The Importance of Problem-Solving

Problem-solving is a necessity in life.  Each day, people encounter a barrage of new (and old) "problems."  These problems can be as simple as what to wear, or as significant and complex as saving the life of someone in distress.  Certainly the problems that we encounter each day differ depending on the individual, but there's no denying that life is a series of challenges, difficulties, and "problems" for which the way you go about tackling them says a lot about who you are as a person.

Children are not immune to facing daily problems; one could even argue that they face more difficulties than adults as they explore and try to make sense of the world around them.  Children also face different problems than adults do, including problems that adults take for granted, like tying shoelaces or communicating simple ideas (I know adults can struggle with this, too).  Additionally, school provides a whole new array of problems for kids: making friends; figuring out math; paying attention; working with others; and making sense of all the new information being thrown their way.  With all that coming at them, it's essential that students be equipped with strategies to help them solve all these problems.  Unfortunately, it seems like many students are having increasing difficulty solving even the simplest of problems.

Students approach me all the time and say things like, "I don't have a pencil," or "My pencil broke," or "There's no chair at my desk (despite the fact that there are several empty ones near their desk)," while they wait to see what solution I have for them.   I have a red basket that ALL papers for me go into, and I've told students that this is where they should turn things in, yet I have students ask me almost daily, "Where should I put this?" while flashing a piece of paper in my face.  I know these seem like simple questions, but I believe they're signs of a larger problem of learned helplessness, which is definitely on the opposite end of the spectrum from good problem-solving.  If adults are always solving problems for children, how will they gain the practice necessary to solve their own problems?  This is something I constantly think about with my own children as they ask me to do things like open their snack bag before they've even attempted it.  Sure, it's easy for me to do, and sometimes even after they try they still can't get it open, but how will they ever learn to open it if they aren't given the opportunity?  This resistance towards helping them solve simple problems is a struggle for me.  It's an urge I have to constantly fight because it's natural for me to want to help people, especially my own children.

The New York Times recently had an opinion piece, "Raising Successful Children," by psychologist Madeline Levine where she says, "The happiest, most successful children have parents who do not do for them what they are capable of doing, or almost capable of doing; and their parents do not do things for them to satisfy their own needs rather than the needs of the child."  That last part resonated with me because there are plenty of times where I would like to swoop in and tie my 6-year-old's shoes so that we could get out the door faster, but he is very capable of tying them on his own.  Ms. Levine goes on to say, "When we do things for our children out of our own needs rather than theirs, it forces them to circumvent the most critical task of childhood: to develop a robust sense of self," and "the central task of growing up is to develop a sense of self that is autonomous, confident, and generally in accord with reality."  The realities are that life demands that people be skilled problem-solvers, life is not always fair, and sometimes in life you struggle and make mistakes.

Two accounts of learned helplessness from my freshmen year of college have stayed with me for many years.  The first is of a girl from New Jersey who lived on my floor and needed help during the first week of school filling her car up with gas.  New Jersey's gas stations are full-serve, which means you stay in your car and someone pumps your gas for you.  As a result, this 18-year-old college student who was now living in Maryland had no idea how to put gas in her car.   The second story came from someone else who lived on my floor that first year who told me that his mom still brushed his 10-year-old little brother's teeth.  I don't know what became of that kid, but I bet Mom didn't go off to college with him to help him continue brushing.  I hope at some point he was given the opportunity to try it on his own.  

In the article "Spoiled Rotten" from the July 2, 2012 edition of the The New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert writes about a psychologist who specializes in treating young adults who says that we do too much for our kids because we overestimate our influence:  "Never before have parents been so (mistakenly) convinced that their every move has a ripple effect into their child's future success.  Most parents today were brought up in a culture that put a strong emphasis on being special.  Being special takes hard work and can't be trusted to children.  Hence the exhausting cycle of constantly monitoring their work and performance, which in turn makes children feel less competent and confident, so that they need even more oversight."  This type of student that she is referring to struggles tremendously in school as they have no confidence and are afraid to be wrong so they don't ask questions and they won't take risks.

In addition to my own observations, I hear and read about tales of high school students who don't know how to fill out a college essay or write their college applications, or whose parents attend their college interviews with them.  In that "Spoiled Rotten" article, Ms. Kolbert writes about "snowplow parents" who "try to clear every obstacle from their children's path."  She states how the children that are the recipients of such obstacle-clearing "worry that they may not be able manage college in the absence of household help."  She goes on to quote research conducted by sociologists at Boston College that found that "today's incoming freshmen are less likely to be concerned about the rigors of higher education than 'about how they will handle the logistics of everyday life.'"  

I truly believe that the best way to learn is to try, make mistakes, reflect on those mistakes, learn from them, and then try again.  This is how I learned almost everything I know about computers and computer software, home repair, and even playing sports.  This is also the approach I take with my students.  I equate learning to being on a journey in a car, and I tell them they need to be in the driver's seat.  Mom, Dad, and I will be in the passenger and back seats providing guidance and support, but they need to be in control of the journey.  They need to be the ones completing their homework.  They need to be the ones asking questions to the teacher when they don't understand.  They need to be the ones working out issues with their friends.

From my passenger seat position I try to provide my students with a supportive environment where I encourage them to take positive risks, make mistakes, and explore the content that they're learning about.  I don't necessarily set them up for failure, but I do set them up for struggle.  The National Council for Teachers of Mathematics defines problem-solving as "... engaging in a task for which the solution method is not known in advance.  In order to find a solution, students must draw on their knowledge, and through this process, they will often develop new mathematical understandings."  That obviously is intended to apply to math, but I think it applies to all problem-solving.   There's tremendous personal value in wrestling with a problem, and there's even greater value in solving that problem you've wrestled with.  To me, it's the best way to learn.

We can't just expect children to be naturally skilled problem-solvers.  Solving problems is a skill that must be learned, and like anything else that you learn, the more you practice the better you get.  Fortunately,  opportunities for practicing problem-solving are all around us in our everyday lives.  We need to embrace these opportunities, perhaps while even providing additional ones, and not take them away from our children.