Though Deborah Meier’s newest post on Bridging Differences is ostensibly about hypocrisy (she says she tells her left-wing friends that “we should honor hypocrisy”), I was drawn to her reference to habits of mind. The phrase is one of the most useful in understanding the huge responsibility of our public school system. In fact, the epigraph I chose for my story on the Catalyst charter schools in Chicago is all about habits. It’s from the Old Testament (Proverbs 22:6): “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.”
The power of a habit should be indisputable, but the nature of the habit, especially a habit of the mind, is subject to some misdirection. (Dare I remind our readers that drug addictions, etc. are also habits.)
Meier suggests a 2007 blog essay by Bruce Schauble (who says he is Director of Instruction at Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii) as a good summary of the field; and I trust her judgment on this. Schauble reviews Ted Sizer’s habits of mind – perspective, analysis, imagination, etc., — and Meier’s habits – evidence, connections, viewpoints/cause and effect, etc. – and those of Arthur Costa and Bena Kallick, at the Institute for Habits of Mind – thinking and communicating with clarity and precision, managing impulsivity, gathering data through all senses, etc. – but he leaves out Sizer’s important introduction to the whole subject:
Good schools are places where one gets the stuff of knowledge—that is, crudely, “the facts” –where one learns to use that stuff, and where one gets into the habit of such use.
Most of the modern purveyors of habits of mind forget the mind part; the habit of learning “the facts” and using them. And when Sizer says “the facts,” he means it. He’s not talking vague standards. “A student learns the Bill of Rights,” he notes in the very next sentence, “what those constitutional amendments say, precisely, and what they meant at the time of their framing. He learns then to use the Bill of Rights to understand past, present, and even possible situations.” Note his precisely.**
Even Sizer casts the other stuff – perspective, imagination, etc. – as “skills.” And there is certainly nothing wrong with teaching them. But Sizer cautions (this is 1992), “having the skills today is but a small part of the whole. Being committed to using them consistently tomorrow is the crux of it.” Using them, he believed, to learn “the stuff of knowledge.”
How do you get to Carnegie Hall? The same way you get to college: practice. And the best habit of mind that we can teach our children is that of learning and using “the facts.”
–Peter Meyer, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow
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*Who wrote, now famously, on January 17, “Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but it is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as a sleepover with 14-year-old girls.”
**from Chapter 6, “Habits,” in Horace’s School: Redesigning the American High School, by Theodore R. Sizer. Houghton Mifflin, New York, 1992. Pp. 68-9.
Wow, Peter you completely ignored the thrust of her article, and then you picked a fight where none need exist.
Completely changing the subject from what Meier wrote about, you write that most purveyors of “habits of mind” forget the mind part; the habit about learning “the facts,” and using them. Now that would have applied to me BEFORE I started teaching but I was disabused quickly. I don’t know where your “most” purveyors came from, because the evidence is that few ever adopted that, and in my experience and reading most of the rest abondoned that simplistic attitutde.
But then you cite “using them (facts [and other habits?])” is the crux of knowledge. You imply that Meier then contradicted Sizer.
But remembering that this issue is just a small part of Meier’s post, check her link and you’ll see that she wrote:
“Most of these habits may be cast as skills. Ask the student: Can you analyze this matter for me and then tell me what you find? However, the purpose of education involves more than that. Education is so to convince an adolescent of the virtue of these skills and so to give opportunities to practice the skills that they become almost second nature, and graduates live with them fully after they leave school. Of course I listen. Of course I insist on knowing the facts. Of course I am not fully sure about this new matter, but I know what I know and what I do not yet know. Of course you may have a better idea than mine, and I’ll listen to it carefully and with and open mind. Of course I’ll do something about this if the situation warrants it. Having the skills today is but a small part of the whole. Being committed to using them consistently tomorrow is the crux of it.”
So, since there is little conflict between you and Meier on this, what do you think about the post she actually wrote?i
Of course, when I wrote “she” I meant to write “he.” (The other he, Schauble said that he was inspired by the statement.) Typos can become a habit of mind too.
John,
I wasn’t trying to pick a fight with Deborah Meier, but simply wanted to call attention to the fact that Ted Sizer recognized the importance of acquiring specific knowledge as an important — perhaps the most imporant — habit. Many of the disagreements in the skills versus content debate seem to come down to a question of where you place the conjunction; i.e. do you say “I believe in content, but skills are more important” or “I believe in skills, but content is more important.” That distinction doesn’t appear very significant until you get into the classroom, with a stopwatch, and start measuring how much time — and in what order — on skills and content. The differences, over time, become significant.
cheers,
peter.
When I was a kid, I often heard educators express progressive ideas. Even then, in my experience, the stopwatch would have revealed much more instruction for content. Labaree, if I recall, said that at the height of progressivism only 1/3rd of teachers voiced support for it. Again in my experience, progressivism was long dead, and the only thing I as a teacher was told about it was critical. Today, the push seems to be towards content, so what’s the problem? I suspect that the stopwatch, today, would say that we have far, far too much instruction in facts in relation to the other habits of mind.
But I’m not going to pick a fight with educators who want to teach facts. Its great if we teach more facts, as we also teach much, much more of the other habits. It sounds like you want a different balance, but if you were a teacher who taught more facts, I’d do nothing but thank you for giving me more to use in my favored activity, being a critical thinking coach.
Do we need reminders that we all agree on something? Yes! If fact, I loved the way that Brooks made his point.
Does this mean you’re signing on the Shanker Institute curriculum manifesto?
Yeah, and I’ll hold my breath until kids who five years below today’s standards meet the higher ones.
I didn’t say that, did I?
I don’t weigh in on common standards or even a common curriculum, unless the curriculum is mandated according to a schedule or something equally destructive. Life is to short to worry about things that may or may not work, when we have so many mandates that won’t work that are so destructive.