Technology – and here I mean specifically screen-based devices – has transformed all aspects of our lives. Now, there are upsides to this technological transformation such as instant access to our fitness data or knowledge of the whereabouts of our children. But even these positives come with the burden of responsibility which is never easy to bear and easily leads to fixation on oneself or surveillance of our loved ones.

In schools, the implementation of screen-based devices seems to be what people mean when they speak of needing more money for schools. The devices come with certain upsides such as student management systems, testing portals, real-time feedback, etc. Yet many of these upsides come at a human cost. In his book Public Education in the Digital Age, Morgan Anderson asserts, “Technologically mediated interactions risk undermining authentic dialogue through its dehumanizing effects.” His framework for education is to view power as fundamentally exploitative, and he sees how tech companies have inundated classrooms with their devices, which thereby mediate human interactions. He is not necessarily calling for a return to traditional classrooms in a way that coheres with our educational renewal movement. Yet his point that technological incursions into our classrooms comes at a human cost is one we ought to pay attention to.

The discussion-based learning that is part and parcel of the great books tradition simply cannot be as effectively implemented through devices as through in-person interactions. That is not to say that one cannot receive a fine education through remote learning and that one cannot engage in quality discussions with the tiny headshots on a screen. I know of several programs that aim at high-quality remote learning experiences. It’s just that there are no replacements for the physical proximity of others in the learning environment. My conjecture is that low-tech schooling neither ought to be considered inferior to the tech-based classrooms of today nor ought to be thought of merely as reactions to the tech-driven models of modern education.

Wading into the Shallows

In the midst of the initial rise of the iPhone to the ubiquitous everyday carry device, Nicholas Carr’s 2010 publication of The Shallows called readers to carefully consider the perils of internet technology. It is worth interacting a bit with exactly what he means by “shallow” when it comes to cognitive function. In his chapter “The Juggler’s Brain” he lays out the cognitive benefits attained through sustained use of devices and the internet. The main benefits center around low-level cognitive functions. Carr writes:

“Research shows that certain cognitive skills are strengthened, sometimes substantially, by our use of computers and the Net. These tend to involve lower-level, or more primitive, mental functions such as hand-eye coordination, reflex response, and the processing of visual cues.”

Nicholas Carr, The Shallows, 139

There is a particular way the brain develops when it interacts with the high-powered devices we have on our desks and in our pockets. Particular neurons fire together weaving immense skill into regions of the brain associated with sight (visual cortex) and movement (cerebellum). We could add to Carr’s list video games and streaming services. Most of these screen-based technologies will activate certain areas of the brain while leaving others dormant. We will come back to this idea later to develop strategies to make the most of screen-based technologies to optimize high-level cognitive functions for learning.

Carr explores several other advantages that come with the relatively recent technologies that have entered our homes and schools. One of the uses that is often championed for having ready access to devices for learning is the ability to search and browse the internet to access relevant information. Carr notes how web searches “strengthen brain functions related to certain kinds of fast-paced problem solving, particularly those involving the recognition of patterns in a welter of data” (139). He goes so far as to say that users become “adept at quickly distinguishing among competing informational cues, analyzing their salient characteristics, and judging whether they’ll have practical benefit,” however, trends from social media argue otherwise. It seems to have become the case that users are more and more at the mercy of algorithms that filter information which rather stunts good judgment and discernment. But even granting Carr’s point, we should note how users become good at filtering information, which may feel like a higher-order thinking skill. But in actuality, simply finding data amounts to very little if one cannot then make something of it. We’ll see in a moment what Carr has to say about that.

One additional positive benefit that comes with the use of devices is what Carr explaines as “a small expansion in the capacity of our working memory.” Carr goes on to cite Small and Vorgan’s book iBrain who actually call our ability to hold in our minds massive amounts of informational tidbits “digital ADD.” They write, “many of us are developing neural circuitry that is customized for rapid and incisive spurts of directed attention” (Small and Vorgan 21). It is important to add the distinction that a greater capacity of working memory is not the same thing as cultivating a greater capacity in long-term memory. Much that gets stored in working memory gets flushed rather quickly. If you were to look back at your search history from even a week ago, you might be surprised at what you have since forgotten.

So much for the benefits of devices for our cognition. But what about the detriments? Carr questions whether technology is actually making us more intelligent. He argues that internet access “may make our brains more nimble when it comes to multitasking, but improving our ability to multitask actually hampers our ability to think deeply and creatively” (Carr 140). To put it another way, you can either develop single tasking or multitasking, and one comes at the cost of the other. It really behooves us, therefore, to consider which is the more valuable of the two. Many studies have shown how multitasking or task switching have many detrimental effects on executive function, emotional wellbeing and skills development. Whereas single tasking has more positive gains especially when learners are focused on meaningful work and develop transferrable skills. Carr gets at this same point when he quotes David Meyer, “You can train until you’re blue in the face and you’d never be as good as if you just focused on one thing at a time.”

Carr next interacts with the work of Patricia Greenfield from her 2009 article published in the apex journal Science. While internet-based devices have enhanced our visual-spatial cognitive capacity, there has been “a weakening of our capacities for the kind of ‘deep processing’ that underpins ‘mindful acquisition, inductive analysis, critical thinking, imagination, and reflection.’” (141 quoting Patricia M. Greenfield, “Technology and Informal Education, Science, 323 (January 2, 2009): 69-71.) The word Carr uses is “weakening.” It is not as though when we enhance the visual and motor cortices that the neocortex comes along for the ride. Instead, attention, perception and long-term memory actually suffer. Think of it this way. The brain is a high-efficiency machine. If the brain perceives that it needs to shift to visual-spatial engagement with the highly stimulating world of the internet, then it will redirect its energies to visual and motor skills. Instead, if it perceives that more work ought to be put into singular attention, deep thought, perception, then it will direct its energies there instead.

What all of this amounts to is that the brain when exposed to devices, particularly for longs periods of time, begins to take on the characteristics of the devices. You have rapid switching between tasks, the ability to churn lots of data, and attention gets shifted amongst multiple stimuli. What gets lost is deep insight into the kind of thought that creates meaning. Carr concludes:

“The mental functions that are losing the “survival of the busiest” brain cell battle are those that support calm, linear thought—the ones we use in traversing a lengthy narrative or an involved argument, the ones we draw on when we reflect on our experiences or contemplate an outward or inward phenomenon. The winners are those functions that help us speedily locate, categorize, and assess disparate bits of information in a variety of forms, that let us maintain our mental bearings while being bombarded by stimuli. These functions are, not coincidentally, very similar to the ones performed by computers, which are programmed for the high-speed transfer of data in and out of memory. Once again, we seem to be taking on the characteristics of a popular new intellectual technology.”

Nicholas Carr, The Shallows, 142

Having waded into the shallows, we can see that a high-tech classroom promises certain kinds of cognitive intelligence, but not the kind that sets children up for meaningful engagement with the important questions of life. Focused work on the great books and wrestling with the great ideas runs counter to the shallow attention of the multi-tasking mechanisms we are becoming in the hands of our devices.

Read more about Nicholas Carr’s work as it connects to habit training in my article “Habit Formation: You, Your Plastic Mind, and Your Internet“

Diving into the Deep

Carr’s book, well over a decade old, still rings true today. The digital natives of today have been inundated with even more devices now with smartphones in the hands of veritably every student. Parents and teachers alike feel powerless to stem the tide as it feels like children ought to have these technologies in order to succeed in a new technological age, not to mention the ways in which such technologies keep the safe. The perception of success and safety come at the cost of an increasing shallowness as explored in the previous section. So what perspective can help us navigate a setting in which new, more powerful smartphones are released annually?

Here is where we take a step into the deep end. Cal Newport came out with two books that masterfully cut across the bow of the technological ship driving recklessly into the shallows. He released Deep Work in 2016 and then Digital Minimalism in 2019. It is worth exploring these two to get a sense of the emerging hope we have as an educational movement whereby we can with confidence commit ourselves to low-tech schooling.

The thesis of Deep Work is stated succinctly in the introduction. Newport looks at two economic factors, one having to do with the scarcity of deep work and then correspondingly the increasing value placed on deep work. He writes:

“The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.”

Cal Newport, Deep Work, 14

This is a central tenet of the new economy. Many think that the new economy is all about new technologies usurping the old system of manufacture-based industry. To some extent that is true. But the new economy is all about creativity and the creation of meaning out of the inundation of overwhelming attention-grabbing stimuli. On the face of it, the new economy can degenerate into mass consumptionism, with individuals binging Netflix shows, scrolling social media feeds, and following the latest YouTube personality. However, the new economy is also a place where deep work is rewarded because for those who can focus their attention and energies, they can create work that is meaningful.

It is instructive to consider Newport’s definition of shallow work as “noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend not to create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate” (Deep Work 228). The examples Newport uses to explore shallow work are connected to the work place, especially the academic field. Yet, his definition of shallow work provides us a good guide as to the work we ought to engage in and assign in schools. If our schools are to graduate into the new economy with the rare and valuable ability to perform deep work, we need to avoid shallow work. I highly recommend reading Jason’s article on “Deep Reading” to explore further what it means to engage in the kind of deep work Newport is describing.

Now I would argue that there is a role for screen-based technology in schools. While I champion low-tech schooling, it would be irresponsible to send graduates off into the world unable to connect their deep work to the technological context that surrounds us. Here is where Cal Newport’s other book Digital Minimalism comes to bear. He defines digital minimalism as “a philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else.” (Digital Minimalism 28) The approach hinted at here embraces the use of technology, but clearly defines the parameters of its use. Our screen-based devices can be great tools, but terrible masters. And giving them unlimited time and attention places us at their service.

So, how do we set the parameters? Here I would like to outline a few principles and practices that can help you provide excellent technological training in a low-tech schooling environment.

First, clearly define the tools to be used. Consider what a student actually needs to be able to use to succeed as a student, particularly in college and career. This really boils down to only a few applications. They need to learn how to manage an email inbox and to write professional email correspondence. They need to learn how to format a paper in a word processor. Those two are the major ones, and if that is all your school trained students in, they would be well served. On top of this, you could choose to teach them effective use of presentation sofware such as PowerPoint. They could learn how to manage data in a spreadsheet. You could even go above and beyond by teaching them how to code. I could envision a rhetoric program incorporating some aspect of video-conferencing etiquette or cultivating the skills of video recording and editing. Notice, though, that the choices available are a rather short list. One needs only readily available programs on a laptop to access most of what one needs to train students in the academic use of technology.

Second, clearly articulate the goals for technology use. One could list what students will not do, such as check social media, watch videos, listen to music or play games. More importantly, establishing learning outcomes lets everyone know what we’re working toward. Our students will learn how to format papers according to the three major style guides typically used in higher education programs. Our students will learn how to manage a school-based email account with training in professional etiquette that receives regular review and grades each quarter. Our students will develop professional-looking PowerPoint slides according to sound design principles for their senior thesis presentations. With goals such as these, teachers and students gain clarity on why they are bringing their laptops and what they are using them for. The teacher knows well that the laptop has no need to be out during the classroom discussion of Pride and Prejudice, but that it will be taken out when the paper is written analyzing a character from the novel.

Third, repeatedly provide feedback to students on their use of technology. Teachers should tell students when they are mindlessly taking out a laptop. They should be able to note how demanding the tasks are that they are performing. Remember, we are guiding them toward the rare and valuable deep work and steering them away from the shallows. So, if a student has been given ample time to complete a paper in class, but the work is shallow, then we need to start asking them how they used their time. I might even need to sit right next to them to strengthen their capacity to engage in deep and meaningful work.

Ultimately, our educational renewal movement is well positioned to provide the new economy with capable young men and women ready to create deep and meaningful work. I recommend no screen-based technology through middle school and then very intentional incorporation of technology in high school. We want to cultivate an environment conducive to deep learning so that technology becomes the final piece of the puzzle for students well trained in reading, discussing and writing. The liability of bringing technology in too soon can result in a shallow learning environment that stunts the capacity of our students to excel in college, career and life. It is up to us to train them in the creation of meaning rather than merely being consumers.

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Clearly I have Star Wars on the mind. We are watching all the movies with my son, and they have so much to teach about education. I have to be careful, because once someone gets me started on Star Wars, I can go on and on. Watching through the series of movies, I have been struck by the stages of development young Jedi go through. The very young receive training in the basic Jedi arts in the Jedi temple. Later, a master Jedi will take on an apprentice, called a padawan. Most of the younglings in the temple will not make it to this stage. After being apprenticed for a number of years, the padawan must undergo a series of trials in order to become a Jedi knight. And only after many years of service as a Jedi knight, might one become a Jedi master. The aspect of Jedi training that stands out to me is the role of the powerful Jedi master training the apprenticed padawan. Here we have the more knowing mind enabling the younger Jedi to grow and learn.

In previous articles, I have written about the nature of the mind (is knowledge innate or written on the empty tablets of our minds?) and the stages of development as laid out by Piaget. The Jedi sequence of development strikes me as being more similar to the way Aristotle and Plato understand the stages of development. What I am interested in developing in this article is a more nuanced understanding of development. Even though we can perceive major stages of development, much of the development that occurs for learners happens within the major stages. What I mean is that new knowledge and understanding happens in moments of learning that build over time into true mastery of a topic, subject or skill. The concept we will be dealing with today concerns the level of difficulty the learner must encounter on the pathway towards mastery. Too much difficulty and the learning halts due to frustration. Too little difficulty and the learning halts because there is no challenge to encourage growth. The concept of the right level of difficulty goes by the name “the zone of proximal development.”

Previous article in the series, Human Development:

Part 1: What Do You Have in Mind?

Part 2: All the World’s a Stage

Lev Vygotsky and the Zone of Proximal Development

So far as we have thought about learning, the child has been viewed as an independent learner retrospectively. What this means is that the stages of childhood development have been viewed from the standpoint of the finished article (a child arriving at adulthood) and that children are dependent upon the internal mechanisms that will enable them to learn. Lev Vygotsky turned this viewpoint on its head. Let’s examine the person and work of Vygotsky and then see how his work connects to the learning environments we are trying to create today.

Born the same year as Jean Piaget in 1896, the Russian Lev Vygotsky produced most of his work on psychology in Soviet-era Moscow particularly during the 1920s and 1930s. One of the hallmarks of Vygotsky’s work is a connection of psychology to social or cultural ideas. He also was a pioneer of integrative science that looked at emerging knowledge of the brain alongside studies on behavior and cognitive function. A prominent group of psychologists gathered around Vygotsky, known as the Vygotsky circle. The most well-known psychologist of the twentieth century, Alexander Luria, was influenced by Vygotsky and carried on his work well after Vygotsky’s death in 1934 at the age of 37.

The prodigious mind of Vygotsky worked on many different problems confronting psychology at the turn of the last century. Of special interest in this series on childhood cognitive development are three main areas he addressed. First, Vygotsky was deeply interested in the development of language. He recognized that children learn language as a means of connecting to society. He writes:

“The specifically human capacity for language enables children to provide for auxiliary tools in the solution of difficult tasks, to overcome impulsive action, to plan a solution to a problem prior to its execution, and to
master their own behavior. Signs and words serve children first and foremost as a means of social contact with other people.”

Lev Vygotsky, Mind in Society (Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 28

The language that they learn, which includes not only words but also facial expression and gestures, is a tool to access social connection with other members of the family and then eventually to wider circles of society.

Second, Vygotsky saw how the individual develops holistically within a socio-cultural environment. As noted with language above, child development occurs in connection with the people surrounding the child. Vygotsky’s insights are remarkable in that it placed childhood development within a larger context. One of the liabilities of the scientific method is that it tends to isolate phenomena and processes in order to examine the parts of a greater whole. When it comes to childhood cognitive development, observing a child in isolation can reveal many interesting facets of growth. However, Vygotsky recognized that something was missing when examining childhood cognitive development in isolation from the larger socio-cultural environment. He writes:

“Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological), and then inside the child (intrapsychological).”

Mind in Society, pg. 57

One of the reasons why a child develops is to enhance his or her ability to relate within that socio-cultural environment.

Third, Vygotsky flipped the prevailing understanding of the relationship between development and learning. In the prevailing model of cognitive development, it was assumed that particular kinds of learning can only occur after reaching a certain level of development. What this means, in terms of the prevailing model, is that the brain matures to such an extent that it can now carry out new kinds of learning functions. We could think of the brain as reaching a new size and can now hold a greater volume of learning. Once you have a bigger glass, then you can pour water into it. These analogies break down somewhat, but hopefully this gives a simple picture of the prevailing model. Well, Vygotsky considered an alternative approach. In his own words:

“Our analysis alters the traditional view that at the moment a child assimilates the meaning of a word, or masters an operation such as addition or written language, her developmental processes are basically completed. In fact, they have only just begun at that moment. The major consequence of analyzing the educational process in this manner is to show that the initial mastery of, for example, the four arithmetic operations provides the basis for the subsequent development of a variety of highly complex internal processes in children’s thinking.”

Mind in Society, pg. 90

What if learning actually precedes cognitive development. What if pouring more water forces the brain to get a bigger glass, so to speak? This shifts our thinking of the child no longer as a person who has reached a particular level of development, but as a person with a level of potential development.

These three main ideas come together in what Vygotsky formulates as the zone of proximal development (ZPD). Like language, learning functions as a tool that the mind uses to gain access to a wider socio-cultural network. The mind of the child is interacting with the minds present in the socio-cultural environment such that learning is predicated on more knowledgeable others who provide learning to the child. This contextual picture of learning, then, precedes cognitive development as the mind builds itself based on the learning it acquires. What the zone of proximal development describes is the place of potential development where learning is occurring at the optimal level of challenge to encourage cognitive growth. Let’s take a deeper look at what this means.

The Educational Value of the Zone of Proximal Development

The brilliance of Vygotsky’s insight is that childhood cognitive development rarely occurs in a state of isolation. Children are most often in contact with other people who are more knowledgeable. This contributes to our understanding of the mechanism of cognitive development in new ways. It also points to insights we can glean in practical terms for our classrooms. Vygotsky spells out what the ZPD is:

“[The zone of proximal development] is the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers.”

Mind in Society, pg. 86

What this means is that a child has a certain level or capacity on their own. For instance, a student might be able to accomplish basic addition and subtraction problems independently. This independent level or capacity is the base of the zone. If you continue to provide training at this level, you will not provide enough challenge for the child to grow and develop cognitively. She would be operating below the zone of proximal development.

To take this a little further, that same child has a level of potential development that is just beyond her current capacity. Maybe she is on the verge of understanding multiplication problems. She cannot work these problems on her own. But she can work the problems with the assistance of a teacher or maybe an older sibling. What she cannot do on her own, but can do with assistance from a more knowledgeable other (MKO) places her in the zone of proximal development. At the higher end of this zone is knowledge that is too far beyond the current capacity of the child. Even with the assistance of an adult, the concepts of, say, trigonometry are too far beyond her capacity and have exceeded the zone of proximal development.

Vygotsky goes on to explore the utility of this theory (what he calls a method) for educators:

“By using this method we can take account of not only the cycles and maturation processes that have already been completed but also those processes that are currently in a state of formation, that are just beginning to mature and develop. Thus, the zone of proximal development permits us to delineate the child’s immediate future and his dynamic developmental state, allowing not only for what already has been achieved developmentally but also for what is in the course of maturing.”

Mind in Society, pg. 87

The immediate and distant future for children is independence. What they cannot do now, ultimately they will be able to do on their own. Between these two places stands the teacher who provides just enough assistance to take them from what they don’t know to what they need help knowing, and ultimately to what they then know on their own. And upon achieving a level of independence the next level comes on the horizon for which they require assistance leading to yet another level of independence.

Scaffolding and Retrieval Practice

The concept of scaffolding came many years after Vygotsky developed his theory. It depends upon the presence of the more knowledgeable other, usually a grown up. This adult knows what the child does not yet know. The organic relationship between the child as learner and the grown up as the more knowledgeable other is such that the child can’t help but learn through interaction. We see this through language acquisition. The mother talks with the child. Soon the child imitates the mother’s speech patterns and eventually communicates relatively well, even if there are mistakes. The mother provides scaffolding with little hints and corrections the enable the child to practice language at higher and higher levels of competence.

As teachers, this concept of scaffolding is simply a way to guide a student in learning what we already know. It is like leaving a breadcrumb trail for them to follow along the path of learning. One aspect of being a more knowledgeable other (I prefer this language to being a subject expert) is that the teacher not only knows the subject matter, but also areas of challenge and potential pitfalls a student can fall into. This is important to the concept of scaffolding. We want to provide for the student some amount of challenge in order for them to grow, but not so much that we frustrate the child. The essential characteristic of scaffolding is to be systematic in the building of a child’s experiences and knowledge.

Now we can picture the cascade of increasing complexity in all kinds of subjects: mathematics, science, literature, grammar, spelling, etc. There is a natural progression as a child grows older and older. This is one aspect of scaffolding evident at a macro level. But on the day-to-day basis, we can implement the concept of scaffolding to enable the student to do the primary work of learning. This is the fifth law in John Milton Gregory’s The Seven Laws of Teaching:

“Excite and direct the self-activities of the learner, and tell him nothing that he can learn himself.”

John Milton Gregory, The Seven Laws of Teaching (Veritas Press, 2004), pg. 100

How we go about exciting and directing the learner comes by way of resources, tasks, guidance, modeling, coaching or advice.

One key practice that has recently been associated with scaffolding is retrieval practice. The authors of Make It Stick talk about conventional approaches to learning that emphasize “massed practice” in an effort to “burn into memory” a concept or skill (pg. 47). Instead, spacing out practice and interleaving subjects provides enough time to elapse for the brain to start to forget the concept or skill. Then after a span of time, the mind is called upon to retrieve something from memory. This spaced and interleaved method more deeply engrains the new knowledge in memory.

“When you space out practice at a task and get a little rusty between sessions, or you interleave the practice of two or more subjects, retrieval is harder and feels less productive, but the effort produces longer lasting learning and enables more versatile application of it in later settings.

Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel, Make it Stick (Harvard University Press, 2014), pg. 4

Notice that for the learner it feels harder or less productive than cramming one moment of massed practice. The learner would not choose this strategy, so it is incumbent on the more knowledgeable other to establish this strategy as the scaffold of learning. Recollect that optimal growth occurs through challenge at an appropriate level. And it is the nature of the challenge that counts. It is challenging to mass practice or cram information for a test. But research has shown how ineffective that kind of challenge is. A better form of challenge is spaced and interleaved practice, enabling the mind to create better neural pathways for learning.

The Zone of Proximal Development for Classical Classrooms

In our educational renewal movement, it is important to reclaim the lost tools of learning. As we train our students in the classical liberal arts, we do ourselves a disservice if we make the assumption that lecture-based learning is equally classical in nature. There is so much compelling evidence that lecture is of limited utility. Understanding the zone of proximal development actually helps us make the most of our tools of learning. Let’s look at a few ideas for the classical classroom.

First, learning should be organized around the “energy” of the student. What I mean by energy is that the student should be putting for considerable effort in the learning process. Picking on lecture one again, the energy of lecture-based learning is provided by the teacher as students sit passively listening. Instead, seeking methods to shift the energy away from the teacher and onto the students is essential to optimize learning. Here’s where narration can be so effective. The energy of attention must be provided by the student to listen, see and observe. Then the energy of assimilation of knowledge is borne by the student as he or she tells back. It is not that the teacher isn’t active in this environment. But the kind of energy the teacher provides is maintaining focus, providing feedback, keeping things moving, asking effective questions, etc.

Discussion is another high-energy activity conducive to optimal learning. Students verbally grapple with ideas and listen to differing perspective from other students. The role of the teacher here is to moderate the discussion to get everyone involved. Careful guidance is required to help move the discussion in productive directions. However, the best way to kill good discussion is for the teacher to be the answer man, resolving the debate too soon or giving a definitive perspective at the end. Allowing tension and conflict to remain even for days causes students to continue to chew on an idea over time. A great teacher technique is to come back to a point of discussion after time to see if new ideas have emerged.

Second, there are numerous techniques in Teach Like a Champion 2.0 (TLaC) that create an appropriate amount of challenge and provide ample support. For example, the technique called “Stretch It” (technique 13) builds extension of learning into a rather simple exercise. When a student get a right answer, the reward is to then receive harder questions. Another technique is “Without Apology” (technique 15). This helps build a culture of academic challenge where everyone embraces challenge, understanding the hard work that goes into scholarship.

Teachers can use lesson planning to create scaffolding for their students. TLaC technique 21, “Name the Steps” breaks down concepts into simple steps allowing students to follow a clear pathway toward mastery. In a subject like mathematics, we are used to steps in problems solving. But students can also learn steps for how to memorize foreign language vocabulary or steps to write a good sentence or steps to discuss events in history. There are lots of ways the plan the pacing or tempo of the class to maximize not just the amount of time you have, but also the feel of the time. Check out techniques 27-31 in TLaC.

Third, a significant aspect of growth occurs when students buy into their own development as something they contribute to. So many students think about education as something that happens to them. They become educated. However, when we truly understand what Vygotsky is saying about cognitive development, it is the mind of the child that craves deeper connections with the people and the world around them. Students gain the buy in when they are given greater awareness of their own learning process. Our role as teachers is ultimately for them to have independence. We help them along for a short time as the more knowledgeable other, providing sufficient challenge until they gain enough mastery to work independently. That goal for independence and autonomy actually feeds into further and further loops of challenge. They crave more knowledge and greater mastery, so they turn to you for more. Helping them to self-check the accuracy of their answers can be a powerful tool. “You tell me if that’s the right answer. How would you figure that out?” This is an approach I take frequently with my high school students. Along with this is the concept of self-advocacy. Are they able to seek help when needed from the more knowledgeable other, whether that’s a teacher, parent or peer?

So as you work with your young ones, your padawans, do not be afraid of providing appropriate levels of challenge. “Training to be a Jedi is not an easy challenge, and even if you succeed, it’s a hard life” is equally true of the Christian life. Training to follow Christ means taking up your cross daily. (Yes, I’m spiritualizing Star Wars!) I think of Paul’s admonition to Timothy to “train yourself for godliness” (1 Tim 4:7) and to “practice these things,” meaning reading and teaching the scriptures (1 Tim 4:15). Growth requires challenge, but it results in fruit. May we as teachers devote ourselves all the more to finding ways for our students to experience the growth God has designed for them.

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Previous article in the series, Human Development:

Part 1: What Do You Have in Mind?

Dorothy Sayers and the Lost Classical Tradition

Although not properly a member of the Inklings – the informal literary society gathered around Tolkien and Lewis – Dorothy Sayers was an esteemed member of the British literati in her day and frequently shared her works with Lewis and Tolkien. Best known for her detective novels, Sayers was likewise a first-rate essayist, critic and scholar. She was among the group of women upon whom degrees were first granted at Oxford in 1920. Her writings rarely directly address education, although learned figures like Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane opine from time to time on the subject. It was in 1947 that Sayers addressed an audience in Oxford on the subject of education, a presentation later published under the title “The Lost Tools of Learning.” It wasn’t until the 1990s that her educational vision took hold, and then not in her native England, but in America of all places.

At the heart of her address is a maneuver to map the medieval trivium upon three stages of development. The trivium denotes three of the seven liberal arts (grammar, logic and rhetoric), or what we might call the language arts. Our educational renewal movement has devoted much attention to figuring out what these three arts are and how to teach them effectively. Sayers refers to three stages of development, designating them as the Poll-parrot stage (the youngest learners), the Pert stage (middle grades), and the Poetic stage (after puberty sets in). This designation directly led to classical schools adopting titles such as Grammar school (usually Kindergarten through grade five or six), Logic school (grades five or six through eight) and Rhetoric school (high school), for better or worse. This pairing of the liberal arts trivium and stages of development became so powerful within the classical education movement that it is common to find school websites that describe the trivium as the learning stages of children.

A Critique of Sayers’ Stages

In his 2019 article “Dorothy Sayers Was Wrong: The Trivium and Child Development” on the Circe Institute blog, Shawn Barnett challenges Sayers’ correlation of the trivium and stages of child development. He rightly identifies how Sayers was responding to the state of educational reform that overly focused on teaching facts in more specialized subject areas. Elsewhere I have referred to and critiqued the factory model of education (particularly as developed in Seth Godin’s book Linchpin), and inasmuch as this was what Sayers was responding to, we have found her to be helpful in our day to formulate a renewal of education along classical lines. I share Barnett’s concern that we not be so overly reactionary to the state of conventional education that we warp our understanding of what classical education is.

Despite Sayers’ clarion call to rediscover the lost tools of learning – that is the classical liberal arts – Barnett takes to task her developmental stages understanding of the trivium as anachronistic. Barnett writes, “medieval educational theorists never conceived of the trivium in terms of developmental stages that roughly correspond to a student’s age.” He correctly assesses the ahistorical nature of her essay in that childhood stages of development were never in view during the Middle Ages. He further rightly points out that most of the trivium was taught to university students, not to children. I leave aside Barnett’s discussion of Medieval curriculum as I am certain he is correct that we must take special care to select the best texts for our curricular content. I don’t know that Sayers would disagree with this point. My sense is that Sayers was less interested in spelling out specifically what children should read at what age, but instead giving general guidance that the liberal arts trivium is the answer to the problem of an overly specialized model of education that emerged after WWII with undue focus on technicism and scientism. Medieval education never thought of education in developmental terms, and Barnett demonstrates that Sayers’ is completely anachronistic on this point.

Yet where I think Barnett’s critique misses the mark is that the punchline of Sayers’ joke is exactly that it is anachronistic. We can hear even in her naming of the stages of childhood (Poll-parot, Pert, Poet) an element of humor or levity. Her appeal to the old guard Oxonians in her audience is that the antiquated trivium can be dusted off to meet the needs of modern education. She is not calling us to return to the Middle Ages. When we truly understand the Western cultural heritage as something like open source software, there are ways we can update something like the trivium today. Keep in mind that the Medieval version of the trivium as it existed in the universities was an updated version harking back to the classical era. In fact when we attempt to identify exactly what we are talking about when we look for a classical analogue, we are really looking at a centuries old tradition that grew, developed and changed in a dynamic relationship with the prevailing culture of the eras in which it existed.

What Sayers provides through her anachronistic paring of the trivium and child development theory is an attempt to link the deep magic of the classical liberal arts tradition with the cutting edge of modern research. One can clearly see the influence of Piaget in Sayer’s thinking. Piaget’s breakthrough work on child cognitive development was first published in French in 1936 and then translated into English in 1952. Because his work corresponded roughly to Rousseau’s four stages of child development in Emile (1762), Piaget’s ideas spread fairly rapidly. Yet Sayers never refers to Piaget, nor Rousseau for that matter. Her three-part schema seems not to be based on Piaget’s four-part schema, but this may be more down to her desire to fit the schema to the trivium than a lack of awareness of the Rousseau/Piaget four-part schema.

Piaget’s work on childhood cognitive development was the cutting edge science of Sayers’ day. So one major take away from her essay has to do with the nature of her argument. For the classical liberal arts to inform and influence education today, it must be conversant with modern research. In hindsight, we can see how there is a tension between the classical tradition and advances in research. Yet, that tension enables us to explore the ways we can gain insights into the craft of teaching. To that end, let’s examine further Piaget’s theory of childhood cognitive development and the ways it influences neurobiology and cognitive science today.

Piaget and His Stages of Development

The basic theory of cognitive development moves through four stages. The first stage is the sensorimotor stage from birth to two. The infant uses basic reflexes to interact with the world, establishing sets of habits in reaction to various stimuli or bodily functions. Some of the cognitive traits initiated in the first stage are understanding object permanence and gaining a sense of curiosity surrounding novelties. The second stage is called the preoperational stage, beginning when the child learns basic speech patterns. Children begin to play and pretend during this stage. They also ask lots of questions, sponging up knowledge through those close to them. The third stage begins around the age of seven. The concrete operational stage finds children developing the skill of logic, particularly inductive reasoning. The fourth stage, called the formal operational stage, begins around the age of eleven. Children in this stage are able to think abstractly, solving multifactorial problems and monitor their own learning.

So far we can see how Piaget’s four-stage theory corresponds somewhat to the kind of schema Sayers proposed as the trivium stages. However, we can add a few layers of complexity to what Piaget understood about these stages. To begin with, children progress through these stages at different rates. It is not as though every child upon turning seven automatically enters the concrete operational stage. What Piaget was really after in his research was not entirely about the four stages, but the mechanisms that enabled a child to develop cognitively. He saw that a child responded to new challenges by updating old schemas to assimilate new knowledge. However, there comes a point where a child makes a shift to respond to complexities of newly assimilated knowledge and updates her entire schema. For instance, an infant is able to assimilate a massive amount of information just through physically manipulating objects. But there comes a point when the child alters her schema because physical manipulation is insufficient to assimilate certain kinds of new knowledge. Language is required because of the insufficiency of motor operation, and the child updates her schema, moving into the preoperational stage. This does not mean that the sensorimotor method of learning goes away. Instead, the newly accommodated way of learning expands the aperture of knowledge receptors.

It should also be pointed out that abstract thought is not absent in children before turning seven. It is not uncommon for Piaget’s stages to be described as a concrete stage followed by an abstract stage. In Piaget’s use of the word “operate” or “operational” he is conveying that a child is capable of systematizing thought in the best mode possible for that stage. So the infant is systematizing thought about the physical world by putting objects in her mouth and banging them on the tile floor. When we think about the realm of the abstract, it is clear that children are able to have abstract thoughts, it is just that the ability to systematize abstract concepts has not yet become the dominant schema for their thinking.

There are some key concepts Piaget developed as hallmarks of cognitive development. We begin with decentering. A child is decentering when she is able to pay attention to multiple attributes of the same object. Children younger than three or four can become fixated on only one attribute of an object. Once children are able to decenter, they can hold in their mind multiple aspects of something. This cognitive skill is essential to reading. When we read, we see the letter symbols grouped together. By decentering we can simultaneously see that these symbols form words and phrases that carry meaning. Next is conservation. The concept of conservation involves the ability to recognize a quantity remains the same even when transformed in different situations. For instance, the amount of orange juice remains the same when poured from a tall, skinny glass into a short, wide glass. Children gain the ability of conservation usually by age seven. Finally, reversibility is the concept that an object can be restored to its original condition after being transformed. For instance, if you take a cookie out of the cookie jar (subtraction), you can restore the original state by returning a cookie to the cookie jar.  A child that has the ability of reversibility can understand series of events and how to move forward or backward through that series. Like conservation, this ability emerges around the age of seven.

Gleaning from Piaget’s work, we can draw a few postulates about child cognitive development. First, Piaget provides a way for us to think about the mind of the child from the perspective of the child, meaning we are not evaluating a child’s cognitive abilities as lesser or slower than adult cognitive ability. In fact, there are cognitive process that are rather faster and more adept than adult cognitive ability. Take language as a case in point. Children acquire their native language more rapidly and with greater fluency than most adults acquire a second language. So, the cognitive ability of the child is not a diminution of grown-up cognitive ability, it is actually a cognitive ability unto itself.

Second, Piaget gives us certain hallmarks that are present at different stages. We can observe a toddler banging pots together with an understanding that the child is actually thinking at a deep level about his little universe. Students in, say, Middle School are not only learning about different subjects, they are also gaining mastery of executive function. Can they follow sets of instructions to solve equations, write a paper, and turn in work on time fully completed?

Third, Piaget’s layout of the developmental stages shows educators that learning is dependent on and constrained by developmental processes. At a certain level, this is intuitive. John Milton Gregory in his Seven Laws of Teaching establishes the principle that the unknown should be built upon the known. This idea is consistent with the notion that new learning should be built upon the structures of the child’s operational abilities.

Piaget’s theories have undergone transformations since he first proposed his stages. Among the greatest criticisms of his theory is that the basic theory is at best a heuristic guide to general development, but when applied as a structural whole, it misses the nuances of development. Today developmental theory views cognitive development as a modular system, with different parts of the mind operate independently. So an advance in reading skill based on cognitive development does not mean that the same child will experience an equivalent advance in number sense. However, in general terms, there are elements of neuroscience that bear out the basic heuristic of his theory. For instance, our understanding of how the brain develops during the first year of life shows how at a neurological level there are parts of the brain that get connected together, substantially leading to new cognitive capabilities. In infants, the number and quality of neurons linking the prefrontal cortex is limited so that those early years are marked by unhindered curiosity and exploration. When the neurological links are strengthened through the process of myelination, the prefrontal cortex can take on a stronger role in formal thinking which has the effect of inhibiting or restraining curiosity and exploration. Biological factors such as this go some way toward explaining some of the passage through Piaget’s stages.

The dictum that “neurons that fire together wire together” provide insight into cognitive development and also indicate potential pedagogical strategies. What we’ve learned through neuroscience is that the brain grows new neurons, prunes old neurons and myelinates neurons that are repeatedly used. Myelination is the process of wrapping neurons in a fatty substance that helps it fire faster due to increased conductivity. This is the basic theory of neuroplasticity. The brain you have now is not the brain you had yesterday, nor the brain you will have tomorrow. That is IF you develop new habits or make changes in your behaviors. Essentially, your brain wants to conserve effort and will prune neurons it no longer needs and protect the ones it consistently uses. Yet, the environment bombards the brain with new information that forces the brain to constantly evaluate what needs to be kept, discarded and protected. This goes some way towards explaining the physical processes behind cognitive growth even into adulthood.

Reappropriating Dorothy Sayers

Having taken a bit of a deep dive into Piaget, it is worth returning to the basic contours of her essay “The Lost Tools of Learning.” If we take the thrust of her argument seriously then we must heed the call to recover that which was lost and use it effectively today. She uses the analogy of “tools” to describe the liberal arts. Our educational renewal movement has done a decent job dusting off the old books and implementing them so that students are once again reading the great books, learning the Western cultural heritage, translating Latin and Greek, examining logic and gaining rhetorical skill. Genuine practice of the liberal arts is raising up a generation of students truly empowered to lead our churches and societies. For this I am grateful to Dorothy Sayers for planting the seed in her essay that would blossom into classical Christian education today.

As I have wrestled with her essay over the years I have seen the inadequacy of the three-stage developmental schema she mapped out for the trivium. For one, the trivium really should not be thought of as stages of development. It was a few years ago now that Jason Barney proposed a twofold understanding of the liberal arts. He wrote:

“This leads me to propose a twofold understanding of grammar, dialectic and rhetoric. Each is both an art and a science, both a complex skill of communication and a traditional body of knowledge about that area.”

The liberal arts are neither developmental stages nor are they mere subjects. The reduction of the liberal arts to subjects is likewise problematic.

“If you look at many of our textbooks in grammar, logic or rhetoric, you have to admit that the method of the textbook seems to assume that the goal is primarily to teach our students knowledge about these ‘subjects,’ as if that were enough.”

The danger of this approach is that students acquire the “right” answers as they gain mastery of the subject materials, but have they become well practiced in the art of grammar, logic and rhetoric? This is the genius of Jason’s proposal, that the subject matter informs masterful practice of the art and masterful practice more deeply ingrains the subject matter. The liberal arts conceived of by Sayers as tools means we must have a good knowledge of what the tools of learning are, but we must also be able to use the tools of learning effectively.

This is where my reflection on childhood cognitive development comes into play. As we teachers reflect on the craft of teaching, it is essential to understand the science of how the minds of children are developing. Sayers in a rudimentary way points the way forward for how we can implement the liberal arts for today. It is not that the liberal arts get locked into particular stages of development. Instead, we must gain a sensitivity to how the learning and practicing of the liberal arts matches the emerging cognitive abilities of the children in our classrooms.

Here in the second part of this series we have covered a lot of theoretical ground. So in the last part of this series the goal is to give due consideration to implementation. There are ways in which we can use the science of today to inform best practices as we recover the lost tools of learning.

Previous article in the series, Human Development:

Part 1: What Do You Have in Mind?

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