My School, My Self
“I just needed a place where I could be myself.” That was Teri’s assessment of what was missing from her life in school, and my experience suggests that she speaks for hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of students. School is not typically a place for the self, at least not the self of students.
A colleague of mine sneers at the fuzzy notion of the self, smelling the suspicious odor of low standards and “nonsense” like self-expression and self-esteem (“self-of-steam,” as one of my former students misheard it). “What on earth is this self,” he asks as though holding it by two fingers at arm’s length.
“Well,” I say, “it’s rather like your affection for Hemingway. You tell me he speaks to you; he touches some core of truth within you, and you love to read and teach his books. You remind me of that wonderful scene in The History Boys when Hector, the old English teacher, is explaining the moment when you read a truth that you thought you were the only one to feel. Hector says something like, ‘At that moment, the book reaches out and takes you by the hand and you know you aren’t alone.’ The book speaks to your self, speaks to that jumble of emotions and beliefs and interests and understandings that you experience as you. The book matters to you. When what you study and who you are come together, your education starts to matter to you.”
And, as is becoming increasingly clear from research into the role of emotion in learning, people think and learn about what matters to them. The purpose of education ought to be to help students figure out who they are and what the world means to them. This is how they become productive, moral citizens of the world. Knowledge–the facts of history, math, science and other school subjects–and various skills are important, but only to the extent that they become personally meaningful and helpful in the worlds in which individuals must live. In “We Feel, Therefore We Learn,” neuroscientist Mary Helen Immordino-Yang writes, “[K]nowledge and reasoning divorced from emotional implications and learning lack meaning and motivation and are of little use in the real world. Simply having the knowledge does not imply that a student will be able to use it advantageously outside of school.” (Immordino-Yang, Damasio)
Teachers should understand the connection between emotional relevance and motivation better than anyone. In their courses, they study the Roman Empire, speak French, solve problems, study the ocean because they love these things; these things matter to them, they’re important. These deep interests give meaning to teachers’ lives, form part of their identity. What’s important to the students, on the other hand, rarely finds its way into the classroom. Their selves are restricted to the hallways, the locker rooms, the cafeteria.
What an opportunity lost, particularly during adolescence when young people are most concerned with discovering who they are and what they believe. It’s a time steeped in the turbulent waters of self-discovery. Imagine what school could be if the classroom became part of this search.
Every now and then, we get a glimpse of the possibilities—of what school would be like if we designed things so that students could discover and pursue what matters to them. Teri got that chance finally when, as a senior, she entered a self-directed program that allows students to waive all the regular graduation requirements and to create a course of study around what matters to them. In Teri’s case it was writing poetry and working with children.
“The only thing I felt truly connected to was my poetry writing and the English classes. I did poorly in all of the other classes and was on academic probation off and on during my sophomore and junior years. I remember feeling like I wanted to give up if I had to follow the standard coursework that awaited me. I was not engaged, and I desperately needed the freedom that came with a course of study that was created out of my own interests.”
Teri’s experience was not unique. Others who found this program echo the relief of finding this place where they could be themselves. Andy said, “My motivation changed . . . because my interest and involvement with the studies became personal. . . . I felt that a brand new set of doors was opening. I pushed myself because I was motivated to learn more because it was information that I was interested in and felt it was important to know.”
Cynthia, another student, describes herself as “the type of person who prefers to learn about something that to me has relevance. It was clear that those subjects that did have relevance were more interesting, and if I was interested, then the motivation to work and study and learn was there. Basically, once I got going with my program, which entailed working with children with severe special needs at a local nursing home up the road, I felt like my school had meaning, like there was purpose.”
Motivation, purpose, engagement—these are the qualities most teachers long to see in their students, the same qualities that prevent adults from burning out in their jobs. Telling students that math or Mandarin will be important “when they grow up” cannot substitute for feeling the need now. Teaching for understanding, blended learning, differentiated instruction, all the latest well intended jerry-rigging to shore up a flawed design can’t succeed if what they study simply doesn’t matter to the learners. Perseverance and creativity are more likely to result from emotional engagement than from decontextualized exercises in “grit” and lateral thinking. Until we change our fundamental concept of schooling, until we create more self-friendly designs, designs that invite and encourage a fusion of self and endeavor, it seems unlikely that we will get our wish.
Easy to say. But changing fundamental concepts–truly exhuming long-buried notions of how people learn and reexamining these in the light of new discoveries about the process of learning–presents a real challenge. Change requires a lot of work. Why bother? College placements are good or excellent. Parents are happy. Alums are giving. Our schools are good. And yet . . .
Why all the grumbling in the faculty room, especially around the time of graduation–complaints about falling standards, inflated grades, lack of skills and, especially, absence of motivation? Teachers don’t typically hear voices like Teri’s, Andy’s and Cynthia’s. Periodic studies consistently show a steady decline in student engagement in school, from 80% engagement in elementary school to 60% in middle school to 40% in secondary school. The most common words students use to describe themselves in school are “bored” and “tired.” Ta-Nehisi Coates captures the experience of too many students in his new book, Between the World and Me: “The pursuit of knowing was freedom to me, the right to declare your own curiosities and follow them through all manner of books. I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests.”
Research into how people learn offers us an opportunity to understand and address these problems by rethinking entrenched assumptions about learning and brain function. The history of humanity is a history of paradigm shifts that altered our psychology–changed our perceptions and deepened our understanding so that we could function more successfully in the world. What is exciting about research into learning is that science supports the intuition and experiences of so many teachers whose understanding, for example, of the relationship among emotion, learning and motivation has led them to challenge traditional practices and policies that prevent students from exploring questions, ideas and pursuits that matter to them.
Over the years, more schools have created some individualized programs for students like Teri, Andy and Cynthia–independent studies, interim terms, student-directed projects. And scattered about are a few well established progressive schools that try to be more friendly to the self of students. But these programs and schools have largely remained on the margins as alternatives to the fundamentally unchanged core of traditional schooling. Still, these “enrichment” programs and alternative schools have something to tell us about how we might redesign schools. And researchers have now added their voices.
There is no single school-design that will work everywhere for all populations–no one-size-fits-all solution, though that’s the grail that educators tend to want, something that will succeed universally: coding for all; mindfulness training for everyone. Even the progressive schools tend to develop programs and curricula that become standardized for everyone. Yet research provides convincing evidence that all brains are different. While the architecture and general developmental trajectories are shared, the neural networks vary depending on all sorts of factors. People’s brains are as individual as their fingerprints or DNA. The result is significant variation in how people perceive and solve problems and in what matters to them, so educators need to design schools with the variability appropriate for their populations and the needs and goals of their communities.
The process of creating systemic change must begin with teachers and administrators studying, specifically, research into how people learn. There is a huge difference between this sort of research and some of the research that appeals more readily to many educators–research into what practices simply make students more successful within the traditional model of schooling. For example, research shows that more frequent, shorter testing produces better results than widely spaced tests covering more material. We need a new understanding of learning and brain function, not new strategies for improving performance in a system built on flawed assumptions uninformed by the biology and psychology of learning.
Once the faculty and administration of a school have truly studied, understood and internalized this research into learning and brain function, they will need to use their new understanding as lenses through which to examine traditional assumptions about learning. Which of the old assumptions do they need to abandon or alter? What are the implications of the new assumptions for the various structures, practices and policies that accrued in their specific schools from the old assumptions? How do they zero-base a new design? Is it possible to look at the successes and failures of any of the existing alternative programs as pilots for new directions? And throughout the process, various constituents–parents, students, alums, boards–will need to be included (perhaps, at times, as participants in discussions but, always, as learners who need to be brought along in the process).
To accomplish a paradigm shift of this scope requires real time and financial support. Much of the critical, essential initial work–the studying, the internalizing, the exploration of implications, the designing–will need to be done when the students are not around, when school is not in session. In other words, the profession itself needs to be rethought. As is true for any other professionals (doctors, lawyers, businesspeople, scientists), educators need to be contracted for the year, not just nine or ten months, and they need to be paid appropriately.
So much to do, if we want to do it. Or we can just keep on keeping on for another century. Perhaps Ginger’s voice captures the extent of our aspirations: “I think I figured out somewhere pretty early on that school was a game where the goal was to get the highest GPA with the least amount of effort. I don’t know if this attitude was particularly conducive to learning, but it got me cum laude from an Ivy League university.”
If you are interested in reading more about the research of Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and Kurt W. Fischer and the implications for schools, Learning, Schooling and the Brain: New Research vs. Old Assumptions by Alden Blodget is available here.
Originally published in Independent School magazine (spring, 2016) by the National Association of Independent Schools.