In “Made to Stick,” Chip and Dan Heath provide tips on how to make ideas more effective . They point out repeatedly that the most effective ideas are not necessarily the truest. To a large degree, what they call the stickiest ideas—those that make the biggest impression on us, prove to be most memorable, and end up exerting the most influence—are often simply the ones that are presented best. Apocryphal stories often prove to be stickier than true ones precisely because of the way in which they are spun. Consider, for example, the urban myth of the man in a bar who shares a drink with a stranger and wakes up the next morning to discover that one of his kidneys has been removed.
Although the story of the involuntary kidney donor is false, it generally makes a big impression on those who hear it, which in turn makes it highly shareable. By now, the story has been repeated so many times that a number of people are convinced that this story is true and steps must be taken to curb this illegal activity and bring the perpetrators to justice. The Heath brothers are not so interested in whether stories are true but what makes stories stick, and their work has broad implications for educators. If lessons are imparted poorly, they will tend not to stick, no matter how true and important. To promote learning, we need to enhance education’s stickiness.
True to their message, the authors outline six features of sticky ideas, which happen to fit together neatly in the acronym SUCCES. The first key feature of a sticky idea is simplicity. This does not mean that educators need to dumb down their material. Instead, it is about determining which part of the lesson is most important, the real core of what the educator is attempting to get across. In radiology, one such simple idea is that “a tumor’s radiologic appearance represents its biological signature.” A homogenous, smooth-walled, well-circumscribed lesion is much less likely to represent a primary malignancy than one that is heterogeneous, irregularly outlined, and poorly circumscribed.
To the novice educator, simplicity might seem to be correlated with ease of development, but in fact the opposite is usually the case. Students who think that writing a 10-page essay is twice as difficult as writing a 5-page one have it exactly wrong. What takes real effort is to distill an idea down to its essence, to capture it in its pure, most elegant, crystalline form. The French mathematician, scientist, and theologian Blaise Pascal famously wrote to a friend, “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time” . To state something simply, it is first necessary to understand it deeply.
A sticky idea’s next feature is unexpectedness. The goal here is to incite curiosity, perhaps even a mild degree of perplexity, in the learner. One way to do so is to ask good questions relatively frequently. Sticky educators do not just tell learners things. They ask them questions. Done well, this engages learners in an inquiry and makes the ideas being discussed more memorable. Likewise, perplexity represents a challenge to understanding a puzzle to be solved, and presenting learners with challenges is a great way to foster engagement.
Consider the case of Sherlock Holmes, who is often said to be the most famous fictional character ever created and who has been depicted over 250 times in film and television . Part of the appeal of the Holmes narratives is their ability to engage readers and viewers in the intellectual puzzles with which he is confronted. Each story is among other things a mystery. Of course, Arthur Conan Doyle was a physician and is said to have patterned his most famous character on a medical school professor. Most educators would be well advised to inject a bit more mystery and adventure into their teaching.
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References
1. Heath C., Heath D.: Made to stick.2007.Random HouseNew York
2. Pascal B. Provincial letters. December 4, 1656.
3. Guinness book of world records. Available at: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/9000/most-portrayed-detective . Accessed June 15, 2014.
4. Aesop. Fables. Available at: http://www.aesopfables.org . Accessed June 15, 2016.
5. Mencken H.L.: Prejudices: the complete series.2010.Library of AmericaNew York