Smart

How smart are you?

Just some quick thoughts:

What does the word smart mean? We toss it around a lot.

Here are a few possibilities.

1) Smart = knowing many things
2) Smart = quick to make connections between things
3) Smart = knowing how to do something

Let’s consider these one by one. #1: Knowing many things.

Google knows many things, much more than any person, but it isn’t intelligent. It possesses information. Is simply possessing information in and of itself a valuable quality? When we lived in an age of information scarcity it must have been, but we don’t live in that world anymore. Even fantasies about returning to a world like that (such as The Walking Dead, in which Eugene’s character is valued for the knowledge he possesses) simply skip over the fact that there are libraries all over the place full of books filled with the same information. Knowing a lot is useful at trivia night but less so beyond that.

At the same time, having a depth of knowledge within a field is undoubtably useful. Ed Janak, an educational historian with whom I have studied, has an amazing depth of knowledge about American educational history. Jenny Denyer, another professor with whom I have worked, possesses deep and layered knowledge about language arts instruction, about discourse, and about teacher education. These are very useful qualities, because in both cases it means that they are able to quickly assimilate new information and understand how it relates to the body of the field, and when asked a question can draw upon the depth of their resources, and provide thoughtful, concise, and complex answers.

What is important here isn’t simply what they know, however, but the depth of field that I’m describing. It seems like in our schools we too often value shallow knowing of a broad array of information, rather than this kind of depth. We could see this as a chicken / egg problem — schools often act as if by filling students with information, we are moving them toward this kind of deep knowledge. Why not see it the other way around, though — that the deeper an understanding of something we form, the more likely we are to begin assimilating the information in that field? What if we treated memorization as a positive side effect of knowing and understanding rather than as the necessary precursor?

What about definition #2: being quick?

Is being quick an important quality? How often does speed matter, in our daily lives? Again, maybe we’re putting the cart before the horse. Having a deep understanding can make one quick, but simply being a fast processor might give one the appearance of having a depth of understanding without it actually existing.

Or perhaps it is what being quick signifies, which ties into definition #3:

Knowing how to do something. Much of the time we call people smart when they already know how to do what we’re asking them to do. This ends up creating a weird dynamic, where many people end up feeling “stupid” because they don’t enter a new situation or class already knowing how to do what will be taught. And the “smart” person is just someone who probably shouldn’t be there.

If we could get people to think of being smart as a situational quality, rather than inherent one (or could drop our use of the word in the first place), we might all be better off – that is, we wouldn’t have to feel bad about not knowing how to do what we have not yet learned. Smart usually seems to mean “situationally competent.” I’m really “smart” in an English classroom, but much less “smart” in a physics classroom, although I might do a decent job of faking being smart, because I tend to be pretty quick and carry myself with confidence.

Perhaps it doesn’t even have to mean that, though? Maybe we can think of being smart in a very different way?

When I do improv, being a good improvisor doesn’t mean knowing something that other folks don’t know (there are maybe a handful of improv guidelines worth knowing, and even they aren’t hard-and-fast rules). Instead, being a good improvisor means trusting yourself and your partner, being responsive (that is, paying close attention and taking into account what you see and hear as a result), and being brave. Maybe this is a better way to think about what it means to be smart? Certainly, if we think about students who tend to learn the most in a particular class, those students pay close attention and act on what they see and hear, and they are brave. Consider a language class — students who have been trained by our educational system to only want to give the “right” answer simply speak up less often than other students, and consequently don’t learn as much. Bravery trumps any kind of traditional “smarts.”

The next time you call someone smart, or they call you smart, stop and think a moment about what the word means in that context. And if you want to go crazy, comment on this blog and tell a story of what “smart” means to you, and let’s see if we can pin this down further.

Fake it ‘til you make it

I touched on the question of a knowledge base for improvisation in my last post. The question of how much knowledge one needs to have prior to improvising is a key one for me, because I am particularly interested in how we bring people into new discourse communities. For example, can a student who is just beginning to learn science or math improvise within either domain? Can an undergraduate who is learning to become a teacher improvise as they learn? Can a new employee hit the ground running, improvising their way into their job?

When I taught a course on Discourse and Improvisation for local teachers, one common expression that came up regularly was “fake it ‘til you make it.” In large part this was because the course was organized around James Paul Gee’s (1989) work on Discourse. Gee sees learning as a process of entering into and gaining facility in a new Discourse.

For example, if I have never attended a rodeo before, and my friend says, “hey, let’s go to the rodeo!”, I will have no idea how to be, how to act, how to dress, what to do when I’m at the rodeo. In common terms we associate with intelligence (but which, as this example shows, are relatively useless terms), I will seem rodeo “stupid,” while my friend appears rodeo “smart.” (Here we can see that when we think of someone as smart, it usually just means that they already know how to do what we want them to be able to do!)

Apparently this is what a rodeo looks like.
Image source: https://www.cowboysindians.com/2019/06/its-all-about-rodeo/

Nonetheless, the best way for me to become rodeo “smart” is to improvise. I’ll ask my friend what to wear beforehand, let them adjust my outfit when they pick me up, and pay close attention as we spend our time at the rodeo. I’ll watch what people say, how they act, what they pay attention to, and begin, hesitantly, to try and use the language, watch the activities, become a “rodeo person.” Eventually, as I “fake it ‘til I make it,” my identity will expand. I will have added a new facet to myself, and will now “know” the Discourse of rodeo – I will be rodeo smart.

We learn by doing, by trying out, by playing around with new language, new actions, a new Discourse and identity. By improvising. We do not need to be experts. What we need is to have space to play.

The educational psychologist Lev Vygotsky described how this works back in the 1920s. Vygotsky (1978, 1991, 2004) saw play and imagination as central to learning, because play and imagination facilitate the trying on of new identities by allowing children and adolescents to act beyond their abilities. Through play we are able to try on identities that are beyond our reach, and to be both who we currently are and another person, one whom we aspire to become, or whose identity we wish to try on – so a child may play at being a teacher, or a scientist, or a historian; by practicing enacting these roles, we learn and develop as we move toward them.

Here is where we see the biggest disconnect with educational practices and how learning works. Too often, we do not give learners space to play. We give them tasks to complete, and we constantly assess them on their ability to complete those tasks successfully. Thus we reward those who already are science “smart” or writing “smart” or math “smart,” and exclude those who actually need to learn the new Discourse in which we are immersing them. We expect beginners to “fake it” perfectly, something which almost no one can do!

Here we can begin to understand the importance of failure as a central feature rather than as a bug in the learning process. There is no way to try and learn a new Discourse without failing over and over again! When I lived in Thailand, for example, cultural and linguistic differences meant that I spent two years making a fool out of myself on an almost-daily basis. And yet no one graded me on this effort, no one (other than myself) chastised me or made me feel bad about doing so, and most importantly, I was still able to work effectively, to get up each morning and do my job (primarily teaching English). I may have “failed” continually as I learned the language and culture, but I also succeeded at the same time, becoming more and more proficient at each. This is how learning works.

References

Gee, J. P. (1989). Literacy, discourse, and linguistics: Introduction. Journal of Education, 171 (1), 5-17.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1991). Imagination and creativity in the adolescent. Soviet Psychology, 29 (1), 73-88.

Vygotsky, L. S. (2004). Imagination and creativity in childhood. Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 42 (1), 7-97.