Inspired by the author’s participation in the Allied bombing of the monastery at Monte Cassino during World War II, the novel is considered a masterpiece by literary critics. It has been compared favorably with the works of Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and Walker Percy, and its themes of religion, recurrence, and church versus state have generated a significant body of scholarly research.
Describes Harlow and Deci‘s original studies that came up with the idea of intrinsic motivation. Note: Maslow (of Hierarchy of Needs fame) was Harlow’s student.
Three basic types of motivation (drives):
Motivation 1.0: Biological (need for food, drink, sex)
Motivation 2.0: Extrinsic (e.g. getting paid)
Motivation 3.0: Intrinsic
Chapter 1: Extrinsic versus Intrinsic Motivation
1. Wikipedia: a success almost entirely because contributors are willing to invest their time and energy for no reward; the very definition of intrinsic motivation.
Note: Despite my own challenges with students using Wikipedia as a reliable source, we use our own classroom Wiki extensively. Giving students projects with a clear goal in mind, but great freedom in execution (like the choose your own adventure stories), seems to tap into the same spirit that motivates the Wikipedia contributors.
2. Social operating systems: the basic, often invisible, assumption on which society runs.
Note: Good metaphor, but he explains it as if the development of our understanding of motivation paralleled human evolution/development. Pre-social humans were driven primarily by the biological imperative, like large animals still are, he claims. I am very uneasy about this sort of lazy extrapolation given how much we’re learning that differences between humans and animals are no where near where we thought they’d be, particularly given the social organization of many animals. He also ignores cross-cultural differences: different societies value self-actualization and other intrinsic motivation characteristics much differently than the WIERD one he seems to be describing.
3. Introduces behavioral economics (mentions Ariely): Humans are not anywhere near to being ideal, rational economic agents.
4. During the industrial revolution, work was mostly algorithmic (a worker could follow a clearly defined set of steps to get their job done), while now it’s mostly heuristic (workers have to come up with new things).
algorithmic work is being replaced by software and outsourced really fast (that’s globalization for you)
p. 30 – U.S. job growth – 30% algorithmic, 70% heuristic.
Note: Pink claims that heuristic work can’t be outsourced “generally”. He apparently wrote a book about it: A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. I may have to get that one, because, while I can see automation eliminating most algorithmic work, I don’t know why heuristic work is so difficult to outsource. Certainly there are local, cultural issues that would make things like advertising campaigns difficult for outsiders (and teaching would probably be hard to outsource too because most people don’t want to send their kids overseas for school), but a lot of other stuff is not that difficult for some creative person somewhere else to do; the world is, after all, Flat. Heuristic jobs are still going to be more abundant than algorithmic, but going heuristic no magic bullet: global competition is still going to be a major factor in the future.
Chapter 2
Baseline rewards: the basics people need in a job that earns them a living. Salary, a few perks, some benefits etc.
Below baseline rewards there is little motivation.
Above baseline rewards extrinsic rewards can be counterproductive.
Work vs. Play: Mark Twain: “Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”
When rewards don’t work:
When they are expected (see also post on Praise and Rewards) (called contingent rewards). If you do this, you’ll get this, does not work.
Deci et al., 1999: “tangible rewards tend to have a substantially negative effect on intrinsic motivation.”
“On average we found that each of us carries two or three mutations that could cause one of these severe childhood diseases.”
–Stephen Kingsmore, physician, Children’s Mercy Hospital in Greenfieldboyce (2010), New Genetic Test Screens Would-Be Parents.
NPR’s All Things Considered had two related articles on last night that deal with the specific topics we’re covering this week: genetic disease and recessive alleles.
The first one is about the latest in genetic screening technology, for determining if potential parents have recessive alleles that could combine to produce children with genetic diseases. Recent research has made this much easier.
The second touches on the ethical consequences of genetic screening. It could lead to an increase in abortion rates and leads us along the slippery slope of eugenics.
What if we engineered for intelligence?
This second story would make an interesting basis for a Socratic dialogue. As would, I think, the movie Gattica, which deals with the consequences of genetic screening and genetic customizations. I see it’s PG-13 so we may be able to screen it. Similarly, I may recommend Brian Stableford’s War Games to my eight graders who might like a military science fiction book that deals with genetic optimization. Alternatively, Nancy Kress’ Beggars in Spain might offer another interesting perspective on this issue.
So my holiday present from the Head of School was Daniel Pink’s 2009 book, Drive. I’m much happier reading scientific papers and books based directly on them, like Lillards’ Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius, than mass-market, self-help publications, but I’m supposed to get through it so we can have a discussion during our inservice. However, since I’d read a favorable review of the book last April I’m willing to give this one a chance, despite the desperate lack of information on the back and the sad pandering to business-minded readers in the blurb on the inside cover.
My antipathy toward self-help books, is based largely, I think, on the possibly erroneous belief that these books tend to be anecdotal, unsupported by science, or even to start with a scientific basis (however poorly understood) and stretch it into wonderful realms of possibility where it was never meant to go.
I also find it hard to credit books that tend to be awfully culture-specific. The worst ones come from certain myopic cultural niches that I find it hard to identify with. Even the stuff that based on rigorous science (as rigorous as far as the social sciences can be at least) tend to be based on the sub-population within the scientists’ easiest reach: WEIRD people from Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democracies.
Anyway, I’m in the middle of chapter one, and the book is actually quite good. Drive is well written for a general audience, so it lacks the concision that would make me happier; I’m already familiar with quite a bit about what he writes, and I’m a little crunched for time this break. The science so far is still based mostly on WEIRD people (though the first studies were done with other primates), but at least it’s an easy read.
Well we watched Jurassic Park last night and concluded it with a discussion about the issues underlying the movie, the same way we’ve been studying analyzing the issues underlying texts. Discrimination based on race and obesity came up first (the fat guy and the black people “always” die), but I was able to coax a bit of discussion about the role and responsibility of science and scientists. Our discussion is summarized in the graphic organizer above, but there are many more subtexts to the story that we did not have time to explore.
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (the book).
I like both the movie and the book because, like most good science fiction, they explore some interesting issues that relate quite nicely to the curriculum. Jurassic Park has a nice little introduction to DNA and gene sequencing that is tied to some the history of life on Earth. As works of art in their respective fields, however, I prefer the movie. The novel has a lot of wonderful detail, and the scientist in me loves the detail, but the characters are not as well drawn and the story seldom strays from its main thesis, scientific hubris. What it has to say about that issue is well expressed and well researched so it does capture the interest of the reader. (The follow-up book, “The Lost World”, sails adrift of the science, is logically incoherent and has a proportionate deterioration in the quality of the writing.) I do however recommend the original Jurassic Park book to my students as a personal novel.
Steven Spielberg makes a great movie, extracting empathetic performances from the actors. Since the book’s author, Michael Crichton, also wrote the screenplay, the movie stays true to the core issues in the text. I think its a great example of a successful, dare I say synergistic, collaboration.
Tomorrow, instead of retelling around the issues in writing, my students are going to try to do so in a skit. This could get interesting.
Extracting pectin for making jelly does not seem to be that hard. Sam Thayer has a nice little article on how to get pectin from apples. The blog Spain in Iowa, has some nice pictures and video of how they extracted pectin from apples and what the result should look like when you test it by putting a teaspoon of pectin into a teaspoon of rubbing alcohol. Almost immediately (but leave it in for a minute), the pectin should jell in the rubbing alcohol and you should be able to pull it out using a fork.
Basically, all you do is chop up the apples, cook them for a long time over low heat till they’re broken down, and then strain out the liquid produced. Since I have access to a lot of green apples that won’t be used for anything else, I tried the process myself. Using a pot full of apples I produced a lot of liquid; way more than I could ever use, but the process seems to work fairly well.
One 8 quart pot of apples produced 8.75 cups of liquid. I’d planned to use the home-made pectin in my currant jam, but testing the currant juice showed that it had just as much, if not more pectin than my boiled apple residue. I guess I’ll save the apple pectin for future use.
Ideally, Student Run Businesses should sell goods or services that are worth the value paid. While I appreciate that there is some value to the sympathy of friends and family, it is nice when customers believe they’re getting a good deal even without that. One direction I try to direct the students is toward making things from scratch, because it adds so much to the experience. Then they can have the extra value of using natural, perhaps even organic, ingredients and satisfying Michael Pollan’s rules for good eating.
In Defence of Food by Michael Pollan
My students have not yet tried jam or jelly-making, but if they do natural pectin would be great.
An interesting research project has shown that the same parts of the brain light up when you’re telling a story as when you’re listening to the story. So much so, that you begin to anticipate and parts of the your brain actually light up before the same parts in the storyteller’s. And the greater the synchronization, the greater the recall of the story.
The researchers found considerable synchronization between Silbert’s brain-activation patterns and those of her listeners as the story unfolded. For example, as Silbert spoke about her prom experience, the same areas lit up in her brain as in the brains of her listeners. In most brain regions, the activation pattern in the listeners’ brains came a few seconds after that seen in Silbert’s brain. But a few brain areas, including one in the frontal lobe, actually lit up before Silbert’s, perhaps representing listeners’ anticipating what she was going to say next, the team says. – Balter, 2010
That’s fascinating enough, but the control of their experiment was to have listeners listen to a story in a language they did not know. There was not the same synchronization. This means, if we extrapolate a little, that the amount of language comprehension determines how much you learn from a conversation, or hearing a story, or listening to a lecture, or even for understanding a set of oral instructions.
So if you want students to remember something you need to speak in their language. Language here refers not just to English versus Russian or whatever, but speaking using common idioms that the student is, like, you know, familiar with.
James Paul Gee has written a lot about this type of communication, and what it means for learning. He argues that meaning is situated, that is, how we understand something that is said to us depends a lot on our previous history and experiences. The most effective communication only really occurs within communities that have shared the same, or similar, experiences.
We are as teachers, of course, trying to expand student’s ability to use language, and introduce them to the language of different communities. But we should probably pay attention to how we speak in different contexts, and speak in their language when we want them to really remember something.
