The first 20 hours.

I have recently read the book 'The first 20 hours' by Josh Kaufman. He also gave a talk at the RSA (as authors do when they have a book to sell) and you can find the podcast here.

Malcolm Gladwell popularised the idea that it takes 10000 hours to become a leading expert at something.  However, this premise has been challenged by a number of people such as Fiona McQuarrie.  Perhaps, as with many things, it's more complicated than first proposed.

Which brings me to Kaufman's premise.  The basic idea of Kaufman's book is that, although it might take a long time to become an expert, you can get 'good enough' at any activity in 20 hours. He identifies ten principles of rapid skill aquisition:

1. Choose a lovable project
2. Focus your energy on one skill at a time
3. Define your target performance level
4. Deconstruct the skill into subsets
5. Obtain critical tools
6. Eliminate barriers to practice
7. Make dedicated time for practice
8. Create fast feedback loops
9. Practice by the clock in short bursts
10. Emphasise quantity and speed

He then talks through these principles, and also talks about the features of effective learning.  The bulk of the book is made up of case studies about six different activities that Kaufman undertook and used these principles on.  They cover physical skills (windsurfing, yoga and touch typing) to more academic skills (programming, playing Go and playing the ukelele)

I enjoyed the book, although to be honest I think that you can get the essential theme of the book from the podcast.  It was worth reading as an educator when thinking about how to structure learning so as to help students to gain initial mastery in a topic/subject

Certainly in my own experience, Kaufman's principles hold true.

 

Getting hooked

Just over a year ago I decided to learn how to crochet. I was looking for something to do on the train that wasn't just tweeting or playing games.  Crochet was a craft that I haven't tried before, and I thought that it would probably be more portable than knitting or sewing.  So I asked twitter for recommendations of teach yourself books, bought 'Crochet Unravelled' by Claire Bojczuk, and started to learn.  My first few hours were spent crocheting test samples and then unravelling them and then re-crocheting them.  I wasn't really bothered about making anything particularly, I just wanted to get the technique right.

 

Once I had got the hang of a few basic stitches, I started to attempt flowers and circle shapes.  Initially, these tended to be a little more 3D than I intended.

3D flower

A flatter flower

When I was in hospital for an overnight operation, I had the ideal opportunity to spend a concentrated period of time crocheting and managed to complete a hat for my daughter (hence the pink).

 

A very pink hat.

So within the 20 hours suggested by Kaufman, I was able to learn the basics of crocheting and create a reasonable product.

What significance does 20 hours have for school?

It is easy to see where the principles as outlined by Kaufman could be applied in skills based subjects (such as the crochet described above).  It is perhaps less clear how applicable this might be to more 'knowledge based' topics (and this is a question that Kaufman doesn't really address in the RSA talk).  Certainly in a school it might be hard always for students to choose a loveable project (i.e. one that they are personally very interested in).  

 

However, many of the principles are aligned with the ideas of formative assessment - identifying success criteria, deconstructing skills into subsets, and creating fast feedback loops.

Certainly, the fact that I can now quote the possibility of gaining 'good enough' skills is more motivating to my kids.  A common lament when discussing the 10000 hours rule is that they didn't want to be concert pianists - just better at playing the piano.  So the idea that we can now identify a particular skill and they can improve that in just 20 hours is more helpful.

Core knowledge and the Metro

 E.D.Hirsch's Core Knowledge curriculum has come under scrutiny since a certain Mr Gove has been espousing it to all and sundry.

For those on the 'knowledge' side of the (false) dichotomy in education, Hirsch's idea - of identifying the knowledge needed to understand the 'cultural capital' of an educated person - is just what is required. 

For those on the 'skills' side, specifying the knowledge that kids should know, and in what year it might be a good idea to teach is, is a very bad thing and will lead to children sitting in rows, practicing recall of unrelated facts.

However, as Laura McInerney points out in a recent blog, specifying content does not specify the way in which it can be taught, and that in itself, Hirsch's core knowledge curriculum does not limit what a teacher does, or how children learn this information.

I thought that it would be an interesting exercise to read a paper with the aim of identifying what knowledge was required to make sense the stories contained in it.  So on Friday morning, I picked up the Metro, and on my train journey, read each story to try and identify any underlying concepts, ideas, facts that might be helpful in understanding what was happening in the world.  Although this is a snapshot only there were a lot of topics and ideas included.  I also stopped making notes before I got to the entertainment, finance and sports pages, so what follows is just from the 'news' section of the paper.

Topics and ideas.

Perhaps unsurprisingly in a newspaper there was a lot of underlying information about the law and judicial system required.  Some of the things mentioned were: Crown court, Magistrates court, Judge, Solicitor, Jury, parole, perjury and (a blast from the past) Borstal.

There were also law related ideas such as: Fraud , Shoplifting, Coroner, Court martial, MI5, SAS, house-arrest, Information commissioner, Data protection act and political concepts such as: Unions and their links with Labour, the Commons, shadow cabinet, Democracy, anti-apartheid, German Chancellor, The Whitehouse

Science and medicine also found their place into the paper: Vegetative state, Life support machine, Dorsal region of brain, Radio waves from space, Crosswinds, Post-natal depression, Spinal damage (prolapsed disc, cauda equina syndrome), Down syndrome, Galaxies, Airspace, Satellite images,  Earthquakes and the richter scale, Mirage, Kidney failure, Negative feedback, Breast cancer, Evolutionary psychologists,  Professor of health psychology,  US Food and Drug Administration, Traditional chinese medicine (and use of animal parts). Notably, some of these terms (especially those related to medicine) were explained in slightly more detail - perhaps because it isn't assumed to be general knowledge. There were also units of measurements included in some stories, including for area square inch and square centimetre

There were also a number of animals mentioned, but interestingly, no plants that I spotted. Starfish, Pubic lice, Zebra-snouted seahorse, Mites (in cheese)

Political geography also appears, as well as news from around the world.  I haven't included all the countries that were mentioned in the 'news in brief' stories here, but the reader would have needed to know about the current and historical situations of South Africa, Afghanistan (Helmand Province) and Egypt to understand the context of some of the other stories in the paper.

A variety of people were mentioned, historical and contemporary, real and fictional: Boudica (with very brief summary of her story), Genghis Khan (and Mongol empire), Louis XIV, Mahatma Ghandi, Bhudda, Osama bin Laden, German chancellor, Bolshoi Ballet, Lex Luther, Hamlet, Homer.

The reader would also need to understand the historical dating system that we use: BC, AD and century

There were also words and phrases which were used that I think required some general knowledge, or that were quotes. 'Letting the cat out of the bag', 'Went off the rails', Uber-cool, 'Cathartic', Old testament 'eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot', Media tycoon, Customer backlash, Sexist, Standing ovation, Toupee, Brothel, Parallel parking, Fromage, Spin bowling

And...

Well, I don't think I could make a coherent curriculum out of one day's news, but there was a lot of information that was assumed and implicit in the stories.  

How are our children going to find out that information?  Can it (should it) be taught?