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u/haywoodjabloughmee 22h ago
Imagine the ones with bat as the first word and they didn’t get it figured out. That would be a tough pill to swallow.
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u/mortalitylost 21h ago
Imagine the ones that decided to come to class high that day and didn't have any idea what was going on except mind games
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u/humptheedumpthy 23h ago
Amazing experiment.
There is another piece of research I saw that showed that some of the best performing students outperform others NOT because they are smarter but because they are more persistent owing to an inherent belief that they SHOULD be able to figure it out.
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u/Street_Roof_7915 20h ago
It’s the idea that intelligence is static versus something that can be developed and strengthened. There is an official name but I am very tired.
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u/donorcycle 23h ago
This is how teachers should be. Knowledge and prepare them for adulthood / life.
Our education system in the US currently is an absolute joke.
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u/RayLikeSunshine 11h ago
It’s called growth mindset. It’s why teachers have moved from “you’re smart” to “you work hard.” Source: I’m an American teacher.
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u/Naughtynuzzler 20h ago
I mean that is just blatantly not accurate. It absolutely varies on a state-by-state basis.
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u/donorcycle 19h ago
Do you know where we rank globally in terms of education?
I'll wait...
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u/Naughtynuzzler 19h ago edited 19h ago
Lol yes. I do. I'm a teacher. You have to take it on a state by state basis. Massachusetts, for example, when taken on its own compares very well to the rest of the world. Since states dictate the majority of educational policies within their own borders, national statistics are often heavily skewed by the low performing states.
I argue that the majority of our deficits are cultural, not educational. Being well educated doesn't seem to be a culturally relevant or popular thing to be right now in the US. And that's certainly not the fault of schools.
We have a decentralized system and serve a MUCH more diverse student body than basically any other OECD nation that tests. Our situation certainly calls for improvement, but to simply lump the blame at the feet of teachers and schools, and call what we do a "joke" is not a good-faith argument.
If you look at a country like Estonia, that boast extremely high test results, you can see that they benefit from a wide range of non-school related features that just simply make life easier for students. The government pays for all school food and transportation. All parents get over a year of parental leave, allowing them to spend essential learning time with their kids when they are young. Teachers have a much higher amount of classroom autonomy there - states and school boards often want to give us LESS autonomy in the US, not more. These are things schools cannot change on their own.
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u/donorcycle 19h ago
Let me preface that I have nothing but love for teachers. My comment is not directed at teachers - you are a singular entity, you cannot on your own be held accountable for our nations education system.
My comment was directed to the powers that be. The ones that purposely have systematically dummied down our education system, for their own reasons. Rockefeller family comes to mind. "I love the poorly educated." That particular side of the aisle has been toying with our education system from way back when. You are a teacher, I have no business educating you in history lol.
I firmly believe that teachers, educators et all are absolutely critical, treated like second rate citizens, and woefully underpaid. My comment 100% was directed to our government. The ones closing the Department of Education. They are the reason our education system is absolute trash. It's by design. We are the United States of America. No way shape or form should we be ranked 20th in the world. Semantics aside, some countries skewer the results, firmly agree with you. But not 19 countries. That is my point. We are still poop, lol.
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u/Naughtynuzzler 18h ago
I appreciate your clarification! There's a lot of people out there right now blaming education for a lot of things, and now a federal government who seems to only want to make.our jobs harder by taking away funding, so I'm a bit on edge lol.
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u/donorcycle 18h ago
I genuinely meant it earlier when I said - "this is how all teachers should be." Earlier, there was a video of a famous footballer and they surprised him with his old teacher when he was a little boy. This famous, somewhat cocky millionaire, turned back into a 8 year old little boy on the spot. Even took his hat off his head out of respect. My comment was - this is the kind of everlasting impact a proper parent like / educator / guardian / adult influence can have on a kid. Children will now and forever always be OUR future. They made that clear when I was a kid at least.
Education wise, there was a time in our country where we taught home ec, woodworking, metalworking, automotive, shop, etc. It gave kids the absolute basics on adulting, for when they graduate and go off into the world. It also gave the less than scholarly students at least some skill sets to use in trade work. I have 25 year old employees today who put tinfoil in microwaves and don't know to remove the container from the box with their frozen meals lol.
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u/Naughtynuzzler 18h ago
To be fair, the high school I teach at has a cooking class, a wood shop class, and a childhood development class (how to raise kids, how the early brain develops, etc.) A LOT of those skills you talk about - especially learning to not put foil in the microwave lol - were taught at home back then. Education starts with parents - we only see them for 6, 7 hours a day, 5 times a week. We don't get to teach them healthy eating habits, common sense around electrical outlets, proper hygiene... they need parents for that. And so many parents are either incapable of being there for their kids or struggling so much themselves that they physically can't manage it, you know? 90% of the teachers i work with certainly know that children are the future - but we inherit them as they come, and need to meet them where they are. Half my 9th graders enter high school and don't know their continents lol. And I don't necessarily blame their middle school teachers for that.
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u/noooooolikeusain 15h ago
I love the way you guys are interacting, respectful and sincere. And with a deep and critical understanding that teachers are not the problem, the system is, so thank you guys
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u/richarizard 19h ago
Ugh, this line of thinking always annoys me. Sorry. The US education system is in roughly the top fourth or so in the world. Not amazing, but not really that bad either. There are a few standardized tests that measure this. PISA is a big one: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/pisa-scores-by-country#title
The US still has a lot to learn from higher performing countries. Singapore has regularly topped the list for many years. Japan, China, and South Korea (e.g.) also typically score high. But the US overall also performs quite well. Ahead of many countries that might surprise you: Sweden, France, Germany, and Norway to name a few.
As u/Naughtynuzzler pointed out, the US is also a large country, so it's useful to look at it state by state. Generally speaking, wealthier blue states outperform poorer red ones, but the full picture is more nuanced than that. NAEP is usually the go-to standardized test for this question: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile?sfj=NP&chort=1&sub=MAT&sj=&st=MN&year=2024R3
I have zero faith in the nonsense currently happening (or not happening) in the current DoE, but the full US education system is much bigger than that. The full picture involves standards, teacher certifications, school accreditations, curriculum developers, and assessment structure, to scratch the surface. The US is not generally a world leader in this, but it is by no means an "absolute joke." Many countries don't even have compulsory K-12 education, let alone anything close to the Pre-K and post-secondary educational institutions that the US has.
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u/ghetto_dave 17h ago
Florida and Texas on the good list for 4th grade reading in 2024! Did not expect those states to be standouts. Great to see it though! All the other southern states need to do some catching up. Weer skrewin up da kidz.
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u/FLVoiceOfReason 23h ago
This video, or ones like it, are used in psychology class. They really help students understand how real “learned helplessness” is and how powerful it can be on us.
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u/ReesesNightmare 23h ago
i was talking to an old teacher a few weeks ago and he was telling me how they arent allowed to do stuff like this anymore, after i brought up the "test" where you had to read the directions that just told you to write your name them only do questions 1, 5, 10, and 15 instead of every single one, to teach kids how to read directions.
parent claimed it was mean to expect your students to fail if they didnt follow directions
for lack of a better word, i was dumbstruck
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u/retrorefl3ctor 21h ago
That’s a real shame because my third grade teacher did something like this with our class—basically, the directions said read all the questions before starting, and the final question was something like, don’t answer any of the questions, wait for the teacher to tell you to start. I was one of many kids in the room who jumped into answering before reading though fully, and I didn’t realize my mistake until I got to the last question. Afterward, my teacher did a great job of talking us through why we did that test and the importance of reading directions carefully and fully. It made a huge impression on me!
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u/frisbeemassage 20h ago
Were you one of my students? Lol I taught third grade a long time ago and did this exact same thing!
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u/retrorefl3ctor 20h ago
Either way, let me say thank you on behalf of all the students who you taught a valuable lesson! Classrooms are for more than just academics, they’re for instilling the foundations of critical thinking skills, and learning the importance of being able to stop and fully assess a task before jumping into it without taking the time to gather all the facts is really, really important. You did your students a real service!
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u/FilteredRiddle 18h ago
I remember my teacher doing this, though I don’t remember what grade. I was so mad when I got to the last question and saw I’d just done all of that work for nothing, because I didn’t follow the dang instructions. 😂
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u/WalmartGreder 15h ago
Ha, I remember doing that same test, except I was one of those kids that did read all the instructions.
I remember sitting there, not doing anything, while almost everyone around me was writing as quickly as they could. One of my friends had leaned over and asked, are you already done? I told him, read the last direction. He stopped, read all the way down, and then laughed and put his pencil down as well. It was really fun being called out by the teacher as one of the few that had followed directions.
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u/loonygecko 20h ago
Ironically I think the danger is that for fear of learned helplessness, the pendulum has swung to trying to make sure kids ALWAYS succeed, even if you suck, you get a trophy and pats on the back. The end result is degredation in trying hard, I mean why try to do better if the outcome is the same? And there's also a heavily reduced ability to tolerate failure and criticism, because they've never experienced it, but in the real world, you WILL have to deal with those things.
IMO there is a balance were too much failure can lead to learned helplessness but letting them have zero failure ever is not a better option. In fact we've probably all experienced learned helpless and frustrated feelings of wanting to just give up because 'it's hopeless,' and part of growth and becoming stronger is to learn how to recover and battle back instead of rolling over and giving up.
This video induced learned helplessness in 5 minutes but it was also a learning experience, especially by the 'losing' side as they learned how much attitude alone can make you fail and how important a good attitude is in success. So by inducing learned helplessness, she was actually also teaching them how to not so easily succumb to future learned helplessness.
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u/FilteredRiddle 18h ago
My favorite psychology video like this is of Jane Elliott’s original blue/brown eyes classroom experiments. Seeing something theoretical happen so quickly, in a real world example, is so powerful for understanding.
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u/EraseMeeee 23h ago
All that Aeropostale and American Eagle, the overhead projector in the background, and the teacher’s hairstyle. I can smell 2002 from here.
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u/Dear_Concept9355 18h ago
She was one of my old professors! Amazing lady. I learned a lot developmental psychology from her 😊
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u/The_Bacon_Strip_ 23h ago
This is a great experiment, we had something similar at university. After it, u start to perceive how u view other people’s opinions in a whole new way
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u/2Siders 22h ago
Could you explain what you mean by
how u view other people’s opinions
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u/ReesesNightmare 19h ago edited 18h ago
i cant speak for Ms. Strip, but what i think theyre saying is you go from yes/no to if/then pretty quickly when you realize everyone else is playin with a different deck than you.
that the answers someone else come up may not be wrong despite your opposite conclusion, because theres now theres a physical incident where you experienced that inadequacy, which was fueled by nothing more than you not knowing or not being provided with enough information to see the bigger picture, or at least the picture the other person sees
You go from "youre wrong" to "why are you right" pretty quickly
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u/mrweatherbeef 23h ago
Is it weird this made me cry? Think how often this actually plays out in real life.
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u/BaoBunny44 21h ago
When I taught preschool I had a kid struggle to write his name. And every adult kept telling him it should be easy and refused to give him extra help. So every time we practiced names (reading and writing them) he immediately gave up and would cry. I decided to take him aside and work with him one on one and he figured it out within a week or so. He just needed a little more help and a little confidence. After that he loved learning new words and writing them. I wonder what would have happened without intervention.
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u/mrweatherbeef 21h ago
Bad things. Exactly this. Catch a kid at the wrong time in their development with one bad teacher or less-than-patient authority figure and it can just snowball. Scary and sad.
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u/anonfortherapy 19h ago
I was tutoring a 2nd grader in reading when I was in college. Sweet girl. She broke down crying one day because her friends were all reading chapter books and she wasn't there yet.
I scoured the library and found the EASIEST chapter book I could find. It was in essence a longer non chapter book at low reading level and had a 'chapter' about every 3 pages. We read it together and she was so excited. Boosted her confidence a whole bunch. When she older her mom, they checked out the whole series for her to read lol
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u/dildorthegreat87 19h ago
I felt the same way, strong pang of emotion. You could see their confidence shattered, and I've known people who say things like "i can't do that because I'm not smart enough"... I'm not going to pretend that every person is equal in intelligence, and things come more easily to some than others...
But without confidence, that gap becomes insurmountable.
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u/Fit-Let8175 22h ago
This is what certain individuals project upon others to try and make them feel inferior or afraid. A form of psychological manipulation: control. Certain employers or those who consider themselves alphas or superior, such as narcissists, have often done this. Entire political parties have bowed their knees to such individuals.
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u/Hot_Dragonfruit222 22h ago
I have a learning disability. And I can completely relate to learned helplessness. I really struggled through grades one through 12. But I later learned my own methods of studying, gain led confidence and a great in college.
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u/SickARose 23h ago
The perfect cut. Just when you thought you’d learn the experiments message, you too learn helplessness.
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u/turquoisesilver 18h ago
I'm the person that struggles with the third word regardless of which group I'm in. I'm on the level of bat = tab
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u/CoffeeIsMyPruneJuice 18h ago
Apply this to my years-long job search after the 2008 economic downturn and it's no wonder why even thinking about updating my resume still gives me anxiety.
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u/Mou_aresei 20h ago
How do we know this is learned helplessness instead of the participants just extrapolating the impossibility of solving the third question based on the previous two? Or is that the same thing?
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u/ReesesNightmare 20h ago
pretty much the same thing. i wouldn't say they necessarily think its impossible but definitely the difficulty of the first two is enough to frazzle you on the third. That you believe theyre all possible, but just not smart enough to figure it out.
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u/Chef_Deco 15h ago
Learned or acquired helplessness is a terrifyingly efficient tool in the hands of bullies.
When in a situation of distress, never listen to anyone telling you there's no point in saving yourself. It just means they have every reason to keep you compliant and docile.
The applications are far-reaching.
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u/ReesesNightmare 14h ago edited 12h ago
DONT EVER get in a car if youre being taken forcibly.
They always say "do it and we wont hurt you"
then they kill you
The ONLY thing they need from a second location, is to hurt or murder you in a private place
Even if you have a gun to your head, your far better off dying where theres a chance of witnesses and criminals are sloppy when they rush. Than disappearing and never being found and them never getting caught
99,9% of the time if you put up a fight long enough, they dont* mortally wound, just hurt you. They get freaked and hop in their rapevan and bounce.
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u/tomtomtomo 1d ago
Now apply that to society
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u/LaughinKooka 22h ago
Meaningful life is impossible for some even if it is achievable since we are subjected to judgement to better be controlled as workers, i.e. performance reviews are systematic manipulations
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u/Professional_Base708 23h ago
I’m interested to know why the ones who did get the third one after the two impossible ones responded differently to the rest of their group. How were they immune to learned helplessness?
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u/spudmarsupial 22h ago
Personal history, to an extent. If you are given impossible tasks regularily then you get accustomed to being a failure. Narcissists do this to people regularily. Also kids whose parents are inconsistant with rules and punishments.
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u/Lower-Cantaloupe3274 22h ago
If you can get your hands on something called Blue Eyes, do it. It's insane.
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u/tired_of_old_memes 18h ago
It looks like six hands go up on the whirl/slapstick side of the room, and only four hands go up on the bat/lemon side.
Am I missing something? The results seem to contradict the alleged conclusion. It looks like the "learned helplessness" side of the room did better than the other half.
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u/Woerterboarding 14h ago
I think she should have given them time to talk about their tasks, before explaining to them what happened. A critical student would have remarked that these words have little to no options for anagrams, and question the task. The ability to see things from a distance and objectively is often more learning-effective than to be given an explanation, before checking if you can come up with one on your own.
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u/lookslikeamanderin 10h ago
‘That side of the room is not significantly more intelligent than this side of the room.’ 🧐
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u/jscannicchio 9h ago
wild, if you go to any anagram solver, none of them come up with "american' when you enter "cinerama"
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u/dogchowtoastedcheese 8h ago
Any recommendations for more videos or reading material like this. Recently watched the Blue eyes one, and read about the "prison" scenario kids were put through. I'd like to learn more.
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u/Ghost__zz 4h ago
Teaching students is one thing but making them experience the same, Hits different. Iam sure now in their life they will reach this state several times where they will feel stupid compared to others but will immediately remember this class.
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u/pygmydeathcult 21h ago
This is exactly what the current administration wants for our kids and future generations. Learned helplessness. Lack of critical thinking skills.
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u/dogchowtoastedcheese 8h ago
Agreed. It makes for a more pliant working class. They need more cogs for the machine.
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u/Candid-Sky-3709 2h ago
I read that per a more recent study “learned helplessness” in the exact sense does not exist because helplessness is the default for all learning beings that haven’t learned yet.
Instead a better name would be “unlearned competence” , because just like practicing for getting more competent it is possible to unintentionally learn to become less competent, e.g. by consistent frustration from tasks above reasonable skill level.
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