The Way They Should Go

This past week, an editorial in the Paris-based newspaper Le Monde discussed one of the most debated components of the teaching profession – to be nice or not be nice.  Of course, when I began my career, I was told not to smile until Christmas.  The thought was it was much easier to grow nicer than to grow stricter.  However, what the article misses altogether and what I was missing at the beginning of my career was that notions of “mean” or “nice” are beyond the scope of the question and not relevant.  Instead, the question should be about being a teacher.

In the past, I’ve alluded to the words of German thinker Martin Buber and his concept that a teacher’s job is to instruct the adult they will become – not the teenager they are now.  Therefore, my approach is not to be polite or mean but to be professional and keep the long term in mind.  In general, I have deadlines and restrictions on re-takes and make-ups.  Most teachers do but in the application of such policies, I respond to situations as a professional.  I will extend latitude when common decency dictates that I should.  If a kid’s parent has been in the hospital all weekend, it is as a professional that I extend the deadline where other students are not afforded such consideration.  For the student, I’m not being nice (though I’m surely sympathetic) but practical.  It is unreasonable to expect a student to complete an assignment if their parent was in the hospital all weekend.  To enforce the policy is not a case of being strict, it is being a jerk.   

However, more likely is the case that a student comes to me and ask for an extension on an assignment and I say no.  Again, not extending the deadline is not a question of being mean – as Le Monde editorial seems to suggest.  The question I have to ask myself is what is being learned from my action.  If the student learns in the future, be it in my class or another class (or a job), that it is not good to turn things in late, then a life-long lesson has been internalized.  Like parents, it does not serve me (and certainly not the students) to allow a kid to arbitrarily miss deadlines.  To do so could lead to the student suffering after they’ve left school where the consequences are more severe and less forgiving.    

 

What is the extent of my “niceness?”  I often say that I’m friendly but refuse to be friends.  Many teachers seek to be friends with students.  Like parents, that serves no one.  I’m not there to be a friend but to be a teacher.  My ability to do what is best for the student can be easily compromised with personal feelings or attachments.  Still, I seek to be friendly.  It would be equally ridiculous to take an adversarial approach to students I have to deal with for 182 days.  Like a professional, the best you can make these relationships, the better the students will perform.   

Now, those who argue against this approach say such teachers do not care for their students and do not care about what is best for them.  Typically, when a person’s response to a point is an ad hominem attack, it is never a good sign.  I’ve been told that I don’t care and I don’t understand what they are going through.  I should try to “meet them where they are.”  Such thinking is naïve.  When a teacher acquiesces to a student’s excuses (extraordinary circumstances notwithstanding) or a student’s plea to avoid consequences, the teacher is cutting the student’s legs out from underneath them – crippling them as they head into a world that cares very little for them.   

So what is a teacher to do?  It is not to be nice for niceness sake.  It is not to be mean because a student should be able to expect a certain level of decency.  The teacher should be the dispassionate advocate for the adult the student will become.  If a teacher does their job correctly, that student will enter the world with maturity and confidence and will have the benefit of having a mentor who sought what was best for the long-run rather than doing what was easier in the short-term.        

The Dangers of Childhood

A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts.
            Colette, 19th-century French writer

A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.

            Robertson Davies, 20th-century Canadian writer

About seven years ago, I worked with my mentor and friend at my previous school to learn more about the history of the community.  To do so, we flipped through and studied past senior yearbooks, which thankfully stretched back to the 1910s.  For anyone who has done so, one is struck by a single observation – the fact that the teenagers appear to be adults.  I think, in comparison and by every definition, students today appear and act younger.  Over the last five years, I’ve assisted a good friend and colleague in taking students to Germany and hosting German students in the U.S.  Once more, I’m struck by the maturity (both in appearance and actions) of the Germans.  Between these two experiences and over an 18-year teaching career, it is apparent that the way we treat and handle children and teenagers is ultimately doing them a disservice.   

One of the refrains I hear the most, particularly within my capacity as a teacher, is the concern that issue “A” is too much stress and responsibility upon younger people.  I have heard administrators and teachers alike mention high school students as children.  It is the culmination of our attitude towards them and what we expect from them.  We see them as helpless, as someone to be coddled and protected.  Therefore, we protect them from bad grades, failing grades and being held back a year.  The infantilization of our students is realized in the students’ perception of their own abilities.   

As has often been cited in international studies, American students have high opinions of themselves and their potential but produce very little.  It is the end result of our coddling.  We pump students up with praise at the drop of a hat, take away all possibility of failure and in the end, we get a gaggle of cocky ne’er-do-wells.  Everything the education system does is designed to create immediate results and little to no thought is given to the long-range impact of these decisions.   

The second feature of this condition is the child-centric approach to parenting, marketing and the like.  Modern family psychologists talk of the importance of praise and finding worth in everything the child says and does.  The fear of damaging self-esteem has created, in some cases, some intolerable people to be around.  It is not the students’ fault but it is a problem that we adults have created.  The question is what should be done?  Unfortunately, many people don’t see the problem.  If we cannot show people the problem, there is no hope of reaching a better path.   

Compounding the problem of officials, teachers and parents not recognizing the problem is the fact that they try to demonize those who object to their education philosophy.  Over my career, I and others like me have tried to make the point that we need to take a different approach to students.  What we receive is the criticism that we don’t like children, we want them to fail, etc.  They have no argument to back up their philosophy so the only thing left is to create a moral argument with reformers playing the role of the boogeyman.  They attempt to invalidate our position, not with a cogent argument of their own but with demagoguery.  It is frustrating and irritating.  It is one thing to have a discussion or debate and to fail to convince or convert others.  It is another thing to be discounted altogether and to be characterized as antithetical to your true beliefs.  I care for my students and want what is best for them.  The current environment is not it.   

Martin Buber, the German philosopher and writer, once said that teachers must focus on teaching the adult the child will become.  Even pop-psychologists like the late Steven Covey preached the idea of keeping the end in mind.  We as teachers and administrators cannot make decisions with regards to students based on what is best for them now.  Rather, we must consider the impact on the adult they will become.  The more we infantilize our students/children, the greater challenges we place before them as adults.