Heritage Foundation Versus Immigrant Children

The Heritage Foundation is the outfit behind all manner of far-right baloney. These days they're most notable for dropping big bucks to create Project 2025, the right wing Cliff's Notes for the nest Trump Presidency (including dismantling education). 

In February, Heritage released a brief (with fewer dollars and a smaller audience, we'd just call it a blog post) arguing that undocumented immigrant children should be charged tuition to attend US public schools. 

It comes, of course, with a large helping of Joe Biden Let All The Illegals In, a disingenuous baloney argument. Immigration has been a problem for a few decades now, and no administration has addressed it with anything resembling success. So every four years or so we get sudden squawking from folks on the right, from the xenophobic racist rants of Trump to the old "Well, if they would just come in legally" argument. New rule: you can only use that If Only argument if you can describe what that actually involves. Also, you can only add "like my ancestors" if you know what your ancestors did to enter "legally" (spoiler alert: it was probably "show up"). 

Plyler v. Doe was the SCOTUS decision that in 1982 declared that children could not be denied an education because of their immigration status. The Heritage Foundation speculates that their tuition plan would prompt a legal challenge which would in turn give them a chance to bring Plyler before the current Supreme Court, who might overturn it because of course they would. Chalkbeat talked to Patricia Gandara at UCLA's graduate school of education, who says this more likely just to be an election year stunt, like the infamous immigrant caravan that often threatens the US just before election time, and then never quite appears. 

Undocumented immigrants in schools fits in with the scarcity mentality, arguing that Those People are draining our American resources. That argument fails to note that plenty of undocumented migrant workers pay taxes, but because of their status rarely extract services. But it certainly strikes a chord with folks who don't want to pay for the education of any children but their own.

We could get into the question of whether immigrants (documented or not) are a net plus for the country (spoiler alert: they are), but let's focus on the real issue here, which is education for children. 

Education. For. Children.

This is the ultimate expression of some of certain worst people, the idea that "I should not have to pay for an education for Other People's Children." It is the narrow, confused idea that an education is a narrow benefit only for the children involved, as if living in a country with an educated population is not a benefit for everyone.

Michael Petrilli, head honcho of the right-tilted Fordham Institute (and with whom I disagree on so many things), actually had an absolute on-point tweet about this Heritage idea today. Spinning off Cardinal Hickey's old line about why Catholic schools serve certain populations, Petrilli tweeted

Likewise, we don't educate migrant children because they are American, but because we are American.

Damn straight. This is informed by a larger truth--that how we treat other people says far more about us than about them. The Heritage Foundation ought to be embarrassed to be saying this about themselves. 

More Common Core Fallout

I thought we had cataloged and complained about all of the results from the nation's implementation of the Common Core, but lately I've begun to suspect that there's one more.

The Common Core moved the Overton Window on the subject of state-imposed curriculum and instruction. 

It was one of the big objections to the Core itself-- how dare the federal and state governments dictate what and how will be taught in local schools. The local control of school districts was an inviolable feature, a given part of How Schools Work. Sure, there were state departments of education providing some oversight and accountability, and they often had programs they wanted to push. But if you are a Teacher Of A Certain Age, you remember state-run professional development as an attempt to sell the idea, an attempt that implicitly accepted that it was up to the district and the teachers to buy the idea, or not.

Under Common Core, that changed. I distinctly remember sitting in state sessions that had a whole new vibe, a whole new "We're not asking you. We're telling you" message.

Fast forward to today. 

Here's a whole Washington Post piece tracking how different states have passed laws to impose certain curricular and instructional requirements on what should be taught (or not). Or we could talk about the moves in various states to push Science of Reading laws, mandating a particular type of instruction for reading.

In both cases, missing from the discussion is the question of just how problematic it is to have curriculum and instruction decisions made by legislators. We no longer wonder if that might be a good idea, or not. 

It's not a good idea for a variety of reasons. Legislatures favor people who are good at politics, not people who are good at teaching. Legislatures are far too removed from classrooms to know what the hell they're talking about. And the whole exercise is one more way to reduce teacher autonomy and cut their professional judgement out of the equation.

I would not want to see my most favorite, most trusted instructional technique imposed by legislators. I find the whole idea bizarre and fundamentally wrong.

But unfortunately, lots of folks no longer do. The Core quietly ushered us into a new era in which it seems perfectly okay for legislators to dictate how teaching is supposed to happen. It is not going to end well. 

Too Much For Mere Mortals

When I was ploughing through the Pew Center survey of teachers, I thought of Robert Pondiscio.

Specifically, it was the part about the work itself. 84% of teachers report that there's not enough time in the day to get their work done, and among those, 81% said that a major reason was they just have too much work (another 17% said this was a minor reason, meaning that virtually no overstretched teachers thought it wasn't part of the problem at all). The other reasons, like non-teaching duties, didn't even come close.

Meanwhile, in another part of the world this weekend, Pondiscio was presenting on something that has been a consistent theme in his work-- Teaching is too hard for mere mortals, and we need a system that allows teachers to focus on teaching. 

Pondiscio has long argued that some aspects of teaching need to be taken off teachers' plates so that they can put more of their energy into actual classroom instruction. I've always pushed back, but maybe I need to re-examine the issue a bit. 

Plugging 47 Extension Cords Into One Power Strip

Certainly every teacher learns that there's never enough. One of my earliest viral hits was this piece about how nobody warns teachers that they will have to compromise and cut corners somewhere. It touched many, many nerves. We all have stories. My first year of teaching I worked from 7 AM to 11 PM pretty much every day. I had a gifted colleague who couldn't bring herself to compromise on workload, so once every nine weeks grading period, she took a personal day just to sit at home and grade and enter papers. And let's be honest--being the teacher who walks out the door as the bell rings, and who carries nothing out the door with them--that does not win you the admiration of your colleagues.

Being overworked is part of the gig, and some of us wear our ability to manage that workload as a badge of honor, like folks who are proud of surviving an initiation hazing and insist that the new recruits should suck it up and run the same gauntlet. On reflection, I must admit this may not be entirely healthy, especially considering the number of young teachers who blame themselves because they can't simply gut their way past having overloaded circuits. 

There's also resistance because the "let's give teachers a break" argument is used by 1) vendors with "teacher-assisting" junk to sell and 2) folks who want to deprofessionalize teaching. That second group likes the notion of "teacher-proof" programs, curriculum in a box that can be delivered by any dope ("any dope" constitutes a large and therefor inexpensive labor pool).

We could lighten the teacher load, the argument goes, by reducing their agency and autonomy. Not in those exact words, of course. That would make it obvious why that approach isn't popular.

Lightening the Load

So what are the ways that the burden of teaching could be reduced to a size suitable for actual mortals. 

Some of the helps are obvious. Reduce the number of non-teaching duties that get laid on teachers. Study halls. Cafeteria duty. Minute-by-minute surveillance and supervision of students. 

Some of the helps are obvious to teachers, yet difficult to implement. Most schools has a variety of policies and procedures surrounding clerical tasks that are set up to make life easier for people in the front office, not teachers in the classroom (e.g. collecting students excuses for absence, managing lunch money, etc). Then there's the tendency to see new programs adopted at the state or district level with a cavalier, "We'll just have teachers do that" as if there are infinite minutes in the teacher day and adding one more thing won't be a big deal. Imagine a world in which preserving teacher time was a major sacred priority. 

Some of the helps would be hard to sell because they would cost real money. Quickest way to reduce teacher workload? Smaller classes. Or more non-teaching hours in the day for teachers to use for prep and paperwork (hard sell because so many boards believe that a teacher is only working when she's in front of students). These are both tough because they require hiring more staff which 1) costs a bunch of money and 2) requires finding more of the qualified teachers that we already don't have enough of.

So what are we left with?

Hiring aids to do strictly clerical stuff like scoring objective tests and putting grades into the gradebook. There are also plenty of folks trying to sell the idea of suing AI to grade the non-objective stuff like essays; this is a terrible idea for many reasons. I will admit that I was always resistant to the idea of even letting someone record grades for me, because recording grades was part of how I got a sense of how students were doing. Essentially it was a way to go over every single piece of graded work. But that would be a way to reclaim some time.

But after all that, we've come down the biggie, and the thing that Pondiscio has always argued is a huge lift for mere mortals--

Curriculum and instructional planning.

The Main Event

As a classroom teacher, the mere suggestion of being required to use canned curriculum made my hackles climb right up on my high dudgeon pony. For me, designing the lessons was part of any important loop. Teach the material. Take the temperature of the students and measure success. Develop the next lesson based on that feedback. That's for daily instruction. A larger, longer, slower loop tied into larger scale feedback plus a constant check on what we'd like to include in the program. 

I like to think that I was pretty good at instructional design. But I must also admit that not everyone is, and that teachers who aren't can create a host of issues. I will also fly my old fart flag to say that the last twenty years have produced way too many neo-teachers who were taught that if you design your instruction about the Big Standardized Test (maybe using select pieces of the state standards as a guide) you're doing the job. I don't want to wander down this rabbit, but I disagree, strenuously. 

So is there a place for some sort of high-quality instructional design and curriculum support for mere mortal teachers. Yes. Well, yes, but.

While I think a school should have a consistent culture and set of values, I think a building full of teachers who work in a wide variety of styles and approaches and techniques is by far the best way to go. Students will grow up to encounter a wide variety of styles and approaches in the world; why should they not find that in school (and with that variety, a better chance of finding a teacher with whom they click)?

The point of hiring trained and eventually experienced professionals for the work is so that they can exercise professional judgment as they deal directly with students. A system that requires each teacher to teach the same lesson in the same way using the same language on the day at the same time is a system that erases most teacher autonomy and agency and eliminates their ability to exercise professional judgment. Sorry kids-- You're having trouble with this concept, and I know some ways to further get it across, but the script says we have to move on. Show me a school that says it's using this kind of curriculum with success, and I'll show you a school that is selecting students for whom it works and getting rid of the ones for which it does not (belief in a perfect system is terrible for students, because the unavoidable reasoning is that if my program is perfect, that failing student must be defective somehow). 

That said, the other extreme, in which individuals live in the land of Do As You Please is not a workable choice either. Autonomy and agency cannot be a license for educational malpractice. Lesson planning by googling the topic is a lousy way to do the job (and getting an AI lesson plan is just asking someone to google the topic and then summarize some of what they find). 

No Child Left Behind and the Common Core introduced the notion that good curriculum and instruction could be mandated by legislators, and unfortunately the idea has stuck with us (witness the states trying to mandate the Science of Reading). This is a terrible idea, and I would still say so even if the government were mandating my favorite instructional ideas. There are so many reasons why, but I'll just note Rick Hess's observation that you can require people to do X, but you can't make them do it well.

Right. Sure. Have We Ruled Out Everything?

Districts need scope and sequence that is coordinated, but not set in lockstep-required stone. Districts need a curriculum that is coherent, but not a straightjacket. Teachers need a library of instructional materials that provides a wealth of solid choices and flexibility. Most teachers develop such a library of their own over the course of their career, but few schools have any sort of mechanism for sharing those libraries (worth noting: having teachers compete for performance pay would actively discourage such sharing). 

Nor are there any real sources for high-quality materials. The government's attempt to create such a resource (the What Works Clearinghouse) is not particularly useful for a variety of reasons, and in general, the pipeline from the world of education research is--well, I wouldn't call it broken because it has never really existed. Researchers don't really understand what teachers do, and teachers don't really understand what researchers do, and neither has the time to figure it out, and nobody has ever emerged to effectively bridge the gap. Meanwhile, the water is muddied by every education publishing outfit which is intent on marketing its materials, and manufactures pseudo-research to do so. On top of that, toss in not-really-research-at-all stuff like TNTP's unserious Opportunity Myth.

The most effective pipeline for teaching materials remains teacher-to-teacher contact, the teacher who pops next door to ask, "Hey, have you got any good materials for teaching quadratic equations?" Some of the best program development is done in house in districts willing to spend the money and time to get their people to do the work. But both of these mechanisms, like the mentoring of fledgling teachers, depends on the luck of the draw. 

Evaluating, screening, collecting, promoting and uplifting effective high-quality materials is, unfortunately, not a job that actually exists. Thinky tanks and publishers employ people to pitch their particular stuff, and state and federal bureaucracies are too close to politics and too far from classrooms to be help. 

So, What To Do?

The task most sensibly falls to school districts themselves, or perhaps in the case of smaller districts, consortiums. A couple of thoughts about how to make that work.

The curriculum and instruction honcho should spend a full half of their time in the classroom. Maybe their own, maybe everyone else's. The notion that a program's effectiveness can be measured by checking the scores from the Big Standardized Test is bunk. Teachers evaluate instruction based on how it works in the classroom, which is a big complicated metric that is best measured with eyeballs. 

The curriculum and instruction honcho needs to be able to have difficult conversations with teachers on the subject of "That Doesn't Seem To Be Working. Why Are You Sticking With It?"

The curriculum and instruction honcho needs the time and resources to look regularly at What's Out There and do the kind of sifting through materials that allows libraries to be built. They need some research and stats background. They need to sift, and they need to field test, either themselves or via a trusted colleague. 

It's not a very sexy solution, and it doesn't scale up all that well, requiring district by district implementation. But it could work. Districts could also move to a teaching hospital model, where more experienced teachers manage their younger colleagues, a model frequently mentioned but rarely implemented. 

But somehow, someone has to manage the bottleneck that now exists between a huge ocean of instructional materials, research, and educational stuff (an ocean that is only going to get huger as the field is further flooded with AI crap) classroom teachers. Sorting through all that for the usable viable bits is, in fact, more than can be done by mere mortals who already have a day job teaching classes. 

Hang on. I'm Almost Done.

Yes, teaching as it has been conceived, with one person serving as clerk, instructional designer, curriculum developer, assessment manager, and classroom teacher (plus, in many cases, social worker and mental health worker), is to much for a mere mortal. It is a job for a couple of people. 

However, the two people have to be very closely coordinated, because all of the pieces of the job are closely tied together, and if they don't fit perfectly, the process of reconciling the bad fit just creates more work. And unfortunately, most of the people showing interest in the other half of the work are not so much interested in being part of a team as they are in pushing particular wares or agenda.

Part of the solution requires a shift in public opinion about what a teacher's job is. Everyone has seen teachers doing the classroom piece of the job; few have seen all the rest, and so as a culture we have a tendency to think of all the rest--the paperwork, the planning, the designing--as just something that gets thrown in for free. 

Teachers need support, the backing of a team, a system that provides them with access to high quality materials that suit the students they have in front of them. They definitely need more support than administrations (and old farts like me) telling them, "Just get in there and do all that stuff." They don't need lawmakers fearmongering with mis-interpreted NAEP scores in order to legislate curriculum and instruction. You get mere mortals to carry gigantic loads by connecting them to other mere mortals, by giving them real tools that empower them without binding them hand and feet, and by recognizing their humanity when considering plugging in one more cord.

ICYMI: Big Fat Eclipse Edition (4/7)

The Curmudgucation Institute is located just about 10ish miles from the path of totality, which is close enough for me. Many local schools are dismissing early tomorrow so that children can enjoy the whole shebang from home. Should be a good time. We've got our glasses and everything. 

In the meantime, read up on some stuff.

My Letter to the Boston Globe re K-12 Political Coverage

Dark money expert Maurice Cunningham continues to try explaining to the Boston Globe how their education coverage seems to neglect mentioning some of the big money players behind the push for reform in Massachusetts. Also, this piece about the activities of the Barr Foundation. 

Oklahoma voters recall white supremacist, reject supporters of Ryan Walters

Some good news from Oklahoma for a change. Turns out plenty of voters still have some sense.

Kanye West admitted to ‘blowing Donda school funds’ on $2m Paris trip as Yeezy staffers ‘weren’t paid,’ lawsuit claims

Kanye's attempt to get into the education biz has not turned out so well. Who woulda thought it.

Students across Alaska walk out in protest of governor’s education veto

Alaska's governor has been trying to go the "bribe teachers to go along" route, but the legislature wouldn't go along, so he vetoed funding and now everyone is upset about something, including students. 

Civil Disobedience and Uncivilized Diatribes

Jess Piper reminds us that there are great and not-so-great ways to express your disagreement.

Rethinking Information Literacy in an Age of AI

John Spencer shares some thoughts about what information literacy really means these days. 

NC teacher turnover hits highest mark in decades.

WRAL takes a look at North Carolina's continuing inability to hold onto teachers. No surprises here.

Naught for Teacher

Jennifer Berkshire at The Baffler with the story of how Democrats lost the plot and joined the opposition to public education and the search for Bad Teachers. Thorough and informative historical look that's well worth your attention.

A Tale of Two (or Three) Pensions

You may be retired, but are you "Have To Prove To The State You're Not Dead" retired? The indispensable Mercedes Schneider has a couple of tales to tell. Plus a follow-up piece here.

DIS-Information in Schools

Nancy Flanagan writes about battling dis-information (as distinct from misinformation). Also, because we have a bunch of twofers this week, catch her post Trust (Pandemic, Day #1475)

Fan of Standards-Based Grading?

Thomas Ultican breaks down standards-based grading, and why he is not a fan.

Critical Race Theory Is About You, And All Of Us

Jose Luis Vilson writes about the many tools used to target teachers of color and programs that respond to a diverse nation. Come for this line: "It’s about time for us to learn how to fight the bull. Or at least call out its excrements."

Billionaire Jeff Yass Avoids Taxes and Buys School Voucher Policies

Pennsylvania's big rich guy loves vouchers, and he's not shy about spending money to promote them, and he's not sticking to his home state. Steve Nuzum lays out some history.

Oklahoma Supreme Court Justices Appear to Question Constitutionality of Religious Charter School

This was the week that the Oklahoma supreme court started to hear arguments about the state's proposed and nation's first religious charter school. Jan Resseger has a good wrap up of the arguments being made and the importance of the case.

Why Does Florida Continue To Administer State-Mandated Writing Assessments?

Florida still makes students take a state writing assessment. Nobody really knows why, but Sue Kingery Woltanski can explain why they shouldn't.

The US is experiencing a boom in microschools. What are they?

Alejandra O'Connor writes an explainer for The Hill about microschools, and while she misses their importance in the drive for privatized voucherized schools, it's still a pretty good summation of how things stand currently.

Humans are not perfectly vigilant

Cory Doctorow remains one of the most on-target critics of AI. In this piece, he addresses the use of humans "in the loop" and why that sucks.

Majority Of Americans Never Use Physical Education After High School

This real oldie from The Onion surfaced this week, but it's still an evergreen classic. For every teacher who ever had to listen to "I'll never use this again..." (aka all teachers).

At Forbes.com this week I looked at the possible (and welcome) demise of Tennessee's achievement school district and the highlights of Pew's newest survey of teachers. 

Come join me on substack, where everything I write turns up in your email inbox, and you never have to pay a cent for it. 

A Useful Public School Support Resource

"I know I read something about that somewhere." 

It's a pain (believe me--one that we at the Institute are all too familiar with) to know that you know something, but can't locate the source. Or wish you knew more, but can't find a handy clearing house for the information you need. Particularly if yours is one of those states where some legislators are whipping up some speedy back door voucher bill.

So here's one useful answer. The Partnership for the Future of Learning has created a website at TruthinEdFunding.org that provides a wide assortment of resources in a library organized by topics. History Rooted in Segregation. Types of Vouchers. Discrimination. Accountability. Drain Funds from Public Education. And more. 

There are links to studies and data as well as graphics and personal stories. You can also filter through the resource library by a set of more specific tags. 

The website is the result of a partnership between about 25 organizations that are all in support of public education-- Network for Public Education, Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy, Florida Policy Institute, In The Public Interest. 

So if you are looking for a place to find a bunch of useful resources to use in defending public education in your state against vouchers, or just some tools for educating friends and neighbors and journalists (and legislators) who haven't quite caught on to what's happening, this resource is for you.  Stop and browse, and return from time to time because new stuff is being added regularly. One of the most useful websites I have come across (and putting up this post insures that I'll always be able to find it).

SAT Scam Alert

This time, it's not the College Board perpetrating the scam.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry sent out an alarm on Monday warning that scammers are contacting parents of students who are getting ready to take the PSAT, SAT, and ACT. The pitch is for some non-existent test prep materials. And it's not just Pennsylvania. 

"Just give us a deposit, and the materials will be on their way," say the scammers, who also promise that the deposit will be refunded after the materials are used and returned. Just use your credit card to put down the deposit.

The parents get no test prep materials. The scammers have their credit card numbers and a chunk of their money.  

What really sells the scam is the information the scammers have. Folks reporting the scam to the Better Business Bureau say that the caller claims to from the College Board, just calling to confirm the student's information, and the scammers know the name, address, school information, and the date and location for the student's test. 

Caller, Carson, stated my son had requested SAT prep materials through College Board student services. He had my address, my son’s name, date and location of the SAT test my son is scheduled to take. Caller stated they needed parental permission prior to sending documents and that I needed to give him a credit card number for collateral.

We would be sent the college SAT prep materials; the materials would be free of charge for 30 days and we would need to return the materials in the envelope provided and my card wouldn’t be charged. The caller stated they send email reminders prior to the return deadline and will send shipping confirmation once the material package is mailed out. My card was charged $249.95 instantly.

Authorities remind you not to give out financial information to strangers, and the College Board won't call you up to ask for your credit card number.

This is not a new scam; it was being run back in at least 2022. It's just one more sad side effect of the fear and anxiety that have been attached to these Big Scary Tests that students are repeatedly told will Affect Their Entire Future! But it does raise one question--whose data has been hacked in order to provide scammers with all that info about the student? 

Teaching Flow State

As I noted a month ago, we have research out there that shows a parallel between playing jazz and teaching a class, mostly related to the gazillion microdecisions that are made in the process. For the subset of teachers who both teach and play jazz, or basketball, or any number of similarly dense and intense activities, this was not exactly news-- we'd already sensed the connection.

We can particularly sense the connection when we are in the zone, what the grown-ups who study this kind of thing call "flow state." If you've been there, you know it--the Something just flows through you, and you are just a conduit functioning so well and so clearly that you feel pretty awesome all the way to your bones. You make those gazillion microdecisions instantly in what the science folks call "effortless attention to a task."

But how do we get there? What makes flow state happen? Which way to the zone?

There are a variety of theories. New research suggests there is a particular explanation of what is going on in the flowing brain, and for me that suggests a few things about learning and teaching.

One theory flow is a version of hyperfocus, that executive function portion of the brain get cranked up and organize everything around the task (I am not a brain scientist, and you probably aren't either, so I'm going to do some oversimplification here). If that were the accurate explanation, then we'd expect people to get good at stuff through concentration, focus, executive function type stuff. Think back to that teacher who taught by way of intense demands to focus attention on the task at hand.

But the other theory says that executive function actually steps back, and in a flow state operation is taken over by an entire other neural processing network that doesn't need the executive function network and basically tells it to go sit quietly while the flow gets going. This would fit with details such as the fact that it's harder to get in the zone when you're just learning the task, or that middle-ground area that you might describe as thinking too much and getting in your own way.

The new study, "Creative flow as optimized processing: Evidence from brain oscillations during jazz improvisations by expert and non-expert musicians," comes down on the side of that second theory.

The study hooked up a bunch of jazz musicians (guitarists) of varied experience and had them do some soloing while scientists watched their brains. Interestingly, they also had some jazz experts judge the quality of the solos (all 192 of them). 

Things they concluded. More experience made higher flow scores. Self-rated quality ("Yeah, I nailed that") predicted flow for all players, but judged quality only predicted flow for low-experience players. In other words, if low-experience players had a good solo, it was probably flow, but for high-experience players, not necessarily. That makes sense to me; with enough experience, you can do a perfectly fine job on "autopilot," which is not at all like flow.

The paper also rules out the default mode network (the daydreamy, reflective part of the brain) as a player in flow.

The paper also includes a whole lot of information about pieces of the brain that light up and statistics stuff (the paper is here, and a plain English explanation is here). 

But the bottom line here seems to be that only through experience over time do you grow the capacity to flow, that mastering the task or task set is the business of building a new neural network in your brain to manage the task.

This would fit nicely with, for instance, the conventional wisdom that it takes a teacher five to seven years to really get good at the work. 

It would also suggest that the teaching model that says we just explain the content and make students focus on it real hard is not necessarily the best path, that a certain amount of repetition is useful, because we're not trying to get them to focus real hard and acquire a particular bit of knowledge, but we are trying to build a neural network through repeated experience. 

It's certainly not a radical new idea to suggest that practicing something a whole lot makes you better at it (though, before someone brings up the 10,000 hour rule, that thing is debunked). Still, "Build a neural network" is certainly a way to think about teaching and learning, perhaps most at odds with some of our traditional approached because it requires one major ingredient-- time. Think of how often we insist that students learn something, Right Now, because if they would just Apply Themselves and Focus, they could get it. As always, some balance might be good.

It also suggests that pressuring students to substitute intensely focused attention in place of time is perhaps not useful. In fact, it strikes me that repeated experiences of frustration, pressure and failure are also building a neural network that's not helpful, another version of the injunction for performers to avoid practicing something the wrong way.

Of course, not all learning needs to aspire to creating a flow state, and I'm sure there's more studying to be done. Always fun to think about building a brain, though.