Like to learn, but hate school

by | Friday, June 12, 2009

In this TCRecord piece, Daniel T. WIllingham uses what we know about cognitive psychology to explain  Why students don’t like school. He suggests that

although most people believe that humans are good at thinking, it is actually the weakest of our mental faculties… Our minds are biased against thinking, because thinking is slow and effortful. In addition, it’s error-prone; it may not even produce an answer at all, much less a good one.

What we truly hate, according to him are things that are (a) either too easy; or (b) things that are incomprehensible. What fascinates us are problems that hit the sweet spot, not merely unpredictable but rather postdictable. He defines this as being initially be surprising, but then be understandable with a bit of thought.”As he says:

… interest is engendered by an appraisal process: that is, a process by which we evaluate the potential interest of something before we delve into it. If we perceive an event to be novel and complex, but also comprehensible, we find it intriguing and worthy of continued thought. Tasks that lack complexity seem too easy. Tasks that lack comprehensibility seem too hard.

Just two points here. First, most of school, it seems to me, lies at these two extremes, either lacking in complexity OR lacking in comprehensibility. Combine this with the diversity of student interests and background it is hardly surprising that even students who like to learn, learn to hate schoo.

Second, I had never heard of this term “postdictable” before but I think it is going to become a part of my vocabulary from now on. It helps me explain and categorize educational activities that work from those that don’t. Additionally it helps me explain movies and books I like – from ones that don’t. I know I hate predictable plots and stories (something I am trying to get my daughter to realize particularly around the typical Disney fare she so seems to love). However, complete unpredictablity is also a pain – a waste of time. Movies I like are postdictable… surprising at first glance but understandable later. Cool.

A few randomly selected blog posts…

The attention economy and the future of education

Peter Hershock is an education specialist at the East-West Center in Honolulu and author of Buddhism in the Public Sphere. He was recently interviewed by Matt Bieber of The Wheat and Chaff. I found this interview fascinating, particularly the first half which spoke to...

Of Math and Ambigrams

Mathematicians love puzzles—they love to play with numbers and shapes but often their love can turn to words and other areas that, at least on the surface, have little to do with mathematics. One form of visual wordplay with some deep connections to mathematics, and...

Best of SkyMall

I love browsing through the SkyMall catalog when I am flying. I never cease to be amazed by human ingenuity - the range of things we have built, irrespective of how useful (or useless they may be). Anyway, someone has now listed the 10 best (or worst, depending on...

IQ & jobs…

Here is a webpage tabulating the IQ distribution of various jobs. Just from a selfish point of view social scientists rank 5th and college professors second. I guess I will (self-servingly) call myself a college professor rather than a social scientist :-)...

The Allegory of the Cave

Plato's Allegory of the Cave (see Wikipedia entry) illustrates "our nature in its education and want of education." It is maybe one of the most famous allegories in literature and philosophy, a precursor to the kinds of mind-games (think brain in a vat) that...

Math-Po (Mathematical Poetry): Goldbach’s Conjecture

My previous post (Poetry, Science & Math, OR why I love the web) mentioned a challenge by Sue VanHattum of "Math Mama Writes" to "write a little kids’ poem ... and that tells of the beauty of math, or, that mentions math and challenge, both in a positive way."...

Happy New Year (and a new illusory video)

Happy New Year (and a new illusory video)

Since 2008 we have been creating short videos to welcome in the New Year. These videos, created on a shoe-string budget, are usually typographical in nature with some kind of an optical illusion or aha! moment built in. Check out our latest creation to welcome 2019...

The death of the university?

Zephyr Teachout (supposedly an associate law professor at Fordham University, a writer, and an online entrepreneur) has a great article on bigmoney.com, titled Welcome to Yahoo! U: The Web will dismember universities, just like newspapers. His essential argument is...

New presentation tool

Todd Edwards at Miami University just told me about this new presentation tool called Prezi.... You have to see it to believe it. Just amazing. Check it out at http://prezi.com/

7 Comments

  1. Bob Reuter

    sorry, I seem to be a bit tired today… many little mistakes and grammatical errors… hope you’ll be able to read me nevertheless… 😉

    Reply
  2. Bob Reuter

    Punya, I totally agree with you that parents always try to push the kids 🙂

    I surely give my father some credits for the germ he put in my head… but on the other hand, I really think that human are complex cognitive “machines”, where it’s not that evident what causes what to happen…

    But I do think it’s a nice story to tell me children and grand-children, than my dad has been putting ideas (and behaviours and values) into my mind/brain… even though I feel that there were many other “mental-virus-planters” in my life, who “gave” me -or contributed to- my love for postdictable cultural artefacts…

    Reply
  3. Punya Mishra

    Bob, I agree that time and experience are needed to build these structures (be it for movies or music). As a parent though one is a bit eager to make it happen sooner rather than later 🙂 Moreover, this is not a process with a distinct end.

    I think your example (about your father) is an important one. It seems to me that you should give him some credit for putting the germ in your head that there were more complex things in the world. You have found it in jazz – not the music he was interested in… but the point is that you did make the “shift.” I think as a parent my purpose is to always point out the further horizon and prevent my kids from becoming complacent learners. As to how far I am successful, only time will tell (or again maybe it will not!).

    Reply
  4. Bob Reuter

    by the way, the point I was trying to convey was that, maybe, we need time and experience to build up some mental structures that help us “predict” the Disney plots, or the musical schemes, and only later do we become sensitive to less-predictable, but still postdictable ones…

    Reply
  5. Bob Reuter

    Well, probably you’re right… at least that’s what Vygotsky would say…

    Personally, I don’t know yet (not being a father yet, it’s hard to argue from the parent’s perspective)… 🙂

    However, I do remember one event from my childhood that fit’s here. My father and I listened to “my music”, which was pop and rock at the time… And he did not always really get it why and how I could like/love such awfully *predictable* music (that were of course not his words, but what he meant), when there was Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, Berlioz, Bizet, Ravel and Schönberg, to mention only a few… 🙂

    And now, some decades later, I start to appreciate less-predictable music, like jazz, and to find “pop” so boring… 🙂

    Reply
  6. Punya Mishra

    Good point Bob, I completely agree… but isn’t part of being a parent always revealing future horizons of development 🙂

    Reply
  7. Bob Reuter

    Maybe those movies are actually (still) postdictable for your daughter, while they’ve become predictable for you… given your life experiences… 🙂

    Reply

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  1. Making teaching suspenseful and post-dictable – A reflection task « explore. create. share. - [...] predictability and chaos, and most importantly makes sense post hoc. See these posts here and here on the idea…
  2. Rethinking homework, some thoughts… | Punya Mishra's Web - [...] Learning, Philosophy, Teaching, Worth Reading | No Comments » Other related posts and pages: |Like to learn, but hate…

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