Dilbert, Sales, and Teaching

     I was listening to an interview with the creator of the Dilbert comic, and he was talking about how he changed the comic to please his readers and then experienced blow-out success.  His contrast of how traditional artists don't do this whereas it is a core idea of sales reminded me of Dan Brown talking about how he followed a similar formula in writing his block buster novels (short, easy-to-digest chapters; unchallenging plotting & characters; easy enough mystery that his readers can feel smart solving on their own, etc.).  Although this idea of the difference between the "pure" artist creating the art for art sakes versus the more crass "I want to be popular, give 'em what they want" entertainer is nothing new, I found myself thinking about education.

    There is constant pressure to do evidence-based teaching strategies that often fall flat in class: project-based, flipped classes, individualized course-of-studies, authentic real-word ambiguous problem solving, purposefully exploring misconceptions, actively constructing & testing models, etc.  Why don't we teachers do more of these things in the face of the evidence that learning outcomes frequently improve when we make the learning harder?  Part of the answer is that we can not afford to be artists; we are actual more on the salesman end of the spectrum.  If the students are unhappy (or we are unhappy) then the effort is doomed.

     The first song you hear on the radio should not be challenging to parse if you want to start liking music.  The first painting you appreciated probably was just a nice scene well executed.  The first book you read cover to cover was probably more fun than deep.

Education is more Dan Brown than William Faulkner.
More Norman Rockwell than George Braque.
More Elton John than Nick Cave.



The trick, of course, is to serve the students some fried chicken but let them catch a whiff of coq au vin...