Bryan Caplan recently posted about what he calls “The Iron Laws of Pedagogy.” He gives four such laws and they’re all about why so much teaching is so ineffective.
Unfortunately, Bryan says nothing about what works.
I know what works. Here it is: Always use stories that illustrate a principle.
Indeed, while I didn’t always practice this, I found it even more effective to use stories before getting to a principle that the story illustrates. Charley Hooper and I did this incessantly in our book, Making Great Decisions in Business and Life.
Here’s a true story followed by another true story.
The first story is one we called “The Case of the Stanford Limousine.” It’s actually our first story in the book. Here it is.
My (Charles’) brother Douglas Hooper has photographed hundreds of weddings in the San Francisco Bay Area. One of them was at Stanford’s Faculty Club in the summer of 1999. The ceremony was complete and the reception was progressing nicely. The mariachi band had gotten everyone in a celebratory mood, and the disk jockey took charge of the dance music. The wedding couple’s 225 guests were enjoying themselves, lost in conversation, food, and drink at this upscale, prestigious university restaurant. Douglas was preparing to photograph the remaining elements of the reception—the cake cutting, bouquet throwing, and garter toss—when the wedding couple, looking harried, approached him. They explained that they had to leave at precisely 5:00 PM, a time that was quickly approaching. And leave they did.
The mystery of their sudden departure was soon revealed. They had left at precisely 5:00 to avoid paying their limousine driver’s customary fine of one dollar a minute for tardy passengers.
Think about it. After planning for a year, inviting hundreds of people, and spending many thousands of dollars, the happy couple cut short the event they will remember their whole lives to avoid paying a fine of $1 a minute.
Let’s put that dollar-a-minute into perspective. Assume that, on average, the 225 attendees spent $200 for clothing, travel, gifts, and lodging—a total of $45,000. Assume, also, that the bride and groom spent $30,000 (probably more) for rental of the Stanford Faculty Club, food, drinks, music, and everything else. Then the total cost of the wedding was $75,000. Including the ceremony, the event lasted just over five hours, for a cost of $15,000 per hour. Had the bride and groom stayed the extra hour, from 5:00 to 6:00, the cost would have been an additional $60, or one two hundred and fiftieth (1/250th) as much. Even ignoring what everyone else spent, the additional $60 would have been only one one hundredth (1/100th) as much per hour as what the bride and groom had already spent. What were they thinking?! Perhaps they weren't thinking.
If they had stopped to consider the situation differently—if someone had asked them if they would like to extend their party for a mere $60—no doubt they would have happily agreed. They could have even passed around a hat and collected 27 cents from each guest. If their wedding guests were typical, the newlyweds would have been fighting off uncles and aunts shoving fistfuls of money at them and demanding to pay the whole amount.
That’s the story from our book.
Now, I think of myself as an unusually rational person who thinks clearly based on principles. But here’s my own story.
About 10 or so years ago, I was in New York to tape a show with John Stossel of the Fox Business Channel. The other guest was my friend and fellow economist Veronique de Rugy. Before we started taping, John invited Vero and me to have dinner at his apartment with his wife that evening. Vero said she would love to but couldn’t make it because she had two young children back in Arlington that she needed to get back to that evening. I thanked John, but said I couldn’t make it because I needed to get back to California that evening.
“That’s too bad,” he said, “maybe next time.”
After we taped the show and I left the studio, I thought, “You idiot; this is the Stanford limousine.” I realized that I could change my flight at little or no expense and spring for an extra night in the hotel for under $200. So I found his assistant and told her my change of heart. She talked to John and changed my flight. I talked to the hotel and lined up another night in the hotel. I went with John to his beautiful apartment and had a wonderful dinner and conversation with him and his lovely wife.
At no time, did I identify a particular principle that led to my clear thinking. Instead, I thought “Stanford limousine.”
Moral: Always tell a story. People remember stories.
I recommend our book. You can order it here.
This is 100% correct, and it's how I try to teach. It is also a reason why some economic concepts are difficult to teach; spontaneous order is the result of the the distributed actions of many people, rather than a straightforward narrative with a protagonist. I try to portray the perspectives of several people and show how they all interact to create an outcome that is no individual's intention, but it is difficult.
Narratives can also mislead. I know some historians hate the idea of teaching history as a narrative, rather than as the result of impersonal systems interacting. For better or worse, I think if we want people to remember anything from history, narrative is the only way to go--people just aren't wired to remember complicated interactions of impersonal forces, and they are wired to remember (and think in) stories.