Why "Easy" Classes Often Teach More Than "Hard" Classes

A lot of teachers talk as if you necessarily learn more material in "hard" classes than "easy" ones. But my own life experience has proven repeatedly that I retain more material from classes that felt easy at the time, whereas the hardest classes I often retain little material from.
In this video I tell my personal story and explore why things have played out this way for me: often if a class seems hard, it's a sign that the teaching is less effective, the textbook is less well-written, or the material is presented at too high a level. Also, hard classes can create a sense of inadequacy and promote frustration and anxiety, poor motivators for learning.
Classes that seem "easy" often are so because the teaching is better quality, the textbook is better-written, and the class is taught at the appropriate level for the students. Futhermore, it may seem "easy" because the teacher is effective at instilling self-confidence in the students, leading them to believe they are smart and capable. All of these factors lead students to play with the material more deeply and master it more thoroughly, which leads to better retention.
I want to call on us to question and throw out the idea that classes need to be extremely hard to the point of frustration, in order to optimally teach.

[@sylviaodhner]

This is interesting, and I think I agree with you. However, I think people sometimes think of remedial classes as "easy" classes, and advanced classes as "hard" classes. That doesn't seem to be what you're saying, though. And I think advanced classes are often easier than remedial ones, especially in grade school, for multiple reasons - because of the self-fulfilling prophecy of teachers' expectations of the students' performance, and because, in my experience, there's more freedom to explore interesting subjects, which makes those classes more fun.

[@AlexZorach]

Yes! This is correct, that I'm not equating "easy" with remedial or low-level and not equating "hard" with advanced or high-level. In all the examples I was giving, I was comparing courses at the same level...often courses in the same school district but taught at different schools and/or by different teachers, or undergraduate courses at similar levels. I agree with you that self-fulfilling prophecy can lead "advanced" classes, as in classes that are oriented towards students labeled as "smarter", to be easier for a variety of reasons. That resonates with me a lot. That's another facet of education that I feel strongly about wanting to question or reform, but I think that is quite different from what I was sharing in this video. In the "rings and fields" class that I think in hindsight was less useful, the professor's attitude seemed to be that he thought that we were all very intelligent and well-prepared, and he was giving us a high-level of challenge that he thought would prepare us for graduate school. Maybe I did get something out of the class; I think it's likely that it did boost my self-confidence and also perhaps develop some more abstract skills that I was able to apply later. It's hard to say this though because I was also getting these skills from other courses. But I find that in terms of the retaining of material, the class didn't seem effective in hindsight. I haven't taken many remedial or low-level classes, although I did work as a TA in high school, my last year, with a remedial math class. I suspect though that a similar pattern may play out in classes of all levels. I don't know though, because I haven't researched it and don't have the direct experience to say much about it from personal experience.

[@jamesfehlinger9731]

In the late 80's, I took a Numerical Methods class as an undergraduate while working toward a Bachelor's in Computer Science. The professor who taught the course just happened to be a woman, and after the course was over I attempted to pay her a compliment by saying something along the lines of "All the math courses I've ever taken from (male) professors seemed to have been made unnecessarily difficult by what looked very much like a deliberate attempt to 'separate the men from the boys' by pacing the material so that only the top 10% would be able to keep up, together with an implicit attitude that most people are too stupid to follow this stuff; and I very much appreciate the fact that you did **not** play this game." Unfortunately, the professor apparently interpreted what I had intended as a compliment as very much a left-handed compliment, if not a deadly insult; and she was clearly not at all pleased by my remark. So all I had managed to do was put my foot in my mouth. What I suspect she may have heard, which was **not** at all what I intended, was that she -- being a woman -- was not teaching to as **rigorous** a standard as her male counterparts. And so she was offended. And she was **really** offended -- I could tell instantly by her facial expression and body language that she didn't like what she was hearing, and I quickly shut up and beat a hasty and embarrassed retreat. It certainly didn't affect my grade in the course, one way or the other; but I was forever after embarrassed by the memory of that conversation, though we never had any occasion to speak to each other again. Nevertheless, what I was attempting to say was in some sense true -- she was **not** just teaching to the smartest 2 or 3 kids in the class, and to hell with everybody else; and I found that approach a refreshing change. Whether her gender had anything to do with it I'll leave as an exercise for the reader. She **was** the only female math/comp sci professor I ever took a class with. ;->

[@AlexZorach]

That's really sad that she interpreted it negatively. At the same time I can understand it because she probably had had a lot of experience with people around her making "backhanded compliments" like that. The sexism in some academic math departments, and STEM departments in general, is palpable. I have had both female and male math teachers over the years, and perhaps I've noticed some tendency of the male teachers to be a bit more likely to teach at too high a level and make it inaccessible, but overall, there is so much variation from one teacher to the next and I've also seen both examples of women who still teach that way, and men who make the subject highly accessible, so I don't really generalize on the basis of gender. Regardless of how the accessibility / inaccessibility issue interacts with gender, I feel strongly about both pushing for more accessible / level-appropriate math education, AND pushing to root out sexism in math (and more broadly in STEM) as they are both worthwhile goals. And if there is some synergy between these two goals, then all the better -- it'll make gains in one area result in some gains in the other as well, making both areas easier to tackle together!