Summer 2021: Post 5: Complexity and Education

Many of my students are initially frustrated with my approach to education, so I thought I should explain it. Learning is a willingness to change, to move beyond what you already know and can do. When you move beyond what you already know, then you enter the complexity zone of life where things are more open-ended, uncertain, and unpredictable. Generally, students don't like working in the complexity zone, as they prefer to work in the simple, predictable zone where they can guarantee a good grade. Sorry, but that ain't education. Education is when you leave a class different than you came in, and that can be difficult.

I believe that people learn when they first recognize that they don't know something and then they rearrange themselves — make internal physical and mental changes — in response to what they don't know. I believe all living systems — maybe all systems — can learn. For instance, slime mold can recognize food or danger (say, an acid solution) and then rearrange itself to move toward or away from the food or danger. This is rather simple learning, but it illustrates the behavior that we humans do on a more sophisticated level, though we also do plenty of learning on this simple level, as well. For instance, we learn to recognize foreign viruses and to eliminate them from our bodies, and we do this unconsciously through our immune system, but the principle is the same: recognize an anomaly and respond appropriately.

Our narrow range of vision

Learning implies certain capabilities within the system that is learning: first, a system must be capable of recognizing an anomaly, an issue that it should avoid, seek, or correct. Many simpler creatures such as slime mold do this rather automatically and within a very limited scope using a very limited sensory apparatus. We humans can sense so much more with our more sophisticated sensory apparatus, but we also have significant blind spots. For instance, we see only a narrow range of the available light spectrum. Most of us — including me — don't know how much we can't see and don't know.

However, even if we are physically capable of seeing something new, we also have to be willing to look. So in class, the first order of business is convincing students that they don't know something that they really need to know. At the beginning of my classes, I ask students to do lots of technical, time-related tasks such as sending me a Gmail or setting up a blog to see who can do it and who can't. I congratulate those who can and give them a good grade. I help those who can't and often give them a poor grade to motivate them. Typically, about 25-30% of the class reachea Week 3 with a 100% score, meaning that they were able to complete all tasks on-time with almost no instruction or encouragement from me. Good for them. The rest of the class struggles — a few with technical issues, most with time management issues. I try to address those issues, and it works for most students. Usually by midterm, almost all of my students are on track and capable of doing the class work on time. Most have raised their scores to a passing level. However, a handful of students decide the class isn't for them and drop it. This is typical.

I think this approach works, but it is stressful on those students who struggle to figure it out. Most of them receive some zeroes and have to scramble to fix them. In slime mold terms, they move too close to the acid bath and then have to scramble to get away. I'm sorry they have to do that, but the process seems to work for most students. First, try something, and then students either figure it out and feel good about themselves, or fail and figure out what they have to learn. If they are willing, then they will learn.

I learned this technique from coaching recreational soccer to kids. Performance first, then instruction. For instance, if I want to teach a group of six-year-olds how to make an instep pass, first I have them try the pass to see who can and who can't do it. I praise those who can, and I work with those who can't, often using those who can as exemplars and motivators for the others. People learn well from their peers. Soon, most everyone on the team can execute an instep pass. If I give instruction first, then those who can already do it are bored, and those who can't do it don't understand what I'm lecturing about. Failure clarifies the issue for them so that they can learn it. If they really want to.

And this brings me to a second capability for learning: desire. The issue is that too many students don't care if they don't know what I'm teaching. The slime mold, for instance, has real desire for learning how to avoid an acid bath, but my students have very little motivation for learning how to format an academic paper in MLA 8 format. This is a particularly difficult issue for a teacher to deal with. If a student is genuinely not interested in learning academic writing, then I have very few tools for motivating them. Of course, I can motivate through grades, and I do that, but I think grades are a rather poor motivator. I'm always looking for better ways to motivate students. For instance, I try using engaging essay assignments that ask students to research and write about issues that, I hope, have value for them. Sometimes it works, but I'm looking for more and better ways to teach.

Finally, learning requires the ability to change mentally, physically, socially, spiritually, and more. A student must willing and able to move beyond what they already know. Not everyone is willing to do that. In fact, as we get older, we seem to become less and less willing to change in significant ways. Real learning is more than just remembering a few facts about the War of 1812 for next week's test. Real learning is about changing how you see the world and yourself in the world. For instance, learning to be a nurse means changing the way you walk and talk from how you walk and talk now to how nurses walk and talk. If you don't believe that becoming a nurse (or a computer specialist, or a biologist, or an historian) will change you, then you do not understand education. If you can't change, you can't learn.

The desire and ability to change is actually rather easy for babies and children who don't have many expectations of the world to begin with and are quite flexible mentally and physically. We olders must contend with hardening of the arteries, concepts, and worldviews. Babies see everyone around them walking and talking, and by golly, they desire to walk and talk, too. They then start the most difficult and most significant learning that any of us ever do: to walk and talk like humans. And they fail over and over until they finally get it more or less right. And almost all of them succeed, even without teachers, schools, and grades.

You, too, can learn to write academic documents if I help you move out of your comfort zone and give you room to fail first. We'll fix it when we know what to fix.

Tell me what you think of this approach to learning how to write effective academic essays.