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Comment by rglover | Hacker News Reader

That was a pretty great speech for a group of 12 year olds to hear. You rarely see people encouraging kids anymore. What's great about this, though, is that the author brought it down to the level of the students to help them understand how passion and perseverance can feel like magic. Very uplifting and I can only hope that this is taking place elsewhere.

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This speech reminded me why I shouldn't give speeches to 12 year olds. :) "Magic? Magic is what you don't understand, and while it's okay to not understand everything, there is in general too little understanding going on so wipe out magic frequently!"

At the kid level I was happy he didn't praise intelligence but rather hard work since that seems to work out for the kids better as they grow up. Though I wonder where "Wizard" lies on the spectrum between praising for "Hard worker, lots of effort" and "Naturally intelligent"?

Though I wonder where "Wizard" lies on the spectrum between praising for "Hard worker, lots of effort" and "Naturally intelligent"?

I was under the impression that it draws heavily from both.

He? He who?

"That was a pretty great speech for a group of 12 year olds to hear. You rarely see people encouraging kids anymore."

Probably because we live in a society where encouraging kids is fairly subversive. I think part of what makes this speech so good is that it actually manages to sneak a bunch of different things in there that would probably be frowned on otherwise.

Not just for twelve year olds. It works just as well for this 48 y.o., too.

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