To make its workers more productive, the Western Electric Company, makers of phones and other parts for the Bell Telephone System, conducted one of the great scientific experiments of all time. The researchers increased the brightness of the lighting at a plant in Hawthorne, Illinois just outside of Chicago, incrementally, while measuring worker output. They alerted the workers to the experiment and they found that as the workplace got brighter the output increased. Then, in a great out-of-the-box experiment, they dimmed the lights incrementally, telling the workers the experiment was still going on. Output continue to grow!

This became known as the Hawthorne Effect.

…the novelty of being research subjects and the increased attention from such could lead to temporary increases in workers’ productivity. Wikipedia “Hawthorne effect”

I got to thinking about the Hawthorne Effect while rereading the Common Core State Standards and thinking about the testing controversy that embroils us. In their website under the Key Shifts in Mathematics menu, they shine a bright light on what they consider to be the core topics:

• In grades K–2: Concepts, skills, and problem solving related to addition and subtraction
• In grades 3–5: Concepts, skills, and problem solving related to multiplication and division of whole numbers and fractions
• In grade 6: Ratios and proportional relationships, and early algebraic expressions and equations
• In grade 7: Ratios and proportional relationships, and arithmetic of rational numbers
• In grade 8: Linear algebra and linear functions

And they conclude:

“This focus will help students gain strong foundations, including a solid understanding of concepts, a high degree of procedural skill and fluency, and the ability to apply the math they know to solve problems inside and outside the classroom.”

The Hawthorne Effect caused by these brighter illuminations will no doubt improve student productivity as measured by test results. But as with the Hawthorne plant, once the experiment, and it is an experiment, is over, once the lighting no matter what the brightness level, stays constant, then productivity will return to its “normal” level. For we have not really changed either the product to make it much more integrated nor have we changed the process to make it more productive.

For the past 50 years we have put math education through a series of Hawthorne Effects. This is the reason that the NAEP scores have remained flat lined. If we truly want to substantially improve math education, as we must, then we will have to reinvent both its product and its process and not just shine brighter lights on it.

I just looked at a wonderful short video by Sir Ken Robinson on creativity at https://youtu.be/63NTB7oObtw in which he describes creativity as a process that produces something original that has value.

At What if Math we seek to make learning a creative experience, a process that enables every student to produce something original that has value. Isn’t that the essence of what learning is or at least should be. Can all learning be a creative experience? Can it be problem-based with interesting problems that can appeal to a wide variety of students? Can it provide powerful tools for students to experiment with and to stretch their imaginations enabling them to produce something original and of value? We believe most, if not all, of it can!

The spreadsheet math problems and experiments in What if Math are designed to enable every student to be creative and to experience creative learning. We hope you will encourage your students to learn and use the wonderful power of spreadsheets to be a creative problem solver. And we hope you will help us create new Labs by sending us problems to develop or Labs you would like us to publish. I look forward to hearing from you.

Art

When I was a kid, Sundays in the summer were car washing days. The stores were closed. The roads were generally quiet. And we took out the hose and the pail, filled them with water and dishwashing soap then rubbed, scrubbed, and waxed the family car…or later our own car…beautiful again. Sundays have already substantially changed and now in an article a recent Economist magazine, one of the last of the great suburban Sunday rituals will soon be going away too. For a scientist has found a pattern made by an obscure but available laser that sheds water and dirt with it. One day in the not too distant future we should be able to buy a car that not only no longer needs waxing but will never get dirty and need washing. Perhaps, about the same time, we will no longer even own cars but instead will ask for one on our cell phone, and an Uber Self-Driving car will pull up to our house to pick us up and drop us off wherever we want to go.

Crazy ideas, great changes. Yes, this is just a tiny example of the new world our students need to be preparing for. We are all linear thinkers. We think the world will continue in much the same way it has been going, with changes that take place slowly and methodically, changes that we can get used to, changes we can plan and prepare for. But change is not linear at all. It is, like the word used by the wonderful writer and biologist Stephen Jay Gould to describe evolution, “punctuated”. Sometimes change accelerates quickly and sometimes it moves at a constant speed. This has always been the nature of change and it is evermore so true today. For things that shed water don’t get dirty and don’t need cleaning — cars, windows, even clothes. And cars that don’t need drivers don’t need parking spaces on streets, driveways, or shopping centers. Our world could, and likely will, change dramatically.

How do we prepare children for work and life in this future world? What should they learn in their school years to make them ready for a lifetime punctuated with change they cannot predict? We cannot base it on the Sunday rituals of our past like counting the cash my dad brought home from his dental practice so that he could put it into the bank on Monday morning. We cannot base it on the paper and pencil calculating rituals we spent innumerable hours on, the paper algorithms that define most of the math our students practice. We cannot base it on “What is____?” habits of thought of the past, when the answer can almost always be easily Googled. We must base it on “What if…” thinking, functional thinking, the basis of science, technology, engineering, and math, the heart of business planning and quantitative reasoning, the question the future depends on.

Sunday rituals will come and go. Technology will sometimes change rapidly and sometimes slowly. But we can prepare our children for their future by making their education about “What if…”, their practice and mastery not off paper-based algorithms but off open-ended problem solving, their focus not on facts in today’s data-rich world but on thinking, their vision directed not on finding the right answer but on seeing outside the box.

Today, I attended an ancient ceremony. It is called “Hooding”. An elaborate and beautiful hood is given to students who have completed their scholarship and are ready to receive a doctoral degree. The Hooding Ceremony at Lesley University today with its rich pageant and sweet music took me back to the 12^th and 13^th centuries when the doctoral degrees were first given out. I quote from the program booklet.

“Doctoral means teacher or instructor. In ancient Rome, people who delivered public lectures of philosophical subjects were called doctors. During the 12^th century, doctor became an honorary title bestowed on men and women of great learning.”

The ceremony features professors and recipients in full academic regalia marching into the theater to receive their hoods and their applause. The rainbow of rich colors laid on velvet black, and sometimes gowns of other vibrant hues worn by professors to feature the ceremonial colors of the institutions they received their degree from, grab our attention. Elegant, beautiful, and wonderfully solemn yet buoyant, the processional music punctuated by the cries of babies in the audience, was a family celebration.

“Most colorful and distinctive of the academic regalia is the hood, which drapes around the neck and extends down the back.”

As each person came up to be hooded by their dean, I could not help but think of the 8 or more centuries and countless people who had been part of the history of this service. So few very very long-lasting traditions remain. So many of our ancient traditions like old artifacts are either lost, destroyed or closeted in museum exhibits.

At the same time I could not help but think of Leonardo of Pisa and the tradition in mathematics he initiated, a tradition about Hooding’s age. But Leonardo’s math medieval tradition is no longer beautiful, no longer meaningful, no longer relevant, and yet we continue to cling to this academic tradition. Some traditions are precious connecting us to the past and enriching our lives. Some traditions bind us to activities that have long since lived out their usefulness, ending up not as things to cherish but as things that impoverish.

So as we enter this season celebrating successful scholarship, we should look to those who will not have anything to celebrate, who will have failed because they were made to follow a tradition no longer of value, no longer of use, no longer necessary. And we must ask ourselves, “What traditions do we cherish, preserve, and pass on to the next generation as their heritage, and what traditions must we shed to enable everyone to gain the education of their dreams.