Learning and Schools are Worse?

In a guest essay to the NYT on June 20, 2023, Dr. Adam Mastroianni, writes in Your Brain Has Tricked You Into Thinking Everything Is Worse that two cognitive biases make us believe that most systems (political, social, cultural etc.) are getting worse despite objective evidence to the contrary. Specifically, he and his colleague, Dr. Daniel T Gilbert, expound on the perceptions about morale decline as defined by honesty and kindness, in their piece published in Nature titled, The illusion of moral decline. Biased exposure and biased memory are the cognitive culprits that explain how we deceive ourselves with regard to the honesty and kindness of society, but these same biases can help us understand why we perceive that our institutions, specifically our schools, are in decline.

Dr. Matstroianni writes that "Two well-established psychological phenomena could combine to produce this illusion of moral decline. First, there’s biased exposure: People predominantly encounter and pay attention to negative information about others....Second, there’s biased memory: The negativity of negative information fades faster than the positivity of positive information". He explains, "When you put these two cognitive mechanisms together, you can create an illusion of decline. Thanks to biased exposure, things look bad every day. But thanks to biased memory, when you think back to yesterday, you don’t remember things being so bad. When you’re standing in a wasteland but remember a wonderland, the only reasonable conclusion is that things have gotten worse". I believe that this helps explain the decline and support for many institutions, but specifically our schools, with people seeking to turn back the clock to schooling as it was in what we imagine to be the good old days. Let's explore this theory through the lenses of different stakeholders in our schools and ask ourselves how knowing these cognitive biases might skew our perception of our schools.

When we look in the rearview mirror of our minds we are deceived, whether we are parents, students, principals or teachers. It is important to imagine the shared experience of school through these different lenses, and ask the is the 'illusion of decline of our schools' a result of biased exposure and biased memory? Remember that biased exposure means we are likely to pay attention to the negative events. Teacher morale may be low in part because of too much exposure to negative stories that our news and social media cycles bombard us with. We remember yesteryear differently, of course, because of biased memory where school was a more idyllic place to work, where collectively educators were thought of more highly, and where authority rested more with the professionals.

It is easy to forget the rash of poor teaching or the unprofessional behavior including the abuses by professionals that were trivialized, minimized, or ignored. Of course, the Information Age has changed society, including our schools, and while negative behaviors like fights, bullying, and social anxiety existed before, the negatives never seemed as widespread as they are today. Looking in the rearview mirror it's easy to conclude that certainly parent complaints were never as easy to access as they are now because of the Internet. Much of this is, in fact, misinformation, where the power structure, or voice to convey "the truth" is based on disgruntled parties that overshare their narratives in a way that promote conspiracy theories, and distrust of schools as institutions. It's also easy to forget that textbooks basically were the curriculum, and tracking students from young ages systematically denied them access to information and opportunity. Today's students and teachers, have unparalleled access to information via Internet connections and personal devices that create the potential for authentic work in our schools. Focusing on social causes, equity issues, and socio emotional health are now being integrated, often imperfectly, but many times powerfully into many schools that were silent to these issue previously. An overreliance on standardized testing has given way to 'test optional' Ivy League schools, and opened the door to an economy where skills based hiring is gaining ground. Painting with a broad brush and the state of American schools as measured by the Gallup polling reveals the starkness of the perception that schools are worse now. When asked about the, "confidence you, yourself, have in the public schools?" with responses being "a great deal, quite a lot, some, very little or none" the data tells a clear story. In 2022, 28% responded with "a great deal" or "quite a lot", whereas in 2002 38% responded similarly and in the 1980's the results reveal mid to upper 40s, and mid and upper percentiles in 50s for the 1970s. In other words, positive perception of our public schools have been cut in half in the last fifty years.

Perhaps in part because we are wired to forget the negatives of the past, our collective perception of public schools in America is fading. Acknowledging that we are biased against the present because we are wired to remember negatives can help us recognize the progress and wins that are so evident in our schools. How do we acknowledge the positive transformations and growth of knowledge and skill if we don't recognize the cognitive bias? Access to information, is both good and bad, but acknowledging that we are wired to focus on the negative within the context of so much information, and disinformation being heaped upon us is equally important to remember in assessing the complex reality of our individual schools and school systems alike. A future focused orientation requires that we look in the rearview mirror, while giving plenty of attention to what's right ahead of us, and remember the rearview mirror's reminder that "the objects may be closer than they appear" is akin to our cognitive biases that shape our collective perceptions and direction of our public schools.