“Man’s mind stretched to a new idea never returns to its original dimensions” - Oliver Wendell Holmes
The Kobayashi Maru scenario was the most challenging of Starfleet Academy's training exercises. You may recall how this test forced cadets into making what was considered a no-win decision — rescuing a disabled ship in enemy territory while risking their own ship and crew, or leaving the disabled ship, thus ensuring its crew's destruction and starting a war.
Young James Kirk was the only cadet who ever won the war game. He did so through his out-of-the-box, positive thinking. Kirk’s rejection of the possibility of the no-win scenario is a model for inoculating ourselves, and our children and grandchildren, against learned helplessness.
It is very easy for any of us to fall into thinking and feeling we are trapped by our current circumstances. Unfortunately, it is much more difficult for us to shed the gravitational force of learned helplessness.
I recently read the autobiography of a man who was considered one of the finest constitutional scholars in the U.S. I was startled to learn he struggled in elementary school. The third and fourth grades were particularly difficult for him. His fourth grade teacher would insist on grading tests out loud and then announced the results in front of the entire class. If there were 20 questions, this fourth grader usually got 15 wrong and placed at the bottom of his class. But then he fell under the influence of Miss Pearl Schaefer, a fifth grade teacher whose love, confidence and challenge helped this young boy discover the joy of learning. The rest is history. He went on to become a superb law student, a law professor at the University of Chicago, president of a major university and much more.
How can you and I become Pearl Schaefers? Not just for fifth graders, but for anyone we come in contact with who is struggling with learned helplessness?
“If you're going to be passionate about something, be passionate about learning. If you're going to fight something, fight for those in need. If you're going to question something, question authority. If you're going to lose something, lose your inhibitions. If you're going to gain something, gain respect and confidence. And if you're going to hate something, hate the false idea that you are not capable of your dreams.” - Daniel Golston
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