No one not your parents nor your teachers nor your peers can teach you how to be yourself. Indeed, however well in tentioned, they all work to teach you how not to be yourself. As the eminent child psychologist Jean Piaget said, "Every time we teach a child something, we keep him from inventing it himself "I would go a step further. Every time we teach a child something, rather than helping him learn, we keep him from inventing himself. By its very nature, teaching homogenizes both its subjects and its objects. Learning, on the other hand liberates. The more we know about ourselves and our world, the freer we are to achieve everything we are capable of achieving.
Many leaders have had problems with school, particularly their early school experiences. Albert Einstein wrote, 'It is nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry. It is a grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.
Among the leaders I spoke with, scientist and philanthropist Mathilde Krim said, "To the extent that school is regimented, I don't like it." And Edward C. Johnson 3, CEO of Fidelity Investments, said, "Sitting in a classroom was never one of my strengths, but I've always been curious about ideas and objects." Johnson instinctively knew the difference between teaching and learning, between training and education.
Obviously, we cannot do away with or do without families or schools or any of the instruments of homogeneity But we can see them for what they are, which is part of the equation, not the equation itself.