Child Development

21 Sep

Posted at 10:54h in Child Development, Meditations, Wellbeing

“When it comes to achieving challenging goals, grit is necessary but not sufficient. The situation also matters — and to an astonishing degree.”
— Angela Duckworth

“What Dilla created was a third path of rhythm… a new, pleasurable, disorienting rhythmic friction.”
— Dan Charnas, “Dilla Time”

Lately, I keep hearing the same concern about artificial intelligence in schools: it removes productive struggle.

I understand the concern. Learning takes effort. Students need opportunities to get stuck, make mistakes, rethink what they are doing and find their way through.

Still, I have started to wonder what we mean when we say “productive struggle.”

Education has a habit of taking complicated ideas and making them portable. Angela Duckworth’s grit gets reduced to perseverance. Carol Dweck’s growth mindset becomes encouragement to keep trying. Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences somehow helped produce decades of talk about fixed learning styles, despite his objections. Eventually, the name remains while much of the concept disappears.

Productive struggle feels vulnerable to the same thing.

A difficult assignment is not educationally valuable because it is difficult. Whether the struggle produces anything depends on the young person sitting in front of it.

That person arrives with more than a skill level. Maybe they slept badly. Maybe the morning at home was chaotic. Maybe something happened with a friend. Maybe they are hungry. Maybe they have failed at this kind of task enough times that difficulty starts to confirm something they believe about themselves.

Tomorrow could be different.

Developmental science has spent decades showing that young people grow through their experiences with the people and circumstances around them. Yet inside a classroom, it can become tempting to treat the student as a fixed quantity.

Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development gives us a place where challenge exceeds what a learner can do alone while remaining reachable with help. Csikszentmihalyi’s work on flow offers another familiar picture of skill and challenge meeting at the point of deep engagement.

Those models are useful. The diagrams are clean. The kid isn’t.

A student can know enough to do the work and still have little available for it at 2:30 on a Thursday.

I think about this when I listen to J Dilla.

I love Dilla’s music. His drums can feel as though they are slipping away from where they are supposed to land. A snare arrives late. Something else pushes forward. The beat keeps moving around the place where your ear expects to find it.

When I am in the mood, I love that feeling. It makes me listen harder. A beat that initially sounds crooked begins to make sense.

And then there are days when Dilla hurts my head. I do not want to chase the beat. Give me something that lands where I expect it to land. Maybe Sugar Hill, Eric B. or just a disco playlist.

The record does not change. I do. So does the context.

That seems like a problem for the way we talk about productive struggle. We often imagine challenge as something we can calibrate in advance: give this student something at the right level, push a little beyond what they know, offer enough support to keep them moving.

There are days when the same student needs more help than yesterday. There are subjects in which difficulty creates curiosity and others where it starts to feel like proof that they do not belong. Sometimes a teacher should wait before stepping in. Sometimes waiting accomplishes nothing.

This is where AI gets interesting.

Bellwether recently examined productive struggle in relation to AI and made an important point: AI can help students through difficulty, and it can also let them bypass the intellectual work entirely.

A student who asks AI to write the essay has avoided something.

A student who asks for help understanding a confusing term may finally be able to get started.

Those uses are very different, though both made the task easier. Maybe “easier” is too blunt a category.

If students are learning historical reasoning, dense vocabulary might get in the way of the work we care about. If they are learning to build an argument, organizing ideas may be part of the work or the obstacle keeping them from doing it.

AI forces us to be more specific: What do we want the young person to struggle with?

Good teachers already make these calls all day long. They notice when frustration turns into withdrawal. Sometimes they give a hint. Sometimes they let the student keep working.

Dilla did something similar with music. He could move a drum just far enough to make you search for the beat without losing it altogether. He knew where to introduce friction and where to leave something steady.

And still, I cannot listen to him every day and nobody forces me to for the sake of productive struggle. The same music that pulls me closer one day can make me turn it off the next. Young people bring at least that much variability into a classroom.

So before we protect productive struggle from AI, we should be more careful about what we are protecting. Maybe AI is not threatening productive struggle as much as it is threatening our ability to be vague about it.

Sometimes struggle opens something up. Sometimes it just hurts your head.

***

By Dan Warren, PhD, Director, Youth Development & Education, Fluent Research

This article was originally published in Youth Today on September 16, 2026 as part of the series Dan writes called Pass the mic: Where hip-hop meets human development. Each month, he brings scholars and rappers into dialogue to spark new ways of seeing youth, culture and change.

Previous pieces in the Pass the MIc series:

20 Aug

Posted at 12:53h in Child Development, Meditations, Wellbeing

“Don’t believe the hype.”
—Public Enemy

“Reading the world always precedes reading the word.”
—Paulo Freire

I remember seeing a painting in social studies class of a woman floating westward across the continent, glowing in white, carrying a book. Behind her were farms, ships, railroads, towns and light. Before her were Native people, buffalo, wild animals and darkness, all being pushed toward the edge of the frame. This was John Gast’s “American Progress.” What I didn’t know until recently was that the woman was Columbia, the female personification of the United States, and that she was carrying a telegraph wire in one hand and a book in the other. I assumed the book was the Bible. Upon closer inspection, it says “Schoolbook.” I was intrigued.

The message was now clear to me: Civilization is arriving. Communication is arriving. Schooling is arriving.

Educational historians like Joel Spring have noted that nineteenth-century schooling was not only a benign push for literacy. It was also a policy of denationalization, using schools to dismantle a people’s language, history and sovereignty and replace them with Anglo-American norms. For me, the schoolbook may be the most revealing object in the painting because it exposes the arrogance at the center of the image. Columbia is not simply bringing education. She is bringing a premade idea of Schooling: formal, institutional, book-based and settler-defined. The painting asks us to see that book as progress. It also asks us to ignore the forms of knowledge already present in the darkness.

The people living there were not uneducated. They were educated differently. Developmental psychologist Darcia Narvaez has argued that Indigenous worldviews begin from a radically different premise than the dominant Western one: human beings are not separate from nature, but nested within a living web of relationships, responsibilities and reciprocal obligations. That kind of education was carried through language, story, ceremony, observation, memory, practice and relationship. Children learned how to read weather, follow animals, understand plants, prepare food, honor kinship, recognize danger, share responsibility and live within the limits of a place. Education was not separate from life. It was how life continued.

Columbia’s schoolbook, then, does not simply symbolize learning. It symbolizes the dismissal of culture.

That dismissal matters because settlers moving west were entering environments many of them did not understand. A book from the East (U.S.) could teach reading, arithmetic, scripture, citizenship and national identity. But it could not, by itself, teach the daily work of making life possible in a new landscape. The knowledge most urgently needed in those places was often place-based, practical, ecological and communal. Much of it was already held by the people being displaced.

People have always migrated, traded, borrowed, taught, married, adapted and learned from one another. There were surely things settlers knew that could have been useful to Native communities, just as there were countless things Native communities knew that settlers urgently needed to understand.

That is the ordinary and humane version of cultural exchange: people meeting one another with curiosity, humility and practical need. That is dialogue.

But that is not what “American Progress” shows. The painting does not imply mutual learning. It moves in only one direction. Columbia does not arrive as a neighbor. She arrives as a teacher. She does not ask what is already known. She assumes need and want.

That is the real failure of Columbia’s schoolbook: she brought education without listening. Settlement without humility becomes possession. Education without listening becomes conquest.

That pattern has not disappeared. It has only changed direction. Today, the imposition is from well-resourced (and well-intentioned) “American-dream groups” to under-resourced communities. Adults, institutions, philanthropies and policymakers arrive with their own schoolbooks: everyone should go to college, every child needs a laptop, every school needs the same pathway to success, every community needs the same innovation.

Some of these ideas are useful. College can open doors. Technology can expand access. Credentials can matter. But when these solutions arrive already written, they can repeat Columbia’s mistake. They assume the problem is absence: absence of aspiration, absence of knowledge, absence of tools, absence of culture. They do not always begin by asking what is known and what is meaningful.

The geography has changed, but the posture can remain the same. What I see resulting from this are “successful” young people who have learned how to succeed inside school rather than how to live well outside it. They may know how to perform the rituals and routines of a stranger’s vision, yet feel disconnected from their bodies, communities, environments and practical responsibilities.

Environmental educator David Orr famously argued that the planet does not need more “successful” people in the narrow institutional sense; it needs people who know how to inhabit a place well. Modern education often separates knowledge from place and people. It teaches students to master symbols while losing fluency in the living systems that sustain them.

A different book may have been better. Or perhaps it would not have been a book at all. It might have been a seasonal calendar, a bundle of stories, a set of tools, a map drawn by those already there, a packet of seeds, an empty notebook. It might have taught reading and writing, but also tending, repairing, growing, observing, sharing and belonging.

Columbia’s mistake was that she brought a book already written. She should have brought an empty one — and learned how much was already known.

Oh, I should probably acknowledge that there are no hip-hop references here. Sorry.

***

By Dan Warren, Director, Youth Development & Education, Fluent Research

This article was originally published in Youth Today on August 18, 2026 as part of the series Dan writes called Pass the mic: Where hip-hop meets human development. Each month, he brings scholars and rappers into dialogue to spark new ways of seeing youth, culture and change.

Previous pieces in the Pass the MIc series:

16 Jul

Posted at 17:38h in Child Development, Meditations, Wellbeing

“Styles upon styles upon styles is what I have.”
—Beastie Boys

“People believe they have learning styles, and they try to think in their preferred style, but doing so doesn’t help them think.”
—Daniel Willingham

My music app thinks it knows me. Most days it does.

I went on a streak of listening to 1970s and early 1980s New York rap a month ago. Must have listened to Funky 4+1’s “That’s the Joint” fifty times over the course of a week, and my algorithm noticed.

At first, that feels good. The algorithm gets me. It recognized my taste and responded to feed me some more tasty stuff with similar flavors. But after a while, the recommendations can feel less like discovery and more like confinement. It keeps giving me the same music, when what I liked was bigger than the songs themselves.

Maybe I wasn’t only drawn to “old-school NY rap.” Maybe I was drawn to the party atmosphere, the call-and-response, the group vocals, the dance-floor pulse, the funk and disco underneath it. A smarter algorithm might hear those deeper qualities and move outward: go-go, house, electro, club rap or later records that sampled and reimagined that early energy (e.g., the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique).

The problem is not that the algorithm knows I like Funky 4+1. The problem is that it may not know why.

That, in my opinion, is also the problem with learning styles.

For years, there has been a strongly held popular belief that people (especially young people) have a specific way they learn best: visual, auditory, kinesthetic or some other style. Throughout my frequent conversations with teachers, I hear this distinction frequently about the students they teach and an inevitable declaration about their own learning style. The idea comes from a good place. It sounds respectful. It tells young people, especially those who have struggled in school, “You are not bad at learning. You just learn differently.”

While it stems from a generous and well-meaning instinct, the popular focus on fixed learning styles can be more restrictive than helpful.

Educators and youth workers should notice a difference. But Daniel Willingham, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia, is one of the leading researchers challenging the claim behind learning styles that students learn better when instruction is matched to a fixed personal style.

Willingham reinforces the point that students are not all the same. He echoes the feeling that preferences are real and powerful. But he is also saying that preference is not destiny. The best way to teach something depends less on a learner’s label and more on the content, the task, prior knowledge, attention, practice and what the student is asked to think about.

A map may help with geography because geography is spatial. Hearing pronunciation matters when learning a language. Physical practice matters in dance or sports. But none of that should compel us to believe that a person is permanently one kind of learner. It only proves that good teaching matches the strategy to the material.

Learning styles become dangerous when they start to operate like a shallow algorithm.

A student says: “I like seeing things that I am learning about.”

The system responds: “You are a visual learner! We will give you visuals.”

The student concludes: “I am a visual learner.”

The system narrows further: “Then we will avoid methods that do not match your style.”

Then the student begins to wield the label too: “Yes, I will also avoid methods that do not match my style.”

This is where the label becomes more than a description. It becomes a form of agency. The young person now has language to explain discomfort, defend preference and opt out of unfamiliar learning situations. That may feel empowering at first, but over time it can shrink the learner’s range. Reading feels foreign. Lecture feels impossible. Discussion feels inefficient. Writing feels like punishment. Practice feels boring.

What began as recognition becomes restriction.

The better response is not to ignore preference. Preference matters. If a young person says they like visuals, we should listen. But then we should ask what is underneath that preference. Do they need structure? Examples? Pattern? A model before they try?

Those are different needs. They call for different supports. Calling all of them “visual learning” may be as crude as calling Funky 4+1 only “old-school rap.” It is accurate enough to feel useful and crude enough to become harmful.

Although such simple labels are lovely in their own way, youth work should be more expansive than that. When a young person tells us what feels comfortable, we can treat that as a doorway, not a diagnosis. We can begin where they are, but we should not leave them there.

The goal is not learning style. The goal is learning range. It is dynamic.

A good youth-serving professional, like a good DJ, widens the mix. They invite young people to talk, read, move, build, listen, perform, revise, reflect and try again. They honor and celebrate what youth prefer while helping them discover what else they can do.

People are not visual learners, auditory learners or kinesthetic learners. They are learners.

Our job is not to build a smaller playlist around their preferences. It is to hear the deeper pattern, widen the mix and help them discover capacities they did not know they had.

And if we didn’t know that before — well, now we do.

***

By Dan Warren, Director, Youth Development & Education, Fluent Research

This article was originally published in Youth Today on July 16, 2026 as part of the series Dan writes called Pass the mic: Where hip-hop meets human development. Each month, he brings scholars and rappers into dialogue to spark new ways of seeing youth, culture and change.

Previous pieces in the Pass the MIc series:

22 May

Posted at 11:40h in Child Development, Meditations, Wellbeing

“When it’s real, you’re doing this even without a record contract.”
— Nas

“Sparks — when illuminated and nurtured — give young people joy, energy and direction.”
— Peter Benson

When I was in graduate school, I taped to the wall in my office an image of Nas (from a Rolling Stone illustration) along with the lyric above. To some degree, it mocked me. I often felt that the only reason I chained myself to that desk was for the letters that would follow my name when I was done. Anyone who has gone through doctoral training can probably attest to that kind of crisis, and Nas got a front row seat to mine. I still cannot fully explain why I went through that process, but I am pretty sure it was not because of a deep love of learning. I snowboarded, played hockey, worked in my garden and played music because of the joy I felt while doing them, not because I expected recognition or reward. Graduate school felt different, and Nas and I knew it.

What makes that line resonate with me is partly what it meant and partly that Nas said it to open Illmatic, his critically acclaimed debut studio album, released in 1994, which is widely regarded as one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time. It stays with me because it offers a definition of realness that has very little to do with recognition. It points instead to a kind of commitment that exists before validation arrives. The contract comes later. The applause comes later. The proof comes later. What comes first is the relationship between a person and the thing they feel called to do. It involves passion and faith.

That raises an important question for those of us who care about young people:

Are we helping them develop a genuine relationship with the process of doing something, or are we surrounding them with environments that teach them to care mostly about the outcome?

Nas is a useful example because his story makes that distinction visible. Before the acclaim, before Illmatic, before the industry confirmed his value, there was a young person in Queens who had already found something that mattered to him. Hip-hop was not initially a product or a career path. It was a place to put his mind, his observations, his hunger and his craft. The record contract formalized something that already had life. It did not create the life itself.

Peter Benson had a beautiful word for this kind of energy: sparks. He used it to describe the talents, interests and passions that give young people a sense of direction and aliveness. A spark is more than competence. A person may be skilled at many things and feel deeply connected to only one or two of them. I was a much better student than a gardener. A spark has heat. It draws a person back. It makes effort feel worthwhile.

That question applies as much to school as it does to youth programs. Schools often speak the language of curiosity and growth, yet students quickly learn that much of the system revolves around grades, ranking, compliance, deadlines and visible achievement. Youth programs can fall into a similar pattern through leadership outcomes, portfolios, showcases and other measurable indicators of growth. None of those things are unimportant.

The problem begins when the structure surrounding the activity becomes so dominant that the activity itself loses its inner pull.

Edward Deci and Richard Ryan’s Self-Determination Theory helps explain why some environments nourish motivation while others thin it out. They argue that people are more likely to stay deeply engaged when three conditions are present: autonomy, competence and relatedness. Young people need room to exercise ownership. They need the experience of becoming more capable. They also need to feel connected to other people and to some larger sense of meaning.

William Damon’s work on purpose shows what can happen when a spark survives long enough to mature. Purpose is not a passing interest. It is a stable and meaningful commitment that matters to the self and also reaches beyond the self. A spark begins as energy. Intrinsic motivation sustains that energy over time. Purpose gives it direction and weight.

Seen through that lens, Nas’s line captures the beginning of a developmental arc. If it is real, you are doing it before anyone confirms that it is worthwhile. You are still there when the work is repetitive, when no one is watching and when the result is uncertain. That is what makes the contract meaningful in the first place.

For schools and youth programs, the practical implication is clear. We should care about outcomes, but we should also pay attention to the quality of a young person’s engagement along the way. We should ask whether they are becoming more curious, more self-directed, more absorbed and more connected to what they are doing.

This feels especially urgent in a culture that constantly invites people to bypass process. The deeper concern, though, is older than any current tool. When process loses its meaning, passion begins to thin out. When passion thins out, purpose becomes harder to form.

The task, then, is helping young people stay lit from within. It is to notice the early spark, to build schools and programs that support intrinsic motivation and to respect the long, uneven process through which a real interest becomes a real calling.

Nas was right. If it is real, you are doing it anyway.

And if we didn’t know that before — well, now we do.

***

By Dan Warren, Director, Youth Development & Education, Fluent Research

This article was originally published in Youth Today on May 21, 2026 as part of the series Dan writes called Pass the mic: Where hip-hop meets human development. Each month, he brings scholars and rappers into dialogue to spark new ways of seeing youth, culture and change.

Previous pieces in the Pass the MIc series: