The Danger of Assumptions

A beginning teacher was sitting at her desk one day when her principal came into the room. The principal handed her a class roster. Beside the student names were numbers – beginning with the number 120. The teacher was ecstatic since she had inherited such a smart class, as the numbers beside the student names had to be their IQ scores. For the rest of the school year, the teacher had very high expectations for all of her students, and the students responded with top performance. At the end of the school year the principal came into the teacher’s room to congratulate her on such a fine year. The teacher, thanking the principal, said, “Well, it was easier because these kids had such high IQ scores. I saw them on the class roster.” The principal looked at the teacher and said, “IQ scores? Those numbers were their locker numbers.”

The power of assumptions. And in a traditional school campus, assumptions are everywhere. Some are positive and productive. Others are negative and destructive.

But what if assumptions could change? What if schools were home to a different set of assumptions, assumptions that were based on creativity, performance, support and results?

Zach King is a Los Angeles filmmaker who specializes in creating short videos featuring visual effects that appear as magic. What follows are excerpts from a TED talk King delivered back in 2021:

“I have a question for you this morning. What is this? A box, yeah. I ask a lot of people that question, and most people say it’s a box. But I’ve met a small group of people who have told me that this is not a box. And what’s fascinating about this group of people is they’re the ones that have pioneered space travel, explored the depths of our oceans and created some of the most impenetrable fortresses, all before the age of five.”

“Of course, I’m talking about my kids. See, when I showed them this, they told me that this was not a box, but rather a rocket ship, a submarine and a castle all at once, somehow combined. So why is it that you and I, as adults, we look at something like this and we just call it what it is, a box? But our children, they can see it for more possibilities.”

“So one night I heard a sound. It was coming from the garage and I thought someone was breaking in, so I went to go check it out. To my surprise, the box was on the ground, and my kids were dreaming with the box.”

“And they said, ‘Daddy, we’re playing rocket ship. Come play with us.’…”

“So, it was there in that garage that I learned the key to why all our kids see with childlike wonder. It’s because they don’t have assumptions. They don’t have assumptions about the box yet. They haven’t been told what it’s supposed to do or what it’s supposed to be used for. Therefore, they have all these other possibilities.”

“So for you and I, as we approach life and try to solve new problems. If we’re able to remove our assumptions for a moment, we can see with this new childlike wonder once again.”

“So the next time somebody tells you to think outside the box, you can tell them, ‘Hey, this is not a box.’ Because when we remove our assumptions, we’re able to then see with this childlike sense of wonder. And that’s the moment when new ideas can enter the world.”

When I was a region superintendent, I visited at least one school a day, maybe more. On those days I had time, I might visit a kindergarten class at an elementary school followed by a high school Algebra class. And here’s one thing I noticed –

Most kindergarten classes were full of wonder and almost entirely absent from assumptions. But sadly, the high school Algebra class, and others like them, lacked wonder and were full of assumptions.

Traditional schools, for the most part, encourage assumptions – too many negative and destructive – while discouraging wonder. Because of this, traditional schools have turned into places where creativity and productivity struggle to exist.

But if kids are allowed to design their own learning plans, with help from an adult learning leader, creativity, productivity, and wonder have a better chance of living and growing.

That’s what I saw in those kindergarten classrooms. That is what was sadly lacking from the high school Algebra class.

We can bring wonder, creativity, and productivity back to our kids. I just don’t know if our traditional K-12 schools are the right delivery system to do it.

Til tomorrow. SVB