Birth of a meme

The new character education, coming soon to a district near you: grit.

Students need grit, and it's the school's job to foster grit.

Because grit is more important than knowledge.

Also: grit is best fostered by means of teachers telling students to do something they don't know how to do, then refusing to answer questions. In any other context, that would be rude, but never mind.

Our new superintendent, the one who was to bring accountability and every-child-every-dayness to our district, is a big fan of grit. Hosted a book club for parents on How Children Succeed the week after winter break.

He's a fan of Tony Wagner, too, while we're on the subject of expensive new superintendents with bad instincts. Vintage, pre-crash Tony Wagner, even better. (With increasing abundance, people want unique products and services!!!! So it's time to redefine rigor!!!)

Wrong again.

Here's Hirsch. And here's Peter Meyer.

At Education Week:

Unlearning Learned Helplessness

"I need help," several students said in their geometry class at Esperanza Academy in Philadelphia.

"I don't think so," teacher John Roman replied.

Roman had just given students a handout with several unmarked triangles on it, and asked them to determine which of the triangles were congruent. He also gave them patty paper (tracing paper), and said that it might help them complete the task. He did not, however, show or tell students what to do with it.

[snip]

[K]nee-jerk calls for help are indicative of a common reason students don't learn to their potential: learned helplessness. They encounter an unfamiliar task (or word, formula, etc.), and immediately shut down or seek help.

The good news is that because it's learned helplessness, it can also be unlearned. And because students have learned it from enabling educators like me (until I stopped spoon-feeding them), we're in the best position to help them unlearn it....Turns out, for example, that John Roman's students had sufficient prior knowledge of congruent triangles. They were also more than capable of figuring out how to use patty paper to perform the assigned task. What they lacked was a problem-solving mindset. They lacked qualities such as determination and resourcefulness.

Yet students will only acquire those qualities if we put them in situations that require those qualities. ...After commiserating for a couple of minutes, a few students picked up the patty paper and began tracing triangles. Soon all students did this, with no help from Roman besides subtle reminders to a few students that the patty paper might be helpful.

The value for students of experiences like this has more to do with confidence than content. The more they learn with little or no help from us, the more they believe in themselves and their abilities. Sure it's important for students to learn math and science and social studies. But the real lesson for kids when teachers do what John Roman did is that confusion is where learning begins, not where it ends.

And the lesson for us as educators is that students will only unlearn helplessness when we unlearn helpfulness.

Bad character comes from sages on stages.

Good character comes from guides on sides.

A likely story.

---

For the record, actual learned helplessness has nothing to do with the scenario described above.

The term comes from Martin Seligman's experiments with dogs in the 1960s, which entailed giving the dogs electric shocks and inducing a state of "learned" helplessness, learned in the sense that after being repeatedly shocked with no means of escape, the animals learned not to even try to save themselves, not even when the avenue of escape was directly in front of them. Instead, when the shocks came on again, they trembled and cried, and displayed all the signs of human depression. The experiments were cruel, though I don't think the experimenters knew they were cruel, going in.

I was taught the learned-helplessness experiments in college, and the image that formed in my mind of the cowering, crying dogs too distraught to exit the shock zone -- or even try to exit -- has stayed with me.

(On the other hand, having since experienced a very similar scenario on two separate occasions, I now see things a bit differently. But that is a story for another day.)

For a teacher to appropriate the term "learned helplessness" as a description of his own students is wrong in so many ways.

UPDATE 3/17/2014: See Crimson Mom's comment. (And don't miss the never-to-be-missed Anonymous.)

a parent on Trailblazers homework

I encountered this in my 3rd grader's homework. He learned his math tables from 1-5 and knows the 10s and 11s. His homework consisted of 30 multiplication problems; 7 of them were problems that he had never seen before.

9 x 9, 6 x 9, 7 x 6, blank x 7 = 49, blank x 6 = 36, 9 x blank = 63, and blank x 9 = 45.

The worksheet was called "Tracking Down Facts." He was upset by this. It was not covered in the classroom so he had no idea what to do. Leaving them blank is not an option for him -- he hates to get in trouble. He likes to do his homework on his own so he doesn't want to ask me for help. His feelings were anger, frustration, anxiety, hopelessness, desperation and finally he broke down and asked me what the answers were.

I sat down with him and asked him what 9 x 10 was and he knew and then I asked him how he could do some easy math to figure out what 9 x 9 was. He got it and painfully worked out all the other problems. This is how my child is learning math with Trailblazers. How did this scenario play out in all the different homes in town?

This is not helping children think through math problems -- it is teaching them how to cope.

I think parents assume that homework is a review of material covered in the classroom -- at least in early grades. I think that parents would be shocked to know that this is one of the core principles of Trailblazers: let the child struggle through problems they have not seen before and come up with their own strategies to solve them and then painfully explain their answers.

the deep

Barry G:

To learn how to solve "all sorts of new problems" one has to start with basic problem solving techniques that are generalizable to a variety of different situations. What the ed school gurus were advising was what happened in Catherine's school as she described. Giving students problems for which they did not have the prior knowledge or skills to solve them.

If you throw a kid who doesn't know how to swim and/or is afraid of water in the deep end of a swimming pool with the instruction that he/she is to swim to the other side, one result is the kid may drown. The other result is the kid may do a combination of thrashings to keep himself afloat and somehow make it to the other side. If you asked the kid how he did it, a likely response may be "I have no idea what I did, but I never want to do that again!"

Steve H on finding a solution

"Problem solving, which is preferred, occurs when students are not able to apply a mechanical, memorized response, but rather have to figure out what to do in a new situation."
Discovery learning in math (pdf file)

Kids who know math can look at a problem and apply a straightforward, mathematical solution. For kids who know squat, EVERYTHING is a problem that has to be figured out. That is not a good thing. The route to complex problem solving does not bypass mastery of the basics.


memory lane

This reminds me of the parent uprising that took place here a few years back.

Kids in the accelerated math course at the middle school were doing so badly on their tests, and the tests were so different from what had been taught in class, that the district was finally forced to hold a public meeting to discuss the situation.

The then math chair, by way of explanation, told us that the reason kids were struggling was that the course goal wasn't just to teach math. "I want your children to be able to solve problems," she said.

She elaborated on this point: there was something about astronauts, as I recall. She wanted our kids to be able to use math to solve the kinds of problems an astronaut might have to solve. Something out of the ordinary.

That was the goal.

Ergo: hard course, 6th grade children weeping over their homework, and parents hiring tutors. Specifically: parents hiring math tutors already employed by the district as math teachers.

Later, a parent standing in the back of the room raised his hand and when called on observed that students hadn't done so well on measurement in the last round of state tests.

The department chair said emphatically, a hint of triumph in her voice, "Your children can't measure!" She seemed to relish this factoid. Your children!

A friend of mine heard from the administration just the other day that kids did badly on the measurement scale again this year.

So I guess the 4 intervening years of Math Trailblazers hasn't done the trick.

handing it to the student

By way of introduction, I am neither mathematician nor mathematics teacher, but I majored in math and have used it throughout my career, especially in the last 17 years as an analyst for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. My love of and facility with math is due to good teaching and good textbooks. The teachers I had in primary and secondary school provided explicit instruction and answered students’ questions; they also posed challenging problems that required us to apply what we had learned. The textbooks I used also contained explanations of the material with examples that showed every step of the problem solving process.

I fully expected the same for my daughter, but after seeing what passed for mathematics in her elementary school, I became increasingly distressed over how math is currently taught in many schools.

Optimistically believing that I could make a difference in at least a few students’ lives, I decided to teach math when I retire. I enrolled in education school about two years ago, and have one class and a 15-week student teaching requirement to go. Although I had a fairly good idea of what I was in for with respect to educational theories, I was still dismayed at what I found in my mathematics education courses.

In class after class, I have heard that when students discover material for themselves, they supposedly learn it more deeply than when it is taught directly. Similarly, I have heard that although direct instruction is effective in helping students learn and use algorithms, it is allegedly ineffective in helping students develop mathematical thinking. Throughout these courses, a general belief has prevailed that answering students’ questions and providing explicit instruction are “handing it to the student” and preventing them from “constructing their own knowledge”—to use the appropriate terminology. Overall, however, I have found that there is general confusion about what “discovery learning” actually means. I hope to make clear in this article what it means, and to identify effective and ineffective methods to foster learning through discovery.

To set this in context, it is important to understand an underlying belief espoused in my school of education: i.e., there is a difference between problem solving and exercises. This view holds that “exercises” are what students do when applying algorithms or routines they know and the term can apply even to word problems. Problem solving, which is preferred, occurs when students are not able to apply a mechanical, memorized response, but rather have to figure out what to do in a new situation. Moreover, we future teachers are told that students’ difficulty in solving problems in new contexts is evidence that the use of “mere exercises” or “procedures” is ineffective and they are overused in classrooms.

As someone who learned math largely though mere exercises and who now creatively applies math at work, I have to question this thinking. I believe that students’ difficulty in solving new problems is more likely to be because they do not have the requisite knowledge and/or mastery of skills—not because they were given explicit instruction and homework exercises.

Those who make such a differentiation and champion “true” problem solving espouse a belief in having students construct their own knowledge by forcing them to make connections with skills and concepts that they may not have mastered. But, with skills and concepts still gelling students are not likely to be able to apply them to new and unknown situations. Nevertheless, the belief prevails that having students work on such problems fosters a discovery process which the purveyors of this theory view as “authentic work” and the key to “real learning.” One teacher with whom I spoke summed up this philosophy with the following questions: “What happens when students are placed in a totally unfamiliar situation that requires a more complex solution? Do they know how to generate a procedure? How do we teach students to apply mathematical thinking in creative ways to solve complex, novel problems? What happens when we get off the ‘script’?”

Discovery learning in math: Exercises versus problems (pdf file)
by Barry Garelick
THIRD EDUCATION GROUP REVIEW / ESSAYS, Vol.5, No.2, 2009

make them struggle
education professors: students must struggle
KUMON: "work that can be easily completed"
handing it to the student

developmentally inappropriate

Vicky S emailed me a wonderful summary of a core issue in public schools, one I haven't managed to put into words but have been thinking about for quite a while now.

She was responding to another email I'd forwarded from a friend whose son will be attending Hogwarts in the fall, re: clarity of summer assignments at Hogwarts vs our public schools:

[The Hogwarts summer assignment] list confirms 1000% that this is the school for E. and that public schools don't know what they are doing. When I would look at the work that my kids were given, from K - now, I would have NO IDEA myself what the teachers were asking for. And if I can't understand, I don't know how the kids are supposed to understand. I feel like taking the Summer Assignment list to my meeting with [the school] and just laying it down and showing them what CLEAR is. All of E's "needs break down of directions" and "chunking material" that's on his 504 plan is done on the Hogwarts Summer Assignment list without any "504 accommodation."

I had exactly the same experience myself last summer, contemplating C's summer assignment list from Hogwarts.

For instance, one part of the summer assignment for The Odyssey was the following:

Based on your reading of books 1-12 of the Odyssey, answer each of the following questions in essay form. Each answer must be no less than fifty words and no more than seventy-five words. Combine all three essays on one page in New Times Roman, 12 point, single-spaced format. Staple your page of answers to the Odyssey identification page you are submitting in September.

1. Show three ways in which the challenges Telemachus meets in establishing his male identity are similar to the challenges certain students entering Hogwarts as freshmen meet in establishing their male identity. [have I mentioned lately that Hogwarts is highly boy-friendly?]

2. What do you consider the three most admirable qualities of Odysseus and why are they still needed today?

3. The Odyssey is filled with interesting female characters. Tell who is the most interesting female character and tell what are her three most admirable qualities.

I still remember, vividly, the feeling of relief that washed over me as I read this assignment.

It was clear.

It was simple.

It was direct.

It was doable by my son.

Freedom.


Here is Vicky S:

This brings up something that's been rattling around in my head. Seems like in so many realms, the schools have completely lost track of developmentally appropriate strategies. They are applying a very simple model. Whatever they are striving for, they try to accelerate. Doesn't work that way.

Examples:

How to develop expertise:
Schools--put the kids in undefined environments and encourage them to think and act like experts.
In reality--provide kids (people) opportunities for knowledge acquisition, then synthesis and opportunities to apply their knowledge, over lengthy time periods (years), with the happy outcome of creating an expert (at the end).

How to make sure kids learn algebra:
Schools--teach algebra at earlier and earlier ages
In reality--teach basic math better, prior to teaching algebra

How to teach kids to handle long term/multiple projects:
Schools--give them long term/multiple projects at earlier and earlier ages. If this does not seem to work, go even earlier.
In reality--start with small nightly homework, several years of assignment books, parsed out assignments, frequent check-ins, short projects one at a time.

This is true in other areas too--

How to produce confident independent child:
Wrong--force child into independence early, cry it out, tough it out, figure it out
Right--meet child's many needs with constant love, attention, affection; kill boogey men; kiss away tears.

The general principle that I'm trying to articulate is that if you want to achieve a certain goal, you don't do it by prematurely acting as if you've achieved the goal. You don't do Z at an earlier age to achieve Z at a later age. You do X and Y at the earlier ages, which then allow you to move forward and achieve Z. The "X" and the "Y" are what developmentally appropriate education is all about.

Absolutely.

easy is better

from Steve:

My son has a teacher who is known for making her 7th grade social studies class hard. The idea is to toughen the kids up for high school. The assumption is that real learning is a difficult process. I feel like telling her that any teacher can make a class hard. It's more difficult, however, to make the class easy. There seems to be the idea that if you make learning easy, kids will never learn to do it on their own. You have to take an indirect, or discovery approach to really remember the material.

What if you came up with a direct, easy approach that could teach kids about fractions, percents, and decimals. Would you not use it? [answer: no] Thematic, real world, group discovery learning is supposed to be fun, interesting, and effective in both what you learn and how your learn. Too bad it doesn't work and wastes a lot of time. That's OK, because they want to emphasize the process and not the results. Perhaps that's why they don't like tests. Answers are not as important as the process.

I have no patience with educators who pride themselves on being "hard."

Hard work: yes, if (and only if) the kids are learning a lot. Hard to understand, hard to learn: no.

Ditto for the idea that a school's job is done once students have been "challenged." As I once told the now-retired science chair here: If I wrote challenging books, instead of books on challenging subjects that people can read and understand, we wouldn’t be living in Irvington. As a general rule, people don't like hard stuff. They like easy stuff, and rightly so:

Hyunjin Song and Norbert Schwarz wanted to see if they could motivate a group of 20-year-old college students to exercise regularly—not an easy task. They gave all the students written instructions for a regular exercise routine, but they used a simple but ingenious method to make the how-to instructions either cognitively palatable or challenging: Some got instructions printed in Arial typeface, a plain font designed for easy reading. Others got their instructions printed in a Brush font, which basically looks like it’s been written by hand with a Japanese paintbrush; it’s unfamiliar and much harder to read.

There are a lot of ways to make something mentally palatable, or not. You can used clear and simple language, or arcane vocabulary words; simple sentences or convoluted sentences with lots of clauses. The psychologists chose typeface because it’s easy to manipulate in the lab. After the students had all read the instructions, they asked them some questions about the exercise regimen: how long they thought it would take, whether it would flow naturally or drag on endlessly, whether it would be boring, and so forth. They also queried them on whether they were likely to make exercise a routine part of their day.

The findings were remarkable. Those who had read the exercise instructions in an unadorned, accessible typeface were much more open to the prospect of exercising: They believed that the regimen would take less time and that it would feel more “fluid” and easy. Most important, they were more willing to make exercise part of their day. Apparently, the students’ brains mistook the ease of reading about exercise for ease of actually doing the pushups and crunches, and this misunderstanding motivated them to actually think about a life change. Those who struggled through the Japanese brushstrokes had no intention of heading to the gym; the reading alone tired them out.

A Recipe for Motivation
by Wray Herbert

If schools were accountable for results, you'd hear a lot less twiddle-twaddle about "challenge" and "hard." Just ask KUMON. Or Fluenz. Or Pimsleur. Or hell, just about anyone trying to sell you an educational product of any kind. Do book publicists write ad copy telling folks, "Buy this book. It's hard"?

No. They don't.

Even Jay Mathews has modified his approach to the "Challenge Index." In the past, all schools made it onto the list if they had a high number of students taking AP courses & the AP test. How students actually did on the test wasn't part of the index; hence the term "Challenge." The Challenge Index measures challenge, not achievement.

[pause]

Remind me again.

Exactly what are we paying these people to do?


make them struggle
education professors: students must struggle
KUMON: "work that can be easily completed"
handing it to the student

should learning be a "struggle"?

from Tex:

I love Kumon! The anti-struggle way to learn.

The Kumon method, Step 1:

Students begin at a comfortable starting point—determined by our placement test—with work that can be easily completed. This way your child will master the basics and gain complete proficiency with each successive step. Kumon students develop better concentration and study habits because they don't get frustrated by our learning process.

Also, from Step 5:

Your child’s individualized program is never compromised by the needs of a group or a prescribed teaching agenda.

make them struggle
education professors: students must struggle
KUMON: "work that can be easily completed"
handing it to the student

the struggle

Chart 2.

When teachers assign kids specific questions in such subjects as math or history, is it more important that:

Kids struggle with the process of trying to find the right answers 86%
Kids end up knowing the right answers to the questions or problems 12%

For all charts, numbers do not total 100% because "don't know" responses are not reported and because of rounding.

source:
Different Drummers: How Teachers of Teachers View Public Education

There are very few parents who would choose "struggles with the process" over "knows his math facts cold."

Evidence?

86% of the public public "want[s] students to memorize the multiplication tables and do math by hand before using calculators." (p. 38)

Interestingly, 73% of teachers say the same thing.

Of course, that was back in 1997.

The baby boomers are retiring now, so I imagine that figure is declining.


Different Drummers
education professors: students must struggle
gifted children and ed schools
constructivism and classroom discipline
make them struggle
KUMON: "work that can be easily completed"
handing it to the student

make them struggle

We acknowledge that many definitions of the term constructivism exist. We believe, however, that a certain core belief is common to all definitions: that students actively construct their own knowledge of mathematics. Students are not blank slates on which a teacher can write. They cannot make a mental copy of the teacher's knowledge of mathematics. They cannot passively absorb skills and concepts in the form transmitted by the teacher. Instead, they have to struggle to make sense of them in a personal way.

source:
Now Here Is That Authority on Mathematics Reform, Dr. Constructivist!
By Michael G. Mikusa and Hester Lewellen
The Mathematics Teacher
Vol. 92, No. 2, February 1999
(no link available)


There are several basic aspects to the transmission-vs.-constructivist contrast. The basic difference, already introduced, is in terms of the theory of student learning that undergirds instructional practice-i.e., the difference between learning through reception of facts and repetitive practice of discrete skills versus learning through effortful integration of new ideas with those previously believed.

source:
Constructivist-Compatible Beliefs and Practices among U.S. Teachers
Jason L. Ravitz
Henry Jay Becker
Yan Tien Wong


Knowledge is constructed in an active, effortful way by learners who are engaged in experiences, which result in reflection and assimilation with existing knowledge.

source:
ISD Knowledge Base



...letting students struggle with the problems they choose and helping only when they ask ^*
source:
Constructivist Learning



I'm collecting constructivist lines about "effortful" learning and "struggle" to construct meaning, etc.

So if you've got some, please share.


^{* this one is especially interesting in light of the fact that our superintendent is constantly talking about students needing to "seek help" - and of course there is the issue, here, of boys not being especially interested in seeking help}


make them struggle
education professors: students must struggle
KUMON: "work that can be easily completed"
handing it to the student