The three Ps of education

A friend of mine reminded me the other day of a talk I had given way back when.  The gist was that I was challenging incoming adult students to take the appropriate view of their educational process in order to gain the most from it.  I used alliteration to make it more memorable – evidently it worked for my friend.  I, on the other hand, had to be reminded.

Perfectionism – The belief that there is an ideal, that the ideal is achievable, and that the ideal ought to be achieved.

This is slow, painful death.  It has been known to result in the unfortunate situation where a student earns an “F” for unfinished work that is being perfected rather than a “B” for completed work that is imperfect.  Our adult degree completion program had students who failed to graduate because they were perfectionists who could never bring themselves to hand in their final projects.

Procrastination – The belief that there is always more time even as the deadline races toward you like a bullet train.

This is speeding toward an immovable object, hoping that it will disappear, only to be obliterated.  More students have failed assignments because of procrastination than will ever fail due to inability.  Procrastination has many sources (one, of course, is perfectionism), but the end result is the same, work is submitted that is inferior to what it could and should have been.  I’ve had many students tell me that they do their best work under pressure.  There may be some truth to that – the mind focuses as the deadline approaches and they are able to concentrate their attention and effort.  But it is only a partial truth.  I know from my own experience how many times I have stood to give a presentation and realized that if I had just given more thought to the illustration I was using it would have been so much more effective.  Bottom line: One cannot be assured that creativity will flow, or that printers will work, at the last minute.

Pragmatism – The realization that reality trumps what might have been.

This is a compromise between our striving for the ideal and our desire to avoid failure.  Pragmatism is often treated like something that is lesser, something to be avoided.  Compared with perfectionism and procrastination, pragmatism gets things done.  Pragmatists graduate, on time, often with better GPAs than anticipated because, at the end of the day, they were committed to finishing more than they were committed to reaching the unreachable or to being waylaid by distraction.

All of this grows out of personal experience.  When I entered my PhD program at Northwestern, I was assigned an up and coming star among the faculty as my advisor.  He was a charismatic educator and a reminder of what we, as incoming graduate students, were meant to become.  Thankfully I asked around and found out that none of the students assigned to work with him had completed their dissertations.  He was a perfectionist who was always calling upon them to revise their work.  I requested a new advisor and was assigned to an aging star with decades of experience guiding doctoral students.  He made it clear from the start that he wanted to see me graduate and that the goal was to get things done.  I went through a period of nine months where I was getting nowhere on my dissertation and so I avoided him.  When I reengaged, he steered me back toward a pragmatic view of my work and a commitment to completion.  So, once again, I thank the late Dr. Michael Leff for teaching me the value of educational pragmatism.

(For the record, this is not a defense of philosophical pragmatism and its view of truth.  That is another topic for another day.)

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Globalizing is ineffective–never do it!

One should never say “always” and must always avoid “never.”

Globalizing is an enticement to which some people are more susceptible.  Seeking to secure victory by sweeping aside all possibility of counterexample is enticing, but it is a trap to be avoided.

“You never clean up your room.”  “You always leave the refrigerator open.”  “Your hair is always greasy.”  “You never admit that you’re wrong.”

One counterexample and the argument is hopelessly misdirected.  “Six months ago I cleaned my room” steers the conversation into waters unfriendly to your original point.

Here are four principles to keep in mind:

1. Decide whether you are making a general point or dealing with a specific instance.  If you are making a general point, then be careful of getting sucked into a ground war where you are battling over each example.  If you are dealing with a specific instance, make sure the facts are in your favor.
2. Don’t trap the other person.  Don’t ask, “Is your room clean?” when you’ve just walked by your child’s room and seen that it is a mess.
3. Replace “you language” with “I language” – own your statements and don’t try to mind-read the other’s intentions.  Rather than “Your room is a mess, just like always,” try “I just looked into your room and it’s not picked up like we agreed it would be before dinner.  What happened?”  Identify specific behaviors and then let the other person explain the behavior.
4. Be clear about the consequences and don’t be afraid to follow through if an appropriate explanation is not forthcoming: “I forgot – can’t I just clean it up tomorrow?”

Celebrate those few occasions when global statements are appropriate, but otherwise avoid.

Technorati Tags: counterexample,ground war,original point,enticement,consequences,victory,globalization,always,never

Working from memory is a bad idea–even when you’re young!

Yesterday, one of my children announced on the way out the door to school that a report written over spring break was still on the laptop and needed to be printed and brought to school since it was due that day.  I asked if I could e-mail it to the teacher instead – I was told that would work.

Here are the steps I had to take to make that happen:

1. Go to the school website to find the teacher’s e-mail address
2. Call Judy at work to make sure I had the correct teacher
3. Fire up the laptop, find the document, resave the document in an earlier version of Word just in case the teacher doesn’t have the latest version, and copy the newly saved document to our network drive
4. Compose an e-mail to the teacher and attach the document before sending

Here is the response I received from the teacher – the child’s name has been redacted to protect the guilty.

I have received it, but I will not grade it until next week. It was not due until next Monday there is information that we have not covered in class that needs to be included in the paper. [Your child] may want to consider adding this information before submitting it for a grade.

Thus, my post title: Working from memory is a bad idea – even when you’re young!

We had a talk with our offending child about using his/her agenda planner that the school provides.  The good news – at least he/she is working ahead, even if not intentionally.

Technorati Tags: e-mail address,agenda planner,memory,bad idea,spring break,laptop

5 Reasons to Visit Colleges as a High School Sophomore

Well, my son and I are back from our college visit trip.  We traveled more than 1300 miles and visited six schools.  Here are my observations.

After reading, let me know what you think – send a note to stephen@julianconsulting.org.

1. Our son is a high school sophomore.  Everyone kept saying he was starting “very early” – almost as though it was too early.  The expectation appears to be that college visits are conducted by juniors and seniors.  Because of our approach (see #2 & #3) I believe the sophomore year is the perfect age to start this process.
2. I told my son that the purpose of our visits was to learn the process of selecting a college, not to make a decision about a specific school.  On our way to the first school I quizzed him on questions he was going to be asked: What is your intended major?  Why are you visiting this particular school?  What is your current GPA?  Have you taken any of the standardized tests – if so, how did you score?  We also discussed questions he might ask: What is the total cost of tuition, room and board?  What scholarships are available?  What is the typical dorm room like?  What meal plans are available and how good is the food?  What opportunities are there for musicians outside of being a music major?
3. My goal was to stay out of the way, so I let my son answer and ask the questions.  During campus tours I walked behind the tour guide and my son so that I didn’t become the focus or interrupt.  It’s amazing how many times the admissions counselor or tour guide would look to me rather than to my son.  When that happened, I looked at my son and waited for him to answer, redirecting the other person’s attention.
4. College facilities are like houses.  There is a wide range in what is offered.  But like a home it is more about fit than which looks the best or has the nicest features.  This is consistent with my belief that the US News & World Report rankings should have little to do with individual decision-making.  The rankings may be interesting in the aggregate, but just because a school is in its top five doesn’t mean it should be in yours.
5. Spending five days traveling with my son meant that the trip was a success regardless of what happened on the campuses we visited.  In addition, we were able to stay with friends for three of the four nights.

Technorati Tags: high school sophomore,admissions counselor,sophomore year,college visits,specific school,meal plans,standardized tests,dorm room,gpa,juniors,expectation,scholarships,seniors