More on Self-Control

I was considering posting a follow-up to the previous entry, and Sherman Dorn has convinced me that it was necessary (don't you hate it when somebody who knows more than you do about a topic points out all the holes in your analysis?). I make a strenuous effort to keep these posts short so that they're easier to read for those of us with short attention spans and busy schedules, but that often means something gets left out. In this case a lot got left out. And, to be frank, a lot will still be left out after this post.

Anyway, back to self-control. I mentioned David Brooks' op-ed in the last post. In it he recounts Walter Mischel's marshmallow experiment from about 30 years ago. To summarize: 4-year olds were left in an empty room with a marshmallow and had two options: 1) ring the bell and eat the marshmallow, or 2) wait for the adult to come back (without being called) and give them a 2nd marshmallow. In short, those with more self-control were able to sweat it out and receive double the marshmallows while those with less simply succumbed to temptation and ate the one that was there. So, why does this matter? The kids from the two groups (those that waited and those that rang) were tracked into adulthood and the kids who were able to wait got higher test-scored, attended more prestigious colleges, earned more money, etc.

So now we're back to where we were in the last post. If self-control is so important, why don't schools teach it more? Well, like seemingly everything in schools, there is a delicate balancing act involved. Imagine if your kid learned nothing but self-control and discipline in school (no math, reading, etc.) -- you'd be furious, and rightfully so. On the other hand, I'm pretty convinced that the kids with less self-control learn a lot less than those with more, so it seems like teaching some self-control could lead to greater learning.

I've been told (by somebody who attended 1st grade in China) that the lesson on the first day of 1st grade in China is how to sit properly in a chair -- and that kids are expected to go home and practice. One can imagine what a dreadful education this would be if that was the only lesson for a year, but might there be some value in spending one day on it?

Anyway, the point is that students need to learn both self-control and academic topics and that focusing too much on one and not enough on the other could prove detrimental.

I think it has a lot of similarities to discipline in school; some level of order is necessary to facilitate learning, but focusing solely on order means that students never learn any subject matter. You could look at character education the same way.

Can we integrate lessons in self-control with lessons in reading, math, etc.? If so (and I think the answer is "yes"), then I think we should. While psychologists and others have studied self-control, I almost never heard it mentioned among teachers or in teacher education and I almost never hear it now in the news or in policy circles. I'll be the first to admit that there's no easy solution, but I think self-control is too important to ignore.

Resisting Impulses and Delaying Gratification

A couple days ago a pair of scientists wrote an op-ed in the NY Times that concluded "consistently doing any activity that requires self-control seems to increase willpower — and the ability to resist impulses and delay gratification is highly associated with success in life."

I occasionally like to step back and re-examine the current structure of schooling rather than just finding tweaks that would make it better, and I have to say that my reaction to the final sentence was "if this is highly associated with success in life, then is this what we should be teaching in school?"

Now, to be fair, I was already pre-disposed to answering "yes" to that question. Before starting teaching I was pretty sure I knew what was wrong with schools and how to fix them. I quickly discovered that I was wrong, and I discovered a few things that I never would have named as problems. One of these, and maybe the most important one, was self-control. From my perspective, there was no greater difference between the students that succeeded and those who floundered than the amount of self-control that they exhibited.

Near the end of my second year of teaching David Brooks wrote this op-ed in which he comes to a similar conclusion. Maybe I'm just looking the wrong places, but so far I can't disagree with his statement that self-control is "largely ignored by educators and policy makers." Indeed, I've only seen it mentioned in one study since that I can remember I started grad school.

I'm not really sure what the research base is on the linkage between self-control and "success" in life, but I see no reason not to believe people who know more than me when they say that there is a strong correlation. And I can't help but wonder if self-control is more important to teach than, say, an extra period of math.

The Most Compelling Argument Against NCLB

When the No Child Left Behind Act was passed in 2001, it had the potential to both a world of good and a world of bad for education. Why the law and its implementation has been good or bad (or both) has been the subject of countless articles, commentaries, and debates. Now the law is up for renewal and the debates have become even more focused. A lot of people argue that there is some redeeming quality to NCLB (a lot of people like accountability, for instance, or the fact that that the stated goal is essentially to close the achievement gap) but that it needs to be tweaked. While the cacophony continues in Washington, I was lucky enough to catch a bit of a different argument on campus -- twice.

Richard Rothstein was on campus in the fall, and then was on campus again last week for the performance pay conference and stopped by our class to fill us in on his research. His argument against NCLB is the most compelling (and thorough) that I have heard. It goes something like this:

Throughout American history, virtually every important figure has set forth as the goals of education to not only provide basic academic skills to students, but also to teach many other things, such as: critical thinking, social skills, physical and emotional health, and far too many other things to list here. He has compiled an exhaustive supply of quotes and documents supporting this.

NCLB, meanwhile, holds schools accountable only for their performance on tests of basic skills in reading and math. As a result, many studies have shown, schools are increasing the time they spend on reading, math, and test prep, and reducing the time they spend on other activities.

Given that, throughout our history, basic academic skills have been but one purpose of schooling, Rothstein set out to see how important these skills are compared to other things that people want schools to teach. The general public, school board members, state legislators, and superintendents (through extensive surveying) all agreed that basic skills were the most important function of schooling, but indicated that out of 100 possible points spread across 8 different functions only about 20% should be focused on these. The other 80% of schooling, they responded, should be focused on things such as the list I mentioned earlier.

Here's why I like this approach to critiquing NCLB:
It's not an ideological position. He doesn't argue that standardized testing or accountability are inherently good or evil. What he finds is, quite simply, that NCLB encourages schools to focus on only a small portion of what is important and, for that reason, needs to be changed. In 1830 (to cite one of his incredible list of quotations) the Joint Committee of Philadelphia Workingmen argued that everybody should receive a broad education "rather than being limited, as in our public poor schools, to a simple acquaintance with words and ciphers." Unfortunately this seems to be happening under NCLB; the law needs to encourage schools to teach all the important topics rather than condemning students to learn nothing but the basics.