A seal at the New England Aquarium. (Photo: Charles Hoffman)
Yesterday I got a short and sweet insight into learning, courtesy of the New England Aquarium, where I took our daughters for our weekly visit. One of our favorite exhibits is the training session for the sea lions and fur seals. In the audience this time were about 100 school children with parents and teachers. To introduce the session, the lead trainer conducted the following discussion:
- How many of you do chores? (Many hands go up.)
- How many of you get an allowance for doing chores? (Most hands remain in the air.)
- How many of do homework?
- How many you have to finish your homework before you can go outside to play? (Lots of hands still in the air.)
- I see lots of hands! It makes homework not so bad because you get a reward at the end.
Then the trainer made her point:
So, from your own life you already understand how we train animals, including the fur seals, by using positive reinforcement.
In other words, it’s assumed that our children are trained like pigeons in a Skinner box. Our teachers fare no better, with rewards and punishment tied to student scores on absurd tests that measure mostly average parental income. What does the future hold for a society that treats its next generation like seals or pigeons?
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. You can also watch it on 
What does the future hold for a society that actually teaches it’s children rather than leaving a good education up to who has the most money? Pretty good I think.
Let’s all go Finnish! (No tests, and teaching is actually an esteemed profession)
Teaching is an esteemed profession here in America too. Is there anyone her who doesn’t think teaching is a good job? Ten months of work with several breaks, good pay, great benefits…
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Me. My wife’s starting salary as a teacher 7 years ago was substantially lower than the amount she made as a newspaper saleswoman, a part-time job she used to put herself through college. In some states it’s better, but in general the pay is not good. She’s no longer teaching, even though she loved doing it.
Also, if you’re a dedicated teacher it’s not 10 months of work. It’s 12, as you prepare for the upcoming year.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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It’s not clear if that irony is intentional.
Depends on where you’re teaching and how you’re doing it. It was hands down the hardest thing I’ve ever done — I was in a high poverty, urban school with plenty of problems (and we had the highest scores of similarly situated schools). I was in school by 6:30 most days and was happy if I left (with a bag full of work) by 5 or 5:30 so that I could do another hour or two at home if I could stay awake. I lost ten pounds (and I wasn’t overweight, I ended up having to buy new clothes that fit) within the first two months, since I barely ate lunch (what with broken copiers, lunch detentions, the fight that I happened upon and had to write up, etc.) let alone having time for healthy snacks or the like.
Now, it’s possible that I was just stupid — that is, stupid enough to believe or at least feel that it really was entirely my responsibility to not only teach the students what they needed to know for the state test and how to behave and how to *want* to learn and what the repercussions of learning and not learning would be for their lives.
There were horror stories (stabbings, shootings, kids getting beaten, house fires with 5 children killed over the last less than a decade, and another three children were just killed this winter in another school about a mile away) and deal every single day with angry, angry kids (usually with good reasons). Kids whose “issues” would be subject to years of therapy and social work if they only lived in families wealthy enough and in the know enough to get it. And kids that just need all of your attention — which is of course, impossible.
But yeah, I do know that there are lazier teachers around, I’ve heard tell. Thank heavens teaching is the only profession with lazy people in it.
Not that I’m bitter.
The trainer is using a gross oversimplification to be sure, but on the other hand, in order to connect to your audience, you need to build a metaphor, some sort of common ground that both sides can work with. Tying the way they train the seals to the way many children perceive their chores/homework sets up a clear common ground.
SO the real question is, does the trainer genuinely believe training kids is just like training seals, or is she just pulling a commonly used metaphor into play to engage the audience.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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As a parent, I often think of rewards and punishments as a way to speed up long-term consequences–to help ease discount rate issues, if you will. People in general, and kids in particular, are pretty bad at doing difficult things now even if it is best for us in the long run. Homework is one example, but there are many others. Since I can’t really change my child’s discount rate, instead I set a reward or consequence that is going to happen now. In time, I hope he’ll learn to do that for himself. That is, set his own rewards and consequence to help him overcome his own present-biased preferences.
Is that training like seals and pigeons? Kind of. The main difference, I think, is that we’re training seals and pigeons to do arbitrary things. It has nothing to do with self-control problems, but with kids that’s the real issue. Same mechanism, but different problems. What alternative is there to rewards and consequences?
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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I don’t understand the problem. Does it not work?
Surely showing children that short-term discipline has long-term benefits is good?
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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I’m intrigued that Sanjoy plans a life of volunteering work to his would-be employers, but as for me, I’ll continue to expect compensation. Bark bark!
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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I was both saddened and disgusted by your article, sir. I, like LBJ, firmly believe that children are far more perspicacious than we give them credit for.
I have a friend who works in CPS in Little Village with only low income students, some of them undocumented children. He teaches Honors Philosophy and makes sure to include both Foucault and Derrida into his curriculum because he firmly believes that when challenged with a topic as abstract and difficult as post-structualism, children will succeed if only we believe in them.
Contrast this liberal model of education with that of a conservative Asian model which treats children like pets too dumb to think for themselves….http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html
The Asian American model minority model may push their children to “success,” but how many developmental and mental health issues come up? What about a quality of life issue-is life really just about getting a job at some corporation, buying a house, and having 2.5 kids?
Also, many employers view Asian Americans as ideal employees because they are often not aggressive enough to want to move up the ladder and disciplined enough to get the job done.
As for the question Mr. Mahajan posed at the very end…well, what other educational system on earth does it better? Many countries fare far worse in their primary, secondary, and tertiary educational systems than we do. If we don’t move away from this animalistic model of education, we’re going to end up with a populace easily influenced by propaganda, especially the rhetoric of fear. We’re going to have a population ripe to be controlled by a demagogue, especially in these recessionary times. See Milgram’s psychological experiments…..the Germans weren’t unique or more evil. They had just been socialized the same way everyone else was….to not think, but to jump and do whatever your authority figures say.
Until we move on to a marketplace of ideas based model of critical thinking in education, our children will always be susceptible to the next fad…they’ll be model employees, but lack the courage to be true entrepreneurs. That being said, the American educational system has a higher chance of fostering creativity than almost any other educational system on earth. For that, we have our Founding Fathers to thank….their historical examples and the examples of all of those who have fought and died for this country since are what inspires courage to innovate and move capitalism forward to a world in which we can all have a bigger slice of the pie.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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“What does the future hold for a society that treats its next generation like seals or pigeons?”
Herring and eusociality.