Why are we taught to be sheep?

Although I study animals, I do not study domesticated animals. Despite this, I know that sheep like to remain in flocks (or is it herds?), as they take the evolutionary approach of survival based upon the power of numbers. They follow each other around and do not stray far from others. They do not seek alone time; they do not follow a butterfly to greener pastures; and they do not question their version of authority. Because of this (and because they have no sharp teeth or claws to defend themselves with), sheep are considered meek. We even define the word sheepish as lacking self-confidence. Yet, our education system “trains” us to be just like sheep. We are taught that certain things are facts, and that is just the way it is. We are typically not taught to question, to ask “why”, or to contradict what authority says is true. In fact, it is commonly stated that once you get to graduate school you have to “learn to think for yourself.” So, let me get this straight – we spend 20+ years learning to think like others before it is ubiquitously expected for us to think individually!?!?

Image result for sheep meme wake up sheeple

Reading Ellen Langer’s article “Mindful Learning” really hit this home for me. She discusses how we are taught the basics until the basics become second nature. We automatically drive on the right side of the road (in the US); we put forks on the left side of the plate when setting the table; and we don’t question “why.” Now, I am not suggesting that you got out tomorrow and see how you feel about driving on the left side of the road around here – some things we are taught should be followed. However, if you travel to England, you have to ditch your learned “second-nature” of driving on the right to be safe. I particularly liked the example about how we set the table. I had never thought about why we put the fork on the left side of the plate and the knife on the right. It really doesn’t make sense for the majority of the population, as right-handed folk typically hold their forks in their right hands and knives in the left. As a child, I was just taught that “this is how it is done,” and so, I accepted it.

As I got older, I was rewarded in school for blindly accepting what I was taught. I got A’s if I memorized what my teachers told me and did not do well when I didn’t. But what if the teachers are wrong (and having taught in the past, I can assure you that I was wrong sometimes)? Every day, research is showing us how things that were historically considered “common knowledge” are now incorrect (e.g., the world is flat; the Earth is the center of the universe; smoking doesn’t cause cancer). Every day, people prove that pushing the boundaries and not listening to what everyone told them furthers our understanding of the world. If everyone stayed a sheep, there would be no change. We need to start teaching children to think for themselves – it is as simple as saying “this COULD BE the answer to that question” vs “this IS the answer to that question”. In part, graduate school is so challenging because it is the first time we are truly and consistently evaluated on how well we can think for ourselves. Maybe, graduate school would be less daunting, less stressful, and less likely to cause or contribute to mental health concerns if we were “taught” how to think for ourselves.

I could go on and on about this topic. But I leave you with this: it’s good to be the “black” sheep (even though we are taught it is not). It’s even better to be a rainbow-colored lion. So go out there and ROAR!

Image result for sheep individuality meme

Mindful Learning

Before entering grad school, I hadn’t thought too deeply about the current education system and the various flaws it might have. During the first month of grad school I saw a Youtube video by Prince Ea, arguing against the current structure of education in the United States. He includes comments related to how the advancement of technology and how the rest of the world seems to have adapted/changed, except for the education system. After hearing some of the comments Prince Ea included in the video made me want to talk to my sister as she is a 4th grade teacher. It was intriguing talking to her about some of the ways she is required to teach as it has changed drastically from when I was in 4th grade, but almost seem to make it more complicated and more difficult to learn. I asked my sister why this was the case, and she was unable to really give me a reason except for that’s the new direction teaching was moving.

Langer introduced the concept of “what we teach” compared to “how we teach it” as we currently do one, but should focus on the other. Currently we are so focused on the content or “what we teach” (teaching to a test) that we can get distracted by how students are receiving the information and if they are actually learning from it. We have gotten so focused on how we have taught information the last 20 plus years, that we don’t always actively think about new ways to approach teaching. However, we need to focus on “how we teach” the material to students as the new generation is very different and has access to significantly more compared even my generation. I don’t have the answers to how this needs to change exactly, but something has to happen for the next generation of students to be able to fully succeed and reach their potential.

Additionally, in Sir Ken Robinson’s video, he includes information on how it’s not necessarily that we don’t have qualified teachers in schools currently, it’s mainly that the system is the overall issue/problem. He had numerous additional great comments and provided important information that would be beneficial for the education system to listen to and adjust.

Monetization of Mindfulness?

“Throughout the twentieth century, particularly after the Second World War, we had a slow-moving river. Stability, continuity, and maintaining the status quo defined our culture, and progress was carefully controlled. This environment influenced both education and technology” (Thomas and Brown, 39).

I don’t agree with this claim.

I think that the lack of stability, continuity, and maintaining the status quo continually influences education and technology.

I do agree that there’s more to education than teaching someone how to fish, so to speak.

Relevantly adapting to change in an education setting takes mindfulness, a broader awareness, of “what will come next” (Thomas and Brown, 43).

But thinking about teaching someone how to fish brings up a common discussion: what is the purpose of education? Is education a way to learn a new trade, a means to an end, so to speak? Or is education valuable on its own?

“To most people, [reading Harry Potter] doesn’t sound very much like ‘real’ learning” (Thomas and Brown, 44). Langer’s seven pervasive myths of education portrays what “real” learning might look like.

Yes. If the purpose of education is to eventually get a job, then it’s harder to explain how Harry Potter is going to help achieve that goal.

Yes. If the purpose of education is to do education (whatever that means), then reading Harry Potter instead of the “classics” seems more like “fake” than “real” learning.

If the problem is educating more effectively in a “constantly changing world,” and the answer is play and imagination, then the trouble is convincing students, parents, and policymakers to buy into this alternative learning style (Thomas and Brown, 48).

The college student has to weigh whether or not a course that fosters play and imagination is going to be worth her tuition. (And in an ideal world, if she adopts the purpose of education to mean that education is valuable in its own right, then she has to weigh whether or not this course visibly increases her education).

The parents have to either pay tuition (at any age level), accept the value in play and imagination (if this was integrated in the public school system), or both. That may be difficult to sell if parents want “the best” for their children, especially if that means well-being, i.e., job security. Showing the connection between Harry Potter and a job opportunity might be difficult.

The policymakers have to be convinced and convince politicians (and decision makers at every level) that play and imagination is worth funding. Quantifying a mode of education that minimizes the use of tests could also be difficult.

I think that quantifying how play and imagination lead to problem solving skills in a workplace setting is a viable option that fits in “education as a means to an end” purpose. “Mindfulness creates a rich awareness of discriminatory detail” (Langer, 23). Perhaps this discriminatory detail is a visible problem solving skill that finds worth in a workplace setting.

But what is mindfulness’ purpose?

If the purpose of mindfulness is to teach sideways learning, then mindfulness is just another means to an end.

If the purpose of mindfulness is to just increase awareness of discriminatory detail, then mindfulness might have an invaluable quality that teachers and employers may find useful.  

Mindfulness

Mindfulness

(At the end of the day, the increase in use of “mindfulness” is just one example of cultural appropriation that exists in a larger West meets East phenomenon, c.f. yoga. Mindfulness, like education, will never be non-teleological).

Mind Full …, Or Mindful?

When was the last time you REALLY take a shower? This morning? Or yesterday? 

Did you mindfully take a shower? Did you feel the water on your skin or you did all routine tasks while you were half awake, half asleep? Were you actively engaged in the present when you were taking a shower, OR you were thinking about your plans for today and did not understand how you take the shower?

Mindfulness defines as a flexible state of mind in which we are at higher sensitivity to the context and perspective, actively engaged in the present, and noticing changes which consequently, lead to having greater control over our lives.

Engaging in mindful learning helps to draw novel distinctions and avoid mindsets or myths which unnecessarily limit our creativity and innovation. To enhance mindful learning, it is important to think about “how to teach” rather of “what to teach.” If the students learn the concepts mindfully rather than taking the basics for granted and learning the concepts mindlessly, they are more likely to accommodate to changes and broader concepts. To enhance mindful learning, the instructor must teach mindfully and encourage the student to attend to contexts and concepts mindfully. Therefore, to stop student’s mind wandering, distracted, or attending mindlessly to the context; the instructors may develop and implement active learning practices and game in the classes rather than lectures. Moreover, an instructor must approach and develop the content of the material mindfully and from diverse perspective to help the students to take advantages of mindful learning.

Practice Does NOT Make Perfect, Mindful Learning DOES!


As a future instructor, it is always YOUR choice. You can start today to practice mindfulness and live in presence. Start with taking a mindful shower tomorrow morning! And then continue to incorporate mindfulness into your driving, eating breakfast, and other daily activities, then, extend it to your teaching. You can also look for some resources at Virginia Tech to help you become MINDFUL!

Mindful vs Mindless: A no brainer

Even the title seems moronic and absurd. Why would anyone choose less over full? But then again, why would anyone choose to act in the often quoted bon mot that “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?” This quote is in itself a form of mindless education. It has been attributed to Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin but I can not find a definitive source. So I too engage in mindless education because repetition of single exposure has made that quote my definition of insanity. Ellen Langer has written of the mindlessness of education and the benefits of being mindful. She says mindlessness as two ways of coming about and they are (1) repetition and single exposure, (2) processing information without questioning alternative ways the information could be understood. To understand how to process information differently, she offers three differing perspectives of why the American Civil War began. Being mindful means we are aware of perspective and individual attributes when engaging in pedagogical practices. For me, this is so ever true in coaching high school athletes. No two people are the same. You must consider the teenagers ability to process the new information, their physical strengths, and their ability to train their bodies to move in specific ways. You must adapt coaching techniques and language so every athlete can improve and reach their potential. This is the same in education and training of the mind. You must present information that is not biased and in a manner that best facilitates knowledge learning. This is not easy but the use of new technologies can be of great assistance. Be mindful though, not all your students may have identical knowledge and skill sets to use the technology. Mindful practices are not easy but the better way than the cookie cutter systems employed today.

Facts & Reliability

Despite her poor use of examples and transitional reasoning, Langer’s concerns about “mindful” and “mindless” learning are appropriate to consider as new educational initiatives are introduced and implemented. Some sort of academic freedom is sorely needed in the classroom, though we must be diligent about straying too far away from the benefits of repetition and skill building in certain circumstances.

Part of the issue, as I observe it, is the deification and liturgical worship of the almighty “facts” which never seem to waver or experience any form of change, blessed as they may be to many. The perspective of “how we have always done things” seems to fit within these patterns of chanting and praying, regardless of how arbitrary such a fit may seem in foundation. Methodologies and approaches are not “facts.” Yet, we treat them as so, thus causing any students who are unable to adopt said ways or commit them to memory are “left behind”.

A perspective which may increase freedom of exploration in the classroom (though I am in now way calling this a “fix”) is a transition from “law” to “reliability”. Teaching our students that there are prominent reliable methods of doing certain things and walking them through the benefits and skills of said methods is not an abomination to contemporary pedagogy. Noting that these methods are “reliable” yet not absolute while encouraging them to explore divergent methods and information in a constructive way is a powerful first step in righting the ship in a way which doesn’t leave students drowning or wading in the water behind us.

Ahhhh….that darn mindfulness thing again in a room full of mindless…..

http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.lib.vt.edu/stable/pdf/20182675.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A1f0e6a7ca8d3345726cdbfcb253e796e

How I love me some Ellen Langer on a wintry Sunday morning.  She was the first woman to be tenured in the psychology department at Harvard.  Sipping coffee, watching the birds eat peanuts I left out on my balcony for them, and, just giggling to myself at how many VT professors would never put Langer as a required reading in their course syllabus.  I’ve blogged extensively regarding the topic of mindless teaching practices by top tier researchers who really don’t want to teach.  Let’s be honest, how do we as students benefit from them?  Feel free to look at my previous blogs on this topic and one of the most interesting was “Human decency in higher education might be missing at VT……“.

Being mindful is implicitly understood as having some degree of freedom to color outside the lines and the ability to say “Hey, maybe we can try something different in class?”   Being mindless is taking that same excitement and telling the student “No, that’s not how it’s been done in the past and it’s too much work to incorporate that idea!”  A very clear example of this is hearing some professors (journal editors) say they regularly desk reject articles simply on the basis that it doesn’t fit the “mold”.  Hahahaha…..and my favorite line which I think is absolutely clever:  “Follow the Golden Rule.  He who has the Gold makes the rules!”  Obviously, not all professors are mindless and I would never imply that.  But, I do think it is a pandemic we as researchers of the future are facing.  I support OpenAccess for this very reason.  Yeah, I also wrote a blog on that!  LOL!

Thanks!

Cheers, Lehi

 

Trial-and-error-and-Google

Reading the section called “Google the Error” in Thomas and Brown’s A New Culture of Learning hit home for me. A man named Allen had learned many different computer programming languages through what may be called trial-and-error-and-Google.  He would write up a script, try to run it, and when it crashed, he googled the error message for some ideas.

When I started my PhD program, my research project was to pick up where one student left off and keep going with it.  The previous student had done basically everything in Python–an object-oriented programming language.  There were dozens of Python scripts that I needed to use for my work and I had only one brief prior exposure to Python.  I knew that I had to learn how to write in Python and the task was very daunting to me.  I have never considered myself to be even a kindergarten-level programmer, even though I did ok in my undergraduate Computational Skills class where I learned basic programming.  So how did I learn Python?

I Googled it.

I would look over a script that the previous student wrote, try to figure it out, and then Google hundreds of things that were about as understandable as Chinese to me (and please note… I don’t know Chinese).  I won’t sugar-coat this… it was EXTREMELY frustrating and difficult at first until I could figure out the structure and the lingo. There were many days that the word “Python” came out of my mouth almost as a curse. Now I am much more proficient in Python and I actually enjoy all of the neat things that I can do with this programming language.  I have even voluntarily used it on a few homework assignments where Python was not part of the class at all.  Who would have guessed it?

Now I wonder how I can capture this learning style in more traditional classes within my discipline: civil engineering.  As a future professor, I wonder how I can help the students do a little more trial-and-error-and-Google learning.  Honestly, when I look back on my learning experiences, learning from my mistakes has been one of the most enduring and memorable methods.  Though sometimes painful or uncomfortable (as previously described), it can turn a tough subject into a strength that may end up being your new side hobby.  Like Python is for me.

HPR 2154: Introduction to Harry Potter

Why is it that some books are so easy to read/follow while others (many of the text books) are mortally boring; Why can we remember details of a good story (e.g. Harry Potter) even after so many years, but there are tons of information we cannot recall from our last week readings?

Harry Potter and Ron Weasley in Divination class

Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown in their book “A New Culture of Learning Cultivating The Imagination For A World Of Constant Change” try to answer these questions by discussing the importance of modern learning processes:

They argue that in today’s ever-changing world, it is rather unproductive (if not impossible) to continue the traditional forms of learning/teaching-i.e. when someone (teacher) transfer the solid knowledge to someone else (the student) in a unilateral direction. while the unchangeable forms of knowledge are shrinking everyday, flexibility towards change and accepting new ways of knowing become more and more quintessential for humans’ learning process.

In spite of the fact that I agree with Thomas and Brown’s idea of making sense of the world through gaming (and internet being the adults’ way of playful sense making), yet I believe engaging solely new technologies in today’s classrooms is not the panacea for our ineffective education system! Many of us “Google” new terms, watch YouTube videos and try to understand the course materials with the help of world wide web, still we do not necessarily develop the vital connections needed for LEARNING process. That means, in most cases, we gain a rough understanding of the issue but we do not ponder enough (e.g. having no time or interest) to process the information into our knowledge.

While the authors believe, Harry Potter books’ success in sticking to readers’ minds (and hearts!) were due to readers’ “experiencing the unfolding of the story with friends, both online and offline”, I think there are other criteria that leads to such memorability!

First of all, the readers “choose” to read Harry Potter in order to “enjoy”. While in many cases, we do not have a “choice” over our course work, therefore having “fun” is less achievable. Second, reading Harry Potter is not an assignment and does not have a deadline to be finished/graded, hence the reader has all the time in the world to savour each line with full concentration (and no fear or pressure of grades and so on). As a result of passion and having the time to reflect on the book’s content, the reader can make sense of Harry’s world by connecting the author’s descriptions to his/her own life experiences-the process in which a co-creation of knowledge between the author and the reader happens!

Can multi-taking be mindfulness-making?

In Mindful Learning, Ellen Langer outlines four myths that hurt education. Of the four myths, the one that most immediately spoke to my own journey to become a better teacher was myth number two — “Paying attention means staying focused on one thing at a time.”

I’m one of those children of the 1980s who had parents who went to great lengths to raise me away from TV and, later on, the Internet. But practice sitting still and being quiet isn’t a prerequisite for learning. When we worry about our students being distracted in class, it is because we assume they need to focus their attention completely on one thing to be able to learn.

For better or worse — and I think there is room for debate there — that isn’t the background of today’s undergraduates. For the simple reason that the pace of our culture has changed, today’s students are equipped to change topics, mediums and multi-task much better than their parents.

So, breaking this myth helps us to think about teaching in a new way. How can we use our students’ ability to quickly move between mediums and multi-task? I often combine lecture, writing assignment or project, a video/audio piece and discussion in every class. But each of these are done consecutively. I’m left wondering how I could use multiple mediums at one time.

For instance, if students had an essay question that required them to respond to a video, could they record their reactions in real-time and then tidy up the essay afterward?

As a reporter, I live tweeted meetings I’ve attended and use those tweets to help reconstruct my articles. If every student were live-tweeting a lecture, using a hashtag, might they be able to use their collective tweets in lieu of note-taking?

Would having an activity to accomplish during what are typically passive moments in the classroom help them be more mindful learners?

I’m not sure, but I think it would be worth trying. And I think student feedback will be key. I find that students are very honest about what works and doesn’t work when asked. Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown summarize this struggle succinctly in “A New Culture of Learning”: “The challenge is to find a way to marry structure and freedom to create something altogether new” (49). But the first step to creating something new is being willing to try.

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