In a recent book called ‘Subtract – The Untapped Science of Less’, Leidy Klotz, a professor at the University of Virginia has looked at the ways that we often neglect thinking about subtracting as a way of solving problems. Normally when an issue arises, we often feel the need to add something, so in the economy, we will add new roads to deal with traffic issues or we will add new home furnishings to beautify a house but we will never think about taking something away. The main reason behind this, as explained in the book, is that we have been set up from an evolutionary perspective to add (or hoard) to survive and this continues today.
It’s an interesting book as it shifts your way of thinking and I would encourage teachers and leaders to read it. The thought process can certainly be applied within a school setting to revolutionise the way we deal with problems, as well as improving learning for students.
Four ways schools can subtract:
Behaviour outside the lesson – one of my friends worked at a school where they were continually dealing with issues related to ties. Detentions were being given out continually but it didn’t seem to make much difference and just created a negative atmosphere between staff and students. Normally a school would add more rules to deal with the issue but what they did is subtracted the tie. Ties do not impact learning but the time wasted dealing with them did and so they swapped to polo shirts without ties. Whether you agree with the school or not, it is a great example of subtracting to solve a problem and it improved relationships within the school.
Behaviour inside the lesson – there are many rules/expectations within a school setting and they can be overwhelming to think about for staff and students. They will be up on a wall somewhere, normally in small font, barely getting noticed. In the book, Klotz talks about his sister, who is an Emergency Room doctor, distilling her decision making process with regards dealing with patients into three key points, in order to save lives. Of course there are more things she could think about but these are three that are essential for her. Clearly this is something we can do within our classrooms. In fact, in the excellent FutureLearn course ‘Managing Behaviour for Learning’ with Paul Dix, this is something that is advocated. Get your fundamentals on the wall in your classroom, show them to your students and consistently refer to them so they have no excuses. I have five key behavioural points on my wall but one assumes this can be done (and probably is) on a whole school basis to provide consistency in the classroom.
Impactful lessons – cognitive load theory has been discussed much in education over recent times and Klotz uses this as a reason for why subtracting is vital. Something I have tried to do more in my teaching is to say ‘when you leave this classroom, the three main points I want you to remember are…’ in order for students not to be overloaded with the content I have delivered in class. When reviewing a lesson, it’s always very easy to say ‘I should have done more of this’ or ‘we could have added another exercise’ but not what we could have cut. Looking back at past PowerPoints, I can see the way I have added additional slides throughout the years, as a security blanket, to make sure I’m covering content but I can now appreciate how this can create cognitive overload. Now I’m looking to teach better by subtracting, whilst working on alternative ways of giving students my security blanket. I’ve written a bit more about stripping back a lesson to the essence in this piece about bass playing.
Better student responses – there is a great quote used in the book that is attributed to Mark Twain which states ‘I didn’t have time to write you short letter, so I wrote you a long one.’ Klotz uses this quote to highlight the effort you need to put in, in order to subtract, whilst also highlighting the skills of an excellent editor (if it’s not obvious by reading my blogs!). Students will often write overly long answers in tests because it’s easier to keep on adding rather than putting the effort in to finely tune their writing to the question being asked. This is an area where we can really help students by taking answers and editing responses live in front of the class using a visualiser. In a recent exam that I marked, a student ran out of time and I tried to highlight the numerous examples where they had written too much, despite warnings not to. The best students are the best at subtracting and we need to train them to do this better.
‘Subtract’ is an interesting book to read and Klotz highlights that you can both add and subtract when it comes to problem solving, it’s not an either/or discussion. At this moment in time though, most people will only look at ‘add’ solutions and will not consider subtracting and this is something he wants to change as it opens up a whole new world of possibilities.
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