As discussed in a previous column, “… [A]nd Why Things Are Better Than You Think” is an unusually encouraging subtitle for a book about learning and leadership. We have been taught to believe that our leadership skills need to be developed because the challenges we face are unprecedented just like these times are unprecedented. We have also come to believe that these challenges threaten our productivity, our work as a whole, or even our lives. We read books to improve ourselves because our obvious flaws and weaknesses cry out for correction.
In short, books usually work first to convince us something is wrong, and then to tell us how reading [insert leadership book title here] can make it better, or easier to bear.
Factfulness by Hans Rosling turns that formula upside down and shows us the “Made in Our Minds” label underneath of most of our fears. The book is a master’s course in seeing the world as doing pretty good and improving. That is, Rosling argued before his death, seeing the world as it is. And when you see it as it is, he promises, you will see that it is not nearly as bad as you think.
In Factfulness, Rosling examines 10 instincts that prevent us from seeing the world clearly. These are thinking errors we make as humans that make us disregard, or fail to look for data that might help us gain a clearer look at the situation right in front of us. For decades Rosling worked for decades with NGOs and governments to solve large-scale world health problems. He then used his research and experience as the jumping-off point for his remarkable book. Each of these instincts he pointed out prevents us from seeing the world as it is.
This week we look more closely at the negativity instinct. I use his example from national crime statistics, and two examples I gleaned from national educational statistics and my own years of research and leadership.
The negativity instinct
We tend to think everything is getting worse. We are certain that things aren’t as good as when we were kids. Our parents are positive that things aren’t as good as they were when they were kids.
Perhaps this belief arises because media seems to fixate on, and circulate worldwide, stories of horrible abuse and crisis.
Or, a scenario I judge as more likely, perhaps it is our duty as adults to see the past through a gauzy, familiar filter knowing that we survived, and to see today’s flaws vividly because the outcome is uncertain.
In Factfulness, Rosling puts it this way: “Warning: Objects in your memories were worse than they appear.”
One example he cites looks at 25 years of crime data in the US and compares it with 25 years of polling about crime data. That is, 25 years of information about how crime actually was, and the corresponding information about how people felt about it.
The results showed that in 23 of those 25 years, Americans reported believing that crime was getting worse. In reality, crime only got worse one of those years. Twice crime stayed essentially the same as the year before.
For 22 of those years, crime had decreased. Nonetheless, time and again, people’s opinions were that crime was getting worse.
This is the negativity instinct. We tend to want to think things are getting worse, even when they are, in fact, getting better. We must resist that instinct.
How can we fight against the negativity instinct?
Rosling says that we must aggressively fight against the negativity instinct. The solution is to look carefully at the available data, and search for evidence of a different result than the one that your human brain is habituated to finding.
That is, we have to look for evidence that things might actually be okay.
This might run counter to our survival instincts, which are drawn to stats that are getting worse. But we can’t get in the habit of ignoring promise and improvement, or else we are doomed to perpetually complain about today, even when things are actually better than ever.
In education, we hear versions of “the sky is falling” frequently.
The data seems striking: More students than ever before need remedial classes when they enter college. (High schools are failing!) More students than ever are dropping back to two-year programs from four-year programs. (Colleges are failing!)
In my Master’s program I was shown these remarkable statistics: 20% of freshmen at 4-year colleges needed remediation, and up to 60% at technical colleges needed the same assistance. [1]
Only later, while intently looking at possibilities for students in my own “College and Careers” class, did I see an underlying trend that made me question the significance of the other data.
College enrollment had increased dramatically since a decade earlier. In fact, 37% more students were attending college than at the turn of the century.[2] So we were not necessarily seeing a decline in the abilities of our academic superstars heralding an end to America’s dream. Instead, we were sending students to college who a decade earlier would not have gone to college at all. They might have been, in fact, less prepared.
Students were not getting dumber. In fact, more than ever were getting a chance and were succeeding in college.
If 37% more were attending, and only 1 in 5 needed remedial help, we were sending 17% more kids to college who did not need assistance.
This isn’t a crisis, it is a cause for celebration. But that isn’t how we heard about it in education, because that headline didn’t make the news.
I had to figure it out myself.
Defeat the negativity instinct by looking at the whole picture
For the past decade and a half, everyone who taught in high schools learned that the average score on the ACT was not going up. The only explanation, again, was that high schools were failing! Except, once again, this Chicken Little take was wrong.
By looking closely at the testing data the same way we did the remediation data, we saw that the scores were actually a very positive sign about the overall health of our educational system.
The fact that the ACT scores are essentially the same today as they were in 1990 is actually a triumph. This is because more kids than ever were taking the test.
In 1990 only “college-bound” students took the test. These were our “brightest”, or at least our most academically inclined, students. In most cases, this roughly equated to our top 10% of students. So at the school where I was principal, if it was 20 years ago, this would have meant that only 5 or 6 of my students would take the test.
Today many schools and school districts require ALL of their 11th graders to take this test. 60 kids instead of 6. And the scores, instead of dropping precipitously as we allowed our “non-college-material” kids to take the test. stayed roughly the same.
Imagine that – today, ALL of our students on average are scoring about the same as our “brightest” students a generation ago. This could mean that overall our education system has dramatically improved for the average student. It could ALSO mean that we were terrible at judging our students and that high schools unnecessarily kept millions of kids out of college who might have succeeded there.
Either way, the results revealed by a stagnant ACT score are pretty remarkable. Educators should be proud of this massive step forward in our democratic education.
Of course, a better step forward would be dismissing the importance of these tests altogether, but that is for a later time.
So this week, when you hear a distressing statistic, whether in the news or at work, take the time to look at the numbers around it. Defeat the negativity instinct by intentionally looking for the good news that headline writers and marketers are trying to hide. Take a page from Factfulness and ask what data is missing to give you the full picture.
You might surprise yourself.
[1] https://wowwritingworkshop.com/about-1-in-5-students-need-remedial-help-in-college/
[2] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cha.asp