Crime and Family: Selected Essays of Joan McCord

24. Learning How to Learn and its Sequelae

C H A P T E R T W E N T Y- F O U R Learning How to Learn and Its Sequelae* H IGH SCHOOL IN TUCSON, ARIZONA, left me thinking that education was a matter of learning how to repeat what others wrote. Fortunately , at Stanford, I had two lucky breaks that taught me otherwise. The first was in a philosophy course that challenged me to think critically about what I read. The professor assigned a series of incompatible theories. When we realized that, being incompatible, they couldn’t all be right, we were forced to rethink our earlier conviction concerning each. What a lesson that was. Thirty years later, I returned to Stanford and let Professor John Mothershead know that his course had made a tremendous difference in my life; it had turned me from an acceptor of received opinions into an independent and skeptical thinker. The second lucky break came in the form of an extraordinary professor who agreed to give me a tutorial course. He agreed on condition that I would read Spinoza , a notoriously difficult project. Having practically no background, but loaded with enthusiasm, I agreed. The reading was dense; the weekly sessions downright painful. Each week, I reported on the sections I had read and what they seemed to mean. Professor Davidson asked for more. Why had Spinoza made that speci fic argument? What issues were relevant to the questions it addressed? Had the argument been made by others? He conveyed the clear impression that reading the text, even carefully reading the text, was not enough. I remember no compliments , no recognition of effort spent, nothing but a careful exposure of what it means to master a topic. His teaching, I believe, put me on track to become a researcher in a broad and multi-disciplined field that investigates justice. William (“Bud”) McCord and I had been friends since high school. We went to Stanford together and were married as undergraduates. We decided on academic *Reprinted from McCord, J. 2002. Learning how to learn and sequelae. In Lessons of Criminology , edited by G. Geis and M. Dodge, 95–108. Cincinnati, Ohio: Anderson Publishing Co.; with permission from Matthew Bender & Company, Inc., a member of the LexisNexis Group, Copyright 2002. All rights reserved. careers together. That decision was easy once we had been given the sensible advice to talk with people who occupied positions we envisioned ourselves as having in about 10 years. “Don’t ask their advice,” Professor Cowley said, “but talk with them about their daily routines. Ask them what they enjoy about their jobs. Then decide which lifestyle best fits you.” We talked with business leaders in a variety of specialties, with lawyers who had become partners in firms, and with well-established bankers. These people were successful and most of them enjoyed what they were doing, but we found—hands down—that what the professors did was what we wanted to do. We also agreed that I would support Bud while he got his credentials before going on for my own. After graduation from Stanford, Bud enrolled at Harvard to study with Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck and I got a position teaching children in Concord, Massachusetts . Classroom teaching provided an important opportunity for me to learn more about children. Occasionally, I used my sixth graders to experiment with theories about learning. The experiment I remember best involved teaching children what to value. At the beginning of the year, I asked the class to list their subjects in order of preference. Almost all the 30 children ranked arithmetic at the bottom. So arithmetic became my target. I instituted an Arithmetic Club. It would be open only to those who got 100 percent correct on an assigned paper. (Because I gave individualized assignments, everybody had a chance to join.) Members of the Arithmetic Club were given a special privilege: They were allowed to do weekly arithmetic homework which I would grade. At the end of the term, the class reevaluated their subjects. Confirming a theory about using rewards to shape preferences (based on my interpretation of some work done by Leon Festinger ), arithmetic had moved upward for all the students and it had become a favorite for most. This classroom experiment exposed the folly of common practice in using homework as punishment, a practice that sends the message that learning is painful, rather than a privilege. The classes also proved useful for pretesting the measurement instruments Bud and I...