Tag: self-reflection

Getting the mind to wander

The mind tend to wander when working at repetitive tasks that don’t require much brain processing. So the brain just switches over to thinking about long-term things. There is even a specific part of the brain, called the “default network” that starts up when we zone-out. That, at least, is what I summarize from looking at some neuroscience research by Malia Mason and others (2007) on wandering minds.

What’s interesting is that the default network tends to be used for “certain kinds of self-referential thinking, such as reflecting on personal experiences or picturing yourself in the future” (Zimmer, 2010). That means introspection. Introspection is the point of Personal World, so it follows that we should want our students’ minds to wander during Personal World.

So how do we design the Personal World time and environment to encourage daydreaming? Repetitive tasks aid mind-wandering, as will anything that is rote that does not require acute cognitive focus. Raking the garden, doodling should be encouraged, in fact, anything that encourages boredom.

I would think also, that reducing the cognitive load would also be beneficial, which might also mean no music. Yet music helps isolate the individual, particularly when they’re using ear buds. Perhaps quiet, “boring” sounds would be best, coming a shared radio so students can’t choose to listen to something else. Of course, if you’re listening to the music on your mp3 player then you tend to tune out the songs anyway so maybe it all falls out in the wash.

Of course this could all be malarkey, based as it is on a single study, so I’ll end with the words of caution that coms at the end of the article:

Although the thoughts the mind produces when wandering are at times useful, such instances do not prove that that the mind wanders because these thoughts are adaptive; on the contrary the mind may wander simply because it can. – Mason et al., 2007.

Self-respect, self-knowledge and character

To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, … counting up the sins of commissions and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice, or carelessness. However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves. – Joan Didion (1961), via Word on the Street (2010)

Unlike Dalrymple, Joan Didion figured that self-respect is built on self-knowledge rather than the reflected assessment of others. She saw character, which is built upon self respect, as the ability to use that knowledge to be aware of and face consequences of your actions.

The dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others – who are, after all, deceived easily enough; – Joan Didion (1961), via Word on the Street (2010)

What Dalrymple and Didion agree upon is that a sense of entitlement is diametrically opposed to self-respect:

I had not been elected to Phi Beta Kappa. This failure could scarcely have been more predictable or less ambiguous (I simply did not have the grades), but I was unnerved by it; I had somehow thought myself a kind of academic Raskolnikov, curiously exempt from the cause-effect relationships which hampered others. Although even the humorless nineteen-year-old that I was must have recognized that the situation lacked real tragic stature, the day that I did to make Phi Beta kappa nonetheless marked the end of something, and innocence may well be the word for it. I lost the conviction that lights would always turn green for me, the pleasant certainty that those rather passive virtues which had won me approval as a child automatically guaranteed me not only Phi Beta Kappa keys but happiness, honor, and the love of a good man; lost a certain touching faith in the totem power of good manners, clean hair, and proved competence on the Stanford-Binet scale. To such doubtful amulets had my self-respect been pinned, and I faced myself that day with the nonplussed apprehension of someone who has come across a vampire and has no crucifix at hand. – Joan Didion (1961), via Word on the Street (2010)

Didion’s ideas are wonderfully expressed in her essay ‘On self-respect’ that has been reproduced by Mallary Tenore on her blog Word on the Street (found via The Daily Dish). It’s a long essay, written in 1961 so some of the references may be dated (though time and the Twilight Series have given some of the references potency again, at least for the middle school crowd). I don’t think I can recommend the whole essay for my students, but reflecting some excerpts might be a useful Personal World exercise.

People with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. – Joan Didion (1961), via Word on the Street (2010)

Self-respect rather than self-esteem

[S]elf-esteem is but a division of self-importance, which is seldom an attractive quality. That person is best who never thinks of his own importance: to think about it, even, is to be lost to morality. Self-respect is another quality entirely. Where self-esteem is entirely egotistical, requiring that the world should pay court to oneself whatever oneself happens to be like or do, and demands nothing of the person who wants it, self-respect is a social virtue, a discipline, that requires an awareness of and sensitivity to the feelings of others. It requires an ability and willingness to put oneself in someone else’s place; it requires dignity and fortitude, and not always taking the line of least resistance. – Dalrymple, 2010.

Self-respect is earned, while self-esteem is not. That at least is the argument of Theodore Dalrymple, who defines this interesting distinction between self-esteem and self-respect based on his observations as a prison psychiatrist. What people want is a “just appreciation of one’s own importance and of one’s own worth.” To assume that one is entitled to respect because of one’s intrinsic strengths is destructive because it says that you don’t have to do anything to get respect. But respect is earned. Both importance and worth are values that are ascribed by others, by society, and to earn them requires effort and achievement. Self-respect is the appraisal of oneself based on one’s contribution to society.

It’s an interesting argument in semantics at the very least, but the fundamental argument at least aligns with the proper way to use praise and rewards. By praising the effort you acknowledge the importance of work in achieving goals, building self-respect, rather that praising intrinsic abilities (“you’re so smart”) that engender a sense that the student is entitled to do well.

One has only to go into a prison … to see the most revoltingly high self-esteem among a group of people … who had brought nothing but misery to those around them, largely because they conceived of themselves as so important that they could do no wrong. For them, their whim was law, which was precisely as it should be considering who they were in their own estimate. – Dalrymple, 2010.

Theodore Dalrymple is a conservative in the dictionary sense of the word. He argues the importance of tradition and personal responsibility. He also strongly believes that healthy culture must satisfy the need of people to belong to something larger than themselves. So much so, that despite being an atheist, he argues that religions, some types of religions at least, have an important role in society.

Do they really not care?

Adolescents like to tick you off. Push all of your buttons to see what happens. And you want to ask, “Who are you really?” and, “Do your really not care?” We probably did the same when we were that age, but do you also remember how idealistic we were? The video below, from Penguin Publishing (found via The Dish) captures a bit of that duality of the adolescent mind. The use of white space and of just simply words also ties it quite nicely into our ongoing discussion of poetry in a “spark the imagination” kind of way.

Praise and rewards

Looking through the Greater Good Science Center‘s blog post on how to raise kind children, I was struck, as I usually am, by the somewhat counter-intuitive finding that we should not reward good behavior (helping in this instance).

Very young children who receive material rewards for helping others become less likely to help in the future compared with toddlers who only receive verbal praise or receive no reward at all. This research suggests that even the youngest children are intrinsically motivated to be kind, and that extrinsic rewards can undermine this tendency. – Carter (2010)

While I have not yet looked to see if there is any direct research on this topic with regards to adolescence, this is part of the Montessori philosophy. Lillard (2007; Ch. 5) has an entire chapter on Extrinsic Rewards and Motivation that gets to the same point. She cites the research that gets to the specific point that extrinsic rewards, rewards that come from the outside such as praise, tend to demotivate once the rewards are removed.

Engaging in a well-liked activity with the expectations of a reward led to reduced creativity during that activity and to decreased voluntary participation in that activity later. (Lepper et. al., 1973) in Lillard (2007; Ch. 5)

Rewards have negative effects when they are clearly stated, expected, and tangible; read this book and you’ll get $5; or do this work and you will get better grades. However, rewards can work if you’re dealing with subjects that students find uninteresting and there is a very clearly specified set of steps that they can learn by rote.

“[R]ewards are often effective at the moment of their offering, so if there are no long-term goals, rewards help without causing harm down the road.” Lillard (2007; p. 157)

Rewards can help with basic learning, like memorizing facts, but intrinsic motivation is essential for tasks that require higher-level more creative thinking.

I try to praise or give tangible rewards very rarely, though it is often hard. Students look for praise sometimes (and sometimes for the oddest things), so when I do complement I try to use what Carter calls growth-mindset praise and say something like, “See, practice really pays off.” Praise the effort, not some intrinsic value the students have.

Naps

Image by Lewis Collard, via Wikimedia Commons

We take half an hour each day, usually just after lunch, for personal reflection. Practicing metacognition. Some students have used the time for quick naps, and I’ve been thinking about how useful this is, or if the time might be used more effectively.

On one hand students wake up a little refreshed, and given the sleep deficit many adolescents have it’s not surprising that they need a little extra. In fact, I found one study (Gradisar et. al., 2008) that found that quite a number of adolescents catch up on sleep by napping during the week (many nap 4 times a week for around 16 hours). And studies with adults have found that naps help you learn. A recent USA Today article on the work of Matthew Walker reports:

sleep clears the brain’s short-term memory storage to make room for new learning. – USA Today (2010)

On the other hand, students need practice with introspection. I believe it’s one of the most important skills they can learn by practice.

Ultimately, I don’t have a problem with students napping during Personal World, as long as they don’t overdo it. And if they do overdo it, it may well be an indication that they need to work more on their sleep cycles at home.

Rising bread

Yesterday, one of our experimental loaves of bread failed to rise, so re-tried it today and had a discussion about all the things we can do encourage it to rise. Since yeast is an organism, and we talked about the role of yeast in baking bread yesterday, this was a chance for the students to take what they’d learned and extrapolate into a new situation.

These types of situations pop up all the time in the student run business, especially when we try something new. It gets to the critical thinking skills adolescents need to practice. It is the reason Maria Montessori advocated for a boarding house middle school that ran a business. It is one of the reasons I insist that we start at least one new business every year in addition to our core pizza business.

Addictive behavior

Image adapted from JTR on Wikipedia Commons

In talking about video game addiction it was suggested that I also look at the parallels with other types of addictive behavior. Mrs. P. sent me a list of links that I’ve been carefully going through. What’s important here is that, no matter what the subject, be it video games, psychoactive substances or even food, many of the symptoms of addiction are the same. Ruth Eng (2003) from the Applied Health Science department at Indiana University has a nice website about addictive behavior. She points out some common characteristics:

  1. The person becomes obsessed (constantly thinks of) the object, activity, or substance.
  2. They will seek it out, or engage in the behaivor even though it is causing harm (physical problems, poor work or study performance, problems with friends, family, fellow workers).
  3. The person will compulsively engage in the activity, that is, do the activity over and over even if he/she does not want to and find it difficult to stop.
  4. Upon cessation of the activity, withdrawal symptoms often occur. These can include irritability, craving, restlessness or depression.
  5. The person does not appear to have control as to when, how long, or how much he or she will continue the behavior (loss of control). (They drink 6 beers when they only wanted one, buy 8 pairs of shoes when they only needed a belt, ate the whole box of cookies, etc).
  6. He/she often denies problems resulting from his/her engagement in the behavior, even though others can see the negative effects.
  7. Person hides the behavior after family or close friends have mentioned their concern. (hides food under beds, alcohol bottles in closets, doesn’t show spouse credit card bills, etc).
  8. Many individuals with addictive behaviors report a blackout for the time they were engaging in the behavior (don’t remember how much or what they bought, how much the lost gambling, how many miles they ran on a sore foot, what they did at the party when drinking)
  9. Depression is common in individuals with addictive behaviors. That is why it is important to make an appointment with a physician to find out what is going on.
  10. Individuals with addictive behaviors often have low self esteem, feel anxious if the do not have control over their environment, and come from psychologically or physically abusive families.

For additional reference, the American Council for Drug Education has a good list of symptoms of substance abuse for a number of psychoactive drugs, while psychcentral.com has a much simpler list titled “Symptoms of Substance Abuse“. WebMD has a similar site that addresses food addiction.