The question was never answered. I was a curious boy, but the schools were not concerned with curiosity. They were concerned with compliance. I loved a few of my teachers. But I cannot say that I truly believed any of them. Some years after I’d left school, after I’d dropped out of college, I heard a few lines from Nas that struck me:

Ecstasy, coke, you say it’s love, it is poison

Schools where I learn they should be burned, it is poison

Your grandmother taught me to read when I was only four. She also taught me to write, by which I mean not simply organizing a set of sentences into a series of paragraphs, but organizing them as a means of investigation. When I was in trouble at school (which was quite often) she would make me write about it. The writing had to answer a series of questions: Why did I feel the need to talk at the same time as my teacher? Why did I not believe that my teacher was entitled to respect? How would I want someone to behave while I was talking? What would I do the next time I felt the urge to talk to my friends during a lesson? I have given you these same assignments. I gave them to you not because I thought they would curb your behavior - they certainly did not curb mine - but because these were the earliest acts of interrogation, of drawing myself into consciousness. Your grandmother was not teaching me how to behave in class. She was teaching me how to ruthlessly interrogate the subject that elicited the most sympathy and rationalizing - myself. Here was the lesson: I was not an innocent. My impulses were not filled with unfailing virtue. And feeling that I was as human as anyone, this must be true for other humans. If I was not innocent, then they were not innocent. Could this mix of motivation also affect the stories they tell? The cities they built? The country they claimed as given to them by God?

So telling children they’re smart, in the end, made them feel dumber and act dumber, but claim they were smarter. I don’t think this is what we’re aiming for when we put positive labels - “gifted,” “talented,” “brilliant” - on people. We don’t mean to rob them of their zest for challenge and their recipes for success. But that’s the danger.

I don’t think that my actions changed in a way that prompted this; my position did. And what this meant was that things I’d once been privy to became increasingly unavailable to me. Gradually, snarky behavior, grousing, and rudeness disappeared from view - from my view, anyway. I rarely saw bad behavior because people wouldn’t exhibit it in front of me. I was out of a certain loop, and it was essential that I never lose sight of that fact. If I wasn’t careful to be vigilant and self-aware, I might well draw the wrong conclusions.

What Wiseman noticed that day can be seen as a vital element of TPS: a deeply ingrained belief that problem-solving is a team sport. Failures are opportunities for improvement. Competent professionals are expected to successfully execute most of their tasks, so successes are not seen as worthy of colleagues’ valuable time. Hence the “puzzled” look on Mr. Cho’s face. Puzzlement occurred because an expected behavior (share your problems so we can work on them together) didn’t happen, while an unexpected one (bragging) did. What I love most about this story is that Wiseman’s boasting would not have raised an eyebrow in 99 percent of work environments I’ve studied. We are socialized to share accomplishments and good news in front of the boss. Nothing puzzling about it! The most impressive result of TPS in my view is that the system normalizes failure—bad news, requests for help, and problems alike. It creates a community of scientists. Not incidentally, the essence of failing well is thinking like a scientist.