linguistic structures - Professor Binkert's Webpage - Oakland ...

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long with them and must rush to have the flat tire fixed; she believes that cars should come with full
spare tires the way they used to. The other applicant responds by saying that a full spare tire weighs
more than a donut tire. The increased weight will make the car heavier and, therefore, reduce gas
mileage. Who gets the job?
Practice
Students don’t always see the connections between the various exercises that they are assigned to
complete in various courses and the “real world.” But, learning how to solve problems, think
abstractly, analyze data, propose hypotheses, and argue for a particular position – all of the skills
required for today’s workplace – require exactly the kind of practice one gets working on different
exercises in different courses. Practice is essential. Even experienced people practice and train on
a daily basis so they can maintain their expertise and develop professionally. Ballet dancers spend
long hours every day at the barre practicing plies and tendus so they can become proficient. Boxers
train every day; authors write every day; scientists experiment; philosophers ponder; golfers golf.
It’s often said that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery in any skill. Students cannot
expect to become successful thinkers if they don’t have practice solving a variety of different
problems as often as possible. Students generally think that they should be able to solve any
problem in twenty minutes, and, if they can’t, something must be wrong with them or their teachers.
That is incorrect as the above facts about today’s problems clearly indicate. Developing skill in
problem-solving like everything else takes practice. When students don’t see the purpose of taking
a particular course to satisfy a particular general education requirement, they need to try to see the
larger picture. It is exactly that larger picture – the relationship between roads and streets, the
relationship between gas mileage and tire size – that is crucial to adaptability, to flexibility, to
mobility, and to success.
Learning by Doing
Students in the United States generally believe that teachers should supply them with facts,
illustrations and the specific means by which they can successfully complete an assignment. There
is an excellent reason for that belief: teachers in the United States generally supply students with
facts, illustrations and the specific means by which they can successfully complete an assignment.
Unfortunately, the problems that one faces in life and at work do not come with instructions for their
solution. In short, what happens in American classrooms frequently has little bearing on what
happens outside them. When evaluation measures depend on memorization and replication, there
is little motivation for creativity, imagination, and objective thought. Consequently, high school and
college graduates often have great difficulty applying what they have learned in new situations. They
have difficulty with abstract thinking. Complexity often paralyzes them because they have few tools
to break down problems into manageable parts. They have not had enough practice doing so.
Students need to have practice and experience dealing with unknowns, managing problems that have
no clear answers, and evaluating competing approaches to find the best solution for the