Practice makes …. Do the promises of deliberate practice make parents believe their kids can earn a scholarship?
In 1897, Pavlov was inspired by an observation: dogs’ expectation of food led to them salivating. That is, the expectations of rewards caused a biological response. In the hundred years since, other research has demonstrated that people likewise react to punishments and rewards. Inspired by these findings, we asked whether deliberate practice makes parents salivate.
In 2022, my research associate and I surveyed 50 parents. Initially, the survey sought to understand the impact of Malcolm Gladwell’s outliers on parents’ perception of practice. However, upon further review of the data, something occurred: the promises that practice could translate mediocrity into world-class athletes were tantalizing, so much so that the data demonstrates that participants in our study believe that their kids can, through practice, earn a scholarship to a prestigious, elite college.
These findings should not surprise anyone. A review of the literature available to parents, including TED Talks, popular books like Outliers or Range, and Long-Term Athlete Development, demonstrates a relatively consistent message: deliberate practice and expert coaching are critical to development.
Richard Lerner on Positive Youth Development (from YouTube)
Practice has real-life benefits. Dr. Richard Learner, the father of Positive Youth Development, has demonstrated that structure and activities can prevent kids from engaging in more reckless behavior. However, there’s something else to consider: how our deep, dark belief in practice’s transformational power is unhealthy.
One of the problems is that when people focus their time and talents on something in our modern society, our default has become to describe that time as practice. The problem is that practice is a social construct. In my reflection, practice is better defined as time used to pursue a goal with the expectation of a reward. Play is time spent doing something because it brings people deep joy and edification. The crossroads between the two activities comprise tasks including skill development.
Here is where things become interesting. Modern thinking is a skill that must be developed under the watchful eye and with an expert’s feedback. It is perspective and requires a student to work diligently to apply the information through practice. The problem is that the star within this model is the instructor or coach.
Before that became the norm, the player might have several different mentors. The information would be passed through a quasi-Socratic method, with questions, discussions, and growth. The goal would be to expand knowledge, and the player would remain the star and arbitrator of their development.
Practice has become a beacon of the Lake Wobegon effect, which cautions that humans naturally overestimate our abilities. We have overestimated the power of practice, leading us down a path of quasi-cognitive dissonance. I use the word quasi because, in this case, it is not rooted in stubbornness. Instead, it is rooted in the mental toll of our love for our children and the genuine fear that they will be left behind. That there will not be space for them, not in sports, but in the gluttonous and wicked world of corporate America.
The nature of practice turns autodidactics into dilettantes by sucking the enjoyment out of sports. This partly explains the burnout of so many players; they don’t get tired of playing; they get tired of the rigorous structure and monotonous nature of practice. One reason this has persisted for so long is that little is known about autodidacts. Webster’s dictionary describes them as self-taught individuals. However, by my estimation, these individuals are everywhere and account for many of our most treasured innovations. That is because at the crossroads of their interests and ability to explore is the superpower of synthesis. This superpower sits atop Bloom’s Taxonomy for a reason and should be the goal. The question is, Does the current model get people there?
It should not be surprising that parents salivate at the idea that they are empowered to mold their kids’ future. What’s a little time on the hedonic treadmill to get ahead and emancipate your children from the burden of the corporate ladder?
According to our research, the answer is … nothing. But that doesn’t make it right or healthy.
