{"id":1908,"date":"2021-08-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-04T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carnegie25live.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=1908"},"modified":"2025-12-16T11:22:49","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T19:22:49","slug":"tim-talks-with-yo-yo-ma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carnegiefoundation.org\/tim-talks-with-yo-yo-ma\/","title":{"rendered":"Tim Talks With Yo-Yo Ma"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"gb-container gb-container-9f092ff3\">\n<div class=\"gb-container gb-container-f749780f\">\n\n<p><em>In these Tim Talks, Carnegie President Tim Knowles engages \u201cfriends, allies, and conspirators\u201d in micro-conversations about education, equity, and the future of learning.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.carnegiefoundation.org\/about-us\/board-of-trustees\/yo-yo-ma\/\">Yo-Yo Ma<\/a>&nbsp;is the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.carnegiefoundation.org\/newsroom\/news-releases\/yo-yo-ma-joins-the-carnegie-foundation-for-the-advancement-of-teaching\/\">newest board member<\/a>&nbsp;of the Carnegie Foundation. Musician, educator, and innovator, Yo-Yo strives to foster the connections that can dissolve borders, stimulate the imagination, and spark collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this wide-ranging conversation with Carnegie Foundation President Timothy Knowles, Yo-Yo shares his thoughts on what\u2019s at stake during this moment of \u201cpunctuated equilibrium\u201d when large and rapid change can burst into the world over a short period of time and cause a dramatic realignment of thinking and experience. Says Yo-Yo, \u201cWe need to work like crazy to try and get good things going, constructive things going of lasting value \u2026 (before we) settle into some form of normalcy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yo-Yo and Tim go on to discuss the future of learning, why young people will be instrumental to leveraging this moment to make real change for humanity and for the earth, and how happiness can be found in confronting challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe happy person is one who is fully present and fully engaged and fully participatory in life,\u201d says Yo-Yo, \u201cpersonally, internally, externally, and communally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed aligncenter is-type-video is-provider-vimeo wp-block-embed-vimeo wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Tim Talks With Yo-Yo Ma\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/582165400?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em>Carnegie President Timothy Knowles and Trustee Yo-Yo Ma discuss the future of learning, why young people will be instrumental to leveraging this moment to make real change for humanity and for the earth, and how happiness can be found in confronting challenges.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Transcript<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Tim Knowles (TK):<\/strong>&nbsp;Hello, thank you for joining me. I\u2019m Timothy Knowles, president of the Carnegie Foundation. Today, I\u2019m having a micro-conversation with Yo-Yo Ma. Yo-Yo is a friend, conspirator, and the newest board member of the Carnegie Foundation. He\u2019s also one of the wisest and most hopeful people I know. In our conversation, we\u2019re going to discuss the potential of the moment we\u2019re in, the future of learning, and why young people will be instrumental to leveraging this moment to make real change for humanity and for the earth. I hope you enjoy the conversation. Let\u2019s plunge right in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Yo-Yo Ma (YM):<\/strong>&nbsp;The way I can describe what might be an exciting moment right now in what we\u2019re all doing together as also individually is the fact that I think we may be experiencing, a short period of time where there can be a surge in change. What do I mean by that? I think there\u2019s an evolutionary term called punctuated equilibrium. What does that mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It means very simply that in evolution a lot of things change incrementally. But every once in a while, there\u2019s a burst of activity where a lot of change happens in a short period of time before things settling down to going back to incremental change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m wondering, and this is what makes me excited, are we at one of those moments in both biological-evolutionarily speaking, but even more so these days, because it happens faster, culturally-evolutionarily speaking. And if it were true, then we need to work like crazy to try and get good things going, constructive things going of lasting value that can jump into this sort of reverse cascade moment and then settle into some form of normalcy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TK:<\/strong>&nbsp;So, I love this hopefulness that you\u2019re putting on the table. And I like the idea that we might be approaching or in a period of unpunctuated disequilibrium as it were.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>YM:<\/strong>&nbsp;I like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TK:<\/strong>&nbsp;Certainly the unpunctuated part makes lots of sense to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>YM:<\/strong>&nbsp;Negatively positive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TK:<\/strong>&nbsp;Exactly. If the Prussian king got into his time machine after breakfast and came here now, he wouldn\u2019t recognize anything on his way to the school house, but when he got there, he would say, \u201cOh, this looks familiar. Here we are 150 years later or more and it\u2019s really, really resilient and resistant to fundamental shift. And so I\u2019m thinking about your evolutionary point and I agree that in the ether and in the air, we are at a, it feels as though we\u2019re at a tipping point, even in terms of education and how we think learning and teaching might look. But what do we do about this conundrum? What can we do to leap frog as it were the versions of learning that are so deeply entrenched and how do we make it more interesting, more rigorous, more engaging for more young people?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>YM:<\/strong>&nbsp;Well, I think one of the things I think a lot about is the idea that at any time in human evolution, there were things that we could not explain to ourselves. 15,000 years ago today and who do we go to, to explain the unexplainable? There used to be storytellers. There were priests, scientists, there were artists, and somehow they\u2019re the myth makers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And we, at some point we\u2019re always looking at what we know is familiar and something, and things that we know that are unfamiliar and that\u2019s zero and one of our digital age. And out of just those two things, we have invented and constructed so many of our knowledge bases, of our disciplines, of our cultures, of our economics, of our politics, of our ideologies. We invented all this stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And what\u2019s interesting to me is that so much of America was actually invented by people in their twenties. Now, Lafayette was 18, right? Hamilton was like, what, 23, something like that. And look, here we\u2019re old men discussing this. And what I\u2019m saying is, are we forgetting that wisdom is found in very ancient cultures, in very old people, but also in very young people? The French revolution, same thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So two of our, the bulwarks of how our modern nation states were constructed, were by people who were very young. And are we listening to the people who are very young? Because I believe there are people who are very young today that actually if encouraged and they already know how they think is a more equitable world, a world that actually is in partnership with nature and how they want to spend their money, consume, and work, and live. They want to have something that\u2019s organic as opposed to my life where you chose a profession, then you kind of went into it for life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Are we forgetting that wisdom is found in very ancient cultures, in very old people, but also in very young people?<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=Are+we+forgetting+that+wisdom+is+found+in+very+ancient+cultures%2C+in+very+old+people%2C+but+also+in+v...via+%40carnegiefdn&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.carnegiefoundation.org%2Fblog%2Ftim-talks-with-yo-yo-ma%2F\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Twitter<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TK:<\/strong>&nbsp;In your audio book, who knew that Yo-Yo had an audiobook, but I do now know, \u201cBeginner\u2019s Mind,\u201d you call on us to be open to new questions, and connections, and unexpected answers. So this is a time for precisely that, to the paradigm shift I think you opened with. So can you talk a bit about the path of the beginner\u2019s mind and what it would suggest for teachers and students about seizing the moment we\u2019re in for something more fundamentally interesting and equitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>YM:<\/strong>&nbsp;Again, I think this comes back to balancing the \u201cshoulds\u201d and the \u201cwants.\u201d If you\u2019re trained as a teacher, you think you have a body of knowledge that you need to share with somebody else. And as a performer, I feel like it\u2019s what I think the commonality between a performer and a teacher is how much people, the recipient, the student, or whoever you\u2019re sharing this knowledge with actually connects to the thing that you\u2019re transferring, and whether it\u2019s alive in them to connect to something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whether you pass the test, whether you ace it, whether you get the certificate, or you get the diploma it\u2019s really whether you\u2019re using your trigonometry when you\u2019re 39 years old. Whether you\u2019re using your world history when you\u2019re 64, when you\u2019re\u2014whether you connect it to something else. Because I know from my own history, I mean, education history, how much I\u2019ve forgotten or don\u2019t use that I\u2019ve actually studied. In which case that piece of knowledge is dormant, it\u2019s inactive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And we know that the happy person is one who is fully present and fully engaged and fully participatory in life, personally, internally, externally, communally. And we know that\u2019s true. We know that people who have taken risks to try and do something that they think is worthwhile like veterans, they feel most alive when they were in danger because they know what\u2019s at stake and they also know what they\u2019re willing to give up in order to have something be accomplished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, people talk about \u201cthe war on cancer,\u201d \u201con education.\u201d Well, the war in a sense is about ourselves. It\u2019s like saying, \u201cWe should win the war that makes us into these thriving individuals and communities that are learning communities that actually allow us to thrive on this planet.\u201d That\u2019s the higher goal. And yes, it turns into jobs. But if we get to those goals, we will succeed in creating happier, thriving, and healthy communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We know that the happy person is one who is fully present and fully engaged and fully participatory in life, personally, internally, externally, communally.<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=We+know+that+the+happy+person+is+one+who+is+fully+present+and+fully+engaged+and+fully+participator...via+%40carnegiefdn&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.carnegiefoundation.org%2Fblog%2Ftim-talks-with-yo-yo-ma%2F\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Twitter<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TK:<\/strong>&nbsp;I love that premise that in essence, the measure of success with regard to a young person being the extent to which they connected it, applied it, used it, shared it. The extent to which it motivated them versus really the traditional paradigm is the extent to which you can repeat it. right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>YM:<\/strong>&nbsp;Right, because that was the industrial age. Because we were training workers to actually follow instructions. Now, it is true that a lot of college graduates sometimes don\u2019t follow instructions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TK:<\/strong>&nbsp;I count myself among them proudly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>YM:<\/strong>&nbsp;I\u2019m horrible with instructions. So, I\u2019m just saying that we need people who are resilient. Who can actually, who know they have access to possibilities that when something shifts, because the world is changing very quickly, you know how to shift and you know how to recognize things that are close to you and far away from you and see the relationship and constantly be aware of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Young people are aware of that because they are actually digital natives the way that you and I are not. And so there\u2019s an advantage, and there\u2019s an advantage to that wisdom, but then you have to think, what do they need? Well, they need things maybe that we know that they don\u2019t have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Maybe it\u2019s a sense of history. Maybe it\u2019s a sense of, because they\u2019re aware of what everybody their own age is doing everywhere, whereas we might not be. They are, so what\u2019s the advantage? The advantage is if we have a large, common world problem to solve, they will be on it if we give them the opportunity and accelerate those opportunities and trust them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, that\u2019s a hard thing, it\u2019s a hard thing to do if you don\u2019t think that the values are built in. That\u2019s why values are so important. Because if we trust young people to do the right things that they know how to do, and we give them that authority earlier than we, the way we earned it, \u201cWell, it took me so many years. So you do the same.\u201d No, that\u2019s a different world. And so what about giving them that custodial responsibility earlier. And for them to actually look for wisdom in their own time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The advantage is if we have a large, common world problem to solve, they [young people] will be on it if we give them the opportunity and accelerate those opportunities and trust them.<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=The+advantage+is+if+we+have+a+large%2C+common+world+problem+to+solve%2C+they+will+be+on+it+if+we+give...via+%40carnegiefdn&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.carnegiefoundation.org%2Fblog%2Ftim-talks-with-yo-yo-ma%2F\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Twitter<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TK:<\/strong>&nbsp;When I went back to South Africa, after apartheid fell and I met with phenomenal people who were involved in writing the constitution, artists who\u2019d been resisting. To a person, they said, you know who we have to thank for this for the fall of the apartheid: teachers and students. It was absolutely consistent and it reminded me, it reminds me every day, to your point about powerful beyond measure in terms of young people and what they can do and accomplish for much greater good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>YM:<\/strong>&nbsp;It\u2019s funny. The same case in East Germany in Leipzig. I was there for I think maybe the 40th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. It\u2019s one big. And I went to the Nicolai Kirche which is where so many of the resistance Monday night meetings started and I met a couple who were there and they now have, they brought a young teenager to play for me. But we started talking and they said, \u201cYeah, we went there, we marched. And the air was so thick with all these young people. All these people saying, knowing something going to happen, but the troops were there also.\u201d So it was like a tinderbox. And I think Kurt Masur said, \u201cPlease, please, please be peaceful.\u201d Whatever. And lo and behold, something that we thought was impossible during our, and maybe even the next lifetime, it changed. And they were in tears talking about that, very much what you said about in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TK:<\/strong>&nbsp;South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>YM:<\/strong>&nbsp;There\u2019s that energy of people in different places that they just know, you can\u2019t keep the truth away from people even if with firewalls and all of that. So what are we going to do with all that energy? How can we say, \u201cThis is good energy that will do the responsible thing?\u201d Again, the trust factor. Is it good?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TK:<\/strong>&nbsp;Yeah, so I think this is an amazing punctuation mark for this conversation, because I think it is rich with hope. If you\u2019re right and that this moment could be accelerative on lots of fronts, then rooting it around trust and engagement from the generation that\u2019s coming, whether it\u2019s on the climate front or it\u2019s on the improvement of the educational pathway front, or any front, it feels like exactly the right place to build your foundation. So, Yo-Yo\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>YM:<\/strong>&nbsp;You\u2019re building the foundation, and you are rebuilding, and actually you\u2019re renewing the commitment of the foundation and I am so unbelievably honored to serve on your board, partly because I\u2019ve known you for\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TK:<\/strong>&nbsp;317 years, I think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>YM:<\/strong>&nbsp;Exactly and counting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TK:<\/strong>&nbsp;Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>YM:<\/strong>&nbsp;And so, because I know your spirit, which is, but I also know a little bit about the history of what this Foundation has accomplished in its entirety. And so where do we need to go now? And I\u2019m just, I\u2019m here for the ride and I\u2019m fully committed and can\u2019t wait to be with my fellow board members and to see what they have to say and to teach us so we can do the right thing for this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TK:<\/strong>&nbsp;Okay, Yo-Yo. Well, I so appreciate you taking time and look forward to seeing you in national parks, in board meetings, wherever you may be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>YM:<\/strong>&nbsp;Anywhere.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<div aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-fsb-flexible-spacer fsb-flexible-spacer\"><div class=\"fsb-flexible-spacer__device fsb-flexible-spacer__device--lg\" style=\"height:80px\"><\/div><div class=\"fsb-flexible-spacer__device fsb-flexible-spacer__device--md\" style=\"height:80px\"><\/div><div class=\"fsb-flexible-spacer__device fsb-flexible-spacer__device--sm\" style=\"height:80px\"><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<div class=\"gb-container gb-container-e3118763 alignfull\">\n\n<div aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-fsb-flexible-spacer fsb-flexible-spacer\"><div class=\"fsb-flexible-spacer__device fsb-flexible-spacer__device--lg\" style=\"height:56px\"><\/div><div class=\"fsb-flexible-spacer__device fsb-flexible-spacer__device--md\" style=\"height:56px\"><\/div><div 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more<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n<div class=\"gb-grid-column gb-grid-column-6e4c6215\"><div class=\"gb-container gb-container-6e4c6215\">\n\n<div class=\"gb-grid-wrapper gb-grid-wrapper-140a62b5 gb-query-loop-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"gb-grid-column gb-grid-column-467ccb83 gb-query-loop-item post-1066 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-video tag-featured tag-future tag-higher-education\"><div class=\"gb-container gb-container-467ccb83\"><a class=\"gb-container-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.carnegiefoundation.org\/podcast-the-next-50-years-of-higher-ed-what-leaders-need-to-know\/\"><\/a>\n<div class=\"gb-container gb-container-8d506024\">\n<figure class=\"gb-block-image gb-block-image-1f9cf2fe\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"822\" height=\"494\" src=\"https:\/\/www.carnegiefoundation.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Thumbnail-Next-50-Years.png\" class=\"gb-image-1f9cf2fe\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.carnegiefoundation.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Thumbnail-Next-50-Years.png 822w, https:\/\/www.carnegiefoundation.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Thumbnail-Next-50-Years-300x180.png 300w, https:\/\/www.carnegiefoundation.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Thumbnail-Next-50-Years-768x462.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 822px) 100vw, 822px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"gb-container gb-container-48f520c9\">\n<h2 class=\"gb-headline gb-headline-ee1ac036 gb-headline-text\">Podcast: The Next 50 Years of Higher Ed \u2013 What Leaders Need to Know<\/h2>\n\n<p class=\"gb-headline gb-headline-1f666cd2 dcs_blueChevron gb-headline-text\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.carnegiefoundation.org\/podcast-the-next-50-years-of-higher-ed-what-leaders-need-to-know\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<div aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-fsb-flexible-spacer fsb-flexible-spacer\"><div class=\"fsb-flexible-spacer__device fsb-flexible-spacer__device--lg\" style=\"height:100px\"><\/div><div class=\"fsb-flexible-spacer__device fsb-flexible-spacer__device--md\" style=\"height:100px\"><\/div><div class=\"fsb-flexible-spacer__device fsb-flexible-spacer__device--sm\" style=\"height:100px\"><\/div><\/div>\n\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In these Tim Talks, Carnegie President Tim Knowles engages \u201cfriends, allies, and conspirators\u201d in micro-conversations about education, equity, and the &#8230; <a title=\"Tim Talks With Yo-Yo Ma\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.carnegiefoundation.org\/tim-talks-with-yo-yo-ma\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Tim Talks With Yo-Yo Ma\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2035,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"ghostkit_customizer_options":"","ghostkit_custom_css":"","ghostkit_custom_js_head":"","ghostkit_custom_js_foot":"","ghostkit_typography":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"client_controls":[],"class_list":["post-1908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Tim Talks With Yo-Yo Ma - Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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