In schools, we constantly speak to students about how to
improve. Whether they are practicing a
sport, rehearsing a musical number or a scene in a play, revising an essay, or
attempting to solve a mathematical problem, we’re encouraging them and
affirming that they can do better. As we
all know, though, there are different ways to improve, depending upon the task
and where one is in the process.
In a New York Times op-ed column published June 17, “The
Structures of Growth,” linked here, David Brooks discusses the various ways
that humans can better their practice toward improvement. As Brooks says early in his column, “But, as
the Canadian writer Scott H. Young points out in a recent blog post [linked here], progress in most domains is not linear. In some spheres, like learning a
language or taking up running, improvement is logarithmic. You make a great
deal of progress when you first begin the activity, but, as you get better, it
gets harder and harder to improve.”
Brooks explains that in some tasks, the growth initially comes easily
and quickly. However, very soon, we
plateau, and at this point, we need to shake up our routine if we are to
continue developing.
As the writer Anaïs Nin once said, “We do not grow
absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in
another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one
realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us
backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells,
constellations.”
Other areas of growth are exponential. This is the kind of improvement that can feel
like a slog, and the way to be exceptional is to heed Malcolm Gladwell’s advice
to practice for 10,000 hours. As Brooks
points out though, many people quit when they are engaged in an activity in
which growth is exponential. Fatigue
sets in, and it’s all too easy to move on to something else.
Brooks also explains that some forms of growth are
episodic. I like to think of this growth
as a series of epiphanies where we exist at a certain level for a while, but
then suddenly, we have a moment of clarity and
see things very differently. At this point, we can move to the next
level of learning or growth, and we will never be the same. Other forms of growth are like a roller
coaster—we must go down before we can go up, and much of the growth comes in
the struggle to move to the next higher level.
We need to demystify how learning and growth occur so that we do not
lose hope in the process, particularly when the process doesn't align with our
conception of how we learn.
While the ways to improve may differ, they all require a
growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset, as outlined by Stanford professor
Carol S. Dweck in her excellent book, Mindset. We must believe that we can grow
and improve, and that our minds and our abilities are not genetically
determined. When we speak to our
children, we need to help them see that first of all, they can improve and
secondarily, that the task in which they are involved may determine what is the
best path on their journey of growing as students and as human beings.
