Educational Rant: boooring?

“Life is not going to be kind to him if he doesn’t come to understand that you will always have to do things that bore you in life.”

This is the message we are promoting in education. Your life has to suck right now so that when you grow up you will be ok with your life sucking.

Is this really the message we want to send to our youth? Is this really the life we want for them?

Sure… I know the arguments for this statement:

We have to learn how to do things we don’t like.

We have to be able to get through the boring stuff to have fun.

We have to learn how to push through the tough stuff.

Doing things we don’t like builds resiliency.

And on and on….

I am guilty of saying those things as a teacher and a mom.

But, when I got the email that one sentence just slapped me across the face. It hurt. I cried. I mean really, I did. Tears welled up in my eyes and I had to stop and ask myself why this was so painful to read.

It occurred to me that we live so much of our lives in the future and forget how important it is to be right here, right now.

My daughter had a meeting with the principals at her school because she is failing most of her classes. Her biggest takeaway was they talked to her about how she had to push through because her future depended on it. And her response was … I want to enjoy my life right now.

This got me thinking. Kids spend somewhere around 7 hours a day 5 days a week doing stuff they don’t like. They have adults telling them that all this stuff they don’t like is going to make them successful in the future. Forget that a lot of them have no idea what they want in the future. What they want is to enjoy what they have right now. They want to be happy. And we are asking them to just be ok with being unhappy because someday you will be unhappy and you need to get used to it.

We do this…we live in this life, this mindset of tomorrow. We work towards getting to college, then we work towards getting the degree that will give us the dream job. Then we get the job and work towards the promotion, then we work toward retirement. Then what?  Then we get to this age where we reminisce about our youth.

I am not saying kids don’t have fun or don’t need goals or whatever else argument is running through your head. What I am saying is that we promote a mindset that says you’re here and now is not as important as your future.

I say no bueno. Why not make learning an enjoyable experience? Why not get kids to think, be curious, ask questions, explore, discover, create, take risks? These are fulfilling tasks. When you take a risk and fail and then are given the space and opportunity to learn from that failure…to get creative with a solution, to explore a different approach, to discover and create something new…these are satisfying experiences that can keep a kid in the here and now, where they want to be. Where they need to be. And by building those skills, that new mindset and way of thinking…they WILL find success.

And here’a another piece to this- we help promote the joy of gratitude for the present, where we are right now, loving everything as it is and finding happiness in our day.

That quote at the top was paired with another such concept that I pushed back against- the work the student was asked to do was something he needed to be able to do NEXT YEAR! So, forget that he really needs to be able to show his comprehension, learning, whatever it is THIS YEAR for THIS content area…no…he also has to worry about something that hasn’t happened yet, a class he isn’t in, a teacher’s teaching style he is not experiencing. And it is possible he won’t get that teacher or even that class. It is possible he will get a new teacher with a new mindset who will be open to showing learning in a variety of ways that make sense to the kid.

In Education, we need to be with our student where they are right now. We need to teach them content in ways that make sense to them. We need to be ok with struggles and failures…and with desires to improve and grow and learn from mistakes. We need to allow them to live in the present, and we need to honor that. And even better…let’s join them in the present. Let’s be with them, right here, right now in this day at this moment enjoying seeing the light bulbs go off and the eyes light up and hearing the questions asked and the ideas and the creativity pour out.

We talk about emotional well-being. We talk about growth-mindsets. We talk about the whole child.

We can foster all that good stuff right now by allowing our kids to enjoy the present, be right here, right now. Allow them to learn who they are today and not worry about what they will be like in 10, 15 or 20 years. I wish I had been given that option. I realize for myself, I want to enjoy every day as it is…because I have no idea what the future will hold.

Sure, goals are important, steps towards goals are key.  But right now…we need to help kids learn and live in the present…their future will come soon enough.