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 carving of Carver

Creativity and collaboration. Authorship and editorial prerogative, who has the final say, and who should receive the credit? Here is an article in Drexel University's Magazine "The Smart Set" about the role Raymond Carver's editor played in "finalizing" his stories....

You have a life?

Story in the NYTimes (forwarded to me by Leigh) titled: Professor as an open book, about how "professors of all ranks and disciplines are revealing such information on public, national platforms: blogs, Web pages, social networking sites, even campus television." Of...

Creative Idiots share their process

Slate Magazine is running a series on Creative Pairs, or why Two is the Magic Number! Written by Joshua Wolf Shenk the series seeks to understand: What makes creative relationships work? How do two people—who may be perfectly capable and talented on their own—explode...

15 years of blogging

15 years of blogging

January 1, 2008. 15 years ago, almost to the day - I posted my first note to this website (screenshot below). My first blog post, dated Jan 1, 2008 I have had a web presence since 1998 - hand coded, HTML pages, traces of which are still available on the Wayback...

TPACK Newsletter, #42 Nov. 2019

TPACK Newsletter, #42 Nov. 2019

Here is the latest pdf version of the TPACK Newsletter (#42, November 2019), as curated and shared by Judi Harris and her team. (Previous issues are archived here.) This issue includes titles, abstract and links to 116 articles, 5 book-chapters, and 34...

EduPunk: The logo

I had written about the EduPunk program and my natural affinity to it here. What I forgot to add in that posting was an EduPunk logo I had created. This logo was made using photos of letterforms from Flickr. There is a handy-dandy tool created by Erik Kastner called...

An Euclidean coincidence

An Euclidean coincidence

FYI, this is a somewhat pointless blog post around a somewhat funny coincidence that popped into my life the other day. I was reading a recent article in the NYTimes with the provocative title: Microsoft Says New A.I. Shows Signs of Human Reasoning, clearly a topic of...

Rainbows in your backyard, how scary

We have been talking about misconceptions in my summer MAET classes and one of my students sent me this hilarious link. There is really nothing much to say... just see it for yourself. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3qFdbUEq5s[/youtube] Another video that I...

The benefits of doodling!

Finally science has proved what I knew all along, doodling is a sign of an alert mind and may actually help memory!! Another justification for this, I guess.

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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