
Effective teachers have a gift for noticing what one researcher calls "withitness." - robg
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_gladwell?printable=true
======
mattmaroon
As usual, Gladwell is cherrypicking data to display something unrelated to
reality. Let's look at the first QB picked since 1999.

2000: Chad Pennington, this year starting qb for the Jets, doing well.

2001: Michael Vick, who was one of the top few QBs in the league. Of course
talent scouts can't predict animal cruelty.

2002: David Carr: Playing backup to Eli Manning. Started for 6 years until an
injury sidelined him. Not a McNabb, but far from a Tim Couch

2003: Carson Palmer: 2 pro bowls with the Bungles.

2004: Eli Manning: Superbowl MVP

(here's where players are still too new to tell much about)

2005: Alex Smith: that one hasn't worked out yet and may never.

2006: Vince Young: Promising backup on the Titans.

2007: JaMarcus Russell: Starting for the Raiders

2008: Starting for the Falcons.

Either way, in any non-Gladwellian universe, I'd say college QB scouts are
doing pretty well.

~~~
robg
Hmmm, who's cherrypicking data? ;)

2000: Chad Pennington, Pick 18, Career Rating: 89.7; Marc Bulger, pick 168,
Career Rating: 85.7, Tom Brady, Pick 199, Career Rating: 92.9

2001: Mike Vick, Pick 1, Career Rating: 75.7; Drew Brees, Pick 32, Career
Rating: 89.1

2002: David Carr, Pick 1, Career Rating: 74.6; David Garrard, Pick 108, Career
Rating: 85.4

2003: Carson Palmer, Pick 1, Career Rating: 88.9; Tony Romo, undrafted, Career
Rating: 96.6

2004: Eli Manning, Pick 1, Career Rating: 76.4; Big Ben, Pick 11, Career
Rating: 89.9; JP Losman, Pick 22, Career Rating: 76.9

2005: Alex Smith - Noted; Aaron Rodgers, Pick 24, Career Rating, 89.8; Jason
Campbell, Pick 25, Career Rating: 80.5; Matt Cassell, Pick 230, Career Rating
84.2

2006: Vince Young, Pick 3, Career Rating: 68.6; Jay Cutler, Pick 11, Career
Rating: 88.6

2007: JaMarcus Russell, Pick 1, Career Rating: 67.5 - _uhhh, "top" QB_

2008: Matt Ryan, Pick 3, Career Rating: 92.0 - _very good - so far_

So, of the last nine years, the top QB taken has turned out to be the best QB
of that year, maybe once. Russell just isn't good. He won't be starting for
long. And Ryan, it's too soon to really tell. Meanwhile, QBs taken, sometimes
very, later have often been as good, if not better, than the top QB's in 6 of
the last nine drafts you cite. There are just as many guys like Brady, Bulger,
Garrard, Romo, and Cassell (picked well behind "names") as there are top picks
that have panned out.

EDIT: Forgot Romo.

~~~
lacker
You are cherrypicking even worse. Just because the highest rated QB was not
the top QB does _not_ mean the top pick is not the best. You should at least
consider all the terrible quarterbacks picked in the later rounds.

Plus, the top pick always goes to the worst team in the league the previous
year. I am more impressed that Carson Palmer has managed an 88.9 rating with
the Bengals than I am than that Big Ben has managed an 89.9 with the Steelers.

~~~
robg
There are 10-15 QBs taken every year out of 250 picks. The question is whether
where they were picked correlates with future success. I see no evidence to
support that correlation.

Otherwise, we're taking about a very limited skill set (i.e. it translates to
nowhere else on the field). The reason so many QBs are picked high isn't
because their talent deserves it. It's because teams overvalue the position
AND there are few QBs deemed worthy enough to even be considered.

New England is actually an interesting case study of what it means to take a
QB who may not have the typical skillset, but if you place them in the right
environment, they can be a true star. The point is: Their success argues
strongly against the role of a high pick for the position.

------
dhimes
_“Mind you, that’s not great feedback...The perfect way to handle that moment
would have been for the teacher to pause and pull out Venisha’s name card,
point to the letter “V,” show her how different it is from “C,” and make the
class sound out both letters."_

Unless, of course, all the other kids start calling out their own names, then
other words, and she _does_ lose control of the class.

It's an excellent article. But the problem I've always had with the kind of
analyses portrayed by the UVA team is that it's too easy to sit there and
sound smart by making these kinds of criticisms. Similar criticisms could be
made about the math teacher, whose style is more like mine was in the
community college physics classes I taught, but I'll spare you, dear readers
of this comment.

I think that it's better to think of teaching like trying to find the best-fit
line through a cloud of scattered points. You can stand there and say, "the
shortest distance to the next point is actually over here..." but completely
miss the idea that if you are trying to maximize a long-term result, you may
not want to draw your line in that particular direction.

~~~
Tichy
I must admit the part about those people criticizing the videos really doesn't
sit well with me. Do they assume there is one perfect way to teach? Are they
working towards establishing the "fascist" school of perfect teaching, that
all future teachers will have to rigidly adhere to?

Maybe pulling out the letter V would have distracted too much from the letter
C, or whatever. I am afraid such people are just parasites to society, somehow
they managed to tap into tax payer money and get paid for just sitting on
their ass all day talking bullshit. Probably standing in front of a class
directly they would be miserable failures. Sorry for sounding so harsh, but my
spouse is a teacher, so I guess I am a little too emotionally involved...

~~~
pchristensen
They're trying to systematically determine what works and what doesn't.
They've got to review a lot of different teachers in the same and different
situations. A teacher who _wants_ to do better would greatly benefit from
specific, actionable recommendations. Creating tools that can be used for
deliberate practice is useful work, especially if the results can be widely
distributed.

~~~
Tichy
In theory yes, but it just seems too easy to criticize in that way. But I
admit I don't know enough about their work to give a fair judgement...

------
dpapathanasiou
While I'm not a fan of Gladwell's analysis (I agree that he has a tendency to
pick data that supports his point, while ignoring evidence that contradicts
it), I did like the message of this piece.

I.e., we should let more people try their hand at teaching, with the idea that
most will probably _not_ be good at it.

This assumes, of course, that none of the failures are allowed to be tenured,
and that teaching can be made an attractive career choice.

~~~
newt0311
Currently the biggest opponents of performance testing of teachers is the
teachers union. Good luck getting rid of them.

~~~
dpapathanasiou
True, it's not likely to happen, given that the union is both politically
powerful and responsible for the way things are now.

It would be a worthwhile thing to try, though.

~~~
newt0311
A lot of people already have. The fact that school voucher systems and charter
schools exist in some areas is testament to their heroic effort. However, it
is too little and maybe too late.

~~~
dpapathanasiou
He's suggesting something subtly different: allow people to become teachers
more easily (i.e., within the existing public school system).

I don't think _that's_ ever been tried.

------
marvin
To the other commenters, this article isn't about college football. Most of
the substance here is really obvious to anyone with a modicum of interest in
teaching, but unfortunately that is what happens when you deal with politics
and bureaucracy. You have to state the obvious, again and again and again.

Teaching is one of my secret passions. I have always been able to make people
understand difficult things by talking to them and watching how they respond.
When I study, people often ask me for help instead of the teacher/lecturer. I
love it.

The thing is, being a teacher would be an incredibly stupid profession for
people like me. I will earn twice as much money doing something else,
navigating a tenth of the bureaucracy and being able to call the shots without
bothering with twenty sorts of political correctness. There is no room in a
normal Western school for my style of teaching. I'd be surrounded by imbeciles
(imbeciles with authority) and not get paid for my effort.

There is something deeply wrong with our system when it deters people who
actually want to do good. There is definitely a business opportunity here if
I'd want to start teaching privately or start some private school. Rich people
see what's wrong here, and are probably willing to pay to fix it.

Here's what needs to be done: Pay more to the best teachers (at least twice as
much as they get today), abolish cartels and unions among current teachers,
measure results, remove bureaucratic barriers to alternative styles and
techniques, and drop all requirements of political correctness.

Most of these requirements are, for different political reasons, impossible to
achieve in a publicly funded system. But if some private school starts to
produce much better students than the public system, there will be chaos.

~~~
youngnh
> But if some private school starts to produce much better students than the
> public system, there will be chaos.

I'm a miltary brat, so I've been in and out of a half-dozen public and private
schools in my K-12 education. Everywhere I went there were private schools
significantly better than the public ones.

The chaos seems to be confined along socioeconomic lines. The best teachers in
the world can't teach kids that don't show up for class, and I'd say America
is pretty split as to whether showing up for class is strictly necessary for
future success.

~~~
marvin
I went to a private (school equivalent to) high-school myself..in Norway, and
the same holds here. It was about three times better than any public school
I'd been to thus far.

------
fbbwsa
Wow, that is one of the worst articles I have ever read by Gladwell.

I generally think Gladwell is overrated, but at least provides interesting
anecdotes. I was sorely tempted to quit reading it about 2/3 through, but then
I thought "maybe he'll tie together the 'football quarterback selection' story
with the 'teacher selection' story in a meaningful way." But no. This would
have been more interesting as a piece about either just college football
quarterback selection or just the question of incentivising a high level of
primary/secondary school education. In the context of the article, they're
really not the same question

I'm not against open ended questions and unresolved endings, but the analogy
was strained, lacked interesting content. And I am interested in both college
football and the "quality of US secondary school education" debate...

The Gladwell love-fest is getting out of hand. I've enjoyed his writing to
date for the most part, despite thinking that it was not quite as
groundbreaking as some people seem to insinuate. But now, anyone will publish
him just because he's Gladwell.

~~~
pchristensen
It wasn't really about teaching or football. It was about how being unable to
measure performance causes a poor allocation of human resources. Top
programmers not getting paid for the value they produce is the exact same
problem.

------
swombat
I'm sure his points are interesting, but I'm inclined not to bother to read an
article concerning a researcher who hasn't taken the time to learn to speak
English. "withitness" indeed. What about "awareness"?

------
jlhamilton
I like what this guy had to say.
[http://juggdish.wordpress.com/2008/12/09/how-to-be-as-
smart-...](http://juggdish.wordpress.com/2008/12/09/how-to-be-as-smart-as-
malcolm-gladwell/)

------
michaelneale
Does it bother anyone else that a researcher has to use "withitness" when
other words or definition would have sounded better and read less like pop-
psychology noise?

~~~
create_account
He's hoping to coin a phrase like "tipping point" and turn it into a best-
seller.

(I don't like it, either, but it does make sense from a marketing perspective)

~~~
ig1
Withitness is actually a standard term in the research it was coined by
educational theorist Jacob Kounin in 1970.

~~~
michaelneale
really? I will assume so as I am too lazy to google this time of the morning.
In that case I take it all back !

------
jonknee
I guessed that this was a Malcom Gladwell article before I clicked on it. He's
got a formula.

------
eli_s
I am a high school teacher and I whole heartedly agree with the sentiment
expressed in this article. I don't know anything about NFL so I don't know if
the comparisons are accurate, however the observations about good teaching are
spot on.

There is no denying that those studying under a good teacher learn more than
those studying under a poor/average teacher. There has been a lot said about
"withitness" in the literature over the years and it is a quality that one
either has or doesn't have.

There are lots of conclusions you can draw from observing teachers and it's
quite awe inspiring to see a truly excellent teacher do their job.

@Tichy: Nothing in this article had anything to do with 'establishing the
"fascist" school of perfect teaching, that all future teachers will have to
rigidly adhere to'. The good teacher qualities that were mentioned included
questioning, providing direct responses to student questions and treating
learning as a team effort (teacher and student learning together). These are
qualities that every good teacher exhibits and all poor teachers struggle
with.

------
newt0311
Interesting article but I wish the author would be a little more concise.
Rambling on about football picks when the topic was teaching was a bit
annoying even though he tried to tie the two together.

~~~
pchristensen
The topic was inability to measure and rate people for a given profession. The
recent (and ongoing) discussion about why great programmers don't get paid
more is equally relevant. It's about information asymmetry which prevents
efficient allocation of resources. But my sentence there was nowhere near as
entertaining as Gladwell's anecdotal writing.

