Apr 8, 2020
Esther Wojcicki is a celebrated educator, a pioneer in
instructional technology, Founder of the renowned Media Arts
Program at Palo Alto High School, and the author of the bestselling
book, How to Raise
Successful People.
Esther was named Teacher of the Year in California in 2002 and
received the Charles O’Malley Award for outstanding teaching in
journalism in 2011. Esther is also the Founder of the Journalistic
Learning Initiative at the University of Oregon, and is the Founder
and CEO of GlobalMoonshots.org. Esther raised three daughters: Susan (CEO of YouTube),
Anne (CEO of 23andMe), and Janet (professor, UC San
Francisco).
Key Takeaways
[3:25] Talk to your teenagers.
Their creative minds are impressive.
[5:35] Helicopter parents have
the same problem as bad managers, they micromanage!
[7:50] Helicopter parenting
might be due to having access to more information than before and
it’s making parents fearful for their children.
[8:55] Esther believes we’d be
happier people if we had access to less information, but that’s
simply not possible with our world today. What we need to do is
learn how to cope.
[11:15] Esther believes teaching
media literacy is a critical skill to have as we live in an
information-overload environment. People need to know how to read
between the lines and figure out if something is truthful or
not.
[13:10] 18-24-year-olds are
completely different from the millennials. Millennials are even
having trouble working with 20-year-olds!
[15:00] Children today grew up
with information overload.
[16:15] Children of CEOs are
afraid they’ll never live up to their parents’
expectations.
[17:25] There are a lot of kids
in the Midwest or the South where the American Dream doesn’t seem
achievable or realistic for them.
[21:55] Esther emphasizes the
importance of teaching children how to learn because this is a
skill for life.
[22:15] Why memorize a test when
students will forget 95% of it a year later? We have a re-skilling
problem in the United States.
[24:55] For people to take
chances, they have to feel safe.
[28:35] We all have deadlines.
It’s important to make people feel comfortable to take risks, in
spite of them.
[31:55] With so much democracy,
we have communication chaos. We don’t know which source to
believe.
[38:05] If children aren’t
learning about trust and risk at home, how can they learn these
skills? Esther believes it starts at school.
[44:10] The power to change the
schools lies with the parents.
Quotable Quotes
- For
people to take chances, they have to feel safe.
- “We
are all fearful. Everybody is afraid non-stop. I’m afraid for the
world.”
- “Every generation is different because they’re
growing up in a different world.”
- “Children today tend to be much more
risk-averse because somebody was always there helping
them.”
- “Here
we have a lot of kids whose parents are CEOs and their number one
fear is they’ll never live up to the standards set by their
parents.”
- “What
does it take these days for people to achieve the American
dream?”
- “I’m
teaching kids how to learn because this is a skill for life. I am
not teaching them to memorize.”
- “Believe in the student and they believe in
themselves. They rise to levels that are completely
unexpected.”
- “When
you’re really upset and worried, you tend to be less productive
than when you feel good about yourself and when you feel
supported.”
- “You
want kids to feel at home at school. You want them to feel a sense
of community. Today, many schools don’t do that.”
Resources and Books Mentioned
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