A few weeks ago, as part of an exercise for the Global Schools Forum, I came across something called the Spaghetti Tower Design Challenge. At first glance, it feels fairly simple – a group of four people get 20 sticks of spaghetti (uncooked), one yard of tape, one yard of string, and one single marshmallow. The goal is to get the tallest standing tower at the end of 18 minutes, with one single rule – the marshmallow has to end up on top. It was designed and implemented with a variety of groups first by someone named Peter Skillman. He held this challenge with the world’s most educated minds – business school and engineering students at Stanford, 150 telecom engineers in Taiwan, and university students across the globe. And he recorded what he found on how the teams worked together, what groups built the largest structures. What did he find?

Business school students performed the worst. Now, this email isn’t meant to mock business school students, but it is meant to highlight the group that performed the best. Who was it?

Kindergarteners.

That’s right – groups of 5-6 year old children actually performed significantly better than fully grown adults who had been to school for decades.

Why?

It’s an interesting story. Business school students talked it out, thought strategically, asked questions, decided on a the best agreed upon strategy, implemented it, and let the chips fall where they may. Kindergarteners did none of that – there was no lengthy discussion or drawing of plans. They grabbed the spaghetti, started building, and just tried a bunch of stuff at the same time. While it appeared business school students were collaborating, there was subtle jockeying involved – is there a leader, how do we give feedback, have I received affirmation, my idea is better than so-and-so. They essentially waste time drawing up elaborate plans without actually trying to build a structure that is even a few inches tall. A structure whose creation would give them a key piece of information – that the marshmallow is actually pretty heavy and it’s hard to keep spaghetti in place. So the first time they are testing it out with a marshmallow on top, it’s 17 minutes in and they don’t have time to try again. Meanwhile the kindergarteners aren’t in competition, they are gruff with one another, move quickly, take risks, and spot problems with initial attempts. Essentially, as Skillman likes to say, “none of the kids spend any time trying to be the CEO of Spaghetti, Inc.” They try a number of times before the 18 minutes are up.

In dozens of trials, kindergarteners averaged spaghetti towers that were 26 inches tall, while business school graduates averaged less than 10 inches.

I find this story charming and delightful, but also instructive. Especially in this moment in my life – where my oldest child is about to go into kindergarten – but also in this moment in history, where millions of people are rethinking what it means to educate a child. It’s an honest and refreshing reminder that we are born with a curiosity and drive to try things, to fail, and to try again. As we are looking to the eventual reopening of our Impact Network schools, we have spent countless hours discussing how best to bring students back, how to ensure their safety, how to catch up on what they have lost, how to counsel them through this crisis. To me, this story is a startling reminder that educating our scholars in Zambia should also be joyful.

So this week, amidst the ongoing pandemic, try the Spaghetti Tower challenge! You can learn more about it here: http://www.peterskillmandesign.com/#/spaghetti-tower-design-challenge/; you can watch Skillman’s talk about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p5sBzMtB3Q; and you can see Tom Wujec’s TED talk about it here: https://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_build_a_tower_build_a_team/transcript?language=en.

-Reshma

The CEO of Spaghetti, Inc.