Struggle Means Learning: Difference in Eastern and Western Cultures

By Alix Spiegel In 1979, when Jim Stigler was still a graduate student at the University of Michigan, he went to Japan to research teaching methods and found himself sitting in the back row of a crowded fourth-grade math class. “The teacher was trying to teach the class how to draw three-dimensional cubes on paper,” Stigler explains, “and one kid was just totally having trouble with it. His cube looked all cockeyed, so the teacher said to him, ‘Why don’t you go put yours on the board?’ Stigler knew that in American classrooms, it was usually the best kid in the class who was invited to the board. In Japanese classrooms, teachers consciously design tasks that are slightly beyond the capabilities of the students they teach, so the students can actually experience struggling with something just outside their reach. “I realized that I was sitting there starting to perspire,” he says, “because I was really empathizing with this kid. But the kid didn’t break into tears. ‘Struggle’ Related

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