Jack of all trades and master of none

I liked to dabble in different things even as a child. It drove my grandmother a little bonkers, I think, because a main memory if have of her is her reciting the phrase I used in the title. This always made me feel a little badly... as if I was doing something wrong or wasn't serious enough. Then M. (who shares my need to explore a lot of different interests discovered that there is a second line. The whole couplet goes:

A jack of all trades is master of none,

but oftentimes better than a master of one.

Now, it was nice to here that this phrase had a more positive spin, but there was always a small part of me than still felt a little badly about not being a specialist in anything. Enter the new book I finished a couple of days ago, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein. It was both fascinating and a balm to my generalist soul. The author makes a pretty decent argument that in many domains it is far better to have a broad scope of knowledge than to specialize narrowly. He even takes on Malcolm Gladwell's contention that it takes 10,000 hours to create expertise, which I found interesting, since I also really enjoyed Blink. In terms of argument, though, I think Epstein's case is stronger than Gladwell's. 

A couple of quotes to whet your interest.

"There are, of course, many routes to expertise. Some outstanding musicians have focused young. The supreme cellist Yo-Yo Ma is a well-known example. Less well known, though, is that Ma started on violin, moved to piano, and then to the cello because he didn't really like the first two instruments. He just went through the sampling period a lot faster than the typical student.

Tiger parents are trying to skip that phase entirely. It reminds me of a conversation I had with Ian Yates, a British sports scientist and coach who helped develop future professional athletes in a range of sports. Parents, Yates told me, increasingly come to him and 'want their kids doing what the Olympians are doing right now, now what the Olympians were doing when they were twelve or thirteen,' which included a wider variety of activities that developed their general athleticism and allowed them to probe their talents and interests before they focused narrowly on technical skills. The sampling period is not incidental to the development of great performers -- something to be excised in the interest of a head start -- it is integral." (p. 65)

Sampling, trying different things, being broad in exposure to activities and pursuits are all good things. In fact, they seem to contribute to the ability to develop expertise when a person discovers something they (note that they refers to the individual, not the individual's parents) are passionately interested in.

Or how about this in regard to education:

"'Some people argue that part of the reason U.S. students don't do as well on international measures of high school knowledge is that they're doing too well in class,' Nate Kornell, a cognitive psychologist at Williams College, told me. 'What you want is to make it easy to make it hard.'

Kornell was explaining the concept of 'desirable difficulties,' obstacles that make learning more challenging, slower, and more frustrating in the short term, but better in the long term. Excessive hint-giving, ... does the opposite; it bolsters immediate performance, but undermines progress in the long run. Several desirable difficulties that can be used in the classroom are among the most rigorously supported methods of enhancing learning, ...

One of those desirable difficulties is known as the 'generation effect.' Struggling to generate an answer on your own, even a wrong one, enhances subsequent learning. Socrates was apparently on to something when he forced pupils to generate answers rather than bestowing them. It requires the learner to intentionally sacrifice current performance for future benefit." (p. 85)

I admit I am very guilty of the excessive hint giving sin. Earlier on there is a description of an 8th grade math class along with some commentary. The student's ability to get the teacher to give hints and thus turning a problem from a conceptual one to a process one was illustrative for me, especially after having read the book about teaching elementary math and the importance of teaching math concepts over math processes. It is difficult for me to see my children feel frustrated (no doubt in part because some of them for a very long time had such low frustration thresholds that would cause significant meltdowns, that it has become a knee jerk reaction to try to avoid frustration in favor of family peace). After having read this, I think I need to slowly raise the entire family's tolerance of frustration.

The second piece of this was preaching to the choir. From my reading on memory, I already knew that the act of trying to remember something made it easier to eventually memorize. It's one of those weird brain things. It is not a very far jump at all to go from that to understanding that trying to learn something, even if you do it incorrectly, also aids in the learning process. You can ask my children about my various discourses on the positive nature of mistakes. For my more perfectionistic children, this is a tough and bitter pill to swallow.

[A complete aside. If this is indeed true, and the case for it is pretty overwhelming, then why on earth do we bother to put grades on the learning process? Why should you be marked down for something that is actually helpful, ie making errors? All grading then does is cause a person to not want to attempt something they may get incorrect for fear of a bad grade. this in turn stunts the entire learning process. In my humble opinion, learning should never have a grade put on it.]

In short, this was a fascinating book which I plowed through in two days despite being back at our usual somewhat harried schedule. But of course I'm going to love a book which not only encourages me to learn about a lot of different things, but goes on to tell me how good it is for me. You should read it.