42. Education Through a Serendipity Vehicle, with David Perell

David Perell is a bright, curious mind, dancing around important concepts with a global tribe. We hope that a lot of our 21st-century students will turn out just like him. His weekly podcast offers interviews with some of the most interesting people in the world. His blog is the voice of our society’s pioneers, laboring to come to terms with the impact of technology on our ideas. And his writing course - Write of Passage, shows us a new way to share our thoughts. Teachers and students fuse into a two-way learning network online.

David joins us to saunter through the education landscape as we consider how we consume information, take risks, design childhood, stunt “genius,” and can cultivate serendipity as the vehicle to a rich life.  

Join us to explore the diverse possibilities unfolding in education, and the ways that unexpected discoveries result from an innovation mindset.

Quotes:

7:54 “We need to define what we mean by ‘education’ because it no longer needs to be this one-way transfer of information; it can now be collaborative and dynamic in a way that was never possible before.” 

20:18 “‘Genius’ is hitting targets that nobody can see. Rather than trying to incentivize crazy thinking and ideas that have a lower chance of success, but a huge outcome if they do succeed… we are trying to cut off all the risk in society... to make sure that nobody really suffers.”

28:00 “A lot of good parenting is letting things that might be difficult in the short-term, but good in the long-term - letting those things happen.” 

30:25 “The problem with the college system isn’t that it’s ‘the college system.’ It’s that it’s the ONLY system that a lot of people feel like they can go through in order to be successful.”

38:10 “My issue with the school system is that there is only one way to do things in terms of how to be successful; its the lack of diversity in the number of paths you can take. That’s not sustainable.”

49:45 “We live lives that are far more interesting than we think they are; if we can recognize how interesting our lives are through a conversation and then build processes to write, we can spend less time actually writing and more time living an interesting life. And by sharing our best ideas, we can become a magnet for serendipity and people, ideas, and opportunities.”

Here are some resources mentioned in our discussion:

Monday Musings https://www.perell.com/join

North Star Podcast, Neil DeGrasse Tyson - https://www.perell.com/podcast/neil-degrasse-tyson

North Star Podcast, Seth Godin - https://www.perell.com/seth

North Star Podcast, Mason Hartman https://www.perell.com/podcast/mason-hartman

The Write of Passage https://www.writeofpassage.school/

Why Can't School Be Fun https://www.perell.com/blog/why-cant-school-be-fun

Tweetstorm on Netflix https://www.perell.com/tweetstorms/netflix

What The Hell Is Going On? https://www.perell.com/blog/what-the-hell-is-going-on

Timeless Learning book https://www.amazon.com/Timeless-Learning-Imagination-Observation-Zero-Based/dp/1119461693

Airbnb Experiences https://www.airbn