Benjamin Xander has conducted the Boston philonic Orchestra for 20 years he is also artistic director of the music program at Walnut Hill a high school for the Performing Arts in Boston as a writer he co-authored the art of possibility transforming professional and personal life he talked to head teachers at a conference organized by the National College of school leadership I'm a teacher like you I teach at the conservatory in Boston I have a class on Friday afternoon people come from all over the world and they're excited to be there and they're eager to learn you
know but what's really going on they're saying am I better than her am I better than him I know I'm better than her I don't think I'll ever be as good as him I hope I can be as good as they're constantly comparing and they're measuring and when they come come out to play let's say the violin it looks as though there's one person playing the violin right there are two people there's a person who playing the violin and then there's another person standing behind the person who's playing the violin whispering in his ear you
haven't practiced enough do you know how many people play this piece better than you do that difficult passage you missed it the last time it's coming right up you're going to miss miss it again that's the voice in the head and if anybody's saying what does he mean a voice in the head what's he talking about a voice in the head that's the voice I mean took a moment for you to hear it right but that Voice keeps talking and talking and talking and it never stops you know sometimes it talks so loudly that it
drowns out the music so my job is to get hold of that voice and this is how it works I do it each year I come into my class at the beginning of the year and there are about 40 students in my class and I say after a little bit of housekeeping I say your grade for the year is an a you're an a that's your grade and there's one condition the condition is that they have to write me a letter in the first two weeks of the class of the year the letter must be
dated the following May when the class ends so the letter the date at the top is May 200 of the next year and then the letter must begin with these words Dear Mr Xander I got my a because then they have to write a letter describing who they will have become by the following May to justify this extraordinary grade and I tell them to fall passionately in love with the person they're describing in the letter and they do they write about who they would be who they could be who they see themselves as if only
that damn voice would stop telling them they can't do it when I come into class the person I teach is the person that they have described in their letter you see I only take a students now there are a few people looking very concerned and saying how does he do that well the answer is very simple you can give an a to anybody you can give an a to a waitress in a restaurant to a taxi driver you can give an a to the other drivers when you're driving in traffic you can give an a
to your mother-in-law you can give an a to your boss you can give an a to anybody what happens when you give an a is that the relationship is transformed this is hard for teachers I know this is very very hard I addressed a group of teachers earlier this year uh and one of them came up to me afterwards and said I like this giving an a it's sweet he said uh but he said but it doesn't make you don't know the students you you don't know them you don't know their work so I imagine
as the year progresses and you find out that some of them are quite mediocre I imagine you modify the grade right I said no and then I tell them about this young girl I met she's about 15 I said what's your name she said Joy said I beg your pardon she said Joy now should her parents modify her name no because we don't give children a name as an expectation to live up to we give children a name as a possibility to live into the person who understood this perfectly was Michelangelo and I'm sure you've
heard this beautiful thing but it Bears repeating somebody asked Michelangelo about sculpting and he said oh sculpting is easy because you have a piece of marble inside the piece of marble is a beautiful statue all you need is a hammer and a chisel just to get rid of all the stone that's in in the way then that's actually a theory of Education it's of course not the one we use the one we use we're up here the students are down here and they try to get up and they do their homework and they work hard
and they study and they and they they work as hard as they can and this is as far as they get this is the gap between their achievement and our standards and of course they're very manipulative because they know what we want to hear so they can get up a little higher Michelangelo's model is totally different it's eye to eye we each have a hammer and a chisel and we're working to get rid of all that stone in the way of that beautiful statue it's a totally different world it came home to me very powerfully
one day I was this was the first year I'd ever done this with the A and I was really excited about it and I came into class and I said to all the class were there and I said what does it feel like to get an A in the first class of the year I mean you haven't done anything you get it a what does that feel like to my amazement one of the Asian students put up his hand like that forgive me for my attempted his accent he said in Taiwan he said I was
number 68 out of 70 student I can't boss Mr Xander says I'm an a it's very confusing he says I am number 68 out of 70 Mr Xander says I'm an A but I am number 68 i w three week very confused then one day I discover much happier a than number 68 I decide I'm an a I call that Cosmic laughter that's not head teachers laughter that's Cosmic laughter because what you're laughing at is the realization of course that the a is invented the 68 is invented we might as well invent something that lights
up our life and the life of the people around I don't know if you know this but about in America in our music schools we have about half our students from Asia from China and Japan and Korea and Taiwan and Singapore and all these places and they play fantastically well they're great they win the competitions but they don't speak up in class and I found out why I actually asked them I said what is this about and they explained to me they said Mr Xander you have to understand in Asia it's very important to be
right the teacher is always right and the students try to be right and as one of these young ladies said the best way to be right is not to say anything then you won't be wrong now I believe the exact opposite which is you cannot learn anything unless you make a mistake so I tell my students when you make a mistake celebrate and the way to celebrate is like this how fascinating it's actually quite difficult try it out on the golf course next time you're out you know why it's difficult is because when we make
a mistake we tend to pull down the body pull down notice the next time you make a mistake the body pulls down now instead when it pulls down you go how fascinating it's like this it's difficult to do you know we had a conference of leaders of the music world you know heads of orchestras and schools and Opera Houses and so on and we had a three-day conference and there was a lot of what I call downward spiral speaking now I don't know what the head teachers downward spirals are but I'll tell you some of
the musical downward spirals the little old ladies who like classical music they're all dying so there's not going to be an audience the children don't learn instruments anymore they do is watch MTV so they're not going to grow up liking classical music and the National Endowment of the Arts is not is not supporting and the foundations aren't supporting the Arts the way they used to so we're going to run out of funds by the end of the second day people were walking around the corridor in the hotel like this because you know everywhere there's downwards
Barrow you can't get I was looking at the times this morning and I thought of bringing it in and showing you how many columns in the times are downwards barrels it's amazing every column is a downward spiral of course the stock market that's a downward spiral downward spiral also outward spiral outward spiral and downward spiral are actually the same thing because wherever you have a winner and a loser you automatically have a downward spiral so of course Sports is full of downward spiral but it doesn't matter in sports because we all go out for a
beer afterwards but our educational system is based on a downward spiral because there's nowhere to go from an A but down so we shouldn't be surprised if our kids look anxious sometimes it seem seems as though there's nothing but downward spiral which of course isn't true which is why I asked for another flip chart now over here we have possibility the world of possibility the realm of possibility and this is where the vision is and vision is very important vision is really important because you know people get confused about Vision they say s vision is
to be number one p no that's a goal Vision to be a vision has to be for everybody everybody at this conference somebody stood up in front of the whole group and said 3% of the population likes classical music if we could move it to 4% our problem would be over I say everybody loves classical music they just haven't found out about it yet how would you walk how would you talk how would you be if you thought 3% of the population likes classical music only we could how would you talk how would you walk
how would you be if you thought everybody loves classical music they just haven't found out about it these two worlds are totally different worlds I had an amazing Discovery this is a really big deal for me I was 45 I'd been conducting for over 20 years and suddenly one day I had this kind of road to Damascus event Eureka I realized the conductor of an orchestra doesn't make a sound my picture appears on the front of the CD but the conductor doesn't make a sound he Depends for his power on his ability to make other
people powerful and when I when that happened it changed everything people in my Orchestra said what happened to you Ben what happened that was what happened I realized my job was to awaken possibility in other people because I wanted to know whether I was doing that you know how you find out you look at their eyes if their eyes are shining you know you're doing it you could light up a village with this guy's eyes if the eyes are shining you know you're doing it if the eyes are not shining you get get to ask
a question who am I being that my player's eyes are not shining we can do that with our children too who am I being that my children's eyes are not shiny now over here we have goals have you noticed how goals tend to be rather Grim we have a goal it's a rather Grim Pursuit we have to make the goal now over here you can have a goal as part of The Vision by all means you have a goal and if you make the goal great and if you don't how fascinating cuz you know we
all know we all know why we have goals why do we have goals to make our eyes shine that's all that's the reason we have a goal so if the goal posts are too close together you can't score if they're too far apart it's too easy so if it's not working the eyes aren't shining move the gold post you know that's the thing now over here over here you have the words you should you ought you need and you must try those out on your children and see if they eyes shine over here we have
things like how about what if what are we looking for what's next over here you see totally different language totally different now over here you have blame and fault and threat and over here requests and apologies totally different this is where we put people down and also put people up over here everybody gets an a it's a totally different world now the leader the new leader is the one who first of all can distinguish the down spir and then has the power to take people from there over here to radiating possibility and anybody can do
it anybody 8y old child can do it anybody can do it there's a key there's a key to the kingdom of possibility I'm going to give you the key to the kingdom of possibility right now okay so this is the story always comes in a story okay the story is this two prime ministers were sitting in a room and they had a conversation about Affairs of State you know the way Prime Ministers do and um suddenly the door bursts open and a man comes in in a state of apoplectic upset he's just like this and
it's making so much noise and Racket and Carries On of course they stop their conversation and the resident prime minister says Peter please remember rule number six immediately Peter's restored to complete calm he bows he apologizes and he walks out of the room there go back to their conversation 20 minutes later the door bursts open again a woman comes in she's hysterical and her hair is flying and she's mascara running everything is a mess and shouting again and again the Prime Minister says Maria please remember rule number six immediately she bows she apologizes she walks
out of the room and then 20 minutes later it happens for the third time the third time the visiting prime minister says my dear colleague he says this is astonishing he said I don't believe it three people have come into this room out of control and you just say rule number six would you be willing to share what this rule number six is he say oh it's rule number six very simple don't take yourself so godamn seriously says oh that's a wonderful rule what may I ask of the other rules there aren't any Cosmic laughter
pretty tentative I must say now it comes down to three things three things one it's all invented you got to get that it's all invented two standing impossibility and three rule number six that's it simple
