You’ve heard the adage before.  Money can’t buy happiness.  But it seems like we’re always giving that old saw a run for its money–as if we don’t quite believe that to be true.  As a general principle, sure, our internal monologue might go, but for me, having a few extra bucks to get that fancy coffee drink or to jet off to that faraway vacation place sure sounds like a plus.  A happiness inducing plus…  and double that ability?  Double the happiness, right?

Stanford’s Nobel winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman offers a different assessment, arguing that a principle called a focusing illusion misleads people into believing that having more money makes them happier, especially as scientific studies have shown that there is little to no difference in a person’s moment-to-moment happiness as a result of overall wealth.

An Illusion for Illustration

An interesting idea, for sure.  He also extended this idea, one that suggests that nothing in life is as important as when you are actively thinking about it, to the realm of education. He explains:

Education is an important determinant of income–one of the most important–but it is less important than most people think.  If everyone had the same education, the inequality of income would be reduced by less than 10 percent. When you focus on education you neglect the myriad of other factors that determine income. The differences of income among people who have the same education are huge.

One wonders how this understanding might change the urgings that parents and we as teachers continuously message to the assembled students in our classes year after year.  Aspire and focus on your education, absolutely… but also understand the other factors and circumstances, some within your control and some outside of it, that will also play a role in your potential economic success.

Somehow, the message loses its edge and promise, doesn’t it?

I’d like to apply the concept of the focusing illusion a bit further.  Consider the current emphasis, from both sides of the political spectrum, of the importance of the teacher as the most important determinant in students’ academic success.  Teach for America is predicated on this idea and individuals ranging from Michelle Rhee to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have also emphasized the same message:  nothing is more important than having a good teacher in front of kids.  And while there is absolutely truth to that idea, the end result of this focusing illusion is that teachers, and solely teachers, are ones who should be offered all the glory or made to shoulder all the blame in public education.

And the myriad of other factors that we know so significantly impact the day-to-day effectiveness (or at times, lack thereof) in our classes?  Ranging from class size and attendance issues, to parental involvement, to the complex socioeconomic effects on students from disadvantaged households?

Decidedly out of focus.

So I have to wonder: are the complex workings of a public education system too large a target for one particular focus?  What should the focus be to adequately bring to light possibilities of steady improvement without inappropriately burdening one individual cog in the machine, no matter how important that cog may be?

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The field of social psychology perhaps needs a bit of help with the acronym naming in this instance, but BIRGing and CORFing are interesting ideas to consider.  BIRGing?  Basking in Reflected Glory. And CORFing?  The opposite scenario, Cutting Off Reflected Failure.

BIRGing in Action

The ideas, which emerged from social experiments and observations by Arizona State University professor Robert Cialdini, describe the tendency for individuals to associate with others’ success so it becomes their own, or in the opposite situation, for individuals to distance themselves from disaster or shame.

Yahoo Sports writer Karie Meltzer (alright, Yahoo Sports!), recently described its application to a sports fans’ allegiance and identification with his or her chosen team:

[With BIRGing], fans of a football team, for example, want to identify with the players’ success. Decked out in team gear, they’ll say, “We had a great win. We were awesome,” when in reality the fans had no part in the win. Cutting off Reflected Failure happens when a team makes a mistake or loses, and fans blame it on an external factor to distance themselves from the defeat. “The refs were biased. The weather’s bad.” The true blame doesn’t lie with the team.

Meltzer used these terms to try and make sense of the varied reaction of Penn State students in the wake of their football coaches’ shameful, fall from grace and the slow, awful realization of their alleged crimes.

Thankfully, applications to our work in the Boston Public Schools are less traumatic.  But still, it’s helpful to consider.  What are the BIRGing opportunities around which all of us–teachers, administrators, parents, students and community partners–can rally around and claim as our own?  How can the impulse to CORF be replaced with the impulse to reset and try something different?

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Here’s an additional concept to consider for our collective, cognitive toolkit:  confirmation bias.

From the fields of psychology and cognitive science, confirmation bias describes a person’s tendency to find and make sense of information in a way that further confirms one’s own preconceptions and existing ideas.  So when we all make decisions, we tend to actively seek out and overemphasize evidence that more strongly supports what we thought was right in the first place.  And on the flipside?  We tend to underweigh or disregard the evidence that goes against what we originally thought.

An illustration:

What does this mean for us as teachers?

You might see how this might play out in our classrooms.  If we hold true to the maxim and belief that all students can learn and teachers maintain the biggest influence on their learning, nothing will stop us from working and reworking our lessons, approaches and interventions to make sure they all achieve.  And if some don’t, that underlying bias and belief will keep us up late at night and up early in the mornings, reaching out to colleagues and community and doing whatever we can to get them there.  And conversely, if we believe that some students just won’t ever get it, that some kids are just hard-wired to be difficult, or combative or non-responsive learners, all difficulties we encounter with those students will confirm that original suspicion:  that kid just isn’t supposed to make it.

And how might confirmation bias shape the often tense dialogue between labor and management, between labor organizations and charter school enthusiasts, and between reformers and the ‘targets’ of reform?

If we as teachers collectively believe that the root issues and challenges of our work lie in the ineptitude of the building administrator and out-of-touch central office bureaucrat, any problem we come across in our daily work (whether a scheduling hiccup or slow response time to an emergency in the classroom or an ineffective professional development session) will confirm that original suspicion:  if our principals and central office staff had a clue and just got out of the way, we’d be so much more effective at the real business of teaching and learning.

Similarly, if central office staff and principals see the biggest issue as the difficulty in removing and shaping a recalcitrant, reactionary and undifferentiated teaching staff, any issue with budget concerns, student test scores or challenges in successfully implementing a new program will confirm yet another original suspicion:  if teachers and teachers unions really cared about kids and student learning, they should be way more willing to relax on those pesky contractual issues and concerns that demonstrate why they’re in it anyway–for their own job security, not the kids.

How can ‘original suspicions’ like these, and the tendencies of confirmation bias that further solidify them in their holders’ minds, ever begin to break down?  I would imagine finding and highlighting the instances (whether in specific schools or in various district initiatives) where they simply don’t hold true would be an important place to start.  And from these examples, to establish new ground and principles from which confirmation bias can play a more positive role:  that positive collaboration among labor and management, with a focus on student learning, is not only possible, but perhaps the only way to go.

Thoughts?

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I’ve always liked the sentiment attributed to the American essayist and satirist H.L. Mencken, and recently abridged by National Education Association president Dennis Van Roekel:  For every complex question, there is a simple answer–and it’s usually wrong.  Apparently, by the way, H.L. Mencken has also been given attribution for one of the least tasteful quotes for the thinking educator–those who can do, those who can’t, teach.  And of course, leave it to Woody Allen to bring it a step further, appropriating the initial offense with a bit of comedic, self-poking evisceration:  those who can’t do, teach.  Those who can’t teach, teach gym.

Anyway.  Back to the cognitive toolkit.

On a periodic basis, I’ll plan to introduce a new cognitive idea, from disciplines outside of our world of education, that might be helpful for grounding, challenging, reframing or refining our conversation about teaching and learning in the Boston Public Schools today.  And perhaps even beyond our own district.  I do think there is a danger, in the realm of education policy and particularly in politics, to presume that the solution, the answer to all our problems, is just to fill-in-the-blank-with-the-simple-idea.  It certainly makes for good soundbites, but to return to Mencken’s idea, likely wrong and almost certainly incomplete.  For what can be more complex than the efforts to refine and improve the workings of a public education system?

Another quick note:  the idea to apply divergent cognitive ideas to the conversation around teaching and education policy isn’t an original one.  I got inspired by a chance reading of a short article by NYTimes columnist David Brooks that summarized the recent submissions to the online salon forum at www.edge.org.  And as a result?  We have a whole pile of great ideas and concepts to play with.

So here goes the first cognitive idea from the realms of science and religious studies:  Reductionism and Emergence.

A Duck for Descartes

Reductionism suggests that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that its meaning and significance can be successfully reduced to accounts of individual constituents.  Emergence, on the other hand, posits that the complex ‘whole,’ what emerges as the result of the interaction and relationship between multiple component parts, is more than the sum of those individual processes.

What do you think?  Do you see echoes of either approaches in the ways that we experience teaching and life in the Boston Public Schools?  For me, it almost seems that the external reformer, whether represented by a business association or foundation, often takes the reductionist approach, insisting that if only one particular practice or one organization or one leader was changed, schools would be transformed.  And for educators in our classrooms, it seems we often are left arguing along the lines of emergence–that the seemingly reasonable ‘ask’ of higher test scores is not as simple as one or two quick fixes but representative and tied to a much more complex set of factors and circumstances.  Only some of which are controllable in our classrooms and schools.

Thoughts?

Post Script:  Much love to all you gym teachers out there.  I happen to know a pretty amazing gym teacher who won the accolades of state teacher of the year.  Take that, Mr. Allen!

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