Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths. - Proverbs 3:5–6

Maybe it is just me, but our world seems to be getting significantly less reliable. Misinformation and disinformation abounds, and things once considered stable and dependable and trustworthy have been suddenly thrust into chaos and unpredictability.  

Toward the end of his presentation at the National Association of Independent Schools conference last week, Shankar Vedantam, host of Hidden Brain, a popular podcast that explores the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior and questions that lie at the heart of our complex and changing world, described a powerful finding about the importance of reliability and trust for wise decision-making. Building on the famous “marshmallow” studies from Stanford in the 1970’s, he explained, researchers at the University of Rochester recreated the famous experiments utilizing two contrasting environments. In one environment, children experienced a series of  “unreliable” conditions before being presented with the marshmallow dilemma.  In the other condition, children experienced high trust and reliability conditions before facing their decision. The results were fascinating and unambiguous - trust, reliability, and consistency were the  key ingredients of the ideal outcome.   

In the original research, the children were presented with a marshmallow, but were told they could have an additional marshmallow if they could wait.  In this original study, children's wait time averaged between 5 and 6 minutes, and the research ultimately suggested correlations between the ability to delay gratification and better outcomes later in life.  In the more recent variations of the study, however, researchers found that changing the environment doubled wait times in the reliable (high trust) condition and halved the time in the unreliable (low trust) scenario.”  According to the results of the updated study, “Children who experienced unreliable interactions with an experimenter waited for a mean time of three minutes and two seconds on the subsequent marshmallow task, while youngsters who experienced reliable interactions held out for 12 minutes and two seconds. Only one of the 14 children in the unreliable group waited the full 15 minutes, compared to nine children in the reliable condition.”  As the researcher concluded, “If you are used to getting things taken away from you, not waiting is the rational choice…the marshmallow task might be correlated with something else that the child already knows—like having a stable environment."  In other words, the degree of reliability and trust within an environment can play an important role in wise decision-making and positive outcomes for the people in that community.  

Building on a sure foundation of faith, tradition, and reason, Episcopal Schools have the opportunity to provide the children and adults in our care with a stable and reliable foundation for navigating this increasingly chaotic world. By creating conditions where they feel known and loved and valued, and by sharing the hope we have in Christ, our students and families and faculty have the opportunity to flourish under ideal conditions of trust, consistency, and reliability. By empowering our students and faculty with the wisdom, courage, and faith of our heavenly Father, we have the opportunity to equip them to thrive in an uncertain and unpredictable world.  

LGLO,

Career Opportunities

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