Monday, July 13, 2009
Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
As we explore the text Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, what we need to keep in mind is the benefit for our students to be exposed to non-fiction. Blink offers students ideas to think about their daily interactions with others. The message of trusting our first instincts and reading cues from others is a skill everyone can benefit from. Using stories to introduce skills like the Statue that Didn't Look Right and Paul Van Riper's Big Victory allowed the reader to make connections and were intended to be interests grabbers. After reading Blink, would this be a text you would use to give students the opportunity to read non-fiction? How would Blink be utilized in a classroom? What feedback do you feel students would share after reading this text?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
If I had taken the author's advise after reading the first 4 pages I would have stopped reading this book. A "thin slice " told me I did not like it. However, since I was being paid to read it I persisted. I believe that the "shcck value "
ReplyDeleteof the book lasted too long. What kid would not love saying with integrity that they did not think a teacher was good after only 5 minutes?
The second half of the book was better when it starts saying what is wrong with only going on your instincts. The section that talked about racism was very accurate. Before the Brown vs Board of Education ruling Black girls were given the opportunity to choose a white doll or a black doll and they chose the white doll. Much of our "instincts" are taught. We just don't realize how ingrained our learning is. We see that in the section of the student selecting terms to find that there was a hidden agenda in the words that were chosen. Subliminal advertising is banned. I am sure that some "political" groups in the world still use those tactics. Certainly the idea about Warren Harding looking the part was very interesting. Our society puts a lot of emphasis on looks. The section about the car sales man is accurate. As a woman I can vouch for the different treatment.
I do not know about the studies in this book and how accurate they are. I do know if it was just on human instinct that the studies were about it should have been world wide. That would eliminate the taught conepts and truly see what natural instinct is. If the book was to show how we should look into the reasons we do things those chapters should have been mixed into the rading earlier.
Would I use this book in a class. Maybe a sociology class of upper classmen. Maybe the honors upper class programs I would reccomend it to. But, personally I am gald it is not the book we get to keep. I hate throwing out books.
Cathy, I think you said it perfectly. I picked up the book, read the first couple of pages and groaned because I saw reading the rest of the book as a task of enormous proportions.
ReplyDeleteI admit, like Cathy said, that the book got minutely better and it did contain some interesting facts, but the overall majority of the book was drawn out and dull.
The section on racism was the only interesing part of the book for me. I was intrigued about the subconscience choices of participants involved in some of the studies. It shocked me to reconize exactly how many racist instincts have been ingrained in our brans. Its not something that I usually think about- but it is so often true.
I have to say I would NOT use this book in my classroom. I think if I assigned the book, even for my AP students to read, they would hate it and hate me for assigning it! Sorry for the bad review!
I guess I will end up being in the minority here. Overall I loved the book. As someone who rarely ever reads nonfiction, I was a little surprised, but the pseudo-science of it and the fact that it really can apply to everyday life was fascinating to me.
ReplyDeleteThe first thing that I looked at to try to apply to teaching was the "priming" segment in chapter 2, which talks about how students who were exposed subliminally to certain words acted a certain way. The person who got all the old sounding words (Florida, sun, oranges, age, etc) acted old and walked slowly. What if we "primed" our students when they walked in the door each day? I guess having posters up with positive messages is one way that a lot of teachers already use. Perhaps our language when we address the kids could prime them. Even giving them an impressive example of an essay before asking them to write one could do the trick.
The most important message of the book for me was that we need to accept the validity of our snap-judgments but only to an extent. If we are knowledgeable and well-trained, our instincts will be more accurate than if we are idiots. If it works for that Heart Attack flow chart in San Francisco, why can't it work for us?
In terms of teaching this text, I would say certain chapters might be really interesting for the kids. The entire book might get a little tedious, however a sociology or psychology class would probably be able to do a ton with it. I would love to use the first 2 chapters as an introduction, and perhaps the section on racism. History classes could use the Warren Harding chapter and tie it in to JFK's victory thanks to debates being televised.
I hope some other people like this book! There are a ton of other points in there that I could go on and on about, but I'll let someone else jump in. Hope everyone is having a great summer so far.
I'm glad we've had a chance to read this, but I do have mixed feelings as to the relevance and meaning for our purposes. As an adult reading a book of choice, I loved it; as a teacher thinking about introducing this to teenagers, I don't see it happening.
ReplyDeleteThe set up and style of this author's technique was very difficult to follow. I am a person who likes more analysis and explanation of materials and examples being presented. Maybe I need to trust my own understanding as opposed to the author's more, but many parts of the research just left me hanging. It left me asking, "ok, so what about that?" I wanted more direction from the expert who chose to put this concept in print.
I did enjoy the "Perils of Introspection" section very much. The whole message of allowing people time to work out a situation and work out what's happening is so important. It's so important as teachers to remember that all of us (yes, students included) think so differently. While I may think with words and use the left portion of my brain more often, many others think in picture format. So many times we ask our students to think as we think; Gladwell gives us many examples in this section to help us realize how we see or remember things. As a teacher, I am constantly reminded to help my students think about their thinking. This section just reinforced some of those concepts for me.
All in all, the book is truly interesting; I just don't think my students would appreciate it if I gave them the whole thing at one time to digest. Small components could certainly reinforce current units or lessons I'm introducing to my students at different times throughout the year.
If you haven't tried reading The Tipping Point by Gladwell, you may find this to be much easier to follow; I hate to have people leaving this assignment thinking that Blink is his best work
I too found this book to be a bit dry when I started. I almost gave up on it. But because I was a bit behind in my reading I was able to read some of the posts before I finished. Andy's comments kept me going! I am glad I persevered. I am someone who has a difficult time picking out a loaf of bread at the Wegman's bakery so on a personal level I found this book helpful...but I agree with Cherie and Cathy...I don't think I would recommend it to students as a general read. But, as a teacher I found some of the ideas very helpful (ie Priming)and I do think specific classes would find sections of this book helpful. I was intrigued by the racism/police tactics section and the Warren Harding section. I am planning to recommend the racism section to Scott Hopsicker who is teaching an elective this year on violence/prejudice in our society...this would be perfect. And, as a parent of an orchestra student getting ready to do college auditions, I found the section on blind auditions fascinating. So, overall, not the most inclusive book I've read but I do see classroom applications.
ReplyDeleteAnd, hopefully, the next time I go to Wegmans to get a loaf of bread I won't take 20 minutes to pick it out!
It is not entirely because we're getting paid to do this that I admit how much teaching has influenced my consideration of new texts. In this case, however, whether or not I would use this book in class was not at the forefront of my mind as I read. Instead, I found myself truly examining the dimensions of my own judgments, especially those based on the "thin slices" of other people, which is so much a part of what we do in our daily work with large populations of diverse students. In my opinion, therein lies the greatest potential of this work to positively affect our teaching.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I did enjoy this book and identify sections of the reading that might make good excerpts for various purposes in class. This is despite the fact that Gladwell, no doubt at the editor’s insistence, somewhat undermines the quality of the work with his repetition of the word "blink" to remind us of how it all relates—thanks. Instead, my enjoyment was mostly due to the variety of situations and sciences he offered to contextualize thinking with the adaptive unconscious. Of these, the sixth chapter ("Seven Seconds in the Bronx") offered some of the most intriguing material for me, including an analysis of the Diallo case and further elucidation of Gottman’s "mathematics of divorce" based on the Facial Action Coding System that he had apparently incorporated into his SPAFF prediction method. Within chapter six, "The Theory of Mind Reading," "The Naked Face" and "A Man, a Woman and a Light Switch" were among my favorites and the ones that have left me thinking about the ways I communicate with others. Those sections and the one on implicit association testing may have more universal appeal across the disciplines than any other excerpt may have to a particular unit of study in one class or another.
Ok, you all know me if you have been in a blog group with me. I HATED it! I love Non-Fiction, but not in this sense. I would not use it in the classroom, as Wendy said, this would be way about the 4th and 5th grade reading levels that I have in my class. It was a very slow read and he tried to make a "new idea" out of an idea that has been around a long time. I am just looking forward to the next read. As Simon Cowell said, SORRY!
ReplyDeletePosted by Wendy Kirby
ReplyDeleteBlink
Can you imagine 7 years of learning facial muscle movments? What a gift some people have for "reading" people and now to think we can learn to do it better. I certainly think everyone would benefit by improving social skills and becoming more understanding of emotions by learning to read physical signs, I know it would help me in my classroom and it would certainly help our students interact better with adults and peers. Could they tackle a book like this with their limited reading skills - NO.
My students' reading skills are a very large block to their learning success. When they do read, it is for pleasure and usually not non-fiction. However, we require them to read non-fiction every day in school. Students, at least my students, do not want to read an entire non-fiction passage for understanding. They want to skim through it, locate a word that matches the question, and copy a phrase for the answer. Using non-fiction reading in our curriculum is crucial to student learning and students must have the skills to glean the essential understandings from the text. Teaching reading skills has to be incorporated in our classrooms continually during a student's academic career, including in the high school. Very few of my students have the necessary reading skills to be successful in their core courses. I realise I teach Special Education but I see it with the regular ed students in my CT classes as well.
Well, I don't think there is any question that I would not have the students I work with read this book, but I'll definitely tell them about it! I actually thought this book was interesting from beginning to end. It is amazing to me that someone can look at a statue for a second and know that it is a fake or that a person can listen to a few minutes of conversation and accurately predict whether a couple is headed for divorce. While I was reading about those studies, I was thinking about the decisions I make about my students after listening to them read for only a few minutes. In only a few minutes, I need to be able to tell what students do well, what they don't do well, and what is causing them to struggle. Although I'm sure my accuracy rate isn't quite as good as the researcher who studied the married couples, this did boost my confidence in my ability to quickly assess my students needs just a little bit.
ReplyDeleteOne other thing I found interesting was the study Andy mentioned about priming. The priming want to go to school in September and start experimenting on my students. It is amazing how something so seemingly small could affect people in such an obvious way. It made me wonder how much the little things I do prime my students to feel or act in certain ways.
PS~ Did anyone take the race IAT? I actually took it before I read this book and I will say that I was comforted by what Gladwell had to say about it. If you haven't done it yet, check it out.
Comments by Charlene
ReplyDeleteThere were parts of this book I liked and could relate to. In regard to snap judgements about trusting people, often the snap judgement is very accurate. More information simply clouds the conclusion about a person's hidden agenda. Priming does work in a classroom situation. Like Mr. Mac said, many teachers have posters dealing with character development visible. Many of the topics covered in this book could stimulate interesting conversations or debates. I would never assign any of this book to be read by any of my students independently. This would be more appropriate in an upper level psychology or sociology class. However, certain sections that would interest them could be read to them and then discussed. The sections dealing with body language and facial expressions seem to be very much in style in some of the newer tv series, such as the "Mentalist" and "Lie to Me". These would be very useful skills to develop. However, the 500 page document of the FACS would be very challenging to read through. The sections on autism and the cop stories could be used for class discussion as well. I could see my seniors being interested in these topics. I totally disagree with Gladwell's statement that the accused in a criminal trial should not be in the courtroom. After serving on a jury for a felony case where one woman sliced another woman's face with a box cutter, it was totally necessary to see the demeanor of the two women involved. One thing about this book is that it really stimulates thinking about many issues.
Okay I am catching up with the crowd. For the most part, I honestly enjoyed this book. However, I was pretty skeptical of the manner in which the bulk of research was presented - not in terms of accuracy, but more because I felt that for each study cited, there could probably be an opposing and equally convincing study found as well.
ReplyDeleteThe premise of the book is an interesting one, and I think there is a lot of truth behind trusting a "gut" reaction. What we do with that gut reaction in education could be another book entirely - how do teachers not judge a student in the first few interactions that take place, and even after the judgment is made, how do we make sure it doesn't unfavorably impact that child's education?
In karate, we train to prepare for situations that would realistically be controlled by adrenaline in a fight-or-flight type of mindset, with the hopes that training will ingrain a desirable reaction, much the way the police officers were trained to deal with gunshots. I can understand why our students who are prone to fighting, particularily if they come from an abusive household, may have a difficult time controlling their thoughts, their words, and even their actions if they progress quickly into a reactionary state of being.
I think one of the studies that was most thought provoking to me was the study with black GRE students who, when asked to indicate race, performed more poorly than black students who were not asked this question. Of course there are many variables that could've contributed to the outcome of the study, but if the indication is true, I wonder why we have students fill in that race bubble prior to Regents examinations?
As far as applicability to my music classroom, well, I might use some information from the text to discuss with students but I wouldn't assign it as a reading. I especially would never assign it to math students - I want them to show their work, to not make hasty answers, and to use as much information as possible to logically determine their answer!
Tricia, I also went to the harvard website and took the IATs (several, because I am a dork) and thought they were really interesting!!
I want to know if the guy who sold the kurous art for millions of dollars got to keep his money ... ?