- “loneliness”
- “to not fulfill my own goals”
- “accidentally hurting people, especially ones I care about”
- “that I am damaged goods”
- “having people realize that I am not as perfect as I try to be…”
- “being alone”
- “to give it all back to my parents”
- “making my parents proud”
- “to stop caring about the fact that I won’t be in med school”
These are Duke students. Has the drive to compete, to be perfect, to meet parental expectations drained the humanity out of them?
Do the quotes help you understand why Rivers subscribes to “Excellence with Humanity?” On one level, “Excellence with Humanity” signifies a balance between developing a competitive spirit, and discovering and developing talents and passions (being true to oneself). I know for some people, this balance is hard to comprehend. For some, getting ahead is the only thing that matters and they believe teaching kids how to do that is the job of independent schools. Indeed, competition is important and teaching students how to compete to improve their performance can be growth-inducing. But competition should be balanced with the legitimate pursuit of self-knowledge, the awakening of passions, the stuff that makes us human and ultimately will make us happy. This is the balance that Rivers strives for.
When schools create a super-competitive culture in which students are only striving for the gold ring of an Ivy League admit, they run the risk of graduating young people whose humanity has been stifled. Competition is a good thing; uber-competition is not.
Great post, Tom. We have the same discussions here, and I fear that we have not succeeded as well as we would have liked to achieve that balance. I have watched this conversation and those tensions evolve for 15 years and I focus on two real nick points, which are truly one when you get down to it.
ReplyDeleteFirst, young people do not have the treasure of perspective that we have; they don't know that what they find critical today will not be critical 15 years from now. We don't do a good job of teaching them from our experience. This is part of why I taught my Falconer seminar and wrote my book. We teach stuff that has a short half-life and do not spend nearly the same amount of time teaching those skills that will pass along perspective and wisdom.
Second, we still don't do a good enough job of educating parents away from that sense that there are only a dozen "right" colleges for their child. We know this is absurd and we talk about it, but not forcefully enough.
So both of these end up back out our doors: we are the educators and should be selecting what we spend our time teaching. For 30 years I have thought the focus is in the wrong spot, and the sad comments from the Duke students, more common than not, indicate that we still are not close to getting this right, even though we know what to do.
Grant Lichtman
Francis Parker School