In the polarized debate on education, more tense than usual after the latest slap from PISA, the respect with which the neurobiologist and popularizer is listened to is surprising. Hector Ruiz Martin from all the trenches, perhaps because of his always calm way of expressing himself. Without abandoning this tone he writes ‘Edumitos, ideas about learning without scientific support’ (International Science Teaching Foundation), in which, through scientific evidence, it dismantles 44 ‘myths’ on which a large part of the educational system is based (both the most conservative and the most innovative: it has something for everyone). Beliefs – which science has proven false – ranging from that the most affective way to learn is ‘learning by doing‘ until the cooperative learning hurts good students.
“No educational system is based on science”
-In the preface he quotes Thomas Sowell: ‘When you want to help others, give them evidence; When you want to help yourself, give them what they want to hear.’ Is the Catalan educational system at that point?
-In the introduction I make an analogy with medicine. For millennia it was not based on science, but on education, tradition, authority, personal experience… Doctors performed bloodletting, convinced that it worked; until they compared how many were saved by the bloodletting and how many were not, and they saw that there was no difference between them, which showed that they did not work.
-It is surprising that in education no one has fallen into comparing methods…
-In medicine it did not happen until a hundred years ago. In the mid-19th century, scientific evidence began to be seen as an ally of medical practice; and now no one understands non-science-based medicine. And there are still pseudoscientific practices, but outside the circuit.
70% of children will learn to read no matter what we do, but 30%, which is many, need direct teaching
-Is the Catalan educational system not based on evidence?
-Neither Catalan nor any. But, on the other hand, there is a lot of research on the matter. When I began to dedicate myself to disseminating all this research in the educational community, the first thing that surprised me is how it is possible that we have all this scientific knowledge and it has not been transferred to the educational community. And what I realized right away is that the educational community is very interested in that knowledge.
-Those responsible for educational policies should also be, right?
-Also. And that seems to be starting to happen. The Department has begun to express that it wants to rely on research to develop its policies. But in this area, until now, it had not been realized that education can be nourished by evidence. We could be facing a movement like that of medicine.
-Has the last PISA been the turning point?
-The debate and interest necessary for us to look at how science can help us face these problems is being generated.
-It’s a little scary. His book shakes things up a bit. It has for all currents.
-Science allows us to see beyond appearances, beyond what is in front of us. In fact, modern science was born destroying one of the ideas that you had to be crazy to deny: that the sun revolves around the Earth. And science is what says: no, the sun does not move, it is you who moves.
-One of the myths that debunks and that hurts especially is the following: “If the environment motivates them, children learn to read naturally.” This belief is ingrained in many schools.
-Surely, how to teach reading is the question on which there is the most research. Certain methods do the opposite of what the research says. It is an idea that takes us back to Rousseau, who said that they will learn to read on their own, that there is no need to interfere. And it’s not interfering, it’s helping! This idea is based on the fact that we learn to read just as we learn to speak: spontaneously.
The idea that we learn to read just as we learn to speak, spontaneously, is false; reading is a technology
-And it is not like that?
-No. Reading is not like speaking. Reading is a technology that we invented 5,000 years ago. In fact, the majority of humanity has been illiterate until the last 100. Reading is a widespread skill in the last 100, and there are still millions of illiterate people in the world, which confirms that it is not learned spontaneously, that it requires teaching.
-Another myth to which he dedicates several pages is that of motivation. Believe that they will learn to read if we motivate them.
-It is a serious problem, yes. 70% of children will learn to read no matter what we do, because of their environment or because they become alert. But there are 30%, which is many, to whom if we do not teach them directly, explicitly, systematically, they will not learn to read fluently, and fluency is key to reading comprehension and to enjoying reading.
Sometimes being motivated is confused with not making an effort, and no; They have to be motivated to make an effort; learning requires effort
-Another of the myths that it affects is that of emotions. Do you think that the current educational system is giving them too much importance?
-Of course emotions are important for learning. However, the key concept is motivation; and motivation is important for learning because it pushes you to do what will lead you to learn. But there are many misunderstandings about motivation.
-Which is it?
-That emotions make what we learn more memorable. It is not like this. Emotions make the events of our lives memorable – that is episodic memory – but they do not necessarily make you remember concepts and ideas (that is semantic memory). Many times, with the best of intentions, you do an activity so that the students have a good time, and you realize that they remember that class, but not what they had to learn. Therein lies the misunderstanding. Because of course all teachers want students to be motivated, but they have to be motivated to pay attention, to think about what you want them to learn. Sometimes being motivated is confused with not making an effort. And no, they have to be motivated to make an effort. Learning requires effort.
Motivation makes you learn more and better because it encourages you to dedicate more time and more effort.
-Do we motivate them so that they do not realize that they are making an effort?
-Learning requires thinking and thinking is difficult. The other mistake is to think that motivation makes us remember better what we are learning, and neither does it. Motivation does not have that implicit effect. Motivation makes you learn more and better because it encourages you to dedicate more time and more effort to the actions that will make you learn. And there are also many misunderstandings about what motivation depends on.
-What does it depend on?
-Many times we think that motivation depends on interest. If they are interested, they learn, and if not, what are we going to do? And that leads to a derivative that is to base ourselves on what interests the students, that they choose. And that forgets one of the most important factors for motivation that we often forget, which is self-efficacy.
-What is self-efficacy?
-The belief that you can learn that, that you will be successful. You feel capable, competent; and self-efficacy is more important than interest, because it modulates our interests. You are interested in those things that you think you are good at and, on the other hand, you run away from what you think you are not good at. So, one thing they see that they struggle with may be lowering their self-efficacy. When you ask a child what he wants to learn, he will most likely tell you about things that he already knows, that he already masters, because what motivates us is to succeed. Therefore, if you allow the student to choose, he will choose what is least convenient for him because they already know it, and he needs to work on what is still difficult for him.
-Basing on the interests of the child, then, is it a bad approach?
-No, but there are many ways to provoke interest. Another mistake is believing that interests are personal. Interest can be provoked.
-The last big issue is that of technology. The belief that it is atrophying our brain.
-Many things are mixed here. One thing is the didactic use of technology in the classroom. Another, a misuse of technology, which is using it to do what you already did without it. And another thing is the uses that are made of technology outside of school. Intuitively, we think that spending so many hours on the cell phone cannot be good, but scientifically it is not proven that our attention span has changed. Our ability to pay attention is an ability that is fixed in our genes and the only possibility of changing it is through an evolutionary process.
-But no study is needed to realize the impact of cell phone abuse on adolescents.
-We are tempted to think that, because our environment changes, our way of being changes, but what changes is our behavior, not our way of being. It’s not that you don’t have the ability to concentrate, it’s that since you have your phone in front of you and perhaps you have no reason not to pick it up, you do it. If you didn’t have it, you would be the same person behaving differently in an environment where there are no cell phones.
Related news
-So, there is no doubt about the need to ban cell phones (in schools).
-Regulation is important. Prohibiting means leaving no room for any type of use, and there are specific uses that help us. The important thing is that we learn to self-regulate.