Too Much Information?

When further information hinders deeper understanding

Submitted as a final reflective paper through the course "Critical Exploration in the Classroom," taught by Professor Eleanor Duckworth, in December 2005

I recently uncovered journals I wrote during my first year as a teacher. The inaugural entry is dated September 13, 2001. Two days earlier, my fourth grade students and I had witnessed the collapse of the World Trade Center on live television. I wrote, “My instinct was to answer the children’s questions by supplying as much information as I possibly could… My political science background gave me keen insight into the context of the events… I saw that my students were confused and worried, and I have found, at least for me, that information is the most comforting way to relieve confusion.”

When I recounted my handling of the terrorist attacks to my headmaster later that week, he responded by shaking his head and asking, “Have you ever read Piaget?” I replied that, being a political science major, I had not. After he gave me a quick lecture on Piaget, I wrote defensively in my journal, “It did not occur to me [on 9/11] to ‘respond to their questions with questions’ or to ‘let their developing minds work through the answers’ or whatever… I felt it was my duty to be there protecting those children from fear and confusion, and to tell you the truth, I think I did a pretty damn good job.”

*****

Exactly four years later to the day, I sat in a crowded classroom as Professor Eleanor Duckworth began the first session of T-440, “Critical Exploration in the Classroom.” In the inaugural entry of my new T-440 journal, I wrote, “I had read and heard that T-440 is a unique class… So I was expecting something ‘different,’ and I felt comfortable supposedly knowing what to expect” (9/15).

There it is again: Comfort. Knowing. Relief from confusion. Information. One of the major questions with which I have grappled this semester arises from the value I instinctively place on information. When in the course of a lesson should a teacher introduce information—if at all?

Before I proceed any further, I feel the need to define the methodology central to T-440, what Professor Duckworth has dubbed “critical exploration.” You can tell a lot about it simply by the fact that she has never handed us a definition. Over the course of the semester, I have defined critical exploration in different ways. In October, I wrote that the idea is “to ask questions so that my learner can build on his own ideas” (10/28). In November, I described it as “the process of understanding what someone else is really thinking by listening and posing questions rather than by taking cues only from initial remarks, or from assumptions about meanings and intentions” (11/16). And in December, I wrote that critical exploration is “based on the idea that… knowledge is constructed from prior knowledge, not by someone depositing new content in a learner’s head” (12/6).

However you phrase it, critical exploration is chiefly about providing opportunities for learners to construct their own understandings. At the beginning of the semester, I definitely viewed this idea as incompatible with information-giving. And I struggled with this perceived incompatibility. After reading a compelling essay by Donald Murray, I wrote, “I feel like there’s so much I want to make [students] aware of, and only to listen, as Murray recognizes, feels like I’m cheating them out of their education” (9/28). I also wrote of the “temptation… as a role model to impart your knowledge to those younger than you” (10/5).

The battle lines were drawn for me one afternoon in early October. A number of us had arrived early for T-440, and one classmate suggested that we place name cards around the table to aid Professor Duckworth in her attempts to refer to each member of the thirty-person class by name. Yet when Professor Duckworth entered the room, she remarked, “I hope that these cards don’t prevent me from learning your names!” I wrote in my journal, “Professor Duckworth’s point, as I interpret it, is that she will learn and internalize our names more effectively if she practices getting our names right, rather than having us tell her our names… every time she wishes to call on us” (10/10).

The next day, I conducted a critical exploration of the Lucille Clifton poem “miss rosie” with one learner. Frustrated that after twenty minutes he had yet to notice any figurative language in the poem, I offered him a list of poetic elements for which he might look as he read the poem aloud. In my fieldwork report, I referred to this as a “questionable move” and expressed intense regret for having provided my learner with information rather than waiting for him to discover it himself (10/11). I had crossed firmly into the no-information camp.

I articulated my opposition to information-giving most clearly in my response to Duckworth protégé Lisa Schneier’s written account of her own teaching of “miss rosie.” At one point in Schneier’s exploration, one of her learners suggests that perhaps the speaker is “a White person criticizing a Black person;” Schneier immediately informs this learner that the poet, Lucille Clifton, is African American. I tore Schneier apart in my journal: “Schneier’s comment was an intrusion on her learner’s organic process of interpreting language. She essentially stuck a roadblock in front of a promising path of inquiry that might have included discussion of racial inequality, personal prejudice, civil rights, and the learners’ own perceived status in society. It could have been a way for the learners actually to relate the poem’s text to their own immediate life experiences” (10/20).

Yet despite my strong words, I continued to struggle with my desire for information. As we conducted our own explorations of mirrors during class time, I routinely asked my teaching fellow whether my learning group had arrived at “the right answer,” knowing full well that he would not tell us, nor was that the point of the activity (10/21). A week later, I even wrote, “I kind of wish now that Professor Duckworth had lectured us on the first day of class about what the point of critical exploration is. I might have had deeper insights about the fieldwork and the readings prior to this point” (10/28).

My attitude about information-giving finally began to shift as we embarked on our final projects. I joined a project group with my classmates Susan and Nicole; Nicole led a critical exploration on a topic of her choice, with Susan and me as learners, for three sessions, and then Susan and I led our own exploration with Nicole for three sessions. For Nicole’s three sessions, she brought us to the Museum of Fine Arts to explore paintings.

For the first two sessions, totaling almost two hours of exploration, Susan and I discussed one particular painting without knowing its title, its painter, its time period, or anything else about it. We amazed ourselves at the amount and depth of ideas and questions we were able to pose. Once the second session had ended (or so we thought), Nicole finally allowed us to read the plaque on the wall, offering the official museum explanation of the painting, which happened to differ significantly from our own. I wrote in my journal, “All of a sudden, we had so many more observations and questions, so much more to explore! We kept talking for about ten more minutes… [The new information had not] cut off our exploration in any way. Instead, we engaged with this new information, grappled with it, tried to make sense of what we understood about it, but also waged rhetorical war against the interpretations we believed to be narrow, misguided, or inaccurate… New information did not all of a sudden erase what we had previously thought, but rather came into active conflict with it and forced us to explore further” (12/3).

A moment in a later session that Susan and I led (topic: "the Kennedy mystique") provides an interesting contrast to my revelation in the museum. I had given our two learners, Nicole and Susan’s friend Sachi, a photograph of Mexican children gathered around a statue of John F. Kennedy. I related the episode in my journal: “Sachi remarked that it looks Photoshopped, leading Susan to say quickly that it’s not. I clarified that ‘as far as we know,’ it is not Photoshopped” (12/2). I was clearly quite aggravated by what I perceived as Susan’s “Lisa Schneier moment.” I wrote, “There were myriad possibilities of where the exploration might go if Sachi and Nicole allowed themselves, temporarily, to believe that it might be Photoshopped. What might they explore about the ‘handling’ of the Kennedy image? About the power of modern technology to reframe history? About the power of an advanced country’s technology to affect how people see developing nations?” (12/6).

Was I reverting back to my pre-museum anti-informationism? Or was I beginning to draw an important distinction that might lead me to question my initial assumption that critical exploration and information-giving are incompatible?

The answer to these questions arrived during Alythea McKinney’s second visit to our T-440 class. Alythea, another Duckworth protégé, led us in two critical explorations of antique domestic artifacts. At the end of the session, a classmate asked Alythea if she knew in what year one particular artifact had been created; without missing a beat, Alythea responded, “1921.” This prompted Susan to ask Alythea at what point, in an ongoing exploration, she would reveal more “facts” such as the date. (I had been pondering the same question, stemming from the experience I shared with Susan at the museum.) I wrote: “My hope… was that Alythea would acknowledge that new information, introduced at the right time, can add to the richness of the learner’s exploration. But she gave a different answer. Alythea said she always errs on the side of not giving this information, because it tends to stifle conversation. I think she further said—or perhaps this is my interpretation of what she said—that the introduction of information that contradicts what learners have theorized artificially stops the discussion, and that this phenomenon is unfortunate and should be avoided” (12/3).

My negative reaction to Alythea’s answer forced me to reexamine my own thoughts about information-giving. Why had I disagreed with Alythea’s approach yet also cringed at the information-giving of Schneier and Susan? I continued writing, reflecting on my museum experience: “While I agree with Alythea that it is often inappropriate to present such information at the very beginning… I see value—not danger—in presenting it later in the session, before it has ‘ended’” (12/3). In contrast, I began to recognize that Schneier’s information-giving was intended not to prompt further exploration but rather to cut off exploration: “Schneier seemed to be determined to keep her learners on the right track… Similarly, Susan did not want our own learners to explore based on an incorrect idea” (12/6).

My conclusion, therefore, was that I need not view information-giving as a question of “whether or not.” Rather, it is a question of “when” and “how”! I wrote: “We have all been conditioned to believe that a teacher is most helpful when he or she is providing learners with information… In some of these instances, it might be helpful to withhold the information until later—even just a few minutes later—so that the learner can fully explore the ‘incorrect’ notion and see what might come of it, before getting back on track, so to speak.” I concluded: “Teaching is not an exact science. It’s an interactive art. And each artist creates his or her art slightly differently” (12/6).

Once I had been liberated from this “either-or” mentality, I began to feel comfortable deciding, in the moment, whether to provide or withhold information; no longer would I rely on some rigid doctrine. In our second Kennedy session, I played for Nicole and Sachi an audio recording of Robert F. Kennedy without revealing the identity of the speaker. I knew that since they had previously been discussing John F. Kennedy, they would likely assume the voice to be his. My hunch was correct, and I revealed the critical information only after they had discussed the recording as if it were of President Kennedy. Later, I wrote that when Nicole and Sachi “thought the speaker was a president,” they “noticed things that they otherwise would not have noticed” (12/11).

Toward the end of the same session, they asked me if I knew the particular dates of the Kennedy assassinations, among other events. I wrote, “I concluded that their curiosity about the dates showed that they were raptly engaged in the subject matter, and that the new information might lead them to even more interesting explorations. So I told them” (12/11).

I made two seemingly contradictory decisions during this session: I withheld the identity of the speaker on the recording yet provided my learners with the dates they requested. I believe that both decisions were sound ones, based on my sense of the moment and on my goals for the session. They were made possible by the maturity I had gained by thinking through the dilemma of information-giving.

Over the winter vacation, I decided to conduct a critical exploration with my parents as learners, using a print-out of the same painting Nicole had shown to Susan and me at the museum. I had a very specific goal in mind: to provide my learners with new information along the way and track how the new information helps them explore further (or hinders them from exploring). About halfway through the session, I wrote, “I agreed to tell them the title: ‘Time Unveiling Truth’… Mom immediately noticed the hourglass.” Not only did the new information lead to new observations, but it also prompted them to critique the new information using the observations they had already made: “Dad said that the man [whose identity he had just concluded to be Father Time] ‘seems more submissive to the woman than vice versa,’ which seemed odd to him because it doesn’t ‘fit the idea of Father Time, the power of time’” (12/29). I felt the giddiness of success, with one caveat: “Both Mom and Dad now seemed eager to have me tell them more” (12/29). While my selective information-giving had opened up new exploratory doors for them, it had also allowed them to desire for me to play the role of a traditional teacher, telling them all the information there is to know and letting them bask in the “knowledge” that they now possess. We have all been conditioned as students to desire information from our teachers, as I myself demonstrated countless times during the course of the semester. Yet I have come to believe that encouraging students to unlearn this desire, and encouraging them to trust and become excited by their own understandings, is one of the greatest gifts a teacher can give.

Despite my more mature understanding of the dilemma of information-giving, I have not finished grappling with it. Professor Duckworth writes: “Any wrong idea that is corrected provides far more depth than if one never had a wrong idea to begin with.” In a recent journal entry, I responded to her statement with more questions: “I find it intriguing that Professor Duckworth chooses to use the passive voice here: ‘that is corrected.’ Who does she prefer do the correcting, and when? The learner himself? A co-learner? The teacher, immediately? The teacher, much later? The teacher, gradually over a long period? Does it matter who and when? It seems pretty clear to me that she does not believe the answer is ‘the teacher, immediately.’ Yet all my other options seem possible in the context of her methodology of exploration” (12/7).

*****

My final T-440 journal entry, written hours after concluding my final fieldwork session, illustrates the culmination of my pedagogical journey:

“Tonight, while on the way to the airport, I overheard two conversations that reminded me of what I’ve learned this semester in T-440.

“The first conversation was on the Blue Line T train. I was sitting next to a man and a woman, presumably a couple, who were complaining about someone who they both know well. The man said something like: ‘He has trouble listening to someone tell him what to do. But you know, that’s 99.9 percent of life, listening to someone tell you what to do. He has to understand that. You take directions from someone, and that’s how you learn. And then later, you know how to do it and tell someone else what to do.’

“And I thought, wow, what a warped view of humanity, however traditional and conventional it might be. No wonder this person has no motivation to listen to anybody. He sounds like he’s so disempowered! Perhaps if he were allowed and encouraged to discover what to do, rather than only listening to someone tell him, he would be more willing to listen to others—because others would be listening to him.

“The second conversation was on the Airport Shuttle. I was sitting across from a mother and her two small children. The younger child, a girl of about three or four years old, was sounding out words. She looked at the signs painted near the ceiling of the shuttle. ‘Mommy, they all say Travel!’ ‘No,’ her mother responded, ‘that word is Terminal.’ I thought, if I were that mother I would ask her to sound out the word, and see if she doesn’t correct herself.

“In section a few weeks ago, we talked about how we keep seeing critical explorations all around us. I am also now noticing situations that have potential for meaningful explorations and constructivist learning, but this learning doesn’t come to fruition because most people don’t know that there are alternatives to conventional views of teaching and living” (12/19).

Critical exploration is important, but not only for the obvious reasons. Yes, it is important for children to feel confident in their abilities to think. And yes, it is important for students to be able to apply their learning in new situations, which can only happen if they understand the subject matter deeply rather than superficially.

Yet I believe critical exploration is important mostly for the reason Professor Duckworth provides at the conclusion of her essay, “The Having of Wonderful Ideas”: “The more we help children to have their wonderful ideas and to feel good about themselves for having them, the more likely it is that they will some day happen upon wonderful ideas that no one else has thought of before.”

The mother of the young girl on the Airport Shuttle is, truly, leading her daughter to a Terminal. Her daughter’s exciting exploration was terminated before my very eyes. I hope that, soon, she truly will be allowed to Travel with her ideas. Who knows where she might find herself landing?

[Note: The three educators whose split-second decisions I critique in this piece are all people I now know on a personal level and admire. I have since discussed these critiques with each of them at length and have emerged a wiser teacher for having done so.]

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