Tag Archives: Life skills

Training versus learning or mastery

Leave a reply

Elias Canetti in his book, Crowds and Power, writes about the differences between training and learning or mastery. The discussion and distinctions seemed worth sharing here.

One trains a dog or a horse to perform a particular behavior with food and repetition.

One trains a child to perform a particular behavior with grades and repetition.

But neither the grade nor a successfully trained behavior demonstrates real mastery of a matter.

Training demonstrates varying degrees of ability to respond to externally generated commands. Mastery demonstrates an ability to operate successfully through a series of increasingly difficult and varied challenges or externally generated circumstances.

Here are some examples to illustrate:

  • spelling versus writing a short story or essay or play
  • 2+2=4 versus what is a ‘marginal tax rate’ or Return On Investment
  • naming colors versus exploring and creating an artistic painting
  • copying versus experimenting and inventing
  • practicing pitching versus playing an actual baseball game

Training as an end in itself only begins to prepare someone for the human game of life and all its challenges and possibilities.

Supporting an individual student to actually experience a level of mastery in response to externally generated circumstances supports them in continuing to approach their life with greater appreciation, creativity and satisfaction.

Without saying how to do that, it may still be worthwhile to both teacher and student to explore how to do that.

 

Research on Grit and Self-Control Recognized in “Genius Grant”

Leave a reply

JTF Grantee Awarded 2013 MacArthur Fellowship

As an associate professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Angela Duckworth’s work focuses on studying competencies beyond general intelligence and opportunity that predict academic and professional achievement. She is perhaps best known for her work surrounding the concepts of self-control and grit, and how those personality traits are better indicators of success than factors such as IQ and socioeconomic opportunity.

Click here to see 5 videos of Dr. Duckworth answering these 5 questions about her work and findings:

What is grit?

Are there virtues that are precursors or closely associated with grit?

What role does humility play, if any, in cultivating grit?

How has your personal story been a window into your research on grit?

What advice would you give to a parent who wanted to cultivate grit in their children?

The more things change, the more they stay the same

Leave a reply

From a letter to Benjamin Franklin from Mr. Benjamin Vaughn, January 31, 1783

“School and other education constantly proceed upon false principles, and show a clumsy apparatus pointed at a false mark; but your apparatus is simple, and the mark a true one; and while parents and young persons are left destitute of other just means of estimating and becoming prepared for a reasonable course In life, your discovery that the thing is in many a man’s private power, will be invaluable!  Influence upon the private character, late in life, is not only an influence late in life, but a weak influence.  It is in youth that we plant our chief habits and prejudices; it is in youth that we take our party as to profession, pursuits, and matrimony.  In youth, therefore, the turn is given; in youth the education even of the next generation is given; in youth the private and public character is determined; and the term of life extending but from youth to age, life ought to begin well from youth, and more especially before we take our party as to our principal objects.  But your biography will not merely teach self-education, but the education of a wise man; and the wisest man will receive lights and improve his progress, by seeing detailed the conduct of another wise man.  And why are weaker men to be deprived of such helps, when we see our race has been blundering on in the dark, almost without a guide in this particular from the farthest trace of time?  Show then sir, how much is to be done, both to sons and fathers; we invite all wise men to become like yourself, and other men to become wise when we see how cruel statesmen and warriors can be to the human race, and how absurd distinguished men can be to their acquaintance, it will be instructive to observe the instances multiply of pacific acquiescing manners; and to find how compatible it is to be great and domestic, enviable and yet good-humored.”

From The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Vaughn was born in 1751, and studied medicine in Edinburgh and was elected to Parliament.

 

How well does your school meet student expectations? Take this quiz to find out.

Leave a reply

The idea is that learning should be student centered. To do that we need to be clear on the expectations students have about their schools. The following diagram outlines the ten expectations which young people want from their schools.

Read more about these expectations and watch short videos of students discussing them in action here.

Lisa Nielsen created a ten question quiz based on these student expectations of school. This is a terrific conversation starter for transforming schools.

You can read the complete article here, take the quiz, and see how your school stacks up.

High School Dropout Success Story

Leave a reply

Design By Nature, Maggie MacnabThis is  from  “About The Author” from a wonderful book, “Design By Nature – Using Universal Forms And Principles In Design,” published 2012.

 

Quote from the first chapter on intuition and creativity, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”  – Albert Einstein

Maggie Macnab grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico with her parents, Sandy, an architect, and Arden, a poet and teacher, and her younger brother Jesse. Her interest in nature and its creative potential was encouraged by her father who gave her a microscope at age nine to see the invisible, read her science fiction shorts as bedtime stories, taught her to observe and draw nature, and took her camping and horseback riding in the high deserts of New Mexico. She learned early on to appreciate nature in all of its many guises in beautiful and mysterious places such as Chaco Canyon,the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Big Bend National Park, Puye Cliffs, and the Santa Fe River on Upper Canyon Road.

Maggie left school at age 16 with one credit outstanding toward graduation, determined not to spend another year in the public education system, and began training in commercial art (the predecessor to design) in Albuquerque in 1973 as a production artist. She learned hands-on with hot metal and emerging computerized typesetters, printers, and ad agencies in Albuquerque and Austin. Maggie started her freelance business in Albuquerque in 1981, subsequently winning national awards and receiving recognition in national design magazines and books from 1983 on. She raised her two children, Evan and Sommer, in the Sandia Mountains.

Maggie teaches design theory at the Digital Arts Program at the University of New Mexico/Albuquerque and for Santa Fe University of Art and Design. She is the most part self-taught and has pursued education in her own way, never looking back.

 

The takeaway: pay attention to and honor what you feel your gifts are and don’t be afraid to go where they take you.

Considering Competency-Based Education

Leave a reply

Considering Competency-Based Education

Quick summary:

Integrated student-centered year-round education is the way to go.

Shift emphasis from student endurance  to  student competence.

Shift matriculation from units of time  to  units of learning.

Shift matriculation from birthdays  to  demonstrations of competence.

Read the full article here.

Employers increasingly emphasizing ‘soft skills’

Leave a reply

A recent Associated Press article by Paul Wiseman says that top employers want college graduates with skills that don’t show up on school transcripts. I am hearing the same thing from local small and medium businesses about high school and community college graduates. So it’s across the board national and local.

Good potential employees have acquired the necessary knowledge and/or technical skills; exceptional potential employees also have ‘soft skills.’

So, just what are these ‘soft skills?’

  • works well in a team environment – gets along with co-workers
  • can write and speak with clarity and be understood – articulates ideas
  • adapts quickly to changes in technology and business conditions – solves problems on the fly – thinks on their feet
  • can interact with colleagues from different cultures and countries

And that’s the disconnect between what can be taught in a classroom and tested for to show progress for students, teachers, principles, school systems to state agencies and legislators – and what can’t be easily classroom taught or tested that employers are looking and needing to hire.

Solution: above my pay grade, but I can see and appreciate the problem.