A long time ago, when I was still a little squirt, I was just as stubborn as I am today, but somewhat less sure of the notion that the status quo is not a lofty goal to aspire to. Of course, now, I know better - the life blood of the entrepreneur is to know that there is always a better way, of course.

Fortunately, there was the notion of ‘homework’ to help me to understand this notion early on. In The Netherlands, starting at my first year VWO (For the americans in the audience: That’s Junior High), homework became annoying. Very annoying. There was lots of it, parents got mad if you didn’t do it, teachers assumed you were an idiot with nothing better to do. And yet… it was boring and hardly effective.

Then, two years later, I moved to the United States, where I enrolled as a freshman (that’s 3rd year VWO/HAVO/MAVO for the cheeseheads), homework grew from an annoyance to a full blown nightmare: Whereas in the Netherlands (at least at my school) your grade was principally decided by test results, in America, at just about every high school, direct grading of homework is such a large part of the final grade that even just skipping half is more than enough to get you an F.

Thus my cynicism about what passes for ‘didactics’ at mainstream education, whether in the Netherlands or (perhaps especially) in the United States, arose primarily due to homework.

This article by Alfie Kohn pretty much kills homework as an academic tool. Scratch that; it utterly obliterates it. So why don’t schools and universities fix this? In theory they ought to like academic research proving a point, don’t they?

Homework’s only function, seemingly, is to allow the thinking man to come to this important conclusion as soon as reasonably possible:

Never let your schooling interfere with your education. — Mark Twain

There’s got to be an easier way to impress this little gem on impressionable minds then homework. The problem is in the word itself: learning dressed up as a work, as a chore. That’s retarded. The human psyche is fundamentally instilled with curiosity and the desire to learn. The moment learning becomes work, you’ve failed completely.

For an encore, allow me to draw a connection to presentations. It is often said that all presentations sell something, but I assert that a significant amount of presentations also try to teach something; even if only the notion that your product is better than everything else.

So, give people the tools to learn: Give a live demonstration, take a 5 minute break and let people tinker with your product or your idea. Don’t spell it out, manipulate the curiosity of the audience and steer them towards the conclusion. I’ll leave the specifics over to more capable teachers than I, as this idea is the essence of the teachings of Presentation Zen - which, I might add, generally teaches you presenting by showing you good presentations, and urging you to experiment with techniques. No homework. Just nifty tricks you try because you think it’ll be fun!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 at 4:15 and is filed under university.