Stop Underestimating Teenagers

An 1812 ship’s captain. A commander of a European army. A Nobel Peace Prize winner. And YouTube’s largest content creator.

All of them were teenagers when they made it big.

David Farragut became a midshipman in the U.S. Navy at 9. By 11 he was in combat. At 12, the Navy handed him command of a British ship it had just captured and told him to sail it home. The ship’s own captain refused to take orders from a 12-year-old and went to get his pistols below deck. Farragut told him if he came up armed there would be trouble. The captain backed down, and Farragut brought the ship in himself.

Joan of Arc was an illiterate peasant girl. At 13, she believed God had called her to save France. By 17 she had convinced the future king of France to give her soldiers, and she led the relief of Orléans. She was wounded in the fighting and went back in anyway.

Malala Yousafzai started writing about her right to go to school at 11, after the Taliban banned girls from the classroom where she lived. At 15 they shot her in the head for it. The following year she stood in front of the United Nations and said the bullet had killed her fear, not her ambition.

Jimmy Donaldson posted his first YouTube videos at 13. For two years he made about a dollar a day. Then in 2017, at 18, he had his first viral video, dropped out of college, built a $5 billion business, given away over $500 million, and became Mr. Beast.

None of them waited until they were adults to matter. They mattered because they were working on things they cared about.

High school should be a place for teenagers to do real world things.

We underestimate what teenagers can carry. We build entire systems around the assumption that a 15 year old needs to be protected. We applaud the high schooler who makes their bed and does the dishes for their family.

But we don’t have to go back centuries to find young people doing big things.

Kenzleigh Torres started her own floral and beauty shop. She is in the 5th grade. She’d wanted to be a gymnast, until a diagnosis with loose joints took that off the table. Running her own shop gave her something else to work on. Her business taught her how to pitch herself to strangers, the difference between spending and saving. While she isn’t world famous...yet, she’s made enough money to invest $500, and was invited to the White House to meet the president.

Her experience has taught her to look to the future. It solidified her learning and gave her confidence in her ability to succeed.

If you want to see what that looks like in practice, come learn more about Horizon School, a junior high and high school hybrid in Northern Utah. We are on a mission to change how we educate teenagers in America.

You can’t build an education system around outliers.

Why not?

Every parent believes their kid has something exceptional in them. Every single one of us. So why do we build a school system that assumes the opposite? One that hands teenagers 4 more years of worksheets and permission slips before we’ll trust them with anything that counts?

High schoolers should be building things. Starting businesses. Solving problems that have consequences attached.

The goal of high school is to prepare teenagers for the “real” world. There is no better way to do that than to give them stakes in something that might fail.

And that is the problem. We worry that if a young person tries something and fails that they will be damaged for the rest of their lives. They won’t. We all have to learn to live with failures and setbacks.

Every great person could have quit. But they didn’t.

Jimmy Donaldson could have given up. If he had, Mr. Beast would have been just another college dropout. But he didn’t.

Malala could have stopped speaking out once the Taliban made her a target. She could have gone quiet after they shot her. But she didn’t. She spoke in front of the United Nations and told the world the attempt on her life had killed her fear, not her ambition.

Farragut could have stayed home at 9, like almost every other boy his age. Joan of Arc could have stayed a farm girl. But they didn’t.

Each of these teens made a choice. High school should give every teen that same choice.

That is what high school should be. An opportunity to attempt something meaningful. Many won’t become world famous, but all of them will grow in ability and confidence.

Sincerely,

Principal Jon

That's the school we're building. If you want to see it in person, Horizon School is enrolling now for junior high and high schoolers in Northern Utah.