How not to be average
[Applause]
you’re born
into an average middle class family in
hanoi
your parents work really hard to make
enough money to send you and your other
sibling to public schools
have some savings and hopefully can take
the family out on a vacation
once a year you attend an average class
in an average school you’re the average
student
so that’s why you work really hard to
get sorted into a probably good high
school and then hopefully a decent
college
from there life is easy you’ll graduate
with a good degree
get a good job in a big city find the
love of your life
get married raise your kids and then you
will work really hard to make enough
money to send your kids to public
schools
have some savings and hopefully can take
the family out on the vacation
twice a year repeat how many of you here
felt that
what i just described is expected to be
your life can you show
your hands all right
like many of you i this i had all the
conditions to live this life
to live this super average life i was
born in an
average middle class family in hanoi i
attended public schools my whole life
and i was i was an average student in a
good high school and
i was about to take the university
entrance exam
until one day at 16 i decided that you
know what
this is not the life that i want to live
one of my favorite teachers
used to say that there are two choices
when it comes to
how you want to live your life the first
choice
is that you can just follow the path
that is set in front of you and just
step along the grand rocks
all the way this is the popular path
and there are many people marching with
you on this part
uh people walking in front of you behind
you on the left and the right of you
you’re marching all together to this
society idea of success
the second choice is that
you it’s what they call the roadless
travel or
it’s a path where you do remarkable
things because you choose to
you choose not to stay with what the
society expected of you
and instead you opened your mind and
your heart to the endless possibilities
of the war around you i was following
the first path for the first 16 years of
my life
i was walking with the giants
and today i want to share with you about
how i need to work
from the normal road and march on my own
path
and what this experience has taught me
and my idea is that
you don’t have to follow a predetermined
route that is
set for you by the society and if you
follow
your own path if you’re brave enough to
follow your own path
you will find your own success so
and if we can apply this to education it
would be really amazing so let me tell
you
a personal story i love mathematics as a
kid
and i used to in secondary and in
primary school i would spend hours every
night working on advanced math problems
what i enjoy most about working on a
math problem
is not to find the answer it is to find
many different ways
to get to the answer and there are many
many ways
that you can do this in math right and
my teacher up to that point
really appreciated this and they praise
me for my creativity
when i approach a math problem until i
get to high school so
let me introduce you my high school math
teacher
right my high school math teacher was
probably one of the most ocd person you
can ever meet
he’s obsessed with getting everything
right according to his way
his favorite saying right you do not
know the way let me show you the way let
me show you my way
so math class became more like dictation
class
he would read he would write the problem
on the board he would solve that and
then we would copy his answer
and every exam we have to do it word by
word if you get a word wrong
you get a point on so gradually
my passion for math disappear
the possibilities that i find in a math
problem in approaching a math problem
disappear and or in bigger scope i lost
interest in
exploring the different possibilities of
life
at that moment i realized how how much
important or
how much i value the power of being
different of finding a different way
so at 16 i i had a dream
and i had a dream that one day i would
be able
to study abroad to explore whatever i’m
curious about
that i can travel a lot and have friends
from all around the world
because i know how hard it would be for
my family to afford a kid to study
abroad
we had one vocation once a year and it’s
domestic i’ve never been outside of
vietnam at that point
and i know how hard it would be for me
to be able to study abroad but at that
point
i’m determined i’m determined that i
will make the second choice
to go the other path to follow what i
thought was best for me
so in the summer when i was 16 trying
grinding
two to three hours every night searching
for any scholarship opportunity
that would ease the financial burden for
my family
and luckily i found out about united
world college
this is what they say on their website
united world college they say that in
two years
you will be studying in one of the 18
campuses around the world
where you will have friends from around
the world you get to travel a lot
around the world and you can you’re free
to explore whatever
you’re curious about does that sound
familiar
that was my dream right so i jump and
okay i’m gonna apply it let it apply how
hard can it be
right so there are three applications
round the first one you fill in the form
an application form got that then you
get an interview with an alumni
i got that and then enter the final 30
students round
and you know when you walk into a group
or an event like this you kind of know
who is who
so data scientists have taught us that
every population
can be broken down into a bell curve and
for those of you who do not know what
the bell curve
is this is what it looks like you always
have low performers you have high
performers
and then you have the average so
consistently throughout my life
i’ve been always been the average right
average student average school
everything was average about me
sometimes i move
forward a little bit sometimes i move
backwards but very consistently
i’ve been this person up there and
when i entered that final round when i
joined the facebook group for the final
30 finalists for the united world
college scholarship
i immediately knew i was here okay
you can laugh because it’s funny now but
it was not funny at the town
people were from uh their province’s
national olympians team
they were presidents of some big name
projects they know how to play musical
instruments
traditional musical instruments they
know how to speak two to three languages
some of them even got longer hair than
me how am i supposed to compete with
that
right so i decided to re-evaluate myself
on the curve
and this is what i came up with are you
ready boom i was a potato
i felt that i panicked right i started
questioning myself
why me a kid who competes in no national
competition
play leads no club or plays no musical
instruments
get into this round of five of the the
final 30
best people for this scholarship and the
more i look at myself in comparison
to those around me with the other
applicants the more
average or below average i felt and i
knew deeply at that point is that being
average was never enough
in order to get this scholarship you
have to be the best of the best and i’m
being the worst of the worst
so one night i told my mom that
okay mom listen i don’t want to go to ho
chi minh to embarrass myself
in front of all these amazing
individuals um
i i don’t know what to do please tell me
and my mom told me a few words
that changed my life forever and i would
like to share this with you
she said that you need to stop focusing
on the things that you do not have and
start
focusing on the things that you do and
you have something unique
that absolutely no one else in this
world has
let’s think about it for a moment it was
the night before i took my flight
to ho chi minh for the final interview
round and
it was the night that i realized that
you know i don’t have to be
above average i don’t i can feel
comfortable being average or even below
average in some aspects
because everyone has their own strengths
and weaknesses
and up until today i think that i got
the uwc scholarship
not because of the things that i did not
have but because of the unique things
that the selection comedy only see in me
if you focus on the strength
instead of your weaknesses you go very
far and let me tell you a funny side
story
i watched my first ted talk when i was
14 and i couldn’t remember
what it was about but the 17 minute talk
was so
interesting that i was hooked into it
that i had a dream that one day i could
be standing on the tenth stage
making extremely long pauses
and blowing people’s mind right that was
my dream so when ted be uv came to me
with an offer
i it was like this again it was a dream
come true moment right
so until i was so excited to talk and
then i had all this
planned drafting in my head until i saw
the speaker line
up with all these incredible big names
in education
mr hill mr thumb mark
kevin everyone and then i thought of
myself as
the potato at the end of the curve again
that’s how i re-evaluated myself in the
town so what i learned is that
you will always find reasons you will
always find reasons to disqualify
yourself
for something you always find reasons to
disqualify yourself from something right
and you always think that you’re not
smart enough you’re not inspiring enough
you’re not old enough you’re not
experienced enough
it turns out that our education system
has trained us
to look at one person and judge whether
whether that person stand in a group
using one single bell curve
it turns out that the bell curve was
right and wrong
when you look at the person holistically
there are infinite bell curves
i’m sorry i’m sorry we never put a
metric on the bell
curve is it measuring mathematics
reading skill
athleticism coding public speaking
prestigious college
it turns out that if you if you look at
a person holistically there are infinite
bankers
when it comes to how you judge that
person and where that person is standing
in a group there’ll be belkers
that you’re low performers there will be
bankers that you’re average
there’ll be bankruptcy above average but
the sum of all this
comes with one idea is that each and
every one of us today have something
unique
that absolutely no one else in this
world has because
of the combination of different belkers
that we have
and that is my belief fast forward five
years later
i’ve been able to travel around the
world i’ve been able to have a lot of
friends
from all around the world uh i’ve been
free to explore anything that i’m
curious about
due to the education that i receive but
most importantly and this is the best
part
is that i’ve been able to inspire many
others
to follow this dream to walk on their
own path
and pursue their passion and i think
that
if you are brave enough to embrace your
uniqueness
and walk on your own path you will end
up with a reality that is way bigger
than your dream
and you can trust that from me so what
would this look like if we apply this
principle
to our education system what would this
look like
i’ve seen what this looks like and it’s
absolutely amazing
i would like to start with a statement
that i believe that creativity
plays a crucial role in this in this
journey of helping people finding their
own path creativity
and i define creativity here as finding
new ways to solve old problems finding
new ways of solving
problems the problems we’re facing at
hand right now is how to live
a happy and meaningful life and what i’m
proposing it
is we need to use creativity in this for
the past five years
i’ve been working with an organization
called the creative kid program
or ckp for short which aims to boost
creativity
in vietnamese students and there are
three principles that we use
that i would like to share with you
today that i believe that we can boost
students creativity and help them more
courageous
in the path that they’re taking the
first principle
is is there another way is there another
way
when you imagine a traditional classroom
you can think of
tables chairs chalkboards teachers
standing at the center of the class
lecturing to the students very much like
this
right and so when ckp was founded we
asked the question is there another way
that students can learn and what we come
up with
is yes there is another way so we get
rid of all those notes table no tier
no chalkboard and the student become the
center of the classroom
discussing ideas with their peers under
the facilitation
or under the supervisation of what we
call a facilitator
we take classrooms to dorm rooms we take
students on field trips
we put them in different groups or we do
anything that makes the students
feel curious about learning we do it
with a different way
so in order to show the students that
there are many creative ways
to learn we start with the learning
environment and within that learning
environment
here comes the second principle the
second principle is that there’s no
crazy ideas
when a student comes to us with an idea
or a social project that they want to do
we don’t say okay that’s stupid don’t do
that go do this
right because first of all that’s rude
that’s really rude
and second of all we know that students
or
especially children get really defensive
easily
if you tell them that their ideas are
stupid
so even if they are um so
we decided we decided that okay
here’s what we’re gonna do ask don’t
judge we’re gonna ask questions
uh we’re gonna start by where where’s
the inspiration come from where did you
get the inspiration
uh what’s the effort we need to get
there are you willing to make such
effort
and how can i help you by asking
questions
you are helping your students evaluate
their own ideas
using their own thinking and i think
that’s very important
in order to walk on your own path it
needs a lot of careful consideration
it doesn’t mean that one day you can
just walk outside and then walk on your
own path you might die
especially in hanoi
so in order to get this careful
consideration
educators and parents here’s your time
to shine you can play a crucial role
by helping students realize and
re-evaluate their own pros and cons the
risks and the benefits
by asking them good questions and then
here comes
the last and once they’ve had the
courage
to walk on their own path after
re-evaluating everything
and they have made the decision to okay
i’m brave enough to walk on my own path
now
and take full responsibility for this
fail to learn
you fail to learn recently i consulted a
social project
uh founded by my campers 11 11 to 12
years old
very young age and after we did the last
reflection three months ago and the
conclusion was very simple
the project failed but the real
conclusion
that we came up with that day is that
the project failed
but we learned a lot by allowing
your students to we learned a lot we
learned a lot about how to manage
a project we learned a lot about time
management we learned about
a lot about how to talk to people how to
get money
from people and how to trade people into
going to our events
we learn a lot of things right
especially this kind of event
right we learn a lot and here’s the best
part
is that this happens because that i
always reassure them that hey if you
fail i will be there with you
i’m not gonna ditch you i’m not gonna
shame you i will be there with you and
we’re gonna pick
us right back up and walk think about
this as failure with a net
right it’s like a circus act you don’t
push your students on the time to roam
50 meters above the ground
and expect them to walk without a safety
net right
you create a safety net so that when
they fail
the tumble feeling and the unpleasant is
real right but it does not it does no
lasting damage
so that if they fail they can bounce
back up and learn again
and i think that’s incredibly incredibly
important
in walking on your own path is that
because no personal path
is guaranteed success they will fail a
lot but then they will learn a lot so
educators and parents here’s your time
to walk with your students to make sure
that they feel safe
when they start walking on their own
path by using these three principles
i i promise that your students will be
able
to go very far i promise our education
system
has always been obsessed with this idea
of paving one single perfect path
for everyone you go to a good school
you get a good job you get a lot of
money you raise your kid
you retire and you disappear
i don’t believe that is the goal of
education i believe the goal of
education
is to empower every single student to be
create
to be courageous enough to walk on their
own path
to follow their own dreams what i’m
sharing today is not to encourage
every one of you to go study abroad and
do education
that is my path and that might not be
yours
what i’m sharing today is my belief that
each and every one of us
is capable of making the second choice
to open your mind and your heart to the
endless possibilities of life
and then to courageously walk on your
own path
it will take you to incredibly amazing
places
we gather attend today to celebrate the
many possible ways
that we can better our lives so i would
like to end with this note
i would like all of us to have the
courage to imagine
to dream and to pursue the endless
possibilities of life
because i know that there’s something
unique about you
that absolutely no one else in this
world has thank you