For your young engineer/inventor/technician/designer/artist

Wow.  Look at this.

Room to grow

One summer I worked with a 10 year-old who’d been attending a small private school where her mother worked and was headed for public middle school in the fall.  Her parents were concerned that she wasn’t prepared.

This 10 year-old has an older sister, so she had an idea of what would be expected of her in middle school.  The thing she was the most worried about was missing the bus.  She knew herself to be distractible in the mornings, and did not want to be late for school.  So we got to work on a system (involving markers, clipboards, and clocks) that would prevent that from happening.

Each time her dad picked her up from my office, he’d  mention that he thought it would be good for us to work on multiplication soon.  Each time, his daughter would roll her eyes.

Finally one week she said firmly “Dad.  I’m not worried about the multiplication.”

“I don’t think you understand,” he pleaded. “Your classmates are going to have their multiplication memorized.  You don’t know yours by heart yet, so if you get asked in class, I’m afraid you’ll be embarrassed.”

“But I don’t care if I can’t do them fast, Dad. I know how to do them.”

I was reminded of that exchange this morning when I passed a family en route to school in my neighborhood.  The approximately 7 year-old child was wearing shorts and long sleeves.  The adults were wearing jackets and hats and the like (as was I; it was 39 degrees).  I heard myself thinking “He must be freezing!”

Just because I would have been. This is a habit we often fall into when it comes to advising young people – assuming that their experience of something is as ours would be. We don’t want them to be uncomfortable, so we tell them what we think they should do to avoid discomfort.  But there’s empathy – being sensitive to what someone else might experience – and then there’s projection.

When we’re careful not to mix the two (or at least own up to and fix it when we do), we make it possible for kids to have their own experiences, and even to get stronger than we ever got.

My young middle school-bound friend was confident in a way that her dad knew he wouldn’t have been under matching circumstances.  She was socially comfortable enough to know that anyone who’d judge or tease her for taking a few seconds to find her way through 6 times 8 wasn’t someone she was going to want as her friend.  And that she would find the ones she did want.  Her dad had played a part in raising daughters with this kind of confidence, and once he realized that she was OK with her slow multiplication, he could let her boldly tread where he wouldn’t have dared.  He’d called her attention to the area of possible discomfort, so he knew she’d been fairly warned. From there she could choose how to manage it. As it turned out, she had a confidence and ease he hadn’t had at the age of 10.  Which of course was exactly what he always wanted.

Unvilifying the video games

I’m reading Jane McGonigal’s Reality is Broken, about how games (of the video variety in particular) may not be the useless waste of time and brain power they’re reputed to be.

It’s one of the most powerful pieces of writing I’ve read in a long time.  I don’t play video games, and until I started reading the book I wished that fewer people would play them less of the time.  That wish didn’t stop me from encouraging parents to resist the temptation to forbid the playing of video games out of hand, and vilify screen time in general, but I still wished.

So I’ll say this.  If you have or know a child who likes to play video (or other) games, and you find yourself trying to get him or her to play less, this could be one of the most important books you ever read.  Not because it will necessarily change your mind about anything (so please try not to resist because you’re afraid it will do that).  Rather because it will offer you a perspective on why your child is drawn to these games that casts him or her in a much more favorable light than the video-games-are-bad rhetoric allows.

And even if you don’t know such a child, McGonigal’s insights on work, happiness, social interaction, and the way we solve and don’t solve large-scale problems make it worth the read as well.

Here’s a passage from early in the book:

“When we’re in a concentrated state of optimistic engagement, it suddenly becomes biologically more possible for us to think positive thoughts, to make social connections, and to build personal strengths.  We are actively conditioning our minds and bodies to be happier. 

If only hard work in the real world had the same effect.  In our real lives, hard work is too often something we do because have to do it – to make a living, to get ahead, to meet someone else’s expectations, or simply because someone else gave us a job to do.  We resent that kind of work.  It stresses us out.  It takes time away from our friends and family.  It comes with too much criticism.  We’re afraid of failing.  We often don’t get to see the direct impact of our efforts, so we rarely feel satisfied. 

Or, worse, our real-world work isn’t hard enough.  We’re bored out of our minds.  We feel completely underutilized.  We feel underappreciated.  We are wasting our lives.

When we don’t choose hard work for ourselves, it’s usually not the right work, at the right time, for the right person.  It’s not perfectly customized for our strengths, we’re not in control of the work flow, we don’t have a clear picture of what we’re contributing to, and we never see how it all pays off in the end.  Hard work that someone else requires us to do just doesn’t activate our happiness systems in the same way.  It all too often doesn’t absorb us, doesn’t make us otpimistic, doesn’t invigorate us.

What a boost to global net happiness it would be if we could positively activate the minds and bodies of hundreds of millions of people by offering them better hard work.”

Indeed. Jane McGonigal’s interested in a happier, more productive world.  We mightn’t expect such a commitment expressed in the form of a book about video games, but that’s what she’s done.  It’s quite something.

Attendance optional

I had cause to dig out an old post about how I’m often a wet blanket when it comes to cool new ideas for schools.  I decided upon reading through it that I think it bears repeating, so I’m posting an amended version.

I don’t get as excited as I used to about great ideas for new schools.  I may seem  like a bit of a Grinch about the whole thing so I thought I’d clarify.  It’s not that I don’t think the ideas are great.

Great people have great ideas for schools and how to make them better.  What makes these ideas great is that they are based on something that really matters and means a lot to the people who come up with them.  This is how all great things are born – out of inspiration and connection.  One person might be committed to ecology and environmental stewardship, so the school’s curriculum will be interdisciplinary and will incorporate math, reading, writing, and science into outdoor projects.  Another person might be passionate about the arts, so the school will have an arts focus.  Someone else is devoted to social activism and outreach so their school will have a strong component of community service.  There’s no end to the great, inspired ideas.

But every time another one comes along, one thing remains fundamental: a handful of adults will teach a large group of children or teens a series of things those adults have decided are important (based on a cocktail of historical priority, current regulations, and personal commitment).  This material will be useful and/or inspiring to some of the students some of the time.  Each school will survive or it won’t, and others will be modeled after it or not, but it will be considered a success if some of the students some of the time are successful by whatever measures the adults have chosen.  That’s as much as we demand.  We want every kid to thrive, but we don’t expect or demand it. We’re willing to tolerate some.

In order for lasting, applicable learning to happen, students of any age need an authentic connection to the learning.  This kind of connection can’t come from someone else’s idea of the one great way for everyone to learn.  The connection has to originate with the learner and that learner’s experience and interaction with the world. It’s true that from time to time the two can sync up – an adult’s great idea for a school works just right for a kid. But so far it has happened only at that level of some, that it’s worked for some kids.  And while we keep trying and trying, many kids are getting more and more apathetic while they sit waiting for us to find a size that fits all. It costs them their vitality and it costs the rest of us all that these kids could offer if they had the chance to join us early in their lives as thinkers, doers, participants, contributors. (If you have or know any child who is better than you at something, you can begin to imagine the cost of keeping that capacity in check.)

If we were to give our own minds and creativity to freeing and nurturing specific individual connection and engagement in our kids, we’d set the full measure of human potential loose on the world.

[Update/Addendum:] The funny thing is that what we could do with all these great ideas that would quickly take their success beyond the level of some is to go ahead and build all these specialized places that people imagine,  and make them available to kids, but not require attendance at any one of them.  Then and only then could the full opportunity and benefit of each be realized.  (Assuming, obviously, that we re-allocated the funding that goes into education as it currently exists to this spectrum of other school-like places. So that anyone who chose to attend a particular one could.)

Attendance would skyrocket.  We think that kids wouldn’t opt for learning if it weren’t compulsory, but it’s not true. They just wouldn’t opt for learning that didn’t suit or serve them, which is what they’re already doing.  We’re just forcing them to do it underhandedly, to cut corners and put up a fight.  If we stopped resisting their preferences and suitabilities, they’d go ahead and go after the learning they need.

Norms, strengths, disorders…

I recently heard about Dale Archer’s new book Better than Normal: How What Makes You Different Can Make You Exceptional, in which he cautions against the over-diagnosing of psychiatric disorders.  If we’re not careful, Archer says, we’ll stomp out some of our best potential.  I’m finding that the book is a little slow going at the outset, but well worth the questions it raises, particularly for those of us raising and being role models for children (which I guess, when I put it that way, is to say all of us).  The recent issue of Oprah Winfrey’s magazine includes this concise interview with Archer.  I recommend that interview as a first look at his work; if you think it might have a positive impact on the way you see and consider your child, and how you determine what’s normal, what’s helpful, what’s not, then there’s also the book…

The malcontents

In general when I hear people use the word malcontent it’s to refer to someone who’s not only displeased with the way things are but seems to look for reasons to be displeased.  The word is often accompanied by some degree of sneer or disapproval.  The dictionary is a little more charitable with its definition; mine gives “a discontented or dissatisfied person” first, and then “a rebellious person.”  The word’s derivation is a little odd and awkward: the French for “bad” coupled with the Latin for something like “thoroughly held.”

Contentment has evolved linguistically into a sort of a satisfied holding.  So the mal version introduces lack of satisfaction with the holding.

It’s the malcontents who point out the shortcomings of culture and society.  They upset apple carts, a tendency which in the short term can be very annoying and disruptive but tends to call attention to things in such a way that those things have the opportunity to change.  Gandhi was one, as was Martin Luther King. It bears mentioning that those two were also in possession of (and/or managed to muster) great courage and ingenuity in the course of altering history.  (In other words, malcontentment alone will not the world transform.)

And then there are the millions of malcontents under the age of 18 whose objections we take with a grain of salt, if that.  Every day they try to tell us with their disgust at our homework assignments, their refusal to turn off their cell phones and their game consoles, their myriad anxieties, that things are not going well.  These resistances are not the inevitable whinings of a younger generation.  They’re communications.  They’re offerings, if we’re willing to consider them as such.

We can get interested – start sifting through to find what there may be to inform our own next questions and choices and actions – or we can keep telling kids to act more like us, which will ensure that things keep staying the same.

Invitations to read, write, spell

In much the same way a set of tiles on the fridge can quietly alleviate fraction woes, a set of Bananagrams* tiles can introduce a lightness to the realm of spelling, writing, and reading for kids who are timid about any or all.  There are many ways to use these and other letter tiles beyond the rules that come with the game.  (Bananagrams is like Scrabble, but without the turn-taking and the points.  It can be played competitively or not.  According to the rules of the competitive game, players work on their own crossword array while others work on theirs so it’s easy to level the playing field when players have highly divergent skill levels.)

Here are a few ways to use the tiles (all of which I’ve seen enjoyed by kids at one point or another):

• Arrange groups of letters in funny sayings or family in-jokes on a shelf or ledge somewhere.

• Leave notes written in tiles.

• Spell nonsense words or extremely long or short sentences.

When we use something like letter tiles as an instrument of connection between people, we offer kids an appealing invitation into the realm of words.  There’s no pressure to GET anything, just an example of what’s available in participating.  It’s the kind of invitation that’s possible for kids to accept on its own merit, independent of shame or fear of failure or, probably most salient of all, disappointing us.

*The tiles from an old Scrabble game can do the same trick, or any other game with letter tiles.  I will say, however, that the combination of the tactilely pleasant Bananagrams tiles and the zippered cloth banana that houses them has a certain allure.

Will it get in the way?

I have an acquaintance who’s a published author but never quite got the hang of spelling.  And a friend who’s a research scientist with a PhD who has never been able to add or subtract very well.

Spelling and quick mental computation can be helpful, without a doubt.  But even for their highest-order relatives (like professional writing and scientific research), proficiency in some things we call basic are not necessarily necessary.  What we often forget to ask ourselves, when kids are struggling, is whether or not the absence of a particular proficiency is going to get in the way. Is our attention in the places where we actually want it?  Are we sometimes (or often) distracting ourselves and kids from pastimes that will prepare them for what they’re best suited to?  I’ve quoted Stuart Brown before, regarding a discovery of the Cal Tech Jet Propulsion Lab:

“Cal Tech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has been the United States’ premier aerospace research facility for more than seven decades… [In] the late nineties, the lab’s management was saying, ‘JPL, we have a problem.’ As the lab neared the new century, the group of engineers and scientists who had come on board in the 1960s, those who put men on the moon and built robotic probes to explore the solar system, were retiring in large numbers. And JPL was having a hard time replacing them. Even though JPL hired the top graduates from top engineering schools like MIT, Stanford, and even Cal Tech itself, the new hires were often missing something. They were not very good at certain types of problem solving that are critical to the job.  The experienced managers found that the newly minted engineers might excel at grappling with theoretical, mathematical problems at the frontiers of engineering, but they didn’t do well with the practical difficulties of taking a complex project from theory to practice…. They found that in their youth, their older, problem-solving employees had taken apart clocks to see how they worked, or made soapbox derby racers, or built hi-fi stereos, or fixed appliances. The young engineering school graduates who had also done these things, who had played with their hands, were adept at the kinds of problem solving that management sought. Those who hadn’t, generally were not. From that point on JPL made questions about applicants youthful projects and play a standard part of job interviews.”

It’s not that offering a child the chance to learn to spell and calculate has to mean that that child won’t have the chance to play, or problem-solve, or the myriad other things there are to do in the course of a day.

But imagine a child who is quick and accurate with mental computation, because that’s where we’ve put our emphasis, but the child can think of only one way to solve any given problem.  She’ll get all our accolades as a young student, all the support and encouragement she’ll need to be successful throughout her young academic career.  But as an engineer?  Or as a doctor?  She’ll be missing a key ingredient.  Or a child who spells flawlessly, never misses an editing mark on his daily proofreading exercises, can organize a paragraph with precision, but doesn’t much like stories.  He’s encouraged to major in English, goes on to study creative writing or journalism.  But he’s missing a key ingredient.

What do they actually need, and will the things we’ve always held as paramount really hold kids back if they’re not mastered?  Answering the question requires a bit of imagination and a lot of pragmatic perspective.  What are these things really useful for?  What do they actually bear on?  And what are the actual building blocks for success and security?  My author and scientist friends would tell you it’s not spelling or computation.  They’re living proof of that.

This could feel like good news or bad news.  I think it’s good news, if it means that we can let go of the traditional mandates that wreak such havoc on the confidence of young people and waste so much of their time, in the often false name of preparation.  It might feel like bad news in the sense that it means we can’t just keep sending them to school, trudging them through standardized progressions of academic material. At least not if we really want them to be prepared for (and inspired to go after) the kinds of livelihoods that are actually out there. It’ll take more in the way of imagination, and actual information gathering.  We’ll have to look at what it really takes to make it in the world today, what actual jobs and professions require of their employees and participants.  And then we’ll have to invent what the pathways to those true requirements might look like.  Lots more effort, but if it means we end up with young adults who are truly prepared, not just academically apt, such that they can get busy solving problems, finding purpose, supporting themselves, it’ll have been worth it, and then some.

Brain Rules

John Medina’s Brain Rules is worth a look; the author’s website gives a great summary of the book so you’ll be able to tell whether it’s worth the full read to you.  So far, I find it a great, simplified, but carefully researched look at how the brain works and what it might mean for how we create environments for ourselves…

Refusing to fake it

Yesterday a 10 year-old said this to me about her experience with math: “It’s like I’ve been doing it, but I haven’t been learning it. People keep saying ‘well if you’re doing it you must be learning it,’ but I don’t think I am.”

What she meant by doing it was that she was performing the tasks that constitute math in her classroom and what’s assigned for homework, but she didn’t understand much of it.  And she thought learning should be about something more than getting through an assignment.

In many cases, the old “learn by doing!” axiom is a helpful way to think about things; it tends to be much more effective to give someone the chance to actually engage in the activity of something than to just tell them about it.  But when we ask kids, and other people, to go through the motions of something without context or conceptual grounding, we drain the learning out of it.  We make it about performance and not about growth.

Every once in a while someone notices, and demands more.