Chapter 8: How Can I Help Slow Learners?

Why Don't Students Like School? by Daniel T. Willingham (John Wiley & Sons, 2009).

First the bulleted summary:

• Intelligence is not fixed.
• Students who are behind their peers will have to work harder to catch up or risk falling further and further behind.
• Never tell students they are "smart" - it could actually make them stupid.

Intelligence is a real phenomenon - experience and controlled studies tell us that some people just learn things more easily than others. But Willingham argues and provides evidence to support the idea that intelligence is in fact malleable. Individual IQ can change over time given proper interventions, and studies around the world have shown increases in national average IQ scores over relatively short periods of time that cannot be explained by any biological (i.e. genetic) changes in the populations. The changes must be the result of environmental influences, such as better health care, nutrition, education, etc.

There have been over the last few years a number of voices in education arguing the opposite - that intelligence is a fixed, inherited trait, determined by a lucky roll of the genetic dice, and not subject to environmental influence. This is of course a very convenient argument for the political right, as the consequence of such a view is that spending money on education and health care to improve the lot of low-performing students would be a waste of taxpayers' money - if it were true. Even more insidious is the way this idea has trickled down to the general population and even into the minds of students themselves. In our culture today, there is a prevailing sense among students that some people are just smart and if you are not smart then there's not much point in striving for academic success.

The point that is missed is that most people who appear smart may or may not have significantly higher IQs, but they do have a lifetime of accumulated knowledge that was acquired through sustained hard work or at least sustained attention to the world around them.* But remember, as discussed in Chapter 1, the more you know, the easier it is to learn more. So as the years go by the gap between the high achievers and low achievers widens to a point where teaching to the middle in a typical classroom leaves a third of the class struggling to keep up and a third of the class breezing through effortlessly. It must seem completely unfair to the low achievers, it reinforces the idea that there are smart kids and not so smart kids, and that the smart kids don't have to do much at all and still get high grades while the rest of us work harder and get low grades for our efforts. How motivating is that? Why bother? Why not just do the bare minimum needed to get a passing grade, because after all, if I work hard and get a 75 or if I don't work hard and get a 65 - does it really matter?

The unavoidable truth is that students who are behind their peers cannot simply do the same work as their peers and ever expect to catch up - it's like starting a race where the other runners have a head start AND they are running at a faster pace - we have to find a way to accelerate the slow learners. And if you've been keeping up with Willingham's other chapters, you may know already that the only way to do that is through extra work, more practice, more focus on filling in the gaps of knowledge that are slowing them down in their current studies. Although Willingham doesn't say this directly, clearly any model of differentiated instruction (the reform du jour in education) that ignores this fundamental fact will be doomed to failure. While better and more targeted instruction would likely be beneficial, it is not enough. If our slower students are to be academically successful and narrow the gap with high achievers, they will need more instructional time, not just better instruction.

And that brings us to the crux of the matter - how do you motivate students to take advantage of this extra time - after all, if you just program kids for more instruction in math or reading, it's unlikely they will thank you for it unless they are prepared to receive it as a gift rather than a punishment. Part of the answer is in changing the internalized beliefs about intelligence. Willingham thinks that the way we praise students frequently reinforces the wrong model and decreases the likelihood that students will work harder. A change in the way students think about intelligence is key.

Willingham puts it this way. Kids think that there are some students who are just smart and some who are not so smart. Smart kids don't have to work hard, everything's easy for them. So working hard is a sign of being dumb. Most kids want to be "smart" - no one wants to be or appear dumb. But since working hard means you're not smart, if you want to look smart you avoid any activity that requires hard work, because then you look dumb. You take easier classes, you do the easiest projects read the easiest books, and when you have no choice in a particular, difficult task, you just don't do it because it's a dumb assignment. "This is stupid" really translates as "I don't understand this but I don't want to look dumb so I'm calling your assignment stupid - see how smart I am?" Still other students have decided that they really aren't smart at all, which leads to resignation and lack of effort because hey, what's the point - I'm just not smart enough to do this.

When we tell students they are smart we simply make the problem worse. It reinforces the idea of intelligence as a fixed attribute of the person rather than a product of hard work that anyone can attain. Further, for low achievers the "praise" can ring hollow, or come off as patronizing. For students who are in fact "smart," as measured by standardized testing, such praise may make them fearful of taking risks or tackling difficult problems lest they be unmasked - a condition sometimes referred to as the "impostor complex" (I don't think I'm smart but I seem to have fooled everyone and now I'm terrified they'll find out that I'm not really smart/talented/competent/etc.). It may be that the smart kid who doesn't do any work would rather fail and be seen as lazy than struggle through a difficult task and risk being revealed as not so smart.

The correct approach, which we've all heard before but often forget or dismiss, is to praise the work or the effort, but do so sincerely. Willingham suggests that we consciously and directly change the culture of our school to one in which the central focus is on work and effort. Students should be taught explicitly that intelligence is a consequence of hard work, and that "failure" in a given task is frequently a necessary step on the way to success. Before I started reading Willingham's book I read a study about IQ that seems relevant here. A survey of Nobel Laureates showed that most of them were not "geniuses" as measured by IQ and many people who are labeled as geniuses fail to live up to the label in terms of achievement - a fact that many observers attribute directly to their being labeled geniuses in the first place.** At a young age, kids have already internalized the idea that to be smart is to have everything come easily to you. When presented with difficulties, even gifted children tend to shut down for fear of not living up the the ideal of smart or gifted that has been foisted upon them. High achievers instead tend to be of average to above average intelligence who know they have to work hard and put in the hours to become leading experts in their fields.

Implications

In summary, we need to change student attitudes about the nature of intelligence and the importance of hard work by directly engaging them in discussions of what is required to succeed academically. One of the most important things we can do in regard to bringing about that mindset is to avoid praising intelligence and instead praise effort. Lastly, we must provide additional time and instruction to students who are behind their peers academically.

Next: Overall reflections on the major themes of the book.

*Students from families with high levels of education and/or parental involvement gain a tremendous amount of knowledge informally and almost without effort through the home environment - dinner conversations, discussions around current events and television shows/movies/plays/etc., homework help, reading at home, visits to museums and other cultural institutions - conditions that are difficult to replicate outside such homes, but programs such as Head Start and others that we can imagine would certainly help.

**I can't find the article now, but here's a similar one on the same theme from New Scientist: How to be a genius.