Markham
Commentary

Thoughts on partnering with the millennial generation

Web: http://www.thommarkham.com/
Email: thom@thomarkham.com

In this issue:

Intelligence: The Great Mystery
Part 2: Designing education to make students more intelligent

Resources Listed in this issue:

Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

www.ascd.org

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Dear Colleague:

In my view it’s time to forward a worldwide conversation about education that has not yet taken place much in public, but which has begun to rumble through every country like a mega earthquake. I label the conversation ‘educating from within.’ At the core of the conversation is a basic fact: 50% of the world’s population is under age 25 and they will come to adulthood in a technological, globally linked world that the current generation of adults can barely foresee. Mostly, we respond to this millennial wave of youth using outdated assumptions, including the beliefs that children won’t learn unless subjected to a set of rigid standards, that schools exist to teach students to compete in a global economy, and that harnessing children to an ever-improved curriculum will finally, at last, force them to learn what they need to know.

None of this will work, or is working. I’m not the first to note this, but I do sense a new storyline emerging. First, we have learned that love, respect, and communication are better motivators than fear, meaning that educators must find ways to engage youth through personalized appeals to their dreams and aspirations. Second, youth want to cooperate, not compete. Hammering them with grim statistics about “losing the competitive edge” will yield little in the way of performance; if we want high achievement, we need to help them become skillful, knowledgeable, and passionate collaborators. And third, given the swirl of forces surrounding their lives, the children themselves—their very nature and being—is changing in ways we do not understand, meaning we had better inquire within about their state of mind and heart.

I invite you to join me in some occasional thinking about the millennial generation and how adults respond to a worldwide shift that requires us to customize learning for a global, transforming world.

-- Thom Markham, Ph.D.

Intelligence: The Great Mystery

Part Two: Designing education to make students more intelligent

On a recent plane trip, I sat next to a hip young man, about 20 years old with an earring and an iPod, who was doing something that many young people don’t. He was reading a serious book on politics and history. Ever on the lookout for success stories, I struck up a conversation about his education. Turns out, his account of how he educated himself caused me to wonder, again: Do schools help students master intelligent behaviors that lead to success in life? Or not?

Here’s the thumbnail: After spending two years at a community college, the young man had just won a prestigious, full-ride Regents scholarship to the University of California at Irvine. Attending a two-year college out of high school had been his choice, he told me. Each of his three older siblings had graduated with 4.3 grade point averages from his highly regarded suburban high school—and he noticed that they all ended up hating high school. Too focused on grades, they felt stressed and time pressured. And, in an ironic twist, his sister was not accepted by the college of her choice because she hadn’t participated in extracurricular activities. He also told me that earning a 4.3 G.P.A. wasn’t a motivating challenge for him. “It’s easy enough to get good grades in high school,” he shrugged. “You just study all the time and don’t do anything else.”

 His decision from 9^th grade on? Focus on subjects that were meaningful to him; use the time saved for life-enhancing electives; become skillful rather than grub for grades. As a result, he turned his success in high school drama into a communications major at the community college, which he chose because of a strong connection to a supportive mentor there. Two years of stellar performance on the college debate team earned him the scholarship—a successful outcome by any measure.  

 In my June Commentary, I recounted how schools generally regard intelligence as an innate, crystallized ability that is determined at birth and never changes. This outdated, ‘cognitive capsule’ view of intelligence has spawned the current methods of choice in public education—the focus on fixed capacity and retention of information, as measured through high-stakes testing. This view of intelligence also leads to student stratification. On a recent trip to Texas, I was surprised to learn that the schools there use standardized measures to identify ‘gifted’ children at the age of five, setting in motion 12 years of special attention, while other students remain categorized as ‘low’ or ‘middle’ achievers by the school system.

 I also indicated how much this view diverges from the latest research on intelligence. For one thing, between 1947 and 2001, U.S. students added a mysterious 17 points to their IQ test scores—an unforeseen surge that scientists cannot explain and a trend that shows signs of accelerating in this decade. Further, due to advances in our understanding of personality, creativity, emotional intelligence, neuroscience, and social dynamics, the entire field of intelligence is now in disarray. Most experts now grope for a more dynamic definition of intelligence that incorporates native ability, environmental influences, and personality into a holistic understanding of how people behave intelligently.

 Should educators be doing the same? I think so. As noted psychologist Robert Sternberg says, “In a world so beset with problems, perhaps the most important thing to understand is not the intelligence of people, but how they use it.” But if we truly want to encourage intelligent behavior in schools—to prepare students for a world that demands that they make informed choices, manage uncertainty, and live by entrepreneurial norms—then we need to do more than simply abandon the old model of intelligence. In fact, preparing students to act intelligently requires educators to think through a number of issues.

 Consider these implications:

·         Intelligent behavior is not amenable to reward and punishment. Rather, students now ask: Is this worth doing? Intelligent behavior draws students naturally to authentic tasks that contain meaning. That means educators must find a new balance between constructivism and accountability—between creative tasks and information. Bottom line, students need to be freed from the constraints of a rigid, fact-filled day and offered flexible opportunities to pursue learning.     

·         Intelligent behavior is mediated by personality; it is not an innate reflex. Mood, outlook, experience, goals, and communication style all impact behavior. The trend toward personalized and differentiated instruction reflects what teachers know: a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to learning does not really work. And, the more we personalize, the more difficult it becomes to standardize. This conflict lies at the heart of discussions about the future of education. How do we create multiple pathways for inquiry and innovation—which are necessary to appeal to the broad range of talents and interests in today’s youth—while still teaching a core curriculum?

·         Intelligent behavior is highly related to self-efficacy. Students will ask: Can I succeed at this? As I have stated before, rigor should no longer be defined by the ‘hardness’ of work, but instead should represent a standard for students’ practical, adaptive skills and their habits of mind. But personal mastery does not occur through lectures and testing—it happens through practice and feedback, with the teacher as a supportive mentor. In essence, if educators want to have students learn intelligent behaviors, they must become facilitators of learning—a big change from grading essays.

·         Intelligent behavior is a whole body exercise. Seminal research by psychologists and neuroscientists tells us that motivation, perception, effort, and engagement—all central to intelligent behavior—do not arise solely in the brain. As data correlating school climate and academic achievement show, emotions and the environment impact cognition in powerful ways, both negatively and positively. If we want to promote intelligent behavior, we need to incorporate emotional intelligence into the mainstream of the school day. For starters, it’s time to let go of the outdated distinction between cognitive and affective learning. Here, I’d like to plug the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) for their relentless focus on whole child education. In the face of the current testing mania, it’s brave. It’s also right, in the sense that whole child education produces far more capable young people.

To my mind, the issues around intelligence rise above simple arguments over educational philosophy. I believe emphasizing a narrow form of intelligence makes our children less smart, in the sense that they become less capable of solving problems and using what they know. It’s actually a squandering of human capital that the world can ill-afford. In fact, since most parents know their child adds up to much more than a single number called an IQ score, I wouldn’t be surprised to see parents advocating soon for a broader view of intelligence. And one day, the right not to have your child slotted into a niche by the educational system may be considered a civil right. We’ll see.

Just to let you know, my young friend on the plane surprised me at the end of our conversation. How did he plan to use his debate skills? Well, he thought he might go into real estate management. I probed a bit, and it was clear his success and range of skills had given him a kind of confidence to try something entirely new—a worthy trait in today’s world. He knew how to manage money, he said, and now he wanted to manage someone else’s. He told me this with poise and authority—very intelligent behaviors.

 Next month: The Next Frontier—Your Heart Intelligence