蜜桃影视

A version of this essay appeared on

Lots of educational programs and interventions push easy ways for students to learn, especially many of the tech tools being used in the time of COVID-19.

As an example, consider the headline-making app , which supposedly 鈥渟ecretly teaches math鈥� to students via an algebra 鈥済ame.鈥� declared the app to be 鈥渂rilliant.鈥�

But as a learning tool, DragonBox appears to fall short, at least according to one study. Students using the app don鈥檛 appear to improve in their ability to solve algebraic equations, according to a by researchers at .

This issue is bigger than a single piece of technology or remote learning, though. Because at the heart of teaching and learning sits a discomforting truth: Gaining expertise is difficult.

But this bitter pill has an upside. Additional difficulty actually promotes learning. More struggle creates more understanding.

A growing body of supports the idea that extra learning hardship leads to extra learning outcomes. UCLA researcher argues that mastery is about 鈥�,鈥� while practice guru Anders Ericsson calls practice 鈥�.鈥�

In many ways, our brains are to blame. Mental struggle helps solidify memories. Hardship makes for more robust neuron pathways. This concept has important implications for teaching 鈥� and learning 鈥� and educators should do more to encourage a bit of cognitive exertion, especially at a time when students are and it鈥檚 easier than ever to speed through an online course, glaze over an e-lesson or just watch a TED Talk that鈥檚 all sizzle and no substance.

It doesn鈥檛 take much to add a little difficulty to learning. Psychologist routinely uses a simple experiment to demonstrate how a modest twist of struggle can improve learning. In his classes on the , Chew hands out a sheet of paper with approximately two dozen words on it. Half the audience counts the number of times the letter 鈥済鈥� or 鈥渆鈥� appears in the text, while the other half focuses on the 鈥減leasantness鈥� of the words.

The results confirm the findings of an older study; people who did something a little bit harder like evaluating the pleasantness of the word remember as much as 40 percent more than those who don鈥檛.

Barnard College psychologist provides another example, using an imagined student named Moe to illustrate the process of making learning harder in ways to promote additional 鈥渄esirable difficulties.鈥�

In Son鈥檚 example, Moe has submitted an essay with multiple spelling errors. Rather than simply marking the spelling errors, she recommends prompting Moe to glance at the page himself and find the mistakes on his own. As Son explained to me, 鈥渁s the student reads more on their own, they鈥檒l see the word spelled correctly, and they鈥檒l never forget the right answer.鈥�

The value of struggle is at the center of the educational process. Students need difficulty, no matter what genetic assets that they bring to the learning table. For instance, I once met up with wunderkind mathematician . By age 3, Ellenberg could read road signs; by 8, he could do high school-level math; and at 17, the Washington Post dubbed him a 鈥�.鈥�

As a child, he believed that struggling indicated a lack of intelligence. But after spending years working at the highest level of math, he realized that learning demands difficulty. As Ellenberg told me, “You have to have an incredible tolerance for failure.”

It was this attitude, this embrace of learning hardship, that helped Ellenberg eventually become a professor of math at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, with a collection of well-regarded articles and books to his name.

Still, building struggle into the curriculum isn鈥檛 easy, especially as learning goes online. Certainly, kids don鈥檛 want learning to be hard. But for teachers and schools, it鈥檚 important to reframe learning, underscoring that the difficulty of gaining expertise is what makes the experience a valuable one. Or as a math professor told me: Math isn鈥檛 fun. But that鈥檚 what makes it worth doing.

The same is true for all learning.

Ulrich Boser is the founder of The Learning Agency and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.聽

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