Greetings Eddies!

There is a subtle but pervasive myth in education reform that if we just find the right structure – the perfect voucher system, the ideal "Common Core" standards, or flawless charter policy – everything else will fall into place.

The truth is, none of this matters if we're building on a faulty foundation stemming from a lack of trust.

Let's unpack that.

THOUGHT: Directing The River
TREND: The Trust Deficit
TOOL: Guitar Hero For Real Life

Directing The River

Every parent wants to influence their children. We want them to be healthy, happy, and wise. But often, our attempt to influence looks a lot like an attempt to control.

Joshua Fields Millburn offers a helpful metaphor on this clip from The Minimalists podcast: You can't direct a river if you don't know which way it flows.

“Parents who understand their children's desires have a much better chance of influencing them," he says. "And the only way to actually understand their desires is to start to get curious about what they want, why they want it, and what they think it's going to do for them."

Control tries to build a dam. Curiosity maps the current. Once you know where the energy is going, you can guide it. But you have to get in the water first.

ICYMI - Find out the worst education advice OpenEd CEO Isaac Morehouse has ever heard on episode #501 of the Minimalists.

The Trust Deficit

We have an obsession with "fixing" education. Every few years, a new wave of solutions arrives: Charters. Vouchers. ESAs. Microschools.

We call this innovation, but Grant Hewitt (VP of Partnerships at OpenEd) says it's merely iteration. Over on LinkedIn, Grant argues that while we change the names, we rarely change the "core operating system." And the default OS is built on a lack of trust.

We design systems assuming people—educators and families—can't be trusted, so we wrap every "freedom" in a suffocating blanket of compliance, metrics, and oversight.

There's no shortage of educational models. Open education embraces them all. But until we fix the foundation—and shift our mindset to one of trust—we are just "building new rooms on the same cracked slab."

Read Grant's post

Yousician: Guitar Hero IRL

Learning an instrument usually starts with the boring stuff: scales, theory, and clumsy fumbling. It’s high-friction and low-dopamine.

Yousician flips the script.

Think of it as Guitar Hero for real instruments. You play along to songs you actually like, and the app listens to your real guitar, piano, or ukulele, giving you instant feedback on timing and accuracy. It gamifies the hardest part of learning music: the practice.

By replacing the "eat your vegetables" approach with immediate wins, it helps kids build the habit first. The theory can wait. Just play.

Learn more about Yousician

Motivation Monday

James Clear brings clarity to motivation—nominative determinism at its finest.