I was having a coffee yesterday with the amazing Marina Gorbis, Executive Director of the Institute for the Future, regarding HeroCamp. Marina shares many things in common with me, passion for public education, want to change the world, willingness to sacrifice alot to get there…as well as being the mother of a strong-willed and self-focused teenage son. Both of us realize that encouraging heroism in teenagers like our sons is going to take a special kind of program and the right kinds of incentives.

Many of the programs that I’ve observed thusfar are amazing, but are more suitable to kids who are pre-disposed to heroism. These are the same kids that have that fire in their bellies to want to change the world already. I know, too well, that these kids are in the minority. They aren’t necessarily the ones I want to reach (although I definitely want them to be rewarded for that fire).

In fact, as Dr. Zimbardo points out in his studies, it isn’t only heroic teenagers who are in the minority - heroic people of all ages are in the minority. I drew out this diagram for Marina to show her what I meant by this:

Everyone else has the POTENTIAL to be heroes, but, for whatever reason, aren’t incited to practice heroism everyday. Of course, this larger group will act heroically when called upon, like in times of disaster or crisis, but, as Dr. Zimbardo highlights, the wrong conditions can also push this larger group to act like villains, such as in the case of the Rwanda genocides or in the Stanford Prison Experiments.

The goal of HeroCamp is to promote the idea of the ‘banality of heroism‘ - the idea that heroes are normal people, not people who totally sacrifice themselves for others, but speak out and act out when they see injustice, put their time and effort into making the world a better place and truly care about their fellow human beings. Thus, when situations arise that encourage evil, they will recognize them and call them out.

If I was to take that pie-chart and show my goal for HeroCamp, it would be that the sliver that represents Heroes grows to the majority of the population:

Of course, I would like to see the pie ALL BLUE, but I’ll settle for a majority for now.

I thought this one is appropriate because, although we all care deeply about education (liberals and conservatives), we tend to approach the solution to the current woes in education VERY differently. No Child Left Behind, for instance, which was inspired by a conservative focus on solutions to fixing the education system (”run schools like businesses”).

The FIVE pillars of moral reasoning are:

1. Harm/Care (liberal)
2. Fairness/Reciprocity (liberal)
3. Ingroup/Loyalty (conservative)
4. Authority/Respect (conservative)
5. Purity/Sanctity (conservative)

He also discusses using incentives to encourage collaboration and giving in the video.

Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis is also worth a read.

You can see the talk here at the TED website.

See this at TED here.

Watch it at the TED site here.

HeroCamp is a gathering of heroes wanting to make…more heroes.

Over a period of 4 days in Houston, from October 23-26, 2008, a group of people who dedicate their lives to making the world a little better everyday will gather to launch a project that answers the question, “How do we inspire others to be heroes?” In order to narrow down the question, we chose to look at ways of creating this program for school kids (haven’t narrowed the age range yet).

At the end of the 4-day schedule of intensive brainstorming and planning the goal is to launch a program that can be run by anyone: a parent, a school kid, a teacher, a concerned citizen…anyone. Therefore, the program we design must be:

1. simple
2. inexpensive or free to run
3. fun