Thread by @Dharlette

Ugh, I hate to pile on, but as a teacher I really, really wish parents wouldn't pull shit like this. I have kids who have internalized this "lesson" - that they have to figure things out, alone, instead of asking for help or seeking out expertise. It hobbles real learning.

https://twitter.com/johnroderick/status/1345508384011816960

Let's say a kid is trying to use a spreadsheet to calculate the average of their data. I've given them the formula, but when they put it into the spreadsheet it doesn't work! A kid like this will do it by hand. But it would take me ten seconds to know *exactly* what went wrong.

If I looked over that kid's shoulder, I'd immediately be able to see which of the handful of common mistakes have happened - did she highlight the box for the average instead of just the data? Did she write the units next to the numbers? An expert can help untangle what happened.

The problem here is that the actual lesson seems to be "Work things out yourself, from scratch, and do not consult an expert even if one is readily available because to do so is failure or will be rebuffed."

He *thinks* he's teaching independence, grit, and perseverance.

He's not. Independence often comes from knowing HOW TO FIND AND CONSULT THE RIGHT EXPERT.

At any moment he could have said "I bet there's a wikihow article on this..." or "You probably could find a tutorial on youtube" and encouraged her to consult an expert (or, you know, HIM).

There are times when I deliberately teach lessons that require struggling through and figuring things out yourself, but when I do that I TEACH MY STUDENTS TROUBLESHOOTING TOOLS first. They have what they need to progress on their own, and know when it's time to ask for help.

There's a reason why the concept of "grit" is controversial, and it's largely because the whole idea falls to pieces if you try to apply it to a hungry child.

A kid that struggles for an hour trying to figure out something that I could teach them in ten seconds will still be throwing themselves against a wall when everyone else has moved on to making their graph and writing their conclusions. Their work will suffer, pointlessly.

And, crucially, even if they futz about until they randomly stumble on the right thing, they'll understand the actual problem less well than if they turned to an expert to ask for help, someone who could empathetically explain it to them.

TLDR: Struggle for the sake of struggle is far less valuable a skill for a child than knowing how to locate and consult an expert in what they want to know. To foster that, we reward kids who are brave enough to ask for help.

We do not shut them down.

If you'd like an example of what teaching independence and perseverance actually looks like, I deliberately teach those skills during my Paper Circuits unit, which you can read about here:

https://twitter.com/Dharlette/status/1097600656607604736?s=20