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Stupid

August 15, 2011 By

Diesel’s BE STUPID campaign is stupid, writes James Lileks on The Bleat.

According to the ad campaign, “stupidity is really what the square world calls creativity, risk-taking, imagination, and a refusal to live by the timorous precepts that constrain people who don’t wear Diesel.”


“And stupid consequently suffered a brain injury, resulting in even more betterer stupider that required tube feeding,” Lileks responds.

Take that, SMART! You don’t even TRY to put your head in a mailbox. Ha ha stupid SMART with your understanding of volume and vertebrae stress.

What’s stupid? Paying $285 for jeans, Lileks answers.

Filed Under: Culture Tagged With: , , ,

In praise of failure

April 22, 2011 By

For an inventor, “failures are just problems that have yet to be solved,” writes John Dyson in Wired. It took 5,127 prototypes and 15 years to get his vacuum right.

Dyson’s new engineering foundation encourages “hands-on creative thinking through design and engineering,” rather than prescriptive learning, he writes.  He wants kids to tackle problems, make mistakes and keep going.

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Measuring academic drift

February 10, 2011 By

College students should learn more than analytical thinking, writes psychologist Robert Sternberg in response to the Academically Adrift study showing many students don’t progress in two or even four years in college on the Collegiate Learning Assessment. But would an assessment of “creative thinking, practical thinking (the ability to apply knowledge) or wise and ethical thinking” show better results?

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It’s the Confucianism, stupid

January 18, 2011 By

What can the U.S. learn from China’s Winning Schools? Asians make education a priority, writes New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who’s lived in Asia.

While Shanghai students are world beaters, the city has China’s best schools. Rural schools are not nearly as good — but they’re improving.

In my Chinese-American wife’s ancestral village — a poor community in southern China — the peasant children are a grade ahead in math compared with my children at an excellent public school in the New York area. That seems broadly true of math around the country.

Chinese principals get extra training for ineffective teachers or push them into other jobs. “Bad teachers can always be made gym teachers,” a principal in Xian tells Kristof.

The Chinese aren’t satisified with their schools, Kristof writes.

Many Chinese complain scathingly that their system kills independent thought and creativity, and they envy the American system for nurturing self-reliance — and for trying to make learning exciting and not just a chore.

In Xian, I visited Gaoxin Yizhong, perhaps the city’s best high school, and the students and teachers spoke wistfully of the American emphasis on clubs, arts and independent thought. “We need to encourage more creativity,” explained Hua Guohong, a chemistry teacher. “We should learn from American schools.”

One friend in Guangdong Province says he will send his children to the United States to study because the local schools are a “creativity-killer.” Another sent his son to an international school to escape what he likens to “programs for trained seals.” Private schools are sprouting everywhere, and many boast of a focus on creativity.

For all their faults, Chinese schools benefit greatly from the Confucian reverence for education, Kristof writes. Teachers are respected. The class brain is admired, not the jock or the class clown.

Higher education is China’s weakness, he writes. But a self-critical, education-valuing culture can identify and fix its problems.

From Whitney Tilson via Matthew Ladner, here’s a chart of  PISA “combined literacy” scores for 15-year-olds in various subgroups. (FRL means “free and reduced lunch” eligibility, i.e., a school’s poverty rate.) Asian-American students do slightly better than Korean students; U.S. whites score a bit lower.

Non-Hispanic whites in the U.S. match scores for Canada, New Zealand and Australia, points out Robert Samuelson. The very low scores for Hispanics and blacks pull the national average down. “Persistent achievement gaps demonstrate the limits of schools to compensate for problems outside the classroom — broken homes, street violence, indifference to education — that discourage learning and inhibit teaching,” he writes in the Washington Post.

In high-level math performance, which correlates with economic growth, U.S. children of white and college-educated parents are lagging, writes Eric Hanushek, who thinks Samuelson is way too optimistic.

Sixteen countries actually produce twice the proportion of advanced math students that we do.  And there are more highly talented math students in the whole population of 18 countries than in U.S. families with a college educated parent.

The U.S. is an innovative society capable of attracting very bright people from around the world, Hanushek writes. But relying on the brain drain is not a sound long-term strategy.

Filed Under: Culture, Education, Parenting Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Teaching creativity

July 14, 2010 By

While IQ scores rise over time, creativity scores are declining in the U.S., write Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman in Newsweek. It’s not clear why, though Bronson and Merryman think passive TV watching and video game playing may be crowding out creative play.

Other nations are trying to encourage students to think creatively and solve problems, while U.S. schools often concentrate on teaching basic skills.  Creativity is seen as something that happens in art class. Here’s where the article got interesting for me:

The age-old belief that the arts have a special claim to creativity is unfounded. When scholars gave creativity tasks to both engineering majors and music majors, their scores laid down on an identical spectrum, with the same high averages and standard deviations. Inside their brains, the same thing was happening — ideas were being generated and evaluated on the fly.

. . . Creativity isn’t about freedom from concrete facts. Rather, fact-finding and deep research are vital stages in the creative process. Scholars argue that current curriculum standards can still be met, if taught in a different way.

Problem solving requires using both sides of the brain, switching rapidly between convergent to divergent thinking, Bronson and Merryman write. The solver considers known facts and strategies, then scans “remote memories that could be vaguely relevant,” searching for  “unseen patterns, alternative meanings, and high-level abstractions.”  The brain locks on to a possible answer — aha! — then evaluates whether it’s worth pursing.

(Yesterday, my husband, an electrical engineer who holds many patents, told me his advice to a friend who’s working for an inventor with a divergent idea. “Try to impress the investors with your competence so they’ll recommend you for a job when this fails.”)

Creativity training helps students learn to solve problems, say researchers at the University of Oklahoma, the University of Georgia, and Taiwan’s National Chengchi University.

The National Inventors Hall of Fame School, a new public middle school in Akron that admits students by lottery, teaches problem solving as part of its STEM mission. Fifth graders were given four weeks to design proposals for reducing noise in the library, which has windows looking out on a public space.

Working in small teams, the fifth graders first engaged in what creativity theorist Donald Treffinger describes as fact-finding. How does sound travel through materials? What materials reduce noise the most? Then, problem-finding — anticipating all potential pitfalls so their designs are more likely to work. Next, idea-finding: generate as many ideas as possible. Drapes, plants, or large kites hung from the ceiling would all baffle sound. Or, instead of reducing the sound, maybe mask it by playing the sound of a gentle waterfall? A proposal for double-paned glass evolved into an idea to fill the space between panes with water. Next, solution-finding: which ideas were the most effective, cheapest, and aesthetically pleasing? Fiberglass absorbed sound the best but wouldn’t be safe. Would an aquarium with fish be easier than water-filled panes?

Then teams developed a plan of action. They built scale models and chose fabric samples. They realized they’d need to persuade a janitor to care for the plants and fish during vacation. Teams persuaded others to support them — sometimes so well, teams decided to combine projects. Finally, they presented designs to teachers, parents, and Jim West, inventor of the electric microphone.

Teachers had designed the project to meet Ohio’s curriculum standards. That was reflected in the school’s first-year test scores, which placed it third among Akron schools.

Sixth-grader Brandon Smith’s Hamster Cleaner 3000 made the finals of a local TV stations’ Coolest Creations contest, after competing at the Invention Convention at the Cleveland Great Lakes Science Center.

Filed Under: Children, Education Tagged With: , , , ,

The video application essay

February 26, 2010 By

College applicants are trying to wow admissions officers with personal videos, reports the Boston Globe. Tufts is the first selective college to encourage video submissions as an “optional essay.” More than 6 percent of 15,436 applicants sent in a one-minute video; many are on YouTube.

Amelia Downs performs a series of dorky dance moves named after math terms like the scatter plot and the bar graph. Sam Zuckert plays a song made solely from the sounds of a piece of paper ripping, crumpling, and waving in the wind. And then there’s Mike Klinker, using a remote control to fly a Styrofoam elephant — with his name on it — through a clearing in the woods.

Tufts students and alumni are commenting on their favorites on YouTube.

Lee Coffin, Tufts’ dean of admissions, says the clips showcase a creativity and personality that would be hard to convey on paper. The idea is part of an effort begun by the university in 2006 to evaluate aspects of applicants’ intelligence not reflected in SAT scores and grades.

. . . The videos are judged as one part of a whole picture, with a student’s academic record still weighing the most, Coffin said. Production value will not be a factor, nor will public comments be considered in the admissions team’s decision, he said. What counts, he said, is creativity and wit, something that shows a student’s voice or talent – that can answer, “What spark do they bring to the class?’’

While other selective colleges don’t solicit videos, applicants often submit them along with blogs and personal websites.

Harvard College has for decades asked students to submit any supplementary materials — art portfolios, manuscripts, music recordings, and films — that display exceptional talent. But Harvard’s admissions dean frets that video applications may give an unfair edge to students from affluent families.

At Tufts, Coffin said more than 60 percent of the videos were submitted by financial-aid applicants.  “Access to video capabilities — via computers or cellphones, even — among teenagers is almost universal,’’ he said.

I worry more that flashy extroverts will edge out shy, nerdy students.

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The work-ethic and knowledge gap

December 23, 2009 By

Most American students are lazy and lack basic knowledge, writes Kara Miller, a Babson College professor of rhetoric and history, in the Boston Globe.

My “C,’’ “D,’’ and “F’’ students this semester are almost exclusively American, while my students from India, China, and Latin America have – despite language barriers – generally written solid papers, excelled on exams, and become valuable class participants.

One girl from Shanghai became a fixture at office hours, embraced our college writing center, and incessantly e-mailed me questions about her evolving papers. Her English is still mediocre: she frequently puts “the’’ everywhere (as in “the leader supported the feminism and the environmentalism’’) and confuses “his’’ and “her.’’ But that didn’t stop her from doing rewrite after rewrite, tirelessly trying to improve both structure and grammar.

Undergrads from China have the strongest work ethic, Miller writes, but she’s also been impressed by students from India, Thailand, Brazil, and Venezuela. They struggle with English, but they’re carried forward by their respect for professors and for knowledge.

By contrast, many of her American students “appear tired and disengaged.”  While the best U.S. students are knowledgeable and innovative, too many lack the basics.   “We’ve got a knowledge gap, spurred by a work-ethic gap,” Miller writes.

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No right brain left behind

July 15, 2009 By

Must kids prep for ‘risk-taking’? asks USA Today in a a story on the “right-brain future” spiel of Patrick Bassett, president of the National Association of Independent Schools (private schools).

Here’s the Cliff Notes version: As traditional jobs in the left-brain world of finance shrink, the USA’s economy will increasingly be tethered to creative innovations rooted in right-brain thinking.

Bassett was inspired by Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.

At High Tech High, a charter school in San Diego, students are encouraged to use those skills to practical ends such as dreaming up new sources of energy or calculating ways to stretch the West’s limited water supply, says the school’s CEO, Larry Rosenstock.

“You want kids who are math whizzes, yes. But you want them to also have the creative talent to apply those math skills to find answers to big questions.”

Barrett praises other schools that are pushing students to think outside the box. He cites Fay School in Southborough, Mass., whose students last year teamed with peers at South Saigon International School in Vietnam. Using video chats and a specially created online wiki-space, they designed a “socially conscious business model” that involved both selling products and creating public service announcements to build awareness for disaster relief.

“That’s the future,” he says. “Kids being analytical and creative to come up with solutions for us all.”

Well, the kids are our future. Or, at least, they used to be.

The “killer app” of the 21st century will be combining right-brain innovations with left-brain skill sets, proclaims a companion story.  Hmmm. A whole brain is better than half a brain!

Put bluntly: The economic engine needs more iPods (a talisman no one really knew to miss until it arrived) and fewer data-crunchers (tasks that can be shipped overseas or tackled with software such as TurboTax).

The article’s examples aren’t always convincing:  Is our economic future dependent on lawyers who become interior decorators, Wall Street analysts who start cookie businesses or investment bankers who turn into web photographers?

On the other hand:

First- and second-year Harvard Med students now vie to get into (Joel) Katz’s 10-week course that uses Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts to teach future physicians how to critically analyze famous paintings.

Those who take the art course typically show “a 50% improvement” in assessing a patient’s symptoms, says Katz, himself an internist. “Usually doctors are not trained in humanism. Students usually say this has expanded their way of thinking, which benefits the patient.”

Though I was a creative writing major, I’m a logical, linear thinker. I don’t look around and see a surplus of logical thinkers, nor a shortage of “creative” types. What we need are those whole-brain people.

Risk takers? Sure. But that’s not something anyone learns in school. It’s part of the American culture.

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Creativity without content

January 28, 2009 By

D-Ed Reckoning’s Ken DeRosa is a grinch.  He looks at a nice, little story about children’s creativity in a National Engineers Week Future City Competition and asks whether students are learning anything.

The competition challenges middle school students to design a city of the future with a focus on water conservation, reuse, and renewable energy. The students use the game SimCity (Deluxe 4) to help them build their three-dimensional models to scale. They have a semester to dream up and then construct their miniature cities entirely out of recycled materials. Supposedly, this inspires them to consider engineering as a profession.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette describes one entry, called L.U.R.E., set in New Mexico:

School is free for everyone, brought into individual homes via a holographic teacher. Nearly everyone in town is gainfully employed as an engineer.

Mountain goat racing and sand surfing satisfy a yen for sports and leisure. And if, for no apparent reason, you need a getaway, there’s the Space Shuttle Gilligan to whisk you on a four-month vacation to the moon…

Students used a Starbucks frappuccino cup to model a coffee shop; they made office buildings from paper towel rolls.

Students were supposed to be learning “how engineers turn ideas into reality.” But they didn’t need any engineering knowledge to build their models, DeRosa grumps.

It’s not as if they built a teaching hologram or used recycled materials to build a real building or designed systems to conserve water and use renewable energy.

My husband, born to be an engineer, built a color TV set when he was in high school.  It worked.  His father, also an engineer, built model planes as a teenager. They flew.

My first husband, a math-physics guy,  designed an atomic bomb in fifth grade for a school project. “It probably wouldn’t have worked,” he said. But he’d studied the science and the math.  It wasn’t an art project.

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