Category: Uncategorized

Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Year

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, by Erik Larson. We have read many books over the years about the rise and fall of the Third Reich (including Shirer’s definitive classic by that name).  But In the Garden of the Beasts is one of the best we’ve ever read in describing the gradual unfolding of the evil that was Hitler and his loathsome cronies.  The book follows William Dodd, the unlikely, bottom-of-the-barrel pick as Ambassador to Nazi Germany, and his daughter, Martha Dodd, who slept her way through the top of Berlin’s high society as she merrily embraced Nazism.  But as the Dodds grew more familiar with Germany and the Nazis, they began to appreciate the true horrors of the regime. Martha would become a spy for the communists—only late in life realizing that she had been the dupe of each evil faction.  Larsen’s descriptions are stunningly apropos of the era—and resonate today: 

“…Germany had undergone a rapid and sweeping revolution that reached deep into the fabric of daily life. It had occurred quietly and largely out of easy view. At its core was a government campaign called Gleichschaltung—meaning “Coordination”—to bring citizens, government ministries, universities, and cultural and social institutions in line with National Socialist beliefs and attitudes. 

 “‘Coordination’ occurred with astonishing speed, even in sectors of life not directly targeted by specific laws, as Germans willingly placed themselves under the sway of Nazi rule, a phenomenon that became known as Selbstgleichschaltung, or ‘self-coordination.’ Change came to Germany so quickly and across such a wide front that German citizens who left the country for business or travel returned to find everything around them altered, as if they were characters in a horror movie who come back to find that people who once were their friends, clients, patients, and customers have become different in ways hard to discern. Gerda Laufer, a socialist, wrote that she felt ‘deeply shaken that people whom one regarded as friends, who were known for a long time, from one hour to the next transformed themselves.’ Neighbors turned surly; petty jealousies flared into denunciations made to the SA—the Storm Troopers—or to the newly founded…Gestapo…

This is an absolutely remarkable book of history—we cannot recommend it more highly. 

We Got Here Because of Cowardice. We Get Out With Courage

Bari Weiss’s extraordinary essay about today’s Woke America, with its enormous impact on education, resonates with the eerie acquiescence of many Germans of the 1930s to the rapid encroachment on their personal liberties by Nazism. As Weiss notes: “If you have ever tried to build something, even something small, you know how hard it is. It takes time. It takes tremendous effort. But tearing things down? That’s quick work. 

“The Woke Revolution has been exceptionally effective. It has successfully captured the most important sense-making institutions of American life: our newspapers. Our magazines. Our Hollywood studios. Our publishing houses. Many of our tech companies. And, increasingly, corporate America. 

“Just as in China under Chairman Mao, the seeds of our own cultural revolution can be traced to the academy, the first of our institutions to be overtaken by it. And our schools—public, private, parochial—are increasingly the recruiting grounds for this ideological army. Most important: In this revolution, skeptics of any part of this radical ideology are recast as heretics. Those who do not abide by every single aspect of its creed are tarnished as bigots, subjected to boycotts and their work to political litmus tests. The Enlightenment, as the critic Edward Rothstein has put it, has been replaced by the exorcism. 

“What we call ‘cancel culture’ is really the justice system of this revolution. And the goal of the cancellations is not merely to punish the person being cancelled. The goal is to send a message to everyone else: Step out of line and you are next. 

“It has worked. A recent CATO study found that 62 percent of Americans are afraid to voice their true views. Nearly a quarter of American academics endorse ousting a colleague for having a wrong opinion about hot-button issues such as immigration or gender differences. And nearly 70 percent of students favor reporting professors if the professor says something that students find offensive, according to a Challey Institute for Global Innovation survey.

“…As Douglas Murray has put it: ‘The problem is not that the sacrificial victim is selected. The problem is that the people who destroy his reputation are permitted to do so by the complicity, silence and slinking away of everybody else.’

“Each surely thought: These protestors have some merit! This institution, this university, this school, hasn’t lived up to all of its principles at all times! We have been racist! We have been sexist! We haven’t always been enlightened! I’ll give a bit and we’ll find a way to compromise. This turned out to be as naive as Robespierre thinking that he could avoid the guillotine. 

“…Every day I hear from people who are living in fear in the freest society humankind has ever known. Dissidents in a democracy, practicing doublespeak. That is what is happening right now. What happens five, 10, 20 years from now if we don’t speak up and defend the ideas that have made all of our lives possible?

“Liberty. Equality. Freedom. Dignity. These are ideas worth fighting for.”

Here is Bari describing the situation to CNN’s Brian Stelter. This tweet from Lyndsey Fifield of the Daily Signal observes the irony of Stelter’s “insistence that nobody is stopping people from speaking freely when he’s talking to a woman who lost her job because she spoke freely is pretty galling.”

FIRE on behalf of Free Speech

There has been a surge of alumni activism on behalf of free speech this week. This Wall Street Journal article “Alumni Unite For Freedom Of Speech: Many left-of-center professors now realize that they too can be brutally canceled by the mob” highlighted the launch of the new Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA), which unites free speech alumni groups at 5 colleges (so far) to advocate for free thought and expression on campuses. Founding members have proudly declared that they will defend the free speech of Democrats, Republicans, left, right, or whoever is speaking.

If you’re interested in free speech at your alma mater — and especially if you might be interested in participating in an alumni group on your campus — please register today to join FIRE’s Alumni Network. Through the network, FIRE will deliver breaking news about your alma mater, but also gain a sense of who might be interested in starting or joining a free speech alumni group working to improve your own campus. 

How it begins, but hopefully not how it ends

This intriguing paper “Avoidance begets avoidance: A computational account of negative stereotype persistence,” describes how early influences can bias a person against certain groups—an activity that compounds and worsens over time. The implications of this important paper are that who you meet early in life—and what is taught in K-12—can set the tone for later, far stronger biases.

That’s all for this week. Have a thoughtful week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

• Mindshift—the book behind the MOOC
• The critically acclaimed Uncommon Sense Teaching (and MOOC!)
• The newest on learning: the book Learn Like a Pro (and MOOC!)
• The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers
• And Learning How to Learn, a book (and MOOC!) for kids and parents. 

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

The Great Upheaval: Higher Education’s Past, Present, and Uncertain Future, by Arthur Levine and Scott J. Van Pelt. If you’re looking to understand the future of higher education, you couldn’t do better than to look at The Great Upheaval.  What makes this book so interesting is not only its review of past changes in higher ed, but also its careful look at what has happened in leading industries such as movie-making, filmmaking, and newspapers as they’ve been disrupted by the online world. All this background means it’s a slow wind-up to get to the meat of the matter—that is, the future of higher ed. But the careful foundation that Levine and Van Pelt lay pays off. They conclude that many new universities will be unlike their industrial era predecessors. “The key actor is the student or consumer of higher education, no longer the colleges and universities that provide it. The focus is on learning rather than on teaching. The outcomes of education are fixed instead of time- and process-based. Higher education is primarily digital, no longer principally analog, and content is unbundled rather than consolidated. Competencies replace credits as the currency and accounting system of higher education. Colleges and universities are one of many sources for education rather than the sole provider.”  Well worth reading if you are wondering where higher ed is heading post-COVID.

ASEE Presents: Master Class on Effective Teaching – Jan. 11, 12, & 13, 2022—12 – 4 PM, ET

The next edition of the upcoming Master Class on Effective Teaching, led by none other than Barb has now been opened for registration.  Feedback on previous sessions of this workshop have been phenomenal: “Three words for this course:  – Astounding  – Invigorating  – Invaluable” “Brilliant insights” “This was amazing…Best $199 I’ve ever spent in my life!”  

This workshop will give you a chance to review and internalize some of the best insights about effective teaching that recent neuroscience provides.  Most great teachers (like you!) are great because you intuit what learners need, and when. This upcoming Master Class will provide you with insight into why you do what you do in your teaching. This insight can help you leverage your natural teaching intuition even further. The materials are based on the critically praised Uncommon Sense Teaching: Practical Insights in Brain Science to Help Students Learn.

A Google Group for LHL Poland!

If you’d like to learn more about learning and Learning How to Learn in Poland, this Google Group: https://groups.google.com/g/lhl-polska/, organized by Professor Adam Trybus of the University of Zielona Góraw, will keep you posted on Polish goings-on. You’ll find intriguing ventures are underway!

Third Culture Kids

It’s hard to appreciate how much our thoughts are often influenced and shaped by the thoughts of the people around us. But Barb got a feel for this while growing up due to her constant moves—she’d lived in ten different places by the time she was fifteen years old.  When she would arrive in one place, acceptable behavior and thoughts could be quite different from where she lived before.  For example, when she moved from rural Texas to tony Malibu, California, she suddenly discovered that her accent, her jeans, and even her ears were unacceptable.  Perhaps this is when she began to realize that social acceptance is a double-edged sword—sometimes fitting in with others means turning into the kind of person you don’t really want to be.  

Over the years, Barb has occasionally met people who are able to rely on their own observations, rather than on simply finding a way to justify thinking the same way as everyone else in their social group.  Upon questioning, she’ll like as not be surprised to discover that the independent thinker had also moved around while growing up.  In fact, there is a name for these kids—they’re called “Third Culture Kids,” because they can grow up between their parents’ culture, the culture of the place they are growing up, and a culture of their own that arises because of their displacement.  This wonderful article gives a good description of the phenomenon. Of course, there are also people who are able to think independently just because that’s who they are—we salute them!

Retrieval practice tips

If you’d like tips on retrieval practice to be delivered to your e-mailbox, as well as to access a tremendous database of retrieval practice research, you couldn’t do better than go here. And don’t miss Barb’s favorite book on teaching, Powerful Teaching, which is affiliated with the site.

Research into why we can’t remember our early childhood memories

This interesting article in CNN Health describes latest research findings about why we can’t remember our earliest memories.  Key graf: “It is true to some extent that a child’s ability to verbalize about an event at the time that it happened predicts how well they remember it months or years later. One lab group conducted this work by interviewing toddlers brought to accident and emergency departments for common childhood injuries. Toddlers over 26 months, who could verbalize about the event at the time, recalled it up to five years later, whereas those under 26 months, who could not talk about it, recalled little or nothing. This suggests that preverbal memories are lost if they are not translated into language.” (Of course, this doesn’t explain how Barb remembers losing her lunch on the kitchen floor before she could walk.)

That’s all for this week. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

• Mindshift—the book behind the MOOC
• The critically acclaimed Uncommon Sense Teaching (and MOOC!)
• The newest on learning: the book Learn Like a Pro (and MOOC!)
• The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers

And Learning How to Learn, a book (and MOOC!) for kids and parents.

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Month

The Fire and the Darkness: The Bombing of Dresden 1945, by Sinclair McKay.  This riveting book held us spell-bound each evening over the past week—only when sleep called with urgency was Barb able to draw herself away.  It is hard to do justice to Dresden’s horrific bombing, which was, on the face of it, a war crime that killed some 25,000 innocent civilians—many of them refugees—in the final weeks of World War II. Yet McKay does a fantastic job of setting out the context of what occurred, describing the horrors experienced by Jews and anyone else who dared cross the Nazi juggernaut, and how, whatever else it might have done, the savage bombing seemed to have been the final straw that broke the Nazi’s morale.  Even-handed, riveting works of history such as this book are extraordinarily important as nowadays, hyperinflated versions of the Dresden death toll are used by neo-Nazis to support revisionist history. These revised histories give short shrift to the millions of deaths and untold damages that Hitler caused.  The Fire and the Darkness is truly a great book. (Also excellent for audio listening.)

PowerPoint in Polish! Barb’s talk at the University of Zielona Góra

Here is Barb’s talk about learning for the visionaries who came to the University of Zielona Góra (some came all the way from Warsaw!).

The Data Is In — Trigger Warnings Don’t Work

This provocative article in the Chronicle of Higher Education describes the lack of efficacy—and even the harm, that arises from using trigger warnings.  Key grafs: 

“When debates about trigger warnings first erupted, there was little-to-no research on their effectiveness. Today we have an emerging body of peer-reviewed research to consult.

“The consensus, based on 17 studies using a range of media, including literature passages, photographs, and film clips: Trigger warnings do not alleviate emotional distress. They do not significantly reduce negative affect or minimize intrusive thoughts, two hallmarks of PTSD. Notably, these findings hold for individuals with and without a history of trauma. (For a review of the relevant research, see the 2020 Clinical Psychological Science article “Helping or Harming? The Effect of Trigger Warnings on Individuals With Trauma Histories” by Payton J. Jones, Benjamin W. Bellet, and Richard J. McNally.)

“We are not aware of a single experimental study that has found significant benefits of using trigger warnings. Looking specifically at trauma survivors, including those with a diagnosis of PTSD, the Jones et al. study found that trigger warnings ‘were not helpful even when they warned about content that closely matched survivors’ traumas.’

“What’s more, they found that trigger warnings actually increased the anxiety of individuals with the most severe PTSD, prompting them to ‘view trauma as more central to their life narrative.’ ‘Trigger warnings,’ they concluded, ‘may be most harmful to the very individuals they were designed to protect.’”

The Dangers to Education in the USA

China just appointed Dr. Jinping Huai as its new education minister. He is a top computer science scientist and former president of the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. China’s educational professionals follow suit their western colleagues—in other words, China has a genuine STEM expert to lead the education ministry.

In the US, some of the biggest dangers of education seem to be coming from within the field of education.  This thought-provoking article from Quillette by three US mathematicians points to the dangers of current educational approaches in the US, observing: “…China pursues none of the equity programs that are sweeping the United States. Quite the contrary: It is building on the kind of accelerated, explicitly merit-based programs, centered on gifted students, that are being repudiated by American educators. Having learned its lesson from the Cultural Revolution, when science and merit-based education were all but obliterated in favor of ideological indoctrination, China is pursuing a far-sighted, long-term strategy to create a world-leading corps of elite STEM experts. In some strategically important fields, such as quantum computing, the country is arguably already ahead of the United States.” 

Bizarre Policies in Math Education

This nuanced discussion of math learning disabilities by Barry Garelick reflects the strange, Catch-22 like situation of modern reform math education. Students can end up bouncing back and forth between a system (that for those with disabilities) which works well for them, and the routine system that doesn’t. No one seems to have figured out that what works well for those with disabilities in math can work for other kids as well.

That’s all for this week. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

Mindshift—the book behind the MOOC

The critically acclaimed Uncommon Sense Teaching (and MOOC!)

The newest on learning: the book Learn Like a Pro (and MOOC!)

The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers

And Learning How to Learn, a book (and MOOC!) for kids and parents. 

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Greetings from beautiful Dresden, Germany! Next, Barb heads to Poland to speak for the University of Zielona Góra on October 4th, and to the Bauhaus University Weimar to keynote for the Annual Meeting of the eTeach Network 2021 on October 8th. It’s exciting to see the latest trends in learning in Europe!

Book of the Week

The End of Trauma: How the New Science of Resilience Is Changing How We Think About PTSD, by George A. Bonanno. Bonanno argues that we vastly overestimate how common PTSD is, and we often fail to recognize how resilient people really are. In fact, many relatively new ideas about stress and how to handle it can actually exacerbate stressful feelings.  Take mindfulness, for example—as Bonanno points out, not only is there not good evidence for mindfulness’s efficacy in helping with recovery from trauma, there is actually some evidence that it could be detrimental.  As Bonanno notes: “A group of mindfulness experts recently cautioned, in a paper published in a leading psychology journal, that misinformation about the effectiveness of mindfulness can mislead people, and can even lead to harm. An alarming number of published studies and case reports have linked meditation to serious side effects, including increased anxiety, panic, disorientation, hallucinations, and depersonalization—the feeling of being disconnected from oneself. It can also cause people who have gone through potentially traumatic events to reexperience memories of these events.” 

So what does Bonanno recommend to end trauma?  Flexibility—realizing that there is no “one-size-fits-all” ways to handle trauma. For example, letting emotions out in relation to a stressful situation may sometimes be warranted, but many times, suppressing emotions is the better approach. 

As Bonanno concludes: “All of this research points to the same basic conclusion: coping and emotion regulation strategies are inherently neither good nor bad. Every strategy has costs and benefits, and a given strategy is effective only insofar as it helps us meet the demands of a specific situation. Ironically, this is not a new story. The leading theorists on coping and emotion regulation have always emphasized this kind of dynamic interaction with changing situational demands. The core theorists have also emphasized the importance of timing. What may be effective at the onset of a stressor event, they pointed out, may be less effective or less useful later as the stressor runs its course.”

American History Business Center

We’ve just come across a fascinating website: The American Business History Center. As the Center notes: “Lawyers study precedents.  Doctors study the Hippocratic oath.  Political strategists study past election results.  But the far larger world of business often has little sense of history.  People involved in business often don’t know how businesses get created, grow, or get destroyed.  This is costly to our society.  If more managers and leaders studied the lessons of history, both the successes and failures, they might succeed more often.

“Students at all levels study the history of politics and war. But that’s not what history really is – it’s the story of everyday life and how it changes over time. Much of that change is due to business.  However, public awareness of where our great regional, national, and global enterprises, the products they make, and the entrepreneurs who built them is limited at best.  Most of the greatest business leaders in American history are unknown and unsung.  We aim to change that.” 

Here is a video of American Business History Center founder Gary Hoover himself, explaining the history of retailing.

Motivation depends on how the brain processes fatigue

This article in Medical Press describes how a “research team conducted a study to investigate the impact of fatigue on a person’s decision to exert effort. They found that people were less likely to work and exert effort—even for a reward—if they were fatigued….Intriguingly, the researchers found that there were two different types of fatigue that were detected in distinct parts of the brain. In the first, fatigue is experienced as a short-term feeling, which can be overcome after a short rest. Over time, however, a second, longer term feeling builds up, stops people from wanting to work, and doesn’t go away with short rests.”

Certainly Barb experiences this in her work. She can be tired, but reframe her thoughts and still forge ahead on what she’s working on.  But come evening, there comes a moment almost like a mental buzzer going off—Barb knows better than to work beyond that point.

A memory researcher to watch: Psychology professor Keisuke Fukuda

This excellent article by Megan Easton in the University of Toronto Magazine [Hat tip: Dennis Wilson] gives an overview of memory researcher Keisuke Fukuda’s work.  Key graf: 

“In one study, partly inspired by his experience learning English, [Fukuda] demonstrated that focusing on large amounts of information for a short time is more effective than dwelling on smaller amounts of information for a long time. ‘Instead of studying 10 new English words each day in the hopes of learning 70 words per week, I looked at all 70 words seven days in a row,” he says. “When you see something over and over and start recognizing it, you’re practising retrieving that information. Repeated retrieval makes it more accessible later.’”

As the article also notes, Keisuke Fukuda’s top 5 memory tips are:

• Test your memory often on the material you want to remember
• Don’t cram. Space out your memorization over time
• Focus on repeated, if brief, exposure to info you want to remember
• Take breaks! Let your mind rest for at least 15 minutes a few times a day
• Use digital reminders, alarms, voice assistants and photo aids

MOOC of the Month

Our apologies—last week’s link was broken for Professor George Seidel’s masterful MOOC Successful Negotiation.  Here’s the correct link. [Hat tip Sunny Brock, first in with the correction.]

That’s all for this week. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

• Mindshift—the book behind the MOOC
• The critically acclaimed Uncommon Sense Teaching (and MOOC!)
• The newest on learning: the book Learn Like a Pro (and MOOC!)
• The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers
• And Learning How to Learn, a book (and MOOC!) for kids and parents.

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

Seven Essentials for Business Success, by George Seidel. Since we aren’t in the world of business, we found Dr. Seidel’s description of the world of business education, and the philosophy of great professor-teachers in business, to be intriguing.  The discussion is filled with nuggets of thought-provoking, teaching-related information we’d never encountered before, as for example: 

“In 1995, Robert Coles, a professor of psychiatry and medical humanities at Harvard University, published an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education titled ‘The Disparity Between Intellect and Character.’ He wrote the essay after meeting with a student who was distraught after another student propositioned her on more than one occasion. She recounted to Professor Coles that she had ‘taken two moral-reasoning courses with [the other student], and I’m sure he’s gotten As in both of them—and look at how he behaves with me, and I’m sure with others.’ She went on to note, ‘I’ve been taking all these philosophy courses, and we talk about what’s true, what’s important, what’s good. Well, how do you teach people to be good?’”

Now that’s an important question for us as teachers!

Pat Bowden with a great review of a mystery MOOC

Our favorite MOOC reviewer, Pat Bowden, gives a great review of an awesome new course.  Click the link to find out who stars. 🙂

Class Central Updated Their Best Online Courses of All Time

Here’s the list! (And Barb has five courses on the list. 🙂 )

A visionary approach to mastery learning in K-12 education

We’re happy to announce that we’ve posted our first (optional) interview video for Uncommon Sense Teaching. It’s with Dr. Cory Steiner of Northern Cass School District #97, in Hunter, North Dakota, about his groundbreaking work in shifting the school district over to a mastery learning approach. This is truly a visionary to education, and you’ll love hearing Dr. Steiner’s insights. (Also note Barb’s flustered realization in the outtake that she HAD to film the discussion with Dr. Steiner!)

MOOC of the Month

We’d also like to bring your attention to Professor George Seidel’s masterful MOOC Successful Negotiation, which is amongst Coursera’s most popular MOOCs, with over a million enrollees.  Everybody needs negotiating skills, and learning from a MOOC is actually much easier and better than learning from a book.  Enjoy!

Perfect practice with Linda Langeheine’s “Stop! Attack!” Approach

For those of you who are learning to play a musical instrument, you might find Linda Langeheine’s three minute video on how to tackle and correct mistakes to be useful.  This seems perfectly in accord with how the procedural system learns.

Voice Coaching

One skill that is often not discussed with relation to online learning is the importance of voice. If you suspect your voice might be harsh or grating to listen to (most people are unaware of problems with their voice), you might wish to take a look at Nathalie Andrew’s Heartspark Voice and see if her coaching services might be helpful for you.

Don’t Forget the Fall 2021 One-Day Virtual On Course National Conference!

Barb will be giving the opening keynote for the On Course National Conference on October 8th. The closing session will be given by Jonathan Brennan, author of the excellent Online Teaching with Zoom. Whether you’ve been working with On Course strategies for years or just care deeply about the success of your students, you’ll find this is a powerful professional development conference. 

Register here, and learn!  

That’s all for this week. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

• Mindshift—the book behind the MOOC
• The critically acclaimed Uncommon Sense Teaching (and MOOC!)
• The newest on learning: the book Learn Like a Pro (and MOOC!)
• The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers
• And Learning How to Learn, a book (and MOOC!) for kids and parents.

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization, by Edward Slingerland.  We were a little taken aback at the title and topic of this book.  After all, drunkenness is not a state most of us aspire to—at least not most of the time—and alcoholism is a tremendous bane.  Yet, while acknowledging alcohol’s dark side, Slingerland makes a credible case that alcohol, by virtue of its ability to tone down the ever-self-conscious prefrontal cortex, can have a helpful impact on the human condition, including the fostering of trust and opening of creativity. By turns witty and thought-provoking, Slingerland leads us through a new perspective on alcohol. This passage gives a sense of the book’s style and approach: 

“A significant portion of the Incan Empire’s organized labor was directed toward the production and distribution of the corn-based intoxicant chicha. Even ancient dead people were obsessed with getting wasted. It is hard to find a culture that did not send off their dead with copious quantities of alcohol, cannabis, or other intoxicants. Chinese tombs from the Shang Dynasty were packed with elaborate wine vessels of every shape and size, in both pottery and bronze. This represented a cultural investment equivalent, in today’s terms, to burying a few brand-new Mercedes SUVs in the ground with their trunks full of vintage Burgundy. Ancient Egyptian elites, the world’s first wine snobs, were sent off in tombs full of jars that carefully recorded the vintage, quality, and name of their content’s maker. Because of its centrality in human life, economic and political power has often been grounded in the ability to produce or supply intoxicants.”

Drunk is an interesting and thoughtful read—also good for audio listening.

A review of our MOOC Uncommon Sense Teaching 

Here is a fine review by education innovator Martijn Klabbers of Eindhoven University of Technology of our Uncommon Sense Teaching MOOC. As Martijn notes: “Enter ’Uncommon Sense Teaching’. An uncommonly interesting course for teachers, looking at the inside of learning. Great explanations, solid universal insights, presented in a fun way. Not only interesting for teachers but also for people that want to have more insight in their learning process. A strong follow-up on ‘Learning How to Learn’. And this is only part 1.

“And the timing is perfect. In these uncertain times, teachers are slowly turning back to the new normal, to the regular classrooms, if possible. Some have enriched themselves with online teaching experience, others with a few online deceptions, most with a foggy mind and tired of the constant uncertainty and fear of what the next year will bring. All are looking forward to a bit of guidance.”

Barb’s article in India Today 

Here’s Barb’s concise article about the four keys to effective learning in India Today, the most widely circulated magazine in India, with a readership of close to 8 million. 

Barb’s Off to Germany and Poland!

Today Barb is heading to Leipzig working with medical online learning company Lecturio September 20-24, Dresden to speak for the Bundeskongress Evangelische Schule Sep 30 – Oct 1, to Poland to speak for the University of Zielona Góra on October 4th, and to the Bauhaus University Weimar to keynote for the Annual Meeting of the eTeach Network 2021 on October 8th. She feels great to be back in action meeting visionary educators and learning more about educational systems around the world!

Grass-roots action against bad behaviour has spurred reform in research in psychology

Researcher Jelte Wicherts describes how fabrication and falsification in the field of psychology, prompted by the egregious case of Dutch psychologist Diederik Stapel, has led to efforts to reform research. As Wicherts describes, what happened before the Stapel case was demoralizing: “before Stapel, researchers were broadly unaware of these problems or dismissed them as inconsequential. Some months before the case became public, a concerned colleague and I proposed to create an archive that would preserve the data collected by researchers in our department, to ensure reproducibility and reuse. A council of prominent colleagues dismissed our proposal on the basis that competing departments had no similar plans. Reasonable suggestions that we made to promote data sharing were dismissed on the unfounded grounds that psychology data sets can never be safely anonymized and would be misused out of jealousy, to attack well-meaning researchers. And I learnt about at least one serious attempt by senior researchers to have me disinvited from holding a workshop for young researchers because it was too critical of suboptimal practices.

But what happened after the Stapel case, Wicherts notes, was inspiring: “an open debate that went far beyond misconduct and focused on improving research. Numerous researchers, many early in their careers, used social media to call for bias-countering practices, such as sharing data and plans for analysis. It changed the conversation. Before 2011, my applications for grants to study statistical errors and biases in psychology were repeatedly rejected as low priority. By 2012, I had received funding and set up my current research group.”

Read the whole thing. We hope that the field of education will follow psychology’s outstanding example.

The link between great thinking and obsessive walking

This fascinating article by Jeremy DeSilva starts with Charles Darwin’s well-known walking habits, and leads to a fine discussion of the effect of walking on creativity. As DeSilva notes: “Marilyn Oppezzo, a Stanford University psychologist, used to walk around campus with her Ph.D. advisor to discuss lab results and brainstorm new projects. One day they came up with an experiment to look at the effects of walking on creative thinking. Was there something to the age-old idea that walking and thinking are linked?

“Oppezzo designed an elegant experiment. A group of Stanford students were asked to list as many creative uses for common objects as they could. A Frisbee, for example, can be used as a dog toy, but it can also be used as a hat, a plate, a bird bath, or a small shovel. The more novel uses a student listed, the higher the creativity score. Half the students sat for an hour before they were given their test. The others walked on a treadmill.

“The results were staggering. Creativity scores improved by 60 percent after a walk.”

[Hat tip Ashley Liddiard.]

That’s all for this week. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

• Mindshift—the book behind the MOOC
• The critically acclaimed Uncommon Sense Teaching (and MOOC!)
• The newest on learning: the book Learn Like a Pro (and MOOC!)
• The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers
• And Learning How to Learn, a book (and MOOC!) for kids and parents.

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism, by Olivia Fox Cabane.  Every once in a while, it’s good to return to a book that’s shown its worth through the years.  Just such a book is The Charisma Myth, which is one of the best books we’ve ever read about how to get along with people while simultaneously being more persuasive, influential, inspiring, and yes, charming. (Who knew that charm could be taught?)  If you feel uncomfortable in meeting people and interacting in public settings, this is one of the best books we could suggest to help.  Also good for audio.

A Great Review of Uncommon Sense Teaching

James Haupert, Founder and CEO of The Center for Homeschooling™, writes to say “I just want to let you know that your book, Uncommon Sense Teaching, is becoming very popular at the Center for Homeschooling with our followers.  Homeschooling parents are getting inspired to improve their teaching skills by reading your book. We are talking about it, and I’m heavily recommending it as a ‘must read’ if one wants to ‘up your teaching game.’ I posted a review on our website.  Caution: The review is a little heavy with the use of cooking metaphors, to make it easier to digest, as my audience likes a little sugar mixed with their science!” 

Better brainpower with age: Some mental abilities actually improve after turning 50!

This upbeat article from StudyFinds describes how two of three major components of attention and executive function actually increase with age.  “Alerting is characterized by a state of enhanced vigilance and preparedness in order to respond to incoming information. Orienting involves shifting brain resources to a particular location. The executive network shuts out distracting or conflicting information.

“‘We use all three processes constantly. For example, when you are driving a car, alerting is your increased preparedness when you approach an intersection. Orienting occurs when you shift your attention to an unexpected movement, such as a pedestrian,’ explains first author Dr Joao Verissimo, of the University of Lisbon, ‘And executive function allows you to inhibit distractions such as birds or billboards so you can stay focused on driving.’

“Remarkably, only alerting abilities were found to decline with age. In contrast, both orienting and executive inhibition actually got better. The latter two skills allow people to selectively attend to objects, and improve with lifelong practice, explain the researchers. The gains can be large enough to outweigh any underlying neural reductions.”

iDoRecall continues to change lives

Our favorite flashcard program, iDoRecall, is continuing to change academic lives.  One Harvard-trained MD, for example, uses iDR for his continuing medical education. He emigrated from Jamaica as a child and was able to matriculate to Harvard and pull himself out of poverty, and is now preceeding to mentor more inner-city youth for years to follow in his footsteps. Incidentally, the coupon code FriendOfBarb, will give a discount of 20% off of the annual subscription, and this discount recurs whenever you renew–it is iDR’s only recurring discount code.

Want to reduce Zoom fatigue?

This study suggests that the key to reducing Zoom fatigue is simply turning off your camera.  We agree!

Artificially intelligent Teacher’s Assistants

This Wall Street Journal article (behind a paywall) gives a good overview of developments in artificial intelligence aimed at keeping students engaged and saving educators’ time.  Opening graf: “Not all robots are good at math. Take ProJo, a program that researchers are testing to help students of all ages spot their math and science mistakes, embodied in a small, humanoid robot. Instead of standing in for an instructor, ProJo acts as a peer, inviting the students themselves to help it solve problems. ‘Let’s take turns,’ it might say. ‘I’m not so good at this.’

“ProJo can also help students work together and assess their growth and weaknesses, in both robot form and on a computer screen. It is one of a variety of teaching aids in development, boosted by artificial intelligence, that scientists and educators say could support tomorrow’s classrooms.”

As our own Terry has noted, “Education is going to be the killer app for deep learning.”

Online proctoring software

A first-of-its-kind study examined the security and privacy perceptions of students taking proctored exams. The article concludes: “As many universities and colleges return to the classroom, students may be less willing to trade their privacy for personal safety going forward… However, at the same time, online exam proctoring technology appears here to stay.”

Quality physical education (not just humdrum PE classes) really matter for helping kids to learn

Another worthwhile article from Study Finds reveals that “Dance, martial arts, and high-intensity team sports have a big impact on children’s academic prowess because they are ‘cognitively challenging.’ Researchers say instead of just increasing the number of PE classes within a week, schools should consider improving the quality of the lessons.”

That’s all for this week. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

• Mindshift—the book behind the MOOC
• The critically acclaimed Uncommon Sense Teaching (and MOOC!)
• The newest on learning: the book Learn Like a Pro (and MOOC!)
• The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers
• And Learning How to Learn, a book (and MOOC!) for kids and parents. 

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

Set it & Forget it: Are you ready to transform your sleep? by Daniel Erichsen.  Barb’s been doing her darndest over these past few years to try to make sure she gets at least eight hours of sleep most evenings.  Well, there’s been a problem with that.  Mostly, she just can’t get eight hours of sleep—instead, she generally spends an hour or two staring into the darkness trying to fall asleep.

Enter Daniel Erichsen’s intriguing, easy-to-read but potentially life-changing Set it & Forget it.  Dr. Erichsen is a pediatrician who has also studied sleep medicine at the University of Chicago—his passion is helping people to improve their sleep.  His counterintuitive advice?  We generally don’t need as much sleep as the “experts” say.  Erichsen suggests simple, workable approaches for detecting when you are truly sleepy, (as opposed to just tired), and perhaps most importantly, he provides advice for reducing the stress that causes so many of us to lose sleep. (Oddly enough, one of the most common stressors on top of all our other daily stressors is that we stress about not getting enough sleep!)  If you have trouble sleeping, this thought-provoking book, and other related books and podcasts by Dr. Erichsen, may help bring you to your dreams.

Aprendiendo a aprender para jovenes! A New MOOC for kids in Spanish!

Our Learning How to Learn for Youth course in English is especially geared for youngsters who are struggling to learn—or who are already excellent at learning but want to be great. The popularity of this course has meant that a new version has been created in Spanish, Aprendiendo a aprender para jóvenes, via ESIC and Austral University, featuring wonderful Spanish-speaking instructors José Fernando Gallego Nicholls, Verónica Milla, and Javier Fontoba; under the direction of María Guijarro García. “Aprender a aprender para Jóvenes es para ti, para darte una visión práctica de cómo aprender más profundamente y con menos frustración. Las lecciones de este curso pueden ayudarte a aprender muchos temas y habilidades diferentes.”

Register now for the Fall 2021 One-Day Virtual On Course National Conference!

Barb will be giving the opening keynote for the On Course National Conference on October 8th. The closing session will be given by Jonathan Brennan, author of the excellent Online Teaching with Zoom. Whether you’ve been working with On Course strategies for years or just care deeply about the success of your students, you’ll find this is a powerful professional development conference. Expect to experience and learn proven strategies you can implement immediately to help your students reach more of their potential in college…and in life. The On Course National Conference is ideal for: 

• Instructors and coordinators of student success and FYE programs
• Faculty from all academic disciplines
• Counselors, retention specialists, TRIO personnel, and student affairs staff
• Administrators looking for proven approaches for improving student academic success and retention

Register here, and learn!  

A massive—and massively useful—review of retrieval practice

This paper provides a tremendous overview of everything researchers know about the use of retrieval practice in classroom settings: “Retrieval Practice Consistently Benefits Student Learning: a Systematic Review of Applied Research in Schools and Classrooms.” It’s also one of the most thoughtful, carefully conducted meta analyses we’ve ever read. No surprise, the lead author is Pooja Agarwal, author of one of our favorite books: Powerful Teaching.

More ideas for motivating students

Here is Mr. Torre’ Mills’ motivational video for his students, which describes the  “4 Principles” that he developed based on the wonderful book Powerful Teaching. As Torre’ notes: “ I recorded the video because we are face to face but dealing with quarantines and I wanted to ensure that all understood my core values and the culture that I am trying to create in my classroom.”

Your Past Shapes your Future

Barb joins Karen and Krista in the awesome podcast Your Brain On… to discuss how the patterns and pathways picked up during past learning experiences influence how our brains react to future learning challenges when building new skills.  Here are part one and part two of the three-part series.

The Uncanny Sherlock Holmes of Science

Microbiologist Elisabeth Bik has an extraordinary talent—she is able to pick out, with superhuman acumen,  duplications in complex scientific papers. Her skill—and bravery—in exposing scientific shenanigans has opened a whole new approach to image sleuthing. We’d love to see a movie made of her, and her impact on science.  (And we’d love to see some fMRI imagery of her own brain in action!)  Although Bik’s skills are extraordinary, it looks as if she has a talent that at least some other mere mortals can learn. And artificial intelligence is homing in her methodology.

That’s all for this week. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

• Mindshift—the book behind the MOOC
• The critically acclaimed Uncommon Sense Teaching (and MOOC!)
• The newest on learning: the book Learn Like a Pro (and MOOC!)
• The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers
• And Learning How to Learn, a book (and MOOC!) for kids and parents. 

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Month

We can always tell when we’ve got a great book to read when we’re so excited about it that we sneak reading in even during the day, when we’re supposed to be working. And just such a book is Tom Reiss’s The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography.  This is a stunningly good book—to be deposited on Barb’s shelf of “favorite books of history.”  It’s always fantastic when you read a biography centered around a decent, caring, but daring human being who gives whatever it takes to do it right by his fellow humans.  

Just such a person was Alex Dumas, father of the famous novelist Alexandre Dumas, (author of The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers—whose key characters were clearly based on aspects of the novelist’s father). Alex, the son of a white marquis and a black enslaved woman, Marie-Cessette Dumas, was the first person of color in the French military to become general-in-chief of a French army. What an extraordinary man!  You can’t help but read about his exploits and come to believe he was an eighteenth-century superhero. 

Reiss provides a very different perspective on the French Revolution and its destroyer, Napoleon Bonaparte.  By providing an in-depth perspective of someone who knew Napoleon well, we come to see how narcissistic Napoleon actually was.  And where the French Revolution had begun the process of freeing all enslaved people in French dominions, Napoleon moved to re-enslave them and to re-institutionalize racism in France.  (Somehow, this is never emphasized in Napoleon biographies.)  In the end, however, it is the wonderful exploits of Alex Dumas that makes this extraordinary book such a delight to read. Also fantastic for audio.

How to Make Best Use of the Most Important Tool in a Software Developer’s Toolkit: Your Brain

This YouTube video on behalf of Class Central, features software expert Zach Caceres presenting with Barb about practical insights for programmers from neuroscience. These insights can enhance your ability to move to and beyond mastery in becoming an intuitive coder.

A Happy School Sets an Example with Uncommon Sense Teaching

LHTLer Brenda Benedict of the  Lake Superior Academy, a Montessori elementary charter school in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, writes: “I teach struggling readers over Zoom. (I live in Grand Rapids, MI). I took Learning How to Learn years ago and it has changed my teaching.

“I introduced the headmaster of the school, Susie Schlehuber, to Uncommon Sense Teaching. She is implementing the concepts to the teachers this week. Together we are showing teachers how to use the concepts in their teaching. The teachers are embracing it and preparing lessons to share with their students. It is very exciting!

“Thank you for your work. We are expecting a great school year of achievement with the students. I am currently taking the MOOC on Uncommon Sense Teaching and love it!” 

Now this is an exemplary school!  Please feel free to reach out to Brenda or Susie if you might have questions about how to enroll your child (if you live in Michigan), or to implement similar programs in your school.

Uncommon Sense Teaching Makes the Retrieval Practice Hall of Fame!

As you probably recall, our favorite book on teaching is Pooja Agarwal and Patrice Bain’s Powerful Teaching (which we reviewed here). We’re happy to report that our very own Uncommon Sense Teaching made it onto the retrieval practice “Hall of Fame”—see their recommended books related to retrieval practice here. 

Matthew Walker (author of Why We Sleep) and Dan Ariely are Sadly Moved to Our Hall of Shame

Two figures we’ve admired in the past have come under scrutiny for serious ethical issues with their work.  We ourselves have touted the book Why We Sleep, by Matthew Walker, as an important book on sleep’s value. (We’re ashamed to have touted it as one of our books of the year.)  Walker’s book, as it turns out, is riddled with inaccuracies and misrepresentations, as described in this outstanding analysis by Alexey Guzey (himself an early student of Learning How to Learn). 

As Wikipedia notes: “Walker failed to disclose that numerous meta-analyses involving over 4 million adults found the lowest mortality was associated with 7 hours of sleep, and that the increased risk of death associated with sleeping more than 7 hours was significantly greater than the risk of sleeping less than 7 hours as defined by a J-shaped curve.” As Guzey concludes: “…imagine that a 20-year-old who naturally needs to sleep for 7 hours a night, reads Why We Sleep, gets scared, and decides to spend the full 8 hours in bed every day. Then, assuming that they live until 75, they will waste more than 20,000 hours or more than 2 years of their life, with uncertain long-term side-effects.”  But there’s far, far more, including evidence for misrepresentation of the institution where Walker received his doctorate (the institution Walker had claimed apparently doesn’t issue doctorates), plagiarism, and, well, just making stuff up if it supports what Walker wants to say.  (Here is Walker’s response to some of the criticism.)

And we were also sad to learn of retraction and problematic research by Dan Ariely, who has studied, of all things, honesty.  Many companies (including some online learning platforms), ask students to sign integrity statements before beginning quizzes or fill-in forms.  This approach has often arisen in conjunction with Ariely’s findings.  Unfortunately, there’s good evidence that the data for this research was cooked.  

An Uplifting Message for Students

This wonderful video message for a Week 6 School Assembly at Sydney Grammar School in Sydney, Australia, gives a sense of the kind of upbeat insights and reminders that teachers can give their students.  Relax and enjoy Ms. Julia Wilson’s message—and perhaps share some similar motivational messages with your own students at your school!

Tea-Shirts for Tea Lovers

After last week’s discussion of teapots, we discovered this interesting online store that sells “tea-shirts” for tea aficionados.  If you’re a fan of tea, you might enjoy perusing their offerings.

Barbara Oakley ร่วมมือกับ LHL Brainery ส่งเสริมคนไทยให้เรียนรู้อะไรก็ได้ บนโลกใบนี้

Barbara Oakley ร่วมมือกับ LHL Brainery ในการสนับสนุนให้คนไทยได้เข้าถึงเนื้อหาของหลักสูตรระดับโลกอย่าง Learning How to Learn ผลงานด้านประสาทวิทยาของการศึกษาแบบเข้าใจง่ายและเทคนิคที่สามารถนำไปใช้ประโยชน์ได้จริง เพื่อส่งเสริมการสร้างทักษะการเรียนรู้ให้ผู้เรียนมีความพร้อมสำหรับการเรียนหรือการทำงานแบบก้าวกระโดดในอนาคต เพราะไม่ว่าคุณจะอยู่ในสายอาชีพไหน ทักษะการเรียนรู้เป็นสิ่งพื้นฐานที่จะทำให้คุณสามารถทำทุกอย่างที่ปรารถนาให้ประสบความสำเร็จได้อย่างง่ายและรวดเร็วขึ้น ขอเชิญติดตามเรื่องราวของ Learning How to Learn ได้ที่ LHL Brainery Facebook.

That’s all for this week. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

• Mindshift—the book behind the MOOC
• The critically acclaimed Uncommon Sense Teaching (and MOOC!)
• The newest on learning: the book Learn Like a Pro (and MOOC!)
• The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers
• And Learning How to Learn, a book (and MOOC!) for kids and parents.

Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World, by Robert Lawson and Benjamin Powell. In keeping with our enthusiasm for alcoholic beverages and our own previous personal experiences with Marxism, we couldn’t help but be tickled by Lawson and Powell’s enlightening tales of travel through socialist societies. As Bob and Ben note: “In this book … we’re aiming for a popular audience that will appreciate not just our economic insights but our down-to-earth honesty. We wrote this book because too many people seem to be dangerously ignorant of what socialism is, how it functions, and its historical track record. We also wanted to get drunk in Cuba, and this was a great way to write off our expenses.” This peek-behind-the-curtain book describes what’s really happening in socialist countries throughout the world—not just retelling blinkered academic theory. Plus… beer.

“Economics in Nouns and Verbs”

Since we’re talking economics, this recent, foundational paper by Santa Fe Institute scholar Brian Arthur, the father of complexity economics, reveals how algebraic mathematics restricts economic modelling to what can be expressed only in quantitative nouns, and which forces theory to leave out matters to do with process, formation, adjustment, creation and nonequilibrium. This also has profound implications in relation to linguistics.  Interestingly, Arthur notes: “…let me note that a body of theory with verbs already exists in economics—Austrian economics… I believe the Austrian approach deserves a more central place in economic theory.”

Teapots and Equity

Barb likes to collect teapots. Not just any teapots, but Yíxīng teapots, made from an extraordinary clay, sometimes of a purple color, from an area near Dīngshān, China.  It seems this area has been mined for teapot and utensil clay for over a thousand years. When used in teapots, Yíxīng clay absorbs tiny amounts of tea flavor with each brewing. This absorption also allows Yíxīng teapots to gradually develop a beautiful patina. One of the highlights of Barb’s life was visiting Dīngshān on the Yangtze River Delta to tour the teapot shops, especially Yíxīng Zǐshā Factory Number 1, with its extraordinary showroom.

Later, while visiting Hong Kong’s tea shops, Barb stumbled across and bought a very special Yíxīng “Revolution” teapot.  By contrast with Yíxīng teapots made during virtually every other era, the Revolution teapot is downright ugly—pretty much like a cowpie pooped from a defective stamping machine. Worse yet, this pitiful teapot dribbles when you try to pour, and the lid doesn’t fit.  There is nothing special about the Revolution teapot, aside from its ugliness. How could such teapots come into existence, in an area that had produced extraordinarily beautiful and creative teapots for over a millennium? 

It all goes back to equity and fairness.  During the Cultural Revolution, if you made a teapot that was creative, or beautiful, or that stood out in any way from other teapots, you were killed—one of the millions that are conservatively estimated to have died due to willful human action during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. (Actual data on the number of deaths is virtually impossible to obtain, since much has been hidden by the government.) 

Many of the murders and deaths, not to mention the crippling of creativity, were in the seemingly well-intentioned name of equity and fairness.  In pottery-making, for example, it was considered unfair to others if you showed talent or creativity. Worse yet, if you produced something that stood out for its beauty, it was clear you were deliberately trying to make others feel badly for their other, lesser talents. Off you would go, never to be seen again. If you were a potter, your best hope of staying alive was to keep your head down and make the worst pots you could. 

While translating in the Soviet Union during Cold War, Barb saw much the same social forces at play.  Anyone becoming too infected by pernicious ideas related to freedom of speech and thought could, overnight, disappear. This was not a joking matter—in fact, a throwaway quip at the wrong time, in front of the wrong person, could mean death. 

Here is an excerpt from Barb’s Hair of the Dog: Tales from a Russian Trawler, describing her interactions with her Soviet shipmates during the Cold War in the early 1980s.

 “Have you ever heard of Stalin?” [the officer’s stewardess] asked. 

“Of course.” I’d noticed a picture of him on the captain’s wall. 

“You have?”

“Yes.” I tugged at the tablecloth and continued. “Did you know Stalin was responsible for the deaths of at least twenty million people during his purges?” 

“Have you ever known anyone who lost somebody during those so­-called purges?” [the captain] scoffed. 

“Yes,” I said. “Most of my teachers lost at least one member of their family.” 

“Oh,” said the captain. He’d thought he had me. “Well, as you say, everybody makes mistakes.” 

“How can you believe that communism is a good system when such terrible things can happen under it?” I probed. 

The captain glanced at Irena, looking uncomfortable. “What we have now is not communism, it is socialism. That’s why we have problems. When the whole world is communist, there will be no problems.”

Equity in Education

One might think, oh, but here in the West, we would never start down such a horrific pathway, particularly when it comes to education!  But of course, all in the name of equity and fairness, we have.  This tremendous article by Maxwell Meyer, “The Two-Front War on Academic Standards,” gives a good overview of the unfolding educational approaches that cripple students’ abilities to learn and be creative in a standard school setting. Here are some key excerpts:

“…[T]here are several alarming trends in education policy that I believe constitute a serious threat to our country. It’s a Two-Front War on Academic Standards. 

“The first front is essentially an effort to rein in our best students, to make sure they aren’t getting any unfair advantages, or doing too much better than others. It takes many forms — eliminating test-based admission at magnet schools, doing away with advanced coursework, etc — but really comes down to one issue: in any system that rewards achievement, differentiated ability produces a gap between students, which is viewed as an inequity. Just like the ‘wealth gap’ or the ‘gender pay gap,’ the ‘achievement gap’ is the subject of almost myopic focus by political activists. And as we know, the solution to some students doing better than others (inequity) is to make all students do the same (equity).

“Of course, that’s not how any of this works. Pulling one student down the ladder doesn’t make it any easier for the students below to climb. But let’s suppose that the stated goal of equity is actually earnest. Wouldn’t we expect to see an effort to pull the lower students up – to give them a hand? Theoretically, yes. But in reality, there is no serious effort to raise standards at the bottom of the performance distribution. Instead, we reduce the standards or eliminate them entirely, giving these students the boot. If there are no standards, there can be no failure, nor can there be any blame for the failure. This is the second front in the war: ‘helping’ students who struggle by eliminating all expectations of them.”

Meyer’s article deserves a careful, full read by anyone interested in advancing genuine learning and creativity.

That’s all for this week. Have a thoughtful week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

• Mindshift—the book behind the MOOC
• The critically acclaimed Uncommon Sense Teaching (and MOOC!)
• The newest on learning: the book Learn Like a Pro (and MOOC!)
• The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers
• And Learning How to Learn, a book (and MOOC!) for kids and parents.