John Stuart Mill
I started into reading the autobiography of John Stuart Mill, and am finding it very interesting. You can get a free copy of the text off of the wonderful Project Gutenberg site. In his autobiography he recounts how he was schooled by his father at home. It is an impressive thing that was done, especially when considered in the context of what we believe our children capable of in this day and age, or at least what our school system believes.
I came across a great quote in the book that made me really pause and consider my own situation:
“A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded which he cannot do, never does all he can.”
He is relating this in regards to how he felt like most of the time he “failed” to do something properly because his father always set the mark beyond what he was capable of at the time. The idea that we should not only require our children to achieve something that we know they won’t be able to accomplish, and do it repeatedly, flies completely in the face of my understanding of learning. I’ve always thought the concept of only testing a child on what they already know to be the proper way to do things so that the child is spurred on by small successes. When I think about Mill’s quote though, there is something in it that rings true. I was rarely ever demanded which I cannot do, and when I was, the response from someone in authority involved in the situation usually gave me some sort of justification for my failure. I don’t blame anyone else for those things, it just was the situation at the time. Would that I could go back and pull little Tommy aside and tell him, “OK, you didn’t succeed at what was required of you. That’s fine for now, but you need to get back up. The worst thing you can do at this point is just give up. You need try again and figure it out for yourself.” As hard as that seems to me on one side, on the other, it seems like it is possibly at the core the same equation as learning to work hard. There are four important negative implications to giving little Tommy justification for failing:
- A message is sent that you shouldn’t ever have to try and do more than you are already comfortably capable of.
- Another message is if you fail, it probably isn’t your own shortcomings that made it so, it is something else in the system you were working in.
- Tommy now thinks that he shouldn’t seek to achieve something just to achieve it, he can just do good enough to get approval from someone else, and that’s worth receiving as reward.
- By shortcircuiting the process of finishing the task, independent thought and ingenuity atrophies.
I realize at this point I need to pick myself up and get going on this shortcoming. Trying to teach my kids this principle without internalizing it into myself is a little like the smoker who pulls a cigarette out of his mouth long enough to tell their kid not to ever take up smoking.