David Brooks

And he talks about how we put these children through the most boring sorting process possible.

impossible.

But then the kids who take these tests in third or fourth grade who realize, oh, I'm dumb, they check out.

And so you get apathy out of that.

And so there's just been this loss of avenues.

One of my best moments at Yale where I teach on and off is I was teaching a young man, a very brilliant young man.

It was about your inner life.

It was how to develop character.

And at the end of the class, and he was going to go off to a Rhodes Scholarship, really smart kid.

He said, Professor Brooks, I want you to know, your class has made me a lot sadder.

And I was like, yes, this is a total win.

Because he was good at playing the game.

But working on his internal life,

Nobody demanded that of him.

And so he went off to Oxford and he studied how characters formed and moral philosophy and moral development.

And I assume he's a better person for it.

One of my favorite things from psychology is from a guy named John Bowlby, who was an attachment theorist in the 20th century.

And he says all of life is a series of daring explorations from a secure base.

So we all need that secure base.

And that's emotional security, your attachment with your parent.