Developing optimistic kids

Hi there,

First, I’m incredibly excited to welcome Melanie Whelan, former CEO of SoulCycle, to the Forge Prep Guild.

She joins founders, scientists, public company CEOs, doctors, and operators who want to pay it forward in a way that really matters.

We believe students in middle/high school can do big things (gets laws passed, help local businesses solve problems, create inventions, etc) and the Guild is one of the tools in our arsenal that fosters that.

At Forge, we focus on developing student agency.

A belief that you happen to the world.

The world does not happen to you.

And that requires optimism.

The Optimism Problem

40% of 12th graders in the USA say it's "hard to have hope for the world."

Nearly 1 in 3 wonder if there's a purpose to life.

What the royal F?

That's not a vibe. This is from one of the longest-running study of American adolescents. And the trend has been moving in one direction since 2002.

Here's the thing though.

This isn’t new.

In 1966, the BBC asked British schoolchildren what life would look like in 2000. Their predictions?

Overpopulation. Famine. Nuclear catastrophe.

A world basically cooked.

They were almost all wrong (except 1 student who nailed which you can watch here).

By 2000, extreme poverty had collapsed. Child mortality was falling fast. Life expectancy up. Literacy up.

The disaster never came.

Every generation of teenagers has looked at the horizon and seen the end of the world. That's not new.

The problem is we’ve built schools that confirm the feeling of helplessness.

School optimizes for compliance. Solve problems with known answers. Sit still.

It’s a place where Forge Prep fellowship winner, Sahana, a 14 yo student entrepreneur whose made $3,000 in her business, is told by her school admin that entrepreneurship is not encouraged at her school.

Compliance, above all.

Curiosity, capability, and creativity are unimportant.

And the stakes keep going up.

College educated folks are having a tougher time getting jobs.

And AI skills already, per the World Economic Forum, carry a 23% wage premium in UK job postings. Higher than a Master's degree. Proof of capability is overtaking proxies for capability. Degrees included.

All the while, our schools obsess over state administered test scores.

So what actually creates optimism?

Not affirmations or SEL curricula or growth mindset lectures. Not telling kids to look on the bright side.

It's demonstrating capability. Contributing to something real.

As a Montessori-inspired school, I love the term Montessori has for this.

Valorization.

The idea is almost embarrassingly simple: adolescents need to feel that their work has real value in the real world. Not gold stars on worksheets. Not dioramas on books they didn’t read. Not memorizing trivia for tests.

Actual contribution.

When a middle/high schooler builds something that gets used, solves a problem that was actually broken, makes something an adult takes seriously, something in them shifts.

They stop feeling like passengers.

You can't lecture a kid into believing they matter. They have to prove it to themselves.

The Forge view

Our students don't read about community problems. They work on them with real partners who expect great work. They don't study businesses. They run them.

Sahana didn't need a different mindset. She needed a school that treated her like someone capable of doing real things.

The 1966 kids were wrong about 2000. Today's 12th graders are wrong about 2040.

We just have to show them that before they stop believing it's possible.

Forge ahead,

Anand

Co-founder, Forge Prep

P.S. If you have a kid entering 5th–8th grade, and you want them to love learning, trust themselves, and actually feel optimistic about what's ahead, reply to this email or grab time here. Our 1st campus goes live in Livingston, NJ in Sept 2026.