Lazyteacher

So, in my continuing quest to control the world, I’ve been reading two books about persuasion and influence: Influencer: The Power to Change Anything by Jerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, and Ron McMillan  and Nudge by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein. Together, surely, no one will be able to resist me. My Persuasion Ray is almost complete!

Influencer feels like an updated How to Win Friends and Influence People and is clearly attempting to use the very techniques it espouses in the copy of the book itself. This is a helpful look at the advantages and disadvantages of the techniques it suggests. The prose is breathless. Take a look at the title. There is much talk of Influence Mavens (or Poobahs or Gurus or Wizards) who vaguely control vast swaths of territory or who count thousands of souls under their control.  Usually, they’re stopping AIDS or meteors from crashing into Earth.  It’s when you get to the fine print you realize the suggestions break down into: 1) Show that what you want people to do is both possible and worth it 2) Look closely to see what one small change will have a big effect.  And…that’s pretty much it. It is from a set of writers who focus on business issues.

Nudge is both more humble and more useful. It comes from two academics (they blog here).  They espouse something they call libertarian paternalism–governments and other institutions using persuasion techniques to help people do things they want to do anyway.  For instance in a cafeteria, putting salads and healthy food at eye level and the desserts in a corner under a heavy blanket. This is a much more believable set of ideas but they tend to congregate in the How to convince people to save more for their retirement end of the spectrum rather than How to convince people to learn better. Still, it has a much more enjoyable prose style with just the right level of humor and irony to leaven the ideas.

What can we take from all of this? Teachers are always going to be persuaders; our power to use institutional persuasive tools (grades) is never strong enough to achieve our goals (student learning). We have to learn how to leverage persuasion and influence to convince students that hard work is worth it. Not only that writing that paper will give us an A that will get us into Harvard, but that learning itself is a pleasure and a practice that has dividends in all aspects of our lives.

Of course, it’s easier to convince someone of something if it’s actually true.  Influence reminds me that students need to be shown that it is entirely possible to do what I’m asking them to do and that the result of doing it is better than not doing it.  But that needs to be true to work. Nudge reminds me that I need to set up a classroom where the choices they face make it easier to do what will be helpful in learning rather that what will be more fun.

Both books are good choices for a class in rhetoric to analyze and explore.  Otjhers might be:

• Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath
• Influence by Robert Cialdini
• 150 Ways to Influence Intrinsic Motivation in Children by James Raffini