“How can I practice to become a better pianist?”
She was about six years old, sitting in the front row at one of the concerts I gave in Japan last month.
“Practicing just to improve won’t improve your piano playing.”
She looked surprised, her mouth shaping “O.” A few audience members shifted in their seats uncomfortably. Others looked at me like they thought I should have complimented her for her good question and courage to ask. I probably should have, but her question was too good. It touched upon something I have been thinking a lot about.
“What makes you want to improve? How do you want to improve, how much, by when, and what is the best way to reach your goal? When you make the answers to these questions very clear in your mind, then your practice will improve your piano playing.”
My answer was based on my understanding of entrepreneurship, crucial to prepare the future generations for our transforming world facing unprecedented challenges.
The Future of Education
Today, with the advancement of IT and AI, we have more information at our fingertips (literally!) than our brain is capable of processing. Education should adapt accordingly. We no longer need schools to memorize facts and disseminate standardized worldviews. What we need are the time/space/community to brainstorm on the following questions as allies facing shared challenges, creating synergy in our joint venture.
- WHAT should we think about – and HOW should we think about them?
- HOW can we ensure correct understanding of given information, and evaluate them most helpfully to our pursuits?
- HOW do we process our understanding into meaningful communication and action?
What clarifies the direction of our consideration are three things: Passion, Purpose, and Profit (Return on the Investment) = PPP.
Passion = Humanity
What makes us human? What part of us is irreplaceable by AI?
Throughout our history, our ancestors have exhibited potential for superhuman focus, persistence and perseverance. We have proven ourselves to be capable of enormous outbursts of energy and creativity, as well as accomplishments that require intergenerational persistence and endurance. They often seem to defy logic and calculation – that, I believe, is what makes us uniquely human. They can be boiled down to what I call COACCE: Let’s pronounce it KOH-see, like seeing together. They are:
- Community
- Optimism
- Adventurousness
- Curiosity
- Creativity
- Empathy
This is what my six-year-old audience asked about: the desire to improve.
Passion Alone can Make us Blind: Purpose and Profit to Ensure our Objectivity
However, our history also demonstrates that passion alone has the danger of leading us to inefficiency, unjustifiable toils, and sometimes even injustice. This is why I said to my six-year-old audience member that “practicing just to improve won’t improve your piano playing.” We can fall prey to narcissism for our self-sacrifice, working hard, enduring pain and losses, even if it wasn’t yielding any results, or worse, defeating its own purposes. We have been known, even worse, to force the sacrifice to be made by others for our own COACCE: ideological doctrines, and academic/religious/artistic/athletic disciplines, for example. As a side note, I also believe that the addiction to profits in our capitalistic society, perfectionism in the performing arts, and work ethic that lead some to Karoshi are some modern-day examples of the hyper-passion and its danger.
To offset the inherent danger of blind passion, we need the other two Ps: Purpose, that ensures clear sense of the direction of our pursuit, and Profit that makes our ventures sustainable.
Co-learning Environment to Fascilitate PPP with COACCE
With the above in mind, I am developing a new online course for SPICE: Stanford Program on International and Cross-cultural Education. It will be available to 20 selected high school students from all over the U.S. to facilitate PPP with COACCE. Please reach out with any ideas or resources as I design this new course. Application will open soon. Stay tuned!
