How do you know when you know?
Getting an A on an exam means nothing. (Library of Congress photo)
The scene: Algebra II classroom, York High School, York, Maine, early 1990s.
Mr. Hawkes: “What’s your answer?”
My friend: “Three-fourths.”
Mr. Hawkes: “Stake your life on it?”
My friend: “It’s just math — I don’t want to die.”
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As it turned out, my friend’s answer was correct. But he didn’t know for sure that it was correct, and he didn’t care enough to go that deeply. He preferred to spend that energy diving deep into the world of music, where he did have a sense of conviction. In music, when he was right, he knew that he was right.
Unfortunately, for many students, they have never had that sense of conviction about anything. There is a question mark that hangs in the air whenever they answer a question, conveying their lack of certainty.
At the other end of the spectrum are students who are convinced that they are right even when the evidence around them suggests otherwise. If they appear to be wrong, it must be due to a mistake in the answer key.
For a student to be successful, they first have to learn what it feels like when you know something. For me, this feeling is one of great clarity: A fog lifts and you can see for miles. You can turn a concept over in your mind, able to view it from any direction. You can take action by applying what you know in new contexts. Your skills are apparent to others.
This deep level of knowing is not always required for school, especially on multiple-choice tests. A lot of schoolwork is just something to survive, and ticking the necessary boxes is often doable with a fairly shallow investment.
If you’ve been getting As and Bs, you might have the illusion that you understand something. However, when it comes to time to build on that knowledge or demonstrate actual skill, you might struggle. “This is when we say, “I get it, but I can’t really explain it,” or “I know how to do it, but I just forgot this one part,” or “I just do better with multiple-choice tests than essay tests.”
These statements are all indications that your knowledge is incomplete. If you don’t realize this, you will be frustrated when you try to learn a skill that you actually care about, a topic that you wish to know and understand deeply. You won’t know that there are deeper layers you haven’t accessed. You won’t have a lot of practice grasping the “why” behind the work you’re doing.
If these uncomfortable experiences persist, a student begins to lose faith in herself as a learner. When she understands, she doesn’t know that she understands, and when she doesn’t understand right away, she gives up. This is how students end up doing the bare minimum.
To solve this problem, we have to practice, ideally with the help of a dedicated teacher, learning something deeply enough that we know we know it. It doesn’t matter much what is being learned; the important part is that the student feels the transition from not knowing to knowing, and that this moment is identified and reflected back to them by the teacher. They need to experience the sensation of the clouds parting and light dawning.
If you want to really challenge yourself in this area, try teaching. Try answering a typical kid question like, “Why is the sky blue?” When your answer is, “Something about light wavelengths…uh…the atmosphere…uh…” you’ll see a gap in your knowledge. When you can see the gap clearly, you are on the way to closing it. This is an opportunity to embrace, not a shameful secret to hide.
When you know that you know something, you have the confidence and curiosity to see what you don’t know and learn new things. This is the ideal posture of a student — and a parent or teacher.