The trouble with homework Annie Murphy Paul Sep 12 How effectively do children's after-school assignments actually advance learning? When you think of America's students, do you picture overworked, stressed-out children bent under backpacks stuffed with textbooks and worksheets? Or do you call to mind glassy-eyed, empty-headed teenagers sitting before computer screens, consumed by video games and social networking sites, even as their counterparts in China prepare to ace yet another round of academic exams? The first view dominates a series of recent books and movies, including the much-discussed film Race to Nowhere. The second image has been put forth by other books, with titles like The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future. Divergent though they are, these characterisations share a common emphasis: Homework. The studying that middle school and high school students do after the dismissal bell rings is either an unreasonable burden or a crucial activity that needs beefing up. Which is it? Do American students have too much homework or too little? Neither, I'd say. We ought to be asking a different question altogether. What should matter to parents and educators is this: How effectively do children's after-school assignments advance learning? The quantity of students' homework is a lot less important than its quality. And evidence suggests that as of now, homework is not making the grade. Although surveys show that the amount of time our children spend on homework has risen over the last three decades, American students are mired in the middle of international academic rankings: 17th in reading, 23rd in science and 31st in math, according to results from the Program for International Student Assessment released last December. A new study, coming in the Economics of Education Review, reports that homework in science, English and history has "little to no impact" on student test scores. (The authors did note a positive effect for math homework.) Enriching children's classroom learning requires making homework not shorter or longer, but smarter. Fortunately, research is available to help parents, teachers and school administrators do just that. In recent years, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists and educational psychologists have made a series of remarkable discoveries about how the human brain learns. They have founded a new discipline, known as Mind, Brain and Education, that is devoted to understanding and improving the ways in which children absorb, retain and apply knowledge. Educators have begun to implement these methods in classrooms around the country and have enjoyed measured success. A collaboration between psychologists at Washington University in St Louis and teachers at nearby Columbia Middle School, for example, lifted seventh- and eighth-grade students' science and social studies test scores by 13 to 25 per cent. But the innovations have not yet been applied to homework. SPACE OUT REPETITIONS "Spaced repetition" is one example of the kind of evidence-based techniques that researchers have found have a positive impact on learning. Here is how it works: Instead of concentrating the study of information in single blocks, as many homework assignments currently do - reading about, say, the Civil War one evening and Reconstruction the next - learners encounter the same material in briefer sessions spread over a longer period of time. With this approach, students are re-exposed to information about the Civil War and Reconstruction throughout the semester. It sounds unassuming, but spaced repetition produces impressive results. Eighth-grade history students who relied on a spaced approach to learning had nearly double the retention rate of students who studied the same material in a consolidated unit, reported researchers from the University of California-San Diego in 2007. The reason the method works so well goes back to the brain: When we first acquire memories, they are volatile, subject to change or likely to disappear. Exposing ourselves to information repeatedly over time fixes it more permanently in our minds, by strengthening the representation of the information that is embedded in our neural networks. MEMORY RETRIEVAL PRACTICE A second learning technique, known as "retrieval practice", employs a familiar tool - the test - in a new way: Not to assess what students know, but to reinforce it. We often conceive of memory as something like a storage tank and a test as a kind of dipstick that measures how much information we have put in there. But that is not actually how the brain works. Every time we pull up a memory, we make it stronger and more lasting, so that testing does not just measure, it changes learning. Simply reading over material to be learned, or even taking notes and making outlines, as many homework assignments require, does not have this effect. According to one experiment, language learners who employed the retrieval practice strategy to study vocabulary words remembered 80 per cent of the words they studied, while learners who used conventional study methods remembered only about a third of them. Students - and parents - may groan at the prospect of more tests, but the self-quizzing involved in retrieval practice need not provoke any anxiety. It is simply an effective way to focus less on the input of knowledge (passively reading over textbooks and notes) and more on its output (calling up that same information from one's own brain). THE HARDER IT IS ... Another common misconception about how we learn holds that if information feels easy to absorb, we have learned it well. In fact, the opposite is true. When we work hard to understand information, we recall it better; the extra effort signals the brain that this knowledge is worth keeping. This phenomenon, known as cognitive disfluency, promotes learning so effectively that psychologists have devised all manner of "desirable difficulties" to introduce into the learning process: For example, sprinkling a passage with punctuation mistakes, deliberately leaving out letters, shrinking font size until it is tiny or wiggling a document while it is being copied so that words come out blurry. Teachers are unlikely to start sending students home with smudged or error-filled worksheets, but there is another kind of desirable difficulty - called interleaving - that can readily be applied to homework. An interleaved assignment mixes up different kinds of situations or problems to be practised, instead of grouping them by type. When students cannot tell in advance what kind of knowledge or problem-solving strategy will be required to answer a question, their brains have to work harder to come up with the solution, and the result is that students learn the material more thoroughly. Researchers at California Polytechnic State University conducted a study of interleaving in sports that illustrates why the tactic is so effective. When baseball players practised hitting, interleaving different kinds of pitches improved their performance on a later test in which the batters did not know the type of pitch in advance (as would be the case, of course, in a real game). Interleaving produces the same sort of improvement in academic learning. A study published last year in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology asked fourth-graders to work on solving four types of math problems and then to take a test evaluating how well they had learned. The scores of those whose practise problems were mixed up were more than double the scores of those students who had practiced one kind of problem at a time. The application of such research-based strategies to homework is a yet-untapped opportunity to raise student achievement. Science has shown us how to turn homework into a potent catalyst for learning. Our assignment now is to make it happen. THE NEW YORK TIMES Annie Murphy Paul is the author of Origins, who is at work on a new book about the science of learning.

How to spot a con artist

Brian k Kemp
 
How to Spot A Con Artist
 
Investing in securities is risky enough without worrying about whether your salesperson is out to fleece you. To be an informed investor, you must know what danger signs to look for. Some are subtle, and some are easier to spot.

Rule Number 1: Con Artists Do Not Like To Be Found

Con artists know that being themselves hurts business. Effective con artists must disguise their true motives. Whether your first contact with the con artist is through an unsolicited telephone call or a stranger ringing your doorbell, the con artist takes great pains to look, sound and speak like you or me. Often, con artists like to blend in with others in your group whether that group is political, community (such as the local senior center), religious or other. They quickly get to know a lot of people in the group so they can count on this common bond to spread the word about their questionable investments and reel in unsuspecting investors.

Rule Number 2: Con Artists Dress For Success

Even though con artists would like you to believe that they are "just plain folk," they are smart enough to realize that this alone will not sway you to part with your money. They work very hard to come across as smooth, professional and successful. Con artists may dress like they are wealthy and work out of impressive looking offices. If your only contact is by mail, the office may bear a prestigious sounding address. Often, this is nothing more than a mail drop. Your best bet is to look behind the surface and do some serious investigating before you part with your money.

Rule Number 3: Con Artists Often Push Poorly Understood Financial Products

Today, a variety of institutions, from banks to brokerage firms to financial planners, offer a wide range of financial products. With such a confusing mix to choose from, it is no wonder that many people turn to financial advisers for guidance. Con artists know this and stand ready to assume full responsibility for your investment decisions. Don’t let them! When it comes to your money, think things through for yourself after getting all the facts. Never give someone control over your purse strings just because you think you are too old, young or financially inexperienced. If you really need help, only deal with financial advisers, broker-dealers or financial institutions with a proven track record.

Con artists also appeal to the dreamer in you. Many people secretly believe that Horatio Alger’s rags-to-riches story can become a reality for them -- if only they get the right break. To them, investing in untested technologies and cutting edge product s before anyone else does is a sure-fire way to make money. International instruments such as letters of credit supposedly issued by foreign banks may spell stability for some people. Con artists sabotage your dreams. They promise you the investment chance of a lifetime without giving you any meaningful written information on the product or the pitfalls involved.

Rule Number 4: Con Artists Bring Out The Worst In You

Skilled con artists can bring out your worst traits, particularly greed, fear, and insecurity. Fear comes into play when the con artist warns you that complaining about a failed investment to the government may result in your spoiling it for others or "rocking the boat." Con artists try to make you feel inadequate if you don’t believe them. In addition, con artists know how to make you believe that if you lack confidence in them, this is a personal slight to their abilities. If you find yourself making investment-related decisions based only on your emotions, watch out!

Rule Number 5: Con Artists Are Fair Weather Friends

Before you invest, con artists are very friendly. They take a personal interest in you out of the blue. They call back when they promised they would. Each time, they tell you even more good things about the investment. You may feel you’re being pressured into investing. You are. Face it. Despite his or her kind words, the con artist will do anything in his or her power to make a sale. In fact, the contacts may become so repeated that you may wish that your first contact had been your last. Too of ten, however, once you have invested your money, contact with the con artist dwindles and then stops altogether. If you cannot get answers to your questions following your investment, this may signal danger.

Rule Number 6: For Every Silver Lining, There Is A Cloud

Every investment involves risk. But to hear the con artist explain it, the investment may be too good to be true. Trust your inner voice if you hear claims like these:

“I just got a hot tip from an inside source that this stock will go through the roof."
“The rumor on the Street is that this deal is ready to take off."
“Your return is guaranteed. There’s no way you can lose money."
“Gotta get in on the ground floor now or you’ll be left out in the cold. In fact, we’ll send a messenger over tomorrow to pick up your check." (Con artists often use this device to avoid federal mail fraud charges.)
“Where else can you earn such a large return? Not in CDs or in a savings account."
“In just a short while, your profits will come rolling in."
“This deal is so great, I invested in it myself."
“If this doesn’t perform as I just said, we’ll refund your money no questions asked."
“Everyone else that invested in this did very well."

Be especially careful if the salesperson downplays any downside or denies that risk exists. Con artists usually are not very good at answering important questions. Watch out if the salesperson becomes reluctant to provide information on the following:

The background, educational history and work experience of the deal’s promoters, principals or general partners
Information on whether your investment monies will be segregated from other funds available to the business
Written information on the business` financial condition, such as a balance sheet and bank references
The prior track record of the business and its principals
The salesperson’s name, where he or she is calling from, who he or she works for, his or her background and what commission or other compensation he or she will receive
The salesperson’s connection with the venture and any affiliates

In addition, be wary if the salesperson doesn’t ask you questions about your past investment experience and your ability to withstand risk. Even if the salesperson does ask a few related questions, take heed if you get the sense that he or she is merely going through the motions.

Rule Number 7: Watch Out For The Man From P.O.N.Z.I (Pay-Out now, Zero Imminent)

No self-respecting con artist would actually admit that he or she was involved in a Ponzi scheme. The Ponzi scheme was named after Charles Ponzi, an Italian immigrant who, after being jailed in Canada for fraud, moved to Boston in the early part of this century. Ponzi solicited people to invest in International Postal Reply Coupons which could be redeemed for stamps. He promised them a 40 percent return in just 90 days. Ultimately, the authorities discovered that there weren’t enough coupons in circulation to support Ponzi`s schemes. Ponzi was imprisoned in Massachusetts and then deported to Italy. The scheme he created, however, continues to survive in many forms.

In a typical Ponzi scheme, large returns are paid to initial investors out of the funds of later investors. Not only does this give the first investors confidence in the deal, but it motivates others to invest. Unfortunately, the later investors lose all or most of their money to the con artist. If you are promised high, guaranteed profits and given no written explanation concerning the investment vehicle, the promoter’s background or the risks involved, be careful. A Ponzi scheme may be at work. Ponzi operators also tend to persuade you to "roll over" your "profits" into still another investment - so your return only ends up being on paper.

Rule Number 8: Steer Clear Of Pyramid Schemes

Pyramid schemes are a variation of the Ponzi scam. Think of a pyramid. Money is collected from people on the bottom to pay off other individuals farther up the pyramid. As more people invest, new pyramid levels are created, and your position in the pyramid rises. In theory, you would be entitled to more money. Many times, you must also buy a product to join.

However, unlike a true multi-level marketing plan, selling the product is less important than recruiting others to join the network. Ultimately, there comes a time when no new money flows in. When this happens, the pyramid collapses.

Tips On Not Falling Prey To A Con Artist

Avoiding being hurt by a con artist is as easy as doing your homework -- before you invest.
Contact your state or provincial securities regulator to see if the investment vehicle and the person selling it are registered.
Your state or provincial securities regulator will also be able to tell you if the salesperson has a disciplinary history, that is, whether any civil, criminal or administrative proceedings have been brought against him or her.
Contact your local Better Business Bureau to see if any complaints have been filed against the venture’s promoters or principals.
Deal only with financial advisers, broker-dealers or financial institutions having a proven track record.
Ask for written information on the investment product and the business. Such information, including financial data on the company and the risks involved in the investment, is contained in a prospectus. Read it carefully.
Don’t take everything you hear or read at face value. Ask questions if you don’t understand, and do some sleuthing for yourself. If you need help in evaluating the investment, go to someone independent whom you can trust such as an attorney or an accountant.
Steer clear of investments touted with no downside or risk.