Intrinsic Value

For many college-bound students, school is often just a means to an end. Students (and parents) may believe and understand why school is important, but that belief and understanding is an abstract ideal. On the day-to-day level, the experience of going to school can often be more drudgery than enjoyment. Yet, millions of students endure their school experience, holding fast to the idea that this, somehow, will pay off later. The thought process goes something like this: doing well in school will allow you to get into a good college, which will then allow you to find a high-paying job and comfortable life.

This line of thinking is unarguably correct, but it leaves something enormous out of the equation - the intrinsic value of learning. And this is a terrible shame. Both because learning has a great deal of intrinsic worth, and because when we enjoy what we're doing, we tend to be much more successful at it.

Alfie Kohn, in his book The Schools Our Children Deserve (p.119), gives us four reasons for the purpose of schools, set up on a 2x2 matrix that looks like this:

	Private	Public
Humanistic	Enhancing Personal Fulfillment	Building a Democratic Society
Economic	Maximizing Competitive Financial Success	Increasing Corporate Profits

This matrix is potentially illuminating. We see that the institution of school simultaneously operates at and serves several different levels and interests. Too often, though, the "economic" purposes are what are defined as important, and the "humanistic" interests are largely relegated to the bottom of the list when our kids ask why do I have to do this?

Kohn's "economic" reasons for schooling point towards this idea of schooling as a means to an end - places of learning, in this light, are places that set up and maintain the basic rules of society, and that if we want to be successful in society, we need to learn and master those rules. Again, this is undeniably true. Almost nobody would deny the importance of a college education in today's economy, or the competitive advantage college graduates have when they enter the job market. Sadly, though, some of the "humanistic" reasons for schooling have gotten lost in the scramble towards college and a better economic life. It is tragic when students (and parents...and even teachers) attribute academic success, or even involvement in extracurriculuars, to the fact that "it will look good on college applications." This may be true, but to do something simply for the sake of resume-padding is to miss the point as to why it might look good on a resume in the first place.

Focusing on the economic purposes of school as justification for working hard is like focusing on the destination and not enjoying the journey. Instead of fiercely driving towards an end goal at the expense of the journey, maybe it would make more sense to focus on the journey itself, to believe and understand that every step along the way is one that has intrinsic value. Instead of putting primary importance on outcome, which has been most of our tendency, we should focus instead on process. That is, instead of being constantly driven towards the college acceptance letter, students should invest more fully in the things they are learning in school every day. Engagement with school on a private, humanistic level will make school a more enjoyable, fulfilling experience, and because of this it will yield higher levels of academic success, which in this light is more of a byproduct of the process of learning as opposed to a primary goal. Therefore, a refocusing towards that which is right in front of us would not only make students' immediate experiences with school more enjoyable, it would also ultimately increase their achievement, and in doing so increase their economic and societal viability. That is, concentrating on the process actually leads to a more favorable outcome, even (and especially) when we aren't even thinking about the outcome!

This is a difficult concept to swallow for the goal-directed thinker. And the institution of school in the Western world is, of course, quite goal directed. In order to properly refocus on the intrinsic value of learning, then, society would need to take a different approach to schooling. Here the 2,500 year old words of Lao Tzu might be of use:

Act without doing;
work without effort.
Think of the small as large
and the few as many.
Confront the difficult
while it is still easy;
accomplish the great task
by a series of small acts.

The Master never reaches for the great;
thus she achieves greatness.
When she runs into a difficulty,
she stops and gives herself to it.
She doesn't cling to her own comfort;
thus problems are no problem for her.

-Tao Te Ching, Chapter 63

Therefore, reinvesting students in the intrinsic value of learning should be one of the most important parts of educators' jobs. This makes school a more enjoyable, positive, and fulfilling place, yes, but it also will ultimately lead to greater overall academic success. How to go about doing this? A start is to make learning real, relevant, and rigorous. Learning should connect to students' life experiences, and tell them something about themselves and their world. It should be challenging and push them, but not so hard that they grow discouraged. Teaching should not be a series of memorizations or test-taking tricks; teaching should cultivate sophisticated habits of mind and hone skills that are generalizable to many different contexts. In this way, learning won't just be a means to an end. Learning will have intrinsic value, and that value will in turn affect positive academic outcomes.