Book review: "It's the curriculum, stupid"

9/2/2013

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.

Richard link

9/2/2013 03:12:01 am

Excellent points, the book is certainly a good read. As one parent said to her daughter when she complained that her science class was challenging, "yeah, that's why they call it 'Chemistry' and not picnic!" We tend to coddle and make excuses rather than embrace rigor. And, by the way, rigor can also be engaging and exciting. I look to the day when the world uses us as the model for academic excellence. This book may help us turn the corner!

ProfessorEnron

9/2/2013 04:58:25 am

By contrast, my Dean says that since our students find math and science difficult we need to dumb these down. In writing.

Roger Sweeny

9/2/2013 05:00:20 am

Interesting that the (American?) title misrepresents what the book is about. She doesn't claim that South Korean, Finnish, or Polish kids are smarter than American kids. She says that they have learned more. In fact, the whole point of the book is that certain changes in other countries will increase what kids in those countries learn, without any change in the average intelligence of the kids.

Dan Willingham link

9/2/2013 05:03:47 am

@Roger Actually I think the title is approrpriate. Ripley would say (and I'd agree) that "smart" definitely includes what you've learned. Intelligence is not something are, it's something you get through experience, esp. experience that challenges you.

Roger Sweeny

9/4/2013 11:20:05 am

I don't think that's how most people use the word "smart." What Ripley is describing would be called knowledgeable or accomplished, learned, maybe competent, qualified, well-trained. The way most people (maybe not most academics) use words, intelligence is indeed something you are.

Thus two cliches: "Joe is smart but he's lazy; he'll never amount to anything." "Asians think students succeed if they work hard; Americans think students succeed if they are smart."

Tim Holt link

9/2/2013 06:42:59 am

Alfie Kohn does not share your exuberance for this work: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/08/29/five-bad-education-assumptions-the-media-keeps-recycling/

Dan Willingham

9/2/2013 07:59:23 am

Probably not, but he hadn't read it when he posted this. He was responding to Annie Murphy Paul's review of the book, not the book.

Alton

9/9/2013 04:22:05 pm

Why would he do that? Professionals publicly comment on books they haven't read, about stuff they don't know? The pros?

Tom Conry

9/2/2013 09:21:01 am

I am looking forward to reading this, and appreciate your review.

You wrote: "The second assumption I often see is that "rigor" and "misery" are synonyms."

For me, and I imagine, for you and most everyone who is on this blog, this has never been true. The more rigor in the lesson, the greater the chance that we would be rewarded in two ways: first, by thinking hard and then succeeding (e.g. your crossword puzzle example in Why Students Hate School), and second, by publicly rising above our classmates. This was the way we claimed our place in the group.

However, for many - most! - other students, rigor was experienced as misery, in part because the above two reasons were occasions to feel shame and anomie.

You seem to be arguing that a change in curriculum and more enlightened teachers can change this situation for the better. However, work by sociologists (Pierre Bourdieu, inter alia) seem to demonstrate (to my satisfaction, at least) that the social conditions that produce this shame and anomie are quite compex and deeply rooted in class structure and in the social conditions that produce our consciousness.

Could you address the weight of those factors on the thesis of The Smartest Kids in the World?

Thank you for reading this, and for all you do, which has been tremendously helpful for me and my colleagues.

Dan Willingham

9/2/2013 09:03:38 pm

@Tom I am not well versed in the sociological literature, but it doesn't make sense to me that these factors would be determinative. I'm pretty convinced by Dweck's argument that the critical factor is how kids construe intelligence. If you see intelligence as something you build over time through your own hard work, there's no reason to be ashamed by failure--you're just not there yet and need to keep at it. If, in contrast, you view intelligence as an unchangeable, inherent part of you, then failure is much more threatening

Tom Sundstrom link

9/2/2013 12:59:49 pm

Could competency-based learning be a pathway for American schools to implement this idea? If competencies are defined at teachable and measurable granularity and included cognitive levels, it seems like classroom operations would naturally migrate in this direction.

Dan Willingham

9/2/2013 09:05:53 pm

Tom, I think it could, but the "granularity" part would be controversial, right? You'd have to get to the point of a state or national curriculum, I think.

Will Richardson link

9/3/2013 12:59:20 am

Hey Dan,

What if we looked at it a different way, seeking out the smartest learners instead of just the smartest (primarily in the context of knowledge)? Wouldn't you agree that kids who pursue topics that they care about build in their own "rigor"? And isn't helping kids develop as powerful learners more important now than force-feeding a curriculum that rarely allows kids to become masters at anything?

I see "the curriculum" and the way it's delivered (in the service of passing a test of knowledge and limited skills and, subsequently, determining the value of the teacher) as the chief demotivator of learning in my own kids. They're checking boxes.

Learning is inevitable, but you err in suggesting that therefore it should be easy. Our challenge is creating opportunities for kids to learn deeply about things they care about through doing challenging work that matters. As Seymour Sarason says, productive learning is driven by "wanting to learn more." Absent that, learning is "unproductive," it's not sticky. Every one of our kids will "learn" lots of things that they will turn around and quickly forget because it has no relevance, and that applies to Finnish kids, Polish kids, Korean kids, etc.

We need to turn this conversation more toward learning rather than "smartest" or most "high achieving" which may be easier to measure but, in the end, narrow the focus of schooling to the detriment of our kids.

Dan Willingham

9/3/2013 02:15:17 am

@Will I think it's likely that they build rigor in what they care about... and my hunch is that not using a curriculum but rather having student interest play a significant role in the selection of content will exaggerate current differences within kids in their skills and knowledge. That's not necessarily bad--this is where values come in to education.
The book (and blog) are really about national approaches to education. Is there a nation following the principle you suggest that serves as a model (either for good or for bad)?

Ima X. Zawsted

9/3/2013 03:03:25 am

I suppose there once was a nation that contained pockets of educational innovation, some of which were modeled on the notion that self-motivation produced the kind of rigorous approach to learning that really counts - the kind that produced lasting intellectual value. It was a side effect of a huge and diversified educational system comprised of many thousands of largely autonomous school districts with millions of teachers. Like a diverse biological ecosystem, it had its failures and its successes. And like a biological ecosystem, the diversity of the educational ecosystem was one of its greatest strengths, ensuring robustness in a changing and uncertain world of challenges that cannot be imagined by an individual or a committee. The success of that system speaks for itself in the nation it sustained.

That system appears to be dying and giving way to regimentation, conformity and adherence to some kind of educational Protestant work ethic. The definition of rigor has been taken to its root: stiff.

Your observations are a hodgepodge of anecdotal assertions. Let me cherrypick from the cherries you've chosen:

"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 relevant statistic is how much worse poor kids do relative to rich kids within a country. The US fares poorly on this statistic."

Like the nose on my face.

Ray

9/4/2013 11:40:16 am

It's the teachers, stupid.. In fact Finnish teachers have a high degree of autonomy. While teachers are provided with a very brief description of the skills that children should master at each grade level, the teachers are free to develop their own curriculum in order to impart these skills. What sets Finnish education apart is both the selectivity and high quality of their teaching programs. You will not find any nation that is able to provide world class educational outcomes without excellent teachers.

Education Realist link

9/8/2013 02:46:57 pm

I thought Finland does have tracking after age 16.

You--and Ripley--appear to be saying three things:

1) Intelligence is not largely fixed.

2) American students expect learning to be easy.

3) By changing these students' cultural values, we can improve educational outcomes.

While IQ isn't destiny, it's pretty absurd to argue that it's irrelevant to educational outcomes. For example, the reason the gap between our poor and wealthy is so much wider is probably because our poor are disproportionately black and Hispanic, who have lower average IQs than the whites and Asians that make up Korea, Shanghai, and Finland. That would also explain why our poor whites outscore our non-poor blacks on most measures of academic achievement.

Second, there's really no point in talking about "America's students". There is no typical American student; we must sort by race then SES. For example, Asian Americans most assuredly don't think school should be easy. ( I always get the sense that academics write about "American students" with white suburban kids in mind, thinking them lazy slugs who watch too much TV.) I would argue that no students really think school should be easy. They do think school is too hard. After having watched many students work incredibly hard, only to be held back (but not defeated) by cognitive limitations, I find it quite insulting to imply that either teachers, parents, or students think school should be easy. But that's pretty much what's left if we are to determinedly pretend cognitive ability is irrelevant. Ever notice that everyone who talks about educational achievement in this country is just running around looking for someone to blame?

*If* anyone wishes to argue that Americans just want school to be easy, then apparently we must somehow change the cultural values of an entire population. Lots of luck with that.

I agree that more money won't solve the problem, that poverty per se isn't the problem. I disagree that immigrants are not causing harm to our educational system, both Hispanic and Asian, but not because of their impact on test scores (good or bad).

One more thing: how can anyone can talk about the educational system in either Korea or Shanghai without acknowledging the rampant cheating at every point in both systems?

Easy Online Insurance Continuing Education Course link

9/9/2013 12:12:05 am

I agree with your opinion poverty is higher in the US. A lot of kids don't study in U.S because he/she is poor and his/her parents can not afford his school fees.

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Book review: "It's the curriculum, stupid"

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