Esther Wojcicki: Godmother of Silicon Valley, legendary teacher, and mother of a super-family

Guy Kawasaki:
I'm Guy Kawasaki, and this is Remarkable People. This episode's guest is Esther Wojcicki, educator, author, and mom. She currently teaches journalism and English at Palo Alto High School. In fact, she was Northern California Teacher of the Year in 1990 and California Teacher of the Year in 2002.
The name of her book is: How to Raise Successful People. She's well qualified to write this book because she has three successful daughters. Susan is the CEO of YouTube. Janet is an anthropologist and assistant professor of pediatrics. Anne is the co-founder of 23andMe.
In this episode, we discuss her approach to education and raising children. This includes her formula for success called TRICK. TRICK stands for: trust, respect, independence, collaboration, and kindness. Among her students have been Jeremy Lin, a former NBA basketball player, and Steve Jobs' daughter.
I'm Guy Kawasaki, and this is Remarkable People. With no further ado, here is Esther Wojcicki.

Guy Kawasaki:
What if you were born a boy in your family? When your brother came, it was “he's now the center of the universe,” and all that. So where would we be today?
Esther Wojcicki:
It would be very different. I probably would've been spoiled a lot, and I would have been forced to study the Torah, because that's what boys do. The main goal is to be a rabbi. That's the number one thing that everybody wants their boys to be or at least somehow connected in the religion. But I think my life would've been really different if I would've been a boy. I would've been over-pampered.
Guy Kawasaki:
So because you were a girl, you had to overcome adversity, not just in your family but forever, really, right?
Esther Wojcicki:
Culture, the society was…
Guy Kawasaki:
And so is there an optimal level of adversity? Too little is not enough. Too much is crushing.
Esther Wojcicki:
I think there is an optimal level. You need some adversity in order to be able to learn to function on your own. But you don't want to be treated like you're a second-class person. You don't want to be treated like you're not as important as the other children in the family or not as important in society as other people are.
I was treated like that, which is why I fought to such a degree. Even at Berkeley, the freshman class is gigantic. My classes had eight hundred people in them, and I was struggling because I came from a school where it was not one of the top schools so there's a lot that I didn't know. So this adversity, the fact that I was on a scholarship and I was way behind and I didn't know quite what to do.
First, I was majoring in zoology. They're like, "What? Why are you doing that?" And then I switched to physiology. They're like, "Oh well somewhat relevant." But the competition was so fierce everybody wanted to get to medical school. So then I thought, "Well, I can barely make it through Berkeley, let alone medical school.
I switched again to political science. That was so easy by comparison. But my parents were like, "What are you doing?!" They thought I lost every marble I ever had, but I was determined. I wanted to get out of poverty and I wanted to stop being treated like a second class citizen.
Guy Kawasaki:
So adversity was good?
Esther Wojcicki:
Adversity was good in that case. It was really good. You can have competition, that also helps in some way. You're competing with, maybe ... It's not clear who you're competing with. You can be competing with an ancestor, or competing with the reputation of your family, or in some sense you're driven because you want to be as good as or better than something in your family.
I think if you don't have any adversity - no competitive spirit - if there's nothing driving you and you're given everything, then you just sit there and do nothing. You have no goals.
Guy Kawasaki:
This creates this problem for the third and fourth generation American.
Esther Wojcicki:
I think it does create the problem for the third and fourth generation.
Guy Kawasaki:
As I was reading your book, I thought, "Oh my god, I'm doing everything wrong." I explained this to my wife last night and she goes, "Well, it's a little late. Our kids are out of college already." So what's a parent to do? In particular, your daughters, so their kids are not growing up with adversity, right?
Esther Wojcicki:
No, they're not growing up with adversity but we don't give them a lot. I didn't come up with this plan myself but my daughters came up with this idea.
They get an allowance, a small allowance, like everybody else, and they don't get a lot of material goods. They feel in some sense they have to achieve. They're competing with the reputation of their family. They all want to learn. We're blessed because they all are really curious.
Guy Kawasaki:
How would you define a successful child today?
Esther Wojcicki:
I think it's one that feels happy and supported in achieving their goal, whatever it is. I have some grandchildren who are totally into gaming. I mean, crazy gaming. One of the things that my daughter did is if you're going to be such a gamer, then I'm going to want you to build a computer because you need a really good computer to do all these games. So this kid is building a computer from scratch! And I can tell you he knows a lot more about computers than I do.
I think you have to present them with some challenge. They can't have everything they want. You don't want to give them a fancy car on their sixteenth birthday. They have to be hungry because I think hungry somehow equates with creativity because you have to figure out how to get what it is that you're hungry for. That's why when you give them too much, it's the end, really. They're never going to do anything.
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, this is a duh-ism, but you obviously didn't just define a successful child as one who gets into an Ivy League school.
Esther Wojcicki:
I don't think a successful child is one that gets into an Ivy League school. I think a successful child is one that follows their dreams. If you look at Malcolm Gladwell's book, chapter three of his book, he talks about what happens when the kids who are really struggling get into a really top-tier school and how they graduate feeling bad about themselves and they feel like they're the worst ones in the class.
You go through life thinking, "Oh my god, I'm not very good." The number one thing you want your kid to feel at the end of college is empowered. If they're going to a school where they feel like they're the lowest one in the class, they're not going to be empowered. So I don't recommend the Ivy's.
Guy Kawasaki:
At all?
Esther Wojcicki:
Unless, for some reason, they want to go and it's their idea. If I just think about Susan, my daughter, I remember when she told me she wanted to go to Harvard! We were shocked!
Guy Kawasaki:
Why?
Esther Wojcicki:
Because we're like, "Harvard?! Why would you want to go to Harvard?! We both went to Berkeley. That's good enough, it's great." Actually, we couldn't believe it. And she was stubborn. She's like, "Well, I want to go to Harvard." I was like, "Okay, okay." Well, I said, "We're going to have to eat potatoes for four years." But I was kind of shocked, but that was her idea and she managed to make it in without a four-point GPA, by the way. I was really impressed that she did it.
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, how would you now define a successful parent?
Esther Wojcicki:
One, I think a successful parent is one that feels, again, good about themselves and the way that they're interacting with their child, collaboration with that child. So one thing that defines a really successful parent is during the teenage years that child still talks to you and tells you about what's going on in their life whether it's good or bad because if you lose communication, you've lost everything.
Guy Kawasaki:
If I were having this conversation with Amy Chua, it would be quite different, right?
Esther Wojcicki:
I think it is quite different. I had a debate with her in Mexico. I don't know if you saw that debate. Yeah.
Guy Kawasaki:
I read that, yes.
Esther Wojcicki:
Her philosophy… well, I want to say that she did this out with the best intentions so I don't want to blame her for any bad intentions. She was trying to do the best for her kids.
Her theory is: I've been alive longer. I know best. I'm going to tell you what to do because I don't want you to make mistakes that I made. She was very controlling, and if you ask her children today how their childhood was, it's actually online, it's not a secret. They will say they had a very difficult childhood and it's because they couldn't even sleep over at a friend's house. They had to practice piano for hours per day. They had to do what their mom considered the most important. I think that that resulted in very unhappy kids.
Guy Kawasaki:
What do you think the biggest mistake parents are making right now?
Esther Wojcicki:
Number one big mistake is the helicopter parenting. So you can call it snowplow parenting or helicopter parenting.
Guy Kawasaki:
Lawnmower.
Esther Wojcicki:
Lawnmower parenting, I don't know what you call it, but what it's doing, it's preparing the road for the child as opposed to the child for the road. So you are clearing the way. Whenever they have a problem, you clear the way to make sure they don't have a problem.
So when then they go out in the world as adults, expect the road to be totally perfect and cleared. When it's not, they fall apart, they get depressed, they get anxious. We have a whole generation of very anxious people, and they need to believe in themselves and they need to accept life the way it is and move forward and try to change things and not call mom and say, "Oh my god, I have a fire in the kitchen."
Guy Kawasaki:
But you don't raise a finger for your kids to get into Stanford also?
Esther Wojcicki:
Are you kidding? Of course not! If they can't get in on their own, how do you think they're going to feel about themselves? I'm more worried about their self-image, the way they feel about themselves than I am about anything else. If they don't belong at Stanford, they don't belong there.
I have a granddaughter right now who's applying to Stanford, and she's on pins and needles because we haven't done anything to help her. There's no way that they would know she's related because her last name is different.
Guy Kawasaki:
You've done nothing?
Esther Wojcicki:
Nothing. The only thing we've done is she wanted help with her college essays. So somebody in the family helped her with her college essays, and we edited them. We wanted to make sure that made sense. But aside from that, nothing else.
She's rejoicing right now because she just got into the University of Texas in Austin, and that's a pretty awesome school actually. She also got into the University of Wisconsin, so I was like, "Hey, you don't need to worry about anything, you're already in!”
Guy Kawasaki:
It's nothing but upside. Yes, yes, yes. Well, what do you think is stressing kids the most right now?
Esther Wojcicki:
I think the parental anxiety stresses kids a lot, and the parents don't have to talk about it. Kids feel it. Just like when you go into a room, you can sense tension without somebody saying it. Kids, they sense that you're stressed about their future, that they might not be doing this right or that right. What they need to believe is that no matter what they decide to do, go to college, not go to college, and maybe they want to be a carpenter, who knows? We don't even have enough plumbers. We don't have enough electricians. If they want to do something, whatever they want to do, they should be able to do.
Guy Kawasaki:
What if somebody listening to this says, "Well it's fine for Esther to say that. One daughter's running 23andMe, one daughter is running YouTube, and one daughter's a surgeon or whatever she is. Okay, but none of them are plumbers."
Esther Wojcicki:
When they graduated from high school, I had no idea what they were going to be. I never tried to dictate. To this day, I have no idea what the grade point average was in college. I don't know most of the courses that they took in college. I know that Susan, who graduated from Harvard, majored in French and English history and lit. When she graduated, my question was, "Hey, so now what are you going to do with that?"
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay.
Esther Wojcicki:
Janet majored in international relations and is the only one that was more practical, molecular biophysics. I was like, "What are you going to do with that, anyway?"
Guy Kawasaki:
In the book, I'm referring to a part where you say that parents should trust their instincts and trust that they know what's best for their kids.
Esther Wojcicki:
Yes.
Guy Kawasaki:
But I want to take the extreme case. So let's say you know vaccination causes autism. So as a parent, despite all the research and the debunking of the theory that MMR creates autism, you know autism is caused by MMR. So you're not going to vaccinate your kids. How do you explain that? Because that's the antithesis of what you're saying, right? Sometimes parents do not know what's best for their kids.
Esther Wojcicki:
I think sometimes parents do not know what's best for their kids. I think all parents want to do whatever is best for their kids. All parents, really, that's their goal in life.
Just like with the autism thing, I think it's hard for a lot of parents to make that decision. I think that all the research shows that there is no correlation between the shots and the autism. It's so much easier to do now.
I did a lot of research when my kids were growing up, but I had to go to the library. It was a pain. And today, I can just do it online, and I would try to evaluate the information myself.
If you take a look at some of the data, all these kids are getting measles or they're getting diseases that have been eradicated, because the parents, I don't think have evaluated the information correctly - scarlet fever, you don't want your kids to have all those things, mumps, measles…
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, I don't mean this to be a podcast about vaccination as much as the concept to say that parents know what is best for their kids is not necessarily true.
Esther Wojcicki:
That's why I want to give the kids more autonomy. They're living in a different age, and just in my program, I want the kids to be in charge, because they see the world very differently than I see the world, and it's their world - they're inheriting this world.
If I am constantly in a position of telling them what to do, then first of all, they don't think and they don't get a sense of empowerment. And also, I might be wrong and I have been wrong before. One of the things I think that's unusual about me as a teacher is that I admit to my students when I'm wrong. I think that that has real benefits, because then they admit to me when they've made a mistake too, because it's open. The whole thing is ... the structure is open. The way the program's structured today is based on years and years of feedback from my students.
Guy Kawasaki:
I've heard parents say that, "Oh, now my kids don't read. When they want to learn how to do something, they watch YouTube, they go to Wikipedia. They're not learning to write, they dictate to their computer and the computer writes it out. They don't go to the library and do research. They use Google." So that's the half-empty view of the world, right? Do you think that all these YouTube, Wikipedia, Google is causing academic weakness or the lack of the ability to think? Or is it empowering them to open up places they would've never gone to?
Esther Wojcicki:
So I think the biggest revolution in this century is the ability to get information quickly. I was not able to do that last century. I had to go to the library to get that information.
I say to my students, "We learn Adobe, the whole Adobe suite, everything that they have. I don't care how you learn this, I don't care if somebody's teaching it to you, I don't care whether you're learning it on YouTube via video, I don't care. I just want you to know it." I can tell you they learn this stuff much faster than previous generations did. They're learning faster, they're communicating more effectively. They know how to look up information really fast. Compare a 19 or 20-year-old kid with somebody who's 60 and they're trying to get some place in New York City, who's going to get there first?"
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah.
Esther Wojcicki:
Okay?
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah.
Esther Wojcicki:
They know how to use this. So the bad side, there's two sides, right? The good side, the bad side. The bad side is they aren't writing as much. As a matter of fact, they don't even know how to write cursive anymore. I think this is bad.
Guy Kawasaki:
Why?
Esther Wojcicki:
Because the research shows that when you write things, you retain it better. So it's important to still learn to write and to take notes, not on your computer but with your hand. That's very important.
Guy Kawasaki:
You mean writing it out?
Esther Wojcicki:
I mean, writing it out. I actually make my students write it out whenever they're taking notes about something. They can also record it because you're doing an interview, you want to make sure you get the whole thing. But if you're recording something for an hour and then you have to write the story, you have to re-listen to that whole thing for an hour. I was like, "Take notes because then you have it. You know where in the interview to go and look. Otherwise, you're going to sit there for another hour and listen to that whole interview."
Guy Kawasaki:
I can give you a power tip that I just learned.
Esther Wojcicki:
Yeah.
Guy Kawasaki:
So there is an app called Descript, which I use. So these two tracks are going to be uploaded to Descript. Descript is going to transcribe it and send it back to me. So I don't need to listen to the whole hour, because it comes out as a text document.
Esther Wojcicki:
I’m writing this down right now.
Guy Kawasaki:
So that's Descript. Now, it gets even better, Esther…
Esther Wojcicki:
No.
Guy Kawasaki:
So now I have a Descript file and it's going to be word for word ninety percent accuracy of this conversation. Let's say there's a part where you say, "Well, yeah, I wasn't sure back in Ukraine ... No, really ..." And then you say what you want to say. I can select all that verbiage and tell Descript to ignore it, okay? Descript goes back to the server, removes the audio, and sends me new audio where that's gone.
Rather than having to go forward and back trying to edit audio, you just edit the text file. The text file then tells the audio to remove this part and send the new audio back. It can do things like this… this becoming a Descript file!
You can say remove all the uh’s, um’s and ah’s, and all of them are gone from the audio. It's a miracle.
Esther Wojcicki:
So you've revolutionized my class. Thank you, class of 2020! I'm going to share this on Wednesday. Thank you so much.
Guy Kawasaki:
For a podcaster, it's so much easier. Oh my god. Yeah.
When I turn in this transcript and file to the sound designer, the big editing is done. It's not like I have to tell them, “Well, at twenty-one minutes and six seconds to twenty-one minutes and forty seconds, cut that.” It's gone. He doesn't even see it. It's a beautiful thing. Anyway, Descript. Trust me.
Esther Wojcicki:
I just wrote it down.
Guy Kawasaki:
So you have a good interview when the interviewee is taking notes. I was on the board of trustees of Wikipedia. Okay? Which I think Wikipedia may be one of the main tools to save democracy, but let's not go down that path.
Even with my own kids' teachers in Silicon Valley, my kids come home and they say, "My teachers said I cannot site and use Wikipedia." I've even met with those teachers. I said, "Why is that?" They say, "Well, Wikipedia, anyone can change anything." I said that's not really true, because if you go into Wikipedia and say Planned Parenthood is selling baby parts, I guarantee you within two seconds that edit will go down. So I think Wikipedia is a great source of information. I'm just curious what you think. Would you let your students cite Wikipedia?
Esther Wojcicki:
So I'm one of the teachers who believes that Wikipedia is great.
Guy Kawasaki:
You're the only one I've met so far.
Esther Wojcicki:
Well, because also I teach kids how to edit Wikipedia itself. So they need to understand it. I think these teachers don't understand it, and that's part of the reason why they don't recommend it. They think that everybody can just upload anything they want to and it just stays there forever.
Guy Kawasaki:
It's not true at all.
Esther Wojcicki:
Which is just the opposite of what is going on. If you go to Britannica, it's out of date. Fine if you like Britannica, but it's at least twenty years out of date. I want something that is current, that is up to date. I can find out right now, today, about what happened with this whole Iran situation. I can go to Wikipedia and it's going to be up there right now.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yes.
Esther Wojcicki:
It's going to be accurate, because all these people, it's crowdsourcing.
Guy Kawasaki:
They're hammering it.
Esther Wojcicki:
They're hammering it!
Guy Kawasaki:
Yes.
Esther Wojcicki:
This is one of the problems that I think we face in education is changing the traditions. The tradition is you go to a Britannica, and it takes a long time for teachers to change their behavior patterns. As a matter of fact, they're still teaching based on what was discussed in 1893, the committee of ten? Today, 2020, they're still doing that which is ridiculous.
That's the battle I'm fighting with this globalmoonshots.org. The problem is: how do we move education to the twenty-first century?
Guy Kawasaki:
What's the answer?
Esther Wojcicki:
I think we need to change. It's actually a little more complicated, but I'll try to simplify it. So the power actually lies with the people. The people impact the school board who then impacts the superintendent and the principal and then the teacher. The teacher is serving the recipe designed by the school board last century. They don't change their curriculum.
Guy Kawasaki:
Because they're powerless?
Esther Wojcicki:
No, it's just because tradition is very hard to change. They're teaching that they have the same books. We're teaching subjects in the same way. Physics, chemistry, the interaction between these subjects. There's no discussion of the interaction. The people in this country have to make it clear to the school boards that they want some change. They want the world… we can't solve today's problems with the same thinking that we use to create those problems.
Guy Kawasaki:
Why would someone become a teacher today? You just described this situation, they're vastly underpaid.
Esther Wojcicki:
I don't know. I'm probably would not be a teacher today, which is pretty sad to say. They are vastly underpaid. They are like a waitress in a restaurant - they're serving the food, which is the curriculum, decided upon by the school board. Whether they like that curriculum or not, they're forced to serve it, and the kids are forced to eat it, whether they like it or not. It's a real problem.
Guy Kawasaki:
And… is there a solution here?
Esther Wojcicki:
Yes. I think the solution is people have to speak up and say, "We want some changes in the school system." Let's look at Finland for example. Let's look at Singapore. Let's look at what they're doing in Shanghai. Some of these countries that are doing really well. What's going on here in America? Here, one of the problems with changing America, by the way, fifty states, every state has its own secretary of education, and within every state, every school district has its own school board. So that's democracy, right? So it takes a long time to change anything because everybody has an opinion. It's a problem.
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, but arguably, today, it's better to have fifty states with fifty superintendents and school boards then to have one secretary of education.
Esther Wojcicki:
Oh, that's true. So we had some major problems with our secretary of education and no Child Left Behind, which left all the children behind, actually. It's true. There's pluses and minuses. I think that we need to support the school board in making curriculum changes that are going to reflect the twenty-first century.
Teachers should be able to use Wikipedia. Kids should be able to use YouTube to find out information. Do you know, what? They block YouTube in a lot of schools. They take phones away from kids. They don't teach you how to use your phone. They confiscate your phone. So the question I have-
Guy Kawasaki:
The whole country of France does that, right?
Esther Wojcicki:
The whole country of France. My question is, how successful was prohibition? Oh, how successful is the drug program?
Guy Kawasaki:
War on drugs. Yeah.
Esther Wojcicki:
Yeah, war on drugs. How successful is prohibition in general for anything?
Guy Kawasaki:
So if I'm a teacher listening to this podcast, what do I do? Commit suicide, go back and get a computer science degree? What do I do?
Esther Wojcicki:
Well, what I did was I rebelled. If you look at ... I wouldn't follow the rules. I did run into some serious problems, but I can tell you who was really happy - my students. They were happy, the parents were happy. The administration was like, "Oh my god, that teacher out there, we don't know what to do with her." But I think it'd be great if more people could start using what I call this TRICK philosophy in class. It's a mindset.
Trust your students a little bit, give them some respect. Their ideas matter. If they want to do something that's totally different, give them an opportunity to try some of these things. There's such rigidity in the system that a lot of kids I know in different areas of the country, the dropout rate is pretty significant.
Here in Palo Alto, we have a less than one percent dropout rate. Many communities have really good retention rates. But the areas where they need it the most, the kids are dropping out of school because it's like a legitimized prison.
Guy Kawasaki:
You just mentioned TRICK, and can we spend five minutes and do the whole acronym?
Esther Wojcicki:
Yes. So TRICK, this is my book. This is basically the organization of the book. The first one is trust, and it starts with you as a parent trusting your instincts, trusting yourself.
Guy Kawasaki:
Except vaccination.
Esther Wojcicki:
Except vaccination. If your child's hungry, I don't care what the doctor says, I mean he gets to eat.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay.
Esther Wojcicki:
Trust yourself. The person who knows that child the best is the mother and the father. They know the child the best. It's your first responsibility to trust your instincts and then trust your child. Trust that your child is going to have some common sense and be able to do some things independently. When you trust them, it's crazy. But then they trust themselves. They feel good about themselves. You want your child to feel empowered. You don't want them clinging all the time, crying all the time, afraid to try new things. You want them to try new things. It's the world. So that's trust.
Respect is closely related and it's also part of a relationship. You want to respect their ideas and they do have wacky ideas as children are always coming up with crazy ideas. I mean, my students, some of their ideas are off the charts. I have let them do them. I mean, including I once let them start a magazine on how to braid hair. I was like, "What? We're going to pay this for this?" It turned out that was a super popular magazine. Today, it's like one of the most popular here, but they're doing more than hair. They're doing other things as well. That was their idea.
You respect their ideas; you give them independence to try out some of these things. You collaborate with them instead of constantly telling them what to do, give them an opportunity to have a say. Where do we want to go for vacation? What about what do you want to do for your birthday? Both birthday parties, they're planned by the parents. "We're telling you this is your party and this is who's coming and how we're going to do it." Let the kids help plan. Let them plan a trip. Let them plan a dinner. That's really easy. Or let them even plan a dessert if you want to get down to it.
The number one most important part is the last letter here, kindness. Can we treat kids with kindness? When you treat them with kindness, they treat you with kindness. You illustrate kindness in the classroom. You, the teacher, or the parent, they then are kind themselves. You want kids that are kind.
Usually if you take a look at the people that are really angry and nasty and mean, they were treated like that as children. You don't want that. You want somebody that is kind, kind to you. Especially as a parent, you get older, you want kind kids, right? You're going to be there when you need them. That's my acronym, TRICK.
Guy Kawasaki:
I love that acronym.
Esther Wojcicki:
It actually works really well in the work world. Also, corporate world. When you treat your employees well, when you care about them, I mean, they'll do anything for you. They will work. I mean, not just eight hours, they'll work sixteen hours, because they know you care and they care.
Guy Kawasaki:
You say in the book that kids rise to expectations. The way you said it was a very positive way that if you expect a lot, you get a lot.? But in the book, you discuss where parents' expectations for their kid was to be a scientist or to be a doctor, something like that, that's a case where you might not want the kid to rise to the expectation, right? You want them to...
Esther Wojcicki:
But see, what you're doing with that or what the parents are doing with that is the expectation is for a specific career, you don't want to put your finger on a specific career. You want expectations for excellence. Those excellence is speaking skills, writing skills, thinking skills, collaboration skills, the skills you need to be excellent in any career.
My expectations, I've taken kids in who literally can't write a complete sentence, and I was like, "What have you been doing for the last nine years in school?" My expectation is, "Yeah, you're fine." I was like my number one statement to them, "Hey, you seem to speak just fine. You're not speaking in fragments, you're speaking. If you speak well, you can write well, just have to practice a little. Believe in yourself."
Guy Kawasaki:
That's a very good distinction. I wish TRICK could add a G, which is grit.
Esther Wojcicki:
I do think that grit is really important, and there is a G in there. The G is in the trust and respect part, because when you are trusted and respected, you have grit, you stick to it. You're like, "I believe in myself.” Just like I believe I was doing the right thing, and I stuck it out even though I was starving most of the time at Berkeley because the food situation could have been better. You have grit when you believe in yourself.
Guy Kawasaki:
Take this case in Silicon Valley. So more helicopter parents, snowplow parents, all this, get anything they want, tutors, been taking violence since age two. How do you teach a kid now? Let's say they just read your book or just heard this podcast. “Esther's right. We got to teach our kids to be gritty.”
Esther Wojcicki:
Are you talking about kids that are older or younger or?
Guy Kawasaki:
Both, I mean…
Esther Wojcicki:
You know what? Just let your kids do some things independently. You will see that they will then have grit. I mean just like this… I just bought this processing unit for this computer.
Guy Kawasaki:
Is it Raspberry Pi?
Esther Wojcicki:
Yeah. This kid's building this computer. I also bought him a four-year guarantee in case something terrible happens and then he can call an 800 number or whatever. I was like, "Now, you've got it, you have it. Now, you can do it. You can make this computer, whatever." I mean, I can't figure this out. Looks too complicated for me but he's going to do it because he wants to play more computer games. That's the goal.
So some of the other kids, what did they get? Well, one of them got ... she's an artist. She got art supplies. The other one is just ... he's like a major bookworm and he wanted a subscription to The Economist. That was pretty expensive. That's-
Guy Kawasaki:
How old?
Esther Wojcicki:
He's fourteen.
Guy Kawasaki:
And he wants a subscription to The Economist?
Esther Wojcicki:
Yeah.
Guy Kawasaki:
I'd say that's a high-quality problem, Esther.
Esther Wojcicki:
I know. So anyway, he got that. Some of the other gifts, they were all tied into whatever it is that they want to do.
Guy Kawasaki:
Their passions.
Esther Wojcicki:
Their passions. One of the kids got one of those ... I don't know what you call it. You roll on it. It has a wheel and you stand and it's like ... It's a toy. It's on the ground and it's electric and it scoots all over the place.
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh really?
Esther Wojcicki:
Yeah, I know. She's kind of into gymnastics.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah, it makes sense.
Esther Wojcicki:
But what we did is try to tie into whatever passion they had already and encourage that passion. I think that that encourages more grit and whatever it is that they personally want to do.
Guy Kawasaki:
Let's suppose that you are the dean of admissions of a college. Forget the reality of board of trustees and all that, but you are the dean, that's your kingdom. You say, "This is how we're going to admit students." Are you looking at SATs, GPAs, essays, interviews, visits, legacy, buildings? What would be the application process for your college that you're the dean of admissions?
Esther Wojcicki:
That's a great question. So I think I still would look at grades because I think grades indicate how hard you work and your grit to tolerate things that you probably don't even like. I probably would do away with test scores because I think there's so much preparation for tests and training and it doesn't really indicate your ability, it indicates your preparation for the test.
Guy Kawasaki:
We're talking SAT?
Esther Wojcicki:
SAT. I would replace that more with projects that you might have done during your four years of high school that mattered to you. What are you really interested in and what have you done and accomplished? I just think about some of my students who have been volunteering in East Palo Alto for years. I think that that commitment is more important than having a high SAT score. I would look at your grades and how you performed and your commitment and passions in life.
I guess many schools are doing away with SAT scores, actually, right now. If I didn't see all these testing companies that are making a fortune on parents who are fearful, and I think it's unfair that some kids are trained to take the test and other kids take it cold, and then you really don't know what the abilities are of the kids that are just taking it cold. That's why I think it's not a really effective evaluation.
Guy Kawasaki:
I don't think there's any proven correlation between SAT and success in college or life.
Esther Wojcicki:
I mean, with my children, I refused to pay the fee. So I was like, "You're going to have to take the test on your own. This is it." Fortunately, they did okay. They never went to any training sessions.
I'm not sure they would get into college today, because as I said none them had a four-point GPA and they were ... Anne, her number one thing that she did was ice skating. That's all she wanted to do was ice skate, be a competitive ice skater.
Guy Kawasaki:
She played hockey in college.
Esther Wojcicki:
She played ice hockey in college.
Guy Kawasaki:
Where?
Esther Wojcicki:
At Yale.
Guy Kawasaki:
She's played D1?
Esther Wojcicki:
Yes. Yale ice hockey. And-
Guy Kawasaki:
Does she still play?
Esther Wojcicki:
Well, she still does competitive skating but not-
Guy Kawasaki:
Not hockey?
Esther Wojcicki:
No, that team traveled with five doctors, because everybody was always getting beaten up. So I was like, "Anne, this might not be a good switch."
Guy Kawasaki:
We're almost at the end, okay?
Esther Wojcicki:
This is really fun. I love it. You have great questions. Honestly, this is the best interview that I've had yet!
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh really? Okay. You talk about grit, which is about determination and all that kind of good stuff, and yet, there is a time and place to give up and pivot. For example, I went to law school for two weeks and quit. I would not say that's evidence of grit. I can justify it forty years later and say it just wasn't for me. But at the time, Asian-American quitting law school, that's like hara-kiri times. So how do you know when to quit?
Esther Wojcicki:
So I'm going to answer that with a story. So we had this neighbor next door named George Dantzig. I don't know if you ever heard of him?
Guy Kawasaki:
Yes.
Esther Wojcicki:
George Dantzig was a graduate student, I don't know, with some Ivy League school somewhere. He came into class late, and he saw this math problem on the board and he assumed it's the homework.
Guy Kawasaki:
It was homework. That's a great story!
Esther Wojcicki:
So he was one of these kids whose hair was unkempt and whatever. He went home and he was embarrassed that he was late. So he worked all night on this problem, and he finally solved it.
Came into class the next day, the professor, he's like, "Sorry, I missed class. I was late, whatever." He presented the solution. The professor almost fell over! He said, "I put this on the board because this problem hasn't been able to be solved for more than fifty years." Do you think he would have tried this and pursued it to that degree if he would've known it?
Guy Kawasaki:
No.
Esther Wojcicki:
Never.
Guy Kawasaki:
Never.
Esther Wojcicki:
That is grit.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. But I asked you, when is it okay to quit?
Esther Wojcicki:
When do you quit? You quit when you really think that there's no hope for you to ever succeed, be happy, do what you're hoping to do. If you've tried sufficiently, and I think one thing about you and your story is you knew yourself and you knew that whether you went through this training or not, you would not be happy at the end. So you had the courage to quit, which took a lot of courage in a Korean family.
Guy Kawasaki:
That's how I look at it.
Esther Wojcicki:
It is Korean, right?
Guy Kawasaki:
No, Japanese.
Esther Wojcicki:
Japanese.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah.
Esther Wojcicki:
Well, anyway, Asian.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah.
Esther Wojcicki:
Yes, I think that that takes a lot of courage to be able to stand up and say, "This is not for me." And so you have to try it in order to make it happen. But you can't just quit in advance. It is not the way to do it. You should try something before you say you don't like it.
Guy Kawasaki:
How long is-
Esther Wojcicki:
Well, you tried for two weeks.
Guy Kawasaki:
How long is the minimum?
Esther Wojcicki:
Some people try for a semester. For example, my children, they tried music for a while. Some of them was a year, some of them was six months. Some of them were longer than that, but it wasn't for them. They're not musicians.
I have a music gene in my family. One of my grandsons inherited this music gene. But my children didn't inherit it. But they tried for a while and it was okay. I said, "Okay, you really don't like it. You're really miserable. You're not doing so well. All the kids at the recital. Okay, you aren't doing such a great job at the recital. Everybody else looks like Mozart." So I think-
Siri:
“…search the web for that. Just tap the search link below.”
Guy Kawasaki:
What's that? Siri?
Esther Wojcicki:
Siri. I didn't turn it off.
Guy Kawasaki:
You didn't say, “Hey Siri.”
Esther Wojcicki:
No, I didn't. This phone I think it follows me. I'm going to turn this off. I'm not kidding. I'm going to shut it down. They always say that there's a lot of spies around listening to you. Here.
Guy Kawasaki:
If there are spies watching my email and text messages and all that, all they're seeing is, "Okay, I'll pick him up. Okay, I'll pick her up. Okay, I'll get it." That's it. If you want to know my life, that's it. There's no deep, dark secrets.
I love this topic of grit. So you have kids, they come home and they say, "I hate math. I can't figure out math. I like film, or I like art, or I like writing, or journalism. I hate math. I can't handle it." What do you tell them?
Esther Wojcicki:
I say one of the most important things in life is being able to add and subtract. It's called finance. You need to know this just to get along in life. So while you might not like it right now, I want you to figure out ways where you can understand and like it. There are all these little videos online.
Have you heard of Khan Academy for example? That will help you understand. The reason you hate math is because you don't understand what's going on. The way they teach math, if you don't understand it, heck with it. You're still moving on. So then you're building a foundation that doesn't exist. Because that's why people don't like math because they didn't understand the basic. You're building on a basic that's not there.
Guy Kawasaki:
In my particular case, when my kids say something like that, in math in particular, I happen to agree with them. It's been a long time since I used calculus, ever!
Esther Wojcicki:
That's right. So sometimes math isn't useful.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yes.
Esther Wojcicki:
But I think-
Guy Kawasaki:
Sometimes?
Esther Wojcicki:
No. Just like geometry. I think geometry is incredibly useful. Knowing the angles, knowing which areas or ways to get from point A to point B in the least amount of time. I think there's a lot of practical applications. The way that we're teaching math does not relate to the real world, that's why everybody hates it. If you knew a real-world application of math, you won't hate it. The number one thing that people need to do, teach: Why, why are you studying this? Why?
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, the answer honestly is to do well on the SAT.
Esther Wojcicki:
No, that's not why. In my journalism class, why study? Because the main goal in journalism, collect information and then try to figure out what's most important. That's a life skill. You're learning journalism because you're learning a skill for life. That's it.
Guy Kawasaki:
I agree. No argument here.
Esther Wojcicki:
But the same thing for math. Okay, I used to teach math for a while, and I can't remember any calculus at all now. None. Because I don't use it. It's just like I also used to speak Russian. I can't say anything either. If you don't use something, then you lose it. If there's math that you studied, that you lose it, and if they don't make it relevant to the real world ever, it doesn't ever stick.
Research shows that even if you get an A on a test, you will only remember thirty-two percent of it after two weeks. Why? It's useless.
Guy Kawasaki:
That much? That much?
Esther Wojcicki:
That much.
Guy Kawasaki:
So you have a thirty-some odd year and a very successful teaching career, teacher of the year, all that kind of stuff. You have three very successful daughters, a book. What are you most proud of?
Esther Wojcicki:
Actually, I think what I'm the most proud of if I think about it is this method that I've created or not created, that I've tried to understand for how to teach people effectively.
Guy Kawasaki:
The TRICK method?
Esther Wojcicki:
The TRICK Method because how did I do it with my daughters? I sort of invented it all as I was going along. I use the same thing in my classes. I use the same thing whenever I'm helping companies set up whatever structure they are setting up.
I think I'm very proud of my students and my daughters, of course. But I think the fact that I was ... I had enough grit, let's put it this way. In order to change the way that education was happening in a classroom and that I stuck to it, even though I was being criticized, harassed, was problematic. I still stuck to it. Eventually, this TRICK idea that I came up with, it took me a while to figure out what I was doing. I had to ask my students what it was. It's like, "Why do you like this class? I don't understand. Why are you here instead of the class next door?" They're the ones that helped me understand what I was doing. I didn't know it.

Guy Kawasaki:
I hope that Esther has helped you understand the role of creativity, independence, and innovation in education. Remember TRICK: Trust, Respect, Independence, Collaboration, and Kindness. It applies to education as well as business today.

I'm Guy Kawasaki, and this is Remarkable People. My thanks to Jeff Sieh and Peg Fitzpatrick for their constant flow of kindness. Mahalo also to Jonathan Rosenberg for making this interview happen.

This is Remarkable People.