ohn Mighton is an academic version of the triple-threat man. He’s a prize-winning Canadian playwright, an elite mathematician and a philosopher of education. Make that a quadruple-threat man: he’s also the founder of JUMP Math, an alternative program for teaching mathematics for Grades 1 through 8. Established in 1998 as a tutorial service, JUMP soon proved so successful, especially in disadvantaged communities, that Mighton converted it into a classroom program, complete with grade-compatible textbooks. JUMP’s rapid growth has brought it close media attention. The title of an article by Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente, “Any Kid Can Learn Math” (Nov. 8, 2008), neatly sums up the JUMP principle: given the right instruction, all children have the potential to become competent students, not just in math but in any subject. JUMP was, and remains, a charitable organization to which Mighton, in spite of a busy professional schedule, freely contributes much of his time.
Though well established in public schools in British Columbia and the United Kingdom, JUMP has just begun to take hold in Ontario where it faces some resistance. The opposition centres around two main objections: that JUMP fails to acknowledge that students have different levels of ability and rates of learning; and that JUMP stresses drill over discovery, and procedure over understanding. Mighton believes that these two claims are based on an incomplete knowledge of the JUMP program, and are invalidated by his own educational writings, JUMP literature and independent research. But the two issues involved—the nature of ability and the methodology of teaching—go far beyond JUMP and reach to the very core of North American education. Mighton’s two books on JUMP, The Myth of Ability (2003) and The End of Ignorance (2007), deal as much with these larger issues as with the program itself.
Mighton sees the current view of academic ability—that some kids have it and others don’t—as a social myth. In language reminiscent of Marx, he lays out the troubling effects of this assumption and the need to change it:
Historically, societies have always been divided by myths of difference: between peasants and nobility, slaves and slave owners, or minorities and majorities. Today, the most pervasive and enduring of those myths—the myth of ability—is being challenged. (The Myth of Ability)
As a microcosm of society, the school tacitly accepts the myth of ability and imposes it upon the classroom. It does so primarily through a hierarchical assessment method by which children are ranked according to achievement. Predictably, the process ends up dividing students into two distinct groups: the successful (those considered to have high ability) and the unsuccessful (those considered to have low ability). Typically, the latter may turn defeatist and defiant, coming to believe the reason for their failure is their lack of ability or, just as bad, the irrelevance of school itself. The myth of ability thus serves as a debilitating and self-fulfilling prophecy, as Mighton explains:
We will never foster emergent intelligence or abilities in weaker students until we remove the psychological and pedagogical barriers that create artificial hierarchies in our schools and prevent weaker students from succeeding. And teachers will never make the effort to remove those barriers until they have seen evidence that emergent intelligence can appear in weaker students. So the hierarchies persist. (The End of Ignorance)
Acting as an original ‘social’ sin, the myth of ability may ultimately be responsible for “humanity’s most persistent problems, including poverty, inequity, and the destruction of the environment.” (The Myth of Ability)
The good news, according to John Mighton, is that academic ability is natural and, when properly nurtured, certain to bear fruit:
I believe that children who are educated according to their potential could do well in every subject. I am not claiming that all children will be exactly the same, or that they will all reach the same level of achievement or enjoy every subject equally…. But I believe there is a standard in every subject—well above the one we now expect of competent students—that almost all elementary students could easily achieve. (The End of Ignorance)
Not a few readers will challenge Mighton on this point, and argue that his estimation of universal academic ability is unrealistic. For support, they might turn to Charles Murray’s 2008 bestseller Real Education. A prominent American sociologist, Murray argues that since IQ scores, that measure underlying academic ability, correlate with academic achievement, academic ability is essentially fixed. Although school plays an important role in realizing that ability, school cannot essentially alter it:
In large groups of children, academic achievement is tied to academic ability. No pedagogical strategy, no improvement in teacher training, no increase in homework, no reduction in class size can break that connection.
Why exactly academic ability is fixed, Murray does not say, but presumably, if it isn’t environmental, it must be biological or genetic, a taboo subject in discussions of general intelligence. For Murray, the view taken by Mighton, that student potential is plastic, constitutes a harmful delusion:
Call it educational romanticism. We have idealized images of the potential that children bring to the classroom and of our ability to realize that potential. When the facts get in the way, we ignore them…. Schools that ignore those realities are doing a disservice to all their students.
But Mighton is no “educational romantic,” nor is he afraid to discuss the biology of intelligence. His belief in universal ability assigns a prominent role to both nature and nurture. Mighton confesses to having “shown few signs of innate talent” as a writer when he was young. But in university, he was encouraged to write after reading the letters of American poet Sylvia Plath, who taught herself the craft of writing through a combination of “sheer determination” and the careful study of its forms. She wrote imitations of poems, studied meter and poetic devices and memorized literary passages. Out of this process, Plath’s talent gradually emerged and she went on to become one of the greatest writers of her generation. Encouraged by her example, Mighton pursued a similar course. Ten years later, he had won the first of two Governor-General’s Awards for his plays.
Mighton admits that it is counterintuitive to believe that close and methodical study of a subject can spark a creative result:
It seems inconceivable that anything original or inspiring could originate in things that are themselves mechanical or derivative, but the abilities of experts often emerge from exercises that involve a great deal of practice and copying of the styles and ideas of others. (The End of Ignorance)
Academic achievement, it turns out, is primarily a matter of careful work and persistent effort, not raw ability, a fact born out repeatedly, according to Mighton, in the development of scientific expertise:
At this level, sheer intelligence is almost secondary. In the sciences, factors such as passion, confidence, creativity, diligence, luck, and artistic flair are as important as the speed and sharpness of one’s mind. (The Myth of Ability)
This view is supported by other observers. In The Learning Gap (1992), a comparison of American and Asian education practices, authors Harold Stevenson and James Stigler point out that,
The Asian disregard for the limitations imposed by an ability model offers children a more optimistic view of the possible outcomes of their efforts than does the model held by most Americans. Through step-by-step training, Asian elementary school children gain a level of skill and confidence that typically exceeds American children’s.
The authors point out that when Asian students are unsuccessful, it is understood to result from a lack of effort, not ability, and they are encouraged to keep working till they succeed. A similar view is taken in Malcolm Gladwell’s most recent book, Outliers, where he posits “The 10,000 Hour Rule”: expertise emerges only after that amount of time has been spent on a discipline. Gladwell cites, among others, the case of the Beatles. Before becoming famous, the Fab Four learned their trade in Hamburg, Germany performing at the Star Club assiduously over a two-year period, eight hours a day, seven days a week. (Or was that eight days a week?)
As for the assumed relationship between biology and ability, Mighton points out:
A growing body of evidence in the study of cognition now shows that the vast majority of children are born with the ability to learn anything and that the brain is plastic until much later in life than scientists previously believed…. The brain can acquire new abilities that emerge suddenly and dramatically from a series of small conceptual advances. (The End of Ignorance)
The latter phenomenon gives rise to Mighton’s concept of “emergent intelligence,” something he has routinely observed in JUMP classrooms, where the study of math is carried out in small, stepby- step increments until the student suddenly “gets it.” This has led Mighton’s detractors to claim that JUMP is based on rote learning. Mighton counters that JUMP uses a multifaceted approach to instruction that he calls “guided discovery,” combining the best of both pedagogies: the progressivist technique of learning by exploration, and the traditionalist technique of learning by procedure. To prefer one method to the other, he argues, is a false dichotomy. Mighton cites:
…that if students are taught how to perform a mathematical operation rather than discovering the method on their own, they are unlikely to ever understand the concepts underlying the operation…a reasonable idea that has simply been stretched too far. (The End of Ignorance)
Ultimately, student success depends not only on the right instruction, but also on the right attitude. Students need to feel confident in their ability and proud of their achievement, but these must be legitimately earned through hard and, sometimes, repeated effort:
I will sometimes let them struggle more with an exercise. They need to learn eventually that it’s natural to fail on occasion and that solving problems often takes a great deal of trial and error. (The End of Ignorance)
Unfortunately, says Mighton, the progressivist view that “kids will discover things on their own without careful guidance has prevented us from appreciating the degree of rigour that good teaching requires.” (The End of Ignorance) But if the excitement of the JUMP classroom is any example, then there is no reason, he contends, why school cannot be both fun and rigorous; another false dichotomy.
If all students have the ability to succeed, the class can and should be taught as a whole, since, “engaging the collective is not simply a matter of fairness; it is also a matter of efficiency” (The End of Ignorance). Working as a unit, the class actually learns faster. JUMP’s critics warn this does not recognize students’ special needs. Mighton’s response is that, “it is possible, through rigorous instruction, to teach the whole class roughly the same things at the same time” (The End of Ignorance), thereby largely avoiding the problem in the first place. For those who work somewhat faster or slower than the rest, appropriate strategies are available both in and out of classroom. Keeping the class progressing as a unit prevents the separation of students into the successful and unsuccessful. This is further strengthened by its assessment method whereby, as much as is possible:
All students would receive roughly the same marks. There might be two marks—for instance, A and possibly A+ for students who have done extra work—and a class would not move on until all, or virtually all, the students had received a satisfactory mark. (The End of Ignorance)
If Mighton insists that all students achieve mastery before moving on, it’s because he believes all students have the ability to do so. Do we? 
Jon Cowans, a recently retired teacher from the Durham DSB, is a frequent contributor to Education Forum.