Eileen

In the Montessori case, kids' emotions weren't about the right and wrong answers.

They actually didn't show different emotional patterns, if they got it right or got it wrong.

Instead, when they got things wrong, they were actually using that as an opportunity to get information and to learn something new.

The act of thinking through the math problem

felt like a fundamentally different process to them.

And in fact, it was, even though their quote-unquote level of math knowledge was the same.

Absolutely.

I mean, amen to that, right?

And take a look at the state of the world right now.

When we move through the world expecting that there is one correct answer and that someone somewhere knows it and that we want that answer and anyone who has a different answer or a different way of thinking about it is wrong.

And when we aren't dispositionally curious to engage with many ways of understanding the complexities of situations, where does that leave us as citizens?

In effect, the rethinking of school around the development of the people inside the school is exactly for what you're saying.

It is to prepare young people with the dispositions of mind to solve complex, real-world problems that do not have one concrete answer, that may represent

a very complex problem space that's fraught, that we need to grapple with together.

And the most important problems that are facing humanity and the planet today are 201 of that sort.

They are complex.

They are fraught.

There are many kinds of legitimate perspectives.

There are many ways of experiencing the implications.

How do we set up our young people so that they are