Page 16: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (February 2022)

Back to the Drawing Board

Let’s Get One More National Multi Mission Vessel, but

Let’s Add Some Grit

By Rik van Hemmen he new maritime academy school ships being built dial up the grit, the researchers need to design a grit setting at Philadelphia Shipyard (of? cially designated as where the teachers need to function within that setting, the

National Security Multi Mission Vessels) are an ex- parents need to buy in, and then somehow the students need to

T citing development and provide a signi? cant boost believe they are working in a real goal-oriented setting, rather to our national maritime educational system. The technology than a pretend goal-oriented setting. And this is where mari- on our existing school ships has very little relevance to the time education comes in.

present marine industry, and these new vessels will not only It is important to remember that a grit goal is only effec- provide the students with a better educational setting, in their tive if it is strongly motivating and real. As a student and as multi-role deployment, they will also provide more exposure a trainer, I have too often seen educational exercises fail be- to maritime education. cause there was no actual motivation to achieve the goal or

Maritime education is one of the country’s educational gold the goal was not real. For a teacher to say “Today we will do standards. Maritime Academy graduates receive an education a scienti? c experiment; we will boil water and determine the that not only strengthens our maritime readiness, but, maybe boiling point temperature” will result in massive BS alarms even more signi? cantly, provides a rare educational approach (sorry, I cannot think of a less scatological term) ? ring off in that straddles practical and theoretical education and profes- the students, since it is a false goal. The students know that sional and technical careers. Maritime Academy graduates they are going through an exercise that has been done a billion have been primed to work on real tasks, in real teams, in real times before. An exercise has no real goal if the goal has been settings, using both technical and non-technical skills (which achieved a billion times before.

I have referred to as STEMPHLA). However, even a simple experiment like this can have real

From our industry point of view, we want to get the best and educational and grit value if the teacher says “If you read your brightest to enter our industry, but maritime education has a textbook, you will know that many centuries ago it was dis- more important national bene? t. Maritime education teaches covered that water boils at a consistent temperature. That is grit and that is what we need both at sea and ashore. nice, but what nobody knows today is what the boiling tem-

The concept of grit was ? rst formulated by Dr. Angela perature of your spit is. Therefore, I want everybody to spit in

Duckworth, and she de? ned it as a combination of passion a test tube and measure their spit boiling point. We will then and perseverance for a singularly important goal. She consid- collect that data and plot it. By the way, I have no idea what ers it to be the magic ingredient in education, particularly in the answer will be, so I am as curious as you might be.” the STEM ? eld, and there is signi? cant evidence that today It is interesting to note that this is a learning project, and grit has become a rare ingredient in education, but it has been the goal of the learning project is to engage the student in un- very dif? cult to study. expected ways (catharsis) to train them to regard their world

As far as I have been able to determine, this lack of support- dynamically rather than passively. That educational bene? t ing evidence is related to researchers running experiments, will not express itself in standardized tests and is inherently but not looking out of their cockpits to ? gure out where grit is hard to measure.

making the difference. Let’s now transfer these concepts to maritime education.

In education there is a huge difference between experi- Goal setting is much easier in maritime education. ments and real life. The biggest problem is that experiments Here is a simple one: “We are going out on a boat. We will in education often run into the natural resistance of the exper- show you how to operate it and then you get to do it yourself. imental subjects, which in education are not just the students, If you do it right, you may be somewhat miserable; if you do but also the parents, the teachers, the researchers themselves, it wrong, you will be cold, wet, and embarrassed.” and even the media. This was an incredibly common educational path until post

Therefore, if an existing educational program is tasked to WWII as in “Hey, you 12-year-old, please take this horse into 16 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • February 2022

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