When the Going Gets Tough--Quit!

Part of who we are comes from within, from the deepest places in our being that is formed one instant at a time by the people, the places, and the events of our lives. We make decisions about who we are without realizing we are doing so, and we become what we become as a result of those decisions. If the decisions are based on faulty information, we become faulty people and probably don’t even realize it until “someday” comes.

You know, the “someday you’re going to regret this” moment that we all have, sooner or later. For many young people, that “someday” moment happens when they leave high school for the real world, woefully unprepared for what’s waiting for them as they apply for jobs or attend their first college class. Self-confident based on social skills, not academic preparation, far too many post-high school citizens find themselves with limited options for their future, and even more limited skills for coping with the reality of the situation they helped create.

The past couple of weeks have been insightful because I'm dealing with young adults who don't know the difference between intrinsic, living one's life from the inside out, and extrinsic, living on the outside and not knowing to look within. The manifestation of this situation is a steady parade of people on my path filled with self-doubt, with fear about the future, with no internal support system to sustain them when life doesn't go the way they have been told it should go. They all plan to be successful, but don’t have the tools or the attitude to be successful: they want it now, they want it easy, and they want it to come with a big paycheck.

When it doesn't work that way, they freeze in place. They don't know that it's on their shoulders, it's their decision, it's their responsibility to take the next step. When the going gets tough, you either get tough too or you get run over by those who don't quit.

The countless "I can't do this" commentary taxes my patience: how does anyone know what can--or cannot--be done unless (s)he first tries? “I can’t do this” is all too often “I won’t do this.” I respect a person who tries, and then has to try again, because that’s learning! I don’t hold the person who refuses to try in very high esteem because that person has already determined what they are and are not willing to do to become more. They think that they have already arrived, and don’t want to know that their journey lasts a lifetime.

"I don't know" more often than not means "I'm not willing to risk not being right, so I won't answer." If you don't know, how are you going to find out if you are unwilling to risk being wrong? We often know far more than we are willing to risk knowing, so why not think about it, say something, and find out you know more than you give yourself credit for knowing? And if you truly don’t know, after sharing the conversation you will know and be able to use that knowledge in a similar situation next time.

"This is too hard" translates to I'm not willing to sacrifice my personal time to work on something that is going to require me to dig deep to do it. It’s faster, easier, and more fun to replicate endlessly what I already know, and it’s less threatening than working harder to learn something I don’t know. Far too often “this is too hard” is followed by “you are so unfair,” as if blaming the responsible adult absolves them of any personal responsibility for not only their situation, but finding a solution.

Dropping a course because the teacher is too hard pushes my buttons. A teacher who is not too hard may not be doing the job for which (s)he has been hired: teaching students what they don’t know, not endlessly reinforcing what they already have learned. Our job is to push people past their comfort zone, to force them to confront their areas of deficiency so they can conquer them and move to a higher educational plane. If they already know it, why are we endlessly reteaching it?

The student who complains to me that (s)he earned all As in high school but cannot write a coherent sentence confirms to me the sad state of our educational system, where teachers are afraid to be “too hard” because they won’t be popular with students, colleagues, or parents. Sure, I can accept that some teachers are more comfortable with happy horseshit than they are with strict standards and high expectations, but where are these popular folks 5 years down the road, when the student confronts the ah-ha moment and realizes that they may have felt good in that classroom, but they didn’t learn anything new? They may have all As and Bs on a report card, but they didn’t walk away from high school with an education they can use in college or on the job or in their lives.

New knowledge is scary because it often takes us out of our comfort zone and puts us at risk in a place we’ve never been. Until the new becomes the old, we have to exist in that uncomfortable place between. What I’m learning is that not many of today’s younger generations are willing to do that because we’ve made the familiar too comfortable and the unknown too risky.

I left the high school classroom for many reasons, one of which is the complete collapse of high expectations and rigorous classroom challenges. The educational system is geared, thanks to No Child Left Behind, to teach to the lowest common denominator, and that’s a formula for failure. The educational process has inflated the achieving student to “gifted” status and rewards what once would have been a strong B student with academic excellence through effort grades that reflect how grateful we are that some students can read and some students actually complete homework assignments.

I cringe when I see project-based activity substituting for knowledge-based competency. A group becomes veneer for the unmotivated, as well as the unable, student who earns a group grade without engaging in the process of creating the project—or learning the information contained in the completed project. “Let’s make the students feel good about themselves” is the hue and cry of those who don’t know that the students have to make themselves feel good honestly, by engaging in and mastering solid educational concepts and building their personal knowledge base.

We aren't educating, we're enabling, constructing a house of cards that tumbles with the least breath of moving air. Standards-based education is based on lowering the standards so ALL children can walk across the stage on graduation day, clutching that high school diploma and waving to friends and family. It’s a social event, not an educational high-water mark. I’m beginning to think that society doesn’t care to know the difference because that would mean changing what we are doing and going back to real basics, the rote memorization of information that forms the foundation for everything else that comes after it.

But if all we expect from them is that what we provide makes them feel good about themselves now, that becomes all they expect from themselves. When it no longer feels good and they don’t know what to do about it, we all fail.