There is a distinction that needs to be brought into sharper
focus. There is a germ of truth in what has been said
recently, which makes it all the more dangerous.
a) It is /partially/ true that time-on-task is one
of the things that makes some sort of contribution
to learning.
b) In any case, even if you think lack of time on
task is bad, the converse does not hold! Time on
task is not an end unto itself. Really really not!
If the time is "merely" being wasted, increasing the time
on task will not help at all ... and in fact will hurt,
insofar as it takes time away from other more-worthwhile
tasks. Furthermore, all-too-often the time is worse
than wasted, as when students learn wrong ideas that
will need to be unlearned later.
As my friend Larry so eloquently said: "If it's not worth
doing, it's not worth doing right."
My corollary is that if it's not worth doing, it's not
worth spending a lot of time over.
Some of you may think I am belaboring the obvious, and
that it "goes without saying" that teachers only assign
work that makes good use of the student's time. If
that's true chez vous, then I'm happy for you ... but
there are plennnnty of places where it's not true.
Specifically, I know of one very large very famous
school that assigned mountains of homework. Only the
very best students could do it in a reasonable time;
some other students could do it if they stayed up
all night, which is not good because it makes people
miserable ... and it is the enemy of real learning
because it interferes with consolidation of long-
term memories.
I actually asked one of the professors about this.
++ I said "The policy seems to be that if doing one
integral by parts is good for you, doing a hundred
must be wonderful."
-- He explained: Anybody who wants to be a good
physicist needs to work hard. We're teaching 'em
to work hard."
++ I replied: "The good physicists work hard because
they love it. You're teaching them to hate it."
He was not persuaded. He continued piling on the
busywork. I would never have survived as an undergrad
at that school. And it wasn't just one professor or even
one department that was messing up.
Here's another example; By way of contrast, I fondly
recall how I was taught about Thévenin and Norton
equivalent circuits: Hardy Martel drew a diagram and
said something like "Open-circuit voltage, short-circuit
current, linear circuit, two points determine a line.
Thévenin equivalent, Norton equivalent. Useful, Know
it." And that was essentially all that was said. It
was all that needed to be said. We all looked at his
diagram and nodded. Open-circuit voltage. Short-circuit
current. Two points determine a line. That's kinda
hard to forget, especially since it is actually useful,
and gets used naturally again and again over time.
Returning to the bad-news story, I once saw a professor
lecture for 90 minutes about Thévenin equivalents,
Norton equivalents, wye-delta transformations, blah
blah blah ... for 90 minutes! And then he assigned
hours of homework on the subject, analyzing some
cockamamie circuit. And then there was a big lab
assignment, to actually build the cockamamie circuit
and measure it against the Thévenin and Norton
predictions. For at least two idiotic reasons the
predictions were no good, so the students learned
that Thévenin and Norton equivalents were horribly
complicated and useless ... quite the opposite of
what I learned when I was in school.
I will now stop belaboring the point, because the
point is that there's already way too much belaboring
going on! Too much busywork.
Maybe the students would spend more time on task if
the task were more interesting. Seriously: students
will learn more from one hard, interesting problem
than they will from 100 easier, uninteresting problems.
As another proverb says, there is the kind of exercise
the builds up muscles and then there is the kind of
exercise that just gives you blisters. It's very
hard for the teacher to optimize the level of
exercise. This is one of 100 reasons why teaching
is an art not a science, and is likely to remain so
for the foreseeable future. There is nothing easy
about this, but it needs to be done, and it needs
to be done right.
Let's not read too much into the recent posts that
emphasized time on task. I hope nobody really meant
what was said. I hope nobody really thinks that way.
But please, don't even talk that way, because of the
risk that somebody will take it literally. Time on
task is more than a mere symptom, It is surely /part/
of the problem ... but is never more than a small
part of the problem, and usually symptomatic of deeper
issues. There are 100 ways in which you could increase
the time on task *without* improving the bottom-line
outcome.
The only thing that is worse than piling on the
busywork is teaching stuff that can't possibly be
true. I look at the textbooks and the state-mandated
curriculum documents and I want to tear my hair out.
Wrong ideas about energy. Wrong ideas about entropy.
Significant figures out the wazoo. Filled "Lewis
octets" in molecules. Kooky ideas about relativity.
Kooky ideas about quantum behavior. AAAARRRGGHHHH!
I've spent a lot of time in industry, where nobody
wants more time on task. People respect the value
of other people's time (and their own time). If Joe
can do the job faster than expected, that's good.
That's 100% good. The same logic needs to be applied
to teaching and learning: If somebody can teach me
X Y and Z in half the time, that's better for all
concerned.
One more proverb: People will optimize the thing
that gets measured ... so be careful what you
measure. Measuring time on task is a profoundly
bad idea. Measure the thing you care about!