We’ve all heard anecdotes about accomplished people who struggled in school: Albert Einstein failed his first college entrance exam. William Faulkner won a Nobel Prize for Literature without ever having accumulated enough credits to finish high school. And Charles Schultz, the creator of the Peanuts comics had his illustrations rejected by his high school yearbook. Doing well in school is not an absolute prerequisite for later success. Still, teachers naturally want all students to get as much as they can from school. How can we optimize school for students who don’t have the raw intelligence of other students?
Americans tend to view intelligence as a fixed attribute, like eye color. If you win the genetic lottery, you’re smart; but if you lose, you’re not. In China, Japan, and other Eastern countries, intelligence is more often viewed as malleable. If students fail a test or don’t understand a concept, it’s not that they’re stupid-they just haven’t worked hard enough yet. There is some truth in both. Children do differ in intelligence, but intelligence can be changed through sustained hard work. This belief in the malleable intelligence for students has many implications for classroom teachers and should play a role in how you administer praise and talk to students about their successes and failures.
There is overwhelming evidence that there is a general intelligence. It’s usually called g, short for general intelligence. What exactly is g? It’s not known. People suggest it might be related to the speed or the capacity of working memory, or even that it’s a reflection of how quickly the neurons in our brains can fire. Knowing what underlies g is less important than knowing that g is real. Having a lot of g predicts that we will do well in school and well in the workplace.
Still, if intelligence were all a matter of one’s genetic inheritance, then there wouldn’t be much point in trying to make kids smarter. Instead, we’d try to get students to do the best they could given the genetically determined intelligence they have. We’d also think seriously about trying to steer the not-so-smart kids toward intellectually undemanding tracks in schools, figuring that they are destined for low-level jobs anyway. But that’s not the way things are. Intelligence is malleable. It can be improved.
Slow learners are not dumb. They probably differ little from other students in terms of their potential. This should not be taken to mean that these students can easily catch up. Slow students have the same potential as bright students, but they probably differ in what they know, in their motivation, in their persistence in the face of academic setbacks, and in their self-image as students. I fully believe that these students can catch up, but it must be acknowledged that they are far behind, and that catching up will take enormous effort. How can we help? To help slow learners catch up, we must first be sure they believe that they can improve, and next we must try to persuade them that it will be worth it.
I have several suggestions in my book, including 1) praise effort, not ability; 2) tell students that hard work pays off; and 3) treat failure as a natural part of learning. Points 2 and 3 are nicely made in this You Tube video titled Famous Failures:
Try to create a classroom atmosphere in which failure, while not desirable, is neither embarrassing nor wholly negative. Failure means you’re about to learn something. You’re going to find out that there’s something you didn’t understand or didn’t know how to do. Most important, model this attitude for your students. When you fail-and who doesn’t?-let them see you take a positive, learning attitude.
Tomorrow: Great teachers are story tellers.
Daniel T. Willingham is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and the author of Why Students Don’t Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What it Means for the Classroom (Jossey-Bass, 2009) from which this post was adapted.
Thank you for this excellent posting. It’s very timely. Pseudo-scientist Charles Murray has been recently getting attention and gaining adherents for his offensive, fatalistic and ill-founded notions of IQ and education.
I certainly look forward to receiving your book.
“We don’t make mistakes; we have learning experiences.”
–Edwina Froelich (1915-2008), one of seven housewives who founded La Leche League, now an organization of mother-to-mother support for breastfeeding with a presence in 60 countries.
Claus,
Pseudo-scientist Charles Murray has been recently getting attention and gaining adherents for his offensive, fatalistic and ill-founded notions of IQ and education.
While I do not agree with Murray’s eduaction policy views, his underlying view on IQ is not inconsistent with Dan’s post.
IQ is malleable at least in children below the age of about 10-12 through sustained hard work. But then things get dicey and after this age we start to see IQ reverting back to baseline despite all this hard work. I don’t really think we know why this happens, though we certainly don’t lack for theories.
But this effect does occur to the consternation of educators.
Moreover, there ia no large scale longitudinal study that I am aware of in which we’ve been able to riase a low-IQ child’s IQ through effective instruction and hard work and have been able to sustain that IQ through late adolescence.
This doesn’t mean that it’s not possible, but just that we lack the evidence. Murray wants to see the evidence. What’s so “offensive, fatalistic and ill-founded” about that?
Dan,
I have to bring up something in chapter 7 because it has been on my mind. In that chapter (on the question of learning styles and different kinds of intelligence) you bring up the distinction between field dependence and field independence. You write, “…people who are more likely to evaluate something they see independently of the object’s relationship to other objects are called field independent, whereas field dependent people tend to see an object in terms of its relationship to other things.”
The examples you give on p. 117 are visual and spatial; does the distinction apply to other areas as well? For instance, when reading a work of literature, does a field dependent person rely on external and peripheral clues (illustrations, titles, headings, blurbs) for meaning, whereas a field independent person might go straight to the text?
If so, our schools encourage quite a bit of field dependence. Some of the commonly taught “strategies” include looking at the picture on the front cover, reading the blurb on the back cover, scanning the questions (in the case of a test passage), reading the headings, making predictions and “text-to-self connections” right off the bat, etc. I tend to avoid this stuff; I encourage my students to plunge right in and see what the story or book holds. And that seems to bring good results.
On the other hand, some field dependence (such as background knowledge) is necessary and helpful. Having read one Shakespeare play, we will understand the next one better. Having learned about the Great Depression, we will have insights into Williams’ The Glass Menagerie that we wouldn’t otherwise have.
So I have three questions:
1. Does the distinction between field dependence and field independence apply to reading in the way that I describe above?
2. If so, do certain kinds of field dependence hinder reading comprehension, while other kinds help?
3. Why do so many commonly touted reading “strategies” emphasize peripheral or extraneous clues such as cover illustration and blurb?
Speaking of The Glass Menagerie, certain scenes from the play came to mind when I was reading this chapter. Jim and Amanda (especially) have mixed and confused feelings about human ability and talent. Here’s Jim blithely contradicting himself in his euphoria:
“Why, man alive, Laura! Just look about you a little. What do you see? A world full of common people! All of ‘em born and all of ‘em going to die! Which of them has one-tenth of your good points? Or mine! Or anyone else’s, as far as that goes–gosh! Everybody excels in some one thing. Some in many! [He unconsciously glances at himself in the mirror.] All you’ve got to do is discover in what! Take me, for instance….”
His little speech taps into American conceptions of intelligence: on the one hand we believe that everyone is potentially extraordinary; on the other hand we believe that extraordinary people stand out from the crowd.
KDeRosa–
Fatalistic, because Murray advocates early tracking on the basis of slender evidence. Offensive, because he suggests that some races are intellectually inferior to others–a view that most certainly colors his views on education
Ken
I’d have to dig a little to see if the type of study that you describe has been done. I agree that it is VERY hard to sustain the type of environment that gives kids a significant boost if it was not in place already.
The truth is that we are not now 100% certain about the proportion of variance from these two sources (env & genetic) and are unlikely to be certain in the near future. But we have to make policy decisions as though we are certain. I do think that the evidence now weights more towards “more environmental than genetic” but more important, I see a huge cost in terms of potential loss of human capital, in terms of higher social services, but most important in terms of human misery, if we set policy in the belief that it’s mostly genetic.
I haven’t read any of Murray’s stuff since _The Bell Curve_ but if his position is “I’m willing to believe that it’s environmental, once I see substantial data” he’s not in my camp. I think the assumption if one is going to make one, ought to tilt the other way.
I have been thinking a lot about the chapter on slow learners. It seems that much of it could apply to gifted learners as well. Sometimes students are “slow” because they need time to think something through; sometimes the sense of “not getting it” comes from a desire to “get it” thoroughly.
The advice on p. 143 about failure could be a book in itself. We have built a lingo of “success” into the daily life of our schools. How many test prep books have titles like “Strategies for Success”? Our leaders do everything they can to portray their reforms as “successful” even when they clearly are not.
Of course we shouldn’t seek out failure, but it is much more important than we often acknowledge. Dan writes, “If you want to increase your intelligence, you have to challenge yourself. That means taking on tasks that are a bit beyond your reach, and htat means you may very well fail, at least the first time around. Fear of failure can therefore be a significant obstacle to tackling this sort of challenging work, but failure should not be a big deal.”
I have to remind myself of this often. Sometimes I try out a new idea that hasn’t quite crystallized, and I realize I don’t have all my arguments in place. I should not give it up on account of this; it may be well worth the inarticulate beginings. Likewise, sometimes when I practice cello I should let myself sound bad for a while so that I can get better. Practice has its ugly parts.
I will be thinking about this for a long time.
Dan,
I am a newcomer to blogging, but I just wanted you to know that I thoroughly enjoyed your blog. There is a lot of truth to the comparisons you made between American students and Eastern Asia students. I believe somewhere along the way we (Americans) have lost sight of the important things in life. A nation that was once known for its freedom, independence, and hard work has switched gears and instilled in the minds of our youth that they can get by in life with the least effort possible. The newer the generation the lazier they become, because we let them become this way. I feel it is our duty (teachers, parents, government, etc) to renew our faith in old practices. Study hard and you will succeed. As a teacher I have always instilled in my students in order to be successful you have to apply yourselves. I have had some hard cases where students that were expected to perform low (according to their IEP folders) worked their fingers to the bone and exceeded expectations of many teachers.
I completely agree with the statement you made about praising effort and not abilities. As a second year teacher, I learned that praising a student’s effort early in the year can set the tone for success throughout the year. I have always believed that keeping a positive outlook with help you to become successful. I love how you stated that failure is a natural part of the learning process. It is so true. When I make a mistake (misinform) in the classroom, I simply acknowledge my fault and move on. I believe that it reflects to my students that although I am the teacher, I too am not perfect.
Thank you for all your insights.
Jennifer Graef
Living in Asia I can tell you that all the people around me instill a belief in hard work in their kids. I seldom hear parents talk about how smart their kids are, it’s all about how much homework or extra tutoring or kumon maths they do.
I’m fascinated to read about IQ ‘reverting’ despite all that hard work after age 10. But I suspect what will linger is the habit of hard work and applying yourself. My husband always says he was never the brightest in class, and always had to work harder than everyone, and that habit is what has made him very successful over and beyond his school days.
IQ isn’t everything. It’s a leg up, but then you need to do the rest of the climb yourself.