The Dangers of Teaching Resilience
Golf is an obsession and those of us who have found it a frustrating game have spent hours trying to give ourselves an advantage to try to attain the unattainable i.e. to have the perfect game. What is the perfect game of golf? A round of 18 shots.
When we see the ridiculous nature of the final sentence above we laugh at the impossibility of such a statement. We can't physically achieve it. Yet it doesn't stop us playing golf. Once we get over the impossibility of perfection we enjoy the game for what it is. We still try to improve, but it is not at the expense of trying to attain the impossible. We somehow accept that the perfect game is unattainable but it is still fun trying. This is what Simon Sinek is referring to in his finite games versus infinite games theory. Why do we not teach kids to do the same with education?
A lot of the time we are telling ourselves, that for our students to improve (play the perfect game), we just need to teach them how to be more resilient. I think this is an approach that is potentially dangerous if we do not qualify what we mean and describe the context in which resilience should take place. Does it mean that to play the perfect game and get that excellence we just need to be more resilient? "Come on you are not trying hard enough! You'll get that perfect result every time if you just worked harder and showed more resilience." We know that this doesn't always work! We are teaching our students to play the impossible perfect game. This kind of resilience is not desirable. We are allowing them to see Education as a finite game, something winnable based on trying to attain perfect results, rather than as something infinite, something long term that we are motivated to improve upon. We are creating perfectionists. Often our students lack the awareness to see that they are playing the wrong game and the classic signs that things are going wrong are conditions such as anxiety, depression, disillusionment with results etc. When they show these signs we tell them to "just show more resilience" when often they are already working at their limit. So, we are in a conundrum. If the drug for success at school is to be more resilient we can end up overdosing ourselves into submission. Trying harder isn't always going to get you that Excellence. And we need to learn that if we are giving of our best effort then a lesser result is acceptable. No matter how resilient we are it becomes fruitless if we are trying to be the perfectionist. Rather we need to look at the motivation and context behind why we do anything and how we measure success in it - whether it be golf or schoolwork.
When perfectionism is the goal in an educational finite way, resilience can become a dangerous process that can lead to mental health issues as mentioned above. Rather resilience is a process of value when the goal is not to attain perfection but rather to stay in the game (Sinek's Game Theory). If we replaced the perfect game of education/educational success as not being about results ie Excellence and the numbers of Excellence credits but rather with the enjoyment and interest of what we are learning (part of being a life -long learner, staying in the game rather than trying to win the impossible) then resilience becomes a powerful tool. It can keep us motivated in the game and enjoying the successes of the game that come along as a by-product rather than being the sole reason why we play the game. We need to stop being result and finite game driven! We need to see results as a by-product of our on-going learning not the driving force.
Resilience is indeed a valuable tool but it needs to be nurtured in the right context. We all need to first, re-evaluate what is success in education, and the context it operates in, so that, when we apply resilience to the problem, it is not trying to play the perfect round, but rather playing to just stay in the game.
Listen to the podcast that sparked this response here: Vanquishing perfectionism
Ken Frame is a within school leader from Marian College