If Student Brains Were Refrigerators
How schools inhibit authentic learning
Artwork by David Chang
Sometimes, I look back at notes I took in the past, most likely during a break when I had time to really sit down and think deeply about something, and I say to myself, “how the hell did you have that thought, that is so random!” Such was the case with a single page titled, “if our students’ brains were refrigerators.” It certainly was not what I was looking for as I flipped through the pages of my journal, but it is what I found. So, let’s take that randomness and run with it, because sometimes through the randomness, comes clarity.
If we pretend for a second that our brains are refrigerators, with different compartments (subjects) for different types of food (knowledge). Where the contents have a certain shelf life (memory), where we can take different ingredients (knowledge) and mix them together to cook up something new (application). If we can close our eyes really tight and copy & paste a fridge in place of our students smiling faces, if we can do that, then we might begin to understand how backward this system we call education really is.
In school, we continuously stock student fridges with tons of food (knowledge). We have odd rules that are accepted as normal. Each drawer must be stocked at different times and in a particular order. When, or rather if, you are asked to cook a meal you can only choose from items in a single drawer and you must follow the teachers’ recipe. The teacher will decide if your meal is deemed successful, even though taste is known to be highly subjective. We will assess you all on your ability to cook the same thing, even though you all have different skill sets, interests and tastes.
So, what happens when you continually stock your fridge with food and rarely take it out to use it? Your food rots. The food you worked so hard to stuff in your drawers this week, is rotten and disposed of by next week. Even when schools do ask you to cook, the scope of how you are allowed to use your ingredients is extremely narrow. Want to candy those walnuts? Too bad. Want to poach the egg instead of fry it? Too bad. You never learn all of the exciting ways food can be combined and recombined in an endless variety of meals.
It is not about what you have in your fridge, it is about what you can do with what you have in your fridge. The best chefs in the world can take the biggest miss match of food and create a masterpiece.
So, what should schools do instead? For starters, we should stop assessing how full your fridge is. It is wasteful and ultimately of little importance. Instead, we should share with our students’ tons of recipe books to spark their interests. We should encourage them to experiment with the food they have in their drawers already. We should let students take different ingredients from any drawer and mix them! I know, how insane! Who cares if they make disgusting food for a few years? Who cares if they put pineapples in their mashed potatoes. They will learn that pineapplemash is a weird thing. Or maybe it is delicious! The point is, you don’t know because you haven’t tried it (my apologies to the 0.001% who have done this). Do you think the greatest cooks do not take epic risks and welcome constant failure?
Perhaps, we should stop limiting our students to the items we think should be in their refrigerator. Perhaps, we should teach students to make a grocery list (what I need to learn), walk down the road to the supermarket (library, internet, experts) and buy what they need to attempt that epic meal (epic application/problem).
We have certain ways of thinking about knowledge in education. The prevailing paradigm of education places a large emphasis on Just-in-Case Knowledge. Here, there is a set body of knowledge that we hope will be useful to you in the future. That body of knowledge is called curriculum and it is often older than the students it was created for. The answer to the stereotypical “why are we learning this?” is often “you will understand in the future.” Well, what if I don’t?
I personally prescribe to the mantra of Just-in-Time Knowledge. This is the paradigm most people use outside of schools. In my work, I don’t just learn a bunch of random things and hope that one day in the future it will be of use to me! No, I am goal oriented. I establish driving questions and long-term goals that I am pursuing and then I try to figure out what I need to learn to accomplish them. I am constantly updating my grocery list and the meals I cook ALWAYS require that I access knowledge across subjects.
I am not saying that I don’t also learn random things sometimes, but in my adult life, those things are almost always interest driven. The learning is intrinsically motivated, the knowledge is the means and the end. And you know what? Because I am interested in the knowledge, I am much more likely to apply it! So maybe I have an obsession with different varieties of carrots. Maybe you think it is odd that I keep stalking my fridge with more and more carrots, but I love cooking with carrots, and the goal is to learn to cook, not to fill the fridge. Stated differently, If I stock your fridge with food which you find disgusting, how motivated are you going to be to cook?
When people say that 95% of what they learned in University is irrelevant to their profession, what they are saying is only 5% of all of that food is in the recipes their employer wants them to make.
The tragic part of this situation is this person spent so much time stocking their fridge they never mastered how to cook (application of learning) or grocery shop (the process of learning). The irony is, these are the two things that would be extremely useful to an employer. If you know how to grocery shop, it doesn’t matter if the list changes. If you have ample practice cooking, it is fairly easy to learn some new recipes.
How can education move away from a just-in-case model, and towards a just-in-time model? How can we shift to assessing our students’ ability to make grocery lists and cook creative meals?
My students’ drawers are full. New flavors cease to excite them. They expect me to make their grocery lists and look indignant when I refuse. They cling to my recipes and are scared to experiment with their own. How did we get here?
Some food for thought
1) In what ways are you teaching your students how to cook?
2) In what ways are you helping your students through the difficult process of creating their own grocery lists?
3) How often are you supplying the recipe, and how often do the kids get to choose?
4) Are you confining your recipes to ingredients from a single drawer because those are the ingredients you know best?
5) Are you not letting any “weird” meals be created in the name of assessment or curriculum?
