Thanks to a tweet this morning by Will Richardson (@willrich45), I came upon the article "Why Self-Discipline is Overrated" written by Alfie Kohn and published in the Phi Beta Kappan in November, 2008.
5 bullet summary
Self-discipline is a trait that generally gets high praise from both progressive and traditional educators. However, Kohn points out that:
- extreme self-discipline is as much of a disorder as extreme lack of self-control, yet we usually attempt to prevent the latter and praise the former.
- all internal motivation isn't good. Students can be wrecked by always worrying about what they "should" be doing.
- our pervasive cultural emphasis on self-discipline seems to be based upon conservative religious philosophies.
- emphasizing self-discipline ensures that the fault lies with the students instead of the structure that the students find themselves in.
- obviously not all self-discipline is bad. Just our total systemic bias towards it is.
Go Alfie!
What resonates most with me in this article is Kohn's point that focusing on self-discipline is a method of being sure the status quo remains unchallenged. Our educational system explains away student "lack of slef-control" as the students fault. Instead of examining why students have little desire to complete the tasks we set before them and questioning our current practices, we just pass students off as immature and lacking in some way.
This general theme also pops up between any groups that have authority over each other. Districts where teachers are "causing problems" according to administration often are simply challenging the status quo.
Psychologically (to the extent that I know psychology), I agree that simply because students are sitting quietly in class and focused on their work doesn't mean they'll be better prepared than their classmates who are often loud and disruptive. Anecdotally, I've known many friends, family members, aquantainces, and ex-students who were a handful in school and yet managed to go on to live happy and successful lives.
Yeah, but...
How do you teach students to lose control? Further, how do you teach students who are overly self-disciplined to loosen up while at the same time help students who really do need to learn some self-control? Kohn doesn't drop any hints towards that end. As a teacher, I can actively strive to provide lessons and activities which students want to work on, but how can I help a student who has become overly self-disciplined? Is there anything I can do?
I've always been frustrated that while I might really like most of Kohn's ideas, many of his writings don't offer practical examples. "What does that look like in action?" is question that keeps coming up as I read. I can hypothesize to some extent, but seeing a few real-life examples to benchmark would be wonderful.
Unfettered quotes
- "Learning, after all, depends not on what students do so much as on how they regard and construe what they do."
- "What counts is the capacity to choose whether and when to persevere, to control oneself, to follow the rules – rather than the simple tendency to do these things in every situation."
- "There is no reason to work for social change if we assume that people just need to buckle down and try harder. Thus, the attention paid to self-discipline is not only philosophically conservative in its premises, but also politically conservative in its consequences."
- "...to identify a lack of self-discipline as the problem is to focus our efforts on making children conform to a status quo that is left unexamined and is unlikely to change."
- "Some children who look like every adult’s dream of a dedicated student may in reality be anxious, driven, and motivated by a perpetual need to feel better about themselves, rather than by anything resembling curiosity. In a word, they are workaholics in training."
Best quote taken totally out of context
- "...children are self-centered little beasts that need to be tamed..."
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Image Credits
- Alfie Kohn at MCTE 2006 by hickstro
- Cute character quotes by Johnny Vulkan
A few questions on your bulleted summary(number corresponds with bullet):
1. Are you saying an extreme on one side cancels an extreme on the other? There are extreme DGF's and extreme OCD's. Not sure that's a huge point.
2. Of course students can be wrecked by worrying about what what they should be doing, but I thought those students are included in bullet 1? (OCD: See 1)
2b. Students who do what they should do, but aren't "wrecked" by it actually benefit from internal motivation.
3. Self discipline based on conservative religious philosophies like? No examples, just using the word CONSERVATIVE and RELIGIOUS! Nonsense!
4. Great point. Teachers fail in teaching these students.
5. Self-discipline- doing what needs to be done when nobody is watching is bad?
@MrTeach: Just to clarify a little, in the bullet points I was attempting to very briefly summarize a fairly long article. These weren't my opinions, just the ideas I thought were key. You may realize that already, I just couldn't tell for sure in your comment.
That being said,
1: Kohn's point here (by my reading) is that there's an extreme bias in accepting any self-discipline and internal motivation (even to the point where it's could be considered a psychological disorder) while any lack of self-control is generally viewed as negative (even if it's very minor).
2: I was attempting to briefly summarize the discussion on types of internal motivation AK goes into. Essentially there's good (knowing that although the task may be unpleasant the end result will be worth it) and bad (doing a task because you feel you should, not because you think it's worth it). Obviously bad internal motivation taken to an extreme can become a psychological disorder.
2b. I agree if you're referring to good internal motivation as I described above. A big part of this from my viewpoint is trying to design activities and lessons in which students can see the value. I don't want students to only complete a task because I told them they should or they want a good grade. Not sure how possible it is to get away from grades in the current system though.
3. I think AK is referring to the reformed doctrine of total depravity and the belief that in order to be more godly requires denying the "desires of the flesh." Self-discipline then becomes very important. AK's mention of this doesn't do a great job of supporting his argument in this article, but I believe he mainly wanted to note that the roots of our love of self-discipline lay in places that many proponents for it wouldn't normally align themselves with.
4. The point that I thought was the most powerful. You seem to agree. Moving on.
5. Again, self-discipline itself isn't bad. The problem lies in the fact that by emphasizing it to a fault essentially is telling our children we don't value or encourage spontaneity, flexibility, emotional displays, or other hallmarks of having less self-control (AK cites psychologist Jack Block in support of this argument). AK is trying to say we're binging on self-control and teetotaling any lack of self control when we should be trying to enjoy both in moderation.
Thanks for responding to my comment. I'm still not seeing his argument. I have to do many ridiculous things for my job, but I do them because I know it is part of my job. Isn't that self-discipline? It might not be the Utopian thought of what we want to teach in school, but it is the truth.
Doing ridiculous things for your job is self-discipline- and hopefully the type of self-discipline AK is saying is good (he's not trying to say all self-discipline is bad). That good type is where you do things you don't like or don't value because you know in the long run they're beneficial. In your case, even though they're ridiculous, the long run benefit of doing those things may be that you get to keep your job or jumping through those administrative hoops allows you to do what you really love.
For "good" self-discipline in students, AK gives the example of studying (a generally unpleasant experience) because the student knows that in the long run the information will be useful for their lives and not simply because they feel compelled to study so they get good grades.
It's nearly impossible from the teacher end to tell which type of self-discipline students have. The best we can do is try to create engaging experiences that students see value in. I fail at this regularly and have many students who only complete the assignments because they're motivated by earning a good grade- or have students who simply don't do the assignment.