What we say we want vs. what we do

I heard an interesting comment on the radio the other day (Wednesday, April 29, 2015).  I looked it up to see who it might have been making the point, and it looks like it was Joseph Stiglitz on The Commonwealth Club. 

He talked about the fact that what people say they want when they think things through is different from how they act in the moment.  That in itself is not interesting.  That's well known.  What was interesting to me was that he went on to say, "Who's to say which is what the truly want?"  Often people take a scornful attitude to this phenomenon.  The answer people give when asked what they would do is seen as untruthful because it does not match the actions.  The actions are seen as foolish because they do not match what they person would do if they thought things through.  I liked this alternate view, that these are just two different things -- w hat people say they want, and what people do.  It's just an observation of human nature, not a judgment.

He went on to say that's why we have thing like child labor laws.  Because we agree that we don't want child labor, but when we act in the moment, we buy what's cheapest.  We have child labor laws not because paternalistic government thinks it knows better than consumers, but because we humans have agreed that we want this to be based on what we want when we think things through, not what we want when we act in the moment.

Educate our children to be pro-active

There's a story all over the news about a cruise ship which turned away from a stranded boat.  Two lives were lost as a result.  Here's one instance of the story:http://www.npr.org/2012/04/19/150897139/cruise-ship-didnt-aid-drifting-boat-passengers-say.  It seems to me that my K-12 education trained me to be passive and obedient, not to go out on a limb.  It seems to me that there's a part of me that wants to turn away from things, to pretend I didn't see.  I hope I would not turn away and let those people die, but I do have a concept of what it is within a person that would cause them to do so.  It seems to me that it has a lot to do with my education.  We need to educate people to be pro-active, not to educate them to be passive.

Not everyone is suited for everything

The blog post "I Used to Be Nicer" talks about how some PhD students just don't succeed.  It quotes a professor who says that, "Students who fail do not think it their own fault that they are failing." Some of the commenters argue that if students don't know they are failing, it is because their advisors have failed to give them adequate feedback.  I don't think that's necessarily the case.  I do see this phenomenon of students not being able to see that they are not suited to PhD work.  When PhD study is not working out for the student, I see them cast blame on the advisor, the courses, whatever.  But even as a non-professor, I can see that that student does not have the disposition to be a PhD student.

I think sometimes it is easier to see other people than to see ourselves.  I see PhD students who are not suited for PhD study, and it makes me wonder, what am I doing that I am not suited for?  When something I'm trying to do does not fall into place, how do I know when it's time to accept that it's not going to work, time to walk away and try something else?

Why we need education

We need good education. We face so many problems.

Babies are born addicted to drugs. Children are denigrated by their parents. Children are bullied by their peers. Teenagers have guns, and kill people. People face long-term unemployment, because once you are unemployed, employers think there must be something wrong with you so they won't hire you. People get beaten for being transgender, or for being Muslim. Political commentators use misleading statements and doctored videos to sow divisiveness and hatred. People get so worked up about things that aren't even true -- the idea that President Obama was not born in U.S., or that Park51 is to be a "Ground Zero Mosque," while our planet is suffering the effects of climate change, including floods, drought, hurricanes, and heat waves.

We need technical knowledge of science and engineering. We need people with skills in policymaking. We need people who can help us transcend divisiveness and hatred, and work together to solve our problems. We need journalists and historians and librarians to help us build our knowledge. If we are going to address the problems of the world, we need people with many different areas of knowledge to work together. We need everyone to contribute. And that is why we need education, to create a world in which everyone is equipped to contribute.

The goal of education should be learning

My experience of school was that in K-12, we were there because we had to be there, and we did boring homework because we had to. When I got to college, I was at a school I chose, studying what I chose to study, and my feeling was, "why did they never tell us before this that school could be interesting?"

However, many students feel about college they way I did before college. I have been reading some comments at http://www.studentsreview.com. Students write things like, "the social life is awful. The adminstration is really starting to crack down on drinking and parties making the social life even worse. They care more about their reputation than students having fun."

When my great grandfather was starting college, his father told him, "you can send a boy to college, but you cannot make him think." My great grandfather took this as a positive challenge, and chose to think.

Students feel they need to go to college in order to get a job, and yet, they don't really want to partake of the academic offerings. What can we do? Is the system all wrong? It seems to me that the educational system should be suited to students' interests (giving them skills they need to succeed in life after graduation), and it should be rigorous. That is, students should know that there are certain standards they will have to meet in order to be successful in their chosen career. Education should be aimed at helping them develop the skills they need. A degree should signify that the student has achieved a certain level of knowledge and skill, rather than signifying that a student has sat through a certain number of classes. Students may not know exactly what career they want to follow, so they should be able to try several different areas before deciding which to pursue. Education should also cover the knowledge that all should have. For example, people need to know some history, so that we don't repeat our mistakes, and people need critical thinking, so that they can recognize false claims.

In a sense, this is how our educational system is already structured. Students focus their study on a particular subject, their future career field, while also studying the areas which all people should know. However, it has gotten to be more about the structure of the educational system -- you need a degree to get a job, and you need to take certain classes to get a degree. We tend to lose sight of the fact that the real goal is that you need certain knowledge and skills in order to be able to succeed in life. Students go to school because they need a degree, not because they need knowledge.

Excuses

The article On Deadlines and Dead Grandmothers by Thomas Benton talks about how when exam time comes, professors hear from many students claiming to have dead grandmothers, wanting to delay taking the exam.  The author is torn -- offering sympathy and an extension would be kind if the claim is true, and yet if it is not true, he wants to challenge them.  He concludes by saying, "Maybe if I were a more open and approachable professor, with a longer history of generosity and kindness, fewer grandmothers would have to die."  That is, if the students felt he would give them an extension without a dead grandmother, then they would not have to make up false excuses.  I would like to see an educational system which encourages truth-telling.  I know that if it were easily done, we would have it already, but still, that's what I'd like to see.

Let us encourage those who seek to learn and contribute

My tai chi teacher told me to drop my shoulders and open up my collarbone. Sometimes my body doesn't always do as it's told. When I was learning to rollerblade, the person teaching me would always say, "Push to the side, not to the back." I would tell my feet to go to the side, but they would keep going to the back. Eventually, after the friend who had been teaching me had quit teaching me, my feet started obeying. I hope that in time, my collarbone will also figure out how to obey. I usually practice tai chi almost every day. In our most recent class, my tai chi teacher seemed pretty exasperated with my collarbone's disobedience, and went into scolding mode. After that, I didn't feel like practicing tai chi at home, and I felt like quitting the class.

A few months ago I joined an e-mail group. I fantasized that the members would be impressed by the wisdom of my contributions. Instead, they hated my outlook so much that the moderators rejected my post. I questioned whether I really wanted to be a part of that group after all. In that questioning, I discovered three people who had quit the group because their contributions had been rejected. I decided to stay, at least for now, but I'm reserved. I hesitate to participate fully in the group for fear of being rejected again.

Let us not squash the aspirations of those who seek to learn and contribute. When people tell me how impressed they are with my abilities, I am inspired to live up to those expectations. The world needs all the help it can get. Let us encourage those who seek to learn and contribute.

Todd West: Changing the focus from teaching to learning

The Spring 2010 issue of COA: The College of the Atlantic Magazine includes an interview with alumnus Todd West, principal of Deer Isle-Stonington High School.  Discussing how he addresses the challenge of teaching disengaged students, he said, "It's up to the teachers to be very creative to engage kids who are sitting in class thinking about the number of [lobster] traps they could be hauling and the amount of money they could be making....How can geometry be beneficial, or reading a classic?....We talk about what we want for our kids, which is primarily to be prepared to do what they want to do.  We change the focus from teaching to learning."

I like that way of looking at it.  I think sometimes educators can get caught up on the idea that there is a certain curriculum they have to get through, and their goal becomes to lecture on all the topics.  But a better approach is to address the question of how to help students achieve their goals.

Students forget what they learn in class

Inside Higher Ed, source of many interesting articles, recently had an article called Memory and Sequence about how students usually forget what they learn in class.

I often hear professors complaining that students don't know the material they should have learned in the pre-requisite class.  They may blame the students for not being smart enough or studious enough.  If they did  not teach the pre-requisite class themselves, they may blame the instructor of the pre-requisite class.

But it seems to be a systemic problem.  Instead of casting blame on individuals, maybe we can try to understand why it occurs, and how to overcome it.  As the article points out, students forget things when they don't practice them.  A class I took a few years ago had several exams over the course of the semester. As I reviewed for an exam, I realized that I no longer remembered that things I had learned three weeks previously.  I appreciated having the exam, because it forced me to remind myself of those things I had forgotten.  Sometimes courses test the material learned in one unit, then move on to the next unit and test the material in that unit, and never again ask about the material learned in the first unit.  It is less work for professors to write fewer and shorter exams and to grade fewer and shorter exams, and professors also experience less resistance from the students that way, but I think it is a disservice to the students not to force them to review by giving cumulative exams.  And it doesn't just have to be about exams.  Instructors can be creative in coming up with ways to get students to refresh their knowledge of material previously covered.  Studies have shown that students who review their notes after class retain the material better than students who do not.  We need to instill such practices in our students.  I think that part of doing that is reasonable workloads.  When I don't even have enough time to read the all the required material once, I will not leave some material unread in favor of reviewing material I have already read.