Made to Stick - Concrete

This is pretty basic and commonsense... but we all struggle with it. Concrete images will always win out over abstract ideas and explanations! If you want something to stick... make it concrete... make it sensory... give them an image, a sound, a sight, a smell... and it will stick.

Make it specific, not general... Something specific that people can connect with. Remember, abstraction comes after the concrete. Abstraction comes with knowledge. If someone doesn't have the knowledge... and you are trying to communicate it... using abstract language is worse than useless... They need the concrete experience first...

There is a powerful example in the book... one that will "stick" with me... Have you ever heard of a teacher named Jane Elliott??? In 1968, after the assassination of Martin Luther King, she was trying to teach her Grade 3 class about prejudice. Now, prejudice is an abstract concept... how do you communicate that to Grade 3'ers?? She made it experiential... She divided the class into blue-eyed children and brown-eyed children. Elliott divided her class by eye color -- those with blue eyes and those with brown.

On the first day, the blue-eyed children were told they were smarter, nicer, neater, and better than those with brown eyes. Throughout the day, Elliott praised them and allowed them privileges such as a taking a longer recess and being first in the lunch line. In contrast, the brown-eyed children had to wear collars around their necks and their behavior and performance were criticized and ridiculed by Elliott. On the second day, the roles were reversed and the blue-eyed children were made to feel inferior while the brown eyes were designated the dominant group.


What happened over the course of the unique two-day exercise astonished both students and teacher. On both days, children who were designated as inferior took on the look and behavior of genuinely inferior students, performing poorly on tests and other work. In contrast, the "superior" students -- students who had been sweet and tolerant before the exercise -- became mean-spirited and seemed to like discriminating against the "inferior" group.

"I watched what had been marvelous, cooperative, wonderful, thoughtful children turn into nasty, vicious, discriminating little third-graders in a space of fifteen minutes," says Elliott. She says she realized then that she had "created a microcosm of society in a third-grade classroom."

Those children remembered that experience... Years later, they are less-prejudiced than their peers... They experienced prejudice... you don't forget something like that... You might forget an explanation... but you don't forget an experience...

30 years later, Frontline on PBC reunited the children/adults involved... http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/