Note: This is the third article in The Myths of Education™ series.
this as normal so we don’t insist on rating babies’ walking skills. We understand that by the time they reach first grade, we won’t know– or care– who failed to walk at 12 months.What if we apply this perspective to the rest of our children’s lives? Don’t we know that when they are 35,no one will know or care how they performed in high school? It won’t be relevant to their success in work and in life because many teens have gifts and strengths that school doesn’t develop and –like babies’ walking– may emerge later.
Myth #3: Our approach is healthy for students
A System Designed to Teach Depression
I discovered that our system is structured with what Martin Seligman identifies as the three components of depression:
Every day, students meet defeat in the form of grades, tests, try-outs, rankings, honors and awards. And children whose gifts conflict with the way they are taught face defeat daily as they struggle to fit a standard process and a mold that doesn’t bring out what’s best in them.
In most schools, teens don’t control what to learn or how to learn it. They also have little control over who to learn from, and when or where to learn.
Let’s look at what our myths teach teens: “Smart kids get good grades.” “Hard-workers get good grades.” “The best athletes make the cut.” “The best students go to the best colleges.” “There are only a few ‘gifted’ students.” “Just do it” (even if it means suppressing parts of yourself).
What message does a student take from this? “If my grades aren’t good, I must not be smart because bright kids do well in school.” “If I work hard and am not the best, there must be something wrong with me because smart kids who work hard get good grades.” “It doesn’t matter what I am interested in learning, I have to focus on what the teacher is looking for.” “If I’m not selected for the “gifted” group, I must not be gifted.”
Translated: “There must be something wrong with me.” When this notion is combined with the belief that defeat happens in all parts of our lives and that it will continue, depression results. I found that defeat is an hourly, daily, weekly drumbeat for students (top of the class and bottom) and that when school-related activities take up the bulk of a student’s waking hours, it begins to feel as if it is happening everywhere in his life.
In other words, depression is built into our system.
Now, if you became depressed while reading this, stay tuned for the good news. We can change our system and here are three places to start:
1. Watch your language
Instead of talking about grades as if they reflect something important about every teen’s abilities, talk about the fact that gifts, strengths, and talents combine and develop in complex ways that tests, papers, and grades cannot begin to measure. Instead of talking about a limited number of “good colleges,” talk about the bright, successful, thriving adults who were not good students.
Cut back on the number of ways a teen is evaluated by someone else: tests, try-outs, grades, honor roll, and awards. Don’t worry that teens won’t learn resilience if they aren’t defeated daily. People who feel more positive emotion are more resilient, say Barbara Fredrickson and Marcial Losada. Identify and celebrate every student’s gifts even if they conflict with the curriculum.
Give teens more choice over how and what they learn so that they become engaged in learning. Create opportunities for student-driven learning. I found that even teens in the bottom of their classes love to learn–when they learn on their own terms.
Learn about positive system change in one Massachusetts community initiative: Thrive Wellesley.
Note: this article is abridged from one I wrote on March 9, 2009 in Positive Psychology News Daily.