Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's lingering too. She's a lurker and this
Speaker 2: is Stuff you Should Know. The Education edition.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm pretty excited about this after learning more about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is your pick. Where'd you come up with this?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Well, that's good. I was hoping that it wasn't like, well,
Speaker 2: I had a really bad experience with a teacher when
Speaker 2: I was a kid.
Speaker 3: No, I had always good experiences generally. But now I'm
Speaker 3: worried that it was a listener because I've gotten a
Speaker 3: few of those lately. Like, hey, when you said you
Speaker 3: didn't know it was me, I usually make a note, but.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, I don't know. Well, if you suggest to
Speaker 2: the Pygmalion effect, you're probably the only one, and you
Speaker 2: can feel free to email and be like, hey, sorry,
Speaker 2: and you said you didn't know it was me. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Well we're talking about the pig melion effect and it
Speaker 2: does have to do with education, but it has to
Speaker 2: do with you know more than that too. And for
Speaker 2: those of you who don't know the pigmalion effect, is
Speaker 2: a kind of self fulfilling prophecy. It's called an expectancy bias,
Speaker 2: I believe, and it basically says, in effect that if
Speaker 2: you have high expectations for say a student or an
Speaker 2: employee or something, they're likely to perform better than other people.
Speaker 2: And it has something to do in all sorts of
Speaker 2: different ways. It turns out from that relationship, that high expectation,
Speaker 2: and it's pretty neat if you think about it. And
Speaker 2: the Pygmalion it's named after, I guess an ovid metamorphosis story.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I think it was. I believe it was
Speaker 1: a statue, isn't that right?
Speaker 2: I think Pigmalion was the sculptor, and the statue is Galateea.
Speaker 1: Okay, I knew it from you know, because I'm not
Speaker 1: the art major.
Speaker 2: Well i'm not either.
Speaker 3: I was the English major. So I read George bn
Speaker 3: Ard Charles's play pig Malion in college in a class.
Speaker 3: And then, of course My Fair Lady was based on
Speaker 3: pig Malion, in which I think her name was Liza Doolittle.
Speaker 3: Sort of, Hey, let's take this rough around the edges
Speaker 3: young woman and make her into a fair lady.
Speaker 2: I knew it is trading places.
Speaker 1: Exactly, but you know, sort of a classic story.
Speaker 3: The original play is great, and it all has to do,
Speaker 3: like you said, with this sort of self this idea
Speaker 3: of the self fulfilling prophecy, which had been around for
Speaker 3: a long long time, but in the nineteen sixties, of course,
Speaker 3: when psychology and doing studies on all kinds of things
Speaker 3: was really blossoming and just sort of exploding.
Speaker 1: In all directions.
Speaker 3: Super hip tho was well, I don't know about that,
Speaker 3: but maybe in those communities. But there was a psychology
Speaker 3: name Robert Rosenthal who got pretty interested in this idea
Speaker 3: of how bias can affect something like performance or assumptions
Speaker 3: or you know, thinking like you know, it moved out
Speaker 3: of the classroom, but initially like hey, this kid has
Speaker 3: promised or this kid does it, and then they end
Speaker 3: up being like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And there's a lot of implications
Speaker 2: obviously of you know, okay, well, then does that mean
Speaker 2: that there's kids who are not performing as well as
Speaker 2: they could because they're not being treated well by their teachers?
Speaker 2: Like sure, there's a lot And I think one of
Speaker 2: the things that I like about this is that it
Speaker 2: just how much debate and research and argument has gone
Speaker 2: into just this one segment of approaching education really just
Speaker 2: goes to show how seriously we take education, or have,
Speaker 2: at least in the past.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so. I mean that certainly doesn't mean
Speaker 3: we figured it out, but no, I think people have
Speaker 3: long studied and tried and argued and debated on the
Speaker 3: best way to help kids reach their potential.
Speaker 1: Then that's a good thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So there was a sociologist named Robert Mertin, and he
Speaker 2: turns out to have been the person who coined the
Speaker 2: term self fulfilling prophecy. I hope he copyrighted it because
Speaker 2: I owe him some money, just me. Anyway, that was
Speaker 2: back in nineteen forty eight, and even by then that
Speaker 2: was a good almost fifty years after experimental data started
Speaker 2: coming in that showed fulfilling prophecies existed. So I guess
Speaker 2: our kind of hero or at least protagonist antagonist? I
Speaker 2: guess it depends on how you look at him. Robert
Speaker 2: Rosenthal in the sixties he hit upon a pretty great
Speaker 2: study idea along with a colleague of his name, Kermit Fode,
Speaker 2: which is a great name in writing out loud, blinked
Speaker 2: out in Morse code, it's a great name all across
Speaker 2: the board. But working together back in nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 2: they took on running rats through may which was already
Speaker 2: like just so cliched back then that it was like
Speaker 2: a perfect thing to experiment on, because it was like
Speaker 2: the people that they were actually experimenting on, the students
Speaker 2: who were running the research, were the ones who were
Speaker 2: being experimented on. But the rats amazes was just so
Speaker 2: ubiquitous they didn't question that at all. It didn't even
Speaker 2: occur to them that they would be being experimented on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they ended up coming up what I think
Speaker 3: should be just these words on a T shirt and
Speaker 3: just don't even explain it, because what they told experimenters
Speaker 3: that we're working with these rats, they said, all right,
Speaker 3: you got some really great rats in this group, and
Speaker 3: they were bred to be maze bright, but those other ones,
Speaker 3: they're maze dull, and I just think that would be
Speaker 3: fun on a T shirt. But actually these rats were
Speaker 3: assigned randomly. But what they found out was that the
Speaker 3: dull rats, the Mays dull ones, hit their peak performance
Speaker 3: three days in and then started to go downhill where
Speaker 3: these really bred to be Mayze bright rats just kept
Speaker 3: on improving, and so the conclusion was, I think these
Speaker 3: students are getting these rats that are Maze Bright and
Speaker 3: are just you know, hey, little buddy, you can do it.
Speaker 1: I know you got it.
Speaker 3: Andy, Sure, you're a smart rat. Like they're handling them better,
Speaker 3: they're talking them up, they're encouraging them, and it's working.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I mean again, you said that they were
Speaker 2: assigned randomly and there was no such thing as Maze
Speaker 2: Bright or Maze dol rats. They were all just the same.
Speaker 2: So they had to have something to do with the
Speaker 2: researchers because there was no difference between any of the
Speaker 2: rats that were assigned. I think in the worst, the
Speaker 2: worst interpretation is you could also suggest that the Maze
Speaker 2: Bright rat student experimenters could could even have been fudging
Speaker 2: the numbers a little bit to meet their expectations. Had
Speaker 2: con but it's a possibility. And actually that kind of
Speaker 2: led to one kind of branch of study that that
Speaker 2: came out of that, Mays Bright May's Dole rat experiment.
Speaker 2: How much expectancy bias affects researchers in scientific studies. That
Speaker 2: was the first leap that it went to, but shortly
Speaker 2: after that it ended up in the classroom because a
Speaker 2: principle of Spruce School and Elementary in San Francisco read
Speaker 2: about this rat experiment. I think it was an American
Speaker 2: scientist in nineteen sixty three, yesh, and the principal, Leonora Jacobson,
Speaker 2: wrote to Robert Rosenthal and said, Hey, if you ever
Speaker 2: want to replace like rats and experimenters with students and teachers,
Speaker 2: I'm your person. And very quickly Rosenthal took Leonora Jacobson
Speaker 2: up on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, by very quickly, I guess in science terms. A
Speaker 3: couple of years later, right, and they said, all right,
Speaker 3: you know, we don't know it now, but this is
Speaker 3: going to end up being a very very famous experiment
Speaker 3: called the Pygmillion experiment. And again you know, named for
Speaker 3: or the art and the play and.
Speaker 1: What else was it?
Speaker 2: Trading Places?
Speaker 1: Trading Places? That's right.
Speaker 2: I keep going to say forty eight hours, but that's
Speaker 2: not it at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but actually trade that came afterwards, so you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Sure, great movie, though, which one Trading Places?
Speaker 1: I love it?
Speaker 2: Okay, I've never seen forty eight hours?
Speaker 1: Oh really, yeah, it's a good one.
Speaker 2: Okay, So which one's better? Trading Places or forty eight Hours.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean they're both kind of great. One is
Speaker 3: just more of a straight up comedy, which is trading places. Sure,
Speaker 3: forty eight hours was sort of in that cop buddy
Speaker 3: movie action thing. Also has laughs, Yeah, for sure, but
Speaker 3: you know it's prime Eddie Murphy.
Speaker 2: Okay, that sound like more of a trading spaces person
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 1: Trading places, trading place, that's an HDTV show totally.
Speaker 3: So boy, that was a good sidetrack. Eddie Murphy's got
Speaker 3: a new Beverly Hills cop coming out, by the way.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's right. I wonder how that's going to be.
Speaker 1: I wonder too.
Speaker 2: I don't feel like he's aging poorly. He doesn't seem
Speaker 2: to be getting less funny over time. Although I haven't
Speaker 2: seen any of his stuff very recently.
Speaker 1: We'll see I haven't either. I'm reserving my opinion untill
Speaker 1: all right, that's fair, all right.
Speaker 3: So Spruce School, San Francisco, it was performed on these kids,
Speaker 3: white majority of Mexican American minority, but mostly working class kids.
Speaker 3: This wasn't some like when I first heard Spruce School,
Speaker 3: I thought it was some like Super heighty twenty Private.
Speaker 2: Side I did too, sounds like it.
Speaker 1: It sure it does, doesn't it, especially in San Francisco.
Speaker 2: But one more thing, very crucially about this school. The
Speaker 2: kids were grouped by reading ability. So if you weren't
Speaker 2: a very good reader, you were in a group or
Speaker 2: a class with other kids who weren't a very good reader,
Speaker 2: and so on and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we're going to talk a lot about grouping
Speaker 3: because it has a lot to It's not a great
Speaker 3: thing to do, as it turns out, and it's got
Speaker 3: a lot to do with a lot of this for sure.
Speaker 3: So students at the school, they were given a test,
Speaker 3: and the researchers told these teachers. And as we'll crucially
Speaker 3: find out too, the test was not given by the researchers.
Speaker 1: They were given by the teachers. Correct.
Speaker 3: Yes, so that's going to come into play as well.
Speaker 3: But they told the teachers, said, all right, we've got
Speaker 3: these results. You've got some bloomers or quote unquote growth
Speaker 3: spurters in your class, and they're probably just like these
Speaker 3: maze bright rats. They were like the they're going to
Speaker 3: really improve over the school year, just you watch. We
Speaker 3: gave him this test. It was the Harvard's Test of
Speaker 3: inflected acquisition, and it's supposed to assess their potential, which
Speaker 3: was not true at all. What they actually took was
Speaker 3: an IQ test called Toga Flanagan's Test of general ability,
Speaker 3: and there were some problems with that right off the bat,
Speaker 3: right with this Toga test.
Speaker 2: So one thing chuck about that test of inflected acquisition.
Speaker 2: It didn't exist. They just they made it up so
Speaker 2: that teachers, if they were possibly familiar with the test
Speaker 2: of general ability, they wouldn't be like, wait, this is
Speaker 2: isn't This isn't what you would use to find gross
Speaker 2: burgers or bloomers. They just made up a test. Because
Speaker 2: this was a made up the results were supposed to
Speaker 2: be made up too. Again, the teachers thought that they
Speaker 2: were administering a test and that the results were real world,
Speaker 2: but they were being lied to. They're being manipulated in
Speaker 2: the exact same way those students were told that some
Speaker 2: of their rats were mays, brighter, maze dull. Exact same experiment,
Speaker 2: just with humans.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because the idea is to see if teachers think
Speaker 3: that a kid is supposed to have a growth spurt intellectually,
Speaker 3: then that will end up being the self fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker 3: So these students were chosen at random. The teachers were
Speaker 3: given that information, and after months and months, they took
Speaker 3: this test again, the Toga test at the eight month mark,
Speaker 3: the one year mark, in the two year mark.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so, just as Rosenthal predicted in his hypothesis,
Speaker 2: I should say Rosenthal and Jacobson, the principal the the
Speaker 2: people who had been or the kids who had been
Speaker 2: identified as growth spurners or bloomers actually did bloom academically.
Speaker 2: They gained all sorts of IQ points over the course
Speaker 2: of the eight months and then year and then two
Speaker 2: years when they took and retook the tests. And that
Speaker 2: even though the effects were mostly pronounced among first and
Speaker 2: second graders, that was enough. That was enough to just
Speaker 2: kind of show like this is a real deal. These
Speaker 2: kids were no different than the other kids. The only
Speaker 2: difference was that these bloomers were the ones whose teachers
Speaker 2: were told keep an eye on them because they're going
Speaker 2: to be amazing kids.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And what's interesting is for the uh, I think, the third, fifth,
Speaker 3: and sixth graders, they showed that they actually improved at
Speaker 3: the same rate the bloomers did the ones who were
Speaker 3: assigned that tag at least at the same rate or
Speaker 3: slightly even slower rate or lower rate did than the
Speaker 3: control group, and the researchers.
Speaker 1: Rosenthal basically said, well, that's because.
Speaker 3: When you're younger, you're your mind is more malleable, and
Speaker 3: so that that's probably it. And also because the school
Speaker 3: and these teachers probably you know, think that their reputation
Speaker 3: wasn't like they may have felt bad for these kids
Speaker 3: who weren't who didn't get the bloomer tag, so they
Speaker 3: may have like paid more attention to them or something.
Speaker 2: Right, or the younger kids hadn't been at school long
Speaker 2: enough to establish like, hey, I'm actually not that smart
Speaker 2: or hey I'm actually really bright, so their their reputation
Speaker 2: wasn't established. You know, no big man on campus label
Speaker 2: had been applied yet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so if you're starting to sense like, oh wait
Speaker 3: a minute, then he just immediately sort of explained away
Speaker 3: something that didn't agree with his finding, you will see
Speaker 3: that that kind of becomes part of the story.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So they published a study in nineteen sixty eight called
Speaker 2: pig Malion in the Classroom, And again they named it
Speaker 2: after Pigmalion because in that story from Ovid, the sculptor
Speaker 2: Pigmalion sculpts a beautiful woman falls in love with her
Speaker 2: and loves the statue so much that the goddess Venus says,
Speaker 2: I'm going to make you a real live person. So
Speaker 2: the attention that Pygmalion paid to Galatea his statue created
Speaker 2: a magical transformation in his statue from statue to human.
Speaker 2: There was some sort of magical intervention. So it actually
Speaker 2: is a really great, great name. And I can't think
Speaker 2: that that didn't have something to do with how much
Speaker 2: it exploded onto the scene, because it's really difficult to
Speaker 2: understate what just to bomb. This dropped not just in academia,
Speaker 2: but in popular culture. It got picked up and talked
Speaker 2: about four years afterward.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a great place to break.
Speaker 3: A I thought you might say that, all right, well,
Speaker 3: let's take a break and we'll be right back and
Speaker 3: talk about this explosion of understanding right after.
Speaker 4: This shot shot.
Speaker 3: All right, So where we left off. The study was
Speaker 3: called Pigmilion in the Classroom, published in sixty eight as
Speaker 3: the paper and then also notably is a full book.
Speaker 3: If it was just the paper, it may have just
Speaker 3: sort of been, you know, passed around through academia. But
Speaker 3: because it was a book, it became very popular, and
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, Barbara Walters is interviewing Rosenthal, and
Speaker 3: the New York Times has got it on the front page,
Speaker 3: and you know, like the mainstream media is all over
Speaker 3: this is you know, basically saying and you know, kind
Speaker 3: of like the media does with something like this. They're
Speaker 3: not digging into the data like academia will, as we'll see,
Speaker 3: but they'll run big headline and they'll say this is
Speaker 3: really significant because we all knew that the way we
Speaker 3: teach our kids is wrong, and this kind of proves it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I think that was another reason why it
Speaker 2: had such a huge effect on like the larger culture,
Speaker 2: because people have been suspecting for a while that putting
Speaker 2: kids into groups by you know, reading ability was a
Speaker 2: bad idea. It was doing a disservice to him. Now
Speaker 2: there's this paper that showed demonstrably that that was absolutely true,
Speaker 2: that was a terrible idea. And yeah, like you said,
Speaker 2: there were headlines all over the place. People were discussing it,
Speaker 2: and Rosenthal he was basically the ringleader, the ring master
Speaker 2: to all this stuff. He was very much on board
Speaker 2: with not pointing out, oh, actually, you guys are missing
Speaker 2: a lot of nuance. It's not quite that cut and dry.
Speaker 2: He was like, yep, absolutely, like exactly what you're saying,
Speaker 2: this black and white thing, where like, yes, this is
Speaker 2: absolute proof. I'm totally going to go along with that.
Speaker 2: And he got criticized just for that alone, just not
Speaker 2: intervening in how his science and findings was being communicated
Speaker 2: to the larger public and in fact kind of playing
Speaker 2: a role in making that happen, just kind of capitalizing
Speaker 2: on the general populations. In comprehension of statistical analysis, we
Speaker 2: don't know what that is or how to do it,
Speaker 2: so we rely on scientists to explain it to us
Speaker 2: in terms we can understand or the press, and if
Speaker 2: the scientist, as we've covered many times Chuck isn't forthright
Speaker 2: or honest, that stuff can get turned into all sorts
Speaker 2: of misunderstandings or overblown findings.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And one of the big things too that we should
Speaker 3: point out was that the fact that we told you
Speaker 3: earlier that before the break, that these tests really kind
Speaker 3: of showed this effect for these younger kids in first
Speaker 3: and second grade, but not for the you know, the
Speaker 3: kids in the older grades, and in fact, it showed
Speaker 3: a negative correlation sometimes in some of the older grades.
Speaker 3: They didn't even put that in the book at all,
Speaker 3: so they're already sort of cherry picking stuff. And the
Speaker 3: book was the thing that really blew up more so
Speaker 3: than the paper. Yeah, and so of course the press
Speaker 3: isn't covering that aspect of it, probably because they didn't
Speaker 3: even know about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So there's two tracks. The popular press like the
Speaker 2: New York Times or Today Show or whatever, they're covering
Speaker 2: it in glowing terms like it's absolute proof of what
Speaker 2: everybody always suspected. The other track was a pretty wide
Speaker 2: river of criticism coming out of the halls of academia
Speaker 2: from other psychologists of different stripes who just were teeing
Speaker 2: off on this paper. And even though it didn't necessarily
Speaker 2: capture the attention of the larger public in academia, there
Speaker 2: was a thorough debate that started right after the paper
Speaker 2: came out and went on for a good decade and
Speaker 2: actually turned out to be really healthy, not just for
Speaker 2: Rosenthal's paper, synhal and Jacobson's paper, but for I guess
Speaker 2: statistical analysis as a whole. But I think because Rosenthal
Speaker 2: ended up inadvertently creating the meta analysis study. But before
Speaker 2: we get to that, took. Let's talk about some of
Speaker 2: the stuff that was wrong with the paper statistically speaking.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean the Toga test we should talk
Speaker 3: about right out of the gate, because this test was
Speaker 3: not supposed to be used on first graders or with
Speaker 3: kids with an IQ below sixty, and that alone probably
Speaker 3: accounts for, or at least accounts for some of the
Speaker 3: fact that these low results were coming in on these
Speaker 3: kids in the younger grades, and then they would obviously
Speaker 3: gain much more ground because they've then aged into the
Speaker 3: test by their time, they're taking this when they're really
Speaker 3: supposed to.
Speaker 2: Be exactly and there was something that that was Rosenthal
Speaker 2: like responded to that. It even said, hey, even if
Speaker 2: that test does and apply to these younger kids, the
Speaker 2: fact that the same kid is taking the same test
Speaker 2: over time, it really it renders that moot. It's still
Speaker 2: going to show accurate results.
Speaker 3: I see what he's saying there, but it's just moot
Speaker 3: to me because it wasn't even supposed to be given
Speaker 3: to a kid that.
Speaker 2: Young, right. But also, he's totally full of beans right there.
Speaker 2: He's so the first initial findings that first test produced
Speaker 2: such totally skewed results that as those kids aged into
Speaker 2: the test and started getting normal results, and you compared
Speaker 2: those those later results to the first results, you would
Speaker 2: see all sorts of crazy gains that were completely incorrect,
Speaker 2: like they just weren't true. That was a big part
Speaker 2: of it. That Toga test was not set up for
Speaker 2: kids with IQs under sixty, which is a big problem
Speaker 2: because first graders in the United States on average had
Speaker 2: IQs of fifty eight, and so you can see it
Speaker 2: reflected in some of those results, like some kid had
Speaker 2: an IQ of eighteen. That's almost impossible and certainly they
Speaker 2: wouldn't be like reading at that point. Same with the kid,
Speaker 2: I think with thirty. And then one of those kids
Speaker 2: later went from like thirty to like one hundred, which
Speaker 2: is coming close to maybe even gifted level. Like the
Speaker 2: results were just terrible and even worse than that. In
Speaker 2: the book as an academic should they didn't include any
Speaker 2: of the raw data either.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that means, you know, you can't go out
Speaker 3: as another researcher and sort of try and replicate that.
Speaker 3: It just kind of occurred to me what he was
Speaker 3: sort of saying with that initial defense was like, you know,
Speaker 3: you have a broken scale that doesn't say what your
Speaker 3: true weight is, but you can still you know, it's
Speaker 3: still accurate because you can see how much weight you
Speaker 3: gain or lose by using that same scale, right, And
Speaker 3: you're like, yeah, but you still don't know how much
Speaker 3: somebody weighs.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's true, But then also the thing that makes
Speaker 2: him dishonest in that response is that imagine and it's
Speaker 2: broken the first time you weigh yourself, and then you
Speaker 2: fix it, and you weigh yourself after that, and so
Speaker 2: those are the right results, but you're comparing them to
Speaker 2: that first broken result. It's completely useless.
Speaker 1: Why does anyone even have scales anyway?
Speaker 2: I don't know, doesn't make any Why for God's sakes
Speaker 2: do they keep them at hotels like at the Beach?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: There was one in one of my rooms when we
Speaker 2: were on tour, and this one was in San Francisco.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I just glared at it a couple of times,
Speaker 2: and it eased itself back under the vanity.
Speaker 3: I mean, hey, I weigh myself to keep track of things,
Speaker 3: but for God's sakes, don't weigh yourself on vacation.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say I do at home, but not
Speaker 2: on vacation, not even on tour.
Speaker 3: So anyway, scale diversion aside, Like you said, he didn't
Speaker 3: include raw data. That means you can't come along afterward
Speaker 3: and try and replicate it, So that's a big problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Other people chimed in and said things like I think
Speaker 3: Richard snow Is psychologists who said, also, you know, apparently
Speaker 3: teachers couldn't remember, and a lot of them reported that
Speaker 3: they even didn't really even glance at this list on
Speaker 3: who was a bloomer or not a bloomer, so, which
Speaker 3: is very strange. It sounds like some of these teachers
Speaker 3: didn't even fully realize or care much that they had
Speaker 3: an experiment going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I thought that was kind of weird too, because
Speaker 2: I didn't get the impression that these were anything but
Speaker 2: you know, normal dedicated teachers. But I don't know, maybe
Speaker 2: they suspected that this was made up, or that this
Speaker 2: was Maybe they were like, there's no test that can
Speaker 2: really pick that up, so I'm not even going to
Speaker 2: pay attention to that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Or they were busy teaching that.
Speaker 2: That could be it too, for sure. Another one was
Speaker 2: that the teachers themselves administered the tests, the initial tests,
Speaker 2: so they weren't administered by professional child psychologists. They were
Speaker 2: ministered by teachers who already had an impression of the kids.
Speaker 2: They were administering the tests too, because it was the
Speaker 2: previous year's teacher. So if you were saying second grade,
Speaker 2: your first grade teacher was the one who administered your test.
Speaker 2: I didn't get that, but that was another criticism for academia.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, So people are debating this, they're starting to sort
Speaker 3: of argue positions, you know, foreign against over time. There
Speaker 3: was a twenty eighteen overview of a lot of these
Speaker 3: debates from someone named Thomas L. Goood and Natasha Stirsinger
Speaker 3: and Alison Levine and hats off Olivia for like getting
Speaker 3: all these names mcau. There's a lot of people that
Speaker 3: did a lot of follow up stuff, so nice job. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but they noted that the individual the individual students result
Speaker 3: results varied a lot on the different post tests, saying,
Speaker 3: you know, basically, we just don't have a lot of
Speaker 3: evidence that these IQs really improved at all.
Speaker 2: Yes, but here's the thing. This is what's astounding of it.
Speaker 2: I think it was. Robert Snow in his book review
Speaker 2: of it, wrote that it's possible that the pygmalion in
Speaker 2: the in the classroom like study actually did turn up
Speaker 2: evidence of you know, this, this idea that we've all considered,
Speaker 2: you know, for a long time as possible that teachers
Speaker 2: expectations affect student performance. Right, But if it did, it
Speaker 2: did it by accident, because he was just saying, like,
Speaker 2: the study was so poorly executed. And it seems like
Speaker 2: Robert Snow was correct in that guess that somehow, some
Speaker 2: way this study did show this is a real thing.
Speaker 2: And over time from this ten year long debate over
Speaker 2: the results and the methodology and all that stuff and
Speaker 2: has off to Rosenthal. He didn't just like, he didn't
Speaker 2: just like throw the study out and run off with
Speaker 2: a big bag of money with a dollar sign on it.
Speaker 2: He stood there and he answered his critics he had.
Speaker 2: He engaged in the debate for a good decade, and
Speaker 2: over the course of that decade, more studies with better
Speaker 2: methodology and better execute were created and studied the same effect,
Speaker 2: this pigmalion effect, and they found Nope, he was right.
Speaker 2: Whether it was a bad study or not, this is
Speaker 2: it produced some sort of correct results that we do
Speaker 2: realize now. The pigmalion effect does have it is real
Speaker 2: to some degree.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and depending on who you were, you could come
Speaker 3: at it from a different angle, and each of you
Speaker 3: have a point because, as Livia points out, like just
Speaker 3: sort of politically, as far as being hard on teachers
Speaker 3: or not, it would play out in different ways. A
Speaker 3: writer for the San Francisco Chronicle said like, see, here
Speaker 3: you go, these low expectations on these children of lesser income.
Speaker 3: That's what's causing them to fall behind and maybe even
Speaker 3: drop out of school later on. Whereas the Albert Shanker,
Speaker 3: who was with it United Federation of Teachers said, no,
Speaker 3: it's not the teacher's fault. It's you know, it's poverty itself,
Speaker 3: and we have too many kids in these classes and
Speaker 3: we don't have the right materials.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and regardless of where you fall on it, there
Speaker 2: was still a big push to do away with like
Speaker 2: advanced placement classes or gifted tracks or even remedial stuff.
Speaker 2: They were like, just because you think of kids are medial,
Speaker 2: do not put them in a remedial class. Put them
Speaker 2: in like a mixed aptitude class, and they'll do way
Speaker 2: better than if you put them in a remedial class.
Speaker 2: That was a big deal. I don't guess it wasn't
Speaker 2: successful because there was still plenty of AP classes and
Speaker 2: snotty little AP students in the nineties. When I was
Speaker 2: in high school, I just loved to shove it in
Speaker 2: your face. Oh I'm in AP history.
Speaker 3: Did you not take any AP classes? No, I took
Speaker 3: a couple. I took AP history in English. But looking back, like,
Speaker 3: I don't know, I can definitely see like they were
Speaker 3: great classes, and I felt like the teachers were better,
Speaker 3: But it also may have been my own bias because
Speaker 3: it was AP and also like a student that you know,
Speaker 3: they don't think should have tested into there, if they
Speaker 3: had been thrown in there, maybe they would have risen
Speaker 3: to that level. So it's, you know, with with adult eyes,
Speaker 3: I know, look back at kind of how messed up
Speaker 3: all that stuff was.
Speaker 2: Well, if it was better teaching from better teachers with
Speaker 2: better material, then the argument for people who are like
Speaker 2: against that would say, then all classes should be like that,
Speaker 2: Every history class should be taught like that. Don't just
Speaker 2: make it for the ones who you think are gifted
Speaker 2: or whatever. So that was a I think that still
Speaker 2: probably is a big deal. I'm not particularly up on
Speaker 2: the state of education today or early childhood education. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so I don't know if they're still putting kids in classes,
Speaker 2: different separate classes or not, But if not, I'm sure
Speaker 2: there's still people arguing against it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure yet as far as
Speaker 3: upper grades. You know, all my experience right now is
Speaker 3: with Ruby and the third grade at her little hippie
Speaker 3: dippy private school, where of course everybody is you know,
Speaker 3: treated equally and given the same opportunities.
Speaker 1: Everyone wins or loses.
Speaker 3: So one kind of cool thing that came out of
Speaker 3: this was because there was there was it was so famous,
Speaker 3: and because there were so many people sort of criticizing it,
Speaker 3: so many people defending it, and so many people doing
Speaker 3: other studies. Because as we'll see, this soon leapt into
Speaker 3: the private sector with like business, into the military, like
Speaker 3: people started sort of applying this kind of thing to
Speaker 3: all kinds of you know, stuff outside the classroom. It
Speaker 3: led to Rosenthal saying, well, hey, now I can look
Speaker 3: at like all these studies together, and like, was that
Speaker 3: the literal birth of meta analysis?
Speaker 1: Was he one of the first.
Speaker 2: That's how I took it. Yeah, that shame. Nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 2: he got together with a colleague Donald Rubin, who was
Speaker 2: the head of Harvard's statistics or statistical analysis department. Uh huh,
Speaker 2: So this guy's like as good as it gets with statistics.
Speaker 2: And they got together three hundred and forty five studies
Speaker 2: that looked at expectancy effects and found that there was
Speaker 2: like there was a pronounced effect that was detected in
Speaker 2: the if you just looked at the high quality studies on.
Speaker 1: It, right, Okay, so they're looking at this stuff.
Speaker 3: Like you pointed out earlier, the people couldn't replicate because
Speaker 3: there wasn't raw data, and there were psychologists and neuroscience
Speaker 3: researchers that were pointing this stuff out like, hey, we
Speaker 3: can't even replicate this thing. There were also people pointing
Speaker 3: out that the people that are criticizing it and the
Speaker 3: people that are defending it, like sometimes they're not even
Speaker 3: looking at the same data, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So Rosenthal was like, hey, this if we're looking
Speaker 2: at actual student progress based on teacher expectations and you're
Speaker 2: just looking at gains in IQ testing, yeah, that's not
Speaker 2: looking at the whole picture. Like if you also take
Speaker 2: into into account scores from year end achievement tests or
Speaker 2: teacher assessments on improvement or how many books a kid
Speaker 2: can walk around with on their head without spilling them
Speaker 2: over because they have really good posture. If you take
Speaker 2: all this stuff into account, you get a much clearer
Speaker 2: picture of whether the student actually did improve or not
Speaker 2: thanks to teacher expectation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly so. And you know, I mentioned they did
Speaker 3: it outside the classroom. I think they found the biggest
Speaker 3: gains in military settings. Yeah, which, yeah, the idea that
Speaker 3: you know, you probably just have more sway as a
Speaker 3: drill sergeant than you do as a teacher.
Speaker 1: Maybe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, you have that much more influence in
Speaker 2: the more influence and control or you have over somebody,
Speaker 2: the more effect your expectations can have on them.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But they definitely like they saw this play out, so
Speaker 3: it's not like we're this is an episode on how
Speaker 3: this isn't a thing, because it is a thing, whether
Speaker 3: they found it by acts and or not. Like there
Speaker 3: was one example that Lyvia found where, uh, there were
Speaker 3: employees putting together medical kits and they brought in this
Speaker 3: group of new hires and told the managers like, hey,
Speaker 3: these people they're they're mays happy.
Speaker 1: What was it, may bright?
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're maze bright, like you ought to see them
Speaker 3: put together these kids like you're going to do great.
Speaker 3: They got a lot of potential here, and that that
Speaker 3: group ended up breaking records for production levels.
Speaker 2: Right. And so if you're in management science, you're teaching
Speaker 2: everybody this, like just just go out and lie to
Speaker 2: your managers, and your employees will start like actually producing
Speaker 2: way better than you would think for for no reason
Speaker 2: other than their manager has higher expectations thinks they're better
Speaker 2: at their job than other people. And that is a huge,
Speaker 2: huge part of all of this. Yeah, there doesn't seem
Speaker 2: to be the same effect if you are forthright and
Speaker 2: honest with the teacher, because the whole thing seems to
Speaker 2: be rooted in the idea that the teacher or the
Speaker 2: manager has to genuinely believe that this kid or this
Speaker 2: student or this employee is above average and expect above
Speaker 2: average results from him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I say we take another break and we talk.
Speaker 3: We dive a little bit more into that after this.
Speaker 2: Eh sounds good, ma'am. Shot shot, So, Chuck. One thing
Speaker 2: that I think probably everybody listening to this episode so
Speaker 2: far has come across as a question, is okay, if
Speaker 2: teacher's expectations actually influenced student performance. How what are teachers
Speaker 2: doing that that can have that effect? And that's been
Speaker 2: a big thread of this study as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because you know, to put this into you know,
Speaker 3: to implement this is kind of the important thing. Sure,
Speaker 3: it's not just to sit back and say, well, we
Speaker 3: know all this stuff now, because hopefully the goal is
Speaker 3: to help kids, you know, learn better. So they did
Speaker 3: put together some broad categories over the years of how
Speaker 3: if you're a teacher, you might be transmitting positive expectations
Speaker 3: you might not be and not even know it by
Speaker 3: saying certain things. And they put together a four point
Speaker 3: thing which after I read it, I was like, oh
Speaker 3: my god, why weren't they already doing all this?
Speaker 2: I know it's kind of sad, but.
Speaker 3: Here it is climate that is giving a warm emotional
Speaker 3: environment input, giving them more and tougher assignments these students. Output,
Speaker 3: allowing the students more opportunity to engage with that material,
Speaker 3: and then the fourth win is give more detailed feedback.
Speaker 2: Right, so teaching essentially ideally, well yeah, exactly. So what
Speaker 2: they found was that given that the idea that some
Speaker 2: of their students were growth spurgers or we're going to
Speaker 2: really you know, make some crazy good moves. This school year.
Speaker 2: Teachers did different stuff with that information, Like, they didn't
Speaker 2: all just follow what Rosenthal would have expected, which is they,
Speaker 2: you know, create these high expectations of warm learning environment
Speaker 2: for those those growth spurgers or bloomers. Instead, some of
Speaker 2: them were like, Okay, well then that kid's good. Let
Speaker 2: me go focus my attention on.
Speaker 1: The lower amazing students.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the maze dull students.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: And so what was interesting about that too, because that
Speaker 2: actually is kind of sensible. It's a sensible strategy if
Speaker 2: you have a finite amount of time and attention to
Speaker 2: give to all your students. They found that in some cases.
Speaker 2: There was a psychologist, Rona Weinstein, who found that when
Speaker 2: that was done, in some cases, the low performing students
Speaker 2: who got more attention actually still did worse than the
Speaker 2: higher performing students. Yeah, and she hypothesized that that was
Speaker 2: because those kids were basically being patronized, and even though
Speaker 2: they're six, they still understand that on some innate level,
Speaker 2: and so they were still getting signals that there the
Speaker 2: expectations for them were low.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or maybe they were already separated out, which kind
Speaker 3: of goes to that whole idea that like putting kids
Speaker 3: in a group just labeled, and you know, and a
Speaker 3: lot of times, you know, they would. I remember my school,
Speaker 3: even where my father was principal, the you know, the
Speaker 3: the troubled Kids program, and this wasn't necessarily academically, but
Speaker 3: the behaviorally troubled kids were all put in a special
Speaker 3: group that had a label. I can't remember. It was
Speaker 3: an acronym that basically indicated kind of how great they were,
Speaker 3: which is, you know, it's a good things like you
Speaker 3: should definitely shouldn't say like call them like these are
Speaker 3: the bad kids or whatever. So I think you're they
Speaker 3: would put labels on them that would hopefully give them
Speaker 3: an aspirational expectation or something, or they or they did.
Speaker 3: In the seventies, my dad's whole thing was outdoor programs.
Speaker 3: He was the first person in the i think in
Speaker 3: the state, definitely in the county that started like all
Speaker 3: these camping programs and he really believed that getting kids
Speaker 3: out in nature if they had behavioral problems could really
Speaker 3: you could see gains there and stuff like that. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: it was pretty cool, great, great principle, Yeah, and full stop.
Speaker 2: So what your point is is that if you if
Speaker 2: you are if you separate kids, or you even talk
Speaker 2: about certain kids in certain ways, if you even have
Speaker 2: them separated mentally, it's going to be transmitted or telegraphed
Speaker 2: to both groups of students as a whole.
Speaker 3: Sure, And they found that even if they weren't separated,
Speaker 3: just sort of the language that teachers would use in
Speaker 3: the class would divide them, the way they talk to
Speaker 3: certain kids and other kids.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that's what I was saying, okay, which is,
Speaker 2: you know, it's pretty interesting. But again, all of it
Speaker 2: comes down to this, and I shouldn't say again because
Speaker 2: I haven't made this point yet. What this is all
Speaker 2: predicated on the fact that teachers are human beings with biases,
Speaker 2: with prejudices, with just thoughts that they can't, you know,
Speaker 2: avoid unconscious ways that you treat or act towards certain
Speaker 2: kids where you favor some over others. And then there
Speaker 2: was something that stuck out to me because there was
Speaker 2: a researcher from New Zealand named Christine Ruby Davies. No
Speaker 2: bet when she talks it sounds awesome, but she has
Speaker 2: set up a project called the Teacher Expectation Project where
Speaker 2: she's like Hey, remember how you guys said a minute
Speaker 2: ago that for this to be effective, you have to
Speaker 2: lie to the teachers. You have to mislead them so
Speaker 2: that they genuinely believe that the students are gifted. I
Speaker 2: say nuts to that. I'm going to figure out a
Speaker 2: way to teach teachers to be high expectance or high
Speaker 2: expectancy teachers so that they for everybody right, so that
Speaker 2: they have those effects on everybody without them, you know,
Speaker 2: being duped. But one of the things she came up
Speaker 2: with that to me was like, yes, I think that's
Speaker 2: seventy percent of it right there. Teachers don't know all
Speaker 2: of their students equally well in the classroom. And if
Speaker 2: you've ever been one of the students who you your
Speaker 2: teacher didn't really know you very well and clearly knew
Speaker 2: other students better.
Speaker 1: Yeap.
Speaker 2: That is a that is an isolating feeling, and it's
Speaker 2: not as easy to learn as it is when you're
Speaker 2: one of the students that the teacher knows that kid.
Speaker 2: And so that's one of the things that Christine Ruby
Speaker 2: Davies teaches, like, know all of your kids equally well.
Speaker 2: It's very important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3: I mean I was well known by all my teachers
Speaker 3: because I didn't consciously make a point to but I
Speaker 3: was the class clown and I was always involved in
Speaker 3: trying to crack jokes and being funny, and I may
Speaker 3: have been disruptive, but the teachers also loved me because
Speaker 3: it wasn't usually like a like super negative disruption. I
Speaker 3: would just see a good opportunity for a joke and
Speaker 3: run with it.
Speaker 2: But as you know, well plus your dad would have
Speaker 2: fired them if they gave you any back.
Speaker 1: Talk, right yeah, right, well into high school too, you know.
Speaker 3: But as a long story short, I was well liked
Speaker 3: by teachers and so they paid me more attention. Livy
Speaker 3: also points out something really important about grouping kids is
Speaker 3: if you just throw kids in a group of like,
Speaker 3: you know, may's dull group.
Speaker 1: Some of these kids.
Speaker 3: May have dyslexia, some may have ADHD, some may have
Speaker 3: insecure housing and family issues and be stress. Some may
Speaker 3: have limited English fluency. So you're throwing all these different
Speaker 3: issues in as one group, and of course that's going
Speaker 3: to be an issue.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, so yeah, that's why they say use mixed group,
Speaker 2: mixed ability groups. That's when I'm easually teaching the teacher
Speaker 2: Expectation Project. Another thing that was touched on is creating
Speaker 2: a caring, non threatening environment where you just it's a
Speaker 2: warm environment for all students and you use respectful language.
Speaker 2: You can't be like, gosh, you're so dumb, you dumb dumb.
Speaker 2: You shouldn't say that to students, right. Yeah, And this
Speaker 2: is another one too, working with students to set their
Speaker 2: own goals, which a lot of teachers would be like,
Speaker 2: you can't actually do that, but apparently Ruby Davis research
Speaker 2: has shown, or some research out there that Ruby Davy
Speaker 2: sites has shown, if you allow students to set their
Speaker 2: own learning goals, they will actually shoot for something that's
Speaker 2: challenging but doable. They probably aren't going to be like, well,
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna learn to draw huckleberry hound this year.
Speaker 2: That's my learning goal, you know, like they're going to
Speaker 2: do something a little more challenging than that, and they'll
Speaker 2: learn along the way, and they will have a sense
Speaker 2: of like agency and a stake in their learning, Like
Speaker 2: they'll take it that much more seriously, and they'll know
Speaker 2: if you plot and chart their learning through learning goals
Speaker 2: and allow them to track it themselves, they will they
Speaker 2: will know when they've learned rather than I saw having
Speaker 2: to look to the teacher to be like, yes, you
Speaker 2: just learned something. Way to go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what near's the horse? If I remember correctly, you
Speaker 3: can draw it ye of a horse?
Speaker 2: I used to. I lost it as I approved on Instagram.
Speaker 1: No, everyone should go check that out. I thought it
Speaker 1: was a great drawing of a horse.
Speaker 2: Thanks.
Speaker 3: Another thing that they said, as far as the high
Speaker 3: expectations teaching from Christine Ruby Davies goes is praising effort
Speaker 3: rather than accuracy. Very big deal and working equally with
Speaker 3: all students. And I'm not going to name my daughter's
Speaker 3: school for obvious reasons, but like they're doing it right
Speaker 3: and it's just great to see that happening. So just
Speaker 3: big props to her teachers and everyone at her school.
Speaker 3: And it is not just her school. It's happening more
Speaker 3: than when we were kids at more and more schools,
Speaker 3: but it's still not as much as it should in
Speaker 3: the same breath, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Instead, two more just related effects that have to
Speaker 2: do with the Pigmalion effect, the Gollum effect, which is
Speaker 2: the opposite if you have low expectations at least the
Speaker 2: lower performance which makes sense too, and that galatea effect
Speaker 2: named after Pigmalion statue that what we expect for ourselves
Speaker 2: impacts our performance, mostly because it mediates how the people
Speaker 2: in authority, a teacher or a manager or something, sees us.
Speaker 2: So the way that they see us impacts how we
Speaker 2: see ourselves, which impacts how we perform, which impacts how
Speaker 2: the manager sees us. And it's just like our boros.
Speaker 2: That's right, pretty interesting stuff. Man, good pick Chuck. I
Speaker 2: think it's so great. You just came up with this
Speaker 2: all by yourself.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I hope I did.
Speaker 2: I hope you did too. Well. Since we both hope
Speaker 2: that Chuck came up with this by himself, it's time,
Speaker 2: of course for a listener mail.
Speaker 3: Hey guys, I live in Rhode Island, where I run
Speaker 3: a Charter Books, an independent bookstore opened in the spring
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 3: We report to the New York Times Bestseller List. Nice,
Speaker 3: and I can confirm that you guys really nailed just
Speaker 3: about everything about it.
Speaker 1: And I thought you might like a few more tidbits.
Speaker 2: Yes, please.
Speaker 3: Every week we export a CSV document from our bookstore
Speaker 3: point of sales software, upload it to the bestseller list portal,
Speaker 3: and as mighty as they are, it's still amusing to
Speaker 3: see that it's basically just comes down to us emailing
Speaker 3: them at Spreadsheet, along with all the other booksellers. Of course,
Speaker 3: if we haven't done it by eleven am on Monday,
Speaker 3: they send a gentle reminder if we inadvertently miss a week,
Speaker 3: because they that you report all fifty two weeks. They
Speaker 3: send a message about how much they value our input
Speaker 3: and how disappointed they are that we forgot.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, a little passive aggressive.
Speaker 3: And then every week they also send an email asking
Speaker 3: about any bulk orders, which you explained very well in
Speaker 3: the episode. You are correct in implying how powerful it
Speaker 3: can be.
Speaker 1: The list.
Speaker 3: That is, authors, publishers, publicists, and other entities in the
Speaker 3: industry frequently ask if we report to the Times. And
Speaker 3: years ago, when I was with another bookstore, we received
Speaker 3: a weird order for twenty copies of a random ya
Speaker 3: fantasy book. Turned out to be a bungled effort by
Speaker 3: an obscure publisher to do some book laundering, as Chuck
Speaker 3: would say, so hours after we took the order, we
Speaker 3: received a sternly worded message from The New York Times
Speaker 3: that they wanted documentation of all orders, basically asking.
Speaker 1: For our receipts.
Speaker 3: None of this is our shattering to you guys, probably,
Speaker 3: but it was fun to hear you talk about my
Speaker 3: day to day work.
Speaker 1: That is Steve from Charter Books.
Speaker 3: So hey, if you're near Charter Books and Rhode Island,
Speaker 3: support your indie bookstores.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, matter where you live, support your indie bookstore
Speaker 2: friends for sure.
Speaker 3: That was Steve right, Yeah, any similar picture they had
Speaker 3: our book on display?
Speaker 2: Awesome, Thanks Steve. We love it when people round out
Speaker 2: information that we've talked about. And if you want to
Speaker 2: be like Steve and do something like that, you can
Speaker 2: do it via email. Send it off to stuff podcast
Speaker 2: at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
Speaker 2: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,