It’s happened. I am too old to understand kids’ music, too old to understand their dress, and definitely too old to understand their technology.
I recently watched two teens walk through the FlatIron mall, one hand from each engaged in passionate embrace with the other, while the remaining hand from each teen worked a cellphone. We’re talking solid minutes — veritable teen lifetimes — without puppy dog eye contact. One second it was e-mail, the next text, and finally Internet, followed by a quick back-out from an APL site when they clearly meant to click ADD.
As a high school math teacher, this vignette worries me: I believe that technologically driven fragmentation disrupts the modern student’s problem-solving process. As part of the TED talk series, Dan Meyer, also a high school math teacher, referred to this phenomenon as the “Two and a Half Men” expectation: Problems should be “sitcom-sized” and “wrap up in 22 minutes, three commercial breaks, and a laugh track.”
Students believe in two-step, one- solution problems. They Google a question, click a link, and behold “the answer.” Confusion clouds their faces when I ask them to brainstorm three solution routes, and then the real storm brews when asked to evaluate which is best. Linear, fast- paced expectations tend to fall short of the open-ended and often ambiguous problems that we encounter in our real lives. These problems — the problems worth solving — require patience, and although a laugh track couldn’t hurt, the solutions are rarely 22 minutes long.
So, to use the language of Colorado’s newly adopted Common Core standards, how do teachers attempt to instill problem-solving “perseverance”? We start by stripping away the crutches that lead from a textbook problem to its textbook solution. We then rally students to think, sketch, and apply habits of mind in order to find possible solution routes. We gather information, solve a simple case, look for a pattern, relate to a previous question, test specific instances, make a model, and check our assumptions and parameters. Finally, a teacher nudges each student along his route — a brave toe into unknown waters — after which he rejoins the class to critically compare end results.
This process takes time, and often crashes upon the bulwark of district pacing: One day to understand systems of equations; two days to grasp the fullest extent of proportions. Education pigeonholes the student at the same time that it swears to recognize his or her individuality.
Yet even more subtle, this process crashes upon the bulwark of Hollywood. Paris Hilton characterizations of success without perseverance inundate our youth. Reality TV paints an American picture of prosperity and success with opportunity for each, and yet outlines it in a Warhol-esque 15-minute frame.
At this point, habits tell me to step back and check my assumptions: Are these technological worries just the inevitable outcome of my old flip-phone sinking like a stone? iPhones, BlackBerrys and Droids are here to stay. E-mail, texting and browsing are the new road. Yes, the times, they are a-changin’. But wait! I shouldn’t relegate myself to the old road to rue the pitfalls of younger generations when I myself am not that old.
How old am I? Well, the sum of my age and Paris Hilton’s age is 58 and I am two years younger than Paris Hilton.
Hmmm. Remember that we’ve solved a problem like this before . . .
Thomas Greene of Arvada (thomasdgreene@gmail.com) is a Colorado native, outdoor enthusiast, and high school mathematics teacher.
