We all know what’s going on at the moment. I don’t particularly want to talk about it. What I’d like to talk about instead is a lesson I learned at work a number of years ago.
I have had the good fortune to be able to observe human beings in their early development over a number of years. You name any issue with adults that you can’t for the life of you figure out why people don’t just … and I will more than likely have a story about a time when … .
Today’s story is about a young man I worked with a number of years ago. More than likely he’s been out of school for awhile and there’s no identifying information so I feel okay about sharing. On this particular day, we were doing word problems, sometimes referred to as story problems —those problems which tell a little story and expect you to figure out what information is relevant, which operation is needed, and how to answer the question. In this particular problem, I believe the target was something like 6 + 4 = 10. This young man could already multiply and divide, so 6 + 4 = 10 was not expected to be difficult for him. He needed to locate the relevant numbers (which he did), determine the operation needed (which he did), and answer the question (which he did).
However the answer he gave was 11.
I asked him to check his work. He did and then told me that his answer was correct. Okay …
I asked him to check again, which is usually a cue that something has been missed. He told me he had already checked and it was correct. Okay …
I pointed to one of the numbers. “What’s this?” I asked.
“Six,” he answered. So far so good.
I pointed to the other number. “What’s this?” I asked.
“Four,” he answered. Curiouser and curiouser.
“And are you adding or subtracting?”
“Adding.”
“Okay. What’s 6 + 4?”
“Ten.” At this point, I wasn’t sure what to think. His calculation was correct, but he demonstrated absolutely no recognition that he had just verbally answered the problem on the page and what he had said was different than what he had written on the page.
“So what is the answer to that problem?”
“Eleven.”
“The answer is ten.”
“No, it’s eleven …”
We went back and forth for a bit, but I ended up giving up before he did because we ran out of time.
The point of this story —and yes, I do have one —is that there is a part of executive functioning known as cognitive flexibility that can be very difficult for some people. We all experience this difficulty to some extent, but there’s ‘experiencing it’ because you’ve received some new information or had something pointed out that you hadn’t considered before and there’s ‘experiencing it’ as though your entire being is being challenged when you need to take apart or reconsider an idea you’ve already formed, even if you can arrive at the correct conclusion in another context. These individuals tend to think in large chunks (missing small errors in logic), loathe editing, and generally have one way to approach problems.
Anyway. Good luck to us all.