LEARN OR WE'LL HURT YOU

Something happened on the Teacher Leaders Network today that gave me pause.

Discussions on the TLN have a tendency to start out on one issue, then morph or deconstruct into a spectrum of ideas. One of the TLN posters described an instruction-assessment model where the teacher just absolutely would not let a student fail. The teacher would teach and re-teach and re-teach six times more, trying different techniques and continuously probing for learning. He liked the model, but knew that many teachers would give up, assigning blame to the student. You can lead a horse to water, and all that.

Another teacher responded, tongue in cheek, saying that her principal was fond of saying “Harass ‘em till you pass ‘em” and “Learn, or we’ll hurt you.”  There was a virtual-time pause in message string, and then a young teacher leader asked, very tentatively: Do you really use LEARN, OR WE’LL HURT YOU! as a slogan in your school?

Of course that was not the case—it was an inside, black-humor joke among the teachers and administrators collectively fighting the ongoing battle to push kids to take responsibility for their learning. The fact that someone had to ask if that slogan was on a poster in a school somewhere is telling, however. How do we get kids motivated to learn, in our culture of high-stakes assessment—and how many teachers persist after multiple breakdowns in the learning process? What is the best way to motivate kids to persevere when the reasons for pursuing school success are not absolutely clear to them?

Well, New York City School Chancellor Joel Klein believes that the answer to that question is: a brand-new, specially branded cell phone and 130 free minutes. There are many genuinely disturbing ideas in this article in the New York Times, beginning with the dustup over whether it’s a good idea to reward kids with an item that is banned in schools. Or the lame assertion that teachers can now text their (already high-achieving) students with testing updates, or “reminders to do their homework.” If reminding kids to do their homework was effective, a 30-second mandatory public service announcement could be broadcast on every channel, every night and bingo! Nobody would ever have a missing assignment.

Klein says: “This is not about preaching, this is about reality. We have an enormous set of challenges of student motivation in their education and finding ways to get those kids excited.”

Indeed. All educators do have challenges in getting kids excited about learning—partly because lots of things about schooling, the way it usually happens, aren’t very engaging to youngsters in their digital, advertising-packed, entertainment-saturated world. We can—and should—work on that.

The other thing is that many kids do not keenly understand the value of an education—because they don’t yet have their life priorities or goals in order. They are young. They also live in a country that does not value academic achievement as much as it rewards amusement, celebrity or quick gratification.

Cell phones (or, God help us, monetary bonuses) are the very last things we should be giving kids who demonstrate learning. Giving kids tangible items cements the primacy of extrinsic rewards, and cripples the incipient impulse to read for pleasure, solve problems for the delight in getting the right answer, or simply finish something for the satisfaction of completion. It’s bad policy, in the long run.

My hat is off to the teachers who doggedly hang in with kids who resist learning, the ones who hassle, hound and badger their reluctant students. Many of these teachers push awareness in students, and the low-key rewards they offer—honest praise when a job is finally well-done, for example—make a lasting difference, a longer and deeper impact than a cheesy cell phone.

Comments

[Bob]

Another thoughtful post. You said, "Giving kids tangible items cements the primacy of extrinsic rewards, and cripples the incipient impulse to read for pleasure, solve problems for the delight in getting the right answer, or simply finish something for the satisfaction of completion." Yes, we agree that extrinsic rewards can be seen as you stated, although empirical behavioral data from schools and labs have existed for decades to indicate that "it ain't necessarily so."

We do agree, that as used in some schools, extrinsic rewards can lead to bad policy implementation, in the long run.

[john holland]

Thanks for this post on dark humor and student motivation. As a member of TLN I know the conversation you are talking about. I think you alights on a subject that most people don't want to talk about.
Teachers are people not saints. We have stress, dark moments, and make wisecracks just like lawyers, and journalists for that matter. From inside the profession the joke is multi-layered and pretty funny. For those who have just stepped inside or on the outside it is probably scary as heck. Great job.