Why is there sometimes resistance to automaticity in education?

The need for automaticity on low-level skills is obvious to anyone with experience learning a sport or instrument. So why is there sometimes resistance in education? It makes sense if you think about what people usually find persuasive.

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Just as a basketball player needs to be able to dribble without thinking, students need to be automatic on lower-level skills so that they don’t eat up too much brainpower while trying to learn and execute more complex maneuvers.

To anyone who has experience learning a sport, instrument, or any other hierarchical skill to a high level, the need for automaticity is obvious.

So why is there sometimes resistance in education?

The resistance makes sense if you think about what people usually find most persuasive: experience, emotional storytelling, and logical deduction, in that order.

It’s easy to convey an emotional story where a kid is made to practice their math facts, is unhappy about it, and becomes happier when the practice requirement is removed. There’s a really simple cause-and-effect in a single moment in time.

It’s harder to convey an emotional story where a kid is not made to practice their math facts, and then feels unhappy later on in algebra because of it, and then learns their math facts and feels happier afterwards. The cause-and-effect is more complicated there and it takes place over a longer period of time.

Someone might become more receptive to the second story once they see concrete examples of it playing out in real life with people that they personally know. But without that experience, it’s so much easier to connect emotionally with the first story.

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