Outcome guaranteed

In a classroom in graduate school the professor was showing her graduate students the difference between the way young people learn a second language and the way adults learn a second language.  The class had already read a great number of theoretical articles and a book on various methods for learning a second language.  Now came the field experiments.  

A group of 8 nine-year-olds filed into the room and took their seats in front of the graduate students.  Then 8 adults came into the room and took their seats in front of the room.  The class had previously voted on what method they thought would be the best, so teachers for the two groups had come prepared to teach their student groups according to the voted-on method.  The two groups began to learn some language parcels simultaneously while the graduate students observed, taking notes on how much and in what ways the individuals in the two groups learned. 

There were two very clear differences in the way the two groups approached learning that day (and it happens to be the case for learning language in general between children 10 and younger and children older than 10 into adulthood).  The young people's group tried guessing about 15 times more often than the adults who were bent on getting the right form before they would speak out.  The older group covered less material because they wanted to master the language forms before pressing on while the younger group covered a great deal of territory, sometimes even randomly repeating the forms they had touched on earlier.  When the two observations were pointed out to the adult group, and that group was asked to change their learning style to match that of the younger group, they couldn't make the adaptation.

Zuckerberg's third principle for his workers is to be bold.  He elaborates below:

Be Bold

Building great things means taking risks. This can be scary and prevents most companies from doing the bold things they should. However, in a world that's changing so quickly, you're guaranteed to fail if you don't take any risks. We have another saying: "The riskiest thing is to take no risks." We encourage everyone to make bold decisions, even if that means being wrong some of the time.

If anything is true in the great American daycare system for children 6-18, it is that there is a methodical progression of ideas.  "Grind it out" would be a saying true of the children who are products of this system.  While it is true in some instances that learning (that includes performing aloud what has been learned) on a macro- scale may need to conform to a progression at some points, it would not naturally hold that learning on a micro- scale should be so methodical.  Learning is random at that level most of the time.

Math classes are typical, but any class would do.  If one were to observe a lesson by a teacher methodically teaching a concept that was next in some micro-curricular progression, (s)he would see a teacher explaining, calling on students to feed back the concept, giving some examples, then asking students to practice what they have learned. After that the teacher calls on students to give answers from their practice work.  In this last phase of asking children to give answers from their practice problems , one would see a great deal of silence and hesitation.  Teachers say it is like pulling teeth to get children to shout out their answers.  Many times the children wouldn't answer even when called upon by name.  According to Mark Zuckerberg, such children are guaranteed to fail.  Hmmm...

 This method works well for the teacher who learned how to teach after becoming an adult, but who has forgotten how learning happens for the young. The adults who manage the system as a whole ask the teachers to teach methodically at all levels and measure them according to the adult learning stick.  Teachers only look for right answers rather than random, many times wrong, answers so that they will measure up on the stick.

So where does Zuckerberg go to get employees who are taking risks, learning randomly, boldly calling out learning forms or math answers even if they are not called upon?  These children work for the other companies he refers to in his principle.  I'm still looking for the pool Zuckerberg is drawing from.  The Wright brothers, Fords, Bells, and Edisons are all dead and still stand out as anomalies in history.