Anyone who has ever read something written by Malcolm Gladwell knows how impactful his writing can be. Gladwell is a blogger and writer for The New Yorker, and can be found here (www.gladwell.com). One of the most insightful pieces of information that I have heard Gladwell discuss online is found in a published discussion between Gladwell, and ESPN.com's Bill Simmons (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/simmons/index). The transcript can be found here (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/060302).
About midway through the discussion, Gladwell touches on a very interesting topic that seems to be applying more and more to school age students. He talks about the ever common strategy of protecting one's self against the damaging aspects of failure by not giving very much effort towards achieving success. Basically, he asks, "Why don't people work hard when they know that it is in their best interests to do so?" Gladwell surmises that the answer is simple: Self-protection. The theory arises from a discussion about professional athletes. For example, Gladwell points out that it takes a special kind of strength and resilience to be someone like Peyton Manning. Specifically, it must be difficult to know that you have done every single possible thing to become successful, but still fall short of ultimate success (this was written in March of 2006, less than a year before the Colts actually broke through to win the Super Bowl). In a case such as this, there are absolutely no excuses for failure except for the very difficult proposition that one simply isn't good enough. Everything has been done to ensure success, except only failure is achieved. It takes a huge amount of strength to risk that revelation from appearing.
Gladwell then applies the analogy to education. Students who stay up all night hanging with friends the night before a big test are likely to fail. However, their behavior has somewhat protected them from the negative aspects of that failure because their test score doesn't mean that they are stupid, simply irresponsible. On the other hand, a student who studies all night and still fails a test, has absolutely no excuses, and has to deal with all of the negative connotations of that failure. As a high school teacher and coach, I see this strategy all the time. It simply isn't cool to try. It has become a very odd dynamic wherein if one achieves a great accomplishment, it is actually somewhat diminished in the opinion of their peers if they had to work really hard for it. The thinking is, "Yeah, you did something great, but that was only because you worked for it. I could have done that to, I just didn't feel like it."
I have seen students take this strategy to an ever greater extreme recently. Not only do students not give their best effort so as to protect themselves from failure, but many are now telling anyone and everyone how stupid they are, uncoordinated and unathletic they are, and overall how worthless they are. This is in an effort to lower expectations for one's self as low as possible, so that any kind of relative success can be seen as greater, while all failure just become expected, and thus not that big of a deal. It becomes sort of like living life while playing with "house money." If you win, that is great, but if you lose, there is no risk associated with that loss.
What does this say about our burgeoning adults that are about to enter the workforce? I don't know exactly what it says, but I would bet that "The Greatest Generation" would never have been able to be described like this or adopted these strategies. One thing that immediately comes to mind is the entitlement that many young people seem to possess as a result of the overflowing amount of opportunities that most school aged students are given on a daily basis. Opportunity is wonderful, and students should get every chance to be successful. However, I wonder if anyone even realizes how thankful all of these young people should be for these opportunities. All of the gifts given to school aged students now are just "expected," as many young people don't realize how lucky they are.
I would love to hear about other's experiences with this phenomenon, as I am sure it rears it's ugly head all across the globe. Thanks for reading.
Live well,
Chad
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2 comments:
Very interesting blog haha...Hit me back with a comment, check mine out.
The question is: How do we, as parents and educators, respond to this phenomenon? I agree the many opportunities given to our youth today are "expected" and taken for granted, maybe to a greater degree with each generation. But I don't think any of us had the wisdom and perspective to fully appreciate the value of the opportunities presented to us until later in life.
So, how do we instill in our children that to fail after giving 100% is okay, but to fail because of total irresponsibility is not?
My personal opinion is that if you build healthy self-esteem in our youth, it can solve many of today's behavioral issues. Self-esteem has a huge impact on our children as they mature into adults because it contributes to every success and failure in their personal and professional lives. If you have healthy self-esteem, you have the confidence to "go for the gold", and you also have the strength to deal with the failures. It's the old saying "nothing ventured, nothing gained".
The challenge: Promote strong, supportive parenting and education to build a healthy foundation to reverse the phenomenon.
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