Emotion

Here’s a story we received from Peri Chinoda, an AP & Honors World History Teacher at Hume Fogg Magnet High School in Nashville:

Background Information: In 1885 the Chancellor of Germany, Otto Bismarck, convened a meeting attended by 13 European colonial powers including the USA and the Ottoman Empire. The Africans whose land was to be divided among the Europeans were not invited. The Europeans agreed on a number of things to ease colonization and prevent fighting among them.

Activity:Two or three students were asked to volunteer to bake cakes in the shape of the African continent. On the day of the lesson, I convened the conference with all other students representing European colonial powers and those who baked the cakes representing the Africans.

The “Europeans” gathered around arranged conference tables. The Africans were either sent outside the room or made to sit at the corner of the room.

The Europeans cut the cakes and divided the pieces among one another. The “Africans” who baked the cakes were not allowed to eat the cakes. They just watched other students eat the products/fruits of their labor.

After this activity: (a) The Europeans/students were to write down how they felt about eating the cakes while the people who baked the cakes were watching. The Africans/students were also to write how they felt when other students ate their cakes and they did not. (b) They were to read about the colonization of Africa, and write an essay reflecting on European Colonization of Africa.

Students talked about this experience for a long time. The lesson stuck on their minds for a long time. Even parents called the school expressing their appreciation for the experience their children went through to understand the process, effects and the moral issues involved in colonization.

Readers of Made to Stick could have predicted this outcome, but it’s interesting nonetheless: Brandweek reports on a research study that concludes stories work better than product positioning in advertisements. [Thanks to Francois at Zoommedia for the link!]

From the article:

One such pattern was that a campaign like Bud’s iconic “Wassup” registered more powerfully with consumers than Miller Lite low-carb ads that essentially just said, “We’re better than the other guys.” Why? Because Bud told a story about friends connected by a special greeting.

Check out this very clever campaign for Wyoming’s libraries. (One bumper sticker offers a more literate twist on a classic: “You can have my book when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.”) And the mudflap girl is a must-see (and, while it would be stretching it to call her a must-buy, she is indeed for sale).

Mudflap book-girl is a good example of “idea judo,” which we discussed in a recent Fast Company column. A classic example of idea judo: Adbusters’ brilliant “Absolut Impotence” ad, in which the Absolut bottle is shown in a flaccid state. The hope of Adbusters is that, each time you are exposed to an Absolut ad, you can’t help remembering the limp-bottle ad, thus turning Absolut’s own marketing expenditures against it.

Here’s one of our favorite stories so far from the “100 books for 100 stories” contest. There are still plenty of books to giveaway, so make sure to tell your teacher friends: Email us — heaths@fastcompany.com — a story of a lesson that stuck and we’ll ship you a free signed copy of our book. (Must be a U.S. resident and a current teacher.)

Check out this tale from Saleem Reshamwala (a few comments below the story):

When I was a middle school student in Apex, North Carolina, I took a class called “Small Engines” with a guy named Mr. Trueblood. It was basically a class in how to repair lawnmowers, and a stepping-stone class for learning how to fix cars.

Here’s the four steps in making a four-stroke engine (the one in most cars) go:

1) Piston goes down, gas and air mixture gets sucked into the cylinder
2) Piston goes up, compresses gas and air (makes gas and air mix more explosive)
3) gas explodes piston is forced down (this is the explosion that makes your car go)
4) Piston goes up (exhaust is pushed out)

I don’t think a single one of us understood that about cars before we started the class. So, Mr. Trueblood tells us, a group of middle-school boys in rural North Carolina, that he’s going to teach us the basic science of how a four-stroke engine works. We’re expecting him to go to the blackboard with the chalk. He walks out of the room.

1) He then walks back in giving a monologue as if he were a mix of gas and air that had been sucked into a car engine. “Woah, got sucked in here, it’s not so bad lots of space to move around” and he’s kind of moving around the class a bit, acting as if he’s talking to various particles around the room. It’s a little weird, and some of the boys are laughing.

2) Then he starts acting as if the back wall of the class is moving toward him. He gets really into it. Laughing nervously at first, talking about how the piston is making things get really crowded for him and the other particles. Then he briefly looks genuinely scared. He’s talking about how being this crowded in, all he wants to do is anything he can to get out.

At this point, a few of us were like, ‘Uh, what the hell is going on here’

3) He yells something about a fire coming in the side of the class, and then SCREAMS and SPRINTS toward the back of the room, yelling that he’s burning. I was kind of terrified at this point. He looked crazy. And, like I said, he’s yelling about having come into contact with flame.

4) He slams himself into the back wall, stops acting crazy, and just acts like he’s exhausted, mentions how shocked he is at the force that he was able to push the piston away with, acts like it’s coming back towards him, and then walks out the classroom door.

I can’t remember if we clapped or not, but I know we all laughed. Nervously. And it sure as hell taught the concept.

There’s a lot to love about this: Note how the teacher is trying to turn a complex process into a concrete story. He is trying to get students to experience the four-stroke engine. And the fact that he freaks them out a little is just gravy. Also note that the initial student reaction to the, er, performance is not particularly positive. Sticky ideas won’t always get instant acclaim, and yet it wins in the end — here’s a guy who still remembers the details of a class from middle school!

The research is in on Baby Einstein videos: “For every hour a day that babies 8 to 16 months old were shown such popular series as “Brainy Baby” or “Baby Einstein,” they knew six to eight fewer words than other children, the study found.”

Concrete enough for ya? But if the enduring appeal of the discredited “Mozart Effect” is any guide, we’re still in for a long debate on this one. It takes parents a long time to become as disillusioned as they should be.

Here’s MojoMom explaining why Gen X parents love Baby Einstein (and why they shouldn’t). And here’s Chip debunking the Mozart Effect.