What Are We Teaching Our Kids And Why?

In a recent conversation with a few other parents, someone was complaining about having a hard time getting the kids to do their homework. I asked what was it they felt was the challenge and the answer was that kids didn’t enjoy doing homework, hence they considered it a painful chore they’d be happy to avoid. Yet, the parent added, they needed to understand that life is often about doing things you don’t like, hence it’s the parent’s job to bring that message home. Then my husband jumped in and asked why did one have to conform to doing things they did not enjoy and the answer was a deep sigh, almost dismissing the question as silly, and then the answer: “because there’s no way around that - that’s the way life is!”.

Is it, really?

There is perhaps an acquired irreverence to rigid rules that gets me to react viscerally when somebody says “that’s the way things are” as a sort of definitive, one-sided truth. What if that’s just a lens? What if there are others? Might there be any other ways to live, whereby one gets to say no to things that don’t bring them joy and still build a fulfilling, well-rounded life? Might “there’s no way around it” be one of many limiting messages we’ve internalised over the years and are turning into trans-generational self-fulfilling prophecies?

The other day, a corporate client was sharing how, just before the pandemic broke last year, their top management had dismissed a request from employees to allow for more flexibility around work from home. The argument was that the company was in no way yet ready for this - countless systems would need to be put in place to do that safely and efficiently and it would take at least two more years till flexible office would become an option. Two weeks after that meeting the first lock-down happened and the whole 2500 people in 10 countries operation switched to work from home in 3 days. This week, exactly a year later, they’re starting to get back to the office. How was that possible? Was it systems and processes that had prevented the change before, or was it mindsets, unacknowledged needs for control, collective and often unconscious belief-systems that were preventing leaders from seeing what was indeed possible?

Coming back to my highly informative parent group conversation, the awkwardness of challenging the value of homework was dialled up when I asked the group what they thought education and school were for after all. Answers ranged from “to give kids a foundation of knowledge to equip them for success” to “create discipline”, “get them to learn things they otherwise wouldn’t”. But what are those things? What will “success” look like in 15 years? How much is knowledge worth in a world where almost any type of information is one Google search away? And, finally, a key question:

What are the foundational beliefs about the nature of human beings and the world itself that are underpinning the ways in which we are schooling our kids or leading our teams?

This last question sparked a fascinating debate between two world-views.

In one view, human beings are fundamentally lazy. Left to their own devices, they will always choose the path of least resistance. If anything good is to come out of a human being, they need to be shaped, moulded (often against their wishes), learning and discipline have to be drilled into them. They need to be taught to suck it up and stick with the pain if they want the gain. In this same world-view, the world itself is a dangerous place. It’s made up of disparate bits and pieces that have little connection and are often at odds with each-other. It’s cut-throat, competitive, full of risks.

In this world, one needs to be very good to succeed. Better than others. Each is in for themselves as everyone else is too busy getting ahead to lend you a hand. “Good” means competent, filled to the brim with valuable expertise. This hard-won expertise - measured in academic accolades - will be exchanged for money in the job market, which will then ensure much-coveted financial safety, status and ultimately freedom to do what you want (but only after you’ve spent plenty of time doing what you must).

This first worldview assumes a world that is mostly static, that looks like machine governed by a set of intricate equations mastered by the few with the right competencies. There are always challenges, many of them complex, but, with enough knowledge and effort they can be overcome. To the ‘expert’s’ eye, the world itself is a problem to be solved and the problem has to have a right answer.

The second world-view is very different. Human beings are considered intrinsically curious, keen to explore and learn, animated by an innate drive to overcome their own limitations. In this world-view, toddlers would be considered a prime example of the ‘life-force’ that visionary educators like Maria Montessori talked about: a force for learning that makes them anything but lazy. They’ll fall down and get back up. They’ll desperately want to eat the soup by themselves, even if that means spilling two thirds on the floor. They’ll always shout: “I do it!” and get themselves into all sorts of trouble in the process. In this world-view, everything is connected and human beings need environments that help channel their life-force into useful things. Two year olds might play with sticks that build the fine motor movements later required for writing. Learning spaces might be designed in playful and engaging ways that encourage physical movement as a conduit for cognitive learning. Schools might be places of experimentation where students are offered challenges, problems or dilemmas from the real world which, in order to solve, they need to dive into concepts from maths, biology or history. If your task is building a bicycle - you can’t do it if you don’t know geometry or physics. In this world it’s assumed that kids will be more inclined to learn the value of Pi if they’re going to use it for building their bike wheels, rather than if someone forces them to memorise it as part of a theoretical task.

In this world-view there is little value for individual success at the expense of others, as it is seen to ultimately be a self-defeating strategy. If people and planet are interconnected, then the only logical definition of success is one that is sustainable for all. This means that success might have more to do with the communities you can cultivate than with the actual knowledge and expertise you possess. It’s a world where one needs emotional intelligence, the capacity to work collaboratively, the skill to listen empathically, to take a systemic view on things and vulnerably accept nobody has the right answers. It requires making wise decisions in-midst ambiguity.

That is because the second worldview assumes the world is alive, ever moving and evolving, ever shifting and dynamic. This is an organic view of the nature of the world, where there is not one problem to be solved and where any one problem has multiple good answers that can be co-created through collaboration.

We only see the actual gap, and glimpse bridges between these two sets of beliefs about the world, in historical moments like the one we’ve all come to in 2020. Moments when decisions which would have been inconceivable under the first world-view suddenly are made and implemented in days as people jump into the adaptive mindsets inherent in the second world-view. When a pandemic strikes, companies discover that thousands of employees can suddenly work from home and be insanely effective while doing it. We all get to see the disastrous impact of self-centred thinking as supermarkets are emptied from panic buying, but also the extraordinary potential of solidarity as teams work through unheard-of challenges or communities stick to lock-down rules, wear masks and keep distance to protect each-other.

How does knowledge serve us handling a challenge like COVID-19 and what role might wisdom play?

Is it any one piece of information we might have retained from our countless hours of doing homework that’s going to get us through this or is it the capacity to adapt (often literally over night) to new ways of working, the ability to stay open and connected even when we’re separated by countless screens, the art of managing our emotions and holding space for those of others, the generosity we extend towards the most vulnerable among us or the patience we hold for ourselves and the ones we love?

Just as I’m writing about world-views, I am fully aware of the irony that this text is in itself coloured by my own way of seeing the world and inherently limited and subjective. My way is obviously not THE way, it’s just ONE way, among many others. Just as the two lenses I’ve described here are not the only ones, but merely two points on a continuum of countless perspectives and ways of living. What I do hope to have achieved is to invite you to examine your own lens.

What are the fundamental assumptions about the nature of humans, the nature of reality, the essence of a good life, that might be colouring your own thinking and decisions? How are your biggest assumptions serving you? How might they be limiting you?

If you’re a parent, how is your own world-view informing what you choose to instil in your kids? How might you ‘loosen up’ some of your existing beliefs and experiment with other ways of looking at things? Is it perhaps worth listening to the signals your child is sending about what works for them, even if that goes against some norms you might have taken for granted?

Who in your life is deeply triggering because they’re so different, so ‘unlike you’? You might just want to reach out and listen to them, not to agree, but just to have your mind opened to other truths. I my own experience, I’ve come to believe that with every mindset stretch comes another degree of freedom, as Viktor Frankl wisely said, “to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way”.