya. It’s a pleasure. Bye, everyone.