When I was in primary and middle school, my teachers were divided: Many thought I was possessed, and the rest thought I was a misplaced saboteur. For many of those years, I had my own desk in the hallway, and I had such regular “visits” with the principal that he used to greet me with, “What is it today, Matthew?”
A bit of context: This was a time before Gifted and Talented programs, before the idea of “enrichment” hit my schools. In the heightened anxiety of the post-Sputnik period of US education, teachers had a serious job to do, and I was — at best — a distraction.
At the time, I didn’t understand what was going on, nor did I see a clear path out of it (if I had wanted one). Only a few years later, in High School — where the put me in calculus two years early in self-defense — did I understand my younger self: I was bored shitless. Let’s call this diagnosis BS Syndrome; BSS for short.
At that time, BSS was an invisible affliction, so there was no thought of a treatment. Kids with BSS were mostly categorized as trouble-makers, ironically, even when their skills (and their grades) told a different story.
As a result of my untreated BSS, I hated school. I viewed it as the worst sort of purgatory: torturous penance endured for the sake of infrequent trips to the library, where I could occupy myself with interesting ideas. An example: Remember that form of torture called “reading aloud”? I was always on the wrong page, trying to keep myself from instigating a rebellion by reading ahead of the class. “Reading aloud time” was synonymous with “Go out in the hall.” Hence the desk.
Fortunately we’ve learned a lot since then. Or perhaps I should say, we’ve had the opportunity to learn. Who doesn’t know that being interested in classwork increases motivation, which increases persistence, which increases just about any other metric by which we pretend to measure “student success”?
When I watched our college reorganized into divisions that support Areas of Study, something struck me about one of those divisions: Liberal Arts: Humanities and Communication included programs that ranged from ESOL and INRW all the way to the Honors program, with majors like English and Communication Studies and Philosophy sprinkled in between. In other words, the mission of LAHC was to serve students who are at just about every point on the continuum of “college ready.” That, I thought, is a division worth leading. So I applied for the job as LAHC dean.
I went into this job with an agenda: I wanted to do whatever I could to ensure that every one of those students in LAHC had the kind of intellectual stimulation that can lead to engagement and motivation to persevere.
Equipped with a fat dose of Vygotsky, I realized that our curriculum needed to be viewed both from the perspective of the disciplinarity of each discipline, and with an eye on an appropriate level and intensity of intellectual stimulation for each student. That’s a tall order. And a heavy responsibility for us, the educators.
Students suffer from two mirror-image mismatches with the curriculum. One of those mismatches is easy to spot — and even easier for me to elicit. Suppose I tell you that, before I sign your evaluation, you have to come to my office and show me a proof of De Morgan’s Theorem. The stakes are high: you want to “pass” and move on. But the task — while immensely intellectually stimulating to someone like me — is just too hard.
What does “too hard” mean? It means you aren’t prepared with the skills to perform the task — but you could be. (Spend a semester in Logic, and you’ll have those skills.) So it’s pretty easy to see what we educators have to do: We have to create intellectual challenges that are genuinely stimulating and scaffold people’s skills toward mastery of these particular techniques. In other words, we meet them where they are, intellectual-simulation wise.
This approach works for logic, and it works for reading. And documenting essays. And time management and self-advocacy and playing the guitar and making mayonnaise and just about any other skill you can think of. Because, as Aristotle pointed out 2400 years ago, we human beings like to know things, and we like to do meaningful things with what we know.
When we fail our students by making challenges too hard for their level of mastery, we create conditions in which students despair. They say things like “I’m too dumb to be in college.” They are emphatically not the ones who are too dumb; we are.
So, what’s the less obvious, mirror-image way we torture students? The inverse, obviously: not enough challenge and stimulation. Yes, like any of us in our lives as shoppers, we love “a deal.” When we can get a product like an A cheaply, we’re inclined to go for it. But are you aware of the phenomenon of subjective valuation? When we don’t pay much for something, we tend not to value that thing, even if we wanted it. It soon becomes expendable — which means it’s too easy to toss it out.
When we don’t provide students enough intellectual stimulation, we contribute to this devaluation of their educational experience; we make it easier for them to toss it out. And this, my friends, is why honors programs are not just “optional extras” in community colleges; on the contrary, honors is a key part of our obligation to our students. Especially to our students.
And what happens when we meet that obligation? Ask a typical ACC Honors student. These are students who persist and complete and transfer at a higher rate; they’re getting into elite universities, they’re devoting time to serving their communities and their fellow students. They’re talking to their peers about what Honors is doing for them.
And don’t try to tell me it’s because they’re “better students.” Look at the data: A great many of our students who disappear are actually passing their courses. That’s on us.
Next time you’re in a mentoring role with a student, ask yourself: Are you helping that student find the intellectual stimulation they need and deserve? Or are you advising them to take easier courses for the sake of their GPA?
Sometimes, prioritizing GPA is prudent. But often, it’s actively undermining what a student needs to start strong and stay strong in college.
I usually end a homily like this with “Teach like the world depends on your teaching.” But today, I’ll end like, this: Advise like this student’s future depends on your advice.
Because it does.
