This hearty plant can survive the harsh conditions of different locations such as Sweden, Japan, and Montana. In my own Illinois it thrives in a region known for hot summers and cold winters. Compare this profile to the Zinnia, which is also known for its heartiness, but cannot survive the deep cold of Illinois.

I recently pulled up a patch of Lily of the Valley with a view of keeping it indoors. And while this is a hearty plant, it will be necessary for me to be careful to establish a healthy culture for this plant in ways I wouldn’t have to when it is outdoors. For plant tissue to grow well indoors, there needs to be slightly high humidity, the temperature needs to be stable, the light conditions must be rigorously attended to, and the plant must be fed nutrients on a regular basis. The very same plant which cares not whether I tend to it all year round, once brought inside becomes very particular about its environment. For it to grow well, I must tend to the culture of my house.

Tending to our culture to optimize growth for individuals in an organization or students in a classroom is analogous to the care I must take with my Lily of the Valley cutting. Like it or not, every classroom and every school has a culture. The question is not whether we have a culture, it is rather what we do about it. There are better and worse cultures, so the goal is to be able to understand what kind of culture we have and then be able to apply tools to help improve the culture of our classroom or school.

Analyze the Culture

The first step in optimizing our culture has to do with deep learning and focused attention on the culture as it currently stands. You can accomplish this through simple observation and description. I recommend taking a notebook and capturing every moment of the day. What are students like when they arrive? How do I feel when I leave for work each day? Is there a moment of the day that I dread? What are the transitions like during the day? Are students responsive and engaged in their work? What are the best moments of the day? The approach here is to get at both the problems or issues in the day as well as the best or most productive parts of the day. Even a few days of observing and noting will spell out the differences between the ideal culture you are going for and the ways it is falling short of that ideal.

Another step to take is to survey your people. This can be done in a formal way by using a tool like Survey Monkey, Google Forms or some other tool. If you choose to use a formal survey, be sure to keep the survey of a manageable length. Survey Monkey recommends using less than 30 questions, or to put it in terms of time, that it should take someone 10 minutes or less to complete the survey.

Questions should be open-ended and fair, allowing the respondent to provide an accurate answer. Allowing the respondent to use a sliding scale or Likert scale (strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree) helps mitigate survey bias. Here are a few questions that you could use in a student culture survey:

Students in my school treat one another with respect: strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree.

I and the other students in my class care about learning: strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree.

Now, you can survey your people less formally. Having a bank of questions that you can ask students, parents, colleagues in conversations can help you get amble feedback as you try to analyze the culture of your classroom or school. At parent-teacher conferences, for instance, you can ask parents to share stories their child has shared about school. Be listening for clues about the cultural values you are trying to build. Some parents or students will be very free, even to the point of offense, when they share their thoughts about the culture of your class. Try to listen for the kernel of truth even if you find it difficult to receive someone’s thoughts.

Having put in the work to describe the culture and survey your people, you are now in a position to determine some of the key factors that are driving the culture of your classroom. You may determine that despite students feeling safe and cared for, they still exhibit lots of anxiety. Or you might find that the culture of enthusiastic learning that you are trying to cultivate is hindered by things like the arrangement of the desks or distractions in the classroom. The ultimate goal is to get to a place of clarity about different levers you might be able to pull to begin influencing culture in a certain direction.

A Vision for Culture

Having described the current culture and surveyed your people to determine the factors that are driving the culture of your classroom or school, you are better positioned to get down to the work changing the culture for the better. Yet, we cannot enact positive changes without a clear vision of where you are heading. Work must be done to get clarity about your highest values and the goals you will be striving towards. I am quick to point out that casting vision is work that can be done simultaneously or even before assessing your current culture, even though I’ve placed point after doing the work of analysis.

Jim Collins in Built to Last articulates how core values are inherent, almost sacred, principles or traits that can never be compromised. We can identify some of these through the analysis exercise above. What is it that we are already doing based on high-value principles. For instance, your students might be going after good grades because there’s already a value placed on excellence. Identifying these core values takes reflection on what might already be in place.

Patrick Lencioni in his HBR article “Make Your Values Mean Something” differentiates core values and aspirational values. He defines aspirational values as “those that a company needs to succeed in the future but currently lacks.” As you consider driving the culture of your classroom or school forward or upward, you will need a combination of core values and aspirational values working together. For instance, if your class is already driven by excellence, but they are completely stressed out, you may find that an aspirational value such as joyful learning needs to be incorporated.

To get at these values, you will actually need to detach from your classroom or school for reflection and deliberation. I think of this as similar to the moment Moses goes up the mountain, communes with God, and then returns to his people with a set of high-value principles, ten to be specific. Getting at core and aspirational values is very much a spiritual exercise, because what you are trying to get clarity on is the set of inspiring ideas that will capture the hearts and minds of those you are leading. The work here is to find a way of articulating something that is both meaningful and abstract. Keep in mind, that there really should only a few of these inspiring ideas.

Once these inspiring values are spelled out, you are ready to begin connecting these up with a plan. How do we live out these values? This entails goal setting. For example, if we are compelled by a vision of joyful learning, I can set a goal of giving one expression of joy every day for the next month. Notice how there are specific and measurable details in this goal. George Doran in his 1981 article in Management Review entitled, “There’s a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management’s goals and objectives” lays out the now-famous acronym for goals that are specific, measurable, assignable, realistic, and time-based. Setting out goals in such a way provides a means for measuring what really matters when it comes to building the culture you are striving towards.

The Habit of Practice

Creating a culture is the ultimate practice of habit training. I believe this is what Charlotte Mason meant by atmosphere. She is very clear that atmosphere is the not the creation of some artificial space where “a child should be isolated in what may be called a ‘child environment’ specially adapted and prepared.” (Philosophy of Education, 94) What she describes positively about atmosphere is quite inspiring:

“The bracing atmosphere of truth and sincerity should be perceived in every School; and here again the common pursuit of knowledge by teacher and class comes to our aid and creates a Current of fresh air perceptible even to the chance visitor, who sees the glow of intellectual life and moral health on the faces of teachers and children alike.”

Charlotte Mason, Philosophy of Education, pg. 97

We might restate this as a culture of truth and sincerity where the fresh air we breathe is initiated by core and aspirational values carried out with clear goals in mind touching on intellectual life and moral health. And in this atmosphere or culture the child very naturally pursues the goals or objectives set forth. It is not as though they are forced to be kind by the environment, but there is clearly a sense that “that’s the way we do things around here.” The child does not mechanically become intellectually stimulated because we have put particular paintings and plants in the classroom, but it is obvious when you look around that “people like us get really excited by what we learn.” A well-considered culture begins to generate habits in keeping with our values. Mason writes, “We may not leave off the attempt to form good habits with tact and care, to suggest fruitful ideas, without too much insistence, and to make wise use of circumstances.” (School Education, 185) The circumstances of our classroom form the opportunities to train in orderliness, thoughtfulness, kindness and so forth.

In this mode of thinking, we can create routines that establish our cultural values. These might be as simple as a handshake upon entering the room in the morning, a process for handing out texts, or a class job that is a delight to all. You might find yourself compelled by this vision, but doubtful that you can create the change necessary to guide your classroom or school toward your inspiring vision. Yet, you can create rapid change through rehearsals. For instance, let’s say you want to create a culture of tidiness. You begin with an inspiring vision of the satisfaction and utility of a clean space. Then you have everyone practice every morning, potentially multiple times, organizing their cubbies, lockers, desks, room, etc. You share a mantra, “a place for everything and everything in its place.” Day after day, the routine is practiced. The culture of tidiness takes root, and you can see on everyone’s faces a sense of pride in the classroom, in their work and even perhaps in their homes.

In modern research, habits have been boiled down to three basic components, a cue, a response and a reward. This approach to modifying our behaviors has a good deal of neurological basis to it. The area of sophistication I would add to this basic model is that the nature of the reward makes a big difference. A simple or trite reward such as a piece of candy, a star on a paper or a letter grade can be effective in enacting change, but usually not lasting change. This has to do with issues encountered in the dopaminergic system. Simple stimuli have diminishing returns because low-level stimuli are simply not that motivating because at a fundamental level basic rewards are not meaningful to us. The better framework for rewards is a feeling of satisfaction such as completing a long-term project, working at something difficult, or accomplishing a goal. These are associated not with dopamine but with the neurotransmitter seratonin, which results in higher levels of positive mood, such as satisfaction, happiness and optimism. (see “Happiness & Health: The Biological Factors- Systematic Review Article,” Iran J Public Health 43 (2014): 1468–1477.) One of the ways I’ve expressed this is that “the habit is the reward.” What this means is that when we create a culture imbued with inspiring values, the reward we are working toward is the serotonergic effect of a happier, calmer, more stable set of emotions.

Now in light of this sense of the reward we are working toward, it is worth celebrating the cultural breakthroughs we achieve. To the extend we are measuring what matters, as expressed in the previous section, we want to celebrate what matters. Once again, the inspiring values guide us to ways we can celebrate. If we have been developing a culture of kindness, perhaps the way we celebrate is to devote a Friday afternoon to sharing personal stories with one another. If we are working on a culture of deliberate practice, we can celebrate by sharing our accumulated skills with one another.

Practical Tools to Build a Culture

To close out this topic, there are five practical tools you can build an inspiring culture in your classroom or school. First, use a mimetic approach. It is frequently the case that we need to model what we are asking our students to do. I can demonstrate how I use kind words, or I can show the steps I use when I am organizing my desk. The mimetic method shows how and then asks the students to imitate.

Second, get others involved. Bring in visitors. Tell parents ways they can be reinforcing these values at home. Partner with another class to build the culture together. This approach builds some synergy and accountability to support the efforts you have in mind.

Third, have strategic conversations. You may have heard of the 80/20 principle or the Pareto distribution, which indicates that roughly 20 percent of the individuals in your class are going to have an outsized influence on the culture of the classroom or school. So be strategic to get these individuals on board with the program, simply because you know that most other will follow suite if they lead the charge.

Fourth, get the group talking. This can be a bit tricky, because you aren’t looking to engage in a debate about whether the value you are putting forward is actually a value. Instead, you want to stimulate their interest and enthusiasm by having them voice ways they could contribute to the culture by embracing this value. If I am cultivating kindness, I could ask the group a question, what could we do to be the class with the reputation for kindness?

Finally, praise is more powerful that chastisement. Immediately upon seeing evidence for the value your are leading, praise the class for exhibiting this so well. Make your praise specific and descriptive. Instead of a general “good job” it would be better to say “way to go class for keeping your desks so organized.”

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At Clapham School, where I serve as an administrator, we were able to hold a small, in-person ceremony for our graduates. As I composed my commencement address, I was struck by parallels with the class of 1919, which had graduation ceremonies cancelled or postponed in various locations due to the Spanish Influenza pandemic. In this message, I try to bring perspective to graduates this summer, that the challenges we face due to Covid-19 may go a long way toward shaping the outlook of this next generation, if one embraces the opportunity a catastrophe provides. In many ways, this speech is a sequel to my article on the Black Death in the 14th century.

Here I’ve shared my commencement address in the hope that perhaps this message will be meaningful to you as a teacher and leader in your school.

Commencement Address – Class of 2020

Good evening, class of 2020. I am so grateful that we can meet this evening with a small gathering of parents, siblings, teachers, relatives and friends. Little about the past several months has gone according to plan, so it is that much more satisfying to have planned this event, bringing a little order in the midst of chaos.

The “Greatest Generation” is a term used to describe the Americans who experienced both the Great Depression and World War 2. What characterizes these Americans is that they lived through some of the greatest hardships of the depression and exhibited the will to win on the battlefields of Africa, Europe and Asia. Of the 16 million who served in WW2, only about half a million remain today.

When we look back on the Greatest Generation, we can observe that such a generation is forged by the harshest of trials. You can’t engineer such a generation. There’s no recipe or lab manual. There were attempts to create great generations. Warren G. Harding called for a return to normalcy in 1920, a phrase that anticipated “Make America Great Again.” What is normalcy? And can normalcy be created through public policy?

The post-war 1950s represented another attempt at social fabrication of a great generation. The idea was social conformity. The picture of suburban docility was promoted on the covers of the Saturday Evening Post with weekly prints of Norman Rockwell paintings. What, though, are we striving for when we call for conformity? Can social pressure create a great generation? This is a highly relevant consideration in light of the dominant position social media has taken since the early 2000s.

My thesis, and the point that I want to make for our graduating seniors, is that great generations are forged through unexpected hardship, and cannot be made by the will of cultural engineers. And what has 2020 been, but a year of hardship after hardship. This pandemic gives me pause to ask whether we are experiencing the kinds of conditions that will contribute to the making of a new great generation. To assess this hunch of mine, I want to take us back to 1918 and 1919.

The Great War, or WW1, was drawing to a close after years of stagnation. The US was ultimately drawn into the conflict as the decisive force, bringing victory to the allied forces against the central powers. One of the unexpected consequences of American soldiers serving overseas was that they brought back the Spanish Influenza, which hit pandemic levels in the fall of 1918. Schools closed in September and October of 1918. Homecoming events, a fairly new annual celebration in the early 1900s, were cancelled that fall. We can empathize with some of the experiences from that pandemic that swept the nation. For instance, students in Los Angeles remained at home and were sent assignments by teachers through mail-in correspondence.

There were subsequent spikes of the Spanish Influenza in January of 1919 and then again in the April-May timeframe later that year. This meant that graduations were cancelled or delayed in various hotspots throughout America. The class of 2020 seems to have similarities with the class of 1919. There were no vaccines or treatments available, so the only protocols to follow were isolation, quarantine, washing hands, disinfecting surfaces, and canceling or limiting public gatherings. If nothing else, it’s good to know we are not alone. Mark Twain is reputed to have said that “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” Well, sometimes it sure seems like it does repeat itself.

For reasons we don’t particularly know, the Spanish Influenza just went away. It took researchers until 2008 to fully understand the genetic makeup of the H1N1 virus, colloquially termed the Spanish Flu. Side note: the Spanish Flu did not originate in Spain. Spain became associated with this virus simply because they remained neutral in WW1, and were therefore able to provide unbiased reporting about this new virus during the war, a service which ultimately associated their national identity with a virus. The Spanish, by the way, referred to the virus as the French Flu.

The parallels between the Spanish Flu and the Coronavirus interest me for this simple reason. The Spanish Flu is something we can regard as the first in a series of hardships that impacted the generation who would subsequently experience both the Great Depression and WW2. Yet, few ever associate that pandemic with the ensuing events. But could it be that the Influenza pandemic served as an initial crisis in a string of events creating the greatest generation?

And so I ask you now, our graduates, a compelling question. Will our pandemic serve as an initial crisis that will forge the next greatest generation? I don’t know what the future will hold. I can’t promise you that depressions and world wars will further galvanize your generation. But perhaps if the mantle is born with only this one catastrophic event, the work of making a next great generation is accomplished here and now.

The temptation will exist to dive deeply into social distractions. We could be on the verge of the next roaring 20s. But I trust that the books that you’ve read here at Clapham, the discussions about what it takes to live life with meaning and purpose, will have prepared you to fully embrace the opportunity now made available to you in our current traumatic experiences.

Let me be clear about my charge to you. I do not spell these things out to you to place a burden of expectations on you. It matters not whether you become labelled a great generation. Instead, what does matter is to notice that your class has had a bit of rubbish luck when it comes to your graduation. And I say, good for you! That’s now part of your story. That’s something that becomes part of your perspective on life. That’s something that marks your graduation as something unique and special. And if you can own that and truly embrace it, you will find joy and blessing.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plan for wholeness and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Jeremiah 29:11

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Everything changed a couple months ago when school went online. At-home learning has caused every school to attempt schooling in new and creative ways. We can also get creative about habit training during online distance learning. I shared my new eBook on habit training in the classroom about a month before we stopped meeting in classrooms. So here is a brief update where we consider how habit training might work while doing school online.

The Method of Habit Training Doesn’t Change

Even though our classrooms are online and it feels like everything has changed, the method of habit training doesn’t change. Let’s review the basic steps of habit training in general before we get to habit training during online distance learning.

We always begin installing a new habit with an inspirational idea that seeks the best for the child. In this step we are cast a vision of the child as a person with greater freedom, competence, ease, independence and/or autonomy. This inspirational idea does several things at the same time. It excites interest on the part of the child in his or her own development and growth as a person. We are also building an alliance with the child, getting them on board with us as teachers to work on this one new habit together. A good inspirational idea also anticipates the ultimate reward of the new habit, which is actually the habit itself.

After inspiring the child with a compelling idea, we describe in detail the habit itself. Remember to keep this simple. Instructions should be brief and to the point. Avoid lectures and impassioned speeches, as they will miss the mark. Instead, see if you can boil down the habit to three or four steps that are easily repeated by you and the child.

The next step is constant vigilance. You are to be ever watchful to ensure that every opportunity is taken to form the habit as well as making sure old patterns aren’t allowed to return. As the teacher, it is important to be supportive, but the word vigilant is different than supportive in one key way. It is ultimately the work of the child to form the habit. We are shepherds along the way, encouraging, reminding and being present for the child. But we need to be careful not to micromanage the child or attempt to do the work ourselves.

In continuation with constant vigilance is accepting no half measures. The child will be worse off by half forming a habit than she was had we never begun the attempt in the first place. Once begun, the training needs to be taken all the way to its conclusion. This is why it’s so important to select only one or two habits to work on at a time. Accepting no half measures doesn’t mean there will be no lapses or that failure at various stages is unacceptable. Instead, it means when we see those lapses or failures we (who have been constantly vigilant) are right there at the elbow to encourage and remind all the way to the finish line.

Finally, the reward of habit training is the habit itself. The child who has been trained in kindness now reaps the reward of a friendly disposition, is able to forgive and be forgiven, and forges deep and meaningful friendships. The student that turns in assignments on time is rewarded with the satisfaction of his accomplishments and is free from the burden of missed deadlines and a mounting backlog of work. This student can enjoy the leisure that is his by right, having finished in a timely manner.

New Online Habits

As the preacher says in Ecclesiastes, “There is nothing new under the sun.” (Eccl. 1:9) Most of the habits in the online environment are analogous to what we would find in the classroom. This is not to say that the internet doesn’t pose problems with regard to habits and habit training. However, there are some unique habits that are relevant as we think about habit training in an online distance learning environment. We can set aside for now difficulties that are of a technological nature, such as video feeds that are glitchy due to poor internet connections or sounds problems that may be a result of feedback or low-quality hardware. Let’s explore two habits to exemplify the method in an online setting.

The first habit to explore is centering your face in the camera. This is a habit that is more mechanical in nature, but it has some interesting implications. We start with an inspirational idea. “If you were able to get your picture centered in the camera, you would have a more professional looking presence in the group chat.” Here I have connected the student to a particular vision of himself as capable of presenting himself in a more mature way. The detailed description is simple, “Each time you join a group meeting online, adjust your camera or move yourself so that your face is in the center of the picture.” Each online session I have with this student, I’m on the watch for good positioning and will mention any adjustments that need to be made in a calm and supportive way.

I will have set some target dates in my calendar to aim for, so that I can make sure we don’t lose track of this habit in the flurry of activity that can distract us from our goal of mastery of this habit. Ideally, every lesson plan will list this habit. But setting reminders in two-week intervals keeps it fresh in my mind. This habit should be easy to acquire, so I anticipate the student will be squared away even within a month. I’ll keep those reminders on, though, just in case there’s slippage that occurs later on. The child then reaps the reward of the acquired habit. He has a professional presentation, he looks ready to engage in online discussions, he has greater control over his technology, and he’s able to fully focus on work that really matters.

The second habit to explore is a little more difficult. Because we are physically separate from our students, it is harder to gauge how students are doing. They might encounter technological difficulties. They might get behind on their work. We might not be as aware of struggles they are having. What they need to acquire is the habit of self-advocacy. This is a skill I help students with in the classroom, but I have found it to be all the more important with distance learning. We start as always with an inspirational idea. “The more you express how you are doing with your work, the more you will feel a sense of control of your own destiny.” There are many directions I could go with different students. For this child, I sense being in control is valuable to her. For others it might be a sense of independence or being able to finish their work quicker. The detailed description must be boiled down to a simple routine. “Every day you should write me a quick, short email telling me about your day. Tell me what went well and what didn’t go well, especially if you had any problems.” That’s the heart of self-advocacy. Notice I didn’t tell them to ask for help. I didn’t make it conditional, “If you are having problems, then reach out.”

If we’re really going to build the habit, we need lots of repeats. So this child is going to tell me something every day in the form of statements, positive or negative. I’ll be able to figure out if there’s some way I need to help, or if I need to get a parent involved at home. Every day I’m on the watch for that email from her. If I don’t get one, I write immediately. “So sorry I didn’t hear from you yesterday. Could you send me something right now, just so I know everything’s okay?” It’s calm and supportive, but notice the ball remains in the child’s court. She’s supposed to initiate the self-advocacy. I’m not sending her prompts every day. My reminders may extend longer than the previous habit. Self-advocacy can be a difficult habit to acquire, because there are aspects to our personalities that cause us to doubt whether we need help, we feel embarrassment if we need help, or we don’t want to ask for help because we might inconvenience someone else. So expect to work on this one for a while. And don’t relent until it is well formed. A student who has learned how to self-advocate well is well prepared to negotiate numerous kinds of relationships in life, from college professors to a spouse to employers.

The Future of Habit Training

It is my great hope that we will soon return to classrooms. There are many predictions about how life will never be the same again. In many respects, that was always true. Life is never the same again. Obviously what people mean is that there will be remnants of social distancing, economic recovery and cultural shifts in light of a global pandemic. But in other respects, human nature will remain human nature. If you are the kind of person who views children as whole persons, the schooling will remain ever as it was. We educators know that everything changes each year. We can’t just reteach our old lesson plans, because we are dealing with new students. The cultural context is always changing, and yet there are perennial things we will always have as part of our work because we work with children.

So, what is the future of habit training? As we explored habit training in an online distance learning environment, we saw that the heart of the method hasn’t changed. My prediction is that habit training will remain the same. The method I have outlined here was essentially the same in Charlotte Mason’s time, and look how many technological and cultural shifts have occurred since the early 1900s when she wrote her six-volume philosophy of education. What this means is that investing in this method even now will reap benefits in your life as a teacher for years to come.

To that end, I encourage you to check out the eBook, A Guide to Implementing Habit Training. It’s a free download on our website. Feel free to send us a note or write a comment to let us know how habit training is going for you. As teachers we are also a community of learners, and through your questions, comments and perspectives, we can all reach new depths and heights in our skill at the craft of teaching.

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One of my favorite podcasters, Brian Johnson who put out a great series of YouTube videos called Philosophers Notes, had this tagline on his podcasts: “Isn’t it a bit odd that we went from math to science to history, but somehow missed the class on how to live?” This idea always resonated with me, not because we need an extra class on living, but because the idea of how to live should be resonating throughout all of our classes. Educators have often missed the fact that math, science and history are to be learned in order to know how to live. If math, science and history don’t seem like subjects where you would learn how to live, then you’re probably like me, having been raised in a system of education more focused on functional outcomes (getting into the best colleges or getting into the best careers) than on living meaningful and purposeful lives. 

You might be skeptical, and rightfully so. The dominant mode of education, the one we see in mass media, is all about the systematic approach — a conveyor belt of educational product. But consider my geometry class. The major goal of the class is to see our world differently, especially those parts of our world that appear most obvious. Why ought we to do proofs? Why transform polygons? Why inscribe triangles within circles? To help us to grapple with the world around us in fascinating new ways. We live in a three-dimensional world that is often depicted in two dimensions. Let’s get to the bottom of that. And in so doing gain insight into what it means to live in this space. Now you kinda want to take geometry again, don’t you?

In this article I want to go beyond just academic subjects and consider the entire enterprise of education as it pertains to life. There are many dimensions to this, so I don’t expect I will fully extract every morsel in this essay, but hopefully it will provide you with some suggestive avenues to stimulate your own thinking about life. Additionally, I would like to relate these thoughts to our current response to the COVID-19 epidemic.

(One more thing, before diving in. A justification of a seemingly inadequate title. You might think that I’m missing an indefinite article, since you know my heartfelt devotion to Charlotte Mason. Yes, she states, “Education is a life,” and by that she means that the child’s mind is fed on living ideas. I’m extrapolating that idea to demonstrate that there is another level of understanding Mason’s claim. Furthermore, you will notice the preposition “on” instead of “of.” Many teachers are asked to express their philosophy of education, in which they will describe their teaching techniques and practices, sometimes elaborating on their view of the child as a whole person. What I am doing here is not really a philosophy of education in that sense. I am instead thinking about education as a whole and its place in life. Maybe the preposition “on” will rattle a few feathers. Thus ends the deconstruction of an inadequate title.)

Two Forces: Achievement or Inspiration

To begin with, I think it is important to make a distinction between two competing forces in education. These aren’t mutually exclusive, but they do exist in tension with one another. The first force is what we might call achievement. Students, parents and teachers want what’s best for their child, and this often gets translated into measurable categories. The grade in a class is a measure of the student’s achievement. The class rank, SAT score, National Merit selection index number and a plethora of other measurements let everyone know how this particular student stacks up against all others. It’s actually really valuable to incorporate measurement in education, but it’s really difficult to measure what really matters.

I’ve written elsewhere that most of our educational measurements select only a few areas of learning and growth, solely because they are easy to measure. Unfortunately, much of what we measure has little value in predicting future success. Our tools simply cannot measure determination, the ability to hold pleasant conversation, kindness toward others, piety, resilience, or delayed gratification. So we need this first force — achievement — but it is a force fraught with fallacies.

The second force I will call inspiration. My hunch is that most teachers go into education because they want to inspire students to love subjects they themselves love. Most teachers look back at their own education and can point to a few teachers that inspired them. They want to make a difference in the lives of their own students. Unfortunately, there are far too few teachers who retain this high level of inspiration for the entirety of their career. Teaching is a demanding job, calling for long hours preparing lessons, learning technology, sitting in staff meetings, and grading homework. Teachers who truly want to inspire students find the nature of their work rather intense, because it means you need to bring massive energy to every lesson, you have to work with struggling students, you need to motivate fringe students, you need to coach and counsel both students and parents, and sometimes you need to flex your schedule to reach those students who need extra help. The first force – achievement – can also steal from the second force. The most inspirational teacher can get caught up in tracking the measurements, not only as a way of looking at her students’ success but also to measure her own success. Don’t get me wrong, we shouldn’t be graduating a group of fantastically inspired students who are complete and utter failures. We need achievement. But we also need inspiration. Both forces are necessary. If I’m honest with myself, though, I greatly lean toward the force of inspiration, sometimes wishing the other force could go away. 

These thoughts on two forces have lived with me for quite some time. So when I came across this quote by Charlotte Mason, I felt it was time to really wrestle with it philosophically for a while.

“It seems to me that education, which appeals to the desire for wealth (marks, prizes, scholarships, or the like), or to the desire of excelling (as in the taking of places, etc.), or to any other of the natural desires, except that for knowledge, destroys the balance of character; and, what is even more fatal, destroys by inanition that desire for and delight in knowledge which is meant for our joy and enrichment through the whole of life.”

Charlotte Mason, School Education, pg. 226

The strength of Mason’s feelings is matched by the power of her vocabulary. The character of learners is “destroyed” when education becomes focused on the desire for wealth or success. The only sure educational desire is for knowledge. She calls it fatal to base education on anything else. The word “inanition” means that a thing is emptied of all of its nourishing content. Take your bleached grains, your generic white bread, with its crusts cut off, and try living off just that. That’s the picture Mason paints for education when the focus is shifted away from the life-giving enrichment of knowledge. I would guess that Mason sides more with the force of inspiration than the force of achievement, too.

Mason, however, was very much aware of the force of achievement, and most definitely saw that a good education entailed success at such things as examinations (Vol. 3, pg. 301). So we can’t minimize the role achievement plays in education. There remain standards that must be met in order to be considered a well-educated person. But Mason also recognizes that our standards ought to be measured against what truly matters in life.

“But the one achievement possible and necessary for every man is character; and character is as finely wrought metal beaten into shape and beauty by the repeated and accustomed action of will. We who teach should make it clear to ourselves that our aim in education is less conduct than character; conduct may be arrived at, as we have seen, by indirect routes, but it is of value to the world only as it has its source in character.”

Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, p. 129

Achievement, then, is not only necessary, it is of fundamental importance. It is actually the goal toward which inspiration aims. The two forces that tug at each other actually cohere elegantly when put together properly. If our aim is on top marks, a 4.0 GPA, college entrance, merit-based scholarships, and the like, our aim isn’t truly aligned. What Mason is articulating is that true achievement is a life so well lived that the world is made a better place. This life of great value is achieved through character. Here is achievement that is truly inspirational.

The Classroom is a Microcosm of Life 

The vision of a life well lived is our ultimate goal of achievement. But that vision seems so far off that it feels impractical on a daily basis. Time presses upon us each day holding in our faces the immediacy of the lesson at hand, the upcoming assessment, or the report card soon to be released. Achievement snaps into focus, pushing inspiration out of the picture.

We need to start viewing the classroom differently. The classroom is the place where life occurs. The temptation is to think about life as truly occurring outside the classroom. Students feel this way, since home is where they most often eat, rest and play. Their youth group, sports team or the Starbucks where they hang out with their friends feels more like the locus where life occurs than the classroom does. School is where they have to go to do the work that’s required of them. How often do we get sucked into that way of thinking as well? But life occurs in the classroom all the same, even if students don’t place the greatest importance on that aspect of their life. To be clear, I don’t think one can say one sphere of life is more or less important than others. Our existence as living beings transcends time and space, and we are unified beings no matter what space we inhabit. To view ourselves as more alive in one place than in others begins to disintegrate the coherence of our being. In light of this, we must strive to breathe genuine life into the atmosphere of our classrooms, lest we cause real harm to ourselves and others.

So what does it mean when I say life occurs in our classrooms? For one, it means that our students are whole persons. We are not just interacting with our students’ minds. Students are also emotional, social and spiritual creatures, just like we are. All dimensions of their personhood come into the classroom. All dimensions of their personhood are being trained and cultivated. This means that teaching that doesn’t connect to their multi-dimensionality will actually not get assimilated because it isn’t fundamentally important to their existence as living beings.

But wait, you might say, aren’t there things you just have to learn, even if there isn’t an emotional, social or spiritual connection? Let’s consider a recent geometry lesson. We are just starting to learn trigonometric functions. This is hard stuff when it’s brand new. I could see the look of frustration on their faces. Lurking in the background is a feeling that if this doesn’t relate to real life in some way, what’s the use of putting in the effort to figure out when, how and why to use inverse sine? In this very moment, though, real life is happening before our very eyes.

What I did was take a step back from the lesson about the law of sines, to help them grapple with their encounter with things that are difficult to learn. “You are feeling the fog right now, aren’t you?” I helped them to see that some things we learn aren’t fully clear at the outset. This might have been true when they first learned long division in early grammar school. This might have been true when they learned factoring in algebra 1. I was connecting them to their emotional state. “Hey, we’re all experiencing this together.” It is very common for us to feel that we are the only one who doesn’t get it. But when there’s a recognition that we are doing something together, a deep bond is formed. The “ah-ha” moments become a group celebration. Learning is a social and relational thing. I was connecting them to their social state. “This seems pretty out there, doesn’t it?” The deeper you go in mathematics, the more abstract and esoteric things become. In this moment, I was showing them that they were exploring something almost mystical. I could relate this to something as practical as navigating an airplane. But the practical application will actually compound their frustration in the moment. Instead, I helped them to see how their imaginations were gaining new tools. I was connecting them to their spiritual state. Real life was occurring in a specific learning environment. The temptation was to think in terms of achievement. “We’re not getting it. Our grades will suffer. I won’t go to the best school. I won’t get a good job. I’ll likely be homeless for the rest of my life!” Instead, we thought in terms of life and saw geometry as a field of endeavor in which we can gain an understanding of meaning and purpose. (I might add that these students have done well using trigonometric functions. As an experienced teacher I knew the fog would dissipate through more practice.)

What does this mean for you as a teacher? We must become observers of life. We only get a relatively small amount of time with the students God gives into our care. By being watchful for real life occurring in our midst, we position ourselves to seize every moment we can. The little arguments that erupt between students, the games that are played on the blacktop, the struggles to learn new concepts, the disorganized backpack. All things are avenues into genuine life connections.

Application of Education is Life to COVID-19

If we agree that education is about life, then this COVID-19 epidemic presents a huge teaching and learning opportunity. We are confronted with the frailty of our humanity. A few weeks ago I compared our present epidemic with the black plague in the mid-1300s. A confrontation with death and our own mortality is not a topic we should shy away from. We ourselves as teachers might be wrestling with new emotions and concerns about safety. We must also assume our students are wrestling with the reality and implications of COVID-19. Their world just got turned upside down.

Because one of the forces of education is inspiration, I think now is the time to inspire our students with a deep and profound vision of what life really means. There are some students who miss their interactions with friends through daily contact. Students presently feel a deep sense of loneliness and isolation. Many students miss the life-structuring order of our daily schedules. We can share with them how all of these feelings point to their yearning for meaning and purpose in their lives. Our texts and discussions can take on new importance if we are forthright in our response to the impact of COVID-19 on them and us right now. You may have a chance to model for them how your faith is upholding you in this moment, or what practices you’ve incorporated during this time of social distancing.

As an example, I teach a health class for sophomores and juniors. We spent time this week talking about meditation and mindfulness as a Christian practice. When I planned this unit, coronavirus was not in my thinking. Now that we’ve gotten to this unit, I opened up about how just a few minutes of quiet meditation in the morning helps me to calmly approach my day. I contrasted this to mornings when I opened up a news feed and saw how many new cases and deaths there were. They were able to see how I was responding to COVID-19, and then I asked them to share their own responses to the epidemic. We explored how stress can impact our health and well-being.

Clearly there are boundaries that we need. I am always careful not to make a class about me, my feelings or my viewpoint on current matters. I am also careful not to traumatize my students by forcing them to talk about raw feelings or controversial matters. Yet we should be open to teachable moments when we can provide insight through our transparency. We should equally be open to discussing matters that are hyper-present in their minds. How odd it would be for a teacher not to mention COVID-19 or social distancing.

Application of Education is Life to Online Learning

Speaking of social distancing, online learning has meant that we are all accumulating new technological skills. You are using student management software in new ways, or you are becoming masters of Zoom or Skype, or you are learning how to use Google Classrooms or MS Teams. Your students are also accumulating new technological skills. If you’re like me, they are learning these skills quicker than you. You might be asking them questions about how to upload assignments or share your screen. With this in mind, don’t be afraid of being a learner. Show them that you are learning how to do some new things. Ask them questions. There’s something empowering when a student is able to teach a teacher. If we are promoting life-long learning, then there are moments when we need to let our guard down so that our students can see that we ourselves are life-long learners.

My other piece of advice as we dive deeply into technological solutions to educating amidst social distancing is to make sure the techniques and technology of education don’t drown out our experience of life. I have told my students how much I miss them at the end of our Zoom sessions. There’s something about being able to see them eye-to-eye in the hallways. I can casually ask them how they’re doing, and they can see the care in my eyes. The technology enables us to connect, but our pixelated, two-dimensional connection is no replacement for embodied presence with one another.

Teach Like Life Depends on It

Someday — hopefully sooner rather than later — we will return to classrooms. We will return having learned some lessons about the nature of education. My hope is that one of the enduring lessons is that education is about life. My hunch is that the reason you come to our humble website is that you get this concept, and that you are striving to provide an education that nourishes the lives of your students. Let me encourage you that I think it will be teachers and schools that feed their students’ souls who have the best hope of surviving this epidemic and even thriving during and after this epidemic. Why do I think this? It is because when people confront forces like our frailty and mortality, we begin to ask questions of meaning and purpose. Parents and students will be looking for this kind of education, one that engages the mind and the soul. Now more than ever is the time to teach like our lives depend on it.

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I was first introduced to Simon Sinek by one of my former students. He was working on his Senior Thesis with me, and his topic was the negative ramifications of the smart phone. So naturally he shared with me a YouTube video of Simon Sinek’s rant on millennials and smart phone protocol. I watched a few of his other talks and was impressed with his frank and insightful analysis of our smart phone addiction, as well as his heart for proper leadership and genuine purpose in business.

Of course, starting with why is one of the things the classical education movement does best. We’re always questioning the base level assumptions we’ve fallen into about the purpose of education. We’re always pointing up and out into this broader more holistic conception of education’s ultimate why. It’s not just about getting good grades or job-preparation; it’s about wisdom and virtue, passing on a rich heritage, and inspiring a generation of humble and winsome Christian leaders. The classical tradition has helped to focus our minds back on the big picture.

Parents and Teachers as Leaders

But I think one of the most important applications of Sinek’s idea is actually not to school leadership or marketing our big picture vision to teachers and parents, as important as that is. Instead, one of the most crucial places to start with why is the classroom or homeschool. At least as far back as my 2017 fall benefit address on rhetoric as leadership, it’s been my conviction that teachers are leaders in their classrooms. And in my experience behavior management systems are like the manipulative marketing practices that Sinek decries: less and less effective the more you use them.

Instead of reading books on classroom management, we should be taking our cues from leadership books from the likes of Sinek and Jim Collins, or old school gurus like John Maxwell and Peter Drucker. Of course, we could also read some of the great philosophers of education, like Aristotle, Quintilian, John Locke or Charlotte Mason (especially for her practice of habit training). But we’d come to much the same conclusion, that in the long run true classroom leadership beats our clever manipulations hands down.

The reason why can be summarized in the foundational principle of Charlotte Mason’s philosophy of education: Children are persons. And as persons, children are worthy of the dignity and respect, the proper autonomy under authority, and the genuine and authentic leadership of those in authority over them that all human beings deserve. As creatures made in the image of God, we have an inherent dignity that puts to shame all tactics of pure manipulation. The behaviorist can with consistency treat children as mere animals to be poked and prodded with carrots and sticks, but the Christian must lead souls and inspire hearts.

Simon Sinek describes the value of true leadership in a way that reminds me of this principle:

 “Great leaders… are able to inspire people to act. Those who are able to inspire give people a sense of purpose or belonging that has little to do with any external incentive or benefit to be gained. Those who truly lead are able to create a following of people who act not because they were swayed, but because they were inspired.” (Penguin: 2009; 8)

The call to this sort of leadership should fall upon the shoulders of every classical educator, every parent and teacher, who wants to see the children in their care inspired to act and not simply manipulated into it.

The Problem with Marketing Manipulations

First, let’s tackle the problem with marketing manipulations. In his book Simon Sinek is careful not to disparage marketing manipulations unduly. He makes the point that “there are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it” (17). He calls manipulations a “fairly benign tactic” and lists as typical examples things like: “dropping the price; running a promotion; using fear, peer pressure or aspirational messages” (17). All these things should be pretty familiar to us during this season of the year, from Black Friday to the post-Christmas, end-of-the-year sale binge.

The problem with such tactics isn’t that they don’t work. In fact, it’s important to stop for a moment and acknowledge that the reason companies engage in these manipulative tactics is because they do work. They help sell more products and human psychology is such that when they are used, we do en masse buy more. As Sinek puts it:

“I cannot dispute that manipulations work. Every one of them can indeed help influence behavior and every one of them can help a company become quite successful. But there are trade-offs. Not a single one of them breeds loyalty. Over the course of time, they cost more and more. The gains are only short-term. And they increase the level of stress for both the buyer and the seller.” (28)

Throughout the book Sinek details the stress and short-term nature of their gains and how overuse of marketing manipulations has crashed many a Fortune 500 company. His solution is for companies to focus more on why their organization exists, and then to filter all the how’s and what’s of the company’s products and services through that lens. Then people who share the same vital convictions as the company will be inspired by the integrity of purpose and product, the unity of the medium and the message. Inspired customers will then want to commit their undying loyalty to the company as an expression of their own identity and values.

Again, Sinek is careful not to overblow his case against manipulations, and instead tries to afford them their proper place:

“Manipulations are a perfectly valid strategy for driving a transaction, or for any behavior that is only required once or on rare occasions. The rewards the police use are designed to incentivize witnesses to come forward to provide tips or evidence that may lead to an arrest…. In any circumstance in which a person or organization wants more than a single transaction, however, if there is a hope for a loyal, lasting relationship, manipulations do not help.” (31)

This idea of a “loyal, lasting relationship” may strike you as a bit much for companies making certain types of products; after all, it’s just a car, a cup of coffee or a computer. But Sinek marshals the evidence of psychological research to convince you of this aspect of human nature. Look around. How else do you explain the buying habits of your friends and neighbors? We affiliate with Starbucks or Apple because of the type of person we envision ourselves to be, and not just because of the quality and “low cost” of their products.

But for our purposes it’s going to be most valuable to shift focus to how we use manipulations as parents and teachers, whether in the classroom or the home. What are the equivalents for teachers and parents of dropping the price, running promotions, using fear, peer pressure and aspirational messages? How do we sacrifice the promise of a “loyal, lasting relationship” for the short term gains of compliance?

The Problem with Manipulations in Home or Classroom Discipline

Common parental and teacher manipulations include but are not limited to the following:

• the guilt trip lecture,
• abstract letter grades,
• gold star charts,
• extra credit assignments,
• monetary rewards for high grades or good behavior,
• a merit system for good and bad behavior,
• detentions, etc. etc.

Of course, like with marketing, rewards and punishments have their place in parenting and teaching. They are endorsed, after all, by no less than the book of Proverbs in the Bible. However, those proverbs about “spare not the rod” are set with in the context of inspiring parental instruction. Simply open to the first chapter and you’ll hear of voice of rich communication and relationship:

⁸Hear, my son, your father’s instruction,
    and forsake not your mother’s teaching,
⁹ for they are a graceful garland for your head
    and pendants for your neck. (Prov 1:8-9 ESV)

In such a context rewards and punishments play a critical role in communicating the natural consequences of wicked and rebellious behavior. But too often parents and teachers can major on the manipulation and minor on this sort of inspirational communication.

John Locke is one of my favorite educational philosophers to address the problem of manipulative rewards and punishments. He makes the point that “beating… and all other sorts of slavish and corporal punishments” should be used only rarely, in situations of real rebellion and danger that are serious enough to merit it. This sort of statement, of course, was going against the grain of his culture. But he wasn’t the first classical educator to object to harsh and unnecessary corporal punishment. Quintilian, the famous Roman orator and educator of the 1^st century AD, had already pointed out the negative effects on the psyche of young boys so treated, and argued for a more inspirational approach (see Institutes of Oratory, Book 1.3.14-16, pp. 19-20 in Honeycutt’s revision).

But Locke goes on to express the dangers of manipulative rewards so well that he is worth reproducing in some length:

“To flatter children by rewards of things that are pleasant to them is as carefully to be avoided. He that will give his son apples, or sugarplumbs, or what else of this kind he is most delighted with, to make him learn his book, does but authorize his love of pleasure and cocker up that dangerous propensity which he ought by all means to subdue and stifle in him. You can never hope to teach him to master it whilst you compound for the check you give his inclination in one place by the satisfaction you propose to it in another. To make a good, a wise, and a virtuous man, it is fit he should learn to cross his appetite and deny his inclination to riches, finery, or pleasing his palate etc. whenever his reason advises the contrary and his duty requires it. But when you draw him to do anything that is fit by the offer of money or reward the pains of learning his book by the pleasure of a luscious morsel; when you promise him a lace-cravat or a fine new suit upon the performance of some of his little tasks; what do you by proposing these as rewards but allow them to be the good things he should aim at, and thereby encourage his longing for them and accustom him to place his happiness in them? Thus people, to prevail with children to be industrious about their grammar, dancing, or some other such matter of no great moment [i.e. importance] to the happiness or usefulness of their lives, by misapplied rewards and punishments sacrifice their virtue, invert the order of their education, and teach them luxury, pride, or covetousness etc. For in this way, flattering those wrong inclinations which they should restrain and suppress, they lay the foundations of those future vices, which cannot be avoided but by curbing our desires and accustoming them early to submit to reason.” (Some Thoughts Concerning Education 34-35)

Here we have it in a nutshell. If we manipulate children with rewards to get them to do something else, we only attach them to the reward. And in a way, we flatter their lower nature, especially if we propose to them a reward that is less worthy than the attainment we are actually after. I love his comment that grammar or dancing are no very important things after all, especially when we compare them with the virtue and character of our children.

This topic always makes me think of my 7^th grade math teacher. She was a dear old lady who proposed to give us gummy worms at the end of nearly every class period for the work we had done. I don’t see how gummy worms connect to pre-Algebra, but somehow a normal day’s work in her class seemed to her to deserve the reward of a diabetes-inducing sugar rush.

The problem with such manipulations is that they belittle the human consciousness by implying that what we really want is the little treat, rather than the elevation of mind and honor of exploring the secrets and mysteries of the world that God has made. It ignores the sort of curiosity that made the proverb-writer say,

“It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.” (Prov 25:2 ESV)

We human beings are royal inheritors of all the knowledge of our ancestors. The job of the educator is to stir up that fire of curiosity that runs in our blood, not pamper our base cravings with sugar plumbs. But in too many classrooms today glory has been exchanged for gummies.

The Solution in True Leadership and Natural Consequences

In other words, the solution to the problem with manipulations is a healthy dose of real inspiration. And beside it, rewards and punishments should take the secondary place as an expression of the natural consequences of conduct, enforced more to bring the message home than in a Pavlovian behaviorist fashion. So first, let’s unpack the inspiration of starting with why in your home or classroom.

How often do you take time in the classroom or with your son or daughter to step back and reflect on the big picture? Do you start with why this subject, why this course of action, why this way of life is valuable, right, ideal? Without sowing the seeds of inspiration, it is unlikely that children will develop the motivation.

In his book Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us Daniel Pink uses the story of Tom Sawyer painting the fence from Mark Twain’s famous novel to illustrate the power of intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. In short, Tom Sawyer is told that he has to paint the fence. While he himself is not very enthusiastic about this task, in a stroke of genius he pretends in front of his friend that it is the most exciting and enjoyable thing he could possibly do. And what a unique privilege he’s had bestowed on him by his aunt. In no time at all he has the rest of the boys paying him for the opportunity to paint the fence for him!

One of the most interesting research findings that Pink presents in Drive is that when you offer to pay children to do something that they had already been doing, like practicing their instrument or taking out the trash, they actually become less motivated to do it and do it less consistently. Extrinsic motivations, like carrots and sticks, can backfire by communicating to us that the activity is not intrinsically valuable. In fact, it’s something you wouldn’t want to do on your own unless you were paid to do it. That social message is heard loud and clear by children, who are intent on learning from parents and peers what is really valuable in life.

This principle means that parents and educators need to take the time to think through the why of everything we do in education, and then modify our methods and practices to ensure that they are in line with that. We can’t accept the grades and merits unthinkingly. And no, just because Harry Potter had a house system with merits and demerits, doesn’t mean it’s a favored feature of classical education. Believe it our not, we actually have to test out whether or not some “traditional” and “classical” methods are just as manipulative and demotivating as our modern ones.

At this point, the voice of Charlotte Mason speaks loud and clear with solid Christian guidance:

“There is a law by which all rewards and punishments should be regulated: they should be natural, or, at any rate, the relative consequences of conduct; should imitate, as nearly as may be without injury to the child, the treatment which such and such conduct deserves and receives in after life…” (Home Education 104).

Mason agrees with Locke (and Sinek) that we cannot do without rewards and punishments, and her principle for the proper administration of them is to consider the consequences which the natural order that God set up would bestow on such conduct. If we fail to do our work on time, often we must do not only that work but more to make up for the tardiness of that initial project. If we do our work quickly and well, we have the natural blessing of choosing what to do with our free time.

It takes discernment to conform our rewards and punishments to the analogy of nature in Charlotte Mason’s mind. We can’t have one simple fix-all to hand for every disciplinary issue or character flaw. A hammer is not well suited for a screw, and will cause much damage to the wall if so unnaturally wielded. But that is the complexity of leading human beings. If all we want to do is train dogs or horses, then a bone or a carrot will work every time. The personhood of our children demands more from us.

The principles of authority and obedience are fundamental for Charlotte Mason, but like Simon Sinek they are constrained to the proper ordering of why, leading to how, and then what in a way that respects the follower. As Charlotte Mason summarized it in the short synopsis of her educational philosophy,

“These principles are limited by the respect due to the personality [i.e. personhood] of children, which must not be encroached upon whether by the direct use of fear or love, suggestions or influence, or by undue play upon any one natural desire.”

Children must be inspired by true leadership, rather than manipulated by our marketing gimmicks into the good life. In my experience, it’s the only way that works over the long haul.

For a fuller answer to what true leadership looks like, download Patrick’s eBook on habit training.

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