Our world, at a rapid rate, continues to discover ways to make past labors obsolete. Under the perspective of progress, this is a wonderful thing. Where past generations toiled for weeks to spin a single bolt of cloth, our factories can produce materials far stronger at a rate that is dizzying to comprehend. Where once thousands of small scale farmers worked with single horsepower to feed the city, large scale farming, now with only a fraction of the labor, now feeds the world. How wonderful! And yet, this same reality has had an effect on our sociological existence, and our psychological sense of self.
My background as a teacher interests me toward the impact this obsolescence has on students. However, the specifics of what this has done to students is not easy to delineate. There is not one single thread that can be chased and named as the cause. But, it has had the effect of increasing the amount of undefinable failure that students experience in their lives. Whereas most failures can be addressed and changed (the old adage of try, try again) I’ll refer to an undefinable failure here as one which cannot be easily solved. For example, if a student has borne witness to a downturn in a family’s business, there is nothing within the student’s power as an adolescent to change the event. And this is not an uncommon event, even so it might be rather common. And, again, its complexity means there will not be an easy solution.
In this situation, giving up can be a tantalizing, if not an effective, solution. In this example, supporting the family member becomes more important than “solving” the problem as it were. So, giving up on one problem opens up focus for something else. A particular career implodes because of new developments? Pivoting to a new career and transferring old skills into “experience” can work wonders. A small regional business is bought out by a national or international conglomerate? The oftentimes hands-off reality of francisement can, in the long-term, be quite profitable. Examples of this type can be endless, because, ultimately, there are many ways to accomplish a goal.
But adolescent perception often lacks the nuance of complex situations like these. Instead they can perceive that giving up was the proper solution—a solution which under the methods of academia, and more broadly public education is unsustainable. As a learned behavior, this type of capitulation goes directly against the learning process. It is inevitable that when a student approaches a new concept or skill, that they will experience a sort of discomfort, or, of course is the case with the evidentiary subjects like Science, History, and Humanities that they might experience cognitive dissonance as they are confronted with the reality that the world may not be as they had previously perceived it.
The Role of Cognitive Dissonance
When any person, young or old, discovers an inconsistency between their actions and their beliefs the cognitive state that they are put in is an extremely uncomfortable one. And the stronger and more core the belief, the more discomfort the person feels. Take the usual example1 given when introducing people to cognitive dissonance: if someone smokes cigarettes, but truly is grappling with the overwhelming evidence of the physical harm smoking causes, they will experience discomfort. Of the options available to them the most usual are: to quit smoking thus bringing action into line with belief, or to deny reality and continue to smoke, thus bringing belief into line with action.
When a person experiences cognitive dissonance, they are presented with a choice. In order to end the discomfort, there are three choices available to them. They may: change the action, change their thoughts, or change their belief. The middle of which is the path of least resistance. Thoughts don’t need to be consistent, so changing the thoughts around an action or belief erases the inconsistency, or just flat out ignores it. This is where learned helplessness comes into play.
Unlearning Helplessness
The initial concept of learned helplessness stated that after multiple attempts to solve a problem, a person “learned” that they were powerless and gave up in an attempt to prevent further exertion. However, neuroscience has flipped that idea onto its head.2 (This flipping is extremely important and beneficial to education.) The new model of learned helplessness describes the initial state as the helplessness—that the brain first assumes that it does not have power over a situation. Only after continued aversive experiences does the person learn that they do have control over the situation.
Returning to the example, someone who smokes, and then reads a convincing paper that smoking increases a person’s risk of cancer feels cognitive dissonance. Their addiction makes it difficult to change their actions, but they are also unable to unread the paper, so their belief would also now take considerable effort now to change. That is why changing thought is the path of least resistance. If the person simply adjusts their thoughts: well at least I only smoke three cigarettes a day instead of six, this perception aids in the brain feeling comfortable with the inconsistency. And this is the learned helplessness.
Now the person must have this occur over and over again in order to “unlearn” the helplessness. In order that the simple adjustment and mental gymnastics of their thoughts is so convoluted that they must either change their action or belief.
This is why most people when interviewed about their smoking habits have either convinced themselves that smoking is not harmful or they have quit, and why we continue to see a decline in acceptance of smoking especially of the original cigarette variety.
Applied to education, a student who is experiencing cognitive dissonance (whether that be from confronting a new fact about the world, or learning a new skill) is faced with the same three options. Change the action, change their thoughts, or change their belief. And so the concerned educator is faced with a threefold challenge when working with students steeped in learned helplessness.
Change the Action
Like the exemplar smoker, students have a number of habitual actions that wisdom notes are not useful. This is not to their fault, but just a reality of coming to know the world and needing to live in it. I think the most evident change of action that occurs in schools is organization. Thinking in regard to the new neuroscience of learned helplessness, this makes sense as the most common challenge.
Organization is an abstract concept, not easily defined, and—even when defined—looks different for each individual with some conceptual overlap. Like the smoker, students often hold an irreplaceable belief that their “organization” works for them. Thus, operating under new forms and needs comes as strange.
When seeking to change action then, it is imperative to demonstrate by action. If an organizational system is better—say naming files to make them easy to find—concretely demonstrating the usefulness and explicitly pointing to its usefulness would best encourage students to adopt the system. Importantly, this also includes the fact that perhaps an arbitrary or highly individualized organizational system (one that is difficult for an outsider to comprehend), is not bad if it is functional. That means that sometimes the best way to get students to be organized, is to accept that they already are.
Change the Thought
It has been noted that a majority of educational-based learned helplessness is derived from “seeking the right answer” in non-mathematical subjects. Young students have a natural inclination to seek respected figures to validate their understanding. This is easy to accommodate for concepts such as phonetics, arithmetic, and scientific facts. However, as students progress in their studies and as they are prepared for complex critical-thinking, this becomes less simple.
A metaphor is easily defined, its meaning is similarly so, yet the purpose of its use and especially its effect on the reader slips away from concrete to ephemeral. A teacher might validate a student by saying their interpretation is well-supported, logical, or corroborated, but never is there a definite proof of the response.
Thoughts are personal, consider the example of the smoker again. The thought relieves cognitive dissonance by roundabout construction—a way of accepting both belief and action despite their conflict. The important part about working with thought-based learned helplessness is ensuring that the thought does not encourage anti-reality.
If the smoker’s thought is as was given as an example, that smoking less is less worse for their health, that still complies with reality. However, if the smoker’s thought was: by smoking this particular brand of cigarette my health will be better, the thought accomplishes the same reduction of cognitive dissonance, but this time at the expense of reality.
Returning to education, a concern to be correct is good, except in the event that it is impossible. So, it is always imperative to speak directly with students and keep them in line with material reality. This enters into the realm of belief. The students must be given to the belief that material reality must never be denied.
Change the Belief
Arguably an amount of apprehension follows when considering the role that school has in changing the beliefs of the students which take part. An answer to this question is beyond the scope of this article. However, there is something to be said in relation to the previous two types of change.
Both change of action and thought stay fixed in material reality. The argument then, would be that change in belief should be supported when the student holds a belief that does not align to reality. For other beliefs students should be given the freedom to discover and formulate for themselves.
Final Thoughts
Seligman describes the cure to the instilled learned helplessness in his dogs as the forced movement and demonstration of ability by outside force. The transfer of this to humans is not direct.
With its three pointed-loops the Triquetra of Celtic symbolism, the trefoil knot is a special mathematical knot with three distinct loops. Imagining this image shows the interconnected nature of cognitive dissonance and learned helplessness. Specifically the trefoil shape, because pulling on any one end tightens up the knot, just as the compassionate teacher might find that in trying to help their student, they only tighten down the struggle.
So, it becomes imperative to define what Seligman calls movement for a particular lesson in order to be able to demonstrate to students that they are capable of doing it. Thereby breaking the learned helplessness and motivating the student to continue the behavior on their own.