Unplugging Children

Technology is amazing. So amazing that it is completely rewiring our kids in ways that may fundamentally change the way they think and live their lives. Some believe that we can and should harness technology to ensure that our kids are prepared for the world and to assist their learning. I often disagree (I also think a flip phone is better than an Android, so maybe that says something about me). I am sick of people that can't finish a meal without sending a text, people who can't remember birthdays if they are not on facebook, and sick of being constantly interrupted from tasks at work. That said, my fear is that children who learn to depend on the immediate gratification that pressing a button provides will forget more and more and lose the ability to concentrate, immerse themselves in their passions, and ultimately realize goals that require delaying gratification.

A recent article in the New York Times notes that people are now paying big bucks to unplug, from software that disables your internet to resorts that lack wifi and phones. The article notes that those who break away and spend time in quiet settings are more attentive, remember more, and have improved cognition. Empathy, it turns out, also requires being unplugged. It is not particularly surprising, as screens distance you from people and places, so your connection to them is weaker and thus your ability to put yourself in their shoes is diminished. A recent Cracked post also notes that crutches like Google, Facebook, and Twitter allow you to forget things because you know you can "recall" them later by searching the web. The trick, however, is trying to remember all the things that you could theoretically look up and have forgotten.

Here are my fears about about using technology with kids in class:

1. Technology is expensive and many teachers receive limited training on how to incorporate it into their pedagogy.
   
2. According to researchers Paul Glewwe and Michael Kramer in their April 2005 survey of strategies for increasing student performance (smaller class sizes, teacher training, computers, etc) titled "Schools, Teachers, and Education Outcomes in Developing Countries," computers work best in environments where "both the number of qualified teachers and the quality of employed teachers is notoriously poor."
   
3. Children are becoming more and more distracted. In August 2011, the Washington Post reported that nearly one in ten kids suffers from attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and that the phenomenon has increased over the past decade. Using technology poorly could contribute in a way that ultimately makes them unable to apply themselves to something complex and complete the task.
   
4. Even if they are able to complete a task, I have been distracted by facebook, gmail, several text messages, and a google search while trying to write this post. Children are particularly sensitive to distraction, and we may be creating unnecessary road blocks that make completing something (and feeling the associated sense of pride and achievement) that much harder.
   
5. So many skills require you to warm up and get into them: dance, language, musical instruments, writing, reading, creating ideas for businesses, etc. If kids are constantly interrupted, they may never hit that point of nirvana where they are immersed enough in a task to get that rhythm that is required to truly excel.
   
6. Some people are more effective multitaskers, but being good at balancing may still prevent you from the enjoyment that you get from being immersed so totally in a task that you lose track of time and your surroundings. If we rob our kids of the joys of learning, then how do we keep them engaged?
7. Multi-tasking also overwhelms your brain, and you may crowd out good ideas or insights that would have otherwise occurred.
   
8. Pressing a button or clicking a link and getting an immediate response is actually addictive. If kids get used to this kind of response, they may find other things less interesting or worthwhile if there is no immediate response. Many things in life don't offer that immediate gratification, and that is a problem.
9. Facebook can help you stay in touch, but it can also give the false sense of knowing someone or of being in touch. What often happens is that your friend now becomes like a news article, something distant. Further, you lose the camaraderie of sharing stories and experiences because, well, facebook already told me so why bother? We are eroding our social networks, our ability to interact with others, and our ability to put our talents together to a shared goal.

These are not the only problems, they are not always problems solely of technology, and they are not reasons to completely deny technology. I don't want to come off as a Luddite, as I think technology has a place. That said, the whole point of technology is to do more things better and faster so that we have more free time to enjoy! If we are spending that free time all on the very technology that created it...that is not a win.

My sophomore English teacher was really great at using a wide variety of technology for his classes. He would use videos, music, slideshows, but it would always be structured and usually tied to group work. He was incredibly effective at using technology as a tool, not being used like a tool by technology. I do support a more limited use of technology in schools.

The following are some ways to use technology to improve outcomes for students:

1. Plan your lesson carefully, embedding the technological aspects in a targeted manner for a specific purpose.
   
2. Don't use technology because you can; use it because it makes sense (my teacher would be very clear later on about ways to connect the multimedia and literature and lecture components of his class through very complex worksheets).
3. Technology is not a tool to help a teacher that is too lazy to adequately prepare: good teaching requires preparation, regardless of the amount of technology you use. (If you pull a Cameron Diaz in "Bad Teacher" that is a problem).
   
4. Combine technological and social aspects (as my teacher would use technology to teach part of a concept and then follow up with group work), so that students use it as a part of their education not in place of other ways of learning.
   
5. Be present and lead students through technological aspects: the technology should not replace you, but illustrate what you are trying to communicate to your students (my teacher, for example, would constantly interject or pause films to ensure that we were getting what we should have).
   
6. Give the technology a fixed beginning and end: these boundaries are important to ensure that it doesn't interrupt any learning that was taking place or will take place during other parts of the lesson.
   
7. Do not let the technology overoccupy your lesson plan: if you do not give kids adequate time to think about, talking about, and write about the concept, they will not commit it to memory and they will not develop higher order thinking skills (this may, actually, contribute to some of the problems of students not learning well in college: many people are on facebook during lectures or can even watch lectures online).
8. Technology is about consumption, so be sure to balance any activity involving multimedia with plenty of questions and conversation so that the student is forced to produce as well, as that is where the learning will occur.
9. Use technology to help in classes of mixed proficiency levels to help students advance at their own pace, but be able to monitor and engage any students that you have using divergent activities.
   

My optimal level of technology in classrooms is probably low to moderate compared to others, and I am probably more old-fashioned than many as time passes. That said, I think it is really important to introduce new technologies in a way that makes sense and offers more pros than cons. If it doesn't, maybe stepping a couple decades backward in your lesson would be a good idea.

Speak Out!

• How do you feel about using technology in schools? In general, is it good or bad for children to be plugged in?
  
• What are some ways you or others you know work to ensure that technology is your tool not your master?
  
• Talk about some really effective or really ineffective ways that you have seen technology used in curriculum or in classroom management. Why were they good or bad? What could be improved? What lessons can we learn?

Act on it!

• Find times to unplug so that your child (and you?) is able to interact with others, experience deep engagement with a task or project, and think enough to understand or connect to a concept or activity.
• Ask your kids questions so that they are forced to engage with what they are doing!
• Create finite bounds on how and when your child can use technology.
• Offer encouragement for long-term goals and help your child to remain committed to achieving them.
  
• Monkey-see-monkey-do: if you notice your child is overly addicted to technology, perhaps they are mirroring your own behavior. Find ways to improve yourself and help your kids to join you.
  
• Even when your child is on the iPad or watching Teletubbies, talk to them and make them an active rather than passive consumer. Help them to use technology as a tool, rather than as an IV tube.
  
• Try to limit the amount of different stimuli that are assaulting your child at any given time: encourage them to get the most out of one website; don't let them text while watching tv while computing, etc).
  

Are Universities Universally Desirable?

All children should go to college, right? You get paid way more and you are guaranteed a job, so it’s a no-brainer. When I look at friends from my Master’s program waiting tables or scrambling to find an internship after paying $75,000 at a “good school," I have to wonder. If our kids often get a subpar basic education and no support to have a goal they pursue in their educational career, why the hell would we send them to college?

So much of what I got out of college and grad school came from learning languages, traveling, working, and volunteering (not from my classes). So much of my love for learning exploded out of me after graduating (this blog is a great example). I look at my job, which is related to my masters, and I realize that I was clearly able to do this job without the “required” masters degree (I started at the same time as grad school and was able to do the same things when I started that I do now). I have to ask, what was the value?

I’ve been asking this of many friends applying to advanced degree programs, much to their chagrin. It is so ingrained that they have never gotten the “well, are you sure you need a Masters?” conversation before. I’m not trying to dissuade them, but to help them focus on what they really want and the best way to get there. Looking at my student loans, I ask the question at least once a month. You'd be surprised to hear how many aimless folks are pouring into grad schools "because the economy is bad, and hopefully it will be better when I get out." Yikes! In this post, I will attempt to dispose of the assumption that college/grad school is desirable for all students.

An appalling study released in January 2011 revealed that a large chunk of students are not learning in college, and many barely study. Apparently, 36% percent of college students make no improvement in critical thinking, reasoning, or writing skills during four years of college (45% of students learn nothing during the first two years of college, which is depressing for those getting 2-year associates degrees or dropping out early with debt but no degree). Much of this probably has to do with students averaging less than 20% of their time in class, studying, or doing homework compared to the over 50% they spend on socializing. Now, I am the first to note how important social development is in college, but you are paying oodles of cash to develop intellectually and cognitively not to shoot the breeze with others who are equally excited to be moving out of years of agonizing puberty.

This raises questions about the constant push to increase the amount of students going to and graduating from college. According to the Obama Website, “President Obama has doubled our investment in scholarships and financial aid so that students from working- and middle-class families can access and complete the college education they need to get the good jobs of the future” (emphasis his, not mine). In fact, policies like these have worked with college enrollment surging from 8.5 million in 1970 to over 20 million in 2009. It is good that Obama is focusing on funding elements of education that do not increase debt for students, while reducing the maximum loan payments in time and amount paid.

That said, Obama’s goal and the status quo it now represents may be quite faulty. Should everyone go to college? I would argue that the answer is no. Should everyone have the opportunity to, most definitely. I think it is really sad, however, that more and more jobs that once required no degree now require a BA, and MA, or a Ph.D. I got my Masters while working at the Department of Labor, and I can honestly say that my Masters was worthless to my job (and I got a job in the exact field I studied for). In many cases, even if the student is learning (that other 64%), what they are learning may not be close to enough for their job. That means you have people locked away in academia either not learning or not learning applicable skills for 4, 6, or even 10 years. That is up to a decade of not supporting themselves, of accruing loan debt, of often not contributing to society and the economy.

I wish more people would question the hegemony of college degrees as the golden ticket. If my plumber can quote Aristotle, that’s great, but he shouldn’t have to study Greek philosophy to do a completely unrelated job…and that’s where we are heading. There is a really interesting blogger James Altucher who notes that there are many ways to learn much more directly at the same or a lower cost than college. He lists 8 different ways of learning beyond high school that are much more productive, integrated with the real world, and diverse enough to cater to a wide variety of learning styles that are not well suited to four more years of education for the sake of a degree. The alternatives can be summarized as “create something, master a skill, or explore and reflect on the world.” Specifically he mentions things like starting a business, writing a book, mastering a skill or a sport, creating art, making people laugh, traveling the world, or volunteering for a charity.

I think some people do well in college, learn a lot, and are able to contribute to society. In the end, they often get their money’s worth. That said, to assume that everyone should or could progress down the same path is not logical. Nobody learns the same way. Further colleges are often distanced (the so-called “bubble” or “ivory tower”) from reality, so solutions developed in the academic vacuum have less practical value than one would hope. Further, with stringent cuts to departments and majors that offer concrete skills or produce products and services (languages, research facilities, etc.), the value of a college degree for those who do learn well is in question. Worse, colleges are accepting more kids without upgrading capacity or increasing teaching staff (this is a big problem in law schools,though not exclusively).

The important thing is to find the learning style that’s right for you, and the learning environment that most helps you develop. I think Altucher offers many great ideas for alternative ways to develop the same skills that college can cultivate. That said, Obama is right to make college more accessible to all people regardless of race or income. For me, college was worth it, but grad school perhaps was not. Each person is different and it would be great if we could encourage these differences. I would now like to see policies that enable people of any level to become entrepreneurs, volunteer, or create value for society in alternative venues if college is not right for them.

Speak out!

• If you didn’t go to college, what would you have done with the time and/or money?
• If you know you aren’t a good school learner but you get a full scholarship, should you still go to college for the sake of it?
• What are some ways to get the most out of your college/grad school education? What are other pursuits besides college that you can think of that would cultivate similar development or skills?
  

Act on it!

• Before you ship your kids off to college or before you yourself decide to apply for a Master’s degree without an actual goal in mind beyond the piece of paper…consider what will really contribute to your goals and if you need to.
• Help a high school kid to identify their goals and understand the financial burdens they may be taking on before they go to college (according to this nifty calculator, turns out I should be making nearly $200k to pay the amount of money I pay per month for my grad school debt…if only!)
• Identify extracurriculars you can take on or specific skills you can develop through your program to ensure that you emerge from college or grad school a more capable and fulfilled person.

Charter to Nowhere?

While I respect any teacher or institution that educates our children well, I am not the biggest fan of charter schools and the so-called “parental choice movement.” A lot of research and preliminary tests show that many charters just aren’t that good (some are, but again, so are some public schools), though parents often overestimate how good charters are for their kids. Forming a parallel (yet still “public”) education system seems like reinventing the wheel, discarding all the infrastructure, funding and thought put into the current system. The idea that a public system should cater to specific parents’ desires even though it is funded by taxpayers who may or may not have children also seems questionable, blurring the distinction between public and private benefits. I also fear that having schools who select largely based on a lottery sets up many kids to be rejected and always relegated to a bad education. Finally, we need to ask ourselves, “do we want to use our school system to track students rather than to promote an equal opportunity for them to approach the world?”

Is Your Charter Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?

Sadly, many charters are not that good. According to the most comprehensive study comparing the performance of charter and traditional public school students (Stanford, CREDO, July 2009), only 17% of charter schools students perform better than comparable students in traditional public schools. In 37% of charters students do worse than their public school, and in about half students show no significant difference. English language learners and those in poverty do slightly better in charters, but Blacks and Hispanics do significantly worse. While the results vary depending on when a kid enters the charter, the charter's location, the race and economic stratus of the child, and other factors, this is quite disturbing for what is being hailed as the future of our education system.

Worse, some charters are considered good because they invest an inordinate amount of resources, and the assumption is that this is scalable. As a recent New York Times article on the connections between poverty and educational outcomes notes:

"Another rationale for denial is to note that some schools, like the Knowledge Is Power Program charter schools, have managed to “beat the odds.” If some schools can succeed, the argument goes, then it is reasonable to expect all schools to. But close scrutiny of charter school performance has shown that many of the success stories have been limited to particular grades or subjects and may be attributable to substantial outside financing or extraordinarily long working hours on the part of teachers. The evidence does not support the view that the few success stories can be scaled up to address the needs of large populations of disadvantaged students."

Now, DC has the idea of shutting down charters that are failing relatively quickly as a remedy to bad charters. In this way, its charters do slightly better than public schools (which is not exactly an accomplishment in the nation’s worst-performing system). Think about anytime that you or your kids moved or switched jobs because the company went belly-up (not because you chose to do so): it is a stressful experience; it could be highly detrimental to the child’s learning and emotional well-being (or at least distract them with adjusting to a new setting instead of focusing on learning); it disrupts social bonds that emerge among students that facilitate interpersonal skills; and, it undermines parental connection to any given school and may negatively affect the school’s performance or the parent’s involvement in the child’s education. What this says to me: we will give up on failing charters just like we gave up on failing regular public schools. If this didn’t work for public schools in the first place, why would it work for charters?

In the end, you have to ask why we would invest public money in another parallel education system that often does just as well or worse than the system it purports to fix.

The Shadow Network

We have invested money, time, energy, thought, political capital, administration, policies, personnel, and infrastructure in developing a public school system. Charters are fixing the system by not fixing the system into which we have funneled so many resources, but rather by duplicating all that effort. Is a new system necessary? If the answer is yes, might we not recoup some of the losses from what is already in place? If some charters are good, why can't we identify those best practices and use them in all schools?

The only answers that I can think of are the supposed problem of intransigent teachers' unions and the issue of rigid or inept school and system administrators. The supposed problem of unions is that they keep inept teachers in the public system and are averse to any kind of change. Having just visited one of the most dynamic teachers I've ever had--a union member--I find it hard to believe that teachers' unions are so averse to change that a new system that excludes them is needed. I went from welfare to Stanford with unionized teachers (who even went on strike one year), so the public system can work and unions can't be that problematic. There are certainly unions that are inept and mismanaged, sometimes with the worst teachers rising highest. That said, union push-back against replacing more experienced (and thus expensive) teachers every time their is a budget shortfall is a good thing. Protecting innovative teachers is a good thing.

As for school administration, that is universally viewed as a problem. When Michelle Rhee became chancellor of the DC system (the nation's worst), she found a bureaucracy so poorly managed that supplies and books were sitting in warehouses rather than classrooms. Corruption and nepotism were the norm. Regardless of your opinion of Rhee's policies regarding charters and unions (a recent report found that 15 DC charters were ranked at the bottom of the pack, compared to 5 at the top) the amount of change that she managed to achieve in the bureaucracy of the DC education machine was impressive after decades of failure and stagnation. Rhee demonstrated that change was possible within the system even as she aggressively promoted charters:. As my dear friend, who was a teacher in a charter, noted, the administration was still incompetent and she was constantly stressed until the point where she left. In that case, and in many charters, this new system did not resolve these administrational issues.

Public, but still “Mine, Mine. Mine!”

There are public and private schools for a reason, and no school will exactly fit the educational needs or desires of a given student or parent. It is incredibly unrealistic to expect this of public schools. The goal is to ensure that all of society is prepared to enter the workforce, to contribute. The idea that parental choice should exist for a public service is also questionable. The goals for a public system are to serve a societal good, not a private good. In some ways, then, it is society's benefit, not that of a particular parent or student, that is important.

The other irony in all this is that many parents cannot or chose not to be all that involved in their child's education. Vigorously promoting parental choice for a population that is not willing or able to make that choice seems weird. Given that poorer parents often (but not always, my mom was an exception) are working more and can't take the time to choose beyond their neighborhood school, it seems to me that the real goal should be to ensure that all schools provide a decent baseline.

The way parental choice works is that charters--which are assumed to be good schools--attract more and more demand. This causes public schools to close. The system is then only made of a good, charter schools. We have already seen that the myth of these schools being good is ridiculous, but we also will see that the amount of demand for these schools that still choose based on a lottery is not being met by supply. Further, we have to ask ourselves if it is acceptable for some students to get out of a sinking ship while others wait for it to be squeezed out of existence to get their shot (if it comes in time).

I Guess Some Kids Just Don’t Deserve a Good Education

According to the CREDO study mentioned earlier, while 1.4 million kids attend charters, 365,000 were on a waiting list to get into one. How is this mismatch between supply and demand decided? Usually, a student enters into a lottery and their future is chosen at random, by chance. Do we really want to play mad scientist with kid’s futures? A bad teacher or school can have detrimental effects on a student for the rest of their academic career and life, so should we not aim to provide a decent public education system to all kids, not just those that “win the lottery?”

What I suspect will happen is that parents who are most dedicated or able to invest in their children's education will do so and will be more likely to get their kids into the best schools (public, magnet, charter, wherever). The charter system, which largely depends on empowered parents who are invested enough to push for their child to go to a different school, will not best serve the children without parents, with bad parents, or with parents who are overworked or uninformed. Further, because charters have so much demand, they don't have the incentive to widely broadcast so that parents can realize there is this other option. In my case, I got into a magnet school because my mom found out through dumb luck that they were offering a test and she happened to be off that day. I might not be writing this blog if I were put up to a lottery!

There are some great charters, but they are often enabled by overworking teachers or by using private funding (why not just pay taxes or donate to schools, private donors?). Further, the idea that good performance should yield more funding is scary: if your child is at an underperforming school, they will likely see fewer resources. Perverse, no? A good friend of mine, who also has trouble with this, noted that schools with poor administration should not be rewarded with funding. I want to agree, but ultimately, you are punishing the students for the failures of the administrators. I like a lot of the changes that charters enable, but I also find it troubling to move toward a system with less accountability, fewer results, less supported teachers, and random choice of who succeed with a greater focus on testing...I would rather think of ways to make our system work than reinventing the wheel in a way that is just not working.

While I am not the biggest fan of charters, I am a big fan of all schools providing decent education to children. For this reason, I would rather see public schools better supported than charters defunded. I would like for all schools to have the same accountability. I would like to see more parents being given the information and ability to better participate in their child's education (or if they refuse, I'd like to see them compelled to participate).

Speak out!

1. What do you think is good about charters? What could be improved?
2. What obstacles do you see to implementing reforms in public schools? Does a charter resolve these issues? Is it the best way to resolve them?

Act on it!

• Support your local public schools and join their Parent Teacher Organization or Local School Council.
  
• Volunteer (either to help teachers or administrators or to directly help students. Check out my blog post on one way to do this!).
• Donate supplies to classrooms (a great site is http://www.donorschoose.org/), or go to your local school and ask what they need. Don't think in a limited way, as schools have music and art departments or gym classes that can benefit from donations that are not paper and pencils. Heck, maybe you are handy and your school needs repairs.
• Ask a teacher you know what they need (a friend who lived in my sophomore dorm has often asked for book requests for his 9th grade English classroom on facebook, so look out and help out! As if on cue, he started a new campaign, so I hope people will support my friend Tyler's classroom by going to https://npo.networkforgood.org/Donate/Donate.aspx?npoSubscriptionId=1002090&code=support+page+button and putting a note that you want to contribute to the "BHAG Book Fund," through which he encourages and enables his kids to read).
• Help a parent you know (especially a struggling one) to learn about opportunities for their kids to test into good schools early on!
  
• Stay vigilant and demand good schools of your local and national politicians for ALL children.

Process over Product

In reading an article about ten ways to improve your happiness at work, it struck me that one of the biggest problems with our model of education is a focus on outcomes over process. We measure schools (and perversely dole out funding) based on the outcomes of a test. We give grants to states based on the outcomes of very specific and unproven education reforms (e.g. Obama’s Race to the Bottom initiative). We count students as successful for getting into college, getting a degree, getting a job. The truth is that life is always about journeys and if everything is about the outcome, you are setting yourself up for failure regardless of whether you reach that goal.

Think about the last time that you achieved something big (got a promotion, received a degree, bought a house, got married). Now answer this question: Did realizing one of your biggest goals make you content forever? The answer is likely to be no. That isn’t because marriage, a Ph.D., or homeownership aren’t important goals or aren’t all they are cracked up to be. The reason is that all of these are parts of a process to fill yourself with knowledge, skills, companionship and stability to better take on future challenges and also fulfill them.

So think of the disservice we are doing to children when we gear them to prepare like mad for a test that will determine their future or validate them with grades. Think of the disservice we do to those who may be brilliant but don’t learn best in a structured academic setting when we count college graduation as the golden standard of success. Think of all those golden standard bearers who can’t find the dream job college was supposed to guarantee. Why are they failing? Because in most circumstances, you can’t control the outcomes as this Forbes article reminds us…but you can control the process and how you approach it.

Our education system needs to modify its goals and curricula to better support the development of processes in children. It should focus on improvement, not a final grade (note to teachers: giving someone an “A” and saying “great work” is not helpful, you should still provide good students feedback so that they continue strengthening their craft. Your laziness will only contribute to theirs. Read more about the negative effects of outcome-oriented feedback.).

Think about the skills you need in the workplace and in life: they are not outcomes in and of themselves. One of the biggest things you need is focus, and by feeding a dependency on feedback based on outputs, you reduce the ability to hunker down and consistently improve or work bit by bit towards a goal. You also need communication skills, which you can always improve. You don’t take a Kaplan course and come out with a firm handshake, the pen of Shakespeare, and a winsome pitch. You also need to be able to work in a group, which never is “attainable” given that groups (and thus the needs of any given group dynamic) change and are not static. Increasingly, you need international skills like language, which is not something you attain, but that you consistently improve upon. Even “hard skills” like cooking (home economics) or woodworking (shop) are not about outputs if done correctly: you don’t want to come out of the class knowing how to make a cake or build a birdhouse, but rather to have a sense of how to cook and build well that can be applied to other projects.

The job market is moving increasingly fast and people are switching jobs a lot more now. It is critical that we work to develop people’s ability to improve their skills and processes so that they too can be as mobile as the job market. It is also imperative that they find worth in dedication and improvement of a skill rather than jumping from output to output in a futile search for enduring happiness that one achievement can never offer.

Act on it!

• Praise others’ efforts and processes in a specific way that helps them to consistently improve.


• When helping others with homework or relationship advice, help them to focus on enjoying and learning from the process rather than fixating on an outcome (lord knows, some of my best assignments and dates have been unexpected but largely the result of not being stuck on a perfect result.).


• Speak out when you see a teacher that teaches to a test or puts them above learning.


• Write your congressmen when they pass laws that put undue weight on outcomes.

Speak out!

• What are some processes that are critical in your professional life that you feel are or are not taught well? How could they be taught better?


• Teaching outcomes is a lot easier than teaching processes. What are some strategies for helping people to better processes? How can curricula better guide teachers and administrators?

Why Fixing an Outmoded System Won’t Work

Education reform is (finally) getting its day in the sun, but the parameters in which the debate is framed are scary for two big reasons: (1) There are fundamental differences between today and the time when America was a leader in public education; and (2) The current labor market demands completely different ways of learning and engaging with the workplace than what the current system is designed to provide.

As we saw in the housing crisis and America’s ballooning credit card debt, our education system is proof positive that you cannot have everything and pay nothing. Part of the persistence of this delusion, as I see it, is that there was a time that we could sustain a superior system for peanuts. Like many things in our history, this amazingly sweet deal was sustained by indentured servitude. If we look at the 50s and 60s, when our education system was at its apex, labor was cheap, abundant and qualified. Why? The teachers that sustained our system were women, by and large.

If we think back to the 50s and 60s, we didn’t have a lot of female politicians, scientists, CEOs, lawyers, or professionals. We did have women who were finally getting higher education, but upon doing so, they had severely limited professional options. Furthermore, the paradigm of the American family as one in which the woman took care of the home placed limitations on the kinds of careers women could pursue. One of the most prestigious, family-friendly career options for a newly educated woman (and indeed one of the very few options available) was the classroom. The cream of the crop, lacking other options, were entering classrooms and providing high-quality education to America’s students. Because their options were so limited and their working seemed superfluous to many, they were easily exploited and undercompensated. In this way, we could sustain an impressive education system on the cheap, fueled on cheap, qualified, female labor.

Obviously, this could not last and women have broken glass ceilings in most professions and can take their talents where compensation is higher and personal goals can be realized. Our schools no longer have a monopsony on these highly qualified women, and the system never adapted to a competitive labor market. These qualified women started to leave, and in a profound way. We could either pay more to retain qualified teachers and raise the prestige of the profession, or we could try to sustain the status quo by paying low wages. Having chose the latter, this increasingly in-demand workforce also made its choice and began to leave. This is not to say that great teachers did not remain (nor to say that there are no great male teachers), but simply to highlight that those great teachers who remained would do so increasingly as an act of philanthropy and personal dedication.

As we lost cheap labor inputs to our education system, the system was asked to offer more services to children with greater needs. After the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision and the federally supported integration of schools starting with the Little Rock Nine, a system that had been geared toward a thriving post-WWII, and predominately white population suddenly had to accommodate students from different backgrounds. These are children that until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were not even the equals of their white peers and who were the product of centuries of systemic racism stemming from an era in which African Americans were not people, but property. After centuries of being ignored, marginalized and left out of the education and labor market, the mainstream education system had to provide all the more services to more students at the same time as it experienced an exodus of the cheap, qualified inputs that had catapulted it to success.

Worst of all, much of this occurred at a time when the country’s economic success (and ability to invest in education) was changing into the stagflation of the 70s, as agriculture in the US collapsed, and as huge urban migrations occurred from the south to the north and from farms to cities while the US’s inner cities were left to rot.

The system was pretty obviously destined to collapse or stagnate, and that is what we are seeing today. But the rising cost of labor inputs and new demand with diverse needs was not the only challenge that the school system would face. The raison d’etre of the school system was also changing. As the British education thinker Sir Ken Robinson has noted, public education systems were the product of an industrializing world. They functioned as a part of that context too, with most systems acting like a factory in which you essentially built a child on an assembly line of dumping facts into their heads and dropped them into the labor market. It was very much a system that fed a manufacturing country well, but the US was no longer as competitive at manufacturing.

As the US was transitioning into an economy of ideas and services, the system was not particularly exceptional at generating an entrepreneurial class of independent agents that could function as free agents. Not only were the types of jobs changing, but job stability and how workers approached the labor market was also evolving. We are now entering an era in which a career with a stable pension at the end of a pipeline is a pipedream, even as we tell our children that education is a pathway to a stable career. A Bureau of Labor Statistics longitudinal study of workers entering the workforce in 1979 found that they had changed jobs on average 11 times between the ages of 18 and 42.

The education system is predicated on learning concrete facts or reading books for meaning or doing math. This is somewhat quaint in the era of the computer in which these functions are easily automated. Recent reform has focused more on multiple choice testing which only reaffirms this antiquated notion of knowing facts being of much use. The product is that you are learning things that the internet can recall more quickly, more reliably, and with a larger degree of corroboration. If you are learning things that are easily automated, chances are you are preparing yourself for a job that can and will be done more cheaply by a machine. In an information economy with rapidly evolving technology, the education system needs to create creative thinkers, something that the system and the tests that will “reform” it cannot do if they continue to be predicated on the importance of facts over critical thinking, problem solving, interpersonal skills, entrepreneurship, and processes. This is aggravated all the more when you consider that most schools, lacking budgets, have stripped away the few classes that teach things that are not mechanizable or exportable: the arts, languages, vocational skills, home economics, shop, design, architecture, etc. They have also cut back on after-school or extracurricular programming that might promote these key skills for the new labor market. You want the proof of this? Look at America’s most successful entrepreneurs and count the amount of college dropouts or “ineffective” students. They kept going where most people give up and that is why they were great, but our system failed them and it fails kids who lack that kind of ironclad determination (and often privilege) all the more.

Relatedly, the American education system has not evolved all that much from the quaint, local model. This is dangerous in a globalized world in which jobs are increasingly mobile. All the same, the amount of American’s who have no foreign language skills, no exposure to foreign cultures, and no ability to locate their state capital, let alone another country on a map is frankly alarming. As I noted in previous blog posts, learning a language requires thinking critically, being creative, learning process over discreet facts and interacting. To master a foreign language is to be an entrepreneur, not to mention to be competitive and able to communicate in an increasingly interconnected world. A failure to produce global citizens and excuse it with increasingly unsupported American exceptionalism is nothing more than fanciful delusion that we have not been able to afford for at least three wasted decades. If we don’t turn this ship around quickly and recognize that our mastery of the skills of global citizens is the only way to maintain that American exceptionalism.

A Framework for Moving Forward

Now, I am clearly noting that our system is inadequate and that our reform is even inadequate but haven’t given a lot of solutions. So, I think it is worth beginning to figure out how we might move forward. The solutions are a conversation and they will need to differ depending on the locality (I firmly believe that federal government efforts to improve the education system have largely floundered with the one exception of school integration). In this spirit, I will instead attempt to develop a framework for thinking about solutions, as there will be funding, cultural, and political constraints that need to be addressed in developing the specific solutions.

Teachers

1. Make the hiring process more competitive, including how we recruit, compensate, train and offer advancement opportunities and creative license in the classroom. The current system takes the best teachers from the front lines in many instances.

2. Increase focus on training teachers and providing on-going, relevant professional development opportunities.

3. Redefine the role of unions (not eliminate) to ensure that teachers are held accountable in a fair manner, but also that they are able to exercise the creativity they should be inspiring from students. Unions cannot continue to serve the least common denominator among teachers before students or more committed teachers with a proven track record of excellence. There needs to be a balance between protecting teachers from stifling administrators or dismissal because of their salary level (firing the most experienced) while ensuring that there is a process for offering competitive salaries, compelling teachers to be innovative in instruction, and addressing ineffective teachers in a fair manner that is not viewed as impossible. No profession, especially one so critical for our future, should be immune from probation or dismissal.

4. Provide teachers ongoing training to ensure that they understand the evolving needs of the labor market and society and are able to design lessons to develop those skills in their students.

5. Ensure adequate planning periods and time for parental/community engagement, as the kinds of lessons that prepare kids for higher levels of thought and interpersonal interaction are more highly demanding than the kinds of lessons that merely convey facts.

Administration and Boards of Education

1. Ensure that instruction begins early enough to meet developmental cut-offs, moving towards stronger early education and earlier introduction of skills with time horizons like foreign language.

2. Protect equality of opportunity for all students: that a “public” education system tends to systematically fail the poor and minorities and that schools in certain districts are inherently worse than those in other districts, shows that we are failing as a society. Jobs aren’t relegated to a locality, so why should school funding be relegated to the tax base of a district? Labor mobility is and will increasingly be key to a functioning market, so why shouldn’t students be mobile to ensure that schools are more balanced in the kinds of challenges they face?

3. Rethink how schools are funded, as the benefits to society of an educated and employable graduate go far beyond parents (if you are an employer, a coworker, the consumer of any good or service, you are benefiting from a functioning system. Additionally, lower crime, disease, and dependency rates reduce your tax burden in other ways. Sorry resentful single people, but you have a stake in public education).

4. Use master teachers in the most challenging circumstances, putting new teachers in less challenging environments. Education experts tend to agree that you put anyone in front of a classroom and they will not become good for about 2 years and excellent for about five years. Programs like Teach for America are a bandaid that tries to once again sustain a failed system of cheap, qualified teachers and that perversely puts people at the most selfish point of their life with the least experience in the most challenging environments (I say selfish here in the sense that at age 20-30 you SHOULD be trying to figure out your place in the world, defining your identity, finding a family and friend group, etc., and it is hard to balance that and teaching in a high-pressure environment).

5. Limit interference in schools to ensuring equality of opportunities, protecting children from transgressions (which should not include unique teaching methods), ensuring adequate supplies/funding, increasing community involvement, and raising the profile of educators.

6. Develop guidance counseling programs that focus on helping students to set, plan for, and realize goals and should help kids to understand the trade-offs of future decisions students may be making without realizing their full consequences.

Parental and Community Involvement

1. Develop more flexible and suitable means of reaching a diverse body of parents and finding ways to engage them in the school community, regardless of socioeconomic status or ethnic background.

2. Create stronger bridges between the labor market, social organizations, and schools to ensure that graduates are well suited for the market, including increased use of internships, volunteer positions, and interaction with innovators, social organizations, and employers.

3. Find alternative ways to provide assistance to struggling children and finding ways to match those who can provide voluntary assistance with those who need it.

4. Implement government regulations to ensure that more parents are compelled to participate in their child’s education unless they are absolutely prevented by health reasons. This needs to be met by flexible policies for involving parents who are poorer and may be working, but my mom worked sometimes 14-hour shifts for 2 weeks at a time and managed to be sufficiently active in my education. I envision policies similar to those that make work flexible on election day, wherein workplaces must allow flexibility on parent-teacher conference days to parents so they can be involved.

Infrastructure and Classroom Materials

1. Determine the role of the traditional textbook and seriously reevaluate whether it really serves the goals of a successful education system. Similar to standardized tests, the role of the textbook industry needs to be vigorously questioned. That the bulk of textbooks come from one company or state is problematic.

2. Provide more flexible and dynamic class space that facilitates improvisation, creativity, and most importantly, interaction.

3. Ensure that students have access to specialized supplies like art supplies, musical instruments, lab equipment, technology, home economics, shop space and materials, etc. to develop hard skills and production. I believe we cannot survive without reviving manufacturing or developing solid production and life skills that will diversify our idea economy into one that also produces actual outputs.

4. Secure school facilities and the principal routes by which children arrive.

5. Make school environment conducive for a child to be prepared to learn.

6. Offer healthy school feeding programs to ensure that all kids are prepared to learn.

Testing and Measuring Success

1. Transition the measurement of success away from a model in which a student’s ability to regurgitate facts in isolation is the definition of success towards measuring interpersonal skills, problem solving, creative approaches, and leadership.

2. Expand the “ideal” outcome of schooling beyond graduation or college enrollment. College is not necessary or desirable for everyone or for every profession. By making it the idealized goal, we are setting kids up for failure, sucking them into a world of debt, and isolating their learning from real-life experience and productive contribution to society longer than perhaps necessary.

3. Design testing to reinforce and apply learning (which is not new from a pedagogical perspective). It will require as much thinking to design, update, and score these tests as it does to take them (right now tests are often graded by machines, so that should tell you about how we are training the students taking them).

4. Decouple mandated testing from self-perpetuating businesses and lobbies.

Curriculum

1. Make classes that teach concrete skills such as drafting, design, shop, and home economics more widely available and required so that students have experience carrying out projects.

2. Teach global citizenship, particularly interacting with diverse cultures and communicating in foreign languages.

3. Assign coursework that solidifies problem solving, creativity and understanding of processes that can be widely applied. Move away from worksheets and output-oriented assignments.

4. Transition from individual work to interpersonal work (I am an only child that hates group work, but it is the only way to effectively learn how to work in a team, which in turn is the only way to effectively carry out tasks that require multiple personalities and expertise).

5. Reevaluate whether lessons that teach things that are readily available on the internet are worth learning.

6. Define the appropriate role of technology in instruction and how much responsibility schools have for making students competent users of new technology.

7. Look at what the labor market requires in terms of hard skills, personal attributes, and factual knowledge and develop those skills in class.

8. Move away from wasting scarce class time non-interactive lessons (book reading, individual writing exercises, long individual tests) toward more interactive lessons that take advantage of the value-add that a classroom setting provides (social skills, interaction, teamwork, communication, specialization of tasks, etc.).

Speak out!

This is certainly not a comprehensive look at the problems our system has faced, why it is no longer working, or what is needed to fix it. That said, I would love to hear about problems you think have contributed to the collapse of our system and potential solutions that you think I’ve missed or inadequately addressed.

Be a Better Learner of Foreign Languages

My last post focused quite a bit on the failures of language teaching, but if you took away from that article that the failures of students (or yourself) to learn a foreign language are going to be completely remedied by improving teaching, you are kidding yourself. There are exceptional teachers that will waste all their effort to help their students and that will get jack squat in return. I know, we all love to blame teachers, cut their benefits, and pretend like parents and students couldn't possibly be part of the problems our education system faces...turns out, that's probably a little misguided. This post is designed to compliment the article on foreign language teaching with proactive strategies that language learners (or those supporting a language learner) can use to prepare themselves and better acquire a new language. And teachers, giving your students the tools to effectively learn is something you can do to set them up for success, so this article is also directed at you.

Not everyone will be able to use some of my strongest tools for studying foreign languages like being a dork and having a job that requires me to travel to other countries. Not everyone would be willing to live in a neighborhood where an FL is spoken. But there are ways to approach building vocabulary, using increasingly complex grammar structures correctly, and even pronouncing words in a way that approximates a native speaker that students can use to speak a language better. I offer some of the strategies I've used to study FLs to stimulate a discussion of strategies for learning other languages and to hopefully improve your retention of foreign languages. Even if you hated high school Spanish, I guarantee that many of you are sad that you didn't get more out of years of language study. Hopefully this will inspire some people to take up another language.

Memorizing vocabulary is a big challenge for a lot of people. It is boring to sit and learn lists of words, often words you don't care about right now (and may or may not ever care about). Some people just don't have great memories. The following are some strategies to improve retention (because at the end of the day, most things that are worth doing require some grudge work and you DO have to learn words, which often involves memorization if you are not immersed in the language).

Vocabulary Retention:

Use all four pillars of language learning to improve retention: read, say, listen to, and write the new word.

Don't memorize like a translator ("ok, perro is dog, perro is dog, perro is dog"). This sets you up to translate in your head, which will slow you down and impede fluency. Only say the word in the target language and instead of thinking of the equivalent in your native language, try:

• imagining a picture of the word (envision a dog and say "perro, perro, perro");
• thinking of things you associate with the target word as you say it (think of doghouses, collars, picking up poop, dog food, fighting with cats, tom and jerry, etc. while saying/writing/reading/hearing the word "perro");
• using examples of the concept you are learning (for example, if you want to learn the word for white in French, think "blanc/blanche" and then think of bedsheets, teeth, piano keys, chess pieces, paper, Germans, etc.); and,
• attaching the word/concept to a memory or a sensory perception (if you want to learn bread in Arabic, think khubz and then think of the smell of baking bread, your mom giving you bread with soup when you were sick ate age 5, etc.). Connecting it to your memories embeds it in a neural network AND gives the word some meaning to you.
  
• All of these strategies avoid setting you up for one for one translation and get you in the habit of thinking in the foreign language without any native language crutch. When you speak your native language, you don't think of words, you think of images, memories and concepts...so why would you try something else in the target language?

Time your studies and refreshers in a way that is compatible with how the brain commits things to memory:

• Study before you go to bed, as you may dream about the target language or in the language and you are helping your hippocampus to convert that new material to long term memory.
  
• Try to remember the vocab you studied before bed in the shower the next morning (if you don't shower in the morning, you can do it while eating breakfast, on the train/bus, etc...or you could start showering; your friends will thank you).
• Refresh the material you studied a couple of days after to reactivate the material (you start forgetting material about 48 hours later if it is not used).
  
• Continue to review a week or month out to keep it active.
  

Use that new vocabulary, even if it doesn't always make sense:

• Slip the new word into conversations, even with people that may not speak or even care about the target language (warning, you run the risk of saying "y'allah" or "vamonos" when you want to get your friends to get going).
  
• Go to neighborhoods where the target language is spoken and use your new vocabulary (and old stuff, but try to make an effort to be creative and slip in the new stuff. It helps to retain it, and it gives you practice being creative in expressing yourself in the target language, a key part of negotiating meaning when you can't express yourself exactly).
  
• Go to places that might have items that you just studied (if you just studied food vocab, go to a restaurant or grocery store, for animals go to the zoo, for clothes go to Target, etc) and then try to identify items you see in the target language.
  
• Teach someone else words. The most effective learning strategy is teaching someone else, so find some poor sap to convert into a foreign language learner and you will be doing yourself an epic solid.
  

Stop studying when you cease retaining, and don't think you'll be effective right after a study marathon or reading 100 pages of a novel.

Use words in sentences, even simple ones, in the target language that help you to recall the meaning of the word without making it a one for one translation.

Find a friend who is learning the language to be your conversation buddy. Speaking and listening are often intimidating with native speakers at first and you will simply not get enough practice if you depend on your class. A friend is a low-pressure way of practicing and simulating immersion while talking to someone you care about about topics of interest. Further, it is a great way to talk about people without them understanding you. My friend Derrick and I are both fluent in Spanish now because we would talk smack about people in high school (and we eventually got so comfortable in Spanish that regular conversations felt just as natural in Spanish as they did in English.).

Building vocabulary is much more effective if you set your own pace/goals:

• Don't wait until your teacher or textbook introduces something. If you need to say something or want to say it, learn how and use it. It'll stick better because it is relevant to you present tense.
  
• When you hear a song, see a tv show or movie, read a sign, etc., try to say it in the target language. For what you can't say, create a list of things in your environment that you'd like to be able to say and then learn that in parallel to class vocab.
• Bring outside vocabulary to a lesson. Your learning bolsters the learning of others and when you use those structures/words in class and someone doesn't understand, you create a teaching moment. When you teach, you retain, so it helps you and helps them. It is also a more natural circumstance for your class, as you gain vocabulary in your native language by encountering it not by memorizing it (despite what the GRE and SAT might have you believe).
  

Use natural overlaps between your language and the target language to guess new vocabulary:

• Cognates: Languages with similar roots often share similar words. For example, the word cotton comes to us from Arabic via romance languages: Al-qutn (arabic) --> el algodon (spanish), el cottone (Italian), cotton (english), etc. Most words in Spanish that begin with al, actually come from Arabic. Spaniards incorporated the Arabic article for "the" (Al) into the word. Alcohol comes from Arabic, so take that Saudi Arabia. This can sometimes backfire, but in general will help you to understand what is spoken to you. Just remember that you want to be careful about how you say embarrassed and excited in Spanish, as you might say I am pregnant or horny if you use a cognate. Portuguese speakers should be careful about asking to hold a Spanish-speaker's baby, as you are likely to use a false cognate and say "Can I hit your baby?"
  
• Comparable Structures: Sometimes you can learn how to say a whole slew of words by learning the pattern for that structure in the other language. Many words that end in -tion in English are the same in Spanish, except they end in ción. Information = información. Knowing this, you can say the word action, traction, fraction, satisfaction, etc. It isn't a perfect system, but it will allow you to guess a lot. Can you guess what the words dignidad, humanidad, and ciudad are in English? What is the English ending that corresponds to the Spanish "-dad?" (again, not perfect, as pidad is not the word for pity, e.g.)
  
• Borrowed words/neologisms: As many new concepts (like democracy, technology) developed in a globalized era and many languages borrow, you may already know how to say words in the target FL using your language with little modification. Democracia in Spanish and DemocraTiyya in Arabic are not hard to figure out, neither is computadora or combiuter. Turns out English borrows heavily, so you've got a lot, despite President Bush's unfortunate assertion "It's a shame the French don't have a word for entrepreneur."

Find ways to immerse yourself:

• Visit neighborhoods, stores, restaurants or even countries where the target language is spoken.
  
• Create a conversation club
• Join a meet-up group
• Find native speakers
• Listen to movies, tv, and music in the target language (and let me just say, The Mummy is pretty damn amazing in Spanish. Turns out the title, La Momia, is also a cognate).
• Date people who speak the target language (it'd probably be nice if you were attracted to them or say wanted to be with them, but love, like FL acquisition, is a complicated matter).
  

This is not an exhaustive list, but hopefully it will give you several possible ways to improve how you learn new vocabulary and get you to give an FL another chance.

Conjugating Verbs and Declining Nouns

It is often really difficult to wrap your mind around conjugating verbs or declining nouns when your language does not do this, but if you want to speak any romance language, German, any Slavic language, and Arabic (among others) well, you will need to figure it out (do we do this in English? Turns out yes).

1. It is much better if you use sentences instead of a chart because the chart isolates the concept from its usage. Create sentences like "I study at the library" and "She studies at the library" rather than saying "I study, you study, he studies, she studies, we study...etc). That way you are practicing usage and grammar together.
2. If you feel like a chart is the way to go for you, it is easier to develop a pattern if you make sure that all the words are chantable and fit into a rhythm. For example, I tried to learn the plural form of you in a chant form, but saying "you all, vosotros/ustedes" was tripping me up because every other English pronoun (I, you, he, she, it, we, they) is monosyllabic. I started using "Y'all" for you plural to keep that rhythm. As a result, this Chicagoan says y'all. I also say howdy, but I can't blame that on an FL.
   
3. Start by learning the regular verb pattern (if it exists) and emulating it with all verbs you encounter. You will make mistakes, but remember how kids go from "I goed" to "I went?" The same will be true for you. You will hear the irregulars being used if you are practicing with people and start to correct/refine. Also, sometime the regular pattern sounds really awkward/cumbersome and you get the idea that it is wrong: In Spanish, you should conjugate verbs ending in ir in the first person (I do, I eat, I read, etc) with -o. The verb "ir," however would just be "o," and you get the sense that there must be a better way to say "I go" and learn "voy" is the right way, not "o."
4. Learn tenses you need, don't wait. The sooner you add a tense to your practice, the more versatile you will get and the better you can express yourself. This will give you confidence and make the language more useful to you, and thus enhance your desire to keep going. Again, you will make mistakes without formal studies, but you will start the refining and retention process all the sooner and you will be inspired more because you learned when it was relevant.
   
5. Learn objects, prepositions and word order along with the verb (one reason I recommend sentences over verb charts). Some things that take indirect objects in English (I listen to her) take direct objects in Spanish (Yo la escucho). Sometimes a different preposition is used, I may "dream of/about you" in English, but "I dream with you" in Spanish (the verb soñar goes with the preposition "con" (with) rather than "de" (of). If you create an example sentence that includes an adverb to learn where they are placed in the target language, any prepositions that are needed, how direct/indirect objects are handled, you have a template to fall back on when in doubt.

Pronunciation!

So often, pronunciation is neglected, and this is sad because you may never sound like Antonio Banderas, but you don't have to sound like you learned Spanish at Walmart or Applebee's either. Here are some tips that may help you to sound more like a native speaker, even if you started to learn the language after the cut-off for acquisition (puberty):

1. Listen critically to how a word is pronounced. Where does a native speaker put emphasis? How do they make a vowel or consonant sound?
2. Watching a native speaker make sounds/say words is also underrated, but it will help you to make sounds if you see how natives form them. Look at how they hold their mouth, if they use their tongue or teeth. For example, I had a big breakthrough when I noticed that most Arabs don't move their upper lip all that much while speaking to form sounds. I was better able to use the language because I knew that more effort should be done by the positioning of the tongue and moving my lower jaw instead of my upper lip.
   
3. Practice manipulating sounds in your mouth. Change where you say the sound from the front to the back of your tongue, from the throat to the nose, using more tongue or more teeth, etc. Find where it sounds most like what you hear a native speaker saying.
   
4. Learn the geography of your mouth and locate how sounds are formed in that new geography. The alveolar ridge (the ridge on the roof of your mouth behind your teeth), the glottus, the lips, the tongue, the teeth, the throat, and the nasal cavity all play a role in proper pronunciation, and it will help you to mimic a native speaker if you understand how your mouth words. In Arabic, there are two different D, S, T, and K/Q sounds that vary based on whether you use your teeth or whether the sound is more in your throat or on your tongue. Similarly, there are three th sounds! It will impede you if you say them all the same, so you need to figure out what the difference is. Once you get that, you will be able to hear that difference better too.
   
5. The use of tone and expression of emotions varies across languages, and you need to be very careful not to use your native region's way of talking if you want to sound fluent in the target language. This is tough for me, as I am a very excited speaker and I use emphasis and inflection heavily. That said, doing that in Chinese completely changed the meaning of what I was saying because it is a tonal language that uses tone to change words (the inflection on the word ma can lead to five different meanings...and referring to a Chinese guy's mom as a horse will probably not be well received). Even in non-tonal language, an authentic sound requires expressing emotions differently. My default, hammy way of talking may work great for an emphatic language like Italian, but if I cross the border into France, I am immediately an outsider as French is a language that is smooth, streamlined, and does not have a bouncy, sing-song quality to it. The import of this smoothness is so great that French will have some silent letters pronounced if it will enhance the flow of words in a sentence. Some languages use different words to convey strength of meaning rather than changing the tone: in Arabic, there are forms of a verb that are more intensive and so I would use a different form of the verb to convey "to slice" than I would "to cut to bits." This is important if you want to understand the difference between slicing bread or Charles Mansoning your family (yeah, I verbed him).
   
6. Music, authentic conversations, immersion, multimedia and anything that allows you to practice conversing or listening or speaking will inherently be the best ways to hone your speaking and listening abilities, and thus your pronunciation.

Hopefully these strategies for learning a language will prove useful to you or to someone you know (or teach) that is learning an FL. And, to give everyone the catharsis they need after reading many of those pronunciation tips..."that's what s/he said."

There are some things that make the way we learn languages really problematic at a systematic level, but that you can't necessarily change as a learner forced into this setting:

1. Kids should learn languages starting in infancy when their minds will learn the proper sounds that make up a language naturally, you probably started learning too late because schools start in high school.
   
2. You learn on a block schedule and thus practice maybe 50 minutes a day if you are lucky.
3. You learn once or twice a week and thus have too much time between lessons to forget what you learn.
   
4. There is not enough speaking/conversation/listening built into the system.
5. Textbooks are poorly written or offer exercises that don't stimulate learning.
6. Your teacher uses ineffective strategies.

Knowing these problems exist and developing strategies to work around the system or a bad teacher will help you to be a more effective learner. If you have irregular classes (twice a week, say), create a space in between to avoid language decay.

Now, you also may have poor study skills or habits that are not just related to FLs and you need to identify and fix those (it is sad that more teachers don't help kids in this regard, as it is essential to their approach in any class):

1. You have bad study skills and haven't bothered to think about what conditions are most conducive and least conducive to your studies for a given subject (or all subjects). Libraries work for many people, but I can't study in an overly silent environment. Additionally, it is difficult to study a subject that requires you to speak and listen in a quiet environment. Write out a list of places, times, and conditions that work and don't work for you, and try to develop a plan for how to study in a way that works for you. Be aware that one condition may work for some subjects, but not for all subjects.
   
2. You don't set goals for yourself and don't measure those goals. Why do you want to learn the FL? What do you want to get out of the studies? What do you want to be able to say? By when? What steps do you need to take? How will you know you've succeeded? If you can answer these questions, you have come pretty far in articulating a plan of action that will help you to measure progress and identify areas where you are struggling more to better focus your efforts and areas where you rock to encourage you to press onward.
3. You don't take the subject seriously or find it personally useful. Stop being an ass. Find out how this will benefit you and how you can use it (and you can often use an FL) and remind yourself of it when you get discouraged.

Speak out!

- Do you have a strategy for overcoming a language learning difficulty? Post it!
- Can you think of examples for some of the suggestions I gave above? Post them!

Act on it!

- Go back to a language you've given up on and try some of the above strategies and see if it yields better results!
- Learn a new language!
- Try out your Spanish at Chipotle or the bodega on the corner. Try out your Amharic the next time you go out to eat Ethiopian. Revive that rusty language study that is lurking in the cobwebs of your mind.
- Are you a teacher? Try to provide some of these tips to your students and add your own. Start your students off right by helping them to identify their study style and to set and realize goals (and measure progress). It is a lot more useful to them to measure on their own terms rather than based on test scores. Intrinsic rewards, rather than arbitrary numbers will win every time.
- Are you a parent or friend of a language learner? Help them by giving them strategies and reminding them that they are just as big a part of success as their teacher is. Work with them to develop a study plan. Serve as their student so that they teach you and thus learn more. Take them to places where they are more likely to be immersed.
- Do you speak a foreign language that someone in your community doesn't speak? Teach it! Volunteer as a tutor, teach ESL (English as a Second Language), answer a question, offer constructive feedback to a non-native speaker that makes a mistake (see my previous post on language teaching to do it in an effective, specific and non-discouraging way).