Let me entertain you. But not always.

It’s been lovely speaking with students, many of whom are really delighted to be back in school after the break - one group said “it’s so much fun in school”, laughing.  As someone who believes in intrinsic motivation, as a teacher who tries hard to make lessons enjoyable, and as a parent,  I was delighted to hear this - especially as the distractions that are available today are so compelling; if school is ‘fun’, that really is an achievement.    Making learning entertaining seems like such an obvious way to help students succeed - we all do better on things we enjoy, and the rather stark contrast with my own schooling got me thinking.

There's a lot to be said for school being fun. 
But sometimes things only end up being fun after detailed, sustained attention.

Entertainment is taken to its extreme in Aldous Huxley’s 1932 Brave New World, where there is little else. It’s striking that the novel is set in a future with mood stabilizers, genetic engineering, videoconferencing, chemical birth control, and the ubiquitous television (sound familiar?).  Near-instant gratification rules; and entertainment is portrayed as its own drug.  Now, we certainly have not gone that far in schools, and not all students would describe school as fun, of course, but it’s interesting to note the prevalence of approaches by companies trying to sell gamification or edutainment (material intended to be both educational and enjoyable), and the centrality of our desire to make everything relevant, meaningful and engaging for students.   We  design our curriculum and lessons with hooks that engage and entice; we give feedback that is personally tailored; we expect and aspire to ‘personalised education’ to win students’ interest and attention.

There is a great deal of good in all this, of course, and I pride myself on doing my best to adapt to individuals in my own classes.   But as with many good things, perhaps they can be overdone.  The last thing anyone wants is a meaningless grind at school; I wonder, however, if there is something of a loss when entertainment is a focus,  and in particular, if teachers need to be entertainers?  Isn’t finding the entertainment in life for yourself an important part of growing up?

So what makes something engaging and fun?  Or not?  The worst tasks, for me, have been when I have not really given something proper attention, and perhaps tried to skim something, or do it while also doing a few other things - the ‘dull’ task seems interminable.  But when I have paid closed and detailed attention, I’ve often found ‘dull’ things to be actually quite interesting and rewarding. Writing this blog each week is a great example - it never seems very attractive as I start, but as I’m forced to gather my thoughts and focus, writing becomes genuinely enjoyable.  It turns out that this is not just my own odd affliction (many students say the same thing about their work) and psychologists Nunoi and Yoshikawa have also shown experimentally that things we pay deep attention to are preferred over things we pay less attention to. 

This is an important idea - because as mentioned, the natural thing to think is that we need to persuade students that something is interesting and worthy of their time before paying attention to it.  But the suggestion is that  cause and effect can run the other way too  - that if they first pay close attention, they’ll be likely to find things interesting and engaging.  School may even be ’fun’!  There are immediate implications as we consider how to motivate students.  

The answer is of course to do our best to engage students - but to also trust the ideas and learning to engage and entertain in it’s own way, and not to overly worry about entertainment.   The magic is in the trusting teacher-student relationships so that students ‘go with it’ and commit their full attention to new and difficult ideas, which may be initially remote and puzzling.  I think at some level we all know this - we know that certain adults bring out the best in our students, help them do more than they thought they could, who students will follow simply because they trust them, and who will introduce them to cathedrals of understanding that they would never have entered by themselves.  And once there, they will rejoice.

This fundamental truth is why we don’t just read the website and brochures when choosing a school; we visit and meet people.  It’s why the teacher in the classroom remains a much bigger influence than technology, or the curriculum, or class-size; and it’s why we put so much time and energy into our recruitment. 

I started this piece with an observation about school being ‘fun’.  I end it with the truism that it is the individual teachers who ensure that it is so; and furthermore, that they can do so without resorting to becoming entertainers, or reducing education to entertainment.

Reference

• Nunoi, M. and Yoshikawa, S. (2016) Deep processing makes stimuli more preferable over long durations. Journal of Cognitive Psychology 28:6 pp 756 - 763

• Soloski, A (2020) ‘Brave New World’ Arrives in the Future It Predicted.  New York Times

• Zajonc, R (1968)  Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 9: 2 pp1 - 27