The Power of Mindful Learning (2 page)
Read The Power of Mindful Learning Online
Authors: Ellen J. Langer
-Edith Kaplan
Contemporary Psychology
"Many educators find her theory intriguing and think it has
profound implications for revolutionizing teaching at all levels."
APA Monitor
"Most of us are often mindless in our learning. How this happens and what can be done about it-these are Ellen Langer's
important questions. Her lively answers could radically change
our concept of learning."
Jerome Bruner
The New School for Social Research
"A wonderfully thoughtful and thought-provoking follow-up
to the author's earlier study Mindfulness, this time exploring the
ill effects of mindlessness in education.... An excellent introduction to what might be (and certainly should be) the next paradigm shift in education."
-Kirkus Reviews
"An interesting and very readable proposal... Each of the seven
chapters takes up a learning 'myth'...to reduce the mindlessness
pervasive in traditional education."
-Choice
"I'm a firm believer in the power of mindful learning. This
book should be required reading for teachers at every level,
both in academia and the business world."
-Howard Stevenson
Harvard Business School
1 WHEN PRACTICE MAKES IMPERFECT
Rethinking Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
3 THE MYTH OF DELAYED GRATIFICATION
4 1066 WHAT? OR THE HAZARDS OF ROTE MEMORY
The Dangers of Mindless Memory
Absentminded versus Other Minded?
Alternative Views of Memory and Aging
6 MINDFULNESS AND INTELLIGENCE
Nineteenth-Century Theories of Intelligence
Linear versus Mindful Problem Solving
7 THE ILLUSION OF RIGHT ANSWERS
Actor/Observer and Other Perspectives
Uncertainty and Creative Thought
Mindfulness and Self-Definition
Learning as Re-imagining the World
Each chapter of this book relies in part on the mindfulness
of various students with whom I've had the pleasure of working. Their contributions are noted throughout where our experiments are described. Even more extensive collaboration
and thus special thanks are extended to Douglas DeMay and
Paul Whitmore re chapter 1; to Mathew Lieberman re chapter 4; Becca Levy re chapter 5; and Justin Brown re our work
on intelligence.
Taken as a whole, this book has benefited greatly from
the comments and questions given to me by Roger Brown
and Lenore Weitzman. Katherine Jaeger, Trina Soske, John
Myers, Albert Carnasale, Marie Tatar, Phyllis Katz, and
Nancy Hemenway also provided useful insights. I extend my
gratitude to each for their advice and my appreciation of
their friendship.
I also want to thank Sophia Snow and Brian Ericcson for
their mindful technical help.
Last, but foremost, I am indebted to my editor and friend,
Merloyd Lawrence, whose skill, patience, and wisdom helped
me with each draft.
Once upon a time there was a mindless little girl
named Little Red Riding Hood. One day, when
she went to visit her ailing grandmother, she was
greeted by a wolf dressed in her grandmother's
nightclothes. "What big eyes you have, Grandma,"
she exclaimed, clueless as ever, although she had seen
her grandmother's eyes countless times before. "What
big ears you have, Grandma, "she said, although it
was unlikely that they would have changed since
her last visit. "What a deep voice you have,
Grandma," she said, still oblivious to the shaggy
imposter beneath the familiar lacy nightcap. "What
big teeth you have, "she said, too late, alas, to begin
paying attention.
Certain myths and fairy tales help advance a culture by
passing on a profound and complex wisdom to succeeding generations. Others, however, deserve to be questioned. This book is about seven pervasive myths, or mindsets, that undermine
the process of learning and how we can avoid their debilitating
effects in a wide variety of settings.
1. The basics must be learned so well that they become second
nature.
2. Paying attention means staying focused on one thing at a
time.
3. Delaying gratification is important.
4. Rote memorization is necessary in education.
5. Forgetting is a problem.
6. Intelligence is knowing "what's out there."
7. There are right and wrong answers.
These myths undermine true learning. They stifle our creativity, silence our questions, and diminish our self-esteem.
Throughout this book we will examine them, sometimes
through experiments carried out at Harvard and elsewhere and
sometimes with insight drawn from fairy tales and folktales from
around the world. The process of overturning these myths leads
to certain questions about the nature of intelligence. In the last
two chapters we will explore these questions and the ways in
which our view of intelligence may support inhibiting mindsets.
The ideas offered here to loosen the grip of these debilitating myths are very simple. Their fundamental simplicity points
to yet another inhibiting myth: that only a massive overhaul
can give us a more effective educational system.
We can change school curricula, change standards for testing students and teachers, increase parent and community involvement in the process of education, and increase the budget for education so that more students can become part of the
computer age. None of these measures alone will make enough
difference unless students are given the opportunity to learn
more mindfully. With such opportunity, some of these expensive measures might well become unnecessary.
Wherever learning takes place-in school, on the job, in
the home-these myths are also at work and the opportunity
for mindful learning is present. Whether the learning is practical or theoretical, personal or interpersonal; whether it involves
abstract concepts, such as physics, or concrete skills, such as
how to play a sport, the way the information is learned will
determine how, why, and when it is used. The succeeding chapters explore the way each of these myths locks us into rigid
habits of learning and offer keys to a more flexible and productive approach.
This book takes more of a "why-to" than a "how-to" approach. Nevertheless, the examples and experiments described
implicitly suggest ways to learn mindfully. These are intended
to guide our choices and to be adapted to each unique context,
rather than to be followed mindlessly.
Not only do we as individuals get locked into singleminded views, but we also reinforce these views for each other
until the culture itself suffers the same mindlessness. There is
an awareness of this in science. Scientists proceed along a path
gathering data that builds on accepted wisdom. At some point
someone turns everyone's attention to a very different view of
the previously acknowledged truth. This phenomenon happens frequently enough that scientists are generally not surprised by
what is called a paradigm shift. In a recent New York Timesl
article psychologist Dean Radin described four stages of adopting ideas: "The first is, 1. `It's impossible.' 2. `Maybe it's possible, but it's weak and uninteresting.' 3. `It is true and I told you
so.' 4. `I thought of it first.' " I would add a fifth stage, "We
always knew that. How could it be otherwise?"
The term mindful learning is used here in a very specific
way, drawn from the concept of mindfulness that I defined in
an earlier book by that name.2 A mindful approach to any activity has three characteristics: the continuous creation of new
categories; openness to new information; and an implicit
awareness of more than one perspective. Mindlessness, in contrast, is characterized by an entrapment in old categories; by
automatic behavior that precludes attending to new signals;
and by action that operates from a single perspective. Being
mindless, colloquially speaking, is like being on automatic pilot.
In Mindfulness, I described the benefits of a mindful approach
for our psychological and physical well-being. For instance,
elderly adults given mindfulness treatments were shown to live
longer than their peers who were not given such treatments. In
this book I use the concept of mindfulness as a lens through
which to explore its importance in the world I know best,
teaching and learning.