Ignition for Education

            In my last post, I argued that we should teach children to aim to be creators by the lights of the Creation Paradigm. That means becoming creative of others and oneself, and, of course, of products ranging from bricks to engines to oil paintings to mental health services. I argued that we should prefer this to teaching them to be leaders, as leadership is only necessary for some kinds of creation. Moreover, if leadership is elevated as something to strive for in and of itself, rather than a means to the end of some kind of creation, it amounts to nothing more than power for power’s sake.

            But we need to give children more than goals, even the goals of the Creation Paradigm. We need to teach them to live in a way that leads to creative achievement: to live deliberately, not incidentally, in pursuit of goals that they choose for themselves; to live persistently, pursuing their self-chosen goals even when doing so isn’t fun; to form ideas about who they want to be—not just what they want to do for a living, but what talents and moral qualities they want to cultivate.

            That a person should choose their own goals, and, therefore, that children should learn to choose goals, is essential to the Creation Paradigm. That’s one reason why schools need to give children a lot of options to explore—not just the core curriculum subjects, major sports, music, art, and theatre. Electives are important too. They don’t just broaden a child’s education. They broaden her choices, and, therefore, they increase the likelihood that she will choose. Right now, I’m teaching a ballroom dancing elective. My students have other options, ranging from bridge to bucket drumming. It won’t come as a surprise that I’m strongly in favor of arts wheels, because they enable children to experiment with a lot of different arts forms, and I believe that schools should also design athletics wheels. These shouldn’t just include football, basketball, soccer, and baseball. Children should get to try out minor sports. A child might get a bug for archery.

            Children should have as many opportunities as possible to explore. They should also have opportunities to deepen the interests that they find. These might be provided in school or through community partners. They should be encouraged to stick with their goals and to see achievement as a product of work more than of fun. This doesn’t always come naturally. The basketball players will “shoot hoops” to their hearts’ content, but might be less grateful for the opportunity to spend a lot of time practicing fundamental elements of technique. The chess kids will play full games against computers constantly, but they might be less keen to really study tactics and strategy. Children need to be taught, and taught again and again, that achievement is the child of effort. Because society will delude them into thinking it’s the product of natural talent—that they’ve “got it” and will achieve, or that they haven’t and they won’t.

            To do these things—to set goals and work deliberately to achieve them—children must be taught to see the talents that they cultivate, not to mention the moral qualities—as part of who they are. The identity of a child is half formed and fragile. They can easily vest who they are in membership of a clique, in what they look like or how they dress, or in their peers’ regard or lack of regard for them. But they do listen to adults. It might not always seem like they do, because they look bored or they roll their eyes or they don’t do what we say, but they do listen. And, because they listen, we can help them to regard themselves as products of their own decisions about who they want to be morally and what they want to be good at.