DEPUTY PRINCIPAL'S REPORT

Teaching, Learning and Innovation

Why Struggling Makes Us Human (and Better for it) 

As an educator it has been interesting to see the way thinking about learning, struggle and mindset have evolved over the last 50 years. 

Old school trains of thought leant towards ‘tough love’, with corporal punishment a key element in ensuring times tables and spelling were rote learned and regurgitated on command. I am old enough to have lived at the very end of this style of learning and I will say I saw it work for some and thoroughly damage others; some forever, and the scars were (generally) far more emotional than physical. By work, I mean that outright fear ensured I knew my 7 times tables so that I didn’t face the wrath of the set square that got applied to the backsides of students who didn’t know their 7 times tables…ahh the bad old days. And yet, I know my 7 times tables exceptionally well (ahem, if I say so myself), so what gives? It worked for me, so surely it is a proven method for learning? Well…no. 

Times changed…by the late 20th Century we were in a very, very different phase. Now it seemed success and engagement really only occurred if everyone was acknowledged, rewarded and celebrated. The ensuing thought being that it damaged people to think they weren’t good at things. I tend to think of this as the ‘everyone wins a prize’ educational phase. In some forms this still gets around in some settings—a fear that someone missing out on being first will be somehow damaged beyond repair and become disengaged from whatever event, sport, activity or learning they may be undertaking. The rationale being that not being the best hurts people’s feelings, and that is bad, so we better not let people feel bad. This is ‘lovely’ by nature and would appear difficult to challenge or attack. And yet the end result has been far from affirming or positive. Achievement has dipped, mental health has declined and resilience has plummeted. It appears everyone being equally rewarded has not led to the learning (or societal) Utopia we expected? 

You see, these two radically different approaches have been damaging in equally different ways. One says I deserve to be punished if I don’t get the job done and the other says I get a reward regardless, so why try too hard? Or, everyone gets a prize, so why strive to be all I can be? Or, I must be good at this, I got a prize, even though the achievement is substandard by any measure and in reality the person cannot actually apply that skill or knowledge for which they are being rewarded. Mediocrity and outright failure become cause for celebration and failure is shunted to the dark recesses of the room for fear someone will get their feelings hurt. 

The more recent thinking, to my mind, is far more healthy, constructive and effective. It is the idea that struggling is a key part of what it is to be human, and that from the struggle emerges a far better mindset and true lifelong learning. I often say to students (and teachers) that learning should be a little hard—if it is easy we can already do it, and that is not learning. It is why we don’t parade proudly around our loungerooms showing everyone how well we can walk—our family knows we can walk and it is not that great an achievement, although it absolutely was once! What we learn becomes easy over time, but reading, writing, being numerate, these can not just happen by either fear, osmosis or due to your astrological sign—they occur through sheer hard work and determination. And, in the case of education, teamwork.

Learning, though, should not just be a struggle—my favourite educational psychologist, Lev Vygotsky, knew this early last century when he pointed out that it is vital that teachers engage with what he called the Zone of Proximal Development. It sounds fancy, but really all it means is that we know where a child’s learning is at so that we know what they need next. This means that there is almost always a degree of struggle, and that this is in fact where the true learning occurs. There is an element of Goldilocks here, with a need for learning to be not too easy, not too hard, but ‘just right’. Staff at The Riverina Anglican College work hard to ensure we end up in the ‘just right’ realm and this article is not really about that. What it is about is the idea that our students, young and old, embrace the struggle that learning entails. I’m not sure Malcom Fraser was right when he said that ‘Life wasn’t meant to be easy’, but there is no doubt that learning by its nature can be a struggle and that the battle is worth the fight as it is here that learning occurs.

In my next article I will talk more about the why and even about the how, so that we can help our young learners be all they can be. 

Anthony Heffer | Deputy Principal - Teaching, Learning and Innovation