![Picture of Albert Einstein standing at a chalkboard](/uploads/8/7/4/0/87406048/editor/einstein.jpg?1485461824)
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
I like quotes and of course, as a physics teacher, am naturally drawn to Einstein. One year, I bought The New Quotable Einstein and typed up my favorites, focusing on ones related to education or designed to provoke thinking for teenagers and laminated them individually. I posted a new one each week throughout the school year on a big poster of Einstein. Students could get extra credit for keeping track of each week’s quote and then writing a reflection on what it meant to them.
[In retrospect, of course, it was typically the students who didn’t “need” the extra credit who completed the assignment. If I were teaching again, I would somehow incorporate this task into the expectations for all students and also definitely not have “extra credit” of any kind (but that’s another blog post)…]
Each year, when I would tape up this quote about making things simple but not simpler, I would ponder what it really meant. It doesn’t seem to make sense on the surface, because if something is as simple as possible, shouldn’t it not be able to be made simpler at all? But since Einstein said it and he was a genius, then it must be insightful, right?
[That was rhetorical and a little sarcastic...first, as with so many quotes, it is attributed to him, but there is no clear link; and second, I don’t believe in blind acceptance of “truth” regardless of the source.]
After years of mulling, I think the real question is this...
does “simple as possible” constrain to non-complex?
does “simple as possible” constrain to non-complex?
To answer that, let’s ask: What happens when something is made simpler than it should be?
But you would likely not enjoy the final project if your friend made the process “simpler” by just serving the ingredients without the transformative process of mixing and baking (not to mention breaking the eggs, taking the flour out of the bag, etc).
I think for too many years in education we have tried to make learning simpler than it should be. We spend many years perfecting curriculum to take each standard or idea down to its simplest, most granular skill or unit. We teach and reteach and assess each skill and unit to ensure that every student masters that piece of the whole. And this is a good thing -- to have a whole you need each part...like with our cookie -- a missing ingredient can drastically change the outcome. But with such a focus on teaching the individual skills and ideas, the danger is that that we lose sight of the big picture, of recognizing and addressing what is the desired whole of the learning outcome. | For example, the traditional focus of math education has been on the granular levels of solving each step of a math problem. Teachers (and curriculum makers/textbook authors) make the problems easier for students to tackle and learn by breaking down the process into steps and giving repeated practice on the steps -- think worksheets. The problem with this approach is that it has largely produced students (and adults) who can do calculations, but struggle to set up problems from narrative descriptions and more importantly, cannot identify when they are using or need to use mathematical thinking as they interact with the world around them. |
Thankfully, the philosophy on teaching math is starting to change -- see more on the work of Jo Boaler.
We want students to learn. We want to make it easy for students to learn. But when we try to make learning too simple, we short-change the outcome. We assemble all the ingredients, but never actually mix them into batter or bake the cookies.
Learning cannot be simple. It must be complex and challenging. To incorporate new ideas, to learn new patterns of thinking...to grow...is innately laborious. We definitely should not make the process more difficult and we should always remove every single barrier that can stand in the way. But we really can’t make learning easy. When we try to, it cheapens the experience of learning from something that can produce thinking to something that produces assimilation, compliance, acceptance ... memorization and regurgitation.
Thinking, at least the kind that students will need to be successful in the future they will face, cannot be non-complex. Therefore, we must strive to make education as simple as possible, but never simpler.
Learning cannot be simple. It must be complex and challenging. To incorporate new ideas, to learn new patterns of thinking...to grow...is innately laborious. We definitely should not make the process more difficult and we should always remove every single barrier that can stand in the way. But we really can’t make learning easy. When we try to, it cheapens the experience of learning from something that can produce thinking to something that produces assimilation, compliance, acceptance ... memorization and regurgitation.
Thinking, at least the kind that students will need to be successful in the future they will face, cannot be non-complex. Therefore, we must strive to make education as simple as possible, but never simpler.