Over the last several years, I’ve been collaborating with comedian Sammy Obeid (known for hosting the Netflix series 100 Humans). Through this collaboration, I have come to believe that any topic, however forbidding or unexciting it may seem, can be explained better through humor. Here, I’ll detail how Sammy and I tackled this humor challenge and share ideas for how you can do so yourself—whether you think you are funny or not.
Our analysis showed that when students were assigned humorous videos, they had consistently higher engagement and subsequent test performance.
The Educational Humorist’s Toolkit: Hyperbole and Analogy
Hyperbole: The “But” of a Joke
To create comic effect with hyperbole, you simply exaggerate something to the point of absurdity. It’s a powerful tool for injecting humor when introducing a concept that may strike the learner as surprising or unexpected (and therefore especially in need of additional illumination). The starting point is to link the unexpected concept with the initial expectation using the conjunction “but.” To illustrate this, I asked a colleague for a “but” claim that she might use in teaching. Her answer: “A good leader needs to be able to adapt to the circumstances, but this may also make them inauthentic.”
“The ability to adapt to circumstances can make you a great leader—the kind who will inspire their followers, empower them to do things they never thought possible, and enable them to change the world—or it can make them see you as a total phony.”
Analogy: “The Fuel and Fire of Thinking”—and of Humor
Sammy Obeid says, “Both jokes and learning can share a similar structural property: analogy. If you don’t understand X, let me explain that by pointing out Y, where X is an abstract concept and Y is something more relatable. We do this often in education to make concepts accessible, and similarly in comedy because it gets a laugh. The only difference in comedy is heightening the absurdity of the analogy.”
The Nobel laureate Merton Miller once summarized the capital structure irrelevance theorem he codeveloped in this way: “Think of the firm as a gigantic pizza, divided into quarters. If now, you cut each quarter in half into eighths, [our] proposition says that you will have more pieces, but not more pizza.”
“Some finance managers argue that by swapping company stock for debt, they can increase company value. Modigliani and Miller showed that this is like hoping to change a pizza’s size by how you slice it. If your little nephew did this, it would be adorable; you’d want to hug him and buy him ice cream. But appoint him as your chief financial officer? The kid shouldn’t be allowed one step outside the accounts receivable department.”
Stand and Deliver (and Deliver and Deliver)
Delivering a joke is different from writing it. Precision, expressiveness, and timing are all skills that require dedicated practice. Sammy Obeid honed his act through a record-setting 1,001 consecutive performances. In one faculty workshop, I showed two versions of a humorous educational video Sammy and I coscripted—first as recorded by me, then by Sammy. The participants’ faces said everything I needed to know about my future in entertainment. But then again, that’s not my ambition. I just want to become a better teacher and thinking about myself as a performer helps.
In fact, we educators have something that aspiring performers would kill for—ready access to audiences and the freedom to experiment and evolve our “act” based on audience feedback. Teachers sometimes complain about the drudgery of delivering the same content again and again. I suggest viewing such repetition as an opportunity to work on our material, just like comedians do. What if I insert a longer pause here, make a different gesture there, and each time note the class’s reception?
Consider the Implications of Your Humor
Thinking ahead about different learners’ perspectives is key. Are you worried that the mention of the accounts receivable department in the earlier example would offend someone in your class who takes pride in this kind of work? You can change the name of the department, use different departments in subsequent jokes, or replace that line with something else entirely. Likewise, if a joke doesn’t get a laugh, simply have a fallback ready, such as, “Hmmm, my parents said they loved this joke… I need a different test group.” View these as part of the challenge—one that will help you connect better with your students in the long run.
To Teach Is Human
“I’m just not that funny,” is a common reason for not creating their own humorous explanations. For most of my teaching career, this was my view, as well. Over the past several years, however, I have come to realize that, with enough time and motivation, any teacher can take a given topic and explain it more engagingly through humor. This realization has been empowering. At a time when education, like many other sectors, is increasingly disrupted by technology, here is a method for adding another uniquely human touch.