Designing Teacups: The Atlantic on Why ‘Average’ Is Underrated

In the latest issue of The Atlantic, Lori Gottlieb writes about the latest in middle-class parent neuroses: designing childhood happiness. She goes on to explain how well-meaning parents may be, increasingly, landing their kids in therapy. As a clinical psychology, writer, and mother, Gottlieb writes that our obsession with children's happiness may be dooming them to unhappy lives as adults.

Wendy Mogel, another clinical psychologist, explains in the article that, “Our children are not our masterpieces.” Today, she says, “every child is either learning-disabled, gifted, or both—there’s no curve left, no average.” When Mogel first started doing psychological testing in the 1980s, according to Gottlieb, she hated telling parents that their child had a learning disability. "But now," according to Mogel, "parents would prefer to believe that their child has a learning disability that explains any less-than-stellar performance, rather than have their child be perceived as simply average. ‘They believe that ‘average’ is bad for self-esteem.’”

The irony, as the article points out, is that measures of self-esteem aren't actually good predictors of how happy a person will be, "especially if the self-esteem comes from constant accommodation and praise rather than earned accomplishment." (See Nurture Shock, by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman.) Jean Twenge adds that research suggests that "perseverance, resiliency, and reality-testing" are much better predictors of life fulfillment and success.

In the article, Mogel also talks about how college deans are now seeing more and more incoming freshmen called "teacups" — people who are "so fragile that they break down anytime things don’t go their way."

History Shortchanged

Oh, the saga of low test scores in US schools. It's hardly a news story these days. Still, The New York Times, in response to the latest results of a nationwide test, found that most fourth graders are unable to say why Abraham Lincoln was an important figure and few high school seniors able to identify China as the North Korean ally that fought American troops during the Korean War. But, really, is that all too surprising? I am not so sure that most American adults could identify China as a North Korean ally in the 1950s, let alone, a crucial partner in the Korean War.

According to The Times' Sam Dillion, history advocates blame students’ poor showing on the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act. Teachers and schools no longer have time for history — No Child Left Behind Act, with its requirement that schools raise scores in math and reading but in no other subject, allow time for little else. And if you are not being taught history, it's unlikely that you'll test well.

But as this Reuters story from 1995 shows, student declines in history knowledge is far from new. In fact, the decline even predates 1995. Still, in The Times article, Linda K. Salvucci, a history professor in San Antonio and chairwoman-elect of the National Council for History Education, explains one of the big issues around teaching history.

“History is very much being shortchanged,” Salvucci explains. Many teacher-education programs, she said, also contribute to the problem by encouraging aspiring teachers to seek certification in social studies, rather than in history. “They think they’ll be more versatile, that they can teach civics, government, whatever,” she said in The Times. “But they’re not prepared to teach history.”

Source: The New York Times

A Follow-Up from the Department of Just Because

Jackson Run Bike to kindergarten. on pinkbike.com

From the Department of Just Because

Street bicyclist Danny McAskill takes on the bumps, curves, and spikes of Edinburgh (filmed by Dave Sowerby). Yes, this video is old, but goodness, Mister McAskill can ride the lines.

Developing a Gut Instinct, or Quick Grasp, for Problem-Solving

I often wonder where I went wrong with my own math education. Often, I'll blame Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. I found that book in the hallway of my elementary school one day and read it during math class for the next two weeks. I have no memories of learning multiplication during that time, though I did develop a long love of all book by Roald Dahl amid glances at the chalkboard and the front-of-the-class multiplication chart.

After months of personal book reading during math class, I still recall in painful, cringe-inducing memories of sitting crouched beside my dad's Lazy Boy chair. I was in tears and utter frustration, realizing that I knew little multiplication beyond the "sevens," and even then my "threes" and "fours" were shaky. I had allowed myself to be left behind in my learning for at least six months, maybe longer. But it wasn't my math grade that had revealed my utter lack of learning — amazingly (or perhaps pathetically), I had received either an A or B in class. Rather, my father had asked me a simple problem inv

olving fractions, which revealed how little I had learned. I now realize that it revealed far more — I missed the chance to develop a genuine, natural instinct for math. Fractions, graphs, and equations would go on to become my personal Vietnam, complete with post-traumatic stress disorder with all things math.

Today, The New York Times explains that a lot of American kids have a few holes in their academic game. Graphs and equations are included in these so-called holes. As reporter Benedict Carey explains the US education system is awash with computerized learning tools and pilot programs of all kinds. And while scientists still don’t understand the best way to teach "perceptual intuition," researchers and some teachers are convinced that "if millions of children can develop a trained eye for video combat games and doctored Facebook photos, they can surely do the same for graphs and equations."

Thus, a move from school curriculums that emphasize top-down instruction, especially for topics like math and science, may be in order. Here's what typically happens (and, actually, the approach I took last night for a stats class that I am taking): "Learn the rules first — the theorems, the order of operations, Newton’s laws — then make a run at the problem list at the end of the chapter." But as Carey explains, recent research has found that true experts have something at least as valuable as a mastery of the rules: gut instinct, an instantaneous grasp of the type of problem they’re up against."

In response to this research, some cognitive scientists suggest that schools and students might do better with this "bottom-up ability," called perceptual learning. Carey writes that new studies suggest that "the brain is a pattern-recognition machine, after all, and when focused properly, it can quickly deepen a person’s grasp of a principle." In other words, the author writes, "there’s no reason someone with a good eye for fashion or wordplay cannot develop an intuition for classifying rocks or mammals or algebraic equations, given a little interest or motivation."

David Brooks on the Plight of Untethered College Grads

No one would design a system of extreme supervision to prepare people for a decade of extreme openness. But this is exactly what has emerged in modern America. 


But as David Brooks points out, modern America has designed a setup to raise hot-house tomatoes. Will they wilt or will they bloom into something all together new -- and able to deal with the country's big challenges. Here's Brooks' article. While I do agree with his big point, I do think students nowadays do get openness and "extreme openness." To some extent, what he's talking about is how to deal with not getting what you want, when you want it. In other words, life, day to day.