Born in rural China during the Cultural Revolution, Yong Zhao recollects that he had no talent as a farmer, so his father sent him to school where he had the opportunity to develop self-confidence. His educational journey took him from the Sichuan Institute of Foreign Languages to the United States and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Zhao is an elected fellow of the International Academy for Education, a professor at the University of Kansas and the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. He has written over thirty books, including the recent Learners Without Borders: New Learning Pathways for All Students
and An Education Crises Is a Terrible Thing to Waste: How Radical Changes Can Spark Student Excitement and Success
. A highly sought-after voice in education, Dr. Zhao’s vision aligns with the key drivers of success for twice-exceptional students, including “personalizable learning.” In his view, the entire school system should be flexible enough for each child to discover their greatness. In this interview, Dr. Zhao dove deeply into his insights, how they apply to neurodiversity, and what it will take to create the change all learners need to thrive.
How has your experience of parenting shaped your views about how we should be “doing school?”
As parents, we don’t own our children, so that’s the first big thing. The second thing is we need to create space for them. For example, I never looked at their grades all these years. I never even asked them about that. I wanted them to develop an opportunity for self-determination, to say, “What would you like to do?” Children have their own life. That is the key. If a child decides to say, “I have to be responsible for my own life,” then they seek opportunities. You can support them, but they have to make a decision to say, “This is my life.” Schools typically delay that, saying, “You should learn this. I will teach you this. And I will test you on this.” That’s it.
You’ve talked about how your parents and your schools didn’t fixate on improving your weaknesses and were open to your explorations. What parallels do you see between your experiences in a one room schoolhouse and your vision for what we should be doing today to support children?
In my little village, school seemed to be a great sanctuary for me to avoid things I was not good at. I was not constrained. I’m not endorsing or glorifying poverty, or saying that’s a great education, but I happened to have benefited a lot from a lack of teaching, a lack of instruction, a lack of packaging, a lack of forcing you to do something. I had that space. So, if you look at the U.S. education system, could we not create space for children to pursue what they want to do, for them to become self-determined? The resources today in the U.S. that are available to even the poorest children are much more than what was available to me, but we have stripped our children out of those different rich opportunities. Can schools today create sanctuaries where children can feel comfortable, passionate, and where they can move forward?
A lot of the concepts you’ve outlined in your work mesh so well with the approaches that support twice exceptional learners. How do you see your vision aligning with neurodiversity and cognitive diversity?
Cognitive diversity and neurodiversity are probably too narrow because human beings are also diversified in personality. We have natural born diversity, but contextual or situational diversity cannot be ignored. Children born in Palo Alto are quite different from children born in a mountainous village in Wyoming. That early stimuli can change a lot of human beings. I think that’s something in education we often forget about. That’s why sometimes I object to the ideas about “learning for learning’s sake.” Most people cannot afford that. You have to create value for other people in order to make a living. You’ve got to do something that’s valuable, that somebody would view as valuable, to be a successful individual. I hate the term “successful” because people have different definitions; to me successful really means, very simply, that you can make your living, that somebody’s willing to pay you to do something, and that leads to a happy psychological and social life. Now that demands, actually, a jagged profile, because nobody can be good at everything. You are good in certain domains and that greatness can translate into value for other people.
I think what you’re saying, too, is that what you might do to support a neurodivergent learner—because they don’t fit the structure we’ve created—would be good for everyone.
It is. If everyone is good at something, and they use what they’re good at to help another person, then that other person will use what they’re good at, too. It’s not entirely transactional. But that’s what the modern economy is based on. Right now, we have this “Great Resignation.” Why do people not want to work? It’s very hard to believe, right? But it’s very simple. They never found their passion. If you’re just doing a job to bring some food home, well if you can get out of it, you might want to. But imagine that everybody’s following their passion, everyone’s doing something they really enjoy, why would you want to quit? You don’t want to quit. We have arrived at an economy where you really have to do things that are passion-driven, where you feel good—and that are good for others.
[perfectpullquote align=”left” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]
Cognitive diversity and neurodiversity are probably too narrow because human beings are also diversified in personality.[/perfectpullquote]
Helping identify and develop strengths and talents is core to supporting 2e learners. What are the best practices you’ve seen? Are there any schools or communities leading the way?
Think about Sudbury or Summerhill School. Those are over 100 years old. Those schools have always done well with the exceptional, twice exceptional, or three times exceptional. The first thing is you just have to accept people as different. I think that’s our biggest trouble in mainstream schools, they refuse to accept or to deal with differences among people. The idea is to homogenize. But you can’t really homogenize. Those schools have done well because they accept that you’re okay to be different. You are normal to be different. Montessori has certain things that support children’s growth; for example, they don’t force you into, “Oh, you’re age five, now you should do this.” They follow you; they have multi-age grouping. But the thing is this: Do you
accept? Or do you
expect? It’s really important to let the child lead and acknowledge they have the right and ability to lead.
When we talk about best practices for supporting twice exceptional students among teachers, we often get asked, “How can I do flexible learning while maintaining classroom order?” “How can I implement these things when I have thirty kids in a room?” How do you address those questions?
The question about how to maintain order: You don’t maintain order, actually. I was just in Australia a few weeks ago. I went to an elementary school that was very open. Children engaged in what they chose to do, painting, art, reading. Nobody was bothering others. Everybody was engaged in their own thing. I used to joke that we talk about classroom discipline, and perhaps 60% of books in education are written about discipline or motivation, but no, you don’t need it. If a child is engaged in what they want to do, they are afraid of
you bothering
them. So, you don’t need to maintain some so-called “order.” That’s really the big thing I don’t think many teachers understand. When you force kids to do what you want them to do, they will cause trouble. They reject it, they refuse it, pretend to do it.
How do you do this with thirty kids? You should never think that you’re teaching thirty kids. You’re only teaching one child and that one child is driving their learning. You’ve got to follow them. If everyone has their own pathway, not waiting for you to instruct them, then you can have a very different way of working. It’s tutoring, it’s mentoring, it’s actually bi-relational. Children in this school in Australia were listening to their teacher because they were planning to build some kind of museum of dinosaurs and they loved it. They went to the playground and found some sticks they thought of as dinosaur bones. But there was also one child, one young girl from first grade, reading her own thing. The teacher was not bothering her. A few kids were doing drawings of themselves. So, teachers have different plans, but it’s really the students who choose to do certain things.
You write about the lack of flexibility that everyone in the system feels—teachers, administrators, students, parents. A lot of people desire predictability and control because it makes them feel secure. How do we address that intractable inflexibility to bring the changes you’re laying out?
Seven years ago, I was invited to Fort Leavenworth by some generals, who were talking about building a new university for the U.S. Army. A four-star general said something really interesting. He said in the Iraq War, there was a massive change from
command and control to
mission and control. He said in World War Two, you had to make sure every soldier listened to you, and you marshaled hundreds of thousands of soldiers with tanks. In the Iraq War, though, you have your own foxhole. The soldier just needs to understand the mission, and he will take action. You have to trust the soldier and train the soldier to do that. They can’t really command people like they used to. They have to react very quickly. That hit me very hard: If the military is taking a different approach, why shouldn’t education?
Educators today are very hemmed in by curriculum requirements, testing standards, parent demands, and that makes them feel like they can’t have that flexibility. How do we help educators get on board with the shift that you have in mind?
First, we should just accept that changes on that scale come very slowly. Any big changes that you are advocating—relax the standards, relax the testing or accountability—that will take a much longer time. Remember the U.S. used to have very independent school districts and the state did not have control of them. But gradually, the government said, “We have a problem with not knowing how our students are doing, so let’s design one system so we can manage our students.” So, my first answer to all who want to advocate is this: You write, you talk, you publish, you broadcast, and you do everything possible. You might affect one person, you might affect two, but it takes a long time. No large government education system can change fast. That’s not their job.
We need some people who are social movement leaders, who can distill messages into simple and inspirational messages. I would love if there was an opportunity to build an innovators hub where we all come together because all the innovations talk about the same thing; no grades, no tests, no standards, no curriculum, but we have different approaches. Why don’t all of the innovative schools work together? A social movement requires all of them to be aligned.
The other thing is that we as individuals can do something. If you’re invited to a school district, try to train them as much as possible. If you have students, teach them the way we want them to be taught. If you’re a good writer, write something, the media is open. Everybody can do something to influence students, parents, neighbors. Really, we have to believe we can do something ourselves.
