In Why Don't Students Like School? I pointed out that cognitive challenge is engaging if it's at the right level of difficulty, but boring if it's too easy or too hard. It sounds, then, like it would make sense to organize students into different classes based on their prior achievement.

It might make sense cognitively, but the literature shows that such a practice leads to bad outcomes for the kids in lower tracks. Those classes tend to have less demanding curricula and and lower expectations for achievement (e.g., Brunello & Checchi, 2007).

Further, assignment to tracks is often biased by race or social class (e.g., Maaz et al., 2007).

What tracking does to students self-perceptions has been less clear. A new international study (Chmielewski et al., 2013) examined data from the 2003 PISA data set to examine the association of different types of tracking and student self-perceptions of mathematics self-concept.

The authors compared systems with

• Between school streaming: in which students with different levels of achievement are sent to different schools.
• Within school streaming: in which students with different levels of achievement are put in different sequences of courses for all subjects.
• Course-by-course tracking: in which students are assigned to more or less advanced courses within a school, depending on their achievement within a particular subject.

Controlling for individual achievement and the average achievement of the track or stream, the researchers found that course tracking is associated with worse self-perceptions among low-achieving students, but streaming is associated with better self-perceptions.

This figure shows the difference between the self perceptions of higher and lower achieving students in individual countries, sorted by the type of tracking system.

The data suggest that when students are tracked for some but not all of their courses, they compare their achievement to other, more advanced students, perhaps because they see these students more often. Students who are streamed within or between schools, in contrast, compare their abilities to their fellow stream-mates.

But why is there self-concept higher than higher-achieving students? This effect may be comparable to a more general phenomenon that people are poorer judges of their competence for tasks that they perform poorly. If you're not very good, you're not good enough to realize what you lack.

The authors do not suggest that between school steaming is the way to go (since it's associated with higher confidence). They note that the association is just the reverse of that seen in achievement: kids who stream between schools seem to take the biggest hit to achievement.

References

Brunello, G., & Checchi, D. (2007). Does school tracking affect equality of opportunity? New international evidence. Economic Policy, 22, 781–861.

Chmielewski, A. K., Dumont, H. Trautwein, U. (2013). Tracking effects depend on tracking type: An international comparison of students' mathematics self-concept. American Educatioal Research Journal, 50,  925-957.

Maaz, K., Trautwein, U., Ludtke, O., & Baumert, J. (2008). Educational transitions and differential learning environments: How explicit between-school tracking contributes to social inequality in educational outcomes. Child Developmental Perspectives, 2, 99–106.

If you follow education matters you know that the home environment in very early years are vital. One aspect of that home environment is the language infants and toddlers hear at home.

The groundbreaking work of Hart & Risley (1995; replicated by others, e.g. Huttenlocher et al, 2010) showed that socio-economic status of the parents is correlated with vast differences in the amount and complexity of language that children hear at home. 

But what aspect of this speech is important? Does speech need to be directed to children? Perhaps all that’s needed is for children to be in the presence of this more complex language. After all, we know that children do not learn language via instruction; they learn it by observation.

Three studies published in the last couple of years build a convincing case that parents should, indeed, talk to their children. Talking in the presence of their children (but to others) does not confer the same vocabulary benefit.

In the most recent study (Weisleder & Fernald, 2013), experimenters tested 29 Spanish-learning infants at age 19 months. The children wore a small device that made an audio recording of all speech to which the child was exposed. The audio recordings were analyzed by software meant to differentiate speech directed toward the child versus speech audible to the child, but directed to others. A subset of recordings was coded by human observers to ensure the accuracy of the software.

Recordings of a full day’s speech were analyzed and the results showed a huge range in child-directed speech; caregivers in one family spoke over 12,000 words to the child whereas in another family that figure was just 670 words. The amount of child-directed speech as not significantly correlated (r = .17) with the amount of overheard speech.

At 24 months the productive vocabulary of the children was measured by asking the parents to judge words that they believed their child understood and words that their child used.

Of greatest interest, the amount of child-directed speech at 19 months was correlated (r = .57) with vocabulary at 24 months. The amount of overheard speech at 19 months was not (r = .25).

The sample size in this study is limited and there were some quirky features. (E.g., the software sorting “child-directed” vs. overherd speech is good, but not perfect.) But my confidence in the conclusion is bolstered by reports of the same finding from another lab, investigating speakers of other languages: English (Schneidman et al, 2013) and Yucatec (Schneidman & Goldin-Meadow, 2012).

Why must speech be directed to the child?

Weisleder & Fernald administered another task at 19 months meant to measure word processing efficiency. They speculated that the effect of child-directed speech on vocabulary was mediated through efficiency—something like, for example, the speed and accuracy with which the particular phonemes of the child’s language are processed.

This doesn’t fully explain the difference between child-directed and overheard speech. The obvious hypothesis is that other cues (e.g. eye gaze direction) prompt greater attention to speech that is child-directed, and that attention is necessary to build efficiency.

More details will have to await further research. For now, we can say with greater confidence “talk to your children” not just “talk in the presence of your children.”

References

Hart, B. M., & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children. Baltimore, MD: Brookes.

Huttenlocher, J., Waterfall, H., Vasilyeva, M., Vevea, J., & Hedges, L. V. (2010). Sources of variability in children’s language growth. Cognitive Psychology, 61, 343–365.

Shneidman, L. A., Arroyo, M. E., Levine, S., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2013). What counts as effective input for word learning? Journal of Child Language, 40, 672–686.

Shneidman, L. A., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2012). Language input and acquisition in a Mayan village: How important is directed speech? Developmental Science, 15, 659–673.

Weisleder, A. & Fernald, A. (2013). Talking to children matters: Early language experience strengthens processing and builds vocabulary. Psychological Science, DOI: 10.1177/0956797613488145

Ten people you may not have known were teachers.

1) John Adams was not the only U.S. President to have taught school, but he was the first to have done so. After his graduation from Harvard, he became the master of the grammar school in Worcester, Massachusetts. Adams did not enjoy the post. He described his students as “little runtlings, just capable of lisping A, B, C, and troubling the master.”

2) Alexander Graham Bell is best known to us as the inventor of the telephone, of course, but he had broad interests in sound, elocution, and speech. His mother and his wife were deaf, a significant factor in his experimentation with devices to improve hearing, culminating in the telephone. Bell taught at Susanna E. Hull’s private school for the deaf in London, working on his experiments in his spare time.

3) Gail Borden was an inventor and businessman. In 1853 he applied for a patent for a method of removing 75% of the water from milk and adding sugar to what remained, a process that led to a stable shelf-life. Borden soon established a food company to sell his evaporated milk. It would become Borden foods with its recognizable mascot, Elsie the Cow. (The company went under in 2001, but many of it more popular products were bought out by other manufacturers). As a young man, Borden taught school for seven years in Amite County, Mississippi.

4) Levi Coffin was an anti-slavery activist and is often referred to as the “President” of the underground railroad, which he supported financially and by using his home in Fountain City, Indiana as a safe house for escaped slaves.  As a young man, Coffin taught in a school for whites for several years in New Garden, North Carolina. In 1821 he tried to open a school for black pupils, but local slave-holders forced its closure. He moved to Indiana three years later.

5) Robert Frost may be the most beloved American poet, known for his depictions of New England rural life. After making a marginal living as a farmer, Frost taught English at the Pinkerton Academy in Derry, NH for five years. Doubtless from this experience, Frost offered many quotable thoughts on education, such as “There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can’t move, and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies.”

6) Andy Griffith is best known for his television roles on the Andy Griffith Show and Matlock, but he first made his name in 1953 with a big-selling comedic monologue, What it was, was football.  Before that first success Griffith was a high school music teacher in Goldsboro, North Carolina. Curiously, other cast members from the Andy Griffith Show had similar pasts: George Lindsey (“Goober”) was a high school history teacher in Huntsville Alabama, and both Don Knotts (“Barney Fife”) and Frances Bavier (“Aunt Bee”) had intended to become teachers before being persuaded to give acting a try.

(7) Lyndon B. Johnson is viewed, on the one hand, as a man of real compassion. Architect of “The Great Society,” he championed legislative programs for Civil Rights, for government-supported health care for the poor and elderly, increased support for education, and the “War on Poverty.” On the other hand, Johnson is also well known for a larger-than-life personality, and for being very tough when seeking support for his legislative goals. Both personality characteristics might have come in handy in his life as a teacher. Johnson taught at a segregated elementary school for children of Mexican descent in Cotulla Texas in the late 1920s. He later taught public speaking at a high school in Houston. Many of his biographers say that Johnson’s experience as a teacher had a profound impact on him. In a speech given in 1965, Johnson said “I shall never forget the faces of the boys and the girls in that little Welhausen Mexican School, and I remember even yet the pain of realizing and knowing then that college was closed to practically every one of those children because they were too poor. And I think it was then that I made up my mind that this Nation could never rest while the door to knowledge remained closed to any American.”

(8) The reception of D. H. Lawrence’s poems and novels was uneven during his lifetime, but most today view him as one of the great voices of modernism in the early 20th century, and certainly at the vanguard in the treatment of sexuality in the English novel. At the age of 23, Lawrence taught at the Davidson Road elementary school in South London. A still undiscovered writer, he got much support from his fellow teachers, who loaned him books, read his work, and encouraged him. Some are thought to appear as characters in his novels.

(9) It is hard to believe that Gene Simmons could have been a teacher. He is known best as the frontman for the 1970′s rock band Kiss (right), known for outrageous shows during which Simmons would spit blood, breath fire, and taunt the audience. But Simmons did teach sixth grade in Spanish Harlem. Simmons was reportedly fired for, among other things, replacing the Shakespearean play in the curriculum with Spiderman comics.

10. Carter G. Woodson is commonly called the Father of Black History. Woodson graduated from Berea College in 1900 and in 1912 was the first African-American of slave parentage to earn a PhD from Harvard University. Woodson believed that the history of Black America had been misrepresented and had not been the subject of serious study. To address the problem, in 1915 he co-founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (later renamed the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History). Woodson was an essential figure in bringing Black history academic credibility as well as popularity–he was also one of the founders of Black History Month. Woodson taught high school in Fayette county while he attended Berea and was named Principal in his last year there. From 1903-1906 Woodson taught in the Philippines while it was a U.S. protectorate, and taught High School again in Washington, D.C. while working on his PhD dissertation in the Library of Congress.

This blog was originally published at Britannica.com

The cover story of latest New Republic wonders whether American educators have fallen in blind love with self-control. Author Elizabeth Weil thinks we have. Titled “American Schools Are Failing Nonconformist Kids: In Defense of the Wild Child” the article suggests that educators harping on self-regulation are really trying to turn kids into submissive little robots. And they do so because little robots are easier to control in the classroom.

But lazy teachers are not the only cause. Education policy makers are also to blame, according to Weil. She writes that “valorizing self-regulation shifts the focus away from an impersonal, overtaxed, and underfunded school system and places the burden for overcoming those shortcomings on its students.”

And the consequence of educators’ selfishness? Weil tells stories that amount to Self-Regulation Gone Wild. A boy has trouble sitting cross-legged in class—the teacher opines he should be tested because something must be wrong with him. During story time the author’s daughter doesn’t like to sit still and to raise her hand when she wants to speak. The teacher suggests occupational therapy.

I can see why Weil and her husband were angry when their daughter’s teacher suggested occupational therapy simply because the child’s behavior was an inconvenience to him. But I don’t take that to mean that there is necessarily a widespread problem in the psyche of American teachers. I take that to mean that their daughter’s teacher was acting like a selfish bastard.

The problem with stories, of course, is that there are stories to support nearly anything. For every story a parent could tell about a teacher diagnosing typical behavior as a problem, a teacher could tell a story about a child who really could do with some therapeutic help, and whose parents were oblivious to that fact.

What about evidence beyond stories?

Weil cites a study by Duncan et al (2007) that analyzed six large data sets and found social-emotional skills were poor predictors of later success.

She also points out that creativity among American school kids dropped between 1984 and 2008 (as measured by the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking) and she notes “Not coincidentally, that decrease happened as schools were becoming obsessed with self-regulation.”

There is a problem here. Weil uses different terms interchangeably: self-regulation, grit, social-emotional skills. They are not same thing. Self-regulation (most simply put) is the ability to hold back an impulse when you think that that the impulse will not serve other interests. (The marshmallow study would fit here.) Grit refers to dedication to a long-term goal, one that might take years to achieve, like winning a spelling bee or learning to play the piano proficiently. Hence, you can have lots of self-regulation but not be very gritty. Social emotional skills might have self-regulation as a component, but it refers to a broader complex of skills in interacting with others.

These are not niggling academic distinctions. Weil is right that some research indicates a link between socioemotional skills and desirable outcomes, some doesn’t. But there is quite a lot of research showing associations between self-control and positive outcomes for kids including academic outcomes, getting along with peers, parents, and teachers, and the avoidance of bad teen outcomes (early unwanted pregnancy, problems with drugs and alcohol, et al.). I reviewed those studies here. There is another literature showing associations of grit with positive outcomes (e.g., Duckworth et al, 2007).

Of course, those positive outcomes may carry a cost. We may be getting better test scores (and fewer drug and alcohol problems) but losing kids’ personalities. Weil calls on the reader’s schema of a “wild child,” that is, an irrepressible imp who may sometimes be exasperating, but whose very lack of self-regulation is the source of her creativity and personality.

But irrepressibility and exuberance is not perfectly inversely correlated with self-regulation. The purpose of self-regulation is not to lose your exuberance. It’s to recognize that sometimes it’s not in your own best interests to be exuberant. It’s adorable when your six year old is at a family picnic and impulsively practices her pas de chat because she cannot resist the Call of the Dance. It’s less adorable when it happens in class when everyone else is trying to listen to a story.

So there’s a case to be made that American society is going too far in emphasizing self-regulation. But the way to make it is not to suggest that the natural consequence of this emphasis is the crushing of children’s spirits because self-regulation is the same thing as no exuberance. The way to make the case is to show us that we’re overdoing self-regulation. Kids feel burdened, anxious, worried about their behavior.

Weil doesn’t have data that would bear on this point. I don’t either. But my perspective definitely differs from hers. When I visit classrooms or wander the aisles of Target, I do not feel that American kids are over-burdened by self-regulation.

As for the decline in creativity from 1984 and 2008 being linked to an increased focus on self-regulation…I have to disagree with Weil’s suggestion that it’s not a coincidence (setting aside the adequacy of the creativity measure). I think it might very well be a coincidence. Note that scores on the mathematics portion of the long-term NAEP increased during the same period. Why not suggest that kids improvement in a rigid, formulaic understanding of math inhibited their creativity?

Can we talk about important education issues without hyperbole? 

References

Duckworth, A. L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M. D., & Kelly, D. R. (2007). Grit: perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of personality and social psychology, 92(6), 1087.

Duncan, G. J., Dowsett, C. J., Claessens, A., Magnuson, K., Huston, A. C., Klebanov, P., ... & Japel, C. (2007). School readiness and later achievement. Developmental psychology, 43(6), 1428.

Amanda Ripley's new book, The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way, has garnered positive reviews in the Economist, the New York Times, USA Today, the Daily Beast and US News and World Report.

Is it really that good?

It's pretty darn good.

As the subtitle promises, Ripley sets out tell the education success stories of three countries: Finland and South Korea (whose 15 year olds score very high on the PISA test) and Poland (offered as an example of a country in transition, and making significant progress).

What's Ripley's answer to the subtitle? They got that way by engaging, from an early age, in rigorous work that poses significant cognitive challenge. In other words, the open secret is the curriculum.

Along the way to this conclusion, she dispenses with various explanations for US kids mediocre performance on the science and math portions of PISA. I've made these arguments myself so naturally I found them persuasive:

• Poverty is higher in the US. Not compared to Poland. And other countries with low poverty (e.g. Norway) don't end up with well educated kids. The relevant statistic is how much worse poor kids do relative to rich kids within a country. The US fares poorly on this statistic. 
• The US doesn't spend enough money on education. Actually we outspend nearly everyone. But because of local funding we perversely shower money on schools attended by the wealthy and spend less on the schools attended by poor kids.
  
• The US has lots of immigrants and they score low. Other countries do a better job of educating kids who do not speak the native language.
  
• The kids in other countries who take PISA are the elite. Arguably true in Shanghai, but not Korea or Finland, both of which boast higher graduation rates than the US. 
• Why should we compare our kids to those of foreign countries? It's not a race. Because those other kids are showing what we could offer our own children, and are not.
  

What is the explanation? According to Ripley, there is a primary postulate running through the psyche of South Koreans, Finns, and Poles when it comes to education: an expectation that the work will be hard. Everything else is secondary. So anything that gets in the way, anything that compromises the work, will be downplayed or eliminated. Sports, for example. Kids do that on their own time, and it's not part of school culture.

Several consequences follow from this laser-like focus on academic rigor. For example, if schoolwork is challenging kids are going to fail frequently. So failure necessarily is seen as a normal part of the learning process, and as an opportunity for learning, not a cause of shame.

If the academic work for students will be difficult, teachers will necessarily have to be very carefully selected and well trained. And you'll do whatever is necessary to make that happen. Even if it means, as in Finland, offering significant financial support during their training.

So what is the primary postulate of American education?

Ripley doesn't say, and I'm not sure Americans are sufficiently unified to name one. But two assumptions strike me as candidates.

First, that learning is natural, natural meaning that a propensity to learn is innate, instinctive and therefore inevitable. That, in turn, means that it should be easy. This assumption is pretty much the opposite of the one Ripley assigns to South Korea, Finland, and Poland.

Many Americans seem to think that it's not normal for schoolwork to be challenging enough that it takes persistence. In fact, if you have to try much harder than other kids, in our system you're a good candidate for a diagnosis and an IEP.

This expectation that things should be easy may explain our credulity for educational gimmicks, for that's what gimmicks do: they promise to make learning easy for everyone. Can't learn math? It's because your learning style hasn't been identified. Trouble with Spanish? This new app will make it fun and effortless.

The second assumption I often see is that "rigor" and "misery" are synonyms. Rigor means that you will be challenged. It means you may not succeed quickly. It means your cognitive resources will be stretched. It doesn't mean you are being punished, nor that you will be unhappy.

At the same time, I can't agree with the "play is all you need" crowd. Play can be cognitively enriching, but that doesn't mean that all play is cognitively enriching.

It's easy to create schoolwork that's rigorous and a grind likely to make kids hate school. Ripley offers South Korea as an example. Children there are miserable, adults hate the system, and despite kids' excellent test scores, everyone sees the Korean system as dysfunctional.

It's much tougher to educate kids in a way that is challenging but engaging. That's Finland, according to Ripley. And she's here to remind us that most of what has been pointed to as responsible for the Finnish miracle is not. What's responsible is the rigor of the work kids have been asked to do.

Will Americans embrace this idea, and demand that our education system challenge our kids? Will they embrace it to the point that they will follow this primary postulate whither it may lead?

I think Ripley's right to suggest that it's essential.  I think the odds that Americans will follow through are remote.