Empirical evidence for the benefits of child-centered education

Those of us with a scientific training certainly are inclined to ask "so where's the evidence that one form of education is better than another?" Ideally, this should be obtained from a controlled experiment conducted over a sufficiently long period of time. Here is one such long-term study of different approaches to pre-school education for 68 children born into poverty, tracked over 23 years:

[1] Schweinhart, L. J., & Weikart, D. P. (1997). Lasting differences: The HighScope Preschool Curriculum Comparison study through age 23 (Monographs of the HighScope Educational Research Foundation, 12). Ypsilanti, MI: HighScope Press.

(Apparently the full report is a monograph that must be purchased online, but a free summary can be found here:
http://www.highscope.org/file/Research/high_scope_curriculum/Curric_factsheet.pdf )

Although this study was focused on early-childhood education, the findings seem quite stark. Two quotes from the summary:

• "Scripted teacher-directed instruction, touted by some as the surest path to school readiness, seems to purchase a temporary improvement in academic performance at the cost of a missed opportunity for long-term improvement in social behavior."
  
• "These findings constitute evidence that early childhood education works better to prevent problems when it focuses not on scripted, teacher-directed academic instruction but rather on child-initiated learning activities...These findings suggest that the goals of early childhood education should not be limited to academic preparation for school, but should also include helping children learn to make decisions, solve problems, and get along with others."

There were two other long-term studies started in the 1970's:

[2] Karnes, M. B., Schwedel, A. M., & Williams, M. B. (1983). A comparison of five approaches for educating young children from low-income homes. In Consortium for Longitudinal Studies, As the twig is bent . . . lasting effects of preschool programs (pp. 133-170). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum

[3] Miller, L. B., & Bizzell, R. P. (1983). The Louisville experiment: A comparison of four programs. In Consortium for Longitudinal Studies, As the twig is bent . . . lasting effects of preschool programs (pp. 171-199). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

The Karnes et al. study was conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois, while the MIller and Bizzell study was conducted at Louisville, Kentucky. They are both described along with the Shweinhart and Weikart study in this digest article titled "Child-Initiated Learning Activities for Young Children Living in Poverty" written by L.J. Schweinhart in 1997. Shweinhart writes:

All three included the Direct Instruction model—which offered scripted, teacher-directed academic instruction—and a Nursery School model, in which children initiated their own learning activities with minimal teacher support. The High/Scope study included the High/Scope model, in which children initiated learning activities with substantial teacher support. The Louisville and Illinois studies included several additional teacher-directed models and the Montessori model, which encouraged child-initiated activities with didactic materials.

These three studies found that children in Direct Instruction programs intellectually outperformed children in child-initiated-activities programs during and up to a year after the preschool program, but not thereafter. In the Louisville study, the Nursery School children showed higher verbal-social participation and increased more in ambition and aggressiveness than did the Direct Instruction children, but both groups scored lower than their peers on inventiveness. In the Illinois study, 78% of the Nursery School group, but only 48% of the Direct Instruction group and 47% of the no-program group graduated from high school. 

Finally, a more recently concluded long-term study conducted in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is described in:

[4] Dohrmann, K. R. Outcomes for students in a Montessori program: A longitudinal study of the experience in the Milwaukee Public Schools. (2003). Association Montessori Internationale/ USA, 410 Alexander Street, Rochester, New York. 14607-1028. This paper is freely available online at http://www.montessori-ami.org/research/outcomes.pdf

This study looks at 201 Montessori students who completed fifth grade between 1990-1994, and graduated in 1997-2005, compared with a carefully matched control sample of non-Montessori students. Montessori schools emphasize child-centered education with a strong emphasis on self-directed learning. Dohrmann writes:

A significant finding in this study is the association between a Montessori education and superior performance on the Math and Science scales of the ACT and WKCE. In essence, attending a Montessori program from the approximate ages of three to eleven predicts significantly higher mathematics and science standardized test scores in high school.

These findings are further corroborated by a short-term study published in Science, in 2006, which also finds significant academic/cognitive as well as social/behavioral benefits to a Montessori education:

[5] Lillard A, Else-Quest N (September 2006). "The early years. Evaluating Montessori education". Science 313 (5795): 1893–4.  (See http://www.montessori-science.org/montessori_science_journal.htm for link to full paper.)

I think that the fact that four long-term studies done on this topic (I am not aware of any other such studies and would welcome pointers) all show positive impacts of starting children on an autonomous and self-directed learning path is pretty compelling. Don't you?

Schools kill creativity

Sir Ken Robinson was knighted in 2003 for his achievements in creativity, education and the arts. He has given two outstanding TED talks, and I strongly recommend seeing at least the first one:
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

In this talk, he points out, with a lot of humor, that conventional one-size-fits-all schooling kills creativity, and that the main end of our outdated education system, which focuses exclusively on a narrow view of deductive reasoning, seems to be to produce college professors. He argues forcefully that we have to revolutionize education dramatically if we want our kids to grow up to be more creative and self-fulfilled individuals.

Oh, and you simply should not miss the fun animated version of another one of his talks:
Changing Educational Paradigms: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

(RSA has other informative talks in this highly entertaining animated format that you might like to see as well.)

Raking geniuses from the rubbish

Our education system is a hierarchy. There are progressive stages,  from school, to two-year colleges, to four year colleges, to the masters degree, to the Ph.D. Schooling in the U.S. is compulsory up to the age of 17-18. Beyond high school, a significant number of students do not move on to the next step for a range of reasons: due to the students' own volition, lack of financial resources, or selective admissions policies.

It is instructive to consider the history of this system we have in place today. The following text is by Thomas Jefferson, written in 1782 in the context of a bill on education in his state:

The bill [on Education in the Revised Code of Virginia] proposes to lay off every county into small districts of five or six miles square, called hundreds, and in each of them to establish a school for teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic. The tutor to be supported by the hundred, and every person in it entitled to send their children three years gratis, and as much longer as they please, paying for it. These schools to be under a visitor who is annually to choose the boy of best genius in the school, of those whose parents are too poor to give them further education, and to send him forward to one of the grammar schools, of which twenty are proposed to be erected in different parts of the country, for teaching Greek, Latin, geography, and the higher branches of numerical arithmetic. Of the boys thus sent in any one year, trial is to be made at the grammar schools one or two years, and the best genius of the whole selected, and continued six years, and the residue dismissed. By this means twenty of the best geniuses will be raked from the rubbish annually, and be instructed at the public expense, so far as the grammar schools go. At the end of six years instruction, one half are to be discontinued (from among whom the grammar schools will probably be supplied with future masters) : and the other half, who are to be chosen for the superiority of their parts and disposition, are to be sent and continued three years in the study of such sciences as they shall choose, at William and Mary College. ... The ultimate result of the whole scheme of education would be the teaching all the children of the State reading, writing, and common arithmetic; turning out ten annually of superior genius, well taught in Greek. Latin, geography, and the higher branches of arithmetic; turning out ten others annually, of still superior parts, who. to those branches of learning, shall have added such branches of the sciences as their genius shall have led them to; the further furnishing to the wealthier part of the people convenient schools at which their children may be educated at their own expense.

From: Notes On Virginia. viii, 388. Ford Ed., iii, 251. (1782.), as quoted in The Jefferson Cyclopedia, a comprehensive collection of the views of Thomas Jefferson, Ed. John P. Foley, Funk and Wagnalls Company, New York, 1900, page 275. 

Interesting, is it not? I don't know to what extent these ideas were implemented in the form advocated, but the idea of progressive levels of education, with each successive level being increasingly more selective, is certainly still with us.

Jefferson's phrase referring to geniuses "raked from the rubbish" rankles, but it plainly points out an uncomfortable truth about our present system, particularly in the context of higher education: that it is a meritocracy.

It is certainly a point of pride for faculty and for academic institutions that they can identify, recruit, and cultivate "geniuses." But should we not also be mindful of what it really means (both to the individuals in question, and to society as a whole) to discard the rest as "residue"? Even if we are forced to be selective due to resource constraints, could our society be better served if we cultivate a more inclusive perspective in academia?

These are not idle questions. They are at the very root of the debate about increasing diversity in undergraduate and graduate programs, and among the ranks of faculty.

Learning together

I like teaching classes that I haven't taught before. In seven and a half years of teaching at USC, I have taught about ten different courses. This is somewhat unusual in an environment where many faculty prefer to teach a relatively small stable set of courses over time.

I confess I do this mostly because I like the excitement of mastering new material, and gain a lot of value from learning while teaching. But, it struck me today, I also do this in part because it is precisely when I'm teaching material that I'm not deeply familiar with, that I feel closest to students, most sympathetic to how they perceive the material, most understanding about what they may find challenging. And it's a pleasure to feel  thus connected to the student's doubts and uncertainties, because then we're on the same team, learning together.

There is a risk, of course, that I am caught short when explaining some concept that I don't completely grasp myself. At such moments, if I can set aside my ego, and approach the situation with humility instead of trying to hide my ignorance, I find that the honest act of showing students how I deal with what I don't understand (say, by trying to re-derive some mathematical expression from first principles, or by saying out loud what I'm myself confused by, so that potentially a student can help me figure out some simple fact I'm ignoring) is itself of value to them. I've had students tell me after class that they found it helpful to watch me model how to overcome my own uncertainties.

My research group and I often meet to read a technical paper or parts of a book together. The way we organize these sessions, which can last anywhere from two to four hours, none of us, including I, have read the material before. We take turns reading a few paras each, stopping periodically to make sure we all fully understand what we have read (descriptions of algorithms, equations, proofs of theorems, the experimental setup, etc.). We are often puzzled, of course, but because there are usually ten or more of us in the room, one of us is likely to figure out the answer quickly. These sessions are always a pleasurable and rewarding experience, and help my students and me bond with each other, enhancing our sense of shared identity as a group.

One of my Ph.D. students once remarked after such a session, "I wish our classes were more like this!" and it struck a chord in me. It occurred to me that such a reading-based class could indeed offer a refreshing experience of non-authoritarian, communal learning.

In Spring 2006, I taught such a class at the graduate level, with about fifteen students. Because I was starting to move my own research interests more significantly in this direction, I told the students from the very start, we would together learn about different optimization techniques and their application to communication networks. We had a three-hour class in the evening once each week. I specifically asked for and got a small classroom where we could all sit around a table. For the first hour or so I would present a lecture covering requisite background material (such as KKT conditions for solving constrained optimization problems in closed form, linear programming, convex optimization and Lagrange duality), and then we would read a paper which used that theory in the context of a communication or network algorithm/protocol  (e.g., optimal popularity-based replication in P2P networks,  primal-dual techniques for network utility maximization). Beyond this, the students worked on research projects either alone or in pairs where they took the tools we learned and applied them to a networking problem of their own choice.  Looking back over all the courses I've taught to date, this was easily the most enjoyable experience I've had as a teacher (the 5/5 course evaluations I got that semester indicate that the students had found the experience valuable too).

There were many reasons why this class went so well, including the small class size, the balanced mix of theory and applications, a highly motivated set of students, the diverse and interesting material, and the outstanding teaching assistant I had that semester, but I am certain that one of the biggest factors was the fact that we were, in a very real sense, learning together. I have warm memories of us all huddled closely around the table in this small room each week, reading and discussing papers late into the spring evening.

The best thing for being sad

This quote, I think, speaks for itself:

"The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies. You may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins. You may miss your only love. You may see the world around you devastated by evil lunatics or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it, then: to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the world can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you."

- T. H. White, The Once and Future King

Material versus sacred values

I attended a talk this afternoon by Dr. Morteza Dehghani, a research scientist at USC's Institute for Creative Technologies who works on computational cognitive modeling.

He talked about the difference between two approaches to decision making: rational choice based on material/utilitarian values, and irrational choices based on what he refers to as sacred values. To excerpt from his talk abstract:

"In dealing with conflict, two broadly different approaches to modeling the values that drive decisions and choice of behavior have emerged: a consequentialist approach based on instrumental or material values, versus a deontological approach based on moral or sacred values. Sacred values are different from secular values in that they are often associated with violations of the cost-benefit logic of rational choice models... I argue that understanding sacred values and the processes by which they emerge are vital for understanding and modeling decision-making in cultural contexts."

He noted that sacred values are derived from one's cultural upbringing, and are reflected in popular stories, mythologies, scriptures, and the way history is interpreted and told. They are defended on the basis of faith and emotion, not reason. Our cultural background, through the stories we hear and read growing up, significantly impacts how we make moral decisions. Having lived all my life in cross-cultural settings (for many years as a south Indian in north India, and now as an Indian in America married to someone born in China), I found this quite fascinating.

If you think about it a bit, it is clear that sacred values play a key role in many of the most significant aspects of our life, particularly those that relate to our interactions with others: friendship, familial duty, love, religious faith, patriotism, social responsibility. Our views on these are indeed colored greatly by the culture and traditions we are exposed to, and rarely have a purely rational basis.

Dehghani argued that the way the stories that form a culture impact the decision making process is by providing a rich store of analogies that can be applied to a particular context. These analogies allow for case-based reasoning, which could, however, be quite irrational, unlike cost-benefit analysis. He presented his work on a cognitive decision making system called MoralDM, which combines both approaches to better model results obtained via psychological experiments. He also discussed how the emergence of sacred values around Iran's nuclear program may make rational incentive-based negotiations backfire.

An online article I read recently on NYTimes by Robert Sapolsky, This is your Brain on Metaphors, also explores some very related questions. I think the notion of metaphoric reasoning versus literal reasoning described by Sapolsky is essentially the same as the distinction between case-based reasoning and cost-benefit analysis made by Dehghani.

After the talk, I looked up some of Dehghani's other work. In a paper titled "The Role of Cultural Narratives in Moral Decision Making", he and his co-authors describe two experiments where they gave different sets of questions with two choices - one involving rational self-preservation, and another involving irrational self-sacrifice to groups of Iranians and Americans. The questions posed in each experiment were essentially variants of a story familiar to Iranians in which a self-sacrificing choice is made. Their experiments show that familiarity with an analogous story dramatically influences the decision. The authors conclude:

"Our results suggest that a core differentiating factor in moral reasoning between cultures may be familiarity with different collections of cultural narratives. Even if the foundations and the logic of morality were universally present, the different cultural stories would cause differences in the judgment of morality between cultures. We believe some well known findings on moral reasoning might be explained by formal examination of moral narratives present within and across cultures."

A corollary to this, which I have certainly experienced for myself, is that in order to really understand someone from a different cultural background, one needs to become familiar with their particular set of narratives, the stories they grew up with.

The dark side to culturally-determined, emotional, irrational decision making, however, is that it is one reason we must forever experience divisions and conflict in our heterogeneous world. Our only hope lies in greater mindfulness of the possible sources of misunderstandings, and non-violent communication.

The Inner Game

I strongly recommend a book called "The Inner Game of Tennis" by W. Timothy Gallwey (1974). The author of this book is a well-known tennis coach whose ideas have been adopted by coaches in many other sports as well.

Gallwey makes the compelling case that there are two kinds of games going on when one plays tennis. One is the outer game, visible to all, in which the two players competing are opponents, each bent on defeating the other to move on to the next round and eventually to win the tournament. The second is the inner game, which is always invisible. This game is played with oneself, and is all about the process of putting in effort to overcome obstacles, and thereby improve oneself towards meeting and growing one's potential, not about the end goal. It is this inner game, he contends, that is the most valuable.

In one passage that I found very insightful, Gallwey writes:

"..Then is your opponent a friend or an enemy? He is a friend to the extent that he does his best to make things difficult for you. Only by playing the role of your enemy does he become your true friend. Only by competing with you does he in fact cooperate! ... In this use of competition it is the duty of your opponent to create the greatest possible difficulties for you, just as it is yours to try and create obstacles for him. Only by doing this do you give each other the opportunity to find out to what heights each can rise... In true competition no person is defeated. Both players benefit by their efforts to overcome the obstacles presented by the other."

So he asserts that the great value of the game of tennis is not in the visible outcome of defeating the other player, it is in the invisible process of having been challenged to improve oneself.

This inner game, of course, has nothing to do tennis per se, but is a game we all play, each day, whether or not we are consciously aware of it.

Here is the most moving passage from the book:

"Many start tennis as a weekend sport in the hope of getting exercise and a needed relief from the pressures of daily life, but they end by setting impossible standards of excellence for themselves and often become more frustrated and tense on the court than off it.... How can the quality of one's tennis assume such importance that it causes anxiety, anger, depression and self-doubt? The answer seems to be deeply rooted in a basic pattern of our culture. We live in an achievement-oriented society where people tend to be measured by their competence in various endeavors. Even before we received praise or blame for or first report card, we were loved or ignored for how well we performed or very first actions. From this pattern, one basic message came across loud, clear and often: you are a good person and worthy of respect only if you do things successfully. Of course, the kind of things needed to be done well to deserve love varies from family to family, but the underlying equation between self-worth and performance has been nearly universal. ... Now that's a pretty heavy equation, for it means that to some extent every achievement-oriented action becomes a criterion for defining one's self-worth. ... it follows that the intelligent, beautiful and competent tend to regard themselves as better people. ... When love and respect depend on winning or doing well in a competitive society, it is inevitable (since every winner requires a loser and every top performance many inferior ones) that there will be many people who feel a lack of love and respect. Of course, these people will try equally hard not to lose
the respect they have won. In this light, it is not difficult to see why playing well has come to mean so much to us... But who said that I am to be measured by how well I do things? In fact, who said that I should be measured at all? Who indeed? What is required to disengage oneself from this trap is a clear knowledge that the value of a human being cannot be measured by performance --- or by any other arbitrary measurement. Do we really think the value of a human being is measurable? It doesn't really make sense to measure ourselves in comparison with other immeasurable beings. In fact, we are what we are; we are not how well we happen to perform at a given moment. The grade on a report card may measure an ability in arithmetic, but it doesn't measure the person's value. Similarly, the score of a tennis match may be an indication of how well I performed or how hard I tried, but it does not define me, nor give me cause to consider myself as something more or less than I was before the match."

Something I liked about this book, written by a western author in the context of a modern game, is how completely it resonates with the ancient eastern philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita, to focus on work and duty unmotivated by external rewards, and to be equanimous in the face of praise or criticism.

This is a lesson that is particularly important in the competitive world of academia, where we have a tendency to measure success almost exclusively by external recognitions and marks of achievement in the form of grades, degrees, awards, best-papers, rankings, etc. While these do play a practical role in what is meant to be a meritocratic system, I am certain they also do a lot of invisible damage, because it is hard to maintain a balanced view about them; that they are at best only a partial indicator of personal growth, and not at all a measure of a person's worth/quality as an individual.

When I reflect upon the matter with honesty, I can recognize the significant extent to which such recognitions matter to me personally and professionally, more than they should. I hope it is a positive step to admit to myself at least that these recognitions can, at least if viewed incorrectly, be an obstacle in the way of improving my inner game, the only game that truly matters.

Piaget on child-centered education

The following quote is from a book I'm reading by Jean Piaget, titled "Science of Education and the Psychology of the Child," (1970):

"Is childhood a necessary evil, or have the characteristics of the childish mentality a functional significance that defines a genuine activity? According to the reply given to this fundamental question, the relation between adult society and the child to be educated will be conceived of as either unilateral or reciprocal. In the first case the child is called upon to receive from outside the already perfected products of adult knowledge and morality; the educational relationship consists of pressure on the one side and receptiveness on the other. From such a point of view even the most individual kinds of task performed by the students (writing an essay, making a translation, solving a problem) partake less of the genuine activity of spontaneous and individual research than of the imposed exercise or the act of copying an external model; the student's inmost morality remains fundamentally directed toward obedience rather than autonomy. Whereas, on the other hand, to the degree in which childhood is thought of as endowed with its own genuine form of activity, and the development of mind as being included within that activity's dynamic, the relation between the subjects to be educated and society becomes reciprocal: the child no longer tends to approach the state of adulthood by receiving reason and the rules of right action ready-made, but by achieving them with his own effort and personal experience; in return, society expects more of its new generations than mere imitation: it expects enrichment."

I couldn't agree more.

Jean Piaget

Piaget endorses the view that a child's mind should not to be viewed as an empty vessel into which well-packaged knowledge needs to be poured, but rather as an active and engaged entity, with its own respect-worthy dynamic. Education should not aim merely to train a child towards some preconceived social end, but should rather be a process whereby a child can grow, through "effort and personal experience", to be able to contribute meaningfully to society.

Another phrase in this book that caught my eye, "that authentic process of construction that is the true development of the mind," is also illustrative of Piaget's view of learning as an active, organic process.

This is something to think about not only in the context of children in schools, but also for young adults at the college level. Sadly, even at the college level, (at least in engineering, which I am most familiar with), our education system today is geared primarily towards cultivating "obedience rather than autonomy".

In a chapter called "The Genesis of the New Methods," Piaget provides a brief intellectual history of autonomy-oriented educational methods that are characterized by a) assuming "genuine activity" in the child, and b) the "reciprocal character of the relation they establish between the subjects being educated and the society of which they are destined to form a part." I found this discussion very useful in identifying further authors I myself should read, so I jot down some notes on this chapter below.

Piaget starts by mentioning that the core ideas have existed in some form or another for centuries, including in the words and writings of Socrates, Rabelais, Montaigne, Fenelon, and Locke, but dismisses their views along these lines as being no more than fragmentary.

He views Rousseau as the first to have had a "total conception" of these ideas, particularly as evidenced in Emile, and credits Pestalozzi (a disciple of Rousseau) and Froebel (a disciple of Pestalozzi) for taking the first steps to make these ideas concrete. In particular, Pestalozzi founded a school called Institut d'Yverdon in Switzerland in 1805, where children appear to have had great autonomy, and where the teachers acted more like "older companions and trainers rather than leaders".

Jean Jacques Rousseau

But, at the same time, he finds Rousseau's justifications for educational change, arrived at primarily through intuition and subjective experience, as lacking in rigor, being hardly more than a "sociological belief, or a polemical weapon". Even Pestalozzi and Froebel, he writes, suffered, from not having a solid scientific theory of developmental psychology to guide their efforts.

Piaget writes, "The notions of the functional significance of childhood, of the phases of intellectual and moral development, of true interest and activity, are already there in [Rousseau's] work, but they did not truly provide inspiration for the 'new methods' until the moment they were rediscovered, on the plane of objective observation and experiment, by authors more concerned with unfevered truth and systematic controls."

This is an interesting commentary. As a developmental psychologist himself, Piaget clearly believed that an objective experimental methodology was essential to uncovering "truths" about the learning process in a convincing and coherent fashion. Only such scientific findings could, in his view, impact practice substantially.

He qualifies and clarifies this a bit later:

"Let there be no misunderstanding, however. Modern educational science has not emerged from child psychology in the same way that advances in industrial technique have developed, step by step, from the discoveries of the exact sciences. It is rather the general spirit of psychological research, and often, too, the very methods of observation employed that have energized educational science in their passage from the field of pure science to that of scholastic experimentation."

He describes as more central and significant the contributions of psychologists and experimentally-oriented educationists, in particular, John Dewey, Maria Montessori, and Ovide Decroly, in the late nineteenth century, who all founded schools based on the new ideas.

He also mentions Kerchensteiner, whose central idea was that the "aim of the school is to develop the student's spontaneity," and Claparede, for being the first to apply the theory by the psychologist Karl Groos that "play is a preparatory exercise and therefore displays a functional significance" to the context of education.

A somewhat more controversial figure he mentions finally in this context is Alfred Binet. Binet is best known for developing the first IQ tests. Piaget himself sees these tests as problematic. He notes "though the tests have not produced all the results expected of them ... either we shall one day find good tests, or else intelligence tests will go into history as an example of a fruitful error". He notes, "Apart from these tests however, Binet also rendered many other services to the new education with his theory of the intelligence and his book Les idees modernes sur les enfants."

I'm looking forward to reading more about these figures who have played a central role in the development of humanistic, learner-centric ideas of education.

Clarification, Commitment, and Courage

"Cheshire Puss," she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. "Come, it's pleased so far," thought Alice, and she went on. "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where--" said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"--so long as I get SOMEWHERE," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

- Lewis Carol, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

This is a deep observation. It's easy to get *somewhere*. We have

only to walk long enough. But if we want to get somewhere

*particular* in life, we have, first of all, to be very clear on

the destination.

But there is more to it. Once we do clarify where we are going,

we have to be committed to getting there, and we must have the

courage to find the path and stick to it.

This gives us a three-part recipe:

1. Think hard and clarify for ourselves what we believe in, what we want to do, what we want to be, what we want to have. These are our principles and our goals. We must make them as explicit as possible to ourselves. Write them out.

2. Resolve and commit, wholly and fully, to achieving our goals, while staying true to our principles. It helps to close one's eyes and visualize oneself as the person who has what we want, who does what we want to do, who is what we want to be.

3. Now, act with courage and stay true to the commitment. This means being patient and willing to put in the time needed to learn. It means being resilient and not backing down or giving up on our dreams when we face setbacks (and we can be sure there will be many!). It means being willing to learn from failure and change to do something new when an old and familiar approach doesn't work. It means recognizing our own freedom and ability to change our environment in myriad fruitful ways, and exercising this freedom to move closer to the achievement of our goals. Above all, it means being fearless and willing to court disappointment often.

There are challenges to be faced at each step.

The challenge on the first step is set goals that help us meet our true potential, and bring joy into our lives. As we learn and grow and are exposed to more opportunities, we can and should revisit and adjust our goals. We may find that some of our earlier goals truly no longer matter to us, and other new goals arise.

Once we get past goal-setting, the second and third steps are still very hard because we are wired evolutionarily to be risk averse, to avoid disappointment, and, when disappointed, to become unhappy, give up readily, and aim lower. Our latent fears make it very difficult for us to believe the significant extent to which we can shape our environment.

We can perhaps view life as a dynamic stochastic optimization problem, a particularly hard one, in that there is a time-varying multi-dimensional objective function that is not predefined! There is no deterministic guarantee that this three-step approach of i) clarifying our goals and principles, ii) committing to them, and iii) maintaining the courage to pursue them through difficult times, will ensure that we get what we want. However, I contend that this policy will maximize the probability of this happening. (The probability thus maximized does depend on factors out of our control, including lack of adequate resources and other socio-economic constraints, but in most cases is a lot higher than we might have imagined). And following such a policy is likely to yield us the satisfaction of leading a principled, meaningful life.

***

I started this post with a quote related to clarification of goals. Here are two more quotes I like, one about commitment and one about persistence, which is, of course, the essence of courage:

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness concerning all acts of initiative and creation. There is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen events, meetings and material assistance which no one could have dreamed would have come their way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!”

- W. H. Murray, The Scottish Himalaya Expedition

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing in the world is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."

- Calvin Coolidge

Fundraising in Academia

Although I've often encouraged my students to consider academic careers, it occurred to me recently that I have not talked to them enough of what such a career actually involves. What is often invisible to graduate students thinking about a career in academia, particularly in a research-oriented university, is that a great deal of faculty time and attention is spent on raising funds to support their students, bring in summer salaries, fund travel, equipment, etc.

So I did a two-hour session talking about fundraising in academia for a few students, post-docs and visitors to my group today.

I began with a short back-of-the-envelope calculation suggesting that a faculty member who intends to fully fund five research assistants needs to bring in about $300K a year, a non-trivial amount. (For larger, more resource-hungry research groups that are not uncommon in engineering departments, this amount can be easily as high as a million or more.)

I then talked about the different kinds of funding sources including internal university sources, industry sources and the various government agencies including NSF, various DoD entities and NIH. I talked about how, for industry sources as well as for many DoD-based agencies, much can depend on building relationships with key people. I then focused in on NSF, with its more academic-friendly model of open calls and relatively transparent peer-review process. Finally, I discussed the ingredients of a good proposal and tips and pointers on writing proposals that get funded.

Something I hope I was able to bring out is that while this process of fundraising could be considered "overhead", at least to the extent that it takes away time that should be spent *doing* research, it is also very helpful in many ways. Being forced to convince others to give us money for research gives us a good reason to think deeply about what we want to work on, and the quality and impact of our work.