Apparently, we have decided that cramming the maximum amount of trivial knowledge into our children’s brains will somehow make them ‘smarter’. To this end, educators have posed many theories on how to elicit the kind of Effort necessary for children to willingly participate in this process. Most of them are hitting all around the target, with calls to have kids only work on their strengths, or only follow their passions, or ‘own the learning’ and teach themselves, etc.
The intended ‘target’ should be how to maximize Effort –the ‘main ingredient’ in every worthwhile undertaking—but instead of spending time training Effort as a skill, we apparently assume that Effort automatically shows up once kids ‘want something bad enough.’ This understandably has led educators to assume that kids will need to know ‘WHY’ they should put out Effort.

Once we finally tie our fates together and move forward in the same direction, it will become clear to us that each person has some super-power that can benefit the whole, and if this power is discovered early, then encouraged, all of us—through our desire to ‘belong’—will be motivated to maximize this ‘superpower’ for ourselves and each other.