Can the mighty micro-VCoL help save democracy?
Back in the nineteen nineties, when I was a graduate student at UC Berkeley, I was looking for leverage. Specifically, I was looking for a lever that could help create conditions that would support optimal mental development, social and self-regulation skills, hopefulness, and life satisfaction—at scale, of course.
If you’re thinking these goals are grandiose, join the club! I had to endure a great deal of eye-rolling in the early years.
Over time—especially through the late nineties and early two thousands—it became increasingly clear to me that if we learned how to support the optimal development of human minds, we could build our collective capacity to grapple with the kind of challenges we would face in the 21st century.
When I talk about the human mind, I am not referring to specific mental capacities, functions, or locations in the body. I’m referring to an emergent phenomenon that is more akin to what we call the self.
The desire to optimize mental development has driven my work for the last 30 years. In pursuit of this goal, I first sought to understand the mind’s built-in learning mechanisms—the very mechanisms that make babies so determined to learn that they are willing to fail repeatedly and painfully in order to build competence.
The evolutionary process that selected for these mechanisms produced a process called the dopamine-opioid cycle, a hormonal motivational mechanism that drives striving (dopamine) and produces reward (opioids).
There are two ways to recruit the dopamine-opioid cycle in education, but only one way that supports optimal mental development.
Today, the most common way in which we attempt to recruit the dopamine-opioid cycle involves providing extrinsic rewards like high grades, high game scores, good test scores, praise, advancement, or gold stars for good performance. These practices can seem to produce results for some children, but they fail to motivate most children, and actively alienate many others. Moreover, they fail to support optimal mental development and foster discontent.
The alternative way of recruiting our inborn learning mechanisms is to invite the dopamine-opioid cycle to do its job by creating optimal conditions for the kind of learning it evolved to support. These are conditions in which children learn through real-world practice at their own pace and in areas of personal interest. In other words, we can help the dopamine-opioid cycle to do its job effectively by creating real-world conditions like those that led to the evolution of the dopamine-opioid cycle in the first place.
Learning programs that recruit the dopamine-opioid cycle in this way provide optimal learning conditions for all children, regardless of current level of mental development, genetic inheritance, temperament, or personality type. They do so by engaging students repeatedly in virtuous cycles of learning (VCoLs)—micro cycles in which competence and knowledge gradually develop through practice in real-world contexts. Each micro-VCoL not only builds real-world competence but also contributes to an earned sense of competence. This earned sense of competence translates into a sense of agency that drives striving, hope, satisfaction, and wellbeing. Moreover, when micro-VCoLing occurs in social contexts, it supports the development of essential self-regulation, social, and reasoning skills.
Micro-VCoLing involves skills for setting tiny learning goals, gathering micro-information, putting what is learned into practice, and reflecting on the outcomes of that practice.
Imagine a world filled with competent, ambitious, thoughtful, every-moment learners who work and play well with others, and take satisfaction from effective action in the world.
These attributes are highly compatible with democratic values. Here’s why.
Equal opportunity: In the company of good teachers and the right metrics, VCoL makes it possible to create a truly level playing field for learning — one in which all children have a real opportunity to achieve their full learning potential.
Freedom: VCoL shifts the emphasis from learning a particular set of facts, vocabulary, rules, procedures, or definitions, to building transferable skills for thinking, communicating, and learning, thus allowing students greater freedom to learn essential skills through study and practice in their own areas of interest.
Dignity: Educational programs that create optimal conditions for learning the way our minds are designed to learn refrain from valorizing one learning pathway over others. (Like telling students that they will not be successful human beings if they don’t go to college.) They valorize student interests instead and provide appropriate opportunities for learners to build a broad range of skills in their own areas of interest.
Arguably the most tragic consequence of early 21st Century educational reforms in the United States, was the way in which the movement (pressure) to prepare every student for college disadvantaged and alienated students who lacked academic interests or ambitions. I believe this policy contributed greatly to the current political divide in this country precisely because it left no path to dignity for at least half of the public school student population.
Pursuit of happiness: When we leverage the brain’s inborn learning mechanisms, we allow people to retain—and amplify—their inborn love of learning. Thus, they’re equipped not only with skills and knowledge, but also the drive required to adapt and thrive in a complex and rapidly changing world.
Citizenship: Educational programs that create optimal conditions for learning build skills for (1) coping with complexity, (2) gathering, evaluating, & applying information, (3) perspective seeking & coordination, (4) reflective analysis, and (5) communication & argumentation, all of which are essential for the high-quality decision making required of citizens in a democracy.
Open mindset: Educational programs that create optimal conditions for learning treat learning as a gradual and never-ending process. The competence built through VCoLing fosters a sense of humility about one’s current knowledge & skills because learners come to understand that their skills and knowledge are constantly evolving. A touch of humility can make citizens more open to considering the perspectives of others — a useful attribute in democratic societies.
In closing, VCoL is not only a learning model for our times, but it could well be the learning model that helps save democracy!
