The Gods of Education. Are They Worth It?

TL;DR:

Schools, like cathedrals, have gods that they worship, which shape their values, priorities, and practices.
The gods of education can be both burdensome and dangerous, demanding sacrifices and affecting the unintended consequences of serving them.
Identifying the gods in education allows for a critical examination of their impact and whether they are worth prioritizing, as they are tools that should serve the purpose of student growth rather than becoming the sole focus.

“All Gods are imperfect, even dangerous.” – Neil Postman

Whenever I visit a school, I envision myself walking into a cathedral. I study the pictures, posters, and banners in the entryway and subsequent hallways, and I continually ask myself the question, “What does this school worship? What is their god?”

And then, I try to imagine the consequences.

Like cathedrals, schools are places where large groups come to gather, share in expected routines and traditions, and work towards a common goal. They also come religiously. Be it out of want, duty, or requirement, students, like church members, come to school burdened with struggles, anxious for connection, and hoping for a change.

Unlike cathedrals, however, schools do not have a clearly defined god. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have them. Nor does it mean they don’t worship them.

Schools Create the Gods They Worship

“What makes public schools public,” Neil Postman writes in The End of Education, “is not so much that the schools have common goals but that the students have common gods. The reason for this is that public education does not serve a public. It creates a public.”

It is easier to see if kids are learning how to read than it is if they are growing in empathy. So we lean into what we know, what we can quantify. We rely on the tools rather than the purpose. Click To Tweet

And every public— every school—is defined by the god or gods they serve.

Which is what makes the gods of education so dangerous. Just like every religious god, the gods of education demand our allegiance, our service, and our devotion. They also demand a sacrifice. And if we aren’t mindful of the gods our educational institutions, our classrooms, or even the ones we are serving, we may not be aware of the sacrifices we are making. Of ourselves and of our students.

Therefore, asking the question, “What are the gods of my school?” becomes incredibly important because it leads us to the more consequential question, “What are the unintentional consequences of following this god?”

Some of the answers are easy. Others are a bit uncomfortable. All are extremely important.

The Gods We Serve

Sports are an easy god to identify. So too are its potential consequences. When we worship sports we can easily sacrifice our academic or moral integrity to ensure a win on Friday night.

That does not mean we should get rid of sport, however, because we shouldn’t. What we should consider—what we need to consider—is how to take it off the altar. Because all gods are imperfect. Some are even dangerous.

In recent weeks, in hopes of gathering a greater understanding of the various gods education serves, I have reached out to a number of fellow educators and parents, asking the question, “What do you think are the gods of education?” Here are some of their answers:

Exhaustion and the need to be constantly working and stressing over the profession.
Relationships and its oversimplification of being the solution to seemingly every problem.
Innovation and the drive to continually change, try new things, and be edgy in our instruction, curriculum, and norms.
Timely achievement of standardized knowledge and skills rather than focusing on the wisdom and process of learning.
PLCs and faculty meetings…enough said.
School rules/handbooks and the focus on all the things staff and students can’t do, and the consequences for breaking them.
Student engagement and the responsibility to entertain, innovate, and be consistently relevant and up-to-date with strategies and trends.
Traditions and the belief that “the way we’ve always done it” is what’s best for here and now.
Safety and the slippery slope of eradicating (or attempting to eradicate) any discomfort, conflict, or controversy.
Standardized testing and the unintentional forcing of “countless educators to teach to {the test}” rather than focusing on “the imagination and the creative spark of classrooms.” – Benjamin Koenig, a K-6 music teacher at Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation.
Routines and holistic norms that require entire buildings to teach, grade, assess, and (fill in the blank) the same, all for the sake of school-wide consistency. “Because it’s easier.”
The potential of students and what they could be, forgetting who they are here and now.
Compliance and the need for kids or adults to simply obey so we can have order, progress, and sanity.
Dress codes and cellphones and the belief that if we get rid of or control the external, learning will occur and our environment will improve.
Time. From Nicole Bond, the Supervisor of Educational Technology at Lincoln Intermediate 12 in Pennsylvania:
“The one god everyone in education prays to in order to do it all.
The one god everyone prays to the last week before breaks.
The one god everyone prays to when working on learning goals, test prep, grading, planning, scheduling, and curriculum writing.
The one god we need to build relationships with community members, stakeholders, staff, colleagues, and students.
The one god to rule them all.”

What I love about this incomplete list is that none of the gods mentioned are inherently bad. Some of them are burdens we place on ourselves (exhaustion) while some are burdens placed upon us (standardized testing). Most of them, however, are tools that were intended to help us in our profession and in student growth. None of them were intended to be gods.

Then suddenly, they were.

How Tools Become Gods

Daniel Pink, author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, says, “When the product motive becomes unmoored from the purpose motive, bad things happen.” As educators, we know this. We call it “teaching to the test” or “behavior modification.” But because it is easier to assess the product rather than the purpose, education spends a great deal of time talking about the product.

It is easier to see if kids are learning how to read than it is if they are growing in empathy. So we lean into what we know, what we can quantify. We rely on the tools rather than the purpose.

Over time, and sometimes rather quickly, the tools such as standardized tests, traditions, and student engagement become the focus of our PLCs, the talking points of our evaluations, and the topics of our best sellers. Then suddenly, without knowledge or fanfare, instead of helping us achieve our purpose, they become our purpose. Our identities. And our gods.

Are They Worth It?

“All gods,” Neil Postman reminds us, “are imperfect, even dangerous.” Mainly because they demand a sacrifice.

And that is where I believe the question, “What are the gods of education?” begins to stick. Where it makes us uncomfortable. Because if we can identify the gods in education—the gods in our schools—we can begin the process of discovering what the unintentional consequences are of serving those gods. And we can start to answer the question, “Is it worth it?”

For example, if safety is a god in our school or district, we might sacrifice the ability to engage in uncomfortable yet real conversations with our students, thus watering down the content and reducing its value. To ensure safety for all, we might create hard and fast rules on the playground that keep all kids free from harm but reduce problem-solving, age-appropriate learning, play, and fun.

In the end, is it worth it?

If busyness and the need to be exhausted all the time is a god, we might stay late every night, check emails and text messages long after working hours, and engage in our profession all the time…believing that’s what quality educators do! We might sacrifice time with family, ignore our health, and refuse to take vacations or call in sick.

In the end, can we say it is worth it?

If we can’t, perhaps they have become more god-like than we’d like to admit. Which, therein lies the problem. As Danny Bauer, chief Ruckus Maker at Better Leaders Better Schools, believes, one of the gods of education is ego and identity and the entrapment they create. “What happens if I do that thing? What happens if I don’t do it?”

“If my students don’t score well on the State Standardized Test, what does that say about me?”

“If that difficult kid needs to be moved from my class, what will people think about me?”

“I can’t leave early tonight, I am ALWAYS the last one out of the building!”

The god of ego and identity is a sneaky bugger as it can easily be disguised by work ethic, success, and a myriad of other titles. But in the end, if it takes the place of our educational purpose—of providing students an opportunity to become better people— then it too has become a god, imperfect, even dangerous.

And in the end, is it worth it?

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Gods Are Tools. Not Gods.

As educators, we can decide what gods we serve, if any at all! Because they aren’t real gods. They are tools. And because they aren’t real gods, we can use them for the benefit of our schools and students, and then leave them on the shelf or toss them in the trash. We can use them as resources that help people learn and grow, and when they no longer serve that purpose, we can get rid of them.

Because they aren’t gods! They are mere tools.

The next time you walk through your schools, your hallways, and your classrooms, pay attention to what is hanging on the walls, what is talked about most in the teacher’s lounge, and what is “worshipped” in your PLCs. Ask your colleagues, parents, and students the question, “What gods do we serve?” Wrestle with, “What are the unintentional consequences of serving this god?” and then truly evaluate the consequences. Ask yourself, your school: “In the end, if we worship this god until our final days, is it worth it?”

At times, the answer might be “Yes, it is.” Which is great! If only because you asked the question and know what you are serving. But most importantly, when you get to the end, neither you nor your students will be disappointed because it is where you were headed all along. And there are few experiences more rewarding than standing atop a mountaintop, overlooking the valley, head in the clouds, celebrating the end of a long and purposeful journey.

If the answer is, “No,” perhaps it is time to place those gods on the shelf where they belong.

You might even consider throwing a few of them in the trash.

About Brian Miller

Brian is a secondary principal, father of five fantastic children, and husband to a wonderful wife. He has taught and led throughout the US and internationally and is a public speaker, blogger, and co-host of an education and culture podcast. You can follow his blog (millerbrian.com), on Twitter (@miller_brian_), or on his podcast (SchurtzandTies).