The Power of Mindful Learning (4 page)

In Singapore, on my way to Chinatown, I asked the taxi
driver how large the Chinese population was. He answered,
"Seventy-six percent of the country is Chinese." I said, "Are you
sure it's not 77 percent?" He laughed, although I think many
would not have been sure what I was getting at. The government had published a report saying that 76 percent of the population was Chinese, and for many that remained fact without
any awareness that births, deaths, emigrations, or immigrations
could change the number at any moment. This is the way most
of us have been taught to take in information-as though it is
true irrespective of new contexts.

When we drill ourselves in a certain skill so that it becomes second nature, does this lead to performing the skill
mindlessly? Do we set limits on ourselves by practicing to
the point of overlearning? When we approach a new skill,
whether as adults or children, it is, by definition, a time when
we know the least about it. Does it make sense to freeze our
understanding of the skill before we try it out in different
contexts and, at various stages, adjust it to our own strengths
and experiences? Does it make sense to stick to what we first
learned when that learning occurred when we were most
naive? When we first learn a skill, we necessarily attend to
each individual step. If we overlearn the drill, we essentially lose sight of the individual components and we find it hard to
make small adjustments.

Learning the basics in a rote, unthinking manner almost
ensures mediocrity. At the least, it deprives learners of maximizing their own potential for more effective performance
and, as we will see in Chapter 3, for enjoyment of the activity.
Consider tennis. At tennis camp I was taught exactly how to
hold my racket and toss the ball when serving. We were all
taught the same way. When I later watched the U.S. Open, I
noticed that none of the top players served the way I was
taught, and, more important, each of them served slightly
differently. Most of us are not taught our skills, whether academic, athletic, or artistic, by the real experts. The rules we
are given to practice are based on generally accepted truths
about how to perform the task and not on our individual
abilities. If we mindlessly practice these skills, we are not
likely to surpass our teachers. Even if we are fortunate
enough to be shown how to do something by a true expert,
mindless practice keeps the activity from becoming our own.
If I try to serve exactly as Martina Navratilova serves, will I
be as good as she (apart from differences in innate gifts),
given that my grip of the racket is determined by my hand
size, not hers, and my toss of the ball is affected by my
height, not hers, and given the differences in our muscles?
Each difference between me and my instructor could be a
problem if I take each instruction for granted. If we learn the
basics but do not overlearn them, we can vary them as we
change or as the situation changes.

Perhaps the very notion of basics needs to be questioned. Socalled basic skills are normatively derived. They are usually at
least partially applicable for most people some of the time.
They are sometimes not useful at all for some people (e.g., how
to hold the racket for someone who is missing a finger or how
to read a text for someone with dyslexia). They are not useful,
however, as first learned, for everyone across all situations. If
they are mindlessly overlearned, they are not likely to be varied
even when variation would be advantageous. Perhaps one could
say that for everyone there are certain basics, but that there is
no such thing as the basics.

In the classroom, teaching one set of basics for everyone may
appear to be easier for the teacher because the teacher needs to
know less, a single routine leaves little room for disagreement and
hence may foster obedience to authority, and it seems impossible
to give individualized training to several people at once.

There are ways, however, to foster mindful learning of basic
skills in classrooms full of potential experts. The rationale for
this change in approaches is based on the belief that experts at
anything become expert in part by varying those same basics.
The rest of us, taught not to question, take them for granted.

The key to this new way of teaching is based on an appreciation of both the conditional, or context-dependent, nature of
the world and the value of uncertainty. Teaching skills and facts in a conditional way sets the stage for doubt and an awareness
of how different situations may call for subtle differences in
what we bring to them. This way of teaching imposes no special burden on teachers. Rather, it may increase their own
mindfulness as it helps individual students come closer to realizing their potential.

Consider an example that may seem trivial at first, yet
speaks to how difficult it is to change what we have mindlessly
learned. At a friend's house for dinner I noticed that the table
was set with the fork on the right side of the plate. Of course,
being polite, I said nothing, although I felt as though some natural order had been violated. I couldn't seem to dismiss the
thought that the fork goes on the left side of the plate, even
though I was aware that the feeling was preposterous. I even felt
that it made more sense in some ways for the fork to reside
where my friend had placed it, given that most people in this
country would retrieve it with the right hand. Where did my
mindset come from? My mother taught me how to set the table
when I was young. Her view was not discussed. It was not made
into a big deal. It was simply stated, and I mindlessly learned it.

To linger in the kitchen a moment longer, consider how
many people cook. Having once been taught when and how to
use certain ingredients and spices it occurs to few of us to
change recipes to accommodate changes in age, minor health
problems, seasons, and the like. Yet unintentional changes
sometimes bring about useful learning.

Once a year I attempt to bake. I have a wonderful recipe for
marble cheesecake, which I appear to be unable to ruin. The first time I made it I put it in the oven for a few minutes and
then realized I had forgotten to add the heavy cream. I took it
out of the oven and added the cream. The next time I used
light cream, followed by half-and-half on the next occasion,
with perfectly acceptable results. When I add the chocolate, for
some reason the cake ends up speckled instead of marbled.
Never having learned how to bake, I didn't see these deviations
from the recipe as a disaster. I simply changed the name of the
cake so it is not an inferior marble cheesecake. This no-fault
cheesecake always tastes delicious to me because I use only
ingredients I like, but more important, I enjoy varying it rather
than mindlessly following an unconditional recipe.

Most of what we learn in school, at home, from television,
and from nonfiction books we may mindlessly accept because
it is given to us in an unconditional form. That is, the information is presented from a single perspective as though it is
true, independent of context. It just is. Typically, no uncertainty is conveyed. Much of what we know about the world,
about other people, and about ourselves is usually processed in
this same way.

We can learn a skill by accepting at face value what we are
told about how to practice it or we can come to an understanding over time of what the skill entails. Even in the latter case, we
eventually try to get the skill down pat. In research Lois Imber
and I conducted many years ago, we found that when people
overlearn a task so that they can perform it by rote, the individual steps that make up the skill come together into larger and
larger units? As a consequence, the smaller components of the activity are essentially lost, yet it is by adjusting and varying
these pieces that we can improve our performance.

Recently, with students Dina Dudkin, Diana Brandt, and
Todd Bodner, I set out to test more directly the idea that teaching material conditionally allows students to manipulate the
information creatively in a different context. Some ways of
teaching conditionally may be surprisingly simple.

In a pilot experiment, high school students with the same
basic experience and education were taught a lesson in physics-3
The lesson was on videotape, and all the students saw the same
videotape. Before viewing the tape, however, half the students
received an instruction sheet informing them that their participation consisted of two parts: "Part I consists of a 30-minute
video that will introduce a few basic concepts of physics. Part II
involves a short questionnaire in which you will apply the concepts shown in the video. The video presents only one of several outlooks on physics, which may or may not be helpful to
you. Please feel free to use any additional methods you want to
assist you in solving the problems." The other half of the group
was told the same thing but with no mention of several outlooks or of additional methods. Our hypothesis was that the
instruction to allow for alternatives would encourage mindful
learning.

On direct tests of the material, the groups performed
equally well. For questions that required students to extrapolate
beyond the information given, to use it creatively, a different
picture is emerging. Although nothing in either the video or
the instructions forbade using previous knowledge and experi ence to help solve these problems, only the students given the
mindful instructions tended to do so. Students who were not
given these instructions were the only ones to complain about
the material. Although it is too early in this investigation to be
sure of the results (a situation of mindful uncertainty), a prior
study done with Alison Piper, described fully in Mindfulness,
suggests there is merit in this approach.' In that study students
were introduced to a set of objects either conditionally ("This
could be a. . .") or in absolute form ("This is a. . ."). As in the
pilot study just described, we tested to see whether conditional
information allowed for alternatives. We found that only those
students taught conditionally thought to use the objects in creative ways.

Another way of presenting information mindfully makes
use of students' mindlessness. This approach was suggested to
me by Jerry Avorn of Harvard Medical School. In a lecture
given to our department he told of a drug that was tested in a
randomized clinical study. Patients were given either the drug
or a placebo, an inert substance, and did not know which they
were given. On the chalkboard during his lecture Avorn put a
list of side effects, such as nausea, headaches, and fatigue, and
wrote rather high percentages next to each. Seeing the list, we
all assumed that this was a rather risky treatment, only to find
out that the numbers corresponded to the placebo group.

In a similar way information, be it from psychology or history, can be presented with figures for the main variables
reversed, and students can be asked to come up with explanations for these "facts." We're all very good at working backward and coming up with reasons to justify any opinion. In so doing
we often box ourselves into a single view. I find that as students
generate more and more reasons, they become more likely to
believe that the "fact" is true. The more we think this way in or
out of the classroom, the more we are likely to believe in one
right answer. In the classroom, when I reveal that the fact is
actually the opposite of what I presented, the students seem to
get the point without further discussion. The more often we
learn the basics with the recognition, from the start, that there
are several, perhaps quite disparate ways of accounting for
information, the more open we are to alternatives.

To make this point clearer, consider a presentation of the
classic Milgram study on obedience to authority (to students
who aren't familiar with it).5 In this study subjects played the
part of a teacher. They were instructed to administer shocks to
a learner whenever he made an error. Unbeknownst to the subjects, the learner was a confederate of the experimenter; despite
his cries with every supposed shock, he felt no pain. The shocks
appeared to increase in intensity, and subjects were instructed
to continue even though the shocks might actually kill the
learner. A certain percentage of the subjects obeyed the experimenter and administered the most intense level of shock. In
discussing this study for teaching purposes, I make two columns on the chalkboard: percentage of those who fully obeyed
and percentage of those who did not. In the first column I
write 35 percent and in the second, 65 percent. Students generate explanations for why most people did not obey and I should
add, they do so with great certainty: "People don't like to be pushed around," "People are compassionate and don't want to
see anyone suffer," and so on. At this point I turn to the board
and notice that I "mislabeled" the columns.