The other evening I was having dinner with my sister’s family, including my niece who was home from college for a visit. My niece is a charming education major and already has a teaching certificate, having taught for a couple of years in a prep school in England. My niece knew that I’ve been teaching at Eastern Michigan University and asked: “Uncle Tom, what’s your theory of teaching?”
“My theory of what?”
“You know, your theory of teaching,” she said. “How do you think your students learn? What’s the basis for the way you teach your students?” “What do you assume when you attempt to reach your kids with the things they need to know?”
I had to admit; no one’s ever asked me that question before. I’d been teaching for 5 years with classes as big as 120 and no one ever asked me about my theory of teaching. Unlike my niece, I never had a course in education. Fact is by State law, I’m not qualified to even teach Kindergarten -- but here I am teaching college students.
I realized my niece was right, I really should have some sort of “theory” for what I do. How can I possibly be an educator if I don’t have a theory? I needed one.
How can I get myself a “theory of teaching”? I decided that there were only two practical ways. (1) I could spend semesters in attending boring education courses, reading a bunch of books, and doing research or (2) I could invent something.
Being a seasoned university professor, I chose option #2. I’ve been teaching for a number of years; I’ll just make something up based on what I’ve been doing, give a name, and proclaim it my theory of teaching – having no real idea what I’m talking about. So here it is: my uncertainty principle of learning.
Most of you may recall from your studies of quantum mechanics that the German scientist, Werner Heisenberg, got the Nobel Prize for his “Uncertainty Principle of Physics” in 1933. This important principle deals with the location and measurement of sub-atomic particles. Among other things, it states that it’s impossible to accurately measure both the precise location of a particle and its momentum at the same time. You can do one or the other – you can determine where a particle is or you can say something about its direction and velocity; but not both. They’re referred to as conjugate variables.
Likewise, you can say nothing about either the location or momentum of a particle when it is not being measured – in between times its simply referred to as a “cloud of possibilities” … well really a “probabilities” but “possibilities” sound more democratic.
“Clouds of possibilities”: I like that! That’s how I think of my students -- clouds of possibilities. My meeting with them for a couple of hours each week does little to dispel these clouds. I know little about where they’re coming from, where they are in their lives from day to day, or where they’re going.
However as an educator, from time to time I’m required to locate these students in learning space -- to say something about what they know and whether they have actually learned anything. I have to assign grades that reflect their knowledge.
Or more accurately, grades that reflect how well they’ve psyched out their instructor. As every thoughtful educator knows, assigning a grade reflects a student’s skill in duplicating what the educator imagines the student should know -- not necessarily the truth. Every student since Socrates or Confucius has scored well by imitating the ignorance of their teachers.
Another aspect of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of Physics is that in measuring either the location or momentum of a particle, you change it. In other words, the process of measuring a thing, affects it. I firmly believe this to be true with students. Exams are important assessment tools, but you can’t test students without changing them. In reality, it’s the only time you have their full attention and the questions you ask and their answers impart knowledge. Exam questions signal what’s important to you as an educator – what’s not asked has no immediate value.
Given that students try to get good grades, or at least pass a course with minimum effort or disruption to their lives, the questions asked on exams clearly shape what students remember. If they get a good question right, they remember it. If they get it wrong, they sometimes figure there may be a better answer.
It’s quite impossible to test a student without changing that student. Assessing and educating students are conjugate pairs. I decided some time ago I can do one or the other well, but not both. I’ve chosen educating and given up the idea of accurately assessing student knowledge. I focus on using exams to further educate students -- to impart as much potentially useful knowledge as possible. For me the “test” is a teaching tool; not for assessment. I really don’t care what grade a student gets and neither will he or she in 10 years. The only important thing is: has the student learned something related to the subject being taught.
How do I do that? I ask irritatingly, open-ended questions; questions that require both knowledge and thought and often don’t have a right or wrong answer -- questions for which the answers cannot be memorized. I ask students to reassemble what they know in order the discover things they often didn’t know they knew. In the process, they invent their own learning.
For example rather than asking a simple question about the shape and size of Europe, I might ask how Europe’s many peninsulas have contributed to the fact that its rose as a world dominating power in the 17th century. In thinking about that question, some students might get to the notion that it has something to do with the fact that peninsulas are easy to defend and hard to conquer and therefore Europe has always been a land of competing states. Some may come to realize that Europe came to dominate the world because, in part, of its unusual geography.
The bottom line: there’s no such thing as teaching -- only in helping clouds of possibilities, a.k.a. students, on their paths to achieve certain goals. Where they end up within their space of possibilities is anybody guess, but my job is to facilitate that process as best I can. That’s Wagner’s uncertainty principle of learning.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Combatting the happiness crisis
In these difficult times, it’s easy to loose track of how happy we are. To be sure, there is a great deal of unhappiness in the world and even in our lives.
But recent research shows that Americans and others are generally happier today than previous generations.
In spite of the uncertainty of our current economic situation, most of us will not loose our jobs, most of us will not suffer the loss of a young or middle-aged loved one, most of us will have a roof over our heads and enough to eat – no matter how tenuous our current situation, we fully expect to be happier in the future.
Almost all Americans, and majorities in other countries, are surprisingly happy. Ninety percent of Americans report themselves to be "very happy" or "fairly happy". Ironically, almost everyone thinks they’re happier than the average person.
As nearly as I can tell, most Americans are high on the happiness scale and this has been true for some time. Perhaps our ancestors preferred happy people as mates, driving happiness upwards through natural selection.
However, it’s a serious problem with people becoming happier and happier. We are reaching a level where “happiness” is not only abundant, but most of us expect it. For the first time in history, happiness seems to be out of control.
Something must be done about all this happiness! Happiness is undermining the motivational fabric of our society. I’m here to alert you to this crisis. I’m here to suggest ways to stop happiness “dead in its tracts”.
Throughout history it was axiomatic that life was miserable – oppression, famine, ill health, tedious back-breaking labor, frequent and early death, and outdoor toilets being the lot for most. The only consolation was that in the next life, the Great Hereafter, things would be nicer – if you didn’t complain too much about this life.
When our founding fathers said: “Man is endowed by his Creator with certain inalienable rights and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, they didn’t intend that people would rush out and find happiness, let alone capture large amounts of it -– only snippets, a little bit at a time, just enough to keep us motivated.
Today, there’s a new academic field called “happiness research” dedicated to identifying and measuring “happiness” – or at least, our perceptions of happiness. You could argue that “happiness” is an abstract idea, impossible to measure directly, but happiness research simply asks people whether they “think” they’re happy or not. It also asks them whether they expect to be happy in the future.
Over the past 10 years or so, various surveys asked large numbers of people in different countries to judge their own happiness levels – from deeply depressed to moderately happy to insanely ecstatic. It turns out most peoples around the world rate themselves happier today than just 10 years ago … and they expect to be even happier in the future. Clearly, there’s an epidemic of bliss sweeping our world!
One happiness researcher, Geoffrey Miller reports that:
(1) Individuals differ in their happiness, but these differences appear to be quite stable across life spans. Some happiness may be due to genetic rather than environmental factors. In other words, some of us are born happy, others not (as shown by studies of identical twins reared apart.)
(2) Major life events (such as winning the lottery or the death of a loved one) have only temporary affects – one usually recovers to their typical state within six months to a year, even after very happy or very sad events. Each person appears to have a happiness "set-point" that is pretty resistant to change over a lifetime.
(3) Some of the "usual conditions" often used to explain individual differences in happiness seem to have little effect. A person's age, sex, race, income, nationality, and education level have at most, only small correlations with perceptions of happiness, typically explaining less than 2% of the variance between people. Important exceptions of course, are hunger, disease, and economic and social strife. Poor people are generally less happy but once they reach a certain minimum standard of living, additional increases in material wealth has little effect – which of course, means that in the past we continued to pursue more and more happiness no matter how happy we already were.
This recent happiness research undermine the fundamental tenets of our society. Few people today recognize the serious social implications of too much happiness.
Popular culture is dominated by advertisements that offer us things that are claimed to increase our happiness if we buy them. But happiness research shows that such claims are bogus; in reality we are seldom happier after we buy something than before it. Retail products should carry a warning: “This product might make you feel better for a very short period, but it’ll not make you a happier person”.
This research undermines the very basis of our consumer society. If we all realized that we can’t become happier with a new car, a new house, a new job, a new spouse, American society would come crashing down. There’d be no motivation to trade up, to trade the perfectly functional old for something (or someone) wonderfully new! All material and relational progress would come to an end.
Pretty soon everyone one would be satisfied with their own lot in life. People will stop struggling to become happier by improving their lives. It’s unnatural, uneconomic, unpatriotic!
People, arm yourselves against those who make us happy: suppress the outlandish urge to be “happier”! Stamp it out; wherever you can. Offer your friends and family an alternative to happiness – miserablness. It’s the only kind thing to do.
Please support my campaign to spreading “miserableness” where ever one goes -- in schools, factories, churches, and homes. Make our great country the unhappy place it once was… and, with your help, can be again.
Have our schools set confusing and unobtainable goals, promote greedy and domineering bosses in the workplace, get our churches to preach hell and damnation, make people feel guilty about things that improve their lives.
Studies have shown that happiness is wildly contagious. Happy people infect others. We must be on guard, ever vigilant. We must spot outbreaks of happiness early, surround them, isolate them, and then stamp them out with miserableness before they have a chance to spread.
You need to do your part. Be miserable… in your homes and workplaces. Do your best to make your family and friends miserable too. Be a good example of unhappiness and discontent to your friends and neighbors. Please, please us help solve this, our happiness crisis!
But recent research shows that Americans and others are generally happier today than previous generations.
In spite of the uncertainty of our current economic situation, most of us will not loose our jobs, most of us will not suffer the loss of a young or middle-aged loved one, most of us will have a roof over our heads and enough to eat – no matter how tenuous our current situation, we fully expect to be happier in the future.
Almost all Americans, and majorities in other countries, are surprisingly happy. Ninety percent of Americans report themselves to be "very happy" or "fairly happy". Ironically, almost everyone thinks they’re happier than the average person.
As nearly as I can tell, most Americans are high on the happiness scale and this has been true for some time. Perhaps our ancestors preferred happy people as mates, driving happiness upwards through natural selection.
However, it’s a serious problem with people becoming happier and happier. We are reaching a level where “happiness” is not only abundant, but most of us expect it. For the first time in history, happiness seems to be out of control.
Something must be done about all this happiness! Happiness is undermining the motivational fabric of our society. I’m here to alert you to this crisis. I’m here to suggest ways to stop happiness “dead in its tracts”.
Throughout history it was axiomatic that life was miserable – oppression, famine, ill health, tedious back-breaking labor, frequent and early death, and outdoor toilets being the lot for most. The only consolation was that in the next life, the Great Hereafter, things would be nicer – if you didn’t complain too much about this life.
When our founding fathers said: “Man is endowed by his Creator with certain inalienable rights and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, they didn’t intend that people would rush out and find happiness, let alone capture large amounts of it -– only snippets, a little bit at a time, just enough to keep us motivated.
Today, there’s a new academic field called “happiness research” dedicated to identifying and measuring “happiness” – or at least, our perceptions of happiness. You could argue that “happiness” is an abstract idea, impossible to measure directly, but happiness research simply asks people whether they “think” they’re happy or not. It also asks them whether they expect to be happy in the future.
Over the past 10 years or so, various surveys asked large numbers of people in different countries to judge their own happiness levels – from deeply depressed to moderately happy to insanely ecstatic. It turns out most peoples around the world rate themselves happier today than just 10 years ago … and they expect to be even happier in the future. Clearly, there’s an epidemic of bliss sweeping our world!
One happiness researcher, Geoffrey Miller reports that:
(1) Individuals differ in their happiness, but these differences appear to be quite stable across life spans. Some happiness may be due to genetic rather than environmental factors. In other words, some of us are born happy, others not (as shown by studies of identical twins reared apart.)
(2) Major life events (such as winning the lottery or the death of a loved one) have only temporary affects – one usually recovers to their typical state within six months to a year, even after very happy or very sad events. Each person appears to have a happiness "set-point" that is pretty resistant to change over a lifetime.
(3) Some of the "usual conditions" often used to explain individual differences in happiness seem to have little effect. A person's age, sex, race, income, nationality, and education level have at most, only small correlations with perceptions of happiness, typically explaining less than 2% of the variance between people. Important exceptions of course, are hunger, disease, and economic and social strife. Poor people are generally less happy but once they reach a certain minimum standard of living, additional increases in material wealth has little effect – which of course, means that in the past we continued to pursue more and more happiness no matter how happy we already were.
This recent happiness research undermine the fundamental tenets of our society. Few people today recognize the serious social implications of too much happiness.
Popular culture is dominated by advertisements that offer us things that are claimed to increase our happiness if we buy them. But happiness research shows that such claims are bogus; in reality we are seldom happier after we buy something than before it. Retail products should carry a warning: “This product might make you feel better for a very short period, but it’ll not make you a happier person”.
This research undermines the very basis of our consumer society. If we all realized that we can’t become happier with a new car, a new house, a new job, a new spouse, American society would come crashing down. There’d be no motivation to trade up, to trade the perfectly functional old for something (or someone) wonderfully new! All material and relational progress would come to an end.
Pretty soon everyone one would be satisfied with their own lot in life. People will stop struggling to become happier by improving their lives. It’s unnatural, uneconomic, unpatriotic!
People, arm yourselves against those who make us happy: suppress the outlandish urge to be “happier”! Stamp it out; wherever you can. Offer your friends and family an alternative to happiness – miserablness. It’s the only kind thing to do.
Please support my campaign to spreading “miserableness” where ever one goes -- in schools, factories, churches, and homes. Make our great country the unhappy place it once was… and, with your help, can be again.
Have our schools set confusing and unobtainable goals, promote greedy and domineering bosses in the workplace, get our churches to preach hell and damnation, make people feel guilty about things that improve their lives.
Studies have shown that happiness is wildly contagious. Happy people infect others. We must be on guard, ever vigilant. We must spot outbreaks of happiness early, surround them, isolate them, and then stamp them out with miserableness before they have a chance to spread.
You need to do your part. Be miserable… in your homes and workplaces. Do your best to make your family and friends miserable too. Be a good example of unhappiness and discontent to your friends and neighbors. Please, please us help solve this, our happiness crisis!
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