"At their level"

I had meetings to travel to earlier this week. On the way, I flipped through the various radio stations (most of the stations around here, like the lady at the honky-tonk in The Blues Brothers, make the proud claim that "We play BOTH kinds of music! Country AND Western!").

I hit on a talk station, which was preferable to some of the things.

And an ad came on that made me think - and I'm still thinking about it. It was apparently one of those megachurches, where they have a group for everyone and a wide range of social activities. And one of the things the announcer said kind of bugged me. He made a comment along the lines of, "And we have groups for youth, too - we meet them on their own level with exciting, drama-based lessons and video game stations."

First of all: what kind of video games? Do they just have ordinary but maybe "family friendly" games like Tetris and Guitar Hero, or do they have special Youth Group video games, like "David's Target Practice" or "Spot the Pharisee"?

And second - this raises an issue that frankly bugs me. Not just about churches, but also about education and society at large.

Yes, I understand that sometimes you need to meet youth or the unchurched or students or whomever where they are. But you damn well better not LEAVE them there! I wonder about the kind of faith a kid might develop if he is only ever exposed to fun song-and-dance type lessons, or video games, or all that kind of entertainment-oriented stuff. What happens when he hits a difficult point in his life? (I guess what I'm thinking here: don't coddle them - just like you don't water your lawn a little bit every day in a dry climate, because it then never develops the deep roots that can sustain it when there's a period when you can't or are not permitted to water it, you don't always do the happy-clappy stuff so that when the person hits the inevitable pain in life, they don't recoil from the church and think it is a place that cannot help them, because "it's just for happy people.")

As the saying goes: we need to do the hard things.

And I am concerned about that. It seems so much any more there's a push to shield people - especially young people and students - so they are kept as long as possible from having to do the hard things. And you know what? Just as a muscle becomes soft and weak by not being exercised, I think a person's moral capacity can become soft and weak when they are kept from the normal difficulties in life (or, worse, when they are shielded from the consequences of their actions).

I hear this a lot from educators: "Make it fun!" or "Have a student-centered classroom!" (which usually actually means: show movies, allow discussion extraneous to the topic at hand, throw softball test questions at them). And you know what?

I am not here to make the students like me, my subject, or the class. I am here to help them gain the skills and knowledge they need to be productive and well-rounded citizens.

Especially in the majors classes - I do not think I should have to "sell" the subject. If a student majoring in Biology doesn't love biology, thinks it's too hard or stupid or boring or not worthwhile or feels they shouldn't have to work for their degree, they need to be in another major. Not in mine.

I do try to make the subjects interesting - I bring in real-world examples, if I can come up with a funny anecdote to illustrate my point, I use it. Or I do activities appropriate to the topic. (I work very hard to choose lab activities that reinforce and mesh with what they're learning in lecture).

Now, don't get me wrong - not everyone loves every subject in their field equally well. That's why people specialize. But I've had a few students who hated ALL of their classes - who griped about all their professors, about all the projects they were doing. They just seemed miserable - there was no spark of enjoyment there, no sense of "This is something I want to be doing."

Either they need some kind of intervention (chemical or talk-therapy, because they are suffering from depression), or they need to look for a new career. I find it hard to deal with people who are ALWAYS sour and are ALWAYS bored with everything.

And I refuse to dumb down my classes - to take out some of the much-complained-about math in my Ecology class, or stop teaching certain topics in general biology, or not do "all that chemistry" in Soils. Because that is stuff a person who has had a class in that field needs to know! I do not want graduates to go out from our department with our name on their diplomas, and then have the employers later go, "Man, it was a mistake hiring someone from THAT school. Let's never do that again."

I don't know. I wonder at people who look at every challenge they are faced with and automatically shut down - automatically go "this is too hard" and don't even try. Or worse, who go running to someone to try to intervene for them and get a stop put to the hard thing.

Actually, the most satisfying things I've ever done in my life have been the hardest. Dealing with essentially being asked to leave the first graduate program I was in (I was partly sabotaged by a particular faculty member, but I didn't find that out until later - it was the first time I had "failed" at a big thing in my life and it took a lot of soul-searching to deal with it). Doing the research for and writing my dissertation. Moving a thousand miles away from family to a town I'd never heard of before I sent the job application in and starting to teach from scratch in my first real job ever. Revitalizing a youth group after a congregational split, when I had never worked with anyone under 18. Heading a campus committee where there was a lot of in-fighting and a lot of things done that really weren't with the students' best interests at heart, and really pushing the group to consider the students' best interests. (And I think I succeeded on that last one. I saw one of my former committee members a few weeks ago - normally we never have contact as we're in different schools, let alone different departments, and he commented on my leadership of the committee and how he appreciated that "you always put what was best for the students first, even if it wasn't popular with everyone." And that committee chairmanship was one of the hardest things I've done, because I HATE conflict and would much rather just not say anything, compromise, allow people to run over me. But there are some things that are just NOT right, and in that case, I guess I can find the guts to step up and say, "No, that is not right. We need to do it this way.")

And you know? I look back on all the hard things and I go, "You know? I'm stronger than I think I am." And I think that's an important lesson. Now when I face something difficult, I can say to myself, "You survived these things in the past, you can survive this."

It's by doing the hard things that I know I can do them. I know that sounds kind of silly and tautological, but it's easy to get stuck in the loop of "this is too HARD. I can't DO THIS." and never move out of it.

And it's the same way with faith. I am not satisfied that my youth group kids can merely parrot the Ten Commandments back to me; what I want is for them to be able to explain why they are important, why THAT ten, and how the commandments apply to their everyday lives.

And you know what? When you expect a lot of people, sometimes they rise to that. Oh, there are weeks when I'm met by blank stares or by responses that show they didn't "get" the question. But other times they really have good insights, and they ask good pointed questions about things. Or they share things that happened during the week and once and a while I get the feeling of "Yes! Some of this IS sinking in!"

And I think because I make it challenging - I make the lessons more intellectual or more scriptural than what a lot of my friends who lead youth groups do - I think the kids respond to that. I do think young people want challenges...or at least they want them until they hit a point where they've been so coddled for so long that their ability to work hard or think hard has atrophied.

I think the other thing is that there's an awful fear of failure, and a strong desire to protect kids from it.

Now, don't get me wrong: I HATE failing at stuff. Hate it tremendously. When I do screw up and something I try fails, I either go home and cry about it for a day or two (if it's a big thing) or stomp around and cuss for an hour or two (if it's a little thing). But at the end of that time, I kind of square my shoulders and go, "Okay. THAT didn't work. Now what do I try?" And I try again.

Failure sucks but it can also be useful, in the sense of that you know one way that doesn't work.

And sometimes failure plays a more corrective role. It teaches us not to do that thing again.

(Though I guess not everyone learns. We had to become much more anal-retentive about kids wearing their safety glasses in lab because a girl in one class [not my class] broke a pipette and got glass in her eye [doctors were able to remove it without any damage]. But you know what? The prof whose class she was in when it happened - and whose class she is in again this semester - says that of all the people in the class, she is the one she has to harp on the most to wear her safety goggles. That blows my mind, that she wouldn't be the FIRST one in the class to have them on every day.)

So, it worries me when people talk about "you need to meet them at their level" or "you need to interact with them at their level" or, worst, "you need to bring it down to their level." Okay, maybe sometimes you need to start where people are - but you also need to bring them up to another level. You need to install some aspiration in people. It's because of people's aspirations - because of people saying "Where we are now is not good enough" that we have things like antibiotics and the polio vaccine and electricity and computers and clean water and all the blessings of the modern world...it's why we're not still living in the trees and having to spend 15 hours a day hunting and gathering food.

And you know? Having aspirations and not just saying, "oh, well, where we are now isn't great but it's too much trouble to try for more, and anyway we might fail" has worked awfully well for us in the past. I'd hate to see "let's just meet people where they are and not take them out of their comfort zone, because that might hurt their feelings" become the new paradigm of life.