Life in the Classroom

Featured Image Credit: Image by sunil kargwal from Pixabay

The irony is not lost on me – and neither on you, I hope, as you read – that this was my last post before the arrival of Covid-19, worldwide lockdowns, and a new life of pandemic restrictions, including remote teaching in on-line classrooms.

People often say that school is a training ground, or a practice session, a rehearsal for life, which usually means career. This whole “real-life” authentic learning stuff basically privileges the work place over the school classroom.

If the flipside to words like “real” and “authentic” is words like “fake,” “false,” or “contrived,” then maybe we’re just being sloppy with our words. Unless that’s actually what we think of school. Well, I’m probably just being too fussy because none of this is what’s meant by real-life authentic learning, is it?

Or, if it is, wouldn’t it mean that no one’s keeping score until “real life” happens, and no one’s getting paid in school since results are pretend, and no one’s responsible because, hey, it’s all just theoretical? School the Great Training Ground implies that school is not really a place that matters because it only teaches about life or career, which comes later…

And hey, wait, that’s just fine, isn’t it? School does teach stuff for later, for when things matter, for when it really counts.

But hey, wait.

Hands up if you think school actually is part of life. Part of kids’ lives, and teachers’ lives. Kids and teachers are alive. School is not some neverland of make-believe. School is real. It has real, live people in it.

A classroom is an authentic place. It’s a – go ahead, say it with me, now – “c l a s s r o o m.” Right! What goes on in school is plenty real and means more than “Yeah, this doesn’t really count.” Laughter and friendship matter. Anxiety and stress matter. Living affects us. Learning is meaningful. Here you go, how about this: if classrooms were inauthentic, if learning were just practice for later, if school weren’t real, then why are we grading people? Shouldn’t we save that for the regular season, when it really matters?

Students are young people who live a huge chunk of their lives every day in a classroom. For them, school is every bit as real as any other place they go.

It has ups and downs, friendship and rivalry, anxiety and stress and reward and good times. Calling school “sheltered” essentially discounts being there because a kid’s life, relative to themselves and their own experience, is all there is. Kind of like any other point in our lives. Our lives are real, and we don’t just switch on like a light bulb upon leaving some unreal, inauthentic place – there is no such place.

School being this pretend place is adult condescension – oh-so well-intentioned, of course, on that infamous and overcrowded road to hell. Sure, kids have limited experience. Sure, they might be sheltered according to someone else’s perspective – fine, then that’s how big a kid’s world is. So be it. It remains that kid’s perspective. It’s not pretend.

How big someone’s life is becomes how much that person can cope. School life, family life, sports, hobbies, friends, on and on – all of these teach us something about living. Are none of these other parts of life somehow sheltered, too, like school? Who decided that school takes that prize? How about piano lessons? Those are something like school… teachers, practice, grades. Tests, recitals, performances. How about sports… with competitors, and winning and losing, with coaches and referees who hold us accountable. Are these somehow less unreal or inauthentic, or pretend, than a teacher? Are they some kind of real life learning that school is not? We often compare sport to life, and value the life lessons it teaches, but when do we short-change sport by saying it’s less real or some kind of shelter?

In fact, there’s a subtle difference to what we say about sport: “Such great preparation for life!” Affirming, valuable, such a boon. In my experience, the attitude bestowed by adults upon the value of youth sport is nothing but positive, as compared to school…

Which parts of life is nobody grading? If school is so sheltered, aren’t we actually handcuffing teachers who attempt to teach accountability? I suppose it’s not ironic that kids live in “the real world” every minute they’re not in school.

Take the kid who sees school as sheltered preparation for the real world. The day that kid argues with their friend on Saturday, what has school really prepared them for: how to argue with friends, or how to be sheltered?

Telling kids that school shelters them from the harsh world out there is misleading.

Teacher: “You need to do better on your homework. If this were a job and I were your boss, you’d never get away with this.”

Student: Right, and since it’s not a job…

What’s the chance this kid did a less-than-stellar job on homework because they’ve learned school is sheltered? Hey, if it’s all just rehearsal, why bother? If it’s only my teacher telling me off, not a real boss, then who cares? Duly noted: someday it will matter. But not here in school, not today. If we constantly send the message that school doesn’t really matter because the real world is still out there, what will young people grow to understand from their time in school?

But if kids were told and shown that school matters, just like the rest of life, maybe they’d understand it more respectfully, value it more meaningfully. Adults like to say that life is about learning and that we should all be lifelong learners. Seems to me that would make school a place to practise learning. And if the focus in school were simply on learning, then focusing on doing your homework, on careers and jobs, on “If the teacher was your boss…,” on whichever-whatever details… then all the details would just be mere details, as in not really all that important.

If life is about learning – lifelong learning – then what possible sense does it make to shelter anybody from anything? Shouldn’t we just live, and learn all the way through? At school, learn at school. At work, learn at work. With family, learn with family, and so in every circumstance. When life happens, you learn about it, and now you know a little more than before. If learning is what matters, how about we learn how to learn? And then learn, in every possible situation. Life’s going to happen, anyway.