Sometimes a book can change your way of thinking.

This time the book is Mindset by Carol Dweck. She does failure research. No, really. She looks at how people respond to failure. She discovered two basic responses: (1) I’m a failure, and (2) Wow, I’m learning a lot.

It’s the second response, of course, which leads to “growth mindset.”  That is the notion that intelligence and ability are to be gained through work and persistence, not through the lucky favors of the gods. The other mindset, as you can imagine, relegates each of us to an eternal heaven or hell of predestined results. Imagine the damage such a mindset would do on a child’s education. Even successful students can suddenly find themselves utterly defeated when they meet an unexpected challenge.

Education is hyper-focused on “intelligence,” a kind of classical ability to succeed at the tasks we construct in school. Dweck’s research is not merely about that, however. “What are the consequences,” she asks, “of thinking that your intelligence or personality is something you can develop, as opposed to something that is a fixed, deep-seated trait?” For those of us willing to believe it, everything in us can change.

Belief is a powerful thing.

I recently attended two events in one week about the ways in which school may not be serving children well. For both of them, the seating was packed.

The first was a screening of the film Race to Nowhere, a documentary which outlines the disturbing trend in childhood toward anxiety and depression as a result of academic pressure. Parents, teachers, and students were questioning whether we have somehow forgotten what we want childhood to be, out of fear for children’s future. (Isn’t it good for children not to be troubled about the future?) Too often the culture of performance has driven away the culture of enjoyment. It has also driven away the culture of learning, as one interviewee pointed out. When all that matters is a grade or a completed assignment, who will seek time for reflection, or knowledge for its own sake?

The second event was an appearance by Diane Ravitch, well-known thinker on educational issues, and most recently notable for changing camps. Formerly a proponent of school choice and standardized testing, she has revised her views and now says that these methods (particularly the practice of punishing schools for low student performance) are undermining the quality of education. Hosted by Linda Darling-Hammond at Stanford, she questioned how a few islands of school success created by well-endowed foundations (she named Walton and Gates in particular) would benefit all of public education. Only a small percentage of students, she pointed out, could actually attend such schools.

I like the fact that people came to hear. I also like that we are questioning the business as usual. But it seems like the problems are too easy to see and the solutions too hard to explain. Is there something we are missing?

“If they don’t get it here, they’re not going to get it.”

These were the words of Jerry Krumbein, principal of the Bracher Elementary School, which I visited recently. He oversees a population of students among the poorest in his district. Out of 400 students, he told me, only about a dozen had parents with college degrees. Yet these students had achieved an eye-catching 850+ score on the state academic performance indicator, a score worthy of some of the wealthiest districts.

What I sensed in this man was not the adrenalin-driven, high achievement focus we often hear about in struggling urban areas. He was friendly, quiet, and deeply respectful of the quality of his teachers. ”The kids are why we are here. My job is to find them happy, motivated, exceptional teachers, and then to create an environment where they love their jobs.”

To be sure, this school has its diagnostic assessments and targeted skill building. But I saw something more than that. Every morning Jerry addresses the entire school in assembly. He recognizes students who were “caught being a good citizen.” He sings for every birthday. He has students visit his office for doing outstanding work. He teaches a series of “15 Life Lessons” in which everyone in the community learns a code of behavior—say thank you, never cut in line, congratulate your classmates, and so on. It was strict, but as I walked through classrooms, I saw students calm, secure, engaged, and happy.

He confessed that when people come trying to find the “magic formula” for the school’s success, they can be disappointed. He mentioned the “lucky confluence of people” that had gathered there. “I don’t think you can just replicate it,” he said, “which is bad news for our profession.”

Or is it? I think the uniqueness of a local community with its own customs, its own values, and its own recipe for success is too precious a resource to give up.

I think an education of wisdom would include five things.

1. Wisdom is practical. Taking out an umbrella could be a wise decision, because it might save a lot of discomfort. There are so many useful habits that could make life easier to enjoy, if we only knew about them. I heard the idea once that certain combinations of food can be hard for the stomach to digest. No school nutrition program ever gave me that simple idea, but it changed my way of eating.

2. Wisdom comes with experience. I grew up with an idea about romance and intimacy that was not at all reflected by my own life, and it was very helpful for me to realize that my experience was a better source of information. Why do we keep expecting life to be different from what it is?

3. Wisdom is intuitive. We rely on our feelings to tell us what is important and what is not. There was a character in the film The Paper Chase, a law student who had photographic memory. He had an astonishing ability to recite from any legal precedent he had read. But he was failing. He could not evaluate what information was most valuable; he could only randomly quote from different cases. This is the mind without wisdom to guide it.

4. Wisdom is shared. People often associate wisdom with a person. They imagine the wise old woman or the wise old man, or sometimes the pure innocent child. That image of someone else can bring wisdom into more clarity. I am inspired by other people, and then their qualities become part of me.

5. Wisdom is ancient. The great truths of life do not change. Death is inevitable. Love is worthwhile. We receive what we give. These truths have been endlessly restated and collected in stories and poetry and scripture through the ages, and many people try to live their lives by them. This collection of wisdom is the wellspring of civilization, and we should not abandon it when we teach our children.

We educators know about the achievement gap—the regularly demonstrated fact that certain disadvantaged groups of people perform far worse in school. We are very noble in our sentiments about this. We know it is unfair, and we vow to change it by whatever means necessary.

I think we’re missing the real achievement gap.

The real achievement gap is far more devastating in its consequences, but it hardly troubles our minds. We have largely decided to accept it. The real achievement gap is too hard for us to see because it would force us to reconceive our notion of what achievement is.

The real achievement gap is in the fact that there is enough food to end world hunger, while millions of Americans still struggle to eat. It is in the way a wealthy nation meets its needs by throwing away 99% of what it makes in the first six months. It is in our creation of technology so powerful that it can destroy the world several times over, while we feel helpless to restore environmental balance. It is in the fact that every single one of us has the capacity to share love and understanding even while many suffer widely from feelings of depression, loneliness, and alienation.

The real achievement gap is the difference between what we are and what we could be. It is the difference between what we have done and what we could do. Or even what we try to do.

We worry so much about the students who are dropping out of school. Maybe we should worry about the students who are succeeding while their classmates flounder. Do they know what is happening? Do they care? Could they do anything about it? Are we asking them to? What is the difference between their potential for building a supportive community and their efforts to build it?

You see, it’s very easy for educated people like me to get sensitive to the “needs” of others. But what stark deficiency lies in our own hearts that permits us to build careers, take vacations, raise our own children to distinction, and live heedless of our damage while others look on, enviously?

I don’t know.

Where does wisdom come from? It’s not just from our thinking, because our thinking can be wrong sometimes. It’s not just from our feelings and impulses, because those can also lead us into trouble. Some people like to talk about “being in the moment” or “following your gut,” and I always wonder if that kind of thinking is just an excuse for throwing off self-restraint.

Children throw off restraint all the time, and sometimes that seems very enviable. But I don’t think it makes them wise, except in fleeting ways. Teenagers are notorious for unwise decisions—but is that a different interpretation of wisdom? I think wisdom is not the same as being safe and calculating.

To find wisdom, we almost have to step outside ourselves, meaning we have to transcend our limitations. (After all, we can’t really step outside ourselves, because if we did, then our selves would be there to greet us.) Wisdom is discovering that we are much bigger than we thought before.

When I think about the qualities that I admire or want to have, I usually think of another person who exemplifies them to me. Knowing that person makes the quality alive and real. In fact, everything I imagine possible for a human being to experience comes from knowing someone (or at least about someone) who experienced it.

For example, Greg Mortensen is a Himalayan climber who found himself stranded in a Pakistani village and promised to build a school there. With extraordinary perseverance, he managed to establish not just one school, but dozens of them throughout a rural tribal area. If he could do that in northern Pakistan, I reflected, why couldn’t I create schools here? Schools which answer the deeper needs of young people. Schools that teach wisdom.

I think wisdom is personal. I remember the personal qualities of every teacher that I had. Knowledge starts with people. The great discoveries of science and the great moments of history are entwined with the lives of the people who made them. This is true of any field; it surprised me once to realize that geometry was invented by someone.The universe is personal; it is imaginative. Many indigenous cultures know this; they don’t try to divorce themselves from the living and changing nature in which we all live. Now that the particle physicists and the cellular biologists are beginning to talk the same way, I’m hoping more people will listen.

I spoke last summer at the Interfaith America breakfast about what the journey of education really means. If school does not respond to the daily realities of a child’s personal and emotional experience, how will that child have the safety to learn? The talk was recorded, so you can see for yourself. (12 min)

Reflections on the CES Fall Forum, held November 2009 in New Orleans

Ted Sizer had a vision — that schools would be a place for students to reflect, to interact, to question, and to create. Is that revolutionary? I wouldn’t think so, but when I read now about education in the popular media, I am particularly struck by the absence of words like that. This is why we need the Coalition of Essential Schools.

Maybe we have lost the connection between education as a national effort and education as a child’s daily experience. The national view seems far more concerned with obstacles and measurements, while the personal view is mainly occupied with the next fascinating possibility. I think this is what the Coalition is for: to remind us that each mote in the sea of statistics is the life of an individual whose goals are unique, pressing, and often misunderstood.

The Coalition of Essential Schools is asking not just how students should learn and teachers should teach, but how the whole environment can be organized to produce thoughtful inquiry and enjoyable interactions. “School culture… often shapes what people think and how they act.” These words are quoted from Stephen Stolp in the recent CES publication Small Schools, Big Ideas. One Coalition principle is to create “a tone of decency and trust,” presumably so that students will learn to value these qualities.

Where is “decency and trust” in the educational debate? How much are we willing to sacrifice them in the name of control?

I attended a panel discussion about the major faith traditions for high school students in world religions and history classes. I found myself torn between two feelings. One: how valuable such a discussion is for giving young people a sensible exposure to these traditions, especially in such a collegial and accepting atmosphere. Two: how little the students were able to respond with engaging questions and comments.

I realize the intellectual passivity of students is a common challenge for teachers, and it does not apply merely to questions of faith. But I cannot remain passive. I question whether these students are naturally uncurious about a topic which is, after all, about the ultimate meaning. I don’t think one needs to be religious to engage in religious discussion. I have sometimes found humanists or atheists to be the most interested in such a conversation.

People might claim that such conversations are pointless exercises, not really relevant to our daily lives. To them I would ask, is it relevant to know what it means to be good? How we find happiness? Why we struggle with our own tendencies and shortcomings? How we have thoughts and feelings? Whether they are meaningless in a mechanical world, or the only meaningful reality? Maybe these questions should be important to us if they aren’t already. I bet those high school students wouuld have had more to say if we had addressed questions like these.

How do I show respect to a child?

Ken was not an easy student sometimes, in second grade. He tended to get loud and interrupt, or ignore what was going on. He was a little insecure, it seemed, and endlessly in competition with other students. One day his behavior irritated me a little, and I told him I needed him to stop “playing that little game” and be part of the class.

I saw my mistake right away; he became hot in protest (“It’s not a little game”), and obviously insulted that I would describe what he was doing that way. In other words, I had tried to elevate my project in his mind by denigrating his project. I’m happy to say I had the presence of mind in that moment to stop and apologize out loud. But I also used my apology as another opportunity to get his cooperation.

I said to him, “I’m sorry, Ken, that I called what you are doing a little game. I didn’t really mean that. Now that I’ve apologized to you, can you apologize to me for ignoring me while I was speaking?”

He looked down, a little unsure, and said, “Sorry.” I thanked him right away and went on.

It’s so hard to find the right balance of respect and authority with children, especially as they evolve a different sense of what respect means. A child’s need for help today can become a passion for independence tomorrow. I think it really helps to catch one’s missteps right away and bring them into open conversation.

My appeal to Ken was also based on his age. A 7-8 year old has a growing ability to judge what is fair, in a way that a 5 year old would not. He immediately saw the need for reciprocating my apology, and he felt respected by being part of such an exchange. He was also surprised by my willingness to admit a mistake – something he was learning how to do.

: : : Respect for a child means awareness of his emotional needs.