The students who exerted more self-control were not more successful in accomplishing their goals. It was the students who experienced fewer temptations overall who were more successful when the researchers checked back in at the end of the semester. What’s more, the people who exercised more effortful self-control also reported feeling more depleted. So not only were they not meeting their goals, they were also exhausted from trying.”
Dweck concluded that signs of ego depletion were observed only in test subjects who believed willpower was a limited resource. Those participants who did not see willpower as finite did not show signs of ego depletion… Michael Inzlicht… principal investigator at the Toronto Laboratory for Social Neuroscience, believes willpower is not a finite resource but instead acts like an emotion. Just as we don’t “run out” of joy or anger, willpower ebbs and flows based on what’s happening to us and how we feel. Viewing willpower through this lens has profound implications.”
For Rudenstine, humanistic study is recursive, marked by a passionate recidivism: it sends us back, time and again, to the “humanistic object,” the song or play or poem that begs to be reinterpreted, to be experienced once more. “We look to the humanities to provide us with illuminating works to which we can return passionately in the hope of discovering new insights, new ideas, and new knowledge.” This sense of recurrent contact is at the root of the humanities’ appeal, and their ability to enrich our lives, according to Rudenstine. More than any other sphere of knowledge, they are better at bringing us closer to the “texture and flux” of human experience.”
The Internet, of course, is a marvellous place to find specific facts but it can’t do what a library does. It can’t stimulate the imagination by showing us what an unconquerable ocean of knowledge is available to all of us. Walking through a library, seeing and touching an astonishing number of books on obscure subjects can be a revelation. For many of us it’s our first glimpse of the sea of information available, our first hint of our own bottomless ignorance.”
Copyright
Every week I send out articles I encounter from around the web. Subject matter ranges from hard knowledge about teaching to research about creativity and cognitive science to stories from other industries that, by analogy, inform what we do as educators. This breadth helps us see our work in new ways.
Readers include teachers, school leaders, university overseers, conference organizers, think tank workers, startup founders, nonprofit leaders, and people who are simply interested in what’s happening in education. They say it helps them keep tabs on what matters most in the conversation surrounding schools, teaching, learning, and more.
– Peter Nilsson