Common Sense Vs. School Learning

From GWS 65

The more things change, the more they stay the same seems especially true of our never-ending school reform efforts. In my 45 years of reading research and opinion pieces about the dire problems we have in our schools I am struck by how much they keep rehashing the same themes and arguments without ever changing the underlying assumptions educators hold about the necessity of conventional schooling. Despite all sorts of evidence that school is not the only place where people learn valuable skills and socialize, we continue to put all our eggs in the school basket. Perhaps the research from 1987 that the President of the American Federation of Teachers cites below can have more impact today?

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From the 6/19/88 “Where We Stand” column that Albert Shanker, President of the American Federation of Teachers, wrote for The New York Times:

Most current school reform is driven by our country’s economic concerns. The assumption that almost everyone in our country makes is that, if we’re to be economically “competitive,” education is a key ingredient. The central idea is that students who succeed in school take their knowledge and skills to their workplaces and effectively apply them. Those who don’t learn in school either don’t get jobs or botch those they manage to get.

But some new research findings raise serious questions about these widely-held assumptions. The basic analysis is presented in “Learning In School and Out” by Lauren Resnick of the Learning Research and Development Center of the University of Pittsburgh (the article appeared in the December, 1987 issue of the Educational Researcher).

… Resnick argues that school knowledge is very different from what is used on the job. People who used to say that “practical smarts” counted more than “school smarts” may not be wrong. Though all the evidence isn’t in, it’s possible, Resnick says, that “common sense outweighs school learning for getting along in the world—that there exists a practical intelligence, different from school intelligence that matters more in real life.”

According to Resnick, there are four major differences between mental activity, in and out of school. First, school learning is mostly done on your own, whereas most other learning is shared. While there are some group activities in school,

“students ultimately are judged on what they can do themselves. Furthermore, a major part of the core activity of schooling is designed as individual work—homework, in-class exercises, and the like. For the most part, a student succeeds or fails at a task independently of what other students do (except for the effects of grading on a curve!). In contrast, much activity outside school is socially shared. Work, personal life, and recreation take place within social systems, and each person’s ability to function successfully depends on what others do and how several individuals’ mental and physical performances mesh.”

On the job, in the family and at play we are expected to ask those close to us to show us, to explain, to help. In school, asking others for help is called “cheating.”

The second major difference, according to Resnick, is that school learning consists mainly of “pure thought” activities—what individuals can do without the external support of books and notes, calculators, or other complex instruments.” But on most jobs and in other situations outside of school, thinking is done with the use of such “tools.” Many more people get the job done with tools than without. The problem is that schools continue to downgrade the very skills and approaches to learning that are most valuable on the work site.

The third difference, Resnick points out, is that school knowledge consists of manipulating abstract symbols, but thinking outside of school is always in a specific context. We all know of people who didn’t do well at math in school but succeed in the world of banking or investment, or are whizzes in batting averages or in figuring out the complicated match-ups in basketball and football championship playoffs.

Finally, school learning is generalized, but the knowledge needed outside is specific to given situations. Resnick points to specific differences between school knowledge and the skills learned on the job in a number of fields. For example, she cites a study that “demonstrated that expert radiologists interpret X-rays using mental processes different from those taught in medical courses, textbooks, and even hospital teaching rounds.” There’s mounting evidence, she concludes, that “points to the possibility that very little can be transported directly from school to out-of-school use.”

[Susannah Sheffer:] One of the main reasons we reprint this sort of report is so that readers will be able to use it to explain and support their homeschooling choices or approach, to a school official or anyone else. We’d be interested to hear about the response you get if you do put this to such a use.