In a recent episode of Bill Moyers Journal, John Sexton, the President of NYU, spoke on God, baseball, and education. In the process, he described a teacher named Charlie who was particularly influential on him. This teacher's philosophy can be best described with the phrase, "play another octave." The link for the transcript is here. http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/03122010/transcript4.html
Sexton goes on to discuss Charlie's approach to life. "If there's food you haven't tasted, if there's a symphony you haven't heard, if there's a type of music you haven't heard, play another octave of the piano. Reach out, stretch yourself.
And Charlie, who for generations of young men at this high school would be the greatest teacher they ever encountered. Charlie began to lead us down a mystical journey of thinking strange. He taught us to see things we never would have seen by looking at them in a way we never would have thought to look at them. So, he would ask questions or say things to us that would just jog you to a different vantage point."
As I listened to Moyers' interview with Sexton, I considered myself fortunate to be working with adolescents and hopefully teaching them to stretch themselves. However, like most educators, I realize how difficult this is to do. All too often, and for a variety of reasons, teenagers will opt to not play another octave-to not take risks and try something new or different. While we realize that teenagers will engage in risky behavior in certain areas, they may actively avoid walking out on the limb in other places.
One reason that students may not push themselves is they may not consider what we're asking them to do to be worth the risk. The same student who will not speak up in class will want the ball when the game is on the line or play the solo piece in a concert. It's not that they're unwilling to put themselves out there; it's that they don't see the value in putting themselves on the line for the task we have asked them to do. I once heard the educator Theodore Sizer explain to math teachers in Miami, FL who said that students could not do the math in their class that those same students were working in multi-millionaire drug operations and doing very complex mathematical operations in their head. His point was that they were fully capable of doing math that they considered worth their while.
Another reason that students may not try something new is the potential for humiliation by their peers. In too many schools, adolescents, who are at their most vulnerable, live in fear of ridicule by their class or school mates if they try something new and it is less than perfect. For this reason, students judiciously decide to not try at all. In a twist on the line by Tennyson they feel that tis better to have never loved, than to have loved and lost. As educators, we must make our schools havens where every child feels supported and encouraged to takes risks and try new things. I am reminded of this again and again when I witness the courage of the students at Crossroads College Prep who are willing to do something different and even a little scary; I am just as proud of those students' classmates who cheer them on and pick them up when they fall.
How often do we parents inadvertently send them messages of playing it safe because it prevents them from experiencing the pain of failure or it allows us parents to avoid having to argue with an adolescent whose goals may not match our own at that moment? Our hearts ache when their feelings are hurt or their disappointment is keen. In addition, there are times when we would rather avoid the fight with our child as opposed to pushing them yet again to do something they don't want to do. However, we know that we're not doing them any favors. Dr. Wendy Mogel's book, The Blessings of A Skinned Knee, gives a particularly potent argument for why we parents need to let our children experience failure so they can grow up to be confident adults.
One definition of the word risk is "to expose to a chance of loss or damage." None of us want our children to experience loss or damage, but we also know that if they do not put themselves out there, they will not move to the next level and they will never truly experience success. I remember the old Wide World of Sports tag line, "the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat." The two go together, and we cannot provide our children with the opportunity to experience one if there is not the possibility of their suffering the other.
As parents and as educators, we must encourage, perhaps even demand, our students and children to take risks, to try new things, and yes at times, fail. In this way, we offer them the opportunity to live lives of purpose and engagement. We should encourage them to follow the words of Henry David Thoreau when he explained why he went to Walden Pond. "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
