Kevin Brookhouser

Pop Quiz: If you want to encourage students to complete a project or assignment with creativity, innovation, and passion, what's the best tool to motivate them? a. offer a high grade b. threaten a low grade c. make it a competition d. offer a gift certificate to GameStop e. chocolate covered iPod f. none of the above According to Daniel Pink's latest book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us , the answer is f, as in fail. In fact, the evidence is overwhelming that all of the above carrots and sticks actually reduce performance and undermine motivation. When it comes to tasks that require problem solving or other right brain activities, people perform best when they are given autonomy over their tasks, opportunity for mastery in their field, and a sense that the task has a clear and meaningful purpose. Those who have read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, Carol Dweck's Mindset, and Levitt and Dubner's Freakonomics will find much familiar, but ...

"The Hardest Part of a Zombie Apocalypse Will be Pretending I'm Not Excited," says an old friend of mine on Facebook. I tend to agree. What's up with this fascination so many of us hold for zombies? I'll leave that to the psych department of my school, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that our Id can indulge its hunger for inflicting violence without that pestering Super Ego telling us that such behavior is inappropriate. There's nothing inappropriate with unloading a twelve gauge in the face of the undead. The morality is delightfully simple. I would argue that this is the device behind the success of Tarrantino's Inglourious Basterds--Nazis being the closest thing we've seen to people we can kill with a free conscious. This device is why I picked up World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks. However, it has nothing to do with why I liked the book so much. Sure, there's some good zombie killing satisfaction...

Earlier I wrote about the problem with hindsight bias and how it hinders meta cognition in students--big words that mean students don't know what they don't know and think they know what they don't know. When reviewing for an exam, many activities enable this mess by encouraging weaker students to passively observe the more accomplished students demonstrate their competence. The truth will come out in the exam, but wouldn't we all be happier if this truth revealed itself to all parties in the review process? This is why I love pollanywhere.com . Rather than review by asking questions, I can quickly set up a series of poll questions in pollanywhere.com and project them on the screen in the front of class. Here's an example of a Hamlet identification question. Rather than one student volunteering to answer the question, all students are required to submit their answers either by sms text message or through the web on their laptop, smartphone, or mobile interne...

Some of my favorite moments teaching have been when we've decided to take class outside. Get away from the desks and technology and simply have a conversation. When the weather's right, I find that I'm able to reach my students in a different way. However (as I'm sure you know) there are drawbacks, even beyond weather. If the class is too big, it's difficult to hear each other. Distractions are enormous. I feel that there is a need for a space where I could take my class that would be like going outside, but protected and sacred. I'm all for teaching in a 21st century classroom, but I'd also like to spend some time in a classroom with 12th century technology. A Yurt. A simple structure with just meditation pillows where a class could sit together and share a conversation and a cup of tea. It could create the equivalent of having class outside--a place where being thoughtful triumphs over being fast. A place (like our school's chapel) where the silenc...

My Sociology 101 professor taught me something over ten years ago that has stuck with me ever since. I struggled in that class, and once again I raised my hand and expressed my confusion. "Kevin, you know the secret to academic success." Really? I was fighting for my B+ at the time. "You know what you don't know." Later I would learn that he was referring to meta cognition --thinking about thinking--knowing what you know and don't know. Fast forward to fall 2009. I'm reviewing for a Hamlet identification test in which I supply a series of passages from the play and my students would be required to identify the speaker and the significance. Typically I would read a quotation and ask the class to volunteer an answer. When I'm at my laziest, I call on Student A, the one who raises a hand. She responds with the correct answer. When I think about it, this accomplishes very little for any of my students. The girl with the raised hand already knows the ...

The peace plan brokered between Russia and The Republic of Georgia with the help of France's Sarkozy still seems about as stable as York's email server as of late. Reports of Russian and Georgian soldiers sharing cigarettes with each other one minute and pointing AK-47's the next suggest this conflict may not end immediately. These events remind me of what the Christmas Truce of World War I demonstrate about the internal conflict troops face. I don't claim to know what it's like to be a soldier in a war zone, but from what I've gathered, most soldiers who experience fire don't relish the experience. As realistic as the violence in Call of Duty or Rambo may be, I don't think such entertainment media conveys the horror of warfare. Which is why, when given the choice, soldiers on opposite sides of the front are able to find common ground, which is more elusive at the negotiating table among diplomats and generals. When I read a couple weeks ago about t...

The first assignment I give my history students each Fall is Thomas Friedman's article, "It's a flat world after all," a condensed version of his book, "The World is Flat." Most of you all know the premise. For a variety of reasons, the global playing field has been leveled. At one time there was a significant advantage to being born in the United States, but with the ubiquity of broadband internet (among other disruptive technology) a high school student in India or China now has many of the same opportunities as a student in California. It's a bit of a wake-up call for my students. I see the flat world everywhere I look. My favorite example is the popular power ballad band, Journey. Ever since Steve Perry and his signature voice left the band in the 80's, founder Neil Schon struggled to find a suitable replacement. Various singers were hired, but none really caught a lot of attention. Back then, Journey held auditions, listening to a handful of ...