Trophy Kids

Recently, I listened to an interview with Ashley Merryman, co-author of Nurture Shock: New Thinking About Children.  She argues that we’ve raised a generation of trophy kids.  They are rewarded not for excellence so much as mere existence.  One example:  more money is spent on trophies by youth soccer organizations nationwide than on coach training or equipment.  Indeed, parents faced with little league budget cuts more often choose to save money by playing fewer games than by giving fewer trophies.

Some other highlights from Merryman’s interview:

• Kids know the difference between receiving a trophy and earning one… but they’re not sure adults do.  Because adults praise them no matter their level of success, their authenticity is suspect over time.
• Students who are praised for their intelligence are often paralyzed by the threat of failure.  If they fail, are they no longer intelligent?  It’s in the best interest of such children to repeat successes (often beneath their ability level) and avoid challenges (often slightly outside their comfort zone). 
• By contrast, students who are praised for hard work (a character trait over which they seem to have more control than intelligence or beauty) are often emboldened to attempt more.  Hard work (and not success) becomes their defining characteristic – even though the first frequently leads to the second.
• Consider a parent confronting a child:  “Did you break the vase, Mary?”  Mary wants to please her mother.  But answering “yes” admits failure.  Answering “no” is lying.  The question presents Mary no opportunity to make her parents happy.  As an alternative, suggests Merryman, try:  “It would please me to hear the truth about the broken vase.”
• Parents of young children offer incessant praise, expecting the cold reality of criticism to kick in at a later time.  They defer criticism to some future authority in the lives of their children.  But grade inflation – and even workplace perks – suggest that an honest appraisal is simply not forthcoming. 

I haven’t read the book, so I’m not necessarily coming out as an advocate.  The author did present her case with well-reasoned research.  And I’ve taught (and parented) long enough to have encountered anecdotal support of my own.

The Servile Arts

Once upon a time, the world of education was divided into three spheres:  Fine Arts, Liberal Arts, and Servile Arts.  Fine (or “Beaux”) Arts means today pretty much what it meant when the phrase was coined.  Think of bohemians in berets on the southern bank of the Seine.  Painters, sculptors, poets, all making beautiful things.

Liberal and Servile Arts perhaps require a bit more historical context.  Imagine a bunch of rich lads in Genoa, drinking wine as they plot to spend their fathers’ fortunes.  Theirs is a gentrified world not unlike Downton Abbey (though predating it by at least six centuries).  Lots of leisure time for the upper classes, but with less indoor plumbing and more church attendance.  The fellows decide – more or less as a hobby – they’d like to know something about mathematics.  They pool a few ducats and pay some monk to teach them a little algebra.  Voila!  The University is born.

The subjects they choose are meant to better the minds and character of free citizens.  Artes liberales – the arts of liberty:  grammar, rhetoric, logic, philosophy, arithmetic, astronomy, and the like.  As Academia matures, these subjects expand to include the humanities and sciences.

Lesser known and spoken of today are the Servile Arts.  These are civilization’s necessary skills, practiced by… well… not free men.  A list of these Artes mechanicae from the ninth century includes weaving, cooking, agriculture, masonry, metalwork, and warfare (the martial art).  I'd argue that the class-informed division of Liberal Arts and Servile Arts persists and complicates instruction in a subject like Digital Filmmaking.

Serfing the internet

Imagine, Rachel, a first-year filmmaker is taught the meaning of the phrase “shooting ratio.”  She writes it on a flash card.  On the back of the card is a terse definition:  “the ratio between a film’s final edited running time and the total footage exposed or captured for the project.”  Her roommate quizzes her on it and other terms from her Cinema Appreciation course.  She recalls it on the final exam and even uses it once in class discussion.

Rachel believes her flash cards prepare her her for a 200-level production course.  The professor hands her a camera and tells to practice a focus pull.  Rachel sets the device on a tripod and twists the focus ring.  The frame’s clarity (and viewer’s attention) moves from the background of her shot to its foreground.  She pulls focus a dozen times during the class, until she achieves a satisfying take.  Rachel surrenders the camera to other members of her group.  The five of them take turns doing what Rachel did.  The ritual is repeated around three other cameras.  At the end of the period, all twenty class members will claim they learned how to do a focus pull.

But they are no more proficient at focus pulls than is a bricklayer who’s laid only a dozen bricks.  Who can say he’s “learned” to lay bricks?  A craftsman who can reliably repeat the action on demand, whose mortar lines are consistently even, whose resulting walls are level and plumb.  In short, the useful skills of the Servile Arts take longer to acquire than the knowledge of the Liberal Arts.

But the current paradigm of “learning” the Servile Arts is a bit like following a recipe.  Tom has limited kitchen experience, but is having a dinner party and wants to bake a cake.  He sifts through the internet, collects ingredients, and combines them as instructed.  He pulls the result from the oven and sets it before impressed guests.  They make appreciative yummy noises. 

Tom is not a chef.  He doesn’t understand which ingredients act as leavening agents and which offer flavor.  He has never substituted kefir for buttermilk.  He has not experimented with presentation or garnishes.

In this way, Tom is like Adam, an amateur editor.  Adam is assembling a music video and wants to dissolve from one shot to another.  He looks through the software’s help menu, then consults a YouTube tutorial.  Now he knows the recipe of function keys that will accomplish a given visual effect.  The result pleases him and perhaps even his audience of Facebook followers.

It would be overstatement to call Adam a learned editor.  Or Rachel a competent camera operator.  They each followed a recipe, a filmmaking tip.  Until they’ve done their tasks so often their fingers can perform without their brains, until they can customize their tasks to create meaning, they are amateurs.  They are walking, but they are looking at their feet.  They are dancing, but their lips still move as they count steps.

Rachel is frustrated.  She did so well in Cinema Appreciation.  But it’s taking her for freaking ever to prep for the camera quiz.  Her prof’s asked her to submit five well-executed focus pulls, five smooth pans, and five tilts – all while obeying composition’s Rule of Thirds.

Some of her frustrations arise from the sixteen-week term, the fifty-minute class period, the mythic ratio of “two hours outside class for every one hour in it.”  The Academy’s trusted timetables are better suited to acquiring the Liberal Arts.  Even basic competence in the Servile Arts requires more hours of practice.

Yet the pressure is on to increase the usefulness of a college degree.  Parents in this economy, fearful of considerable student debt, always question their child’s employment prospects.  They do not ask “What will Johnny know when he graduates?”  Rather, they ask “What can Johnny do with his degree?”  These customer inquiries are shoving the Servile Arts into the Liberal Arts mold – frequently to the consternation of students and teachers.

Good Enough

Picasso's Femme en Pleurs

A high school junior I know wants desperately to attend an art school.  Recently he asked me, “How do I know if I’m good enough?”

“Show your work to a teacher.” I said.  “To someone who’s good at what they do.  Someone who’s not related to you.  Someone who knows you, but maybe doesn’t love you.  Ask that person if your art is good.

“Maybe that person will talk about your art.  Maybe she’ll encourage you to experiment with color.  Or maybe she'll say ‘I like the way your sketches are composed,’ or ‘your photography is stronger than your sculpture.’  If she talks about your work, take that as a good sign and move forward toward art school.

“But if she talks about your personality, go slower.  If she says ‘I think you’ll want to be more disciplined in your work habits,’ or ‘Maybe you should focus more on meeting deadlines,’ then she’s talking about the kind of person you are, the kind of habits you have.  Even a high-dollar art college is unlikely to change those sorts of things.”

That distinction may also be helpful as families survey prospective schools.  Which colleges boast of award-winning student work?  Of internships and job placement?  Those schools may be very different from the ones which promote a safe campus, a satisfying college experience, or the sort of person you might become there.  Yes, it ought to be a false choice, but it isn't.  Schools set priorities -- some motivated by dollars, others by mission.