The Value Puzzle

Dear colleague,

I don't think it's melodramatic to state the following: The vast majority of students today have a deeply impoverished view of the value of an education. It's way more popular today to decry the pointlessness of learning school subjects than it is to Value them. And on top of this, a pre-COVID national survey found that 75% of secondary students experience school as a form of misery.

In Stockdale Paradox language, these are the brutal facts.

But on the other hand, we have ample reason to believe it doesn't need to be this way.

What school offers is straightforward, though often obfuscated: We promote the long-term flourishing of young people by teaching them toward mastery of the disciplines. These disciplines are fundamental to what it means to be a human being: art, science, social studies, music, literature, writing, math…all the classes we teach are pointed in these good and time-tested directions.

I've yet to meet a person who looks back on their schooling and says things like:

• “Darn it — I learned too much.”
• “I'm annoyed that I became so good at math.”
• “I wish I hadn't learned all that science.”
• “Reading and discussing all those books really left me worse off.”

Growth toward mastery, in any class, just IS good. AND when students actually grow toward mastery, it FEELS good, too.

It's hard, yes. But in the hands of teachers like us who strive to get a bit better each day, school is the good kind of hard — the kind of hard that athletes and musicians and artists and scientists willingly endure in pursuit of their passions.

Our puzzle, then, is bridging this huge divide:

• On the brutal facts side, most students don't think school is inherently valuable and don't experience school as a good thing.
• On the unwavering faith side, all of the classes we teach ARE inherently valuable and CAN BE experienced as good.

We can call it the Value Puzzle.

Last month, I spent my articles explaining one approach to solving this puzzle and bridging this divide: the Mini-Sermon from an Apologist Winsome and Sure (Strategy #4 in The Will to Learn).

In the weeks that follow, I want look at a different tack toward this same problem: Valued Within exercises.

I'll see you next week with our first example.

Teaching right beside you,

DSJR

P.S. Bonus points if you read ahead in The Will to Learn and guess which Valued Within exercise I'll write about first. 😉