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<\/a><\/p>\nHere\u2019s a potential headline:<\/p>\n
BOOK ON STATISTICS MAKES GRIPPING READING<\/p>\n
Or, another:<\/p>\n
COMMONLY USED SCHOOL METRICS MOSTLY USELESS<\/p>\n
Or, one more:<\/p>\n
LIFE STORY OF FUNNY MAN EXEMPLIFIES MORAL IMPERATIVE<\/p>\n
These headlines, perhaps, leave you deeply skeptical. And yet, Todd Rose\u2019s The End of Average<\/em> fulfills them all. It may be the only book about a basic mathematical procedure that you start recommending to your colleagues.<\/p>\n BOOK ON STATISTICS MAKES GRIPPING READING<\/p>\n As a culture, we\u2019re obsessed with averages: from IQ and GPA, to ERA and on-base percentage, to the Dow Jones and monthly unemployment.<\/p>\n Given the ubiquity of these calculations, it\u2019s amazing to learn that an identifiable individual first decided to use scientific averaging procedures to draw conclusions about human social institutions. (It\u2019s even more amazing to learn that his name was Adolphe Quetelet. This man should have invented potato chips.)<\/p>\n In the 200 years since Quetelet, some have seen the average as the ideal, and vilified variance from the average as a problem that schools and factories must solve.<\/p>\n Others\u2014including Francis Galton, relative of Charles Darwin\u2014have been champions of those who exceeded the average, exalting the eminent above the mediocre (and certainly above \u201cthe imbecile\u201d).<\/p>\n In other words, there is a social history to our obsession with averages. It\u2019s not a timeless norm of human societies, but a recent quirk in our social world view.<\/p>\n Improbably, Rose recounts this intellectual and social history with admirable clarity and welcome humor. I rarely lost my place in his argument, and regularly appreciated his wry observation and turn of phrase. When reading about the history of math, every Dante deserves so engaging a Beatrice.<\/p>\n COMMONLY USED SCHOOL METRICS MOSTLY USELESS<\/p>\n But here\u2019s the catch in Rose\u2019s engaging and witty story: when we use averages to describe people, the underlying mathematical assumptions go badly awry.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll leave the details to Rose (who, by the way, does an impressive job making the \u201cergodic switch\u201d clear to non-math readers).<\/p>\n The simple version is this; the rules governing mathematical procedures assume that human beings are like certain gas molecules: identical, and changeless. Of course, you don\u2019t need too much experience as a teacher to know that our students are not immutable clones.<\/p>\n The horrifying implication: our obsession with IQ and GPA and countless other measurements that depend on averaging depends ultimately on a mathematical error. There\u2019s a bug deep in the code we\u2019ve been programming with all along.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s an analogy\u2014adapted from Rose\u2019s introduction. The last time you rented a car, you probably spent a few minutes adjusting all sorts of settings. You moved the seat up and back, tilted the steering wheel, rejiggered the mirrors\u2014even before you got to the radio and the AC.<\/p>\n Of course, car makers would be much happier if they could dispense with all these adjustments; that is, if they could build a car for the average driver. But they (or, as Rose explains, the Navy) have found that no such driver exists. Even if you knew that a driver is 5\u2019 10\u201d, you still can\u2019t make good predictions about the right height for the steering wheel, or the proper tilt for the headrest\u2026much less the best temperature for the car.<\/p>\n And yet, IQ tests assume, in effect, that all students can comfortably drive the same car. If their driving is faulty, the problem resides in the driver, not in the car itself.<\/p>\n Other books in this field offer specific teaching strategies. Instead, Rose offers readers a new way to think about information we already have<\/em>. The uses of these new thought processes will be different for each of us.<\/p>\n If, for example, your school uses IQ scores or GPA as a prerequisite for advanced tracks or classes, you\u2019ll know how to think about these criteria in the future.<\/p>\n If, on the other hand, you\u2019re designing a new class, Rose\u2019s frameworks will doubtless inspire you contemplate course requirements anew. His final three chapters, in fact, offer models for rethinking old systems to allow for complex individuality.<\/p>\n Alas, Rose\u2019s examples don\u2019t come from K-12 schools; we will have to do that work ourselves. At the same time, we can be more effective in rethinking approaches to teaching given Rose\u2019s wisdom and guidance.<\/p>\n LIFE STORY OF FUNNY MAN EXEMPLIFIES MORAL IMPERATIVE<\/p>\n More than most books on science, Rose presents his own life story as a central example of his hypothesis.<\/p>\n In many ways, his biography resembles a cautionary tale about bad choices and misspent opportunities. After a series of failures in high school, he ended up on welfare\u2014with a wife and two children to support.<\/p>\n And yet, Dr. Todd Rose is now the Director of the Mind, Brain, Education program at Harvard University\u2019s School of Education\u2014and the author of a book published by Harper Collins. He has, in brief, made it.<\/p>\n His remarkable story points to two key moral arguments.<\/p>\n First: as a society, our schools cheat many who don\u2019t fit within \u201caveragarian\u201d norms. Clearly Rose has what it takes to succeed\u2014the man is, after all, a Harvard professor. And yet, our education system didn\u2019t facilitate his success; it routinely impeded that success.<\/p>\n We simply can\u2019t feel good about social systems that block capable people.<\/p>\n Second: as a society, we cheat ourselves<\/em> by limiting the successes of promising students. Think of all the other Todd Roses out there who were not able to overcome the hurdles our system placed before them. Think what they might have invented and accomplished and discovered\u2014for us.<\/p>\n In other words: Rose\u2019s desire to see past faulty \u201caveragarian\u201d thinking is not some dewy-eyed project to make do-gooders sleep cozily. Instead, it is an utterly rational appeal to our sense of justice and of logic. If we can take off our social blinders, we will benefit not only those who need non-average systems to thrive, but also ourselves, our students, our families, and our world.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Todd Rose (2016). The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World that Values Sameness<\/em>. New York: HarperOne.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Full Disclosure: I took one course under Dr. Rose in the MBE program at Harvard\u2019s School of Education.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here\u2019s a potential headline: BOOK ON STATISTICS MAKES GRIPPING READING Or, another: COMMONLY USED SCHOOL METRICS MOSTLY USELESS Or, one more: LIFE STORY OF FUNNY MAN EXEMPLIFIES MORAL IMPERATIVE These headlines, perhaps, leave you deeply skeptical. And yet, Todd Rose\u2019s The End of Average fulfills them all. It may be the only book about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":1528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-1304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-methodology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1304"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1529,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1304\/revisions\/1529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}