THINKER'S ALMANAC - September 25

Why is thinking like a teacher the best learning strategy for a student?

Subject: Learning - Protege Effect

Event:  Jacob Neuer gives convocation address at Elizabethtown College, Pennsylvania, 1991

On this day in 1991, Professor Jacob Neusner, a historian of religion, delivered the convocation address to students at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania.  Unlike a commencement speech, which is presented at a graduation ceremony at the end of a school term, a convocation is a speech to incoming students at the beginning of a school term.  The word “convocation” is from the Latin convocare, “to call/come together.”

The purpose of a convocation, therefore, is to inspire students and to spark their quest for knowledge as they stand poised at the beginning of a new school year. Neusner clearly is qualified to speak about acquiring knowledge, having played a part in the publication of over 1,000 books, either as an author, editor, or translator.  In his convocation, Neusner evoked examples of history’s great teachers, teachers who helped their students to discover truth for themselves.  First, he held up Socrates as an example, saying his primary method was to walk the streets, stop people, and ask them irritating questions.  His second example was Jesus, whose Sermon on the Mount was anything but a long, boring lecture (1).

Image by Welcome to All ! ツ from Pixabay

The most important challenge for students is to engage in their own education:  “Learning takes place through discovery, not when you’re told something but when you figure it out for yourself.”  The most important lesson that any student can learn in school is to “teach themselves.” In school, students have teachers and professors “to guide, to help, to goad, to irritate, to stimulate” them; however, if students are to be fully prepared for life outside of school, they must know how to teach themselves.

Research shows that thinking like a teacher is the best way to become a lifelong learner.  Researchers call it the Protege Effect.  Instead of trying to imagine what you will be tested on; instead, imagine what you would test your students on.  Doing this raises learning to another level, requiring the learner to think about their own thinking but also the thinking of the person they are teaching.  In a 2014 study by psychologist John Nestojko, students were asked to study reading passages either for A) preparing to be tested on the passage, or B) preparing to teach the passage to another student.  Even though the students who expected to teach never actually engaged in teaching, they still answered more questions correctly about the passage; they also were able to produce “more complete and better organized free recall of the passage” (2).  

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the Protege Effect, and how did the two groups in the study that showed its effectiveness differ?

Challenge - A Letter to Your Protege:  What would you say to a student younger than yourself to inspire them at the beginning of the school year.  Write an open letter that will inspire readers to take charge of their own learning. Focus on specific pieces of advice that you could give them about how to be a successful learner.

Sources:

1- Safire, William.  Lend Me Your Ears:  Great Speeches in History.  New York:  W.W. Norton & Company, 1997.

2- Nestojko, John, Bui, Dung, Kornell, Nate, Bjotk, Elizabeth. “Expecting to teach enhances learning and organization of knowledge in free recall of text passages” Memory & cognition. 2014/05/21 

THINKER'S ALMANAC - September 24

Why did people finally embrace the change to automatic elevators forty-five years after they were invented, and what does this tell us about the human capacity for change?

  

Subject: Status Quo Bias - New York Elevator Strike

Event:  New York City elevator operator’s strike, 1945

Someone once said, “The only one who likes change is a wet baby.”  Change is hard.  The way things are now, the status quo, is much more familiar and comfortable.  Nevertheless, in order for there to be progress, there must be change.

One example of how hard change can be comes to us from the history of the elevator.  Today we take for granted that elevators are automatic, but when elevators were first invented, they had human operators who navigated them from floor to floor and opened and closed their doors manually.  The automatic elevator was invented early in the 20th century, but the general public was not ready for the change.  The status quo continued for over 40 years until 1945. 

Image by Suppadeth wongyee from Pixabay

On this day in 1945, New York City elevator operators began a strike that crippled the movement of thousands of office workers and cost the city millions of dollars in lost revenue. Building owners decided it was time for a change; it was time to convince elevator riders that operators were unnecessary.  Ads were produced to reassure riders that going it alone was safe.  The ads showed both children and the elderly pushing buttons and navigating safely from floor to floor.  To further adjust passengers to the change, speakers were installed in the elevators, and as riders entered, they heard the following recorded message:  “This is an automatic elevator.  Please press the button for the floor you desire” (1).

To assess your own attitude toward the status quo, consider the following thought experiment:

Imagine a man dressed in black knocked on your door one Saturday morning.  The man, a stranger, tells you that he has some bad news for you:  neurophysiologists accidentally plugged your brain into an experience machine.  As a result, all of the experiences you remember from your life to date have been a product of a computer program rather than actual experience.  The error was just detected, and the man at your door is very apologetic.  He next offers you a choice:  you can remain connected to the machine (in which case the memories of this conversation will be erased), or you can be disconnected.  Although he doesn’t give you any details about your life outside of the computer program, he does inform you that it is nothing like the one you are currently experiencing.

So, which option would you choose?  Would you prefer the status quo or change?  In research at Duke University, Felipe De Brigard found that 59% of respondents said that they would stay connected to the machine, while 41% said they would embrace an alternative to the status quo (2).

The lesson of the status quo bias is to understand that when it comes to change, our default thinking is to resist it, opting instead for what is familiar.  Not all change is good, and certainly the status quo is not always bad; however, while automatic elevators are an efficient way to travel, automatic thinking is not always the best way to go.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:   What are the two choices giving in the “experience machine” thought experiment, and how do the results of the Duke study relate to the Status Quo Bias?

Challenge - Red Pill or Blue Pill:  Felipe De Brigard’s thought experiment might bring to mind the 1999 movie The Matrix.  In this film Neo is offered the choice of taking a blue pill, which will keep him in his simulated reality, or the red pill, which will plunge into the unknown of the real world.  Give some thought to which you would choose and why.

Also on This Day:

September 24, 1896:  Today is the birthday of F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), known for his novel The Great Gatsby as well as numerous other short stories and novels.  In a 1938 letter to his daughter, Fitzgerald presented his powerful case for the English language’s most potent part of speech:

 

. . . all fine prose is based on the verbs carrying the sentences. They make sentences move. Probably the finest technical poem in English is Keats’ “Eve of Saint Agnes.” A line like “The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass,” is so alive that you race through it, scarcely noticing it, yet it has colored the whole poem with its movement–the limping, trembling and freezing is going on before your own eyes (3).

 

September 24, 1936:  Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets was born in Greenville, Mississippi. He once said, “Life's like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending.”

Sources:

1-Freeman, Joshua B. Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II

2-Henderson, Rob.  “How Powerful Is Status Quo Bias?” Psychology Today 29 Sept. 2016.

3-Open Culture. “Seven Tips From F. Scott Fitzgerald on How to Write Fiction

in Books, Literature, Writing” 26 February 2013.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - September 23

How can a marshmallow, an ant, and a grasshopper help us better understand human thinking and behavior? 

Subject:  Delayed Gratification - The Marshmallow Test

Event:  Psychologist Walter Mischel published The Marshmallow Test:  Mastering Self Control, 2014 

The first and best victory is to conquer self. -Plato

Imagine that I have given you a piece of your favorite candy.  As I place the candy in front of you, I explain that you can either eat the candy now or, if you will wait for five minutes without eating it, I will give you a second piece of candy.  If you truly did desire two pieces of candy rather than just one, how would you spend the five minutes?  How would you exercise enough self-control to delay gratification?

You might recognize this scenario.  It is one of the most famous psychological experiments of all time, known as “The Marshmallow Test.”  On September 23, 2014, Psychologist Walter Mischel published The Marshmallow Test:  Mastering Self Control,  a book that goes into detail about the history of Mischel’s famous experiment.  

Image by Nathalie Massin from Pixabay

Mischel got the idea for the test when his own daughters were three, four, and five respectively.  He noticed that as they matured, they became less impulsive and better able to exercise self-control.  Working with Bing Nursery School of Stanford, California, Mischel and his team of researchers began administering their test to children.  A child would be presented with a marshmallow and told that he could eat it immediately or wait alone in the room for a few minutes until the researcher returned with a second treat.  In the event that the child decided he couldn’t wait the five minutes, he was told to ring a bell, which would signal the experimenter to return.

In follow-up research conducted years later, Mischel determined that the children who were able to wait for the second marshmallow on average had better life outcomes than those who did not wait.  The children who were able to delay gratification had higher SAT scores, higher academic achievement, and higher average incomes.

Mischel’s research gives us interesting insights into the workings of the human brain and the differences between immediate and delayed gratification.  Mischel describes two brain systems:  the “Hot System” and the “Cold System.”  The Hot System is the brain’s “Go!” system; it is centered in the brain’s amygdala and is emotional, reflexive, and fast. The Cold System is the brain’s “Know” system; it is centered in the brain’s frontal lobes and hippocampus and is cognitive, reflective, and slow. 

The key to exercising self-control and delaying gratification is first to make your thinking more conscious; second, is to cool down hot situations by becoming more cognitively flexible.  For example, children who were able to resist the tempting marshmallow were able to use their imagination to picture the marshmallow as a cotton ball rather than a tasty treat, or they were able to distract themselves by singing a song.  As Mischel says, “Once you realize that willpower is just a matter of learning how to control your attention and thoughts, you can really begin to increase it.”

Mischel’s Marshmallow Test reminds us that the brain’s executive functions can help us manage our desire and increase our willpower: it allows us to plan ahead, control impulses, and pay attention.

In Aesop’s famous fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper, we have an allegory for hot and cold thinking.  While the Grasshopper frolics and sings on a summer day, the Ant toils to store food for the winter.  Refusing to be distracted by the Grasshopper’s desire to chat, the Ant continues his work.  When winter arrives, the Ant’s planning pays dividends; he has plenty to eat.  The Grasshopper, however, is left with an empty stomach.  Walter Mischel sums up the story as follows:  “The idiosyncrasies of human preferences seem to reflect a competition between the impetuous limbic grasshopper and the provident prefrontal ant within each of us.”

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  How does the Marshmallow Test relate to delayed gratification, and how does passing or failing the test related to long term success?

Challenge - Just Do It:  One of the prime challenges of life is to get yourself to do the things that you need to do rather than just the things that you want to do.  Do some research on quotations about self-discipline and motivation.  What is the one quotation that gives the best advice on how and why to discipline and motivate yourself?

Also on This Day:

September 23, 1899:  On this day. Japanese businessman Fusajiro Yamauchi founded the game company Nintendo in Kyoto, Japan.  Fusajiro’s first products were hand-made, brightly colored playing cards (2).

-September 23, 1952:  Vice-presidential candidate Richard Nixon gave his famous “Checkers” speech in a nationally televised address.  Nixon’s goal in the speech was to address critics who claimed that he had taken money from a secret fund set up by a group of millionaires from his home state, California.  Nixon appealed to his audience’s sympathies by talking about his humble background, his modest income, and most importantly, his family dog: Checkers.  After the speech, letters and telegrams of support for Nixon poured in, and Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican candidate for president, decided to keep Nixon the ticket (3).

-September 23, 1961:  President John F. Kennedy signs an executive order establishing the Peace Corps.  As stated in his inaugural address, one of the missions of his presidency was to reach beyond just the shores of the United States: “To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required—not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right (5).”

-September 23, 2005:  On this day Bill Gates gave a speech at his alma mater, Lakeside School in Seattle, Washington.  He credited the school with sparking his interest in computers.  In 1968, when Gates was in 7th grade, the Lakeside School Mothers’ Club raised funds to purchase a Teletype Model 30 computer, a machine that was more advanced than most university computers.  He and his classmate Paul Allen, with whom Gates would co-found Microsoft, became obsessed with computing, spending every spare minute programming this machine.  As Gates put it:

The experience and insight Paul Allen and I gained here gave us the confidence to start a company based on this wild idea that nobody else agreed with—that computer chips were going to become so powerful that computers and software would become a tool that would be on every desk and in every home. (4)

Sources:

1-Konnikova, Maria. “The Struggles of a Psychologist Studying Self-Control.” The New Yorker  9 Oct. 2014.

2-”History of Nintendo: Where did Nintendo come from?”  BBC 12 Jun 2019.

3-Nixon, Richard M.  “The Checkers Speech.”  The History Place, Great Speeches Collection.  

4.  Housel, Mogan.  The Psychology of Money.  Great Britain:  Harriman House, 2020: 25.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - September 22

How can thinking of an elephant better help us understand the way humans think?

  

Subject: System 1 and 2 - Jonathan Haidt’s Rider and Elephant

Event:  National Elephant Appreciation Day

  

September 22 is National Elephant Appreciation Day. The day was created in 1996 by Wayne Hepburn, owner of Mission Media.  Hepburn’s fascination with our largest land mammal began when his daughter gave him an elephant paperweight (1).

There’s an old story about an elephant, a parable about how we can be bound by our beliefs or our limited imaginations.  One day, a man was walking the grounds of a circus.  Just outside a tent, he saw a huge, fully grown adult male elephant tied to a stake.  All that was holding the great beast from breaking free was a small, thin rope tied to his front leg.  The man spied a trainer nearby and inquired about the elephant, asking why the elephant made no attempt to break free since he could clearly snap the rope with ease.  The trainer responded saying, “It’s all about conditioning.  When this elephant was an infant, the rope was strong enough to hold him in place, so he grew up believing the rope could hold him.  Now that he’s fully grown, he’s conditioned, so he never tries to break free.”

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

While the above elephant-related story tells us a bit about thinking, there’s an elephant-related metaphor that gives us prodigious insight into the nature of human thinking.  The metaphor was created by psychologist Jonathan Haidt in his book The Happiness Hypothesis where he was trying to illustrate the two independent thinking systems at work in the human brain.  The first system is the emotional, automatic system. Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize for his research on behavioral economics, calls this the brain’s System 1.  Haidt, however, gives it a bit more life by calling it the elephant brain.  This is the brain’s autopilot system that developed early in evolution.  The elephant brain works on instinct and intuition, allowing us to think without conscious thinking to make quick decisions.  Haidt calls the second system (Kahneman’s System 2) the rider.  It’s the rational, more evolved, and much newer part of the brain.    The rider controls the intentional systems of the brain, such as the prefrontal cortex where the executive functions are housed.  Perched atop the elephant, but nevertheless, largely outweighed, the rational rider attempts to steer and control the movements of the elephant.  The elephant brain functions with much less effort, while the rider’s conscious, deliberate thinking takes more effort.  

Haidt’s metaphor of the rider and the elephant reminds us that although we like to think that we are evolved, rational beings guided by logic instead of emotion, the reality is that the elephant may really be in charge.  As the Scottish philosopher David Hume said, “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them” (2).

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What are the contrasting thinking systems represented by the elephant and the rider?

Challenge - The Elephant in the Room:  Another opportunity for human insight via the elephant comes from John Godfrey Saxe’s classic poem “The Blind Men and the Elephant.”  Read the poem carefully, and then write your interpretation of it.  What insight does the poem give us about perception?

The Blind Men and the Elephant

It was six men of Indostan, to learning much inclined,

who went to see the elephant (Though all of them were blind),

that each by observation, might satisfy his mind.

The first approached the elephant, and, happening to fall,

against his broad and sturdy side, at once began to bawl:

"God bless me! but the elephant, is nothing but a wall!"

The second feeling of the tusk, cried: "Ho! what have we here,

so very round and smooth and sharp? To me tis mighty clear,

this wonder of an elephant, is very like a spear!"

The third approached the animal, and, happening to take,

the squirming trunk within his hands, "I see," quoth he,

the elephant is very like a snake!"

The fourth reached out his eager hand, and felt about the knee:

"What most this wondrous beast is like, is mighty plain," quoth he;

"Tis clear enough the elephant is very like a tree."

The fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, Said; "E'en the blindest man

can tell what this resembles most; Deny the fact who can,

This marvel of an elephant, is very like a fan!"

The sixth no sooner had begun, about the beast to grope,

than, seizing on the swinging tail, that fell within his scope,

"I see," quoth he, "the elephant is very like a rope!"

And so these men of Indostan, disputed loud and long,

each in his own opinion, exceeding stiff and strong,

Though each was partly in the right, and all were in the wrong!

So, oft in theologic wars, the disputants, I ween,

tread on in utter ignorance, of what each other mean,

and prate about the elephant, not one of them has seen!

Also on This Day:

September 22, 1692:  On this day the last eight people were hanged for witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials.  In total, twenty people were executed. 

September 22, 1862:  Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which warned the Confederate states that if they did not rejoin the Union by January 1, 1863, all slaves in those states would be freed.  The Civil War was still raging, but the Union had just claimed a victory at the Battle of Antietam on September 17th, the single bloodiest single-day battle in American history.  Prior to the Proclamation, Lincoln had not issued any anti-slavery proclamations, maintaining that the war was more about preserving the Union than about ending slavery.  Issuing the Proclamation changed this.  Now support for the Confederacy translated to support for the institution of slavery.  This discouraged anti-slavery countries like England and France from intervening in support of the South. When the Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863, no slaves were actually freed because it applied only to the Confederate states that were still at war with the Union.  It did, however, change the moral tone of the war, making it not just a struggle to save the Union, but also a battle to support human freedom.  It also set the stage for the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1865, which put a permanent end to slavery in the United States (4).

Sources:

1-Daysoftheyear.com.  Elephant Appreciation Day.

2-Haidt, Jonathan. The Happiness Hypothesis. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2006.

3.  Saxe, John Godfrey.  “The Blind Men and the Elephant.”  1872 Public Domain.

4-http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/emancipation-150/10-facts.html

5-”The Founding Moment.”  peacecorps.gov.