The Most Important Skill We're Not Teaching Students

00:00:00.000 | All right, Sarah says, "How can schools implement a deep work approach to learning?"

00:00:06.000 | All right, so let's think elementary, high school level, so like secondary elementary school level,

00:00:13.440 | at that level of education, can we be doing things to prepare students for cognitive work

00:00:22.160 | and in particular deep work type efforts? I think so. I think there's at least three things that we

00:00:28.160 | could specifically integrate into curriculums. One is just the mental model, teaching the students

00:00:35.760 | the mental model that talks about concentration as a skill that is A, trainable, it's like running,

00:00:43.280 | the more you train the faster you can do it, and B, incredibly valuable. This is what allows,

00:00:51.520 | okay great, Andrew Wiles' law of Fermat's last theorem, sure, but it's also what allows your

00:00:56.960 | favorite musician or songwriter to do something really innovative with the music or to learn the

00:01:03.440 | instrument that they then play in a way that is so impressive, what allows this athlete to be

00:01:07.840 | so great, that allows this writer to write this book that you love or that allows this public

00:01:13.280 | thinker to really shape the public conversation. You've got to teach them this mental model,

00:01:18.480 | concentration, especially in today's knowledge style economy, knowledge style economy of

00:01:25.600 | ideas as well as actual economic output, concentration, deep thinking, careful thinking,

00:01:31.520 | it's everything. It's like being good with the sword in ancient Sparta and it's something that

00:01:37.280 | has to be trained. Just giving them that model, very important. Two, practice this in the classroom.

00:01:45.360 | Now we're going to sit here and do this, it's going to be 20 minutes and then you know what,

00:01:50.000 | by October we're going to do 30 minute sessions and by November we're going to do 40 minute

00:01:55.120 | sessions just working on whatever, these hard visualization problems or math problems. We're

00:01:59.360 | going to do writing prompts, you just write, write, write and don't let your concentration

00:02:02.800 | wander. But then when it's over, everyone can jump up and run around and get all their wiggles out

00:02:07.440 | and then we're going to sit down and do it again. You can actually practice concentration, do

00:02:11.840 | interval training on concentration in the classroom. A, this will make them better at concentrating. B,

00:02:16.480 | it reinforces that aspect of the mental model I referenced that concentration can be trained.

00:02:21.520 | Let your students see they get better at it. Let them see they get better at it. That's more

00:02:28.080 | critical than how good you make them, knowing that they can always get better at it. And then three,

00:02:33.200 | I would have detailed notes for parents about how homework should go and about this mental model and

00:02:40.800 | how homework is an aspect for them to practice sustained and focused concentration at home and

00:02:48.080 | how they should set up homework. And it should be these set times they know when it's going to be,

00:02:52.000 | and it should be disconnected and there should be no phone there. And you should say your students

00:02:55.680 | will 100%, I will put $1,000 on the table wagering that the first thing your student will say to you

00:03:00.720 | is I need the computer, I need internet to do research and there's Google Classroom has my

00:03:05.920 | notes in it. Call BS on that. Great. Let's sit down at the computer together and get everything

00:03:11.520 | you need and then you can go do the work with it. Don't let them use that. Or here's the other one

00:03:15.520 | you will see, and I'll bet a lot of money on this because I've been doing this for a while.

00:03:18.480 | I need my phone because I have to text my group mates if I have questions.

00:03:26.160 | So you get detailed notes from teachers to say, call BS.

00:03:30.080 | Homework should be a time for them to practice it. By the way, there is an extra mental health

00:03:39.360 | benefit to making work at home, especially for high school age students or junior high

00:03:44.160 | age students with pretty intense homework. If you actually work structured without distraction,

00:03:49.200 | the amount of time it takes to get that work done well cuts by a factor of two or three.

00:03:53.520 | That's not nothing. If three hours that goes kind of late into the night gets replaced with one hour

00:04:00.080 | done right before dinner, it is a much smaller footprint that homework is a much smaller

00:04:04.480 | footprint on the student schedule. So yes, I think we should be training deep work.

00:04:08.400 | There are some ideas off the top of my head.

The Most Important Skill We're Not Teaching Students | Deep Questions With Cal Newport