Building a better pig

by

 Schools place too much emphasis on speed and not enough on mastery. In subjects such as math, a child should not move to the next topic before the previous (underlying) concept has been mastered. To do so is comparable to building a house on a shaky foundation. All children should work within a zone where they are challenged, yet adequately supported until they master the material and are ready to move on.

 

The Importance of Mastery vs. Speed

Remember the story of the Three Little Pigs? Ever wonder why two of the pigs built houses out of straw and twigs, only to be blown away by the Big Bad Wolf? And what possessed the third little pig to build one out of brick? Was the third pig smarter – born with more talent – better genes? Actually, they were brothers, all from the same litter. And no, they weren’t that different in intelligence; they were pigs for goodness sake. But the first pig went to a school where speed was emphasized. He won top honors for being the “speediest” pig. He ate fast, wallowed fast, walked fast and built houses faster than anyone. Building them out of straw definitely helped with the speed thing, because it was available right on the job site. The second pig went to a school where he learned to build the best house in the time allotted. And that was what he did. He built a very fine house of twigs and came in under budget, with a half day to spare. The third pig went to a school where nothing got done on time, because everything had to meet a certain standard before it was complete. Naturally, the third pig was unemployed after graduation, because he took too long to finish projects. Consequently, he was left to build his own house in all his free time. And so it went, with each row of bricks slowly added, but only after the row below was set and secure. And you know the end to this story. Good houses like good scholarship rely upon securing each level before adding the next. A good education is like a good house, it has to rest on a solid foundation. So how is speed an essential factor in building a solid foundation? Ask the first two pigs.

What is more important, quality of work or speed to completion? If I am paying by the hour, maybe speed. But for surgeon, songwriter, barber, and telephone advisory person – I have to go with quality. In fact, if I am paying for successful completion of the job, speed is not my concern. So why is speed such a big deal in school? Why are tests almost always timed?

I had a Chemistry professor in college who gave untimed tests. At the end of the semester, I went to turn in my test and he asked, “So how did you do?” to which I responded, “Couldn’t get the last problem” to which he responded, “Then sit down and derive it”. Bless his heart. He sat there another forty minutes in the empty classroom, while I figured it out. He knew I could and he wasn’t going to let an arbitrary deadline keep me from showing it.

If you have an assembly line running, of course you want workers who are speedy. But if you have a brand name to protect, you don’t want your product recalled due to poor workmanship. If you commission a work of art or a new website, you aren’t paying for speed, you are paying for quality.

Speed comes with competence, but speed should not be a measure of competence. And for those who are just naturally speedier – walk faster, talk faster, think faster – do they deserve special status? When I go to my doctor, I dislike waiting too long, but I dislike even more, an appointment that is rushed, where I am not carefully listened to, where the doctor does not think deeply before offering an answer to my questions.

A focus on speed often has to do with the need to keep up. Keep up with the rest of the class, get done within the 50-minute class period, and be ready to start the next unit on Monday. But every child is different and every child learns at his or her own rate. Therefore, setting the pace at which they must progress through the course is a set up for half the class feeling bored and half the class feeling overwhelmed and frustrated, convinced they are “just no good at math” or “hate math” or “have math anxiety”.

Effective instruction and learning takes place within the zone of proximal development – at a level just beyond what the child can do independently but not at a level where the child is overwhelmed, even with support. By working within the ZPD, the needed support is gradually withdrawn as mastery is achieved. The scaffolding provided by the teacher, tutor and the text allows the child to take on the challenge of new and unfamiliar material. With practice, the child learns to handle the material with increasing independence until reaching the point where no outside support is necessary because the concept has been truly mastered. Only then should the child move on, with a ZPD adjusted upward, new challenging material introduced, the support needed in place, with the foundation of concepts mastered securely in place. Yet a focus on speed and meeting some schedule totally undermines the process of working within the ZPD and moving at the pace of mastery. To do so leaves the student trying to build a house on a shaky foundation. Math is not difficult when each concept is mastered before moving on. Math is hell when a child is expected to learn new material without the proper foundation in place.

Designing a class that allows for self-paced learning is a challenge – one many teachers cannot or will not undertake.

The Five Why’s Approach

by

Before responding to a problem or reacting to a child’s behavior, take the time to ask a series of five ‘why’ questions. The basis for the problem and a possible solution will be understood at a more fundamental and effective level. Having to answer five of your ‘why’ questions will cause your child to think more deeply about their behavior as well.

Promoting Logical Thinking and Problem Solving

Ever wonder about the origin of the expression, “Children should be seen but not heard”? If you have been around a preschooler recently, you should be able to figure this one out. After the word, “No”, what is the most frequently uttered word? Why of course, it is “Why”.

“Why do dogs have tails?”

“Why do you put gas in the car?”

“Why do I have to go to bed?”

“Why don’t dogs talk?”

And so on.

It is not just the number of “why” questions, but the fact that whatever answer you give the kid, it will invariably be followed by another “why” question. Is our frustration with the annoyance of the endless questioning? No, it is the fact that if we genuinely try to answer a series of “why” questions relating to one topic, we quickly find ourselves struggling for answers. And what is the simple solution to that obnoxious behavior? Children should be seen but not heard.

Is there a lesson to be learned here? One simple lesson is the fact that a series of “why” questions pulls for much more depth than most of us give to our everyday problem solving. Most of us are good at coming up with a quick causal explanation for something and running with it. Are you familiar with Occam’s Razor – which holds that the simplest explanation is often the best? Well, Occam raised a dull child. Face it. Most of life’s problems are far more complex than we would prefer. By asking a “why” question five times in succession, some of that complexity is unearthed.

Originally developed by Taiichi Ohno as a scientific problem solving methodology to improve production at Toyota Motors, the Five Why’s approach seeks to find the basis to a problem as well as its solution by repeating “why” five times. What does manufacturing Toyota’s have to do with raising a child, you ask? When was the last time you had a problem with your Toyota?

This simple approach to problem solving often yields surprising amounts of depth as to causes as well as possible solutions. Give it a try. Here is a simple example:

Having noticed the new water stain on the ceiling, Amanda started to dial the number of her plumber. Then she paused and decided to find out what her teenage son knew about the water problem first.

“Why is there water stain on the ceiling?”

“The sink in the bathroom overflowed.”

“Why did the sink overflow?”

“It was filled with my stuff. You know – my T-shirts and socks.”

“Why was it filled with laundry?”

“That seemed like a better place for it than leaving it on the bathroom floor.”

“Why don’t you put the clothes in the laundry room?”

“Because they aren’t that dirty.”

“Why is the sink a better place than hanging in your closet?”

“That’s a long walk, Mom.”

Instead of a plumbing bill for a house call, this mother found a trove of answers. She not only found the cause of the water damage, she found a couple of other causes worth pursuing. Not only will her son come up with some new laundry skills, he will also learn the fine art of dry wall repair. How’s that for a natural consequence or two?

Five why’s is a valuable form of assessment that leads to defining goals to master; staying engaged with a problem; and managing anxiety. It is a simple way to “Analyze Before You Act”.

So, don’t whine. Ask “why” – five times.

Here is a template that can be used to generate ideas about causes and solutions:

Questions asked: Child’s responses: Insights provided:

Why is there a water stain on the living room ceiling?

The sink in the bathroom overflowed.

Does the sink or the bathroom need a back-up drain to prevent or contain overflows?

Why?

It was filled with my stuff. You know – my T-shirts and socks.

Do I need to establish a clearer set of expectations about laundry?

Why?

That seemed like a better place for it than leaving it on the floor.

Do I need a set of consequences for this kind of behavior?

Why?

Because they aren’t that dirty.

How can I help promote logical thinking (LT), internal discipline (ID), and responsibility (RES)?

Why?

That’s a long walk, Mom

Is it too late to put him up for adoption?

Do you think the teenager got anything out of this series of questions? Do you think this process does anything for his development of logical thinking (LT), internal discipline (ID), and responsibility (RES)? How about the mother? How did she benefit from asking this series of questions?

Don’t let the cement dry!

by

Before you read this essay, take five minutes to do a little experiment. Watch this You Tube video:

Promoting cognitive development.

Have you heard about the Gorilla that went missing? Yes, the now famous You Tube video of the Gorilla that walks on screen, thumps “his” chest, and exits, only to be totally overlooked by half the people who watched? How in the world can anyone miss seeing something so unusual and “obvious”? We actually see with our brains, not our eyes. If we are not expecting to see something, it can be totally “overlooked”.

The research involving the Gorilla has many interesting variations involving other errors in observation* or perception. We now know that “what you see is not what you get”. Eyewitnesses to the same events recall them very differently. Even the versions offered by the same person change over time, as the brain alters, embellishes and edits what it has “remembered”. Sometimes people and events from different times and places are incorporated into a memory that the person swears to recall with 100% certainty.

And these misperceptions or distortions were committed by adults – with IQ making no difference. So what does that say for the reality our children make of their day-to-day lives? Children whose brains are not fully developed, who are not yet capable of integrating the different parts of their lives or have the experience to draw upon to reason about the meaning of events?

Therapists and clients spend endless hours searching through the past, trying to make sense of what happened, how it felt and what it meant. What is remembered? What is reality? What was traumatic and what effect has it had? It is increasingly the case that it is our interpretation of the experience and our reaction to it that defines our reality.

The simple take-away message for parents is this – get to the child before the cement dries. Regularly asking your child about his day affords you the opportunity to be attuned to what is going on in his life, who his friends are, what he finds interesting and … what is upsetting him. An event for one child may be insignificant, while for another be traumatic. We cannot assume to know without asking. And for those events that are traumatic, what makes them so? Asking your child to explain and elaborate not only makes the process available to you, but it also calls upon him to listen to what he is saying and reflect upon it. Saying it out loud is different than letting it bounce around in his head, unedited. Just as writing reveals gaps in logic or areas left incomplete, so does the telling of his story. The causal connections and interpretations he has made that make us cringe are then available – not for criticism, but for understanding (via our curiosity).

Asking for elaboration can often allow a child to find his own dead ends in logic. Sometimes our questions of “How do you know that?” or “What did he (actually) say?” ease the process along. And when the script is totally out of control, we have the opportunity to say, “Do you want to know what I think?” or “Why don’t you ask her (what she said, meant, did)?” or “Do you really think you are a &*!# ?”. Without our help children can fail to challenge assumptions about themselves and others.

What better place for the development of logical thinking and healthy skepticism. We want our children to know for certain that there is no such thing as certainty.

Our brains are designed to jump to conclusions, to come up with immediate explanations for what has just happened. In terms of evolution, it was essential for survival. Our brains are wired to attribute causes to observations. Any good student knows that correlation does not necessarily mean causation, but the saber-toothed tigers ate most of the guys who stopped to analyze their data before running. Ultimately, the slower, analytical thinking is what eventually got us off the saber-toothed tiger menu for good. Ideally, we need both the quick reacting and the slow analyzing processes.

Children are vulnerable to jumping to conclusions due to this built in quick firing brain process, but they are additionally compromised because their brains and life experiences limit their ability to do the careful slow analysis of their assumptions or conclusions.They are dependent upon adults for this sorting through and analyzing work as their cortexes continue to develop. Yet, as many adults prove, careful analysis does not come with age and capacity. We all have a built in tendency to stick with these quickly formed assumptions. Logical thinking and analysis – where assumptions are tested – must be learned. That process begins with a parent’s curiosity and requests for elaboration and explanations.

Sleep is when our brains do much of the work of converting memories to more permanent storage. Bedtime is a good time to talk. It is also a good time to get to our children’s potential certainty before the cement dries. Then, at least, when he sleeps, the annotated version of his day is going into the memory bank.

Bedtime is for reading stories, telling stories, and listening to your child’s stories. This is when they can tell you about their day, how it affected them, and what they’re concerned about. Genuine curiosity about what happened and what sense they made of it conveys caring and promotes attunement. It also brings these quickly formed conclusions out to see if they survive the “analysis” entailed in listening to themselves talk about it and explain why they believe what they have concluded.

Key Competencies: Logical thinking; communication; relatedness (engagement)

Key Words: Inattentional blindness; certainty; elaboration; listening; genuine curiosity; expectations; biases

If you thought their YouTube was interesting, wait until you read their book: The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us, by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons. The implications for inattentive blindness are profound and often life threatening. You will also look both ways at an intersection, twice!

The work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky described significant biases in judgement and decision making. Regardless of intelligence level, humans make judgement errors due to built in cognitive biases or unconscious errors in reasoning. For a complete summary of what you don’t know and what you don’t know you don’t know, read Kahneman’s new book Thinking, Fast and Slow. He describes our intuitive System 1 brains as capable of drawing quick judgments and causal conclusions and our analytical System 2 brains as capable of slower, more deliberate thought. Unfortunately, System 2 not only fails to get involved enough, but when it does it is often in the service of substantiating a false assumption that originated with System 1. I do not do justice to a great book. If you are at all curious about how we think and make decisions, it is a must read. For a review, see Two Brains Running, by Jim Holt of the New York Times.

The Magic Formula

by

 

Children are motivated when they genuinely want a goal and believe they can accomplish it. That is quite different than a goal we want for them or we think they can or should attain. Getting it right, in terms of the Magic Formula: INVESTMENT = (I WANT) x (I CAN), is essential to motivation at school or at home.

 

The Magic Formula: The Essentials of Motivation

 

January of my senior year of college, four of us headed for Florida “to work on our tennis games.” As part of that on court development, we ventured into a Jai Alai arena in Miami one evening. Unfamiliar with the sport and ignorant of its subtleties, I quickly became bored and prepared to leave. But soon after placing a two-dollar bet, my face was plastered against the protective viewing glass screaming, “Go Cuatro!” Anyone can see that after placing my bet, “I had skin in the game.” I went from passive and bored to an amped up fanatic. I share the experience because the difference in feeling was so dramatic, so visceral and so immediate. (It’s a little like filling out your NCAA basketball bracket in March and putting your $5 into the office pool.)

Red-faced and exhausted, you look across the kitchen table at your son and throw up your hands – unwilling to “go to the mat” with him one more time about finishing his homework. Now think, when it comes to finishing homework, “Who has the skin in the game?” As a parent, you are in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” position. You know for a fact that there is a world of difference in the outcomes of kids whose parents care and those who don’t. But at what price? You are their parent, not their friend. But you shouldn’t have to be the enemy in the process. Some days it feels like that, and you can see why many parents just let things slide. Parents do their own form of coasting. The child says, “I got it done at school” and accepting that excuse saves another evening of battling. Structure, limits and high expectations are essential. But motivation to do homework or work around the house should not just come from outside the child. There is a limit to how well that will work, and the older the child gets, the less well external sources of motivation work.

The secret to work at school, work at home, or work on the ball field is investment. If the child is not invested in the process, there are serious limits to what they can accomplish and how much they can be motivated. But, there is a magic formula for investment. Some might say, “Secret Formula” given the common absence of its application. It is simply:

(I want) x (I can) = Investment

If I have some skin in the game, if I truly want something, I am motivated to go after it. Equally as important is the belief that I can accomplish what I am after. When I want something and believe I am capable of achieving it, I’m invested. As a parent, a teacher, or a coach, we need to be on the correct side of this equation. If the child perceives the formula to read:

(You want) x (I can) = investment

the investment depends more on not wanting to disappoint the parent, coach or teacher and less on something internal for the child. Like I said, the older the child, the less this second formula works. Adults who rely on the second formula usually have a rude awakening when the investment evaporates with adolescence.

Before you focus on what they should do, you need to focus on what goal they truly seek – what will make them “want” to do what it takes to get to that goal.

So, before you get ready to do battle again, figure out how you help your child get some “skin in the game” and (want). Here’s a hint. Consider what the goal is and who is choosing it. If you have chosen it, then you have a lot of convincing to do to make the child want it as well. Here’s another hint: Start by listening (and being curious). If you start by joining them in their world, you have a good start at gradually pulling them into your world. Some kids accept the “because I said so” rationale. But if we are hoping for kids who think for themselves, our goals can quickly conflict on this course. It takes more work to find a course that includes a genuine (I want) on the part of the child, but the “because I said so” almost universally crashes and burns. And if it doesn’t, you have a whole set of different problems involving submission, accommodation, dependence, resentment, and depression waiting at the end of that developmental hallway. Or is that what we call, “normal adolescence”?