Crushing student convictions

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This text is part of: "I would never send my kids to school" by Piotr Wozniak (2017)

Few teachers know much about how the brain works and how efficient learning should proceed. However, even well-educated and smart teachers can hold heretic beliefs. One of my teacher colleagues, Marcus said "convictions are irrelevant in learning".

This myth is omnipresent and survives strong in minds of teachers around the world. Marcus's thinking is easy to understand. He comes from a deeply religious family in which creation science was the talk of the day. Marcus pulled himself out from creationist convictions by self-study. Today he is a fervent supporter of science and objective analysis of reality. In his class, Marcus hopes to inject the young mind with skepticism and the honest ability to examine (1) the reality and (2) one's own convictions about reality. His thinking is parallel to those who want to ban homeschooling.

Marcus is an exemplary teacher, however, he still questions a quintessential property of the human mind:

The learn drive is powered by matching new knowledge to existing models

While learning, what you can fit in a model will provide a reward. What you cannot fit will usually be ignored or cause displeasure. Using the jigsaw puzzle metaphor, the current state of the mind/knowledge can be compared to the current state of the jigsaw puzzle. For optimum learning, that state is the determinant foundation. Convictions are based on models, and models determine learning trajectories. This is why convictions determine optimum learning strategies.

Mathematically speaking, the teacher would have to know two semantic knowledge graphs: one for the student's current model and second for the student's corrected target model. The teacher would then need to draw the optimum trajectory between the two using incremental knowledge injections based on knowledge valuation network, which is not known, and using reward valuations, which are not known. Only a parallel device, the brain, can do those valuations optimally. Self-learning is a hit-and-miss process that can find the optimum over weeks, months, or years of learning. It all depends on the current state of knowledge and the input, i.e. the environment. One-on-one interaction makes it possible to make an approximation of the optimum trajectory using student feedback, and arrive at the target fast as long as it meets the following criteria: (1) the student is willing, (2) the teacher is great, and (3) sufficient time is allocated for the process. The fact that the teacher knows the correct model is of little help as each knowledge network graph will map differently in each individual brain. Again, that mapping depends on the starting point: the original status of knowledge.

Marcus's thinking carries an echo of Fineman's paper, where she hoped to root out "backward biblical thinking" by scientific "indoctrination" at school.

If convictions are essential in learning, the question arises: what should a good teacher do to help a student overcome false convictions? A typical teacher, by the mere act of teaching, is usually having a good contribution to righting the wrong of false convictions. However, the choice of strategy may be essential in the hardest of hard cases. Creation science or intelligent design are good examples. All I can say about strategies at this point is that they are hard. There is no simple formula. It takes an excellent teacher, like Marcus, to make a dent, and the effort needed is remarkable.

The simplest approach to changing convictions is free-flowing unemotional conversation. Naturally this is difficult in a class of twenty. It is even harder to make sure the teacher is not seen as someone with an agenda. He needs to be an honest broker and he should not encroach upon freedoms of thinking of the student. If the teacher is like an annoying insurance agent, always coming back to his ulterior purpose, he will have already failed.

The best destroyer of false convictions is self-learning. It may take months, or years, or for ever, for a student to break out from a mold of strong convictions imposed in childhood, e.g. by any form of parental indoctrination. Using crystallization metaphor, a new strong crystal of knowledge needs to form. When it collides with false convictions, it must be big and coherent enough to withstand the pressure exerted by the "false crystal". Only then can contradiction break the old crystal and result in a change to convictions. Against strong convictions, the teacher is virtually helpless.

If self-learning is the key to breaking the mold, perhaps the teacher could simply suggest some literature in the subject. However, once he makes the reading compulsory, he risks alienating the student and actually strengthen the original conviction.

Fineman believes that objective presentation in a classroom can crush false knowledge and change convictions. However, this position fails to take into account that human mind operates on models of reality, and those models determine how new knowledge slots in in the brain. In short, teaching evolution to a kid with strong creation science convictions is a waste of time, it can backfire, and it can result in the hate of schooling, hate of teachers, or even the hate of science. The conversion rate is negligible, and not worth the cost of indoctrination. If that cost was to be a ban on homeschooling, it would be a tragic case of good intent conspiring with a seemingly minor myth to produce a societal disaster.

Self-directed learning is the future, and the myth of irrelevant convictions stands on the way to that future.