Face-to-Face With Malcolm Gladwell at NECC 2009
The first keynote speaker of NECC 2009 was critically-acclaimed author Malcolm Gladwell. He wrote some bestselling books, such as The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers. Gladwell chose a topic that seemed very special to many of the audience members, which surrounded the idea of “meaningful learning environments.” He discussed this topic in a rather unconventional manner; the popular band Fleetwood Mac served as Malcolm’s vessel in which he ferried the audience’s attention. Zach Goodwin was also on hand to live-blog the event and provide a litmus-test of the audience’s reactions.
Fleetwood Mac has always been known for its quick rise to fame after they released the album “Rumors.” This collection of songs proved to be the big ticket that this somewhat unknown band had been looking for. Gladwell told this tale, but then he made an enlightening observation: Not only had Fleetwood Mac made other albums before their self-titled “Fleetwood Mac,” and their follow-up, “Rumors;” they had produced a total of 15 previous albums.
This brought Malcolm to his first point; creating a masterpiece often takes a long time, and a great amount of work. Fleetwood Mac did not create their best-selling album on their first, or even second, try; it took 16 tries to get it right. The same applies for many of the world’s greatest artists and scholars. The pattern, as Gladwell explains it, is that it usually takes at least 10 years of experience to create a great work. The Beatles played 1200 live shows before ever becoming a big hit.
Learning and succeeding requires much more than just talent or “smarts;” it requires a great deal of work. Students who put more effort into their schoolwork generally succeed at a greater rate than those who don’t. KIPP school programs throughout the country have had great results in using the “more effort” model. Students enrolled in KIPP schools spend 60% more time in class on average than their public school counterparts.
Like Fleetwood Mac, students also need to experiment with ways of learning to find what works best for them. Strict regimental methods of teaching are ineffective, as every student is different and need to find their “groove.” Students also need to build on their weaknesses instead of their strengths; compensation will work much better than capitalization. More effort is required, thus making the student more likely to succeed, rather than slide by. Malcolm used entrepreneurs as an example; nearly 30% of all entrepreneurs were, at some point, diagnosed with a learning disability. Those disabilities forced these people to create the skills necessary to be succesfull in the business world. In place of reading and writing, different skills developed; such as communication, delegation, and problem-solving skills.
Finally, Malcolm brought all these points together with one closing lesson: Feedback is a necessary part of any successful learning environment. Timely and targeted feedback is crucial in creating an environment that nurtures meaningful learning.
6 Comments
Gwyneth
Sunday, 28th June 2009 at 10:40 pm
great summation! it was a splendid keynote about how we should compensate & stretch to learn and looking for the easy way to learn isn’t the best …where really, struggling is GOOD for us…
which makes me think i’m lazy for loving the ease of Wikis and how i don’t mourn Dreamweaver or writing raw html! LOL
~G
Gregory Louie
Monday, 29th June 2009 at 1:51 am
I am a fan of Gladwell’s impressive analogic reasoning skill. Yet I take his conclusions with a grain of salt.
Analogies provide a powerful method for making sense of the world, but breakdown when applied too broadly.
Gladwell’s arguments are constructed from case studies of world class performance.
He uses those studies to abstract general principles and apply them generally to all learning paths to mastery.
Yet do these principles really apply to students in secondary education? Gladwell’s data comes from contexts where the individuals studied are highly motivated and the rewards for mastery are outstanding.
Hmm… Does this really apply to the context of learning in traditional school contexts?
I do agree that more practice is necessary. But models of schooling that force students to spend more time without considering student motivation seems to me a recipe for tyranny, not mastery.
I do think that Gladwell’s principles can be applied in contexts that mirror his case studies more closely. That is, his principles might be applied more realistic to schools, but only if the schools provide environments that allow both teachers and students to follow their passions.
I would venture a guess that Fleetwood Mac would not have emerged from a KIPP school!
Just my two cents.
Gregory Louie
Monday, 29th June 2009 at 2:09 am
Just to follow-up on my last comment. I want to emphasize that Gladwell’s main points are well taken.
I just think that Gladwell’s analogies fit more powerfully with the Sudbury empowerment model of schooling than the KIPP school model.
I can easily imagine Fleetwood Mac emerging from a Sudbury school.
Mary
Monday, 29th June 2009 at 7:46 am
“Out of structure, emerges creativity.” Were the greatest musicians to disdain practice, they would never have reached the level of creativity they attained. The myth of a rocker picking up an instrument and churning out brilliance is a popular movie and TV myth which makes for a good story. Were you to factor in what made Fleetwood Mac great, one of the first questions you should ask him would be, “and how much time did you practice?” Next I’d ask, “And were your most productive practices drug addled free flowing experiences, or did you repetitively play difficult sections of music that were challenging? Did this bore you playing one section over and over, or when you finally mastered it, were you challenged? I assume that the person who asked about Fleetwood Mac was not a successful musician.
When my daughter was accepted into an arts school that produces some of the finest musicians and vocalists in the country, I was shocked to hear her friends whose parents played in some of the finest orchestras in the country describe how when they were little, their parents did things like line up M and Ms on the piano to dole out after sections of practice, or bake special cookies for the end of a solid, well done two-hour practice. I’m not averse to reinforcement, but I had never imagined that in musical households, this was a common way of passing down the torch. Even more shocking was finding out that our bluegrass rocker friend used the same techniques with his kids.
We adults in education make so many unfounded assumptions about students without ever asking them how they feel, providing them with the ability to respond without adult authority guiding their answers. We assume that they hate repetitive drilling (and if drill is “drill and kill” rather than “Drill and Thrill,” with a perky, animated actor of a teacher, they should hate it); we assume that they prefer cut and paste projects to learning to recite a poem; we assume that they prefer group projects to individual work. And so, since this is the prevailing opinion in education, those assumptions are foisted on kids and have been for the past 20 years that I’ve been watching and working in classrooms.
After three years of directing a project using direct instruction reading (perky and animated) and increasing the percentage of grade-level readers from 30% to 70%, we became battle weary of the dogmatic district reading coordinators dismissing the tests results by saying that the tests didn’t test anything meaningful, that these students surely couldn’t be doing the level of critical thinking that the students at other failing schools were doing, that by not teaching them to become good “guessers” at reading words, we were hampering them, and that we had set them up to dislike reading. Thus we decided to give the Developmental Reading Attitude Survey where students are asked questions about school and outside reading (How do you feel when it’s time to go to reading? How do you feel when you get a book as a present? How do you like the stories in reading class? etc). Students from K – 3 in the class each had a sheet of paper with pictures of Garfield smiling a lot, a little, frowning a lot and a little and circled the one they wanted to after each question. The test was normed and sure enough our high poverty students learning with DI came out liking reading, reading class, outside reading, and what they were reading in reading class as much as typical students.
What was most significant was that the most struggling 3rd grade stduents liked reading as much as the proficient ones. Typically, these kids HATE reading by that time with all of the frustration and shame that comes with it (Go to the “Children of the Code” website and watch the video on “shame” (also on dysteachia) Those curriculum directors with all their assumptions about what was best for kids, ignored the results and tossed them to the side because they didn’t fit their expectations.
Four years later, when I heard Michelle Obama talk about how after Barack decided to run for president she realized that no matter what they did — win Iowa, raise money, develop an organization, etc — the people in power kept raising the bar higher without acknowledging the success. “Sure he did that, but he’ll never _______” I realized that her experience watching her husband go up against the establishment paralleled mine in education. No test data, no student enthusiasm, no higher graduation rates, or higher level of success in college will convince the current generation of ever entrenched college ed professors and students they’ve trained that haphazard, student constructed learning isn’t what children desire and learn most from. In the face of conflicting data, that goes against their assumptions, these educators just raise the bar higher.
I’ll easily lay odds on the Kipp kids, but I also know that their success won’t mean anything to the naysayers. When faced with dissonance about the most effective teaching of students, they’ll just raise another bar. It’s too difficult to deal with dissonance and look ones erroneous assumptions in the face. Most of the 50’s generation couldn’t do it when faced with the Boomer generations view of the world and the Boomers and their trainees have shown themselves to be just as rigid. These are the same people who continue to say that we are the most creative country on the planet, even if the last generation we educated look like fools (whether it’s Leno, the Daily show, or a world test) when asked information about most anything (science, social studies, vocabulary, etc). As my younger son said, “Mom — look at the architecture in Asia, look at the technology innovations, look at their art. Anyone who doesn’t recognize how we’ve been left behind in the dust is still looking at the world the way it was 20 years ago.”
Phil
Monday, 29th June 2009 at 4:45 pm
If there was a way giving a thumbs up to the previous post I would! Well said Mary!
Going up against the establishment is a test in patience, fortitude and passion for the ultimate objective. However, Ithe battle can quickly take your energy and focus away from continuing and building on your existing success. I battle in waves in order to avoid burnout, frustration and cynicism from settling in. It is very important to focus on the positive and lead by example. Change takes time, but the examples we set now will lead that change.
NECC 09: Opening Night | Academic Musings & Tech for Learning
Saturday, 25th July 2009 at 1:36 am
[...] conference officially kicked off with an intriguing keynote speech by Malcolm Gladwell and was followed by a ‘Gala’ opening reception on Sunday night, 6/28. Trays of ISTE [...]
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