Playing Down Will Not Get Us There
In his book, Study Smart: A Christian Guide to Academic Success, John Seel argues,
Christian schools celebrate Lewis, Tolkien, and Chesterton, but we somehow give students the impression that their genius and Christian mind was innate rather than cultivated over a lifetime of disciplined study, selective mentorship, and daily habits. In doing so, we teach a lie, and distort their views and practice. It’s time to let people fail, to hold students accountable, to resist grade inflation, to celebrate the hard teacher and the tough principal. We do no one a favor by giving young people the impression that discipline, hard work, and perseverance aren’t necessary ingredients for success…We need to put the brutal honesty of American Idol judge Simon Cowell in the classroom and once again call a spade a spade. If we don’t now, later reality will. Playing down will not get us there.
The chief concern most have with Seel’s approach to raising the standards and holding high expectations for students is two-fold: elitism and self-esteem. By raising and maintaining expectations for students, eventually the intellectual haves and have-nots will reveal themselves against the horizon of such expectations. The intellectually inclined students will prove that education is intrinsically elitist and those without such inclinations will have to live with the humiliating realization that they are merely average, intellectually.
C. S. Lewis offers an exhortation for such struggles:
“And what”, you ask, “about the dull boy? What about our Tommy, who is so highly strung and doesn’t like doing ‘sums and grammar’? Is he to be brutally sacrificed to other people’s sons?” I answer — dear Madam, you quite misunderstand Tommy’s real wishes and real interests. It is the “aristocratic” system which will really give Tommy what he wants. If you let me have my way, Tommy will gravitate very comfortably to the bottom of the form; and there he will sit at the back of the room chewing caramels and conversing sotto voce with his peers, occasionally ragging and occasionally getting punished, and all the time imbibing that playfully intransigent attitude to authority which is our chief protection against England’s becoming a servile State. When he grows up he will not be a Porson;((Richard Porson was a child prodigy whose name was at the time synonymous with genius and he later became the Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge.)) but the world will still have room for a great many more Tommies than Porsons. There are dozens of jobs (much better paid than the intellectual ones) in which he can be very useful and very happy. In addition, there will be one priceless benefit that he will enjoy — he will know he’s not clever. The distinction between him and the great brains will have been clear to him ever since, in the playground, he punched the heads containing those great brains. He will have a certain half amused respect for them. He will cheerfully admit that, though he could knock spots off them on the golf links, they know and do what he cannot. He will be a pillar of democracy. He will allow just the right amount of rope to those clever ones.”
