Ice Cream & Consequences

What a screaming family at the beach reminded me about real education.

While some colleagues spent their break uploading “panel” selfies from Dubrovnik or “research” shots poolside in Lisbon, I spent mine watching a family of five implode on a public beach in Finistère.

It was magnificent.

Two kids screaming over a broken inflatable flamingo. One toddler eating sand like it was couscous. A mother threatening to “pack up right now” for the sixth time. And a father—shirt off, beer in hand—negotiating a ceasefire using nothing but melted Magnums and sarcasm. Bribery-by-ice-cream was the only functioning leadership model.

And yet—chaos, consequence, creativity. It had everything: problem-solving under pressure, leadership under duress, team dynamics in full collapse. No slides. No buzzwords. No breakout rooms. Just raw, unscripted learning. In other words: the real world.

We pretend to simulate this in classrooms. We run case studies, debates, and hackathons. But none of it hits as hard as watching someone try to explain sunscreen to a slippery four-year-old who’s just head-butted his sister. The beach is a better classroom than most faculty will ever admit.

And it reminded me of something business schools forget. Learning isn’t tidy. It’s not bullet points or “let’s go around the room.” It’s conflict. It’s improvisation. It’s trying to solve a problem while your feet are burning and someone’s crying because their hat blew away.

So next semester, I’m importing more of that. Less theory. More mess. I want my students to feel the heat, not just debate it.

Business education needs a little less HBR and a little more human. Starting with sand between the toes.