Between my first blog post and this one, I finished up my first class for my LMS license and am in the middle of my second class. One of the cool things about this second class, called “Teacher Leader Scholar”, is that we were able to pick two books to read: one from an innovation standpoint and one from an equity standpoint (super bonus is that I already owned books from both lists and had at least two I hadn’t read yet!). When we’re done with our books, we’re supposed to write a blog post about the book, and, since I already technically have a blog, I thought I’d share my thoughts here.
The book I chose to read from the innovation list was called The End of Average by Todd Rose.
I chose The End of Average as a former student recommended it to me a few years ago, and I snapped it up right away. While I definitely try to read books that students recommend, I specifically was looking forward to this book as I respect this student’s outlook and beliefs. I find myself, though, in moods about what books I can sit down and read, and I hadn’t found the right time to read The End of Average. I’m glad I saved it until now!
Okay, so, what made The End of Average a decent read? Why might you want to check it out?
Here’s a quick list of my thoughts. Think of this as the tl;dr version:
Pros
- Chapters broken down into smaller sections for easier consumption
- Historical significance before and after the idea of the “average” xyz
- Visuals that helped to punctuate the science or beliefs
- Referred back to previous information without going over it all again
- Reinforced my thinking about many things in education
- Was able to talk about real life examples from this book with a variety of people already
- Needs to be read in chunks to process (not just a sit and read through it all book)
- While each point isn’t super long, some parts felt repetitive by the end of the book
- Wasn’t quite what I was expecting when I first started reading it (had a different idea of what it was about - tends to happen for me when I get book recs)
- Not really a solutions book so left me feeling slightly “hopeless”
One of my challenges oftentimes with reading nonfiction is that the author tends to beat the information into the ground. I don’t need eight million examples of the idea in action to think it’s a good or not so great concept.
The End of Average did a decent job of holding my attention and building off ideas vs being too repetitive until we neared the end. Then I skimmed just a bit, looking for solutions.
Part of how it helped hold my attention throughout was through short sections with bold titles that built on each other, at least in the beginning, chronologically. I was able to read the book then in chunks which is what I have to do with a lot of nonfiction. I love to just sit and read, but I can’t do that with nonfiction as I have to stop and think about what I just read. Also, the information can start to blur together and feel repetitive if I read it for too long in one sitting. I think I was getting to that point towards the end of the book.
One of the first ideas we learn about is “Norma…the ‘Ideal Girl’”. (Rose 7) I looked at the picture of Norma on page 6 and was what I think of as the average female body, but, as the book tells us, “Norma is a misguided ideal” (7) as very few to no female bodies actually look like her. As someone who has body dysmorphia, this section was helpful for me to read as it highlights a lot of what is wrong with Norma and any ideal body.
Instead of going on about Norma for an entire chapter, Rose talks about her creation and what that meant for the world and then went on to the next idea. He did come back to the various ideas as the book progressed which then led me to having a-ha moments. I appreciated the historical applications and scientific breakthroughs. Just because one person decided that focusing on an average human in one regard doesn’t mean the world would or should do that in another field. This is just one example of how the book is laid out.
While I don’t feel like my fellow educators should read the whole book for a PD, I feel like parts of it would be relevant especially if we are interested in changing up and rethinking how we “do education”. Chapter 2 “How Our World Became Standardized” and Chapter 8 "Replacing the Average in Higher Education” would be the best bets. Both of these chapters reinforced a lot of my thinking around how standardized tests and one size fits all educations do not do our students justice at all. Then again, I do not know if a huge overhaul of our system is possible at this point as people (outside of education for the most part) still believe that our system is working even after we learn that a lot of what we do is to help set up a standardized worker who can move and stop at the sound of bells, complete repeat tasks, etc,
I do recommend this book for people that want to know a bit about the history of average-ism as well as those that want to know a bit about how that idea isn’t a good one. I talked about this book with a friend of mine, Nikki, and we’ve already had some great discussions around the book, especially around the brain sciences and how doctors that focus on the average can really hurt people. I can’t wait to talk with her tonight during our workout on the rest of it now that I’m done with it.
…update to original post after my workout with Nikki…
I was talking with Nikki during our workout last night about The End of Average and other things going on in the world, and I realized that there is another book out there that I think would pair well with this book: Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo. While Mediocre focuses on the inequities in many practices that favor the “average” (see mediocre) white male, I feel that the book touches base on a lot of the other issues that are wrong with having a focus on the average. If we focus on just the average and not all the individuals, then it could be easier to allow for systems and people to be just meh. The individual or the exceptional is scary and an outlier. Obviously, Mediocre primarily focuses on systemic racism which is a huge deal and feeds into…everything.
Just a brain tangent I went on. *shrugs*
…another update after going to the park with my niece and nephew…
I was talking with my sister-in-law today about babies (my niece was born on mother’s day this year), and how every baby develops differently. We talked a bit about how, with my nephew, she hears people talk about how “kids do x by y age” which isn’t actually always true. I mentioned a bit about how in The End of Average, the author talked about how children will move in the best ways for them: rolling, scooching, crawling but the “average” is to crawl by x and walk by y which can freak new mothers out
a ton especially when their child does things differently.
