Believe in the difference

Start Following Your Dreams, Stop Worrying About What You're 'Supposed To Do'

In elementary school I could not imagine why I was being tortured by Latin or Math, and my perception of soccer was chiefly that of being a crashee.

But I loved starting things, especially newspapers. Once I had saved enough to buy a mimeograph machine (the prior technology being typing hard with as many carbon copy sheets as possible), I was unstoppable.

The logic of producing what would become a 32- and then 50-page newspaper with writers and circulation beyond my school was also irresistible. I had to go out and get advertisements, and I had to organize peers in many places. All this was obvious to me, but it meant not always being where I was supposed to be.

Many years later when my mother died I found correspondence with the principal of my school. My mother was more than a little worried. (Why is my fifth grader neither in school nor at home?) However, the principal patiently and ultimately successfully argued that everyone should trust me. In fact, he advised: “Don’t even show him that you’re anxious."

Bless him!

Once a young person has had a dream, built a team, and changed his or her world, he or she has the power to express love and respect in action—the heart of what brings health, longevity and happiness.

He or she will be a changemaker for life—a real contributor in a world where value increasingly comes from changemaking and not, as it has for millennia, from efficiency in repetition. It is no accident that over 80 percent of the 3,000 leading social entrepreneur Ashoka Fellows started something in their teens, usually early teens. Today, more than half have changed national policy within five years of launch.

Here at Ashoka, we believe that the education reform discussion has largely missed the boat. It is focused chiefly on access to schools driven by an outdated set of objectives, mastering a body of knowledge and a set of rules. That makes sense in a static world—but not in one defined by accelerating change.

Now we must ensure that all of this generation of young people are changemakers before they turn 21. That means that they master the core changemaking skills—empathy, teamwork, new leadership, and changemaking.

The only way they can is by practicing and practicing, by in fact being changemakers. (See Ashoka’s Start Empathy and Youth Venture initiatives.)

How many other principals today know that they are on this very different playing field?

Photo: Drew Leavy/Getty Images