John Huppenthal Guest lecturing in Paul Kims DNLE course Hello my name is John Huppenthal Im the elected superintendent

of public instruction of the state of Arizona. Paul Kim invited me to provide a segment for his massively open online course on education theory. In order to properly understand the project I am working on you need to first understand the concept of cultural traps. Therefore, my segment comes in two pieces one on cultural traps and second on a new theory in practice of learning. One of the fundamental duties of leadership is to break through cultural traps. In order to this we must acknowledge we are all culturally trapped. What is an example of a cultural trap? In ancient Europe when they first domesticated the horse they took the yoke off the ox and put it on the horse. Because of the anatomy of the ox and the horse are so different the yoke was literally choking the horse they were only getting 25% of the pulling power of the horse by doing this. The farmers just accepted of the forms and structures that they had experienced their entire lives and through previous generations. So how many years did it take them to redesign the yoke? The answer is over 700 years. They were culturally trapped for those 700 years. Transition to education we have yoked the brain of our students. We are getting less than 25% of the pulling power not only of our students brain power but also of our education system potential to teach. We can get much as two times of the academic gain by redesigning the educational yoke. We get a glimmer of this in Arizona when we see thousands of students out performing their IQ in academic achievement by more than 40 percentile points. We have thousands of students with IQs below the 50th percentile but performing above the 95th percentile in academic achievement. When Einstein developed his famous E=mc^2 equation he almost immediately knew that the atomic bomb was the ultimate expression of E=mc^2. It was just the question on figuring out the mechanics of creating the bomb. When we see thousand of students outperforming their IQ by 40th percentile points its just the question of figuring out the mechanics of how you redesign the educational system to get every student outperforming their IQ by 50th percentile points. Once the ancient farmers observed the yoke was choking the horse. It was just a question on the mechanics on how to redesign the yoke to create the harness and get the full pulling power out of the horse. So how do we get the most pulling power in education and break through our cultural traps? Number one we start a new theory of learning you might call it the E=mc^2 of education. Number two you redesign the classroom around this new theory of learning. Number three, you put this new classroom in the laboratory and prove that it can break through the speed of sound of education. And finally, we move from the laboratory out into our schools and show we can get the same gains in real practice. Now what is the speed of sound in education? the science of psychometrics allows us to search across schools and school districts to define our current limits. When we do this we find schools that are able to on a sustain bases moving about one and half times average rate of progress. Are cultural traps that simple? In the 1930s Robert Goddard developed a rocket. That incredible mind that developed the rocket control systems was powerful enough to know not only the consequences of the rocket but also what it will mean for the future. So he began to speak out in public about the future he talked about the fact that we will be able to travel to the moon he was doing this way back in the 1930s but he became a national laughing stock to the result to those speeches. Cultural traps can be

vicious. When innovation challenge social norms innovators are brutally treated this is specially true in education this is when leader ship is always important. We as leaders need to provide protection, we need to provide oxygen and we need to provide the line light to our innovators in education that are pushing the speed of sound. In my next segment we are going to talk about the whole new theory of memory that enables us to break through the higher levels of academic productivity and education. We are going to show the human mind is capable of developing in at least twice in its current speed and once you do this high school collapses back into grade school and college collapses back into high school. We are right now on the verge of this new enormous break through its all going to take place in the next decade. Its going to be the most exciting time to be in education and we you and I are along for this journey. Thank you.