Cruelty to Black Students

Townhall.com ^ | September 21, 2016 | Walter E. Williams

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

I’m presently reading - skimming, I’m afraid -

Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise
by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool (April 5, 2016)

It puts me in mind somewhat of

In Search of Excellence:

Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies
by Thomas J. Peters and Robert H., Jr. Waterman

. . . but it makes the point that

• although IQ makes it easy to learn stuff, high IQ can be a mixed blessing if it seduces you into thinking that you are above having to practice.

• ”Practice” which is merely doing the same thing over and over again forever will not produce excellence. E.g., Benjamin Franklin indubitably had a high IQ but - notwithstanding his ambition and his participation in chess games, including against high-level competition in Europe - he never got particularly good at chess.

• Contrariwise Franklin started out also being a less-than-stellar writer, and he practiced intensively to improve. In doing so he was creative about how he practiced, and he developed techniques which challenged himself to do everything - every individual thing - that he could identify as being a stimulant to his ability to write well. He started with a sample of excellent writing, made notes on what was said, then - after a period of time - he tried to reproduce the excellent writing. He tried converting writing from prose to poetry and back, to stimulate his vocabulary. IOW he became his own tutor.

• Real practice, in this telling, pushes the learner somewhat out of his comfort zone - and gives prompt and clear feedback.

• Real practice is about learning to do, not learning facts. Ability to do carries the requisite facts along for the ride. The converse is not true - in fact, without learning to do, exposure to facts does not lead efficiently to learning facts.

• It is extremely damaging to assume that people have innate limitations. IOW, “The soft bigotry of low expectations” ain’t so soft. Wherever you find yourself, some people will seem to be limited in their abilities, but in general they can improve. A lot. In Search of Excellence tells us that “If you aren’t trying to improve, you are getting worse."

I’m wondering how this relates to the Khan Academy “flip the classroom” paradigm . . .

[metmom]

Talk about setting the clock back 50-60 years.

All that equality their parents and grandparents fought for, just being surrendered by a bunch of whining little snowflakes.

They demand equality and then deliberately segregate themselves.

Let’s practice this.....

All the white students on campus demand segregated housing from students of color. The liberals would be peeing their pants.

[Kaslin]

You got that right.