Esther Wojcicki: Godmother of Silicon Valley, legendary teacher, and mother of a super-family

Here's something remarkable and not in a good way. Disengaged employees cost US companies almost $1.9 trillion a year. That's a lot of zeros. Why? Because when teams lack the right skills, productivity declines, turnover increases and strategies stagnate. But it doesn't have to be that way. At Project Management Institute, home of the PMP and globally recognized certifications, your people can learn to collaborate, deliver on time and actually get things the cost of not upskilling way higher than the investment. Project Management Institute. Find the answers@pmi.org. I'm Guy Kawasaki and this is remarkable people. This episode's guest is Esther Wozciki, educator, author and mom. She currently teaches journalism and English at Palo Alto High School. In fact, she was Northern California Teacher of the Year in 1990 and California Teacher of the Year in 2002. The name of her book is how to Raise Successful People. She is well qualified to write this book because she has three successful daughters. Susan is the CEO of YouTube. Janet is an anthropologist and assistant professor of pediatrics. Anne is the co founder of 23andMe. In this episode we discuss her approach to education and raising children. This includes her formula for success called tric. TRIC stands for trust, respect, independence, collaboration and kindness. Among her students have been Jeremy Lin, the former NBA basketball player and Steve Jobs daughter. I'm Guy Kawasaki and this is remarkable people. With no further ado, here is Esther Wotzicki. What if you were born a boy in your family? When your brother came, it was. He's now the center of the universe and all that. So where would we be today?

It would be very different. I probably would have been spoiled a lot and I would have been forced to study the Torah because that's what boys do. The main goal is to be a rabbi. That's like the number one thing that everybody wants their boys to be or at least somehow connected in the religion. But I think my life would have been really different if I would have been a boy. I would have been over pampered.

So because you were a girl, you had to overcome adversity not just in your family, but forever really.

Right. Culture, yes, society was.

And so is there an optimal level of adversity? Too little is not enough. Too much is crushing.

I think there is an optimal level. You need some adversity in order to be able to learn to function on your own. But you don't want to be treated like you're second class person. You don't want to be treated like you're not as important as the other children in the family, or not as important in society as other people are. And I was treated like that, which is why I fought to such a degree. And then even at Berkeley, the freshman class is gigantic. My classes had 800 people in them and I was struggling because I came from a school where it was not one of the top schools. So there's a lot that I didn't know. So this adversity, you know, the fact that I was on a scholarship and I was way behind and I didn't know quite what to do first I was majoring in zoology. They're like, what? Why are you doing that? And I switched to physiology. They're like, oh, well, it's somewhat relevant. But the competition was so fierce, everybody wanted to get to medical school. So then I thought, well, I can barely make it through Berkeley, let alone medical school. So then I switched again to political science. That was so easy by comparison. But my parents were like, what are you doing? They thought I'd lost every marble I ever had. But, you know, I was determined. I wanted to get out of poverty and I wanted to stop being treated like a second class citizen.

So adversity was good, Adversity was good.

In that case, it was really good. But you can have competition that also helps in some way. You're competing with. Maybe it's not clear who you're competing with. You can be competing with an ancestor or competing with the reputation of your family, or in some sense you're driven because you want to be as good as or better than something in your family. I think if you don't have any adversity, no competitive spirit, if there's nothing driving you and you're given everything, then you just sit there and do nothing. You have no goals.

This creates this problem for the third and fourth generation American.

I think it does create the problem for the third and fourth generation.

So as I was reading your book, I thought, oh my God, I'm doing everything wrong. And I explained this to my wife last night and she goes, well, it's a little late. Our kids are out of college already, so what's a parent to do? In particular your daughters? So their kids are not growing up with adversity, right?

No, they're not growing up with adversity, but we don't give them a lot. I didn't come up with this plan myself, but my daughters came up with this idea. They get an allowance, a small allowance like everybody else, and they don't get a lot of material goods. And they feel in some sense like they have to achieve. They're competing with the reputation of their family and they all want to learn. We're blessed because they all are really.

Curious, how would you define a successful child today?

I think it's one that feels happy and supported in achieving their goal, whatever it is. And so I have some grandchildren who are totally into gaming, I mean, crazy gaming. And one of the things that my daughter did is like, if you're going to be such a gamer, then I'm going to want you to build a computer because you need a really good computer to do all these games. So this kid is building a computer from scratch. And I think that he, I can tell you, knows a lot more about computers than I do. So I think you have to present them with some challenge. They can't have everything they want. You don't want to give them a fancy car on their 16th birthday. They have to be hungry because I think hungry somehow equates with creativity because you have to figure out how to get what it is that you're hungry for. And that's why when you give them too much, I think you're. It's the end, really. They're never going to do anything.

Well, this is a duh ism. But you obviously didn't just define a successful child as one who gets into an Ivy League school.

I don't think a successful child is one that gets into an Ivy League school. I think a successful child is one that follows their dreams. And if you look at Malcolm Gladwell's book, chapter three of his book, he talks about what happens when the kids who are really struggling get into a really top tier school and how they graduate feeling bad about themselves and they feel like they're the worst ones in the class. You go through life thinking, oh my God, I'm not very good. The number one thing you want your kid to feel at the end of college is empowered. And if they're going to a school where they feel like they're the lowest one in the class, they're not going to be empowered. So I don't recommend the Ivy's at all. Unless for some reason they want to go and it's their idea. If I just think about Susan, my daughter, I remember when she told me she wanted to go to Harvard, we were shocked.

Why?

Because like, Harvard, why would you want to go to Harvard? We both went to Berkeley. That's good enough. It's great. And actually we couldn't believe it. And she was stubborn. She said, well, I want to go to Harvard. I was like, okay, okay. I said, we're going to have to eat potatoes for four years. But I was kind of shocked. But that was her idea, and she managed to make it in without a 4.0, by the way. I was really impressed that she did it.

How would you now define a successful parent?

I think a successful parent is one that feels, again, good about themselves and the way that they're interacting with their child, collaboration with that child. So one thing that defines a really successful parent is during the teenage years, that child still talks to you and tells you about what's going on in their life, whether it's good or bad. Because if you lose communication, you've lost everything.

If I were having this conversation with Amy Chua, it would be quite different, right?

I think it is quite different. You know, I had a debate with her in Mexico. I don't know if you saw that.

I read that, yes.

And her philosophy? Well, you know, I want to say that she did this with the best intentions, so I don't want to blame her for any bad intentions. She was trying to do the best for her kids. And her theory is, I've been alive longer, I know best. I'm going to tell you what to do because I don't want you to make the mistakes that I made. And so she was very controlling. And if you ask her children today how their childhood was, it's actually online. It's not a secret. They will say they had a very difficult childhood, and it's because they couldn't even sleep over at a friend's house. They had to practice piano for hours per day. They had to do what their mom considered the most important. And I think that that resulted in very unhappy kids.

What do you think the biggest mistake parents are making right now?

Number one big mistake is the helicopter parenting. So you can call it snowplow parenting or helicopter parenting.

Lawnmower.

Lawnmower parenting. I don't know what you call it, but what it's doing, it's preparing the road for the child as opposed to the child for the road. So you are clearing the way. Whenever they have a problem, you clear the way to make sure they don't have a problem. So when they go out in the world as adults, they expect the road to be totally perfect and cleared. And when it's not, they fall apart, they get depressed, they get anxious. We have a whole generation of very anxious people, and they need to believe in themselves and they need to accept life the way it is. And Move forward and try to change things and not call mom and say, oh, my God, I have a fire in the kitchen.

You don't raise a finger for your parent, your kids to get into Stanford also.

Are you kidding? Of course not. If they can't get in on their own, how do you think they're going to feel about themselves? I'm more worried about their self image, the way they feel about themselves, than I am about anything else. And so if they don't belong at Stanford, they don't belong there. And I have a granddaughter right now who's applying to Stanford, and she's on pins and needles because we haven't done anything to help her. And there's no way that they would know she's related because her last name's different.

Nothing. You've done nothing.

Nothing. The only thing we've done is she wanted help with her college essays. Okay, so somebody in the family helped her with her college essays, and we edited them. We wanted to make sure that they were. That made sense. But aside from that, nothing else. She's rejoicing right now because she just got into the University of Texas in Austin, and that's a pretty awesome school, actually. And she also got into the University of Wisconsin. So I was like, hey, you don't need to worry about anything. They're already in.

It's nothing but upside. Yes, yes, yes. What do you think is stressing kids the most right now?

I think the parental anxiety stresses kids a lot, and the parents don't have to talk about it. Kids feel it. Just like when you go into a room, you can sense tension without somebody saying it. Kids, they sense that you're stressed about their future, that they might not be doing this right or that right. And so what they need to believe is that no matter what they decide to do, go to college, not go to college. Maybe they want to be a carpenter. Who knows? We don't even have enough plumbers. We don't have enough electricians. If they want to do something, whatever they want to do, they should be able to do.

And what if somebody listening to this says, well, it's fine for Esther to say that one daughter's running 23andMe one daughter is running U2, and one daughter's a surgeon or whatever she is. Okay, but, like, none of them are plumbers.

When they graduated from high school, I had no idea what they were going to be, and I never tried to dictate. To this day, I have no idea what the grade point average was in college. I don't know, most of the courses that they took in college. I know that Susan, who graduated from Harvard, majored in French and English, history and litigation. And when she graduated, my question was, hey, so now what are you going to do with that?

Okay.

And Janet majored in international relations. Ann is the only one that was more practical. Molecular biophysics. I was like, what are you going to do with that? Anyway.

In the book, I'm referring to a part where you say that parents should trust their instincts and trust that they know what's best for their kids.

Yes.

Okay. But I want to take the extreme case. So let's say that, you know, vaccination causes autism. So as a parent, despite all the research and the, you know, the debunking of the theory that MMR creates autism, you know, autism is caused by mmr. So you're not going to vaccinate your kids. How do you explain that? Because that's the antithesis of what you're saying.

Right?

Sometimes parents do not know what's best for their kids.

I think sometimes parents do not know what's best for their kids. I think all parents want to do whatever is best for their kids. All parents, really. That's their goal in life. And just like with the autism thing, I think it's hard for a lot of parents to make that decision. I think that all the research shows that there is no correlation between the shots and the autism. It's so much easier to do now. I did a lot of research when my kids were growing up, but I had to go to the library. It was a pain. And today I can just do it online. And I would. I would try to evaluate the information myself. If you take a look at some of the. Some of the data, all these kids are getting measles or, you know, they're getting diseases that have been eradicated because the parents, I don't think, have evaluated the information correctly. And scarlet fever. You don't want your kids to have all those things. Mumps.

I don't mean this to be a podcast about vaccination as much as the concept that to say that parents know what is best for their kids is not necessarily true.

That's why I want to give the kids more autonomy. They're living in a different age. And just like in my program, I want the kids to be in charge because they see the world very differently than I see the world. And it's their world. They're inheriting this world. And if I am constantly in a position of telling them what to do, Then first of all, they don't think and they don't get a sense of empowerment. And also, I might be wrong and I have been wrong before. And one of the things I think that's unusual about me as a teacher is that I admit to my students when I'm wrong. But I think that that has real benefits because then they admit to me when they've made a mistake too. Because it's open. The whole thing is, the structure is open. The way the program is structured today is based on years and years of feedback from my students.

I've heard parents say this, that, oh, now my kids don't read. When they want to learn how to do something, they watch YouTube, they go to Wikipedia, they're not learning to write, they dictate to their computer and the computer writes it out. They don't go to the library and do research, they use Google. So that's the half empty view of the world, right? Do you think that all these YouTube, Wikipedia, Google is causing academic weakness or the lack of the ability to think, or is it empowering them to open up places they would have never gone to?

So I think the biggest revolution in this century is the ability to get information quickly. And I was not able to do that last century. I had to go to the library to get that information. I say to my students, we learn Adobe, the whole Adobe suite, everything that they have. I don't care how you learn this, I don't care if somebody's teaching it to you. I don't care whether you're learning it on YouTube via video. I don't care. I just want you to know it. And I can tell you they learn this stuff much faster than previous generations did. So they're learning faster, they're communicating more effectively, they know how to look up information really fast. Compare a kid, a 19 or 20 year old kid, with somebody who's 60 and they're trying to get someplace in New York City, who's going to get there first? Yeah, okay. Yeah, they know how to use this. So the bad side, there's two sides, right? The good side, the bad side. The bad side is they aren't writing as much. As a matter of fact, they don't even know how to write cursive anymore. I think this is bad.

Why?

Because the research shows that when you write things, you retain it better. So it's important to still learn to write and to take notes not on your computer, but with your hand. That's very important.

You mean writing it out?

I mean writing it Out. I actually make my students write it out. Whenever they're taking notes about something, they can also record it. Because you're doing an interview, you want to make sure you get the whole thing right. But if you're recording something for an hour and then you have to write the story, you have to re. Listen to that whole thing for an hour. I was like, take notes because then you have it, you know, where in the interview to go and look. Otherwise you're going to sit there for another hour and listen to that whole interview.

I can give you a power tip that I just learned.

Yeah.

Okay. So there is an app called Descript, which I use. So these two tracks are going to be uploaded to Descript. Descript is going to transcribe it and send it back to me. So I don't need to listen to the whole hour because it comes down as a text document right now. Okay, so that's Descript. Now it gets even better.

Esther.

So now I have a Descript file, and it's going to be word for word, 90% accuracy of this conversation. Let's say there's a part where you say, well, yeah, I wasn't sure back in Ukraine, but no, really. And then you say what you want to say. I can select all that verbiage and tell Descript to ignore it. Okay. Descript goes back to the server, removes the audio, and sends me new audio where that's gone. So rather than having to go forward and back trying to edit audio, you just edit the text file. The text file then tells the audio to remove this part and send the new audio back. And it can do things like this can becoming a Descript file. You can say, remove all the uhs, ums, and uhs, and all of them are gone from the audio. It's a miracle.

So you've revolutionized my class. 2020. I'm going to share this on Wednesday. Thank you so much.

So for a podcaster, it makes so much easier. Oh, my God. Yeah. So when I turn in this. This transcript and file to the sound designer, the big editing is done. It's not like I have to tell them all at 21 minutes and 6 seconds to 21 minutes and 40 seconds. Cut that. It's gone. He doesn't even see it. It's a beautiful thing. Anyway, the script, trust me, I just wrote it down. Yeah. So we have a good interview when the interviewee is taking notes. I was on the board of trustees of Wikipedia.

Oh, yeah.

Okay. Which I think Wikipedia may be one of the main tools to save democracy. But let's not go down that path. Even with my own kids. Teachers in Silicon Valley, my kids come home and they say, my teacher said, I cannot cite and use Wikipedia. And I've even met with those teachers, and I said, why is that? And they say, well, Wikipedia, anyone can change anything. I said, that's not really true. Because if you go into Wikipedia and say Planned Parenthood is selling baby parts, I guarantee you within two seconds, that edit will go down. So I think Wikipedia is a great source of information. I'm just curious what you think. Would you let your students cite Wikipedia?

So I'm one of the teachers who believes that Wikipedia is great.

You're the only one I've met so far.

Well, because also I teach kids how to edit Wikipedia itself, so they need to understand it. I think these teachers don't understand it, and that's part of the reason why they don't recommend it. They think that everybody can just upload anything they want to, and it just stays there forever, which is just the opposite of what is going on. If you go to Britannica, it's out of date. And fine, if you like Britannica, but, you know, it's at least 20 years out of date. I want something that is current, that is up to date. I can find out right now, today about what happened with this whole Iran situation. I can go to Wikipedia and it's going to be up there right now. Yes. And it's going to be accurate. Because all these people, it's crowdsourcing.

They're hammering it.

They're hammering it.

Yes.

And so this is one of the problems that I think we face in education is changing the traditions. The tradition is you go to a Britannica, and it takes a long time for teachers to change their behavior patterns. As a matter of fact, they're still teaching based on what was discussed in. Was it 1893, the Committee of Ten? Today, 2020, we're still doing that, which is ridiculous. That's the battle I'm fighting with this globalmoonshots.org, that nonprofit I have. It's like, how do we move education to the 21st century?

And what's the answer?

I think we need to change. It's actually a little more complicated, but I'll try to simplify it. So the power actually lies with the people. The people impact the school board, who then impacts the superintendent and the principal. And then the teacher. The teacher is serving the recipe designed by the school board last century. They don't Change their curriculum because they're powerless? No, it's just because tradition is very hard to change. They're teaching. They have the same books. We're teaching subjects in the same way. Physics, chemistry, the interaction between these subjects. There's no discussion of the interaction. The people in this country have to make it clear to the school boards that they want some change. They want the world that we can't solve today's problems with the same thinking that we use to create those problems.

Why would someone become a teacher today? You just described a situation. They're vastly underpaid.

I don't know. I probably would not be a teacher today, which is pretty sad to say. They are vastly underpaid. They are like a waitress in a restaurant. They're serving the food, which is the curriculum decided upon by the school board. And whether they like that curriculum or not, they're forced to serve it and the kids are forced to eat it, whether they like it or not. It's a real problem.

And is there a solution here?

I think there has to be, yes. I think the solution is people have to speak up and say, we want some changes in the school system. Let's look at Finland, for example. Let's look at Singapore. Let's look at what they're doing in Shanghai. Some of these countries that are doing really well. What's going on here in America here? One of the problems with changing America, by the way, 50 states, every state has its own secretary of education. And within every state, every school district has its own school board. And so that's democracy. Right. So it takes a long time to change anything because everybody has an opinion. It's a problem.

Well, but arguably today it's better to have 50 states with 50 superintendents and school boards than to have one secretary of education.

Oh, that's true. We've had some major problems with our Secretary of Education and no Child Left behind, which left all the children behind, actually. It's true. There's pluses and minuses, but I think that we need to support the school board in making curriculum changes that are going to reflect the 21st century. Teachers should be able to use Wikipedia. Kids should be able to use YouTube to find out information. I mean, they do. You know What? They block YouTube in a lot of schools. They take phones away from kids. They don't teach you how to use your phone. They confiscate your phone. So the question.

The whole country of France does that.

Right? The whole country of France. My question is, how successful was prohibition? How successful is the Drug program.

War on drugs.

Yeah, yeah, war on drugs. How successful is prohibition in general for anything?

So if I'm a teacher listening to this podcast, what do I do? Commit suicide? Go back and get a computer science degree? What do I do?

Well, what I did was I rebelled. If you look at, you know, I wouldn't follow the rules. I did run into some serious problems. But I can tell you who was really happy. My students. They were happy. The parents were happy. You know, okay. The administration was like, oh, my God, that teacher out there, we don't know what to do with her. But I think it'd be great if more people could start using what I call this trick philosophy in class. It's a mindset. Trust your students a little bit. Give them some respect. Their ideas matter. And if they want to do something that's totally different, give them an opportunity to try some of these things. And there's such rigidity in the system that a lot of kids I know, in different areas of the country, the dropout rate is pretty significant. Okay. Here in Palo Alto, we have less than 1% dropout rate. And many communities have really good retention rates. But the areas where they need it the most, the kids are dropping out of school because it's like a legitimized prison.

You just mentioned Trick, and can we spend five minutes and sure. Do the whole acronym.

Yes. So, Trick, this is my book. This is basically the organization of the book. The first one is trust, and it starts with you as a parent. Trusting your instincts, trusting yourself.

Accept vaccination.

Accept vaccination. But if your child's hungry, I don't care what the doctor says. I mean, he gets to eat.

Okay?

And trust yourself. The person who knows that child the best is the mother and the father. They know the child the best. And so it's your first responsibility to trust your instincts and then trust your child. Trust that your child is going to have some common sense and be able to do some things independently. And when you trust them, it's crazy, but then they trust themselves. They feel good about themselves, and you want your child to feel empowered. You don't want them clinging all the time, crazy, crying all the time, afraid to try new things. You want them to try new things. It's the world. So that's trust. Respect is closely related, and it's also part of a relationship. You want to respect their ideas, and they do have wacky ideas, as your children are always coming up with crazy ideas. I mean, my students, some of their ideas are off the chart. And I have let them do them. I mean, including. I once let them start a magazine on how to braid hair. It's like, what, we're going to pay this for this? It turned out that was a super popular magazine today. It's like one of the most popular here. But they're doing more than hair. They're doing other things as well. But that was their idea. And so you respect their ideas. You give them independence to try out some of these things. You collaborate with them instead of constantly telling them what to do. Give them an opportunity to have a say. Where do we want to go for vacation? What about, what do you want to do for your birthday? Most birthday parties, they're planned by the parents. And we're telling you this is your party and this is who's coming and how we're going to do it. Let the kids help plan. Let them plan a trip, let them plan a dinner. That's really easy. Or let them even plan a dessert if you want to get down to it. And then the number one most important part is the last letter here. Kindness. Can we treat kids with kindness? And when you treat them with kindness, they treat you with kindness. You illustrate kindness in the classroom, you the teacher or the parent, they then are kind themselves. You want kids that are kind. Usually if you take a look at the people that are really angry and nasty and mean, they were treated like that as children. And you don't want that. You want somebody that is kind, kind to you as you get, especially as a parent, you get older, you want kind kids, right? Going to be there when you need them. That's my acronym.

I love that acronym.

And actually works really well in the work world, also corporate world. When you treat your employees well, when you care about them, I mean, they'll do anything for you. They will work, I mean, not just eight hours, they'll work 16 hours because they know you care and they care.

You say in the book that kids rise to expectations. And the way you said it was a very positive way, that if you expect a lot, you get a lot. But in the case in the book, you discuss where parents expectations for their kid was to be a scientist, to be a doctor, you know, something like that. That's a case where you might not want the kid to rise to the expectation, right? You want them to.

But see what you're doing with that or what the parents are doing with that is the expectation is for specific career. You don't want to put your finger on a specific career. So you want expectations for excellence. And those excellences like speaking skills, writing skills, thinking skills, collaboration skills, skills, the skills you need to be excellent in any career. And so my expectations, I've taken kids in who literally can't write a complete sentence. And I was like, what have you been doing for the last nine years in school? And my expectation is, yeah, you're fine. My number one statement to them, hey, you seem to speak just fine. You're not speaking in fragments. You're speaking. If you speak well, you can write well. Just have to practice a little, believe in yourself.

Okay? Okay. That's a very good distinction. I wish Trick could add a G, which is grit.

I do think that grit is really important and there is a G in there. The G is in the trust and respect part. Because when you are trusted and respect respected, you have grit, you stick to it. You're like, I believe in myself. Just like I believed I was doing the right thing and I stuck it out even though I was starving most of the time at Berkeley because the food situation could have been better. You have grit when you believe in yourself.

But how do you take this case in Silicon Valley? So more helicopter parents, snowplow parents, all this get anything they want. Tutors been taking violence since age 2. How do you teach a kid now? Let's say they just read your book or just heard this podcast. Esther's right. We gotta teach our kids to be gritty.

Are you talking about kids that are older or younger or both? I mean, you know what, just let your kids do some things independently. You will see that they will then have grit. I mean, just like this. I just bought this processing unit for this computer.

Is it Raspberry PI?

Yeah, this kid's building this computer. I also bought him a four year guarantee in case something terrible happens. And then he can call on the 800 number or whatever. I was like, now you've got it, you have it, now you can do it. You can make this. Do this computer, whatever. I mean, I can't figure this out. Looks too complicated for me. But he's going to do it because he wants to play more computer games. That's the goal. So some of the other kids, what did they get? Well, one of them got, she's an artist, she got art supplies. The other one is just, he's like a major bookworm and he wanted subscription to the Economist. Okay, that was pretty expensive. That was a hundred.

He's 14 and he wants a subscription to the Economist. Yeah, I'd say that's a high quality problem, Mr.

I know so anyway, that we. He got that some of the other gifts were they were all tied into the whatever it is that they want to do.

Their passions.

Their passions. One of the kids got one of those. I don't know what you call it. You roll on it. It has a wheel, and you stand and you. And it's like it's a toy. It's on the ground and it's electric and it scoots all over the place.

Oh, really?

Yeah. I know she's kind of into gymnastics.

Yeah, it makes sense.

But what we did is try to tie into whatever passion they had already and encourage that passion.

Okay.

So. And I think that that encourages more grit and whatever it is that they personally want to do.

Let's suppose that you are the dean of admissions of a college, okay. And forget the reality of board of trustees and all that, but you are the dean. That's your kingdom. And you say, this is how we're going to admit students. Are you looking at Sats, GPAs, essays, interviews, visits, legacy buildings? What would be the application process for your college that you're the, you know, Waj U Dean of admissions?

That's a great question. So I think I still would look at grades because I think grades in indicate how hard you work and your grit to tolerate things that you probably don't even like. I probably would do away with test scores because I think there's so much preparation for tests and training, and it doesn't really indicate your ability. It indicates your preparation for the test.

Are we talking sat? Act?

I would replace that more with projects that you might have done during your four years of high school that mattered to you. What are you really interested in and what have you done and accomplished? And I just think about some of my students who have been volunteering in East Palo Alto for years, and I think that that commitment is more important than having a high SAT score because I would look at your grades and how you performed and your commitment and passions in life. And I guess many schools are doing away with SAT scores actually right now, if. If I didn't see all these testing companies that are making a fortune on parents who are fearful. And I think it's unfair that some kids are trained to take the test and other kids take it cold, and then you really don't know what the abilities are of the kids that are just taking it cold. So that's why I think it's not a really effective evaluation.

I don't think there's any proven correlation between SAT and success in college or Life.

I mean, with my children. I refused to pay the fee. So I was like, you have to take the test on your own. This is it. And fortunately, they did okay. But there was. We didn't. They never went to any training sessions. I'm not sure they would get into college today because, as I said, none of them had a 4.0. And they were all Ann. Her number one thing that she did was ice skating. That's all she wanted to do was ice skate, be a competitive ice skater.

And she played hockey in college.

And she played ice hockey in college. Where at Yale.

She played D1.

Yes, Yale. Ice hockey. And you know that. Does she still play well, she still does competitive skating, but not. Not hockey, right? No. That team traveled with, like, five doctors because everybody was always getting beaten up. So I was like, ann, this might not be a good switch.

We're almost at the end.

This is really fun.

I love it.

Okay, so you have great questions. Honestly, this is the best interview that I've had yet.

Oh, no kidding. When you talk about grit, which is about determination and all that kind of good stuff, and yet there is a time and place to give up and pivot. For example, I went to law school for two weeks and quit. I would not say that's evidence of grit. I can justify it 40 years later and say it just wasn't for me. But at the time, Asian American, quitting law school. It's like harakiri times.

That's right.

So how do you know when to quit?

So I'm going to answer that with a story.

Okay.

So we had this neighbor next door named George Danzig. I don't know if you ever heard of him.

Yes.

George Danzig was a graduate student. I don't know, some Ivy League school somewhere. And he came into class late, and he saw this math problem on the board, and he assumed it was homework.

That's a great story.

And so he was one of these kids whose hair was unkempt and whatever. He went home and he was embarrassed that he was late. So he worked all night on this problem, and he finally solved it. Came into class the next day. The professor, he's like, sorry, I missed class. You know, I was late. Whatever. He presented the solution. The professor almost fell over. He said, I put this on the board because this problem hasn't been able to be solved for more than 50 years. Do you think he would have tried this and pursued it to that degree if he would have known it? No, never. Never. That is grit.

Okay, but I asked you, when is it okay to quit.

When do you quit? You quit when you really think that you don't. There's no hope for you to ever succeed. Be happy. Do what you're hoping to do if there. If you've tried sufficiently. And I think one thing about you and your story is you knew yourself and you knew that whether you went through this training or not, you would not be happy at the end. So you had the courage to quit, which took a lot of courage.

That's how I look at it.

It's Korean, right?

Japanese.

Japanese. Well, anyway. Asian.

Yeah.

And yes, I think that that takes a lot of courage to be able to stand up and say, this is not for me. And so you have to try it in order to make it happen. But you can't just quit in advance. It is not the way to do it. You should try something before you say you don't like it. How long? Well, you tried for two weeks.

How long is the minimum?

Some people try for a semester. For example, my children, they tried music. While some of them was a year, some of them was six months, some of them were longer than that, but it wasn't for them. They're not musicians, but I have a music gene in my family. One of my grandsons inherited this music gene, but my children didn't inherit it. But they tried for a while, and it was okay. I said, okay. You really don't like it. You're really miserable. You're not doing so well. All the kids at the recital, okay, you aren't doing such a great job at the recital. Everybody else is like, looks like Mozart. So I think.

What'S that? Siri?

Siri, turn it off.

You didn't say, hey, Siri.

No, I did. This phone, I think, follows me. I'm gonna turn this off. I'm not kidding. I'm gonna shut it down. They always say that there's a lot of spies around listening to you here.

If there are spies watching my email and text messages and, you know, all that, all they're seeing is, okay, I'll pick him up. Okay, I'll pick her up. Okay, I'll get it. That's it. If you want to know my life, that's it. There's no deep, dark secrets. So I love this topic of grit. So you have kids, they come home and they say, I hate math. I can't figure out math. You know, I like film or I like art, or I like writing or journalism. I hate math. I can't handle it. What do you tell them?

I say, one of the most important things in life is being able to add and subtract. It's called finance. And you need to know this just to get along in life. So while you might not like it right now, I want you to figure out ways where you can understand it and like it. There's all these little videos online. Have you heard of Khan Academy, for example, that will help you understand. The reason you hate math is because you don't understand what's going on. And the way they teach math. If you don't understand it, heck with it. You're still moving on. And so then you're building a foundation that doesn't exist. Because that's why people don't like math, because they didn't understand the basic. And you're building on a basic that's not there.

In my particular case, when my kids say something like that in math in particular, I happen to agree with them. It's been a long time since I used calculus.

That's right. So sometimes math is useful?

Yes, sometimes no.

But sometimes, just like geometry, I think geometry is incredibly useful. Knowing the angles, knowing which areas are ways to get from point A to point B in the least amount of time. I think there's a lot of practical applications. The way that we're teaching math does not relate to the real world. That's why everybody hates it. If you knew a real world application of math, you won't hate it. The number one thing that people need to do, teach. Why? Why are you studying this? Why?

Well, the answer honestly is to do well on the sat.

No, that's not why I. Why in my journalism class. Why studying? Because the main goal in journalism, collect information and then try to figure out what's most important. That's a life skill. That is. You're learning journalism because you're learning a skill for life. That's it.

I agree. No argument here, but the same thing.

For math, you know? Okay, I used to teach math for a while and I can't remember any calculus at all now. None. Because I don't use it. It's just like I also used to speak Russian. I can't say anything either. That's about it. But if you don't use something, then you lose it. And if there's math that you studied, you lose it. And if they don't make it relevant to the real world ever, it doesn't ever stick. Research shows that even if you get an A on a test, you will only remember 32% of it after two weeks.

Why that much?

That much.

So you have a 30 some odd year, very successful teaching career, teacher of the year, all that kind of stuff. You have three very successful daughters. A book. What are you most proud of?

Actually, I think what I'm the most proud of, if I think about it, is this method that I've created or not created, that I've tried to understand for how to teach people effectively.

The trick method.

The trick method, because how did I do it with my daughters? I sort of invented it as I was going along. And then I use the same thing in my classes, and then I use the same thing whenever I'm helping companies set up, whatever structure they are setting up. So I think I'm very proud of my students and my daughters, of course. But I think the fact that I was. I had enough grit, let's put it this way, in order to change the way that education was happening in a classroom and that I stuck to it, even though I was being criticized, harassed, was problematic. I still stood. And then eventually this trick idea that I came up with, it took me a while to figure out what I was doing. I had to ask my students what it was. It's like, why do you like this class? I don't understand. Why are you here instead of the class next door? And they're the ones that helped me understand what I was doing. I didn't know it.

I hope that Esther has helped you understand the role of creativity, independence and innovation in education. Remember trick? Trust, respect, independence, collaboration and kindness. It applies to education as well as business. Today, I'm Guy Kawasaki and this is remarkable people. My thanks to Jeff C. And Pig Fitzpatrick for their constant flow of kindness. Mahalo also to Jonathan Rosenberg for making this interview happen. This is remarkable people.