When, if ever, does a person stops learning? Stephen Rushen, an educationalist based at Penn State University in the United States, conducted an experiment, or says he conducted an experiment, to find out.
The question has received considerable attention.
Many argue that people learn throughout their lives. Others assert that learning stops at an early age, and that any "learning" after that point is simply reapplying previous knowledge to fit a new situation. Many college professors believe that, for most people, learning stops some time before a student's freshman year.
Here is what Rushen did. To an early morning introductory economics class of thirty live students, he added fifteen dead students, and then observed what happened. After a full semester of careful study, he published a report in the Annals of Improbable Research. The account here is based on that report.
"On average, dead students are less likely to skip class than living students, especially on nice, warm days. Dead students had perfect attendance, were always in class early, and never left early. In fact, they often stayed after class, and never complained when lectures ran long. This was a contrast with their living companions, who had less than perfect attendance, were often tardy, and at times would leave early."
"On average, dead students were less disruptive than living students. Dead students are less likely to interrupt the instructor, be disrespectful, make noise, or ask irrelevant questions than are their living counterparts."
"There was no discernible difference between living and dead students' performances in class discussions, responses to questions from the instructor, or when called to the chalkboard to solve a problem."
"This seemed to be the weakest area for the dead students. On average their scores were 30 to 40 points below the class mean. The effect this had on the grade curve was substantial, as it pushed the grades of all of the living students up a full grade."
Rushen concluded that "dead students definitely have a place in the classroom. Their perfect attendance and exemplary behaviour clearly illustrate their desire to learn. In three of the areas I measured, they were at least the equal of, if not superior to, their living peers. While their performance on exams was poorer than that of living students, this cannot be taken as unwillingness to learn. The lower test scores could be due to low self-esteem, or to a misunderstanding, on the students' part, of general exam procedures."
(NOTE: This week's report may be apocryphal, yet instructive.)
Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly magazine Annals of Improbable Research (www.improbable.com) and organiser of the Ig Nobel Prize