Oh, Poor Baby

I can remember our school talent shows, because I was often in them, and the excitement and disappointment that came when the winners were announced.  Nowadays, the talent shows are simply displays - not contests.  If things keep going the way they are now, eventually the NFL will simply be guys showing off how far they can throw the ball, how fast a receiver can run with the ball, and who is the biggest physical obstacle to a touchdown.  Neither team will actually "win" because that would make the players on the other team feel bad.  Is that what we really want?   

I remember when my son was in 5th grade and had to compete in a track and field meet against the rival school's 6th graders.  (This was back in 1973.) He and another boy were the best at high jump and my son had been practicing for weeks on a home made pit and pole.  The night before the competition he was throwing up from nervousness.  I hugged him and told him that it didn't matter who won, that we would love him regardless.

He looked at me with a look I will never forget and said, "I'm not doing this for YOU!"  The next day, they finally had to call it a draw because both kids jumped the same level and then neither one could clear the bar on the next higher level.  That was the best possible outcome because they both gave it their very best effort.   Compare that to what this author describes. 

OP-ED COLUMNIST

Are Kids Too Coddled?

Andy Rementer

By FRANK BRUNI

Published: November 23, 2013 in the New York Times

AT a middle school near Boston not long ago, teachers and administrators noticed that children would frequently return from a classmate’s weekend bar mitzvah with commemorative T-shirts, swag that advertised a party to which many fellow students hadn’t been invited.

So administrators moved to ban the clothing.

They explained, in a letter to parents, that “while the students wearing the labeled clothing are all chatting excitedly,” the students without it “tend to walk by, trying not to take notice.” What an ordeal.

Many parents favored the ban, a prophylactic against disappointment.

Some did not, noting that life would soon enough deal the kids much worse blows along these lines. And one observer, in a Facebook thread, said this, according to a local TV station’s report: “Perhaps they should dress the children in Bubble Wrap and tie mattresses to their backs so they don’t get hurt.”

I assume that’s facetious.  But these days, you never know.

I occasionally flash on that anecdote as I behold the pushback against more rigorous education standards in general and the new Common Core curriculum in particular. And it came to mind when Education Secretary Arne Duncan recently got himself into a big mess.

Duncan, defending the Common Core at an education conference, identified some of its most impassioned opponents as “white suburban moms” who were suddenly learning that “their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good.”

It was an impolitic bit of profiling. Gratuitous, too. But if you follow the fevered lamentations over the Common Core, look hard at some of the complaints from parents and teachers, and factor in the modern cult of self-esteem, you can guess what set Duncan off: a concern, wholly justified, that tougher instruction not be rejected simply because it makes children feel inadequate, and that the impulse to coddle kids not eclipse the imperative to challenge them.

The Common Core, a laudable set of guidelines that emphasize analytical thinking over rote memorization, has been adopted in more than 40 states. In instances its implementation has been flawed, and its accompanying emphasis on testing certainly warrants debate.

What’s not warranted is the welling hysteria: from right-wing alarmists, who hallucinate a federal takeover of education and the indoctrination of a next generation of government-loving liberals; from left-wing paranoiacs, who imagine some conspiracy to ultimately privatize education and create a new frontier of profits for money-mad plutocrats.

Then there’s the outcry, equally reflective of the times, from adults who assert that kids aren’t enjoying school as much; feel a level of stress that they shouldn’t have to; are being judged too narrowly; and doubt their own mettle.

Aren’t aspects of school supposed to be relatively mirthless? Isn’t stress an acceptable byproduct of reaching higher and digging deeper? Aren’t certain fixed judgments inevitable? And isn’t mettle established through hard work?

Apparently not, to judge from some reactions to the Common Core in New York, which has been holding hearings on the guidelines.

One father said that while his 8-year-old son was “not the most book-smart kid,” he was nonetheless “extremely bright.” With the new instruction, however, too many kids were “being made to feel dumb.” There was “no room for imagination or play,” the father groused. “All the kids are stressed out.”

A SOCIAL WORKER testified that she’d been receiving calls and referrals regarding elementary-school students on the psychological skids. “They said they felt ‘stupid’ and school was ‘too hard,’ ” she related. “They were throwing tantrums, begging to stay home and upset even to the point of vomiting.” Additional cases included insomnia, suicidal thoughts and self-mutilation, she said, and she wondered aloud if this could all be attributed to the Common Core.

A teacher on Long Island did more than wonder, speaking out at a forum two weeks ago about what she called the Common Core Syndrome, a darkly blooming anxiety among students that’s “directly related to work that they do in the classroom.”

“If that’s not child abuse, I don’t know what is,” she thundered, to wild applause. Then she endorsed the idea of parents’ exempting kids from Common Core-related tests. “The mommies in New York,” she concluded, “don’t abuse their children.”

If children are unraveling to this extent, it’s a grave problem. But before we beat a hasty retreat from potentially crucial education reforms, we need to ask ourselves how much panic is trickling down to kids from their parents and whether we’re paying the price of having insulated kids from blows to their egos and from the realization that not everyone’s a winner in every activity on every day.

There are sports teams and leagues in which no kid is allowed too much more playing time than another and in which excessive victory margins are outlawed. Losing is looked upon as pure trauma, to be doled out gingerly. After one Texas high school football team beat another last month by a lopsided score of 91-0, the parent of a losing player filed a formal complaint of bullying against the winning team’s coach.

It used to be that trophies went to victors; now, in many leagues, they go to everybody — for participation. Some teams no longer have one or two captains, elected by the other players, but a rotating cast, so that nobody’s left out.

Some high schools have 10, 20 or 30 valedictorians, along with bloated honor rolls and a surfeit of graduation prizes. Many kids at all grade levels are Bubble-Wrapped in a culture that praises effort nearly as much as it does accomplishment.

And praise itself is promiscuous, though there are experts with profound reservations about that approach. They say it can lessen motivation and set children up to be demoralized when they invariably fail at something.

“Our students have an inflated sense of their academic prowess,” wrote Marc Tucker, the president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, in Education Week. “They don’t expect to spend much time studying, but they confidently expect good grades and marketable degrees.”

David Coleman, one of the principal architects of the Common Core, told me that he’s all for self-esteem, but that rigorous standards “redefine self-esteem as something achieved through hard work.”

“Students will not enjoy every step of it,” he added. But if it takes them somewhere big and real, they’ll discover a satisfaction that redeems the sweat.

And they’ll be ready to compete globally, an ability that too much worry over their egos could hinder. As Tucker observed, “While American parents are pulling their kids out of tests because the results make the kids feel bad, parents in other countries are looking at the results and asking themselves how they can help their children do better.”

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It's Time to Flip It!

Normally, I quote relevant sections from articles that I find in other publications, but this one is worth reading all the way through.  If you have children in school, or that will be entering school soon, you really need to read this.  I hope this is an innovation that may save all the kids that just get passed through our schools, never really learning.  And the super learners won't get bored, because they will be able to challenge themselves every day.

In traditional schooling, time is a constant and understanding is a variable. A fifth-grade class will spend a set number of days on prime factorization and then move on to study greatest common factors — whether or not every student is ready.  But there is another way to look at schooling — through the lens of a method called “mastery learning,” in which the student’s understanding of a subject is a constant and time is a variable; when each fifth grader masters prime factorization, for instance, he moves on to greatest common factors, each at his own pace.

Mastery learning is not a new idea. It was briefly popular in the 1920s, and was revived by Benjamin Bloom in his paper “Learning for Mastery” in 1968. It has shown dramatic success — compilations of studies can be found here and here.

One of the advantages of mastery learning is that the student, not the teacher, leads — and we know that people learn far better when they are actively involved. The teacher provides materials, tools and constant support. Students set their own goals and manage their own time.

In a traditional classroom, the teacher must aim the lecture at the middle, leaving the faster learners bored and the slower ones lost. Differentiation and personalization are big challenges. But the mastery system allows each student to learn at her own pace.

Mastery also rewards students for actual learning. A student cannot simply turn in a shoddy paper, take the D and move on. If she turns in shoddy work, she can’t move on. She has to keep trying until she demonstrates she fully understands.

Despite these advantages, mastery learning never caught on, mainly because it was a nightmare for teachers. One problem was how to do direct instruction; a teacher can’t give five different lectures in one class. The other was how to test students. Multiple versions of a test were needed so students couldn’t pass them to friends who would be taking them later.

But some teachers are now reviving mastery learning. What is making it feasible is the flipped classroom, a method I wrote about in my most recent column.

In a flipped classroom, teachers make videos of their lectures introducing new concepts and assign them as homework. That frees up precious class time to work directly with students on projects, exercises or problem sets — the stuff that students would traditionally do at home. Now instead, of struggling alone, students can do the most important work with a teacher or peers who can help.

(Incidentally, many of those who commented in response to my flipped classroom column asked: where’s the reading? The answer is: where it always was. Students still read for homework. But in a flipped classroom, they won’t do problems at home any more — they’ll watch the lectures instead.)

Thousands of teachers are experimenting with flipping their classrooms in elementary schools, law schools and everything in between. Jon Bergmann, a former chemistry teacher who used flipped learning and now teaches others about it, lists 15,000 members in the Flipped Learning Network.

But a handful of innovative teachers are venturing further, using the flipped classroom to employ mastery learning — “flipped mastery,” as Bergmann and his fellow chemistry teacher Aaron Sams call it in their book, “Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day.” Since the flipped classroom eliminates the whole-class lecture, they’ve realized, it has also eliminated the reason for students to work at a uniform pace.

Tim Kelly, who teaches math at a high school in Baumholder, Germany, which serves children of United States military families, heard about the idea when he sat next to Sams on a bus trip when they both won the Presidential Award for Mathematics and Science Teaching.  When Kelly came back from the ceremony in December, 2010, he talked excitedly about flipped mastery with his colleagues Corey Sullivan and Mike Brust.  That’s crazy,” said Sullivan; it sounded radical and chaotic. “No way should we ever do that.”

But as spring approached they decided to try it. “We had some struggles with our kids,” Sullivan said. They figured it couldn’t hurt to try something new.

They worked around the clock through spring break to design the course and create materials. “We put in 40 to 60 hours outside school just for a unit,” Sullivan said — and there were 12 units per course. They had to make all the videos; such a quick switch was only possible because they divided the work among them. (They now call themselves the Algebros. They post all their lessons and materials online; feel free to borrow.)

The fourth Algebro, Spencer Bean, who also won the Presidential Award, had stuck with the traditional way. But then his daughter went through Kelly’s flipped mastery Algebra 1 class, and he was converted. “Here I am with this award and I’m going to throw away everything I’ve been doing that I just got an award for,” he said.

Setting up a flipped mastery class is a second full-time job, and the method can also demand more teacher time before and after class to make sure every student gets personal attention. But teachers also say that it saves them time on the paperwork. Tom Driscoll, who uses flipped mastery to teach history at Putnam High School in Putnam, Conn., notes that he no longer has to write daily lesson plans.

Another advantage: less (or no) student work to grade at home. “We stopped grading papers in the sense of taking them home and having stacks and feeling guilty for not doing them,” said Bergmann. “Everything they turned in we went over in class. There’s a lot of teaching in the grading process.“ After the student takes the test or turns in a project designed to demonstrate mastery, the teacher sits with the student and goes over the work, providing immediate feedback. Bloom called this formative assessment. (There’s no reason teachers couldn’t do this in any classroom. But it’s far less feasible when 30 kids are taking the test together.)

“There’s my one-on-one time with students,” said Brian Gervase, who uses flipped mastery in his pre-calculus class at Downers Grove North High School in Downers Grove, Ill. “Let’s look over the work together and make sure you understand this particular skill.”

A typical day in a flipped mastery classroom usually starts with a brief group activity and poll: who needs extra help or is ready for a mastery check?  Then the noise begins — “a 10-ring circus,” Bergmann and Sams call it. “Kids are coming at you all day long,” said Kelly. “The first day, I got dizzy a couple of times.” Driscoll made a three-minute video version of a typical class, which you can see here.

Some teachers offer students a menu of learning activities to choose from, and another menu of ways to demonstrate mastery — that way, a student who does not test well, for example, could still show her understanding. Driscoll allows students to complete three from a list of choices, including writing an essay, giving a speech, having a debate or designing a video game.

In math, multiple-choice tests are more common. Bergmann uses Moodle software, which creates at random a different test each time from a pool of questions the teacher writes in advance (here is a tutorial on using it). A student who can’t show that she grasps the concepts must do more work and then retake the assessment.

Driscoll structures his class like a video game — it’s a post-apocalyptic 2045, and students have to study different civilizations to come up with a way for society to rebuild itself. “You have to complete certain ‘missions’ to move to the next level — some are teams, some are solo,” he said. Sound corny? “Engagement has gone through the roof,” he said. (Driscoll and his fellow Putnam social studies teacher Brian Germain have a lot of creative ideas — their Web sites are here and here.)

It is too early to have formal proof of the effectiveness of this iteration of flipped mastery, and its use is still too limited. (The Flipped Learning Network forum on mastery learning currently has 267 members.)

But teachers who use flipped mastery claim that its efficiency allows most students to do a year’s work in much less time. They build in extra units for advanced students or work with them on independent projects.

They say it’s also a better way to teach slower learners, giving them more teacher attention and personalized instruction. Kelly said that at Baumholder, the math department tries to put struggling students in the flipped mastery class. “As soon as we flipped, we noticed that students’ focus really improved,” said Kelly. “Math teachers get some really bad grades, but that doesn’t happen anymore. Maybe it takes longer, a little more practice, but they can do it. They’re not bombing.”

“Before, some kids would do the minimum amount of work possible,” said Bean. “They’d get by with a C-. Now they know they have to master it to be able to move on. The same kids stay after school to work with me on assignments.”

The truly struggling students might not get through a year’s material. But Brust notes that in a traditional class, they would be learning far less. “A kid who got a D would pass, but he was set up for failure for the rest of his career,” said Brust. “Now it may take longer, but when you’re done you have a solid foundation.”

Tina Rosenberg won a Pulitzer Prize for her book “The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts After Communism.” She is a former editorial writer for The Times and the author, most recently, of “Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World” and the World War II spy story e-book “D for Deception.” 

Don't Do Your Kids Any Favors

When my son was in 5th grade, he attended a small two-room school in eastern Montana ranch country. In the spring, after the mud dried up, the schools within a 10-mile radius had a "play day," in which the kids competed in track events and a spelling bee (so that it could still count as a school day.) There were so few kids in these schools, two grades had to compete against each other.  So, in his school, the 5th and 6th grades competed against the Albion school's 5th and 6th graders.  

This year my son had mastered the Fosbury Flop and was ready to take on his nemesis, a 6th grader named Tom, in the high jump.  The night before, my son was so nervous he was throwing up.  Ever the mommy, I hugged him tight and told him, "Honey, don't worry about tomorrow.  Your Dad and I will love you just as much no matter what happens."  He looked me straight in the eye with a fierce look I didn't know a 10-year-old could have, and said, "I'm not doing this for YOU!"

At that moment, one that has stayed in my memory for 40 years, I realized that he had a life separate from mine and that winning the high jump competition was something that was important to him.  He needed to beat Tom.  As it turned out, neither boy beat the other.  They jumped and jumped for what seemed like days but they both went out on the same height. Steve and Tom were both happy because they had fought and achieved their goal.  Nothing was given to them just for showing up.

The following article reminded me of that day.     

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September 24, 2013

Losing Is Good for You

By ASHLEY MERRYMAN

LOS ANGELES — AS children return to school this fall and sign up for a new year’s worth of extracurricular activities, parents should keep one question in mind. Whether your kid loves Little League or gymnastics, ask the program organizers this: “Which kids get awards?” If the answer is, “Everybody gets a trophy,” find another program.

Po Bronson and I have spent years reporting on the effects of praise and rewards on kids. The science is clear. Awards can be powerful motivators, but nonstop recognition does not inspire children to succeed. Instead, it can cause them to underachieve.

Carol Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford University, found that kids respond positively to praise; they enjoy hearing that they’re talented, smart and so on. But after such praise of their innate abilities, they collapse at the first experience of difficulty. Demoralized by their failure, they say they’d rather cheat than risk failing again.

By age 4 or 5, children aren’t fooled by all the trophies. They are surprisingly accurate in identifying who excels and who struggles. Those who are outperformed know it and give up, while those who do well feel cheated when they aren’t recognized for their accomplishments. They, too, may give up.

It turns out that, once kids have some proficiency in a task, the excitement and uncertainty of real competition may become the activity’s very appeal.

If children know they will automatically get an award, what is the impetus for improvement? Why bother learning problem-solving skills, when there are never obstacles to begin with?

Having studied recent increases in narcissism and entitlement among college students, Jean Twenge, author of “Generation Me,”warns that when living rooms are filled with participation trophies, it’s part of a larger cultural message: to succeed, you just have to show up. In college, those who’ve grown up receiving endless awards do the requisite work, but don’t see the need to do it well. In the office, they still believe that attendance is all it takes to get a promotion.

When children make mistakes, our job should not be to spin those losses into decorated victories. Instead, our job is to help kids overcome setbacks, to help them see that progress over time is more important than a particular win or loss, and to help them graciously congratulate the child who succeeded when they failed. To do that, we need to refuse all the meaningless plastic and tin destined for landfills. We have to stop letting the Trophy-Industrial Complex run our children’s lives.

This school year, let’s fight for a kid’s right to lose.

Ashley Merryman is the author, with Po Bronson, of “NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children” and “Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing.”

How Was School Today, Dear?

Ken Robinson, an "educationalist," gave a TED talk in May, 2013, called "How to Escape Education's Death Valley."  TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conferences bring together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes or less).  If you haven't watched them, you are in for such a treat!

In this talk, KR says there are three conditions under which human life flourishes and they are contradicted every day in every classroom.  The first is: human beings are naturally different and diverse.  Rather than teach to have each student passionately explore his or her special talents and interests, we teach for conformity.  All across the nation, if it's January we are learning facts about the American Revolution.  Never mind that your son has just discovered the wonders of astronomy and doesn't want to read, talk, or take a test about anything else.  He will have to wait . . .

Second, all humans are naturally curious and that makes us natural learners.  Have you ever spent a day with a 3-year old?  How many questions did you answer?  My granddaughter is four, and the phrase she uses most often is "How Come?" But our schools want to achieve compliance.  The present system was originally proposed by Horace Mann to educate workers for the industrial age.  It was beneficial to have hordes of compliant workers standing at assembly lines.  In the information age, we need innovators, creative thinkers.

The third principle is that human beings are inherently creative; we create our lives, and in spite of the culture of education that strives to turn out finished students who all know the same body of knowledge and have the same values, we are still all individuals.  The culture of standardization is opposed to basic human nature, which may be one reason it isn't working very well.

Tomorrow we will talk about "Unschooling."