9 thoughts on “Changing Education Paradigms”

  1. Brilliant animation, but I don’t buy the argument.
    We are in deep trouble as a country because other countries are implementing the industrial model of education far more efficiently than we are. All the hand-waving about the “creativity of groups” falls flat when other countries are able to produce many more educated professionals than we are.
    We don’t know what the future will bring, but I predict that it will not look like warmed-over progressive educational pipe dreams.

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  3. I love the idea of progressive education – groups, creativity, individualized instruction. To some extent, Ian gets that. His teachers let him learn in a way that best suits him and allow him time in the day to draw. But they are also training him to fit into the homogenized classroom setting and to blend in as much as possible.
    Jonah would thrive in a setting like this. His school gives lip service to these ideas, but ends up with the worst of both worlds. He is graded using the stupidest of rubrics. Most of his teachers wouldn’t recognize real creativity, if it smacked them in the face. Group work is great, when it’s done right. When it’s done badly, it actually inhibits creativity.
    The problem it is impossible to properly implement a system like this, when you have an incredibly diverse population, in a large territory, with divergent interests, with a teaching population that isn’t being properly trained, with broken leadership, small minded union leaders, disinterested parents, and a population that refuses to allocate more money to schools.

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  4. I’m telling you, the problem is grades, i.e., extrinsic motivators. How can anyone be expected to be truly creative when there is a grade involved?

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  5. Speaking of group work, I just remembered that there have been some studies that found that, surprisingly, brainstorming in a group does not produce better or even more ideas. This is interesting, because you’d think that brainstorming would be the most likely group activity to work. Here’s a bit from Wikipedia:
    “Although brainstorming has become a popular group technique, when applied in a traditional group setting, researchers have not found evidence of its effectiveness for enhancing either quantity or quality of ideas generated. Because of such problems as distraction, social loafing, evaluation apprehension, and production blocking, conventional brainstorming groups are little more effective than other types of groups, and they are actually less effective than individuals working independently.”
    “Although traditional brainstorming does not increase the productivity of groups (as measured by the number of ideas generated), it may still provide benefits, such as boosting morale, enhancing work enjoyment, and improving team work. Thus, numerous attempts have been made to improve brainstorming or use more effective variations of the basic technique.”
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorming

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  6. “How can anyone be expected to be truly creative when there is a grade involved?”
    There really isn’t an escape from extrinsic motivation. Even without grades, a teacher (or parents) will be unconsciously giving off waves of approval or disapproval, without being able to help it, which is every bit as much extrinsic as grades are. Also, I wonder how much grades mean to the average child in the early grades, compared to her teacher’s opinion. I think math and science competitions are another example of extrinsic motivation, and yet, I don’t think it’s true that kids would be more creative in math and science without the contests. (I’ve mentioned before the example of the extrinsically motivated creative dolphins from “Don’t Shoot the Dog, but there’s another story that I haven’t mentioned before about the kitten that was reinforced for doing cute things, and became very creative in finding cute things to do, well past the age when most kitties would move on to considering a day of sitting in a sunny spot a very full day.)

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  7. For some children, grades are carrots, for some, they’re sticks, and for many, they don’t matter. It depends on the child.
    The Dana Foundation podcasts are fascinating. They’re free on iTunes. The podcasts on “The Creating Brain,” panel discussion with Nancy Andreasen, M.D., Ph.D., are very interesting.
    In my opinion, there’s a false dichotomy between knowing a field well, and being able to be creative. Kindergartners may score very well on a creativity scale, because they don’t know how the world works. Late teens rule out a lot of answers, because they know that paperclips aren’t explosive. This isn’t a flaw, IMHO. The most creative people are those who know a great deal, and find ways to use that knowledge in surprising ways.
    Picasso, for example, didn’t start out creating the sort of works we think of as “Picasso.” Many artists went through very stringent instruction in How To Draw, Paint, etc.. I find Michelangelo’s work creative and powerful, in part because he was able to draw upon a deep education in his field. In my opinion, the highest peaks of creativity are only achieved by those who are aware of their craft.
    In order to be creative in the sciences these days, you first must learn a great deal about your field. The sciences are very creative, but it’s not possible to skip the schooling part. Think of a group of would-be chemists who haven’t internalized the periodic table. Perhaps they’d be creative, but they wouldn’t be nearly as effective as a group of chemists, all of whom were up to date in developments in their field.

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  8. Well, when Pink is talking about extrinsic motivators, he is talking about monetary rewards. Maybe the issue is that grades have been linked to monetary rewards (good schools, scholarships, high paying jobs).
    I think Pink would describe pleasing one’s teacher as an intrinsic motivator, but maybe not. Maybe there is a third level, maybe a “social” motivator. I just showed Clay Shirky’s TED Talk on Cognitive Surplus, and he talks about assigning monetary punishments doesn’t always work to deter unwanted behaviors, that the social costs of the unwanted behaviors are often more motivational.
    Now, I don’t know what those of us dealing with and increasingly autistic population that can’t quite understand these social costs of unwanted behaviors are supposed to do. I always find Max’s (on Parenthood) emphasis on stickers to be kind of offputting. Maybe it does work for those who lack these social skills.

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  9. “All the hand-waving about the “creativity of groups” falls flat when other countries are able to produce many more educated professionals than we are. ”
    I simply don’t agree with this. I do not think that “other countries” are able to produce many more educated professionals than we are. I think there are countries that have 4X our population and now have decent educational systems. Once you have that, you can pick off the very tippy top of that system and mix them in with our natives. Then we give natives a completely different set of financial incentives: science is international, in subject, culture, and, largely, in immigration laws, law & finance are not, business isn’t, mostly, and it’s not surprising that the majority of mathematicians end up being foreign trained.
    I disagree that incentives don’t breed creativity though — I think the problem is judging creativity, not incentivizing it through monetary (or grade or sticker) rewards.

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