Moneyball and quality history education

I’m thinking out loud this afternoon. So . . . good luck.

I’ve always been a big fan of Michael Lewis. Liar’s Poker, Trail Fever, The Blind Side . . . and one of my favorites, Moneyball.

I first read Moneyball just a year or so after it came out in 2003. It not only helped me better understand baseball but it also helped me see how change can be a good thing.

And so I had to go see the movie this last weekend. Of course, there were liberties taken with the story and characters but it did do a pretty good job of conveying the major theme of the book:

Collective and institutionalized wisdom is often wrong, causing people to make decisions based on flawed data.

The real question?

What does success look like and how can we measure it?

For those people unfamiliar with the specifics, Lewis writes about a guy named Billy Beane who was the general manager of the Oakland A’s. The problem that Beane had to solve was how to win baseball games with an overall team salary of about $41,000,000. Which sounds like a lot except when compared with just about every other team in the major leagues.

The New York Yankees, for example, had a team salary of around $125,000,000. So if the A’s and the Yankees both wanted the same quality player, the Yankees could always outbid the A’s and build a team of studs. The A’s would get stuck with the leftovers.

The solution? Sabermetrics.

Sabermetrics is a different way of finding good baseball players than what was being used at the time. Beane threw out the traditional methods of evaluating baseball players – the methods all other teams were using – and began finding players that no one else wanted and could afford but were still able to win games.

Simple stated – Beane figured out a way of defining success that was exactly opposite of what baseball purists were telling him. For example, he threw out the concept of high batting averages and base stealing. And instead he focused on walks and on-base percentage.

The result was that the Oakland A’s won more games over the last decade or so than any other team.

Yeah . . . so? Major league baseball is very traditional and hates change.

K-12 education is very traditional and hates change. We’re great at measuring stuff. We’re great at teaching the same thing, the same way it’s always been taught. Why? Just because that’s the way it’s always been done.

But I’m going out on a limb here. In the new world of 21st century, we need to start asking some of the same questions that Billy Beane was asking:

What does success look like and how can we measure it in a 2011 history classroom?

I’m in a conversation today with a group of teachers about how to do social studies standards and assessments differently so that kids learn what we want them to learn. And I’m thinking to myself:

What would Moneyball look like applied to social studies and history instruction?

Tip of the Week – Interactive Lectures II

Several weeks ago I posted a quick overview of an article, The Guide on the Stage: In Defense of Good Lecturing in the History Classroom, that appeared in the October 2009 issue of Social Education. In the article, Jason Stacy, describes his love for the lecture.

And in the current educational world of social studies instruction, the lecture is often viewed as an example of what not to do.

So let’s be clear. Stacy is not suggesting that the typical, traditional lecture is good for kids. In fact, he’s saying just the opposite:

The problem . . . is not lecturing, but bad lecturing.

But he is suggesting that done well, lecturing can be a powerful way to engage kids in content. In The Guide on Stage, Stacy describes three examples of what he calls Interactive Lectures. My earlier post discusses his Problem-Solving Lecture.

Today? A quick overview of what he calls a Comparative Lecture.

Like the earlier Problem-Solving Lecture, a Comparative Lecture forces kids to assimilate new material by placing it in “constant opposition” to other material. Stacy uses the example of the difference between a Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian view of constitutional power. By using the Comparative Lecture approach, you can engage kids in not just the theories of the two views but also discuss those who supported the differing views. And then dig deeper into why certain groups supported certain beliefs.

It seems like a pretty simple, perhaps even a traditional, approach. But by creating a framework in which differences are acknowledged and encouraged, students are able to attach both prior knowledge and new content to something that makes sense to them. One person has called this sort of framework “mental velcro,” a sticky place in the brain to attach specific details.

The framework also lends itself to useful graphic organizers such as Cornell Notes.

This framework also encourages your kids to think historically while gathering basic facts through your delivery. Questions will naturally develop in your mind and the minds of your students that must be solved. These questions and the discussion that follows is the “interactive” part.

But to be truly interactive, these questions need to open-ended, that spark debate, challenge assumptions and involve groups of kids rather than the traditional “raise your hand, ask the same kids all the time” type.

Other comparative lecture topics might include such things as:

• Brown vs. Board of Education decision
• Drop the bomb vs. don’t drop the bomb
• Different approaches to solving the Great Depression
• Expansion of slavery
• Current health care

So . . . lecture. But lecture well, lecture interactively.

Next week? The Thesis-Driven Lecture.

Have fun!