Thought Bananas 8 | May 12, 2022
Book Review, Work Updates, Preschool, and the Psychologically Rich Life
Thought Bananas is a weekly newsletter for big ideas, short stories, and appropriately-sized memoirs from Charlie Becker.
🍌Quote of the Week
"That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth." -Tim O'Brien
🍌In the Newsletter This Week
New Writing: Review of The Pathless Path by Paul Millerd and an essay about learning called “Playing the Game of Ideas.”
What I'm Up To: Launching the Center for Economic Inclusion at University of Houston and still looking for a pre-school.
What I'm Thinking About: Living a more psychologically rich life.
Crowd Work: What do you think it means to be psychologically rich?
New Writing
🍌Reflections on The Pathless Path by Paul Millerd
I've received really positive feedback any time I provide commentary on others’ writing. People have told me they find it enjoyable and insightful, so I’m leaning into that with my first book review in the newsletter. The book is called The Pathless Path by Paul Millerd, who I have become friends with since he read this review. Here is an excerpt from the review:
🍌Playing the Game of Ideas
There's a large subculture of people on the internet who are interested in education, but have commodified the pursuit of knowledge. They find, distill, and sell "framework" or "mindset" materials. This bothered me for a long time but I couldn’t figure out why, and I couldn’t think of an alternative, until now. Here is an excerpt from the essay:
What I'm Up To
🍌The Next Step of My Work at University of Houston
A few weeks ago, I summarized what I do for work in this way:
As the Managing Director of the University of Houston SURE (Stimulating Urban Renewal through Entrepreneurship) Program, I teach students to become business consultants. Similar to a university hospital, where student doctors work under doctor professors to provide medical services to the community, my students provide consulting services to clients. These clients are current or aspiring entrepreneurs from the community–usually underserved populations–who want to start or grow a small business.
I can officially announce the next step (as shared by the school here):
The C. T. Bauer College of Business is launching the Center for Economic Inclusion (CEI), a new center that champions and expands an experiential education model that has transformed the lives of both university students and entrepreneurs from the Houston community. CEI’s programs build upon the award-winning Bauer College program, Stimulating Urban Renewal through Entrepreneurship (SURE℠), which trains students while educating and enabling community members to launch businesses.
This is tremendous for me, as I shared on LinkedIn:
I am so glad that I was able to join the program for the last month of this semester and to be a part of today’s celebration. I have been with SURE for six years of my life. When I started working with SURE, it was an unconventional choice and not what I’d been planning during my time in graduate school.
Today, I can say that the work I’ve done and the role I’ve played these last six years is one of the most meaningful achievements of my life. As a new father, I am proud that someday I’ll be able to tell my daughter about this work, and about the peoples’ lives that the SURE Program changed. Launching the Center for Economic Inclusion is only going to make this work bigger and bring it to more people.
🍌Preschool Revisited
My wife and I started touring preschools last week. We found a place we really like. It made me realize that I might hire a preschool teacher to decorate my office. My self esteem got better just walking around there. I didn't start taking pictures until late in the tour, but here is one of my favorites, from near the entrance:
(The text in the picture says: Eagle Ethics
We connect before we correct.
We stay curious, not furious.
We understand that behavior is communication.
We coregulate because children regulate off the adults in their lives.
We think can’t, not won’t.
We believe relationships buffer stress and build resilience.
We believe in restoration, not punishment.
Resilience means we see you, we hear you, we are with you!)
In a previous issue I asked, why are preschools and daycares so expensive? Why are the waiting lists so long? A few days after asking, I came across an excellent Twitter thread someone wrote that answered both questions. There are three key reasons.
The unit economics are different from schools for older children. In a preschool, you need one caregiver for as few as four infants. This means that where you would have one teacher for a class of twenty first graders, you would need five caregivers for that same class if the children are infants or toddlers.
Beyond the labor cost, there are stringent requirements for in-home daycares and center daycares, like how much square footage you need per kid.
Whereas Kindergarten through college is heavily subsidized by the government, there is little such support for daycare and preschool.
I highly recommend reading the Twitter thread to see the more detailed examples.
What I'm Thinking About
🍌The Psychologically Rich Life
This week, I found a term in an academic journal article that unites many of my interests. The key idea in the article is that people have historically thought of a “good life,” as either happy or meaningful, but there is a third aspect of good lives, correlated with but distinct from happiness and meaning: Psychological Richness.
I plan to do a deep dive on the article in the coming weeks. I’ll explore what it means to have a psychologically rich life in general terms, and why that term appeals so much to me specifically. As a preview, here is one of my favorite parts of the article: a table outlining the key parts of a happy, meaningful, and psychologically rich life.
Crowd Work
In standup comedy, crowd work is when the comic speaks directly with the audience. This section is a place for us to directly engage one another.
What do you think of the term psychological richness? What comes to mind when you hear it?
That’s all for now—see you next week!
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Charlie, you should consider a side-career writing book reviews. Brilliant
Charlie, I really like this one. I have found that the education and caring environment of my children are truly inspiring.
Like you, I'm impressed, to a person, with the educators, the staff of Jack's various preschools and schools. They truly care, give good thought to what is beneficial to kids and have hard jobs.
And, I have found, that spending time with them, grounds me in a way that most other professions don't. That is, there is something special about people that invest heavily in children, with the trust that the 9 months or a year they spend with them, will be beneficial to them and to society, over time. It's your metaphor of eastern redwoods, but with a whole professional class, annually, over and over again. And while it's not as sexy or packaged as some internet educators, it's real and earned.
In any case, thanks for bringing that up today, I needed the reminder.