I just published an article titled Video Games Rant on one of my other blogs. Most of the article is not directly related to education, otherwise I would have published it here instead. As I was writing the last few paragraphs of this rant, I considered some opposing viewpoints and had an interesting revelation about video games. That revelation is directly related to education, so I think it is appropriate to discuss it in a little more detail here.
I have asserted the value of video games in brain development many times. I have also done a lot of research on the subject, and so far I have found no explanation for why video games are so effective for learning, except that they tend to be more motivating that traditional teaching practices. While this is true, it is actually just one element of the brain science behind learning. It turns out that video games are more effective for learning because they conform better to the way the brain is designed to learn.
The question I asked in the other article is how ancient humans got by without the benefits of video games, if video games are so good for us. The answer was, "They lived them!" This might sound counter-intuitive, but it is true. Modern video games help develop mapping skills by including an element of risk with getting lost. In ancient times, humans learned mapping skills in a very similar way. Video games improve perception by including elements that are difficult to see, but which either offer benefits or reduce risks if discovered. In ancient times, missing small details, like a stalking predator, could result in serious injury or death. Video games improve quick decision making skills by putting players into situations where acting too slow has strong negative consequences. Similarly, ancient humans often had to deal with situations where quick action was necessary for survival. One of the biggest benefits of video games is developing good problem solving skills. Ancient humans learned problem solving skills by trying to find ways to make life less dangerous and difficult. Now, however, many humans have very poor mapping skills, decision making skills, perception, and problem solving skills. Unfortunately, successfully making life much less dangerous and far easier has not eliminated the need for these skills. The strong need for more engineers in the U.S. is evidence of this. In addition, mapping skills are important for getting around in big cities and even suburbs. Perception is extremely important in activities like driving. Problem solving skills are important in nearly every aspect of life. We still need these skills, and it turns out that video games are the most effective way to get them, if you do not count living with the constant threat of death.
The point of all of this is that thousands or more years of natural selection have produced human brains that are ideally suited to learning in exactly the way that video games teach (which explains the attraction). Video games have one additional benefit over real life experience: The penalty for failure is low. Failing in real life used to result in death, severe injury, or at least pain. Even in the most strict video games, the highest penalty for failure is having to start over from nothing. In most modern video games, the worst penalty is having to redo a little bit of work. This reduces fear of failure, which increases motivation to try new things. Trying new things is one very important way of learning. Failing is also a very good learning experience. When the cost of failure is low, the fear of failure is reduced, which encourages trying risky things that will likely end in failure, but which will sometimes result in awesome success. Even the failures themselves have value, because they will always teach what does not work. In short, reducing the cost of failure helps increase motivation to learn by experience. While natural selection may have suited our brains to learn by experience, we can use video games to make the consequences of failure acceptable. Video games are actually better for effective learning than the conditions that suited our brains to learn from video games so well.
We can take advantage of this knowledge. It is possible that there is no classroom teaching style that could be as effective as video games for teaching. If this is the case (and research aught to be conducted to discover if it is), then we should be spending a lot more effort figuring out how to effectively use video games as learning tools for real life subjects. People like Salman Khan and Ananth Pai have already started using game elements for learning with great success. Armed with a better understanding of why games work so well for learning though, we should be able to do much better. There are millions of people in the U.S. that spend inordinate amounts of time playing video games. If we can sneak some real education into video games, without reducing motivation to play them, we could educate the people of the U.S. at minimal cost. It is even possible that well engineered video games could dramatically reduce the need for a large public education system. The evidence is very strong that video games have huge potential as teaching tools. We need to put resources into learning how to use them most effectively.
Monday, November 18, 2013
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Doing it right!
I just read this article. Evidently someone is setting up a new college called Minerva, which seems to follow some of the most important suggestions I have given on this blog. The part of the article that really caught my attention was this, "Though 21st-century technology links professors and students, they use a seminar format that hearkens back to Socrates’ ancient learning model." I have said this before, and I will say it again: One of the biggest problems with modern U.S. education is the strict classroom teaching style. In ancient universities, a lecture/forum model was followed (the article refers to the forum part as "seminar"). This model was very flexible, allowing students to learn at their own pace. It also did not grade students in a classroom style. A student became a master in a subject not by getting good grades and going through a highly structured degree program. A student became a master, by mastering the subject matter. If this took two years or ten years, it made no difference.
So, some differences (which I have also suggested) from ancient schools is that Minerva does not plan to have formal lectures. Instead, students must study materials on their own time. In the article it says that Minerva suggests that its students use resources like Khan Academy for lecture style learning. Professors will then teach in the form of online seminars, much like forums in ancient universities. This allows Minerva to offer a high quality education at about half the cost. In fact, their goal is to offer a Havard or better quality education, for half the cost of Harvard.
Something that bothered me in the article was a quote from MIT's Chris Peterson,
The reason this bothers me is that it is a lie. These "unproven" methods were used very successfully for many centuries before the modern classroom teaching method became common. Right, the lectures were taught by paid professors instead of found free on the internet, and likewise the forums (seminars) were live instead of online. I am sorry, but anyone who thinks this change in medium will make that big of a difference has not been paying attention to the last ten years (in fact, Khan Academy has shown that recorded lectures are far more effective than live ones, because students can rewind and view parts they did not understand as many times as it takes to understand). Further, while Minerva may frame it as founding the "next university," it is little more than going back to the well proven methods of the past, which modern classroom methods have repeatedly failed to match. Before calling something "unproven" please look at the evidence. If you really want to look poorly educated, make a general statement about something you know nothing about, that is wrong.
Now, I am not saying that Minerva will be successful. I am suggesting that if they fail it will not be due to their so-called "unproven educational methods." One place they could fail is learning materials. If they do not spend a good deal of effort making sure good supplemental materials are available online, students who are struggling may have a hard time finding help. For any classes that rely entirely on online materials, it is essential that they verify the availability of such materials. Another concern is availability of reliable internet services for students and professors. If professors are doing live seminars online and one student has connection difficulties, it could interfere with that student getting answers to important questions. Recording the seminars for later viewing could help, but if no one asked the question, it will still go unanswered. There are plenty of things that could go wrong, but most of them are manageable, if the school puts sufficient effort into it. If they fail, it will not be due to their unconventional learning model, it will be because they did not pay attention to something important.
Before concluding, I want to mention one other thing about Minerva that I think is awesome. Each year, students will live in a different international city. Now, I don't know how this will be handled if Minerva starts taking on students in areas where this is not a reasonable option, but for now, I think this is an excellent plan. I live in the U.S., and I have found that most Americans are pretty deluded about the state of the rest of the world (BYU Idaho, the college I am currently attending requires at least one class on a "global hotspot," which is a place with a lot of oppression, violence, and/or disasters; I learned about Pakistan, including local cultures, government, terrorism, history, and natural disasters). Americans do not understand that their culture is not the dominant world culture. Americans (and many Europeans, as I found when reading about plastic printable guns) also seem to think that a majority of people in the world live under free, democratic, unoppressive governments. While it is unlikely that Minerva will send students to countries with tyrannical governments, moving around will at least help them to understand different world cultures. Also, I have found that the media in each country seems to report slightly different information about conditions in 3rd world countries. Moving to a different country every year might help students to put together the pieces, so they eventually understand the real condition of the majority of world population.
I think Minerva has some extremely good ideas. I expect the learning model to be highly successful once students learn to teach themselves instead of relying on professors to babysit their learning. I sincerely hope that Minerva manages to avoid all of the potential pitfalls. While their goal is not to overturn the modern educational model, I think they could do it. While there are many other things they could be doing to improve their educational model, I still think this could be the start of a much more competitive education system in the U.S.
So, some differences (which I have also suggested) from ancient schools is that Minerva does not plan to have formal lectures. Instead, students must study materials on their own time. In the article it says that Minerva suggests that its students use resources like Khan Academy for lecture style learning. Professors will then teach in the form of online seminars, much like forums in ancient universities. This allows Minerva to offer a high quality education at about half the cost. In fact, their goal is to offer a Havard or better quality education, for half the cost of Harvard.
Something that bothered me in the article was a quote from MIT's Chris Peterson,
“They are looking to take some very unproven educational methods, still very much in the experimental stage and roll them out to a whole bunch of the most vulnerable people in the world,” Peterson said. “They frame this as founding the next university. They know that elite prestige sells better than anything else in the education world.”
The reason this bothers me is that it is a lie. These "unproven" methods were used very successfully for many centuries before the modern classroom teaching method became common. Right, the lectures were taught by paid professors instead of found free on the internet, and likewise the forums (seminars) were live instead of online. I am sorry, but anyone who thinks this change in medium will make that big of a difference has not been paying attention to the last ten years (in fact, Khan Academy has shown that recorded lectures are far more effective than live ones, because students can rewind and view parts they did not understand as many times as it takes to understand). Further, while Minerva may frame it as founding the "next university," it is little more than going back to the well proven methods of the past, which modern classroom methods have repeatedly failed to match. Before calling something "unproven" please look at the evidence. If you really want to look poorly educated, make a general statement about something you know nothing about, that is wrong.
Now, I am not saying that Minerva will be successful. I am suggesting that if they fail it will not be due to their so-called "unproven educational methods." One place they could fail is learning materials. If they do not spend a good deal of effort making sure good supplemental materials are available online, students who are struggling may have a hard time finding help. For any classes that rely entirely on online materials, it is essential that they verify the availability of such materials. Another concern is availability of reliable internet services for students and professors. If professors are doing live seminars online and one student has connection difficulties, it could interfere with that student getting answers to important questions. Recording the seminars for later viewing could help, but if no one asked the question, it will still go unanswered. There are plenty of things that could go wrong, but most of them are manageable, if the school puts sufficient effort into it. If they fail, it will not be due to their unconventional learning model, it will be because they did not pay attention to something important.
Before concluding, I want to mention one other thing about Minerva that I think is awesome. Each year, students will live in a different international city. Now, I don't know how this will be handled if Minerva starts taking on students in areas where this is not a reasonable option, but for now, I think this is an excellent plan. I live in the U.S., and I have found that most Americans are pretty deluded about the state of the rest of the world (BYU Idaho, the college I am currently attending requires at least one class on a "global hotspot," which is a place with a lot of oppression, violence, and/or disasters; I learned about Pakistan, including local cultures, government, terrorism, history, and natural disasters). Americans do not understand that their culture is not the dominant world culture. Americans (and many Europeans, as I found when reading about plastic printable guns) also seem to think that a majority of people in the world live under free, democratic, unoppressive governments. While it is unlikely that Minerva will send students to countries with tyrannical governments, moving around will at least help them to understand different world cultures. Also, I have found that the media in each country seems to report slightly different information about conditions in 3rd world countries. Moving to a different country every year might help students to put together the pieces, so they eventually understand the real condition of the majority of world population.
I think Minerva has some extremely good ideas. I expect the learning model to be highly successful once students learn to teach themselves instead of relying on professors to babysit their learning. I sincerely hope that Minerva manages to avoid all of the potential pitfalls. While their goal is not to overturn the modern educational model, I think they could do it. While there are many other things they could be doing to improve their educational model, I still think this could be the start of a much more competitive education system in the U.S.
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Brainworks
The human brain shares many similarities with muscles. On a cellular basis, brain tissue and muscle tissue are very different. In their reactions to certain types of stress, however, they are very similar. I recently read a few articles on the brain that confirmed a theory I have long wondered about.
Many years ago (maybe 10), I began to wonder if my high degree of intelligence was due to some natural luck, or if it was maybe the result of a strong desire to be intelligent. When I was 14, I took an electronic IQ test, and I scored 136 on it (100 is average, 136 is very high). Discussing the results with others, I learned that most electronic IQ tests only go up to 140, which means that the closer to 140 a person tests, the more likely their IQ is to be far over 140. I have not taken an IQ test since, though I managed to pass a Mensa entry practice test (I do not plan on joining, because I am unwilling to pay dues just to be part of a "smart club"). Anyhow, this experience got me thinking about intelligence. When I was very young, I was extremely curious. My parents, instead of discouraging curiosity or blowing it off, encouraged me to be curious, and they often taught me about things I was curious about. My mom also taught me many things I was not as curious about, as a sort of game. By I was 5, I knew the technical names of nearly all of the major bones in the body. When we moved back to the U.S. (we were in Germany because my dad was in the military), we lived with my grandparents for a while and visited them fairly often after moving out. My grandparents encouraged my curiosity even more. As a present once (maybe for a birthday, I forget), by grandfather bought me some wire, a bolt, and a lantern battery and showed me how to make an electromagnet. For Christmas, they often gave me Technic Legos or other toy sets that could be used to build mechanical devices. In short, I grew up in an environment where learning and curiosity were encouraged. This has given me a lot of motivation to learn. As such, I have spent a great deal of effort on learning new things that I find interesting.
Thinking about all of this has led me to the question above. Am I smart because I was born that way, or am I smart because I want to be smart and have put effort into becoming smart? The more I learn, the more I believe the correct answer is the second. Even my extremely good memory can be attributed to things like my mom playing memory with me starting at a very young age. Recently, in conjunction with a pair of college classes, I have learned even more supporting my theory. For my math class (linear algebra), we were required to read and comment on a pair of articles about brain function. These articles discussed studies that showed that intelligence is a learned trait. One discussed a study done where the students in a poorly performing highschool math class were separated into two randomly selected groups. One was given a short course on study skills, while the other was given a short course on brain neurology. The brain neurology course focused primarily on how the brain forms new connections while learning, and it asserted that by expending some effort, even people who are "bad at math" can teach their brains to be good at math through practice. The grades of the two groups were compared at the end of the semester, and it was discovered that the group who attended the brain course did significantly better in the math class than those who attended the study skills course. Why? The study attributed the success to motivation. Common wisdom (in the U.S.) tells us that if we are bad at math, we can never improve. The students who were taught study skills still believed that no matter how hard they worked, they could not improve, because they were born bad at math, so they had no motivation to apply the newly learned skills. The students who were taught about the brain learned that the common wisdom is wrong and realized that hard work would not be wasted. So, they were more motivated to work harder, because they could see a clear benefit.
Now, there is a second thing I learned, from a computer science class. The textbook, a book for learning the Java programming language (called "Head First Java"), begins by discussing how the brain works and how the book takes advantage of this knowledge to improve the pace of learning. Note that all of the information presented is considered common knowledge in neurology and psychology. The strongest focus is that the brain craves novelty. This is far more complex than it sounds. A better way of putting it is that the brain is not built to focus on one thing for long periods of time. In ancient hunter/gatherer societies, survival depends on awareness, and awareness depends on being able to rapidly switch focus between different things. If you miss the predator following you, you will become lunch. Likewise, if you miss the berry bush off to your left, halfway hidden behind a tree, you might starve. In modern society, we do not need such a high level of awareness, but our brain is still wired to notice and focus on new or unusual things. What this means is, we are easily distracted. The textbook tries to take advantage of this knowledge by using multiple learning techniques and by providing novel distractions that still teach Java. It does this by using more natural language than typical text books, including images with captions, and having a lot of asides with interesting but pertinent information. Put together, not only do these help retain focus, but they also teach using multiple methods, which has also been found to improve learning retention.
What is the use of all of this brain information? I have frequently asserted that there is little real research on education and that the research that exists is summarily ignored by both our education system and our government. The above is some of the research that exists, but is ignored. Why is it ignored? I do not have a clue, except maybe because it supports the idea that the formal classroom model is a poor teaching method (though it can be applied effectively even in a classroom model). How can we take advantage of the above information? Well, there are many ways of doing this.
First lets look at a corollary to the above that is rather important. We have discussed how the right kind of stress can help the brain grow, much like exercise and muscles. We have not discussed that the brain can be injured by excessive stress, again much like muscles. Injuries to the brain due to over stress can be found all over the U.S. In fact, our current educational system is the primary cause of such injuries. Studies in New Zealand (I'll write more on this later) have determined that the optimum age to learn reading varies between 4 years old and 9 years old. This is a huge range. The U.S. educational system tries to force all children to learn to read by 5 or 6 years old. Different rates of brain development result in different receptions to this. Children who do not yet have the necessary brain development find learning to read at this age difficult or impossible. This results in two related effects. The first is a subconscious reaction causing the brain to reject learning to read even after sufficient development has occurred. The second is that the child hates reading, even after finally learning to do it. This hatred of reading is the result of the subconscious reaction, not something that the child consciously decides to do and is thus extremely difficult to overcome. This also happens with math and nearly every other school subject. The end result is that children learn to hate any kind of academic learning, and their brains reject learning in academic environments. This leads to a hatred of learning that extends outside of academic environments. The result is that the typical American claims that they cannot do math (consider how you would react if a supposedly educated American told you, "Oh, I just can't read"; math is no less important or valuable than reading in modern American society). Our education system is awful, in a large degree, because it destroys motivation. Using the knowledge gained from the research I have discussed, the U.S. education system could overcome a lot of other shortcomings just by increasing motivation to learn. We can do better though.
First, we need to get over the misconception that if you are not good at something, it is genetic and there is nothing you can do about it. Many Americans have difficulty reading, due to genetic conditions like dyslexia. Most of them find some way of getting around it. Even dyslexics who have great difficulty reading learn to read and put the effort into doing it when absolutely necessary. In our society, it is nearly impossible to get by without some reading ability. That said, most people who have difficulty reading can blame poor schooling. It is not uncommon in many areas of the U.S. for students to graduate from high school with poor reading skills. Many of these students slowly improve their reading skills through necessary reading in everyday life (though they typically never overcome their dislike for reading). From this, it is clear that through effort ability can be improved. It should be pretty obvious that the problem is not capacity for learning but rather how the subject is taught. There are occasional people with actual disabilities that affect reading, but there is no evidence that this is a significant percentage of the population. If we can teach students that they are capable of learning and overcoming difficulties (even people with dyslexia can learn to read, with enough effort), then we can destroy the common misconceptions that often lead to lack of motivation.
Second, we need to quit trying for force learning down children's throats before they have had sufficient brain development. As I mentioned, this causes psychological injury that ultimately makes learning more difficult and often leads to dislike of learning. Now, I am not saying that we should increase the age at which we teach things. There seems to be an optimum level of brain development for learning different things. For reading this is typically between 4 and 9 years old. If we wait too long, the subject will become less interesting, and the lack of novelty will reduce motivation, making it harder to learn. This is where my problem with the classroom model of teaching comes in. For reading, there is a 5 year range where sufficient development may occur. So, which grade year do we teach it in? Common wisdom in the field of teaching would probably say the middle year, 6 or 7 years old, because that is the average. Unfortunately, this is too early or too late for a majority of students. In other words, this is unlikely to improve the situation at all. Ideally, we would teach each child to read right at the time when they have achieved sufficient brain development. The U.S. education system will tell you that this is impossible, because there are too many students to effectively teach each one separately. The system used in New Zealand is evidence that this is a lie. This is a shortcoming of the traditional classroom learning system used in the U.S., not a generally impossible task. In New Zealand, most of elementary school is spent with the same teacher. Classrooms have many age groups. Subjects are taught in a less formal way, especially reading. Reading is taught primarily through motivation. Each school day, a significant amount of time is spent on reading but not necessarily on teaching reading. As students become interested in and ready to learn to read, they are taught by specialists. The result is that students enjoy reading when they get out of elementary school. They also tend to have far better reading skills that the typical American. Most other subjects are similar in many ways. For instance, math is often easier to learn at older ages than U.S. schools start at. The result here is that many students feel that they are just "not good at math," when the real problem is lack of sufficient brain development. The problem this poses is that once they think they are genetically predisposed to be bad at math, they loose motivation to try to learn it. As with reading, the more informal classroom setting has clear benefits, as students can be allowed to work at a pace that fits their brain development.
My third solution to this problem is based on the idea presented in the Java textbook: the brain craves novelty. The human brain is designed to adapt quickly, which poses a problem in a society where adaptation is not as necessary as during less prosperous times. Our brains are very well suited to learning many new but unrelated things, in quick succession. This does not mean that several short classes a day is the optimum way of learning, however. The problem is this: when we learn something small, then immediately learn something totally unrelated, we have a very high probability of forgetting the first thing. Our brains do this to avoid wasting space. If we learn something, and then use it, the brain recognizes it as important, and it is more likely to store some of that information in long term memory. Still, one record in long term memory will still not last very long, especially when we are presented with something totally unrelated directly after. So this problem is this: Our brains retain information best when we immediately use that information, a lot. So, for best retention, we should focus on one thing for an extended period of time. This is the best way to permanently store information in long term memory. Now, on the other side, the brain gets bored with this strategy. Too much study of a single subject typically becomes rather mind numbing. The brain begins to see no point in remembering the information, because it is constantly available. The lack of novelty results in a lack of sufficient stimulation, which can actually cause you to fall asleep while studying. Studying one thing constantly often becomes extremely difficult in a fairly short period of time. In short, to keep the brain interested, we need to vary what we are learning, but to retain what we are learning, we need to study a specific subject for an extended period. These seem to be diametrically opposed. How do we study one subject without interruption but still have enough interruption to keep the brain focused? The answer is actually not that complicated: use different teaching techniques. My Java book uses conversational language, because the brain is more stimulated from conversational language syntax than formal text book language syntax. It also intersperses interesting images throughout the text, with captions attached. It includes asides with useful information that also provide a short break. The result is that the brain has the opportunity to regularly change focus, but the subject being learned remains the same. Also, in the different things, overlapping information is presented, which helps to reinforce important points. Learning using multiple different styles helps to ingrain information in long term memory better. Varying learning techniques not only helps improve focus, but it also improves retention.
Now, let's look at some ways of implementing these ideas. Getting over the misconception that learning ability is entirely genetic is fairly easy. This misconception is often spread by the actions of teachers and parents. For the math class in the study, the misconception was effectively destroyed with a simple two week course on the neurology of learning. For younger students, teachers could easily just tell them that learning is determined more by motivation than genetics. The other two can be most easily handled by using a less formal classroom system. The less formal classroom allows for learning paced for the student. It also happens to be more conducive to increasing novelty. If there are many students studying at different levels, students will be exposed to more parts of a subject at one time, allowing them to learn and focus on the things that they find most interesting at the moment. This will produce an environment that encourages motivated and effective learning.
There are some additional things that could be used to increase novelty, even in a traditional formal classroom setting. These are things like alternate forms of teaching media. For instance, in 5th grade (before I started homeschooling), I had a teacher who would occasionally do a Jeopardy-like game, covering the subjects we were learning. Well designed games provide a break from traditional learning and are also very engaging. If the subject of study can be worked into the game, then it will also facilitate learning. Students that are engaged in learning are much more likely to retain what they learn. In addition, things like videos, pictures, and even audio clips can be used to provide breaks and add variety to the learning methods. Music can also provide a break, and music has been shown to improve learning, giving another extra boost to retention.
One last thing I want to look at improving is the problem of rapidly switching subjects. Going through four to six one hour long classes per day, with totally unrelated subjects, is a recipe for learning a bunch of stuff that you will forget by the end of the day. Instead, it would probably be better to stick to two or three two hour long classes per day, or even just two three hour classes. Instead of having the same class schedule every day, each day of the week would cover one or two different subjects. So, on Monday, there might be three hours of math and three hours of science. On Tuesday, the first three hours could be English and the next three hours might be history. The rest of the week would be similar. For a subject as important as reading, there might be three days with a three hour block of reading, or reading might even be an everyday thing. Note that for long class periods, there should be breaks or times during class where students can leave their seats and wander a bit (blood clots in the legs are most likely to develop during long periods of sitting). During breaks may be a good time to play music or watch an entertaining video. Short distractions like this will not interfere with retention but will still give the brain a needed break. Breaks may also be a good time to answer students' questions in an informal setting (and when a student is curious about something is often the best time to learn that thing).
I am not saying that the above will work for everyone or even that it will work. I expect it to work, based on the scientific knowledge behind it. Like I have said many times, there is not much we could do to make our education system worse, so the odds that this will improve it are pretty good. Some of the techniques I have mentioned have been used with great success in other countries. In New Zealand, the less formal classroom setting has been very successful. In most oriental countries, the culture encourages the idea that learning capacity is based on motivation and not genetics, and we have clearly seen the positive results of this (in fact, it has resulted in a stereotype that all Asians are extremely smart). While the novelty thing has hardly been used in serious education, presenters have been using it for years to keep their audience interested. Similarly novelty is one of the biggest driving factors of the video game industry. People will go to great effort to learn the mechanics of games like World of WarCraft (Wow) and Minecraft, because the games are engaging and motivating. Nobody learns to play a video game in a formal classroom setting. The games are so motivating that the players seek out the knowledge for themselves. Wow contains more knowledge than the average college class and covers at least as many subjects as the typical elementary school (you can even find books in the game about the history of the imaginary world the game takes place in). People learn this information for fun, using resources like the internet to find it. If we could make school this motivating and engaging, students would begin to allocate part of their free time to studying school subjects, possibly instead of playing games (nothing against games...). We have the knowledge to do this, now we just need to apply it.
Many years ago (maybe 10), I began to wonder if my high degree of intelligence was due to some natural luck, or if it was maybe the result of a strong desire to be intelligent. When I was 14, I took an electronic IQ test, and I scored 136 on it (100 is average, 136 is very high). Discussing the results with others, I learned that most electronic IQ tests only go up to 140, which means that the closer to 140 a person tests, the more likely their IQ is to be far over 140. I have not taken an IQ test since, though I managed to pass a Mensa entry practice test (I do not plan on joining, because I am unwilling to pay dues just to be part of a "smart club"). Anyhow, this experience got me thinking about intelligence. When I was very young, I was extremely curious. My parents, instead of discouraging curiosity or blowing it off, encouraged me to be curious, and they often taught me about things I was curious about. My mom also taught me many things I was not as curious about, as a sort of game. By I was 5, I knew the technical names of nearly all of the major bones in the body. When we moved back to the U.S. (we were in Germany because my dad was in the military), we lived with my grandparents for a while and visited them fairly often after moving out. My grandparents encouraged my curiosity even more. As a present once (maybe for a birthday, I forget), by grandfather bought me some wire, a bolt, and a lantern battery and showed me how to make an electromagnet. For Christmas, they often gave me Technic Legos or other toy sets that could be used to build mechanical devices. In short, I grew up in an environment where learning and curiosity were encouraged. This has given me a lot of motivation to learn. As such, I have spent a great deal of effort on learning new things that I find interesting.
Thinking about all of this has led me to the question above. Am I smart because I was born that way, or am I smart because I want to be smart and have put effort into becoming smart? The more I learn, the more I believe the correct answer is the second. Even my extremely good memory can be attributed to things like my mom playing memory with me starting at a very young age. Recently, in conjunction with a pair of college classes, I have learned even more supporting my theory. For my math class (linear algebra), we were required to read and comment on a pair of articles about brain function. These articles discussed studies that showed that intelligence is a learned trait. One discussed a study done where the students in a poorly performing highschool math class were separated into two randomly selected groups. One was given a short course on study skills, while the other was given a short course on brain neurology. The brain neurology course focused primarily on how the brain forms new connections while learning, and it asserted that by expending some effort, even people who are "bad at math" can teach their brains to be good at math through practice. The grades of the two groups were compared at the end of the semester, and it was discovered that the group who attended the brain course did significantly better in the math class than those who attended the study skills course. Why? The study attributed the success to motivation. Common wisdom (in the U.S.) tells us that if we are bad at math, we can never improve. The students who were taught study skills still believed that no matter how hard they worked, they could not improve, because they were born bad at math, so they had no motivation to apply the newly learned skills. The students who were taught about the brain learned that the common wisdom is wrong and realized that hard work would not be wasted. So, they were more motivated to work harder, because they could see a clear benefit.
Now, there is a second thing I learned, from a computer science class. The textbook, a book for learning the Java programming language (called "Head First Java"), begins by discussing how the brain works and how the book takes advantage of this knowledge to improve the pace of learning. Note that all of the information presented is considered common knowledge in neurology and psychology. The strongest focus is that the brain craves novelty. This is far more complex than it sounds. A better way of putting it is that the brain is not built to focus on one thing for long periods of time. In ancient hunter/gatherer societies, survival depends on awareness, and awareness depends on being able to rapidly switch focus between different things. If you miss the predator following you, you will become lunch. Likewise, if you miss the berry bush off to your left, halfway hidden behind a tree, you might starve. In modern society, we do not need such a high level of awareness, but our brain is still wired to notice and focus on new or unusual things. What this means is, we are easily distracted. The textbook tries to take advantage of this knowledge by using multiple learning techniques and by providing novel distractions that still teach Java. It does this by using more natural language than typical text books, including images with captions, and having a lot of asides with interesting but pertinent information. Put together, not only do these help retain focus, but they also teach using multiple methods, which has also been found to improve learning retention.
What is the use of all of this brain information? I have frequently asserted that there is little real research on education and that the research that exists is summarily ignored by both our education system and our government. The above is some of the research that exists, but is ignored. Why is it ignored? I do not have a clue, except maybe because it supports the idea that the formal classroom model is a poor teaching method (though it can be applied effectively even in a classroom model). How can we take advantage of the above information? Well, there are many ways of doing this.
First lets look at a corollary to the above that is rather important. We have discussed how the right kind of stress can help the brain grow, much like exercise and muscles. We have not discussed that the brain can be injured by excessive stress, again much like muscles. Injuries to the brain due to over stress can be found all over the U.S. In fact, our current educational system is the primary cause of such injuries. Studies in New Zealand (I'll write more on this later) have determined that the optimum age to learn reading varies between 4 years old and 9 years old. This is a huge range. The U.S. educational system tries to force all children to learn to read by 5 or 6 years old. Different rates of brain development result in different receptions to this. Children who do not yet have the necessary brain development find learning to read at this age difficult or impossible. This results in two related effects. The first is a subconscious reaction causing the brain to reject learning to read even after sufficient development has occurred. The second is that the child hates reading, even after finally learning to do it. This hatred of reading is the result of the subconscious reaction, not something that the child consciously decides to do and is thus extremely difficult to overcome. This also happens with math and nearly every other school subject. The end result is that children learn to hate any kind of academic learning, and their brains reject learning in academic environments. This leads to a hatred of learning that extends outside of academic environments. The result is that the typical American claims that they cannot do math (consider how you would react if a supposedly educated American told you, "Oh, I just can't read"; math is no less important or valuable than reading in modern American society). Our education system is awful, in a large degree, because it destroys motivation. Using the knowledge gained from the research I have discussed, the U.S. education system could overcome a lot of other shortcomings just by increasing motivation to learn. We can do better though.
First, we need to get over the misconception that if you are not good at something, it is genetic and there is nothing you can do about it. Many Americans have difficulty reading, due to genetic conditions like dyslexia. Most of them find some way of getting around it. Even dyslexics who have great difficulty reading learn to read and put the effort into doing it when absolutely necessary. In our society, it is nearly impossible to get by without some reading ability. That said, most people who have difficulty reading can blame poor schooling. It is not uncommon in many areas of the U.S. for students to graduate from high school with poor reading skills. Many of these students slowly improve their reading skills through necessary reading in everyday life (though they typically never overcome their dislike for reading). From this, it is clear that through effort ability can be improved. It should be pretty obvious that the problem is not capacity for learning but rather how the subject is taught. There are occasional people with actual disabilities that affect reading, but there is no evidence that this is a significant percentage of the population. If we can teach students that they are capable of learning and overcoming difficulties (even people with dyslexia can learn to read, with enough effort), then we can destroy the common misconceptions that often lead to lack of motivation.
Second, we need to quit trying for force learning down children's throats before they have had sufficient brain development. As I mentioned, this causes psychological injury that ultimately makes learning more difficult and often leads to dislike of learning. Now, I am not saying that we should increase the age at which we teach things. There seems to be an optimum level of brain development for learning different things. For reading this is typically between 4 and 9 years old. If we wait too long, the subject will become less interesting, and the lack of novelty will reduce motivation, making it harder to learn. This is where my problem with the classroom model of teaching comes in. For reading, there is a 5 year range where sufficient development may occur. So, which grade year do we teach it in? Common wisdom in the field of teaching would probably say the middle year, 6 or 7 years old, because that is the average. Unfortunately, this is too early or too late for a majority of students. In other words, this is unlikely to improve the situation at all. Ideally, we would teach each child to read right at the time when they have achieved sufficient brain development. The U.S. education system will tell you that this is impossible, because there are too many students to effectively teach each one separately. The system used in New Zealand is evidence that this is a lie. This is a shortcoming of the traditional classroom learning system used in the U.S., not a generally impossible task. In New Zealand, most of elementary school is spent with the same teacher. Classrooms have many age groups. Subjects are taught in a less formal way, especially reading. Reading is taught primarily through motivation. Each school day, a significant amount of time is spent on reading but not necessarily on teaching reading. As students become interested in and ready to learn to read, they are taught by specialists. The result is that students enjoy reading when they get out of elementary school. They also tend to have far better reading skills that the typical American. Most other subjects are similar in many ways. For instance, math is often easier to learn at older ages than U.S. schools start at. The result here is that many students feel that they are just "not good at math," when the real problem is lack of sufficient brain development. The problem this poses is that once they think they are genetically predisposed to be bad at math, they loose motivation to try to learn it. As with reading, the more informal classroom setting has clear benefits, as students can be allowed to work at a pace that fits their brain development.
My third solution to this problem is based on the idea presented in the Java textbook: the brain craves novelty. The human brain is designed to adapt quickly, which poses a problem in a society where adaptation is not as necessary as during less prosperous times. Our brains are very well suited to learning many new but unrelated things, in quick succession. This does not mean that several short classes a day is the optimum way of learning, however. The problem is this: when we learn something small, then immediately learn something totally unrelated, we have a very high probability of forgetting the first thing. Our brains do this to avoid wasting space. If we learn something, and then use it, the brain recognizes it as important, and it is more likely to store some of that information in long term memory. Still, one record in long term memory will still not last very long, especially when we are presented with something totally unrelated directly after. So this problem is this: Our brains retain information best when we immediately use that information, a lot. So, for best retention, we should focus on one thing for an extended period of time. This is the best way to permanently store information in long term memory. Now, on the other side, the brain gets bored with this strategy. Too much study of a single subject typically becomes rather mind numbing. The brain begins to see no point in remembering the information, because it is constantly available. The lack of novelty results in a lack of sufficient stimulation, which can actually cause you to fall asleep while studying. Studying one thing constantly often becomes extremely difficult in a fairly short period of time. In short, to keep the brain interested, we need to vary what we are learning, but to retain what we are learning, we need to study a specific subject for an extended period. These seem to be diametrically opposed. How do we study one subject without interruption but still have enough interruption to keep the brain focused? The answer is actually not that complicated: use different teaching techniques. My Java book uses conversational language, because the brain is more stimulated from conversational language syntax than formal text book language syntax. It also intersperses interesting images throughout the text, with captions attached. It includes asides with useful information that also provide a short break. The result is that the brain has the opportunity to regularly change focus, but the subject being learned remains the same. Also, in the different things, overlapping information is presented, which helps to reinforce important points. Learning using multiple different styles helps to ingrain information in long term memory better. Varying learning techniques not only helps improve focus, but it also improves retention.
Now, let's look at some ways of implementing these ideas. Getting over the misconception that learning ability is entirely genetic is fairly easy. This misconception is often spread by the actions of teachers and parents. For the math class in the study, the misconception was effectively destroyed with a simple two week course on the neurology of learning. For younger students, teachers could easily just tell them that learning is determined more by motivation than genetics. The other two can be most easily handled by using a less formal classroom system. The less formal classroom allows for learning paced for the student. It also happens to be more conducive to increasing novelty. If there are many students studying at different levels, students will be exposed to more parts of a subject at one time, allowing them to learn and focus on the things that they find most interesting at the moment. This will produce an environment that encourages motivated and effective learning.
There are some additional things that could be used to increase novelty, even in a traditional formal classroom setting. These are things like alternate forms of teaching media. For instance, in 5th grade (before I started homeschooling), I had a teacher who would occasionally do a Jeopardy-like game, covering the subjects we were learning. Well designed games provide a break from traditional learning and are also very engaging. If the subject of study can be worked into the game, then it will also facilitate learning. Students that are engaged in learning are much more likely to retain what they learn. In addition, things like videos, pictures, and even audio clips can be used to provide breaks and add variety to the learning methods. Music can also provide a break, and music has been shown to improve learning, giving another extra boost to retention.
One last thing I want to look at improving is the problem of rapidly switching subjects. Going through four to six one hour long classes per day, with totally unrelated subjects, is a recipe for learning a bunch of stuff that you will forget by the end of the day. Instead, it would probably be better to stick to two or three two hour long classes per day, or even just two three hour classes. Instead of having the same class schedule every day, each day of the week would cover one or two different subjects. So, on Monday, there might be three hours of math and three hours of science. On Tuesday, the first three hours could be English and the next three hours might be history. The rest of the week would be similar. For a subject as important as reading, there might be three days with a three hour block of reading, or reading might even be an everyday thing. Note that for long class periods, there should be breaks or times during class where students can leave their seats and wander a bit (blood clots in the legs are most likely to develop during long periods of sitting). During breaks may be a good time to play music or watch an entertaining video. Short distractions like this will not interfere with retention but will still give the brain a needed break. Breaks may also be a good time to answer students' questions in an informal setting (and when a student is curious about something is often the best time to learn that thing).
I am not saying that the above will work for everyone or even that it will work. I expect it to work, based on the scientific knowledge behind it. Like I have said many times, there is not much we could do to make our education system worse, so the odds that this will improve it are pretty good. Some of the techniques I have mentioned have been used with great success in other countries. In New Zealand, the less formal classroom setting has been very successful. In most oriental countries, the culture encourages the idea that learning capacity is based on motivation and not genetics, and we have clearly seen the positive results of this (in fact, it has resulted in a stereotype that all Asians are extremely smart). While the novelty thing has hardly been used in serious education, presenters have been using it for years to keep their audience interested. Similarly novelty is one of the biggest driving factors of the video game industry. People will go to great effort to learn the mechanics of games like World of WarCraft (Wow) and Minecraft, because the games are engaging and motivating. Nobody learns to play a video game in a formal classroom setting. The games are so motivating that the players seek out the knowledge for themselves. Wow contains more knowledge than the average college class and covers at least as many subjects as the typical elementary school (you can even find books in the game about the history of the imaginary world the game takes place in). People learn this information for fun, using resources like the internet to find it. If we could make school this motivating and engaging, students would begin to allocate part of their free time to studying school subjects, possibly instead of playing games (nothing against games...). We have the knowledge to do this, now we just need to apply it.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Child-proof Touchscreens
We are using a tablet computer for education for our 3 year old daughter. Mostly right now, she is learning simple stuff, like numbers and names of objects. One nice thing about touchscreen devices is that they have a much shallower learning curve for people with poor coordination than other computer devices. This makes them ideal for children. Our daughter's experience confirms this.
I just finished reading this article: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865580442/Touchscreens-and-toddlers-The-research-is-mostly-good-news.html It discusses using touchscreen devices for children. It also references some good studies on the subject of how touchscreen devices affect children. One surprising thing I learned from the article is that many parents allow their children to play with their smart phones or tablets when they need to be free from distractions (while shopping for instance). It talks briefly about a child who figured out how to unlock a smart phone at 8 months old. Studies have shown that touchscreen time for young children, even this young, can have positive effects. The article says that studies suggest that limited time with close supervision is best, and it can be especially effective if the parents are directly involved. Evidently (and as I have suspected and observed) touchscreen devices are excellent learning tools for children that are too young to have enough coordination to use traditional computers.
This article got me thinking about more widespread use of touchscreen devices as learning tools. Even the cheapest tablet computers available are powerful enough to run most learning applications. The problem is that they are fragile. Near the end of the article, one parent is quoted as saying that one reason they limit the time their child spends on the tablet or smart phone is that it tedious to have to clean the drool off of the expensive device. (Note that limiting time is a good thing, but drool on the device is probably not.) This is the same thing I am worried about with our daughter. She does not drool on it, but the device cost several hundred dollars, and she does not understand that it is fragile and needs to be kept clean. At this point, she is just too young to understand this, and it can be assumed that other children her age or younger will also not understand this. So, do we just keep risking it, hoping that we get lucky, or do we deny our daughter the opportunity for very good early brain development to potentially save a few hundred dollars?
I would like to suggest that someone needs to start making small (somewhere between 4 and 7 inch) tablets designed with children in mind. These would be water tight (not just water resistant; kids like to drop things in bathtubs and toilets), with impact resistant screens. The shell would also need to be impact resistant, because children often drop things, or worse, I have a brother who had a fetish with stepping on things when he was very young (I am lucky he did not break my laptop screen). I am not suggesting that they need to be military combat grade materials, but I think that current designs could be improved on a bit to make more child safe designs. Given the potential benefits these devices have for learning, I think that a small, lower performance, cheap tablet that can handle common educational games would be a good seller. These devices could even be marketed to schools (some of which are already spending over half a grand a pop on IPads). If these could be produced cheaply enough, some schools might even consider buying every student one. I am certain that many parents would buy at least one, if not one for each of their children.
Anyhow, these studies that show benefits for judicious use of touchscreen computers for educating young children make a very good marketing platform for these devices, but if they are not child safe, many people will shy away because of the risk of expensive damage. I sincerely hope that someone with some influence reads this and makes it happen, because we are homeschooling our children, and having a few damage resistant devices like this would really help.
Lord Rybec
Consequences of Aliteracy
I currently have a professor who has mentioned the topic of aliteracy in the U.S. several times. Aliteracy is when a person knows how to read, but chooses not to. It turns out that aliteracy is a growing problem in the U.S. Evidently, even a significant percentage of highly educated Americans are too apathetic to take time to read. This includes those in high positions, like CEOs. Obviously, this is related to the education problem we have in the U.S. I have identified some less obvious problems that are very likely caused by this epidemic of aliteracy.
One problem I have noticed is that most small business owners in the U.S. do not seem to have any knowledge of labor law. In addition, a vast majority of lower level retail managers (below store level) do not know labor law either. The result is that small business owners won't ask your sexual orientation (which is only prohibited in a few states) in an interview, but they will ask if you are a student, if you have a family, and if you have transportation to work, even though all of these are prohibited by Federal law. In addition, companies like WalMart (I have seen this myself) often have signs up stating that they will not hire anyone who will not work on Sundays, even though Federal law considers this to be religious discrimination, unless the business can prove that hiring the person would cause "undue hardship." (Given their profit margins and size, WalMart would have an extremely hard time convincing a judge that having a few employees who will not work Sundays would cause undue hardship.)
Anyhow, I have had personal experience with these problems, and I always stand up for my legal rights, because if no one does, then they will never learn. Also, I am protected by anti-retaliation laws that prohibit any kind of disciplinary action based on my assertion of my rights. Thankfully, I have never been challenged on this (I have caused my managers some grief, but they know better than to doubt that I know what I am talking about).
So, the point of all of this is that aliteracy is, among other things, destroying many of our legal rights. First, business owners and managers are too lazy to take the time to learn how they are supposed to treat employees. Second, employees are too lazy to learn their legal rights. So, in my experience, most workplaces for entry level jobs often treat their employees in ways that are illegal, and the employees, while they recognize the unfairness of the treatment, do not realize that they can do something about it. The only times that anything is done about this is when someone like me overhears something clearly illegal going on and reports it (and, I have done this before, resulting in around $15,000 in fines to a company that was violating child labor laws designed to protect minors). People in a truly literate civilization do not jump into legally complex arenas, like business ownership or management, without doing their research to make sure they are operating within their legal limitations.
I have argued in the past that reading is the single most important skill that students can learn in school. I would like to add an addendum to that statement. First, reading is the most important skill that schools can teach our children. Second, however, if the methods they employ to teach reading discourage the actual use of that skill, then the skill has little value. Thus, reading is the most important skill that schools can teach our children, but for this to be effective, it must be taught in a way that encourages liberal use of the skill. There is no skill that has any value if it is rarely or never used, and reading is no exception.
Stay tuned. I am not finished on this subject. It turns out that New Zealand has the highest literacy rate and lowest aliteracy rate in the world. I am currently researching their program for teaching reading, and it looks very promising. I will be posting an article on my findings in the near future.
Lord Rybec
One problem I have noticed is that most small business owners in the U.S. do not seem to have any knowledge of labor law. In addition, a vast majority of lower level retail managers (below store level) do not know labor law either. The result is that small business owners won't ask your sexual orientation (which is only prohibited in a few states) in an interview, but they will ask if you are a student, if you have a family, and if you have transportation to work, even though all of these are prohibited by Federal law. In addition, companies like WalMart (I have seen this myself) often have signs up stating that they will not hire anyone who will not work on Sundays, even though Federal law considers this to be religious discrimination, unless the business can prove that hiring the person would cause "undue hardship." (Given their profit margins and size, WalMart would have an extremely hard time convincing a judge that having a few employees who will not work Sundays would cause undue hardship.)
Anyhow, I have had personal experience with these problems, and I always stand up for my legal rights, because if no one does, then they will never learn. Also, I am protected by anti-retaliation laws that prohibit any kind of disciplinary action based on my assertion of my rights. Thankfully, I have never been challenged on this (I have caused my managers some grief, but they know better than to doubt that I know what I am talking about).
So, the point of all of this is that aliteracy is, among other things, destroying many of our legal rights. First, business owners and managers are too lazy to take the time to learn how they are supposed to treat employees. Second, employees are too lazy to learn their legal rights. So, in my experience, most workplaces for entry level jobs often treat their employees in ways that are illegal, and the employees, while they recognize the unfairness of the treatment, do not realize that they can do something about it. The only times that anything is done about this is when someone like me overhears something clearly illegal going on and reports it (and, I have done this before, resulting in around $15,000 in fines to a company that was violating child labor laws designed to protect minors). People in a truly literate civilization do not jump into legally complex arenas, like business ownership or management, without doing their research to make sure they are operating within their legal limitations.
I have argued in the past that reading is the single most important skill that students can learn in school. I would like to add an addendum to that statement. First, reading is the most important skill that schools can teach our children. Second, however, if the methods they employ to teach reading discourage the actual use of that skill, then the skill has little value. Thus, reading is the most important skill that schools can teach our children, but for this to be effective, it must be taught in a way that encourages liberal use of the skill. There is no skill that has any value if it is rarely or never used, and reading is no exception.
Stay tuned. I am not finished on this subject. It turns out that New Zealand has the highest literacy rate and lowest aliteracy rate in the world. I am currently researching their program for teaching reading, and it looks very promising. I will be posting an article on my findings in the near future.
Lord Rybec
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Liberal Homeschooling Response
This is a comment in response to: http://www.emilywillinghamphd.com/2012/06/liberals-who-homeschool-special-needs.html My response is longer than the comments allow, so I am posting it here.
First my disclaimer: I am conservative. We are homeschooling our children (they are 3, 2, and 1 right now, so it is not very rigorous yet). I was homeschooled from 6th grade on. I was pulled out of public school because I was failing 6th grade. At the same time, I was in the Talented and Gifted program. The primary reason I was failing was that public school was slow and boring, so I would do things that were more interesting, instead of homework. For me, homeschool allowed me to do my work at my own pace (fairly quickly) and then study more interesting things with the extra time.
Now, for the subject at hand. The biggest argument, by far, that I have heard against homeschooling is that kids don't get properly "socialized." The argument is that for kids to become socially adept, they must interact with others of their own age, in an uncontrolled environment (and public schools with 15 to 20 times as many students as teachers certainly provide this uncontrolled environment). The problem here is that before 12 to 16 years old, it is just plain stupid to put kids into an uncontrolled social environment (the internet has verified this repeatedly). Young children have poor judgement (mostly due to lack of experience and mental maturity). Putting a bunch of people with poor judgement together without any moderator will result in situations like the one mentioned in the article. They will essentially form their own government, which will typically be led by whoever is most charismatic or strongest (as in, whoever bullies the most effectively, mentally or physically). This is very bad. In fact, the cultures in many U.S. public schools are about the same as ancient barbarian civilizations like the Mongols, where the ruler was the one who killed anyone who challenged his rule. (No wonder autistic kids get physically abused. They tend to care less about power hierarchies, which is perceived as a challenge by whoever thinks they are in charge. Having mild Asperger's, I know about this.) In this environment, kids who are different (whether autistic, Down's Syndrome, or even just an unusual hair color) should expect to get bullied, and if their parents don't understand why their kid gets singled out, then they don't understand how kids work.
There is another problem with this argument. First, up until the last 100 years, there has not been a public school system that segregated children by age. Before this period, kids were primarily socialized in family, church, and community settings. These settings are very highly controlled and are not segregated by age (sometimes children would be segregated from adults, but "children" included all ages from 2 to 15, not groups for each individual age). Further though, during the last 100 years, the "generation gap" has slowly widened. Now, recent highschool graduates coming into the workforce have a very difficult time working with older workers (as in, workers 25 years old or older). I have personal experience with this (I got along fine with older workers at a large hardware store I worked at, but every single highschool student or new graduate had problems with socialization with older employees). Back before we had age segregated public schools, even 16 year olds worked well with older workers. I would argue that our school system, where students are segregated by age in an uncontrolled social environment, is the primary cause of the so called "generation gap." In real life, a vast majority of those we will be expected to get along with are not our own age. Arguing that good socialization requires uncontrolled groups of similar ages is absurd.
In addition to all of this, most homeschoolers are either fairly religious, or have the sense to find social groups for their children. My family is religious. We attend church every Sunday, which gives our children a variety of people with a large age range to socialize with. There is a 2 hour nursery class that they go to while we are in Sunday School, which has 3 or 4 supervisors for maybe 10 or 12 children (very controlled). My mom takes my siblings who are still in school to a homeschool social group and sends some of them to external classes (my brother took a science class for homeschoolers that included 10 or so other homeschooled children). In each of these situations, the social environment was controlled (maybe not so much for the science class, but this was when my brother was 16 or 17, and required less control). Good homeschoolers do this whenever possible. Homeschoolers with large families may not even need to do this, because a home with more than 4 or 5 children makes a very good, controlled social environment (it tends to include a good age range as well). In my experience, homeschooled people tend to fit into social groups with a wide range of ages far better than people who were in public school. Since this includes almost every post highschool social group on the planet, this is far more important than the kind of "socialization" that U.S. public schools provides.
Given all of this, I think that it is unfair and somewhat cruel to subject my children to the uncontrolled social environment, run by people with poor judgement (other students), that public school provides. That said, if homeschool just does not work for some of my children, then we may try public school for those children (my mom had to do this with one of my brothers, and for him it worked out very well).
Overall, homeschool should be a careful decision. Many parents cannot (or are not willing to) handle the rigor required to effectively homeschool their children, and in those cases, it is more important for the children to learn than to be in an ideal social environment. For those that have special needs children, or just don't want to subject their children to the socially toxic environment of public schools, homeschool can be a very good option, and in my opinion, the needs of the individual child should outweigh some ethereal idea that putting a lot of children together will somehow make the good behavior push out the bad. This is especially true of special needs children.
Lord Rybec
First my disclaimer: I am conservative. We are homeschooling our children (they are 3, 2, and 1 right now, so it is not very rigorous yet). I was homeschooled from 6th grade on. I was pulled out of public school because I was failing 6th grade. At the same time, I was in the Talented and Gifted program. The primary reason I was failing was that public school was slow and boring, so I would do things that were more interesting, instead of homework. For me, homeschool allowed me to do my work at my own pace (fairly quickly) and then study more interesting things with the extra time.
Now, for the subject at hand. The biggest argument, by far, that I have heard against homeschooling is that kids don't get properly "socialized." The argument is that for kids to become socially adept, they must interact with others of their own age, in an uncontrolled environment (and public schools with 15 to 20 times as many students as teachers certainly provide this uncontrolled environment). The problem here is that before 12 to 16 years old, it is just plain stupid to put kids into an uncontrolled social environment (the internet has verified this repeatedly). Young children have poor judgement (mostly due to lack of experience and mental maturity). Putting a bunch of people with poor judgement together without any moderator will result in situations like the one mentioned in the article. They will essentially form their own government, which will typically be led by whoever is most charismatic or strongest (as in, whoever bullies the most effectively, mentally or physically). This is very bad. In fact, the cultures in many U.S. public schools are about the same as ancient barbarian civilizations like the Mongols, where the ruler was the one who killed anyone who challenged his rule. (No wonder autistic kids get physically abused. They tend to care less about power hierarchies, which is perceived as a challenge by whoever thinks they are in charge. Having mild Asperger's, I know about this.) In this environment, kids who are different (whether autistic, Down's Syndrome, or even just an unusual hair color) should expect to get bullied, and if their parents don't understand why their kid gets singled out, then they don't understand how kids work.
There is another problem with this argument. First, up until the last 100 years, there has not been a public school system that segregated children by age. Before this period, kids were primarily socialized in family, church, and community settings. These settings are very highly controlled and are not segregated by age (sometimes children would be segregated from adults, but "children" included all ages from 2 to 15, not groups for each individual age). Further though, during the last 100 years, the "generation gap" has slowly widened. Now, recent highschool graduates coming into the workforce have a very difficult time working with older workers (as in, workers 25 years old or older). I have personal experience with this (I got along fine with older workers at a large hardware store I worked at, but every single highschool student or new graduate had problems with socialization with older employees). Back before we had age segregated public schools, even 16 year olds worked well with older workers. I would argue that our school system, where students are segregated by age in an uncontrolled social environment, is the primary cause of the so called "generation gap." In real life, a vast majority of those we will be expected to get along with are not our own age. Arguing that good socialization requires uncontrolled groups of similar ages is absurd.
In addition to all of this, most homeschoolers are either fairly religious, or have the sense to find social groups for their children. My family is religious. We attend church every Sunday, which gives our children a variety of people with a large age range to socialize with. There is a 2 hour nursery class that they go to while we are in Sunday School, which has 3 or 4 supervisors for maybe 10 or 12 children (very controlled). My mom takes my siblings who are still in school to a homeschool social group and sends some of them to external classes (my brother took a science class for homeschoolers that included 10 or so other homeschooled children). In each of these situations, the social environment was controlled (maybe not so much for the science class, but this was when my brother was 16 or 17, and required less control). Good homeschoolers do this whenever possible. Homeschoolers with large families may not even need to do this, because a home with more than 4 or 5 children makes a very good, controlled social environment (it tends to include a good age range as well). In my experience, homeschooled people tend to fit into social groups with a wide range of ages far better than people who were in public school. Since this includes almost every post highschool social group on the planet, this is far more important than the kind of "socialization" that U.S. public schools provides.
Given all of this, I think that it is unfair and somewhat cruel to subject my children to the uncontrolled social environment, run by people with poor judgement (other students), that public school provides. That said, if homeschool just does not work for some of my children, then we may try public school for those children (my mom had to do this with one of my brothers, and for him it worked out very well).
Overall, homeschool should be a careful decision. Many parents cannot (or are not willing to) handle the rigor required to effectively homeschool their children, and in those cases, it is more important for the children to learn than to be in an ideal social environment. For those that have special needs children, or just don't want to subject their children to the socially toxic environment of public schools, homeschool can be a very good option, and in my opinion, the needs of the individual child should outweigh some ethereal idea that putting a lot of children together will somehow make the good behavior push out the bad. This is especially true of special needs children.
Lord Rybec
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Gamefication in Schools
If you don't believe that video games are good educational tools, look up Ananth Pai. I spent a few hours today watching TED videos on gamefication. One gamefication expert mentioned this guy named Ananth Pai. Mr. Pai is from India. He is a teacher in the U.S. and mostly teaches 3rd grade. His teaching record, based on tests scores of students, was just as crummy as most other U.S. teachers, until one day his 6th grade daughter suggested that his students might respond better if they were able to use Nintendo DS handheld consoles in the classroom for learning. Initially, he thought her suggestion was absurd, and even said that he would never allow that. Soon after though, he spent some time hanging out at BestBuy, asking children if they would like it if their classes used those game consoles for learning. They all said that they would like that a lot. So, Mr. Pai bought enough Nintendo DS consoles for his entire class (out of his own pockets, because the administration thought the idea was absurd). Eventually, he added desktop computers, and even XBox Kinect. His third grade class, which had started with math and reading skills below what is typically expected for a third grader, ended that school year with math and reading skills typically expected of students halfway through forth grade (they learned more than a grade and a half of material in one grade). His students' test scores improved by 2 to 5 times what was typical for the school. In addition, when those students moved on, they maintained their lead, even though the classes for later grades were not gamefied in any way.
This is one case of evidence that games are great learning tools. As I have mentioned before, Khan Academy has shown that children will even respond well to game-like reward systems, with no other game-like elements. Mr Pai's experience has caught the attention of several large corporations that regularly donate money to education, as well as education system officials for several states. Unfortunately, this buzz happened in 2011, and we still don't have a large scale gamefication of schools in the U.S. Why not? We have all sorts of evidence that this works, and the U.S. education system is becoming one of the worst in the world. Our government keeps trying to think of new ways to improve the education system, and in the process has managed to hobble it more successfully than it has ever been in the history of our country. Why do we keep trying new things, hoping they will work, when the answer is staring us in the face?
Most Americans that do believe video games can be useful learning tools think that educational games have to be designed to be educational to be effective. Up until today I believed that, to some degree. Games like World of WarCraft have great benefits for general education and brain development, but they just don't teach specific subjects very consistently. Some Wow players might get good at math from managing their imaginary in-game money. Others might get better reading skills from reading all of the storyline text presented when accepting quests, or from communicating with other players. Many players just ignore the difficult elements though. The game is designed so that this does not make it much more difficult, because otherwise it would not retain players very well. Most commercial games are designed so that players only have to learn what they want to learn from the game. Besides that, many of the mental benefits of these games are not easily quantifiable and while they are useful real life skills, they are just not considered important enough to dedicate school time to learning (spatial memory and mapping skills, for instance). It would be reasonable to assume, knowing only this, that games are good for general mental exercise and improvement, but not for learning specific subjects. Today I learned that this is totally wrong.
Mr Pai bought store shelf commercial games for his Nintendo DS consoles. He chose ones with obvious educational value, but not the kind of games that are specifically designed to teach 3rd graders math and reading. One of the games was a collection of simple brain games. These are intended to be mentally stimulating, but they were not designed to teach 3rd grade math. They were designed to be entertaining. One of these games casts the player in the role of a cashier. The player rings up items, then takes payment for them. The player must then count out the change for the payment. Players get points when they count out the correct change. Students in Mr. Pai's class would play this game and compete to see who could get the highest score. This is one of the many games they used to improve their math skills.
The reason that these games are so successful at teaching is that they are engaging. A typical classroom lecture is boring, especially to 3rd graders. With usually only one hour per day and a class of 30 students, a teacher can only devote 2 minutes of personal time per student, assuming that no lecture is given. A 30 minute lecture leaves only 1 minute per student. This is not enough time for meaningful one on one time with all of the students that need it. Engaging games encourage the students to learn on their own. This leaves more time for the teacher to spend with students that really need help. Mr. Pai also found that this eliminates the need for homework, giving the students more free time outside of class (though, nearly every study on the subject has found that more than 15 minutes per day of homework has no discernible benefits anyhow). Some students would even play some of the online games they used in class at home after school, for entertainment.
In summary, there is plenty of evidence that gamefication is superior to everything else that we have tried for improving our education system. The most effective learning games are not necessarily those designed specifically for learning. Games that are engaging help keep the interest of students. What we really need to do is find or make a bunch of games that are engaging and also happen to be educational, then use these game in our schools to teach our children. Based on the results of people like Ananth Pai, and Salman Khan of Khan Academy, our educational system could easily and quickly become one of the best in the world, instead of one of the worst, if we would embrace gamefication, instead of treating it like an absurd joke.
Lord Rybec
This is one case of evidence that games are great learning tools. As I have mentioned before, Khan Academy has shown that children will even respond well to game-like reward systems, with no other game-like elements. Mr Pai's experience has caught the attention of several large corporations that regularly donate money to education, as well as education system officials for several states. Unfortunately, this buzz happened in 2011, and we still don't have a large scale gamefication of schools in the U.S. Why not? We have all sorts of evidence that this works, and the U.S. education system is becoming one of the worst in the world. Our government keeps trying to think of new ways to improve the education system, and in the process has managed to hobble it more successfully than it has ever been in the history of our country. Why do we keep trying new things, hoping they will work, when the answer is staring us in the face?
Most Americans that do believe video games can be useful learning tools think that educational games have to be designed to be educational to be effective. Up until today I believed that, to some degree. Games like World of WarCraft have great benefits for general education and brain development, but they just don't teach specific subjects very consistently. Some Wow players might get good at math from managing their imaginary in-game money. Others might get better reading skills from reading all of the storyline text presented when accepting quests, or from communicating with other players. Many players just ignore the difficult elements though. The game is designed so that this does not make it much more difficult, because otherwise it would not retain players very well. Most commercial games are designed so that players only have to learn what they want to learn from the game. Besides that, many of the mental benefits of these games are not easily quantifiable and while they are useful real life skills, they are just not considered important enough to dedicate school time to learning (spatial memory and mapping skills, for instance). It would be reasonable to assume, knowing only this, that games are good for general mental exercise and improvement, but not for learning specific subjects. Today I learned that this is totally wrong.
Mr Pai bought store shelf commercial games for his Nintendo DS consoles. He chose ones with obvious educational value, but not the kind of games that are specifically designed to teach 3rd graders math and reading. One of the games was a collection of simple brain games. These are intended to be mentally stimulating, but they were not designed to teach 3rd grade math. They were designed to be entertaining. One of these games casts the player in the role of a cashier. The player rings up items, then takes payment for them. The player must then count out the change for the payment. Players get points when they count out the correct change. Students in Mr. Pai's class would play this game and compete to see who could get the highest score. This is one of the many games they used to improve their math skills.
The reason that these games are so successful at teaching is that they are engaging. A typical classroom lecture is boring, especially to 3rd graders. With usually only one hour per day and a class of 30 students, a teacher can only devote 2 minutes of personal time per student, assuming that no lecture is given. A 30 minute lecture leaves only 1 minute per student. This is not enough time for meaningful one on one time with all of the students that need it. Engaging games encourage the students to learn on their own. This leaves more time for the teacher to spend with students that really need help. Mr. Pai also found that this eliminates the need for homework, giving the students more free time outside of class (though, nearly every study on the subject has found that more than 15 minutes per day of homework has no discernible benefits anyhow). Some students would even play some of the online games they used in class at home after school, for entertainment.
In summary, there is plenty of evidence that gamefication is superior to everything else that we have tried for improving our education system. The most effective learning games are not necessarily those designed specifically for learning. Games that are engaging help keep the interest of students. What we really need to do is find or make a bunch of games that are engaging and also happen to be educational, then use these game in our schools to teach our children. Based on the results of people like Ananth Pai, and Salman Khan of Khan Academy, our educational system could easily and quickly become one of the best in the world, instead of one of the worst, if we would embrace gamefication, instead of treating it like an absurd joke.
Lord Rybec
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