080519 — Blog — Rulerless

Hard work is the easy way out

Challenging problems aren’t the ones that require a lot of labor. They are the ones that require thinking.

It is a huge mistake to focus on labor and think we’re doing such hard work. Maybe we’re actually being lazy by not coming up with a cleverer strategy for avoiding all that work.

We can use math as good metaphor to explain this idea. The brilliant Prealgebra book from The Art of Problem Solving teaches students to think algebraically — that is, strategically — about math, even no variables are present.

Casey von NeumannMay 2, 2019072619, 080519, 071621, 101321, 010322Comment

Ruin something good with a goal

Jason Fried, co-founder of Basecamp, doesn’t believe in goals. He claims he’s never had one.

Imagine being able to succeed by just wanting to make things — and make things better for everyone. Fried is proof that it is possible.

So often, we focus on an external timeline that we have to satisfy in order to be acceptable. We believe that if we fail to keep up with others (or with our own imagined future self), our efforts have no value — or even that we have no value.

Casey von NeumannApril 25, 2019071119, 080519, 072820, 092520, 122820, 031521Comment

"She has so much potential."

“The teacher raved about her,” my friend said about her fourth grader. “She said she can be anything she wants to be — a writer, a scientist, a doctor. Said she is endlessly competent.”

Because I am a cranky old spoilsport, I was taken aback by this.

I completely understand my friend’s delight and pride in her child’s accomplishments and academic success. But here’s what I want to say to the teacher:

Casey von NeumannMarch 25, 2019080519, 041322Comment

The challenge of ease

As students, the hunger for achievement and approval leads us in strange directions.

Some of us are ashamed of doing material that feels like "review," even if it isn't actually mastered.

We'd rather push through, no matter how uncomfortable and frustrating it is, than slow down, take our time, and master whatever it is that we're working on.

Where does this come from?

Casey von NeumannMarch 21, 2019080119, 080519, 092520, 121020, 033122, 112322, 010223Comment

Learning is annoying

Every morning (along with lunchtime and after school), the piano at The Little Middle School is overtaken by a series of students. Each one informally shares the music they can play. This ranges from video game themes, classical pieces, folk songs, songs we’ve learned in class, to just messing around. Each student will continue to play until they have run through their repertoire to their own satisfaction or find themselves jostled off the bench by the next person (usually the latter).

Casey von NeumannMarch 19, 2019080519, 061520, 072720, 080720, 061421, 122221Comment

What grades can't measure

We all know that grades don’t correlate to success in life by any measure (wealth, happiness, power, number of Pokemons caught).

I was your classic straight-A student, and I have made enough epic life mistakes to prove definitively that grades don’t even measure intelligence.

Even though we know that grades don’t mean anything in the long run, it’s scary to give them up. After all, they do give us a map of what matters in school and how to be successful there.

What’s not on the map?

Casey von NeumannMarch 15, 2019080519, 062520Comment

How to help a student rebuild confidence

Imagine that everything your child knows and can do can be represented by nested rings.

The violet center represents that which your child has mastered.

The red outer ring represents skills and knowledge that your child has very little exposure to.

Too often, the learning process requires students to spend the majority of their time on shaky ground:

Casey von NeumannMarch 13, 2019080519, 080520, 032221, 040521, 033122Comment

Unschooling is not unstructured

As a general philosophy, especially for very young children, unschooling is useful way of framing a parent’s role. Little ones are effective scientists, constantly running and evaluating experiments on their environment. They are gathering so much data from the world around them that they don’t need it organized or structured for them — they are doing that on their own.

Casey von NeumannMarch 12, 2019080519Comment