“The word ‘drill’ has come to define bad teaching, writes the New York Times’ Virginia Heffernan. ”Drilling seems unimaginative and antisocial. It might even be harmful.”
Is it?
Heffernan’s piece (“Drill, Baby, Drill”) quotes Dan Willingham, who wryly notes that drilling “often conjures up images of late-19th-century schoolhouses, with students singsonging state capitals in unison without much comprehension of what they have ‘learned.’” Writes Heffernan:
Oh, those schoolhouses — with the hickory sticks and the dunce caps. “Harrisburg! Salt Lake City! Montpelier! Tralalalala!” That does sound kind of fun — I mean, authoritarian. And drilling hardly has a better reputation outside academia. On message boards, students complain bitterly about Kumon, the extracurricular Japanese system of worksheet drills that many also admit has made them superb at math.
“You can’t be proficient at some academic tasks without having certain knowledge be automatic — ‘automatic’ meaning that you don’t have to think about it, you just know what to do with it,” Willingham notes.” Heffernan also talks to E.D. Hirsch who, like Dan, points out that a distributed practice system (aka drilling) “is helpful in making the procedures second nature, which allows you to focus on the structural elements of the problem.”
Memorization suffers from bad PR. To be expert at a skill, including reading comprehension or problem solving, requires command of a large amount of prior knowledge. The phrase “drill and kill” tends to be used to contrast rote memorization with deep understanding and contextualization rather than as a necessary precursor to higher order thinking. Perhaps memorization needs to be rebranded and relaunched.
“Drill and kill? Is that what you think I’m doing by having my kids memorize their times tables? Heck, no. I’m building automaticity.”
I want to rebrand “drill and kill” to “SKILL WITH DRILL”!!!!
Comment by ann — September 20, 2010 @ 9:32 am
Right after I read Drill, Baby, Drill, I read another piece from the same NY Times Magazine – Tutors Made to Measure, by Maggie Jones. That article talks about “automated computer tutors” which use “algorithms to assess students’ cognitive skills and tailor the lessons.” The twist is that now the “tutors” are programmed to respond to emotional cues.
These types of program is what is refered to by Ms. Heffernan as “colorful, happy apps”. I find it curious, though, that Ms. Jones doesn’t mention that “automated computer tutors” are a form of exercise to learn facts to the point of automaticity (or drill without the kill).
I guess drilling is ok if it has enough technology associated with it.
Comment by Mia Munn — September 20, 2010 @ 9:59 am
Knowledge is the foundation for critical thinking and problem solving.
So how can so many misguided progressives insist their form of education reform focus almost exclusively on developing strategies for critical thinking and problem solving, thereby leaving no time in the school day to develop the foundation (knowledge)? This philosophy has failed miserably in the past yet it’s being thrust back into the schools yet again.
I always believed one of the primary reasons to study history was to avoid the mistakes of the past. HELLO!!!
Comment by Paul Hoss — September 20, 2010 @ 10:13 am
Think of all the things that we, as adults, have to learn to automaticity. For each adult, it’s a different set of things, but we all have them. Some, we get to learn by repeating an experience often enough (the layout of a transit system). Others, we have to force ourselves to learn (the words and music to a piece our choir is going to sing from memory, in two days). Why would we think that children should be protected from this necessity until they’re 18?
Comment by EB — September 20, 2010 @ 10:29 am
[...] Building Automaticity « The Core Knowledge Blog Filed under: education — coopmike48 @ 8:32 am Building Automaticity « The Core Knowledge Blog. [...]
Pingback by Building Automaticity « The Core Knowledge Blog « Parents 4 democratic Schools — September 20, 2010 @ 11:33 am
Too true, and yet still so many administrators want to be able to walk into a classroom and observe HOTS (higher-order thinking skills) on the spot at any given moment. Many teacher-evaluation tools specifically condemn “mechanical manipulation” of students. So what are the odds we’ll see “skill with drill” decriminalized any time soon?
Comment by James — September 20, 2010 @ 2:36 pm
Today at lunch I talked politics with a very sharp-witted older teacher whose judgment I respect when it comes to administering a school. “Obama IS a Muslim,” she informed me. “There’s a YouTube video that catches him declaring this.” She also asserted, matter-of-factly, that the decline of the middle class is caused by unions’ forcing companies to send jobs overseas. The woman has critical thinking skills, but she clearly lacks a solid grasp of many important and relevant facts. Deploying critical thinking skills without facts leads to folly. It seems to me that critical thinking skills are inborn and that schools must give the knowledge that enables them to be deployed in enlightened fashion. I wished this woman had been taught more facts about politics, religion, economics and philosophy (esp. epistemology).
Comment by Ben F — September 20, 2010 @ 9:26 pm
I have another name to consider…my son is a basketball player. He is a very, very good three point shooter. Every day he goes to the gym and puts up anywhere from 500 to 1000 shots. If that is not drilling, I don’t know what it is. However, he calls it “building muscle memory”. The repetition is needed so that when he gets the ball the desire to shoot becomes automatic. Isn’t that really what the “drills” are in school? Building the muscle memory for the foundation from which to advance to more complex skills by relying on the foundation built previously? Does this make sense?
Comment by tim-10-ber — September 21, 2010 @ 5:36 am
Automaticity is a term familiar to reading specialists, who know it as a critical component of the reading process. Patterns and programs established early in life enable students to proceed to higher level tasks, yet many teachers ignore this, probably due to lack of understanding. Knowledge of the brain and the miraculous things science now knows about how we learn has yet to impact education initiatives.
Comment by LynDee — September 21, 2010 @ 6:11 am
tim-10-ber,
Your son’s example is excellent and one that holds true for many areas of life.
If someone wants to be good at something, to excel, they must put the time into the activity. They have to be willing to practice. Whether it’s basketball, playing the piano, learning a foreign language, dance, it doesn’t matter. There are no shortcuts to success.
Rafael Nadal did not become the best tennis player in the world by dreaming about it. He worked at it. Yoyo Ma did not become the cellist he is or Midori the pianist she is by wishing it. They worked extremely hard to get to their levels of performance.
Drill and kill is one view, while some see it as drill to kill (the competition) as more accurate.
Comment by Paul Hoss — September 21, 2010 @ 11:30 am
I read a book on reading comprehension over the summer (precious reading time I’ll never get back) that recognized the importance of background knowledge, but totally missed the mark on its function.
The author essentially argued that background knowledge can be used by telling kids to “use what you already know” prior to a reading. Doing so, according to the author, will help students better comprehend what they read.
My question to the author, if I were given the opportunity to ask, would be how students are supposed to “use what they know” if they don’t actually know anything? The author mentioned nothing of the importance of building content knowledge through years of schooling.
Background knowledge is sort of like a computer program that runs automatically in the background without your awareness – it’s not something you can just turn on when you read. It can only come from years of building content knowledge – from memorizing it.
I wish more educators, administrators, school board members, and, especially, ed-reformers would figure that out.
Comment by Anthony Guzzaldo — September 22, 2010 @ 12:33 pm
As a teacher of second and third grade students, I know the frustrations these students feel when we do timed addition, subtraction, and multiplication facts. However, I am also able to see the joy in their faces when they meet a goal they have set for themselves. Because we require so much memorization of the facts, these students exercise this memorization muscle every day. Every fall they are shocked when they cannot get half as many addition facts as they did in the spring. It is then when we talk about how they have not used that math fact muscle much over the summer. With practice, the muscle does return and students are then able to do higher-level math with speed and accuracy.
Comment by Jaclyn DenOuden — September 22, 2010 @ 10:51 pm