The Educational System Should Be About Learning …But IT’S NOT.

I met a young boy named Steven one morning at a car repair shop. He was the son of Jack, the manager. He was a bright, personable, and adorable 12 year old. As I like to do with students, I began a conversation to get to know him. He was in 6th grade and told me he loved school and his teachers. He enjoyed gymnastics, soccer, hanging out with his parents, and having fun with friends. He was very outgoing, social, caring, and spontaneous. Then after a few more moments, as he began to trust that I was someone that truly wanted to hear what he thought without judgment, the floodgates opened and he delicately told me how he really felt about school. Steven said that he believed he wasn’t very smart and didn’t really like how stressful the work felt in school. I asked him why.

“I don’t do well on tests. I just don’t get it like the other kids.” he replied.

“Mmm,” I responded.

“…and I don’t like homework either,” he added.

“Why?” I asked.

“It's boring. I don’t always make good grades, and I don’t have time to do the things I really love,” he replied. “I just get tired of school work,” he concluded.

This is a typical conversation that I hear from all aged students. They say they feel stupid when they don’t get something right, and that they don’t have time to explore the things that really interest them without being overwhelmed about studying, doing assignments, and memorizing for tests that seem pointless. And most of all, to high school and college students, there is a constant pressure in the back of their minds to make high grades. They have developed a belief system that without good grades, they won’t get a job and make enough money. Not enough money to them equals they won’t survive in the real world. To many students, school feels like a high-stressed job beginning in about 3rd grade with personal overwhelm peaking their junior year in high school and then again as a senior in college.

Are high grades really the key to making enough income? You would think so. But it’s really not the case. There are many people that don’t go to school or make low grades and create careers where they make plenty of money (…and vice versa). There is something just not right about correlating high grades to making a good enough income. It feels controlling and manipulative because high grades really don’t mean you have learned.

How many times have you studied for a test and forgotten everything you crammed into your brain the next day?

Grades are outcomes that depend on a myriad of uncontrollable factors, such as the students motivation and skills to learn the material, their physical and emotional state on test day, the teacher’s philosophy, the reliability and validity of the test, and how fairly the teacher grades. In my post-graduate work, I took two classes on the science of creating tests and grading fairly. It's not easy to develop truly fair tests!

I cannot tell you how many times as a teacher, I made tests just so I could give students a grade. I was taught that high grades would show that my students were learning. I would teach to the test and lecture excessively instead of creating experiential activities so they could retain and use what was really important. One semester, later in my teaching career, I was teaching a college wellness course that I had tried hard to make experiential with as little grading as possible. The students freaked out when I went over the syllabus. A few students told the head of the department that if I didn’t tell them exactly what they needed to learn and what to study so they could make an A, they would drop the class! I remained as true to my experiential beliefs as the Dean would let me. It was a struggle to say the least. Two years later though, I ran into the student in my class that had complained the most. She told me that she was sorry that she behaved the way she did and that my class was the best class she actually had ever taken because she had been using the personal wellness coaching skills out into the real world.

From my research and experience as a student and educator, focusing on grades as a measure of learning has horribly backfired. It has created students who struggle to learn on their own and trust their own intuitive learning process and inherent abilities to enjoy learning. Because the education system is based on the assumption that young people will not learn enough on the own to beat out the other nations on the standardized tests, then it must reason that all the curriculum must be standardized and controlled. They are told that if you don’t get the highest grades, you won’t be successful. Grades then become the student’s identity, who they are at their core, …not their passions, not their creativity or innovation, not their contributions, not building connected and fulfilling relationships, and not being well, all the things that the research shows that human-beings need to truly thrive in the real world.

i.e. “If I make good grades, then I am worthy of making good money.” “If I make bad grades, then I am not good enough.” “I will do anything to make good grades.” “Grades equal my worthiness!” "If I can't make good grades, then I must quit.

...and we wonder why our students lose their passion for learning and struggle so much in their lives.

Learning is actually a natural, positive, fun process if the educational system would stop making it wrong not to know something. Think about the pressure you have felt when you were made to learn and regurgitate information for a grade. The brain actually begins to view “making the grade” as a perceived threat/fear and moves into a constant low-grade survival mode (a fight, flight, or freeze state). In this constant state of survival, the the flow of energy to the higher brain slows down, cutting off their present executive abilities to not be able to problem solve, make decisions, connect to their higher thoughts, and to figure things out easily and calmly. It’s like trying to do math fast in your head when you feel you aren’t good at it. You stress and can’t think. It’s hard and not fun. I remember taking a course after graduating from college where there were no grades. The professor said, “I hope you’re taking this course because you’re excited and passionate about the subject.” Novel idea. I felt like I wasn’t learning anything because it was experiential, easy and fun. But in reality, I was actually taking in and using the information as I was changing myself and my skills on a deeper level, something I had never experienced.

Learning is intrinsic. It comes from within. It shouldn’t have to be forced. When a toddler begins to walk and take her first steps and then falls down, she is going to get back up and try again if even if the parents never say a word. She will keep trying until she walks, jumps, hops, skips, and runs. She will do it. Mom and Dad don’t force her to walk. They set up a safe environment and encourage, guide, coach, and validate the progress that she is making. When the child falls down, the parents don’t reprimand her and call her a failure and give her a bad grade on her mistake. Why? Because parents know that the child will keep trying and eventually they will walk.

Learning is a self-organizing principle. It happens when the child is ready and interested. It of course would be detrimental for parents to say to a child, “I don’t care if you’re not ready to walk; it’s my job to teach you to walk and today is the day that I’m supposed to teach you to walk so you’re going to walk today. I am in charge of you to make that happen and if I don’t, I am a bad parent. So get up and walk and if you can’t do it and cry and scream or refuse, then I’m sending you away; when you’re ready to come back and walk, I’ll accept you. No playing around, It’s all work.” Isn’t this what we are implicitly saying in our educational system to our young people? More frustratingly, teachers have been forced into this no-win, stressful situation. Making teachers force learning on kids who are not ready and punishing them if they don’t want to learn or don’t get it right is no fun for anyone.

Wonder why we have so many behavioral problems?

We MUST allow students to build their skills out of their passions they already have. Let’s set up the educational system so kids get to explore everything in elementary school. Let them try music, art, recreational games, building, anything that allows them to experience the process of expressing themselves in whatever ways they want. Let’s allow them to master resiliency to challenges in life with effective social-emotional skills by learning to move through conflicts, be a friend, effectively communicate, find purpose and contribute. Let’s set up learning situations that truly promote problem solving by giving them challenges and supporting them in finding the solutions (growing self-worth and confidence). And most of all, let’s set up the environment so they are building healthy, lifelong habits (eating, moving, relaxing), and balancing all of life’s dimensions, -emotional, -mental, -spiritual, -social, and physical is crucial. Learning to read, write and do math will inherently come from a student’s passions and be applied effectively if the environment is setup correctly. There is no strict time a child NEEDS to learn anything. WHO SAYS THERE IS? What is the rush? When a young child is ready to read and is having fun, he will read easily. When a young child wants to naturally understand “why” and “how” on his own terms, a fire for learning is lit that can never be burned out. This would make us have to change our viewpoint on testing and grades.

In middle school, we MUST build on the elementary philosophy and begin to allow students to focus in on their passions. Allow them to be coached and supplied with resources to actually to begin to further build their distinct skills. Have them write their own tests and guide books and evaluate themselves. Have them teach and present what they love to others. If there is something they need and want to learn, provide it. (“Classes on Demand”) Get the community involved in supporting students with their passions. You would be surprised what happens when kids’ passions come together in the right environment, resources just seem to show up.

In high school, students MUST be given the ability to hone in on certain areas of expertise and begin to work in the community contributing and growing their skills. Allow them to bloom into who they are without judgement. By this time, they will be creating, innovating, problem solving, writing, speaking, and changing the world as they see fit. Continue their coaching and allow them to find their way. Applying to college should not be stressful. The college years should be exciting and fun and a place that young adults are DOING their career in many ways, where they can grow their passions to the highest level they can imagine and support their communities in the meantime. Not taking the same classes they already had in high school!

Empowerment Education® gives a new-paradigm blueprint of change to support educators in learning how to shift old-paradigm outcome environments to new-paradigm, person-centered, trauam-informed learning environments. Their brilliance will be unleashed. I have seen it over and over. Real learning takes place without the need to control, force, or grade.

All children are amazing and brilliant. Our educational system in its current structure tends to make children feel like they’re not….-that they need to be something more than they are to be amazing and brilliant. Steven was feeling this way and he is not alone. After spending thirty minutes with me as his "coach" talking about his passions in life, who he loved, and describing all about the visiting dog in the car repair store as if he had known the dog for years, his brilliance was shining all over the place. He couldn’t see it though. I reminded him. “Do you know that there are many ways to be smart?” He said he didn’t know that. I replied, “You are athletic, care about people and animals, and love to talk to and help others.” His eyes lit up and he smiled and said, “Just like my dad!”

(Disclaimer: I love schools, teachers, school staff, and administrators. I was a teacher, and am a certified, credentialed Life and Well-being Coach. I do not feel negatively towards the wonderful educators who show up everyday to do what they do. Students do learn in school despite the drawbacks of the educational system because of the great educators, but we need to make it easier on the teachers.)