Learn With ThemJoel Weber's learning, teaching, growth, teens, & Holden High School blog
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Many parents and teachers are unduly fond of forcing kids to do things the kids don’t want to do. The authorities may not admit it, but it makes them comfortable to thus reaffirm their position of authority, or their position of being one-up to the kid. It’s kind of like giving a spelling test: “I’m the teacher, you’re the learner. Fill your head.” (Giving spelling tests may need not always be a bad thing.)
(Sometimes I think the less secure an authority is, the more likely they are to try to force people to do things.) One of the ways this gets expressed is: “You’ve got to learn to do things you don’t want to do.” This never sounded exactly right to us at Holden. We were always suspicious of clichés anyway. So here’s what we figured out with our teen students: “If there are goals you want to reach, there may be pieces of your effort that you don’t really like or aren’t really interested in. But if you can’t reach your goal without these tasks, and if you can’t or won’t modify your goal, then you’ll have to figure out how to do these ‘undesirables.’ We can help you chunk these tasks in doable pieces, or intersperse them with things you like to do, so that they get done and you get the satisfaction of achieving that bigger goal. Or we can help you refine that larger goal.” In short: “You may need to learn to do tasks you don’t like or want to do in the interests of some bigger goal.” The adolescents I’ve known line up on two sides of a dichotomy: some come upon some boring or distasteful task and often say, in effect: “That’s stupid. I’m not going to do it.” Others often say: “That’s stupid. How can I learn something from it if it’s something I have to do?” This of course is not any pure dichotomy, but it does seem to be there in real life. So to me, it will help people if they can broaden what they’re willing to do if and when they’re serious about meeting large or longterm or fixed goals. Otherwise, let’s talk about changing goals. I’m sure you know of examples in your life or in lives around you—from music, from building things, from applying to and getting admitted to college, from finding a job, etc. These ideas relate to that other cliché: “You can do anything you want to do if you just set your mind to it and work hard.” More on that later, but for now I would just say that the cliché is only true if you have flexibility in your set of “anything you want to do.”
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Copyright Joel B. Weber 2013 forward. Disclaimers: This blog is not affiliated with Holden High; views are my own. I have no official connection to Holden other than Director Emeritus and friend. Dates and many student names have been changed; facts have not. Archives
December 2014
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