We get our students asking us this
question in multiple different ways:

But why do I need to memorize facts when
I can look up facts on the Internet?

No problem.

We have Wikipedia. We have,

well, Google, just in general.
We have facts available to us all

the time.
As I've been doing, I'm planning today

to talk about what is going on behind
the scenes. What is the question behind

the question or the assumption
behind the question?

But I'm going to do a little bit
of an aside and attack the question

directly for a little bit before we
get into intellectual character.

So what's going on behind the scenes?

What is the student possibly thinking when
asking, why do I need to memorize facts?

Well, I would say two are really
closely related to each other.

The first is that education
is about information.

I had a student who was planning to drop
out of school and go to do online school,

who told me, "Oh yeah,
I'm going to do online school.

I'll still be educated."

Education is about facts.

The second thing, or sorry, education
is about information and information—

this is the second thing—

information is about facts.

These are two things that students assume
when they think that they don't need

to learn the things we're trying to teach
because of the availability of Google.

Cognitive science tells us that the more
you know, the more you can learn,

and also, the more you know, the better
you can process new information.

There is information required

in the education process, and information
does include a lot of facts.

But that's not the only
thing about education.

The third thing that students may be
saying when they're

trying not to learn something based
on the fact that they can Google things is

that they are saying, they're making this
assumption that they can readily discern

between facts and fiction when
they read something online.

And I will hasten to say
that I obviously can.

I always know when I'm reading fake news

and when I'm reading something true.
Or not.

You will recognize that
as the amount of information that's

available to us gets bigger and bigger,
it becomes harder and harder for us

to process and to figure out what's true
and what isn't true,

or even more importantly, what's
important and what's not important.

What's the intellectual character trait

that we need to develop in our students if
they are going through life thinking

that they can always tell the difference
between what's true and what's false?

I'm going to contend that that
character trait is humility.

I'll start by saying that humility is not,
in the words of

C.S. Lewis, "pretty women trying to think

they're ugly and clever men
trying to think they're fools."

It is not denying the good
things about ourselves.

Intellectual humility is not falsely
declaring ourselves to be nothing.

If that were the case,
then Chesterton would be right when he

says that kind of humility
"would produce a race of men too mentally

modest to believe in the
multiplication table."

So that's not what I'm talking about

when I say intellectual humility.

It is not just denying
the things we have to offer.

Rather,
intellectual humility is recognizing our

dependence on God, and it's also
treating others better than ourselves.

Authentic humility is an attempt
to see ourselves as we really are.

And notice I say an attempt
to see ourselves as we really are.

We don't see ourselves very well.

That's why we absolutely need to develop

friendships in our lives with people
who will tell us the truth.

Faithful are the wounds of a friend
because we don't see ourselves well.

We need to understand that we
are made in God's image.

As such, we have the ability
to seek truth and to find truth.

But we also need to recognize
that we're fallen.

And as such, we are not perfect
in our pursuit of truth.

We have false motives.

We have poor processing sometimes.

All kinds of things
go on in our pursuit of truth.

We mess up.

Humility recognizes that.

Why would I want to develop humility?

What are the benefits?

Again, there are many.

I've chosen three.

The first is a growth
of knowledge and insight.

If I can rejoice when I'm proven wrong

because I got to learn something,
that's a benefit of a lack of humility.

You know how often it's been that we say

something and somebody says,
"No, you're wrong."

And we go back and forth and at the end

we're both mad and neither of us
has changed our point of view,

and somebody missed out on an opportunity.
Because one of the two was wrong,

don't know which one at this point,

but that person missed an opportunity
to put their mental model, make their

mental model better,
more like the world actually is.

Now we can all just in general recognize
that we're wrong about something.

Like, I know I'm wrong about something.

I don't know what it is.

So when you and I disagree about
something, here's an opportunity for me

to recognize, maybe, one
of the places that I'm wrong.

I might not be wrong here,

but if we can talk about it,
not in terms of a conflict,

not in the case where one of us is
vanquished and the other one is

victorious, but rather that the two of us
together are trying to figure out

which one of us is wrong so that person
can benefit by now being right.

Think about how different our interactions

would be around
all of the things that we fight about.

Our world would be richer and larger—
this is the second thing—

our world is richer and larger than
if we are intellectually proud.

Third benefit: Our influence
is increased if we're humble.

I already mentioned

the case of evangelism, but I'll
tell a personal story for this one.

I told you that I grew up, or when I was

younger, I had the reputation of always
being right and defending my point of view

as long as it took till
the other person gave up.

In 2007, I got a job offer
to teach in Colorado.

It was a tiny community.

I knew one person in the community,
but I decided I would do it.

And before I left, I heard some
bad things about this community.

I heard there are a bunch
of legalists there.

And I was young and vigorous, and I said,
"Okay, well,

the way you change a legalistic
community is you change their children."

And so I'm going to go in,

and I'm going to change this
community by changing their children.

You have enough experience
to know how well this went.

So I got there, and I
started teaching school,

and one of the school board
members was also a minister.

He was my age.

I was 23, I think, at the time.

So he was young,
and he really felt the responsibility of

his task, of his role there as
minister and as school board member.

And so I had this community pegged
as a group of legalists, right?

So one day, this young minister
got up, and he gave a sermon.

And I was listening to this sermon,
and I thought he said that you can't

worship God unless you're
wearing the right clothes.

You can't worship God properly unless
you're wearing the right clothes.

So I took exception to this.

I was wearing the right clothes,
but I knew that you can worship God

in whatever clothes you're
wearing at the time.

And so after church, I
walked up to him and we started arguing.

And wouldn't you know,
this is actually kind of embarrassing.

It's really embarrassing for both of us.

We stood there and we argued

in the parking lot until at least 1:30,
I think it was 2:00 in the afternoon,

while his wife and children sat
in the van.

I ran into somebody who was every bit as
stubborn as I was. And he was my boss.

Back and forth, we argued.

That summer, I went back home to Ohio,

and I worked for my dad.
I was driving a truck,

hauling farm machinery, and I was
driving. I had hours and hours to think.

And at some point, somebody said to me,

"You know, you can either be
right or you can be happy."

And it clicked.

I don't have to argue with this guy.

Kept processing, went back
with a different attitude.

I started seeing the community
for who they were.

These were people who actually love God.

They were doing the best they could.

They had people from all over the eastern

United States who had problems with their
churches that moved out there.

How do you make a—how do you forge
a community from 100 different places?

It was smaller than that,
but you know what I mean.

How do you forge such a community?

It's hard. And I recognized what they
were doing in that second year.

My influence in that community was—
I don't want to brag—

but it was a lot better.
When I left after that second year,

that minister thanked me for what
I had done in that community.

Why?

Because I had demonstrated humility.

Now, that is not the end of the story.

I am still working on developing
humility in myself.

I still lose influence because of times
when I am too proud to hear another

person's point of view, and when I am too
proud to recognize that I might be wrong.

But I go back to that story—

that was a turning point in my life
with that experience.

And I have that man to thank.

I'm so glad he was stubborn,
even though I hated it at the time.

So how do we develop humility?

Three practices in my classroom.

One is I try to model humility myself.

I'm not perfect and would hesitate even

to say that I'm good,
but I'm at least trying.

I give my students
an opportunity to study deeply.

And third, the third practice I use is

that when a student brings something
that they're really sure is a dumb idea,

I try to ask for the other
side of the story.

So one of my—it was actually a former
student sent me an article about how math

education is racist because you're looking
for the right answers, and that's racist.

And I said, "Okay, what's
the other side of the story?

What's going on here?"

And I actually looked it up and we
we had a good conversation about it.

If you ask for the other side
of the story, if you ask for the student

to need to defend the point of view
that they think is dumb, perhaps

that will help them understand a little
bit of what it takes to be humble.

It feels like with this subject that I'm
just skimming past it really fast.

There's so much more.

But I have a vision

for schools in which wisdom grows in our
classrooms because our teachers are

modeling intellectual humility
and students are mimicking that model.

I have a vision for classrooms where we
value truth over ego,

where we recognize that our creation in—
that we are created in God's image,

that we are fallen, and that God is
working to redeem us to Himself.