Conventional Ejucashun

 
 
 
 

Vocabulary

secret	share (3)	accumulate
trust	funny (2)	illustrate (2)
duty	astronaut	call of duty (2)
typical	keep up	want out of
passion	grade (2)	get out (2)
essay	assemble	hot-air balloon
float	envelope	destination
curious	invitation	competition
panel	judge (2)	supersonic
suits	path (2)	long story short
dozen	check (2)	blow away
realize	terrible	win/won/won
depot	spark (2)	present (3)
bunch	supplies	Home Depot
viable	influence	execute (2)
guy	diminish	short-tempered
narrow	calculus	quick-tempered
startup	drop out	paragraph
bar (2)	network	phenomenal
hope	stray (2)	auditorium
spread	notice (2)	invitation
rumor	wannabe	make fun of
mock	show up	intelligent
inspire	team (2)	elementary school
throw	amazing	evaluation
exist	term (2)	pronounce
willing	response	think outside the box
algebra	type (2)	hardware (2)
end up	diploma	come up (2)
stand	stable (2)	straight A (B, C)
feature	graduate	message (2)
explore	obsessed	prototype
set up	measure	entrepreneur
limit	cool (2)	conventional
diverge	innovate	non-profit
		take away (3)

 
 
 

Video

 

 
 
 
 

Transcript

I want to share with you a big secret today — and it’s not one that a lot of you are going to want to hear . . . but at the same time, it’s so important, that I have to tell you.

That secret is this: What if I told you that every single day, kids go to school, they become less intelligent?

Now, how could that be possible?

When kids go to school, they learn things, right? And they accumulate more knowledge.

So if anything, they should be getting smarter. How could they possibly be getting less intelligent?

What am I talking about?

Well, I do hope to illustrate that to you today.

Before I turned fourteen (14), I was a kid that did not know what he wanted in life.

So usually, when you go up to a five or six year old and you ask him or her, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” He’ll say, “And astronaut,” or “A businessman.”

I wanted to be a professional Call of Duty player.

And since I had no idea about what I wanted to be when I grew up, I just listened to my parents almost a hundred percent (100%) of the time. I trusted that they knew what was best for me.

My parents wanted out of me what any typical parent would want out of his child: go to school, keep up your grades, get out and exercise, once every few years.

And I was trying to do everything they asked of me — except the problem was, I wasn’t even that good at school. I was terrible at science. I could not write a five-paragraph essay if my life had depended on it.

And to this day, I still think I’m the only Asian kid in the world who does not understand math.

I really do.

But when I turned fourteen (14), that all changed.

 

 

I was no longer this hot-air balloon floating around in space; I was now like a supersonic jet flying towards my destination, at fifty-thousand (50,000) miles an hour — or however fast those things go.

And this change all started when I received an envelope in the mail.

It was an invitation — not to a birthday party; I didn’t get any of those. Not to a playground — but to a business plan competition down in Boston.

And I was curious, I was so curious, that I just had to go.

The program director explained to us that over five months, we would form a team, develop a business idea, and present this idea to a panel of judges, who would be judging us, how good our suits were, and how good our business ideas were.

 

 

And long story short, over those five months, I formed a team, developed an idea.

And we actually ended up winning that competition and taking home a check.

And that one event sparked my interest for going to more and more of these competitions.

Over the next two years of my life, I actually went to dozens and dozens of these competitions, and . . .

I was winning almost all of them.

And I realized that I liked going to them so much not just because I liked winning them, but also because I had an unrealized passion.

That was the passion for creating things.

Because the one thing that my team would do differently from our other competitors, every single time, was that while everyone would go up and present their idea and their PowerPoint, we would go to Home Depot, buy supplies, and actually build the idea we were talking about.

And the judges were just so blown away by the fact that a bunch of teenagers could go and create things, can make prototypes and have minimally viable products.

And we won almost every single competition just because the judges loved that we had gone and executed it.

 

 

At one of these competitions, I met a short-tempered, middle-aged Polish guy named Frank. He came up to us, took a look at our prototype, and said: “I can help you guys turn this into a real company.”

Think about that.

Isn’t that cool?

We were sixteen (16) year olds, going out into the real world, and creating a real, hardware technology startup.

At first we were all like, “Time to be Steve Jobs. Let’s go build Apple. Drop out of school now.”

But we quickly realized that it’s not that easy. So, don’t drop out, unless you’re really sure you have a really great idea.

 

 

We realized that the first part to building a great company is to assemble a great team. As students, we couldn’t go to bars to network, to networking events for adults.

So we went to our school and set up this little presentation in our auditorium in which we would present our idea, and hopefully kids would join our team.

We sent out an invitation to our entire school.

The first thing we noticed was that almost no one showed up. There was almost no interest.

Those who did show up, spread the rumor around the school, and throughout that week, we were actually mocked. We were made fun of for our ideas, and for being wannabe Mark Zuckerbergs.

What’s funny is, the next week after, we did the exact same presentation, and did it at our elementary school, to kids who were five or six years younger.

And the response was phenomenal!

These kids were throwing their lunch money at us, asking if they could buy a prototype. They were asking for our pre-money evaluation, which I know you guys know from watching Shark Tank.

But it was amazing that these kids even knew terms like that existed, when they were too young to even probably pronounce some of these words.

That just inspired me so much.

 

 

And I think this is what our educational system has done: over just these five to six years in the education system, these creative children have turned into these teenagers that are unwilling to think outside the box.

So let’s go back to that secret I was talking about.

How is it possible that school is making kids less intelligent?

The fact is, there is so much more than just one type of intelligence.

And while school can make you more academically intelligent — it can teach you physics, algebra, calculus — it is diminishing children’s CREATIVE intelligence. It is teaching them to think a certain way, to go down a certain path in life.

It’s telling them: go to high school. Get a diploma. Go to a good university. Find a stable job.

But if you don’t do that, you won’t be successful.

But if that were true, how am I even standing here today? How did I, a straight C student, start a technology company at the age of sixteen (16)? And how is my company, which was featured on the Wall Street Journal last week, doing better than some companies started by Harvard and Stanford graduates?

It must something that can’t be measured by academic intelligence alone.

So here’s what I believe.

Parents, teachers, educators . . . you have the power to influence and inspire youth.

The fact is, there are way too many people out there right now who are obsessed with telling kids to go to college, to find a good job, and to be “successful”.

There are not enough who are telling kids to explore more possibilities, to become entrepreneurs.

And if there’s one message that I want parents, kids, and all of you to take away from what I’ve said here today is that you can open your own doors, and that you can stray away from this conventional, limited and narrow path that education sets us upon.

You can diverge and create your own future.

You can start your own company and start your own non-profits.

You can create, you can innovate.

And if there’s one message I want you to take away from everything I’ve said, it is this:

No one has ever changed the world by doing what the world has told them to do.

 

 

Questions

1. Eddy Zhong the speaker, opened his talk with a seeming contradiction or paradox. True or false?

2. When Eddy was in elementary school, did he have clear goals for his future?

3. Did his parents encourage him? What advice did they give him?

4. Eddy had good grades and was an excellent student. Is this correct or incorrect?

5. Was there a turning point or decisive moment in his life? What had happened? What was his secret?

6. Back at his school, everyone was very enthusiastic, awed, amazed and excited about his venture. Is this right or wrong?

7. Is he critical of conventional schooling? What does he say about it?

8. “No one has ever changed the world by doing what the world has told them to do.” What does this mean?

 

A. Who are some very successful people that you know? What is the educational background?

B. How was your schooling? Describe your education. Was it satisfactory?

C. Do you (have to) give presentations?

D. Do you think Eddy’s philosophy or outlook is entirely true or is he being too idealistic and impractical?

E. What will happen in the future?