A Challenging Education

Why Rigor?

By Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project 

Recently I was reading a discussion posted to a Classical education group. The OP was a parent of a student in 7^th grade trying to frame a good educational plan for her child while not over-stressing him. Her question was simple yet complex: Why is it important to provide a rigorous education for one’s child? What is “rigor”?

Rigor is too often defined as simply “challenging” (lots of AP classes) or maybe just college preparatory. A rigorous education is more than just being academically busy, though many programs and students treat it that way. I see three main components that help define a rigorous education for any student.

1. Thorough

Education is a luxury. Over a lifetime we fortunate few will enjoy a window of opportunity to focus specifically on our own education. While our earliest years should feel like play, as we mature in our education, we must gradually learn that education is a thing we do for ourselves rather than being a thing done to us in the form of a lengthy check list of chores before certificates of completion are offered.

Statistically, most do not mature much beyond “consuming” education primarily by completing check lists and seeking certifications with few distinctions or preferences for the quality or intensity of each part, provided each required category is completed. Even students who have limited interest in an academic future will finish half their high school courses as dual enrollment to save “time and money” at the college level. Once at college they’ll often find those dual enrollment classes weren’t much of a challenge after all and credits need to be repeated.   

A rigorous education is one that exceeds base levels and goes beyond check boxes. Students read the whole piece of literature, not just the summary. Learners master a topic at level rather than just cursorily “cover” the topic workbook style for a given period. They might “take” French for the expected two years in a check-list model or, with rigor, they might learn enough that they can navigate and converse in the language with relative ease. Both approaches take two years, only one matters in the long run.

A rigorous education is thorough enough that each level is a proper foundation for the next for as long as the learner chooses. If she comes to completely understand the mechanics of English in middle school, she can stand on that foundation to master even more interesting things in writing or foreign languages in subsequent years and eventually enjoy a wide variety of options professionally in the future as a writer, speaker, journalist, or interpreter.

The check-box education may result in the same certification of completion in the same number of years as a rigorous education. Only rigor builds a foundation to stand on and as you build and climb to even higher goals. If you have the choice between a heart surgeon who was at the top percentile of her exclusive cohort or one who enjoyed a program that allowed 100% to pass with minimal effort, you wouldn’t hesitate to pick the first one as you grow to appreciate rigor in education.      

2. Challenging

A rigorous education must always push a student to go just beyond his current skill levels, whatever those levels might be. This is why a student doesn’t need to be academically gifted, per se, to deeply profit from a rigorous education to the same degree that an academically gifted student will. The goal is to constantly challenge yourself and perpetually try things that are just beyond your reach. If you plant a sapling tree but leave it tethered, supported, propped, and protected, it never becomes robust enough to weather storms. Challenging yourself in your own education helps you weather the storms to come as they certainly will.

There is no real distinction in the outcome of an unchallenged gifted student and a well challenged average student who braved a rigorous education.  

Real challenges in education even at the college level are now rare. Public education is not designed for rigor. Private education is only a little better. In both approaches, education is diluted to increase the commodity of students who check their boxes and get their papers. Profound topics that once challenged human minds for centuries are now efficiently reduced to short summaries followed by multiple-choice questions in a pass-fail course with unlimited tries. Challenging doesn’t “pay” anymore for most schools.

Unusually, rigor works at The Lukeion Project because students who achieve mastery at a lower level are ready to climb to our next steps. We don’t list our classes as “9^th grade English” because a student must go back to basics or even surge forward to the levels that challenge them so they can build up.

3. Comprehensive

A rigorous education doesn’t decide a student’s path prematurely. A student with a strong interest in dinosaurs or chess at age 10 is still led through a robust selection of literature, art, music, writing, philosophy, public speaking, and foreign language along with more typical STEM topics and even basics in the garden, kitchen, and shop. We need well-rounded electricians, astrophysicists, and journalists, please.

Why is Rigor Important?

In terms of overall life satisfaction, being genuinely challenged by a subject and then enjoying a sense of achievement by overcoming that trial is a true boost to ego and self. Nobody looks back on a check box education as being intrinsically rewarding. Ever hear a grandparent entertain the family with harrowing tales of doing the bare minimum or going through the motions or just staying busy until time expires? A big part of feeling confidence is the assurance that, having overcome challenges before, we can overcome them again.

A person gains the confidence to continue to bigger challenges when she has a history of prior success over actual challenges. In a world of participation trophies and easy wins, we have a generation of deeply depressed young people. They’ve not overcome anything difficult before and, as adults, don’t know how... and are terrified they can’t.  

Every student’s rigorous education should, ideally, be crafted for her and well-suited to him. Rigor means that the next level up should be difficult to reach without strong effort. Top grades should not be granted to anybody that merely followed the instructions but no more. There’s a level above that! Rigor means that excellence—overcoming the challenge fully—is not a check list but a genuine victory.  

Do it Anyway

Lessons from the Green Beans

By Dr. Susan Fisher with The Lukeion Project

This summer we had a bumper crop of green beans in the garden, and I decided it was finally time to put aside my fear of explosions and use my pressure canner for the first time. I won’t bore you with the humiliating details of my canner-side vigil, and the parting texts to friends whom I was sure I would never see again. The upshot is the beans came out fine and the house is still standing. A few weeks later when I canned my next batch, I was much calmer and that is where this blog post began – literally in a chair next to the pressure canner on the stove.

Just like most people, as I watched the pressure valve on my canner, I was thinking about Cato the Elder. Ok, that first part was a joke, but I really was thinking about Cato the Elder, an influential senator and historian of the early Republic, whose work and thought influenced statesmen and orators like Cicero and many others. He was also known as Cato the Censor for his strong opinions, particularly about self-reliance, hard work, and discipline.

While it is easy to dismiss Cato the Censor as a cranky old coot, with an overly starched toga who shook his noble fist while shouting at kids to get off his lawn, he does make some good points. First and foremost is the point that all of us, young or old, ancient or modern, cranky or not, tend to slack a bit when things get too easy. To be fair, we are animals after all and all animals lean toward slacking, since moderating energy expenditure is imperative for survival. Since this is a natural inclination, it falls to the vigilant like Cato the Elder to periodically remind people of the dangers of kicking back too much.

As the valve jiggled back and forth at ten pounds of pressure, I thought how easy it would have been to give in to my fear of learning pressure canning and just freeze the beans, pickle them, or not grow so many in the first place. Green beans are plentiful in Ohio, after all, and it is much easier just to get them at the store. However, this is just the sort of danger against which Cato was warning. Had I given in to my fear of the pressure canner, I would not have learned a new skill, nor would I have some nice quarts of green beans for this winter. 

Feeling smug that I hadn’t gone the easy route where the green beans were concerned, I started thinking about other areas in which, by Cato’s reckoning, I might have slid into slackerdom and was thereby missing out. This mental inventory led me to three pertinent questions for myself and others for determining whether one is taking the easy route to their own detriment:

• When is the last time you tried something new?

• When is the last time you tried something scary? (I’m not talking about alligator wrestling here, although if that’s your thing, then more power to you. I’m talking about things that people do regularly that you have psyched yourself out about.)

• When is the last time you told yourself you were incapable of doing something?

If you answered “a long time ago” or “I can’t remember the last time I tried something new” for questions one and two and/or “yesterday” for question three, odds are that you have given in to fear, laziness, or inertia and are on the road to becoming soft. (I can hear that overly starched toga rustling from here.)

Luckily you don’t need a crusty old coot of a Roman to point his bony finger in your face to get you back on the straight and narrow. Three words will do the trick. Grab a pen and write these down: Do it anyway.

• This is new – I don’t know how to do it! Do it anyway.
• I know that this is safe, but I’m scared. Do it anyway.
• There are so many sentences here to translate. Do it anyway.
• I might make a mistake. Do it anyway.
• It would be easier to get my answers off the internet. Do it anyway.
• I left this assignment until the last minute, and I’ll never finish in time. Do it anyway.

“Do it anyway” is the key to shutting down all the excuses that allow you to cop out, give up, or take the easy way out. More importantly, these three words are also the key to guaranteeing success, new skills, and growth. Do it once and you might have some quarts of green beans. Keep at it and you’ll have character, of the sort that would make Cato the Elder very pleased indeed.

6 Ways to Improve Executive Function

Plan, Monitor, and Execute Goals

By Amy Barr at The Lukeion Project

Not that long ago it became pedagogically fashionable to reject the old-timey learning methods that worked well for the last several thousand years. Big tech solutions, apps, and shiny expensive learning systems have replaced reading, writing, and formal reasoning. Now few conventionally schooled students ever read a whole book (excerpts only), are seldom expected to memorize much (apps are always available), and are trained for highly uninspiring multi-choice standardized exams like life depends on them. Likewise, educators are expected to provide an extensive infrastructure of detailed and colorfully prepped study aids to help serve up pre-digested information for easy student consumption.

Pedagogy was once an art. Learning was once a joy! Executive function, the cognitive processes and mental skills that help an individual plan, monitor, and successfully execute their goals, was both the method and result of a decent education. Plan, monitor, and execute goals? Educators are now being replaced by apps and students are being equipped for nothing much beyond a lifetime of playing with those apps.   

How can a student gain control of her own education and build his executive function? How can a student learn to plan, monitor, and successfully execute the goals of any academic mission now or in the future?

1.       Determine the exact parameters of assignments.

This is a fancy way of saying, “READ ALL THE DIRECTIONS.” Simply following the directions for an assignment will take most students most of the way to a terrific score. Roughly a third of students will not read the directions the instructor gave for an assignment. Another third will only read part of the instructions. The remaining third (academic superstars) took the time to carefully and conscientiously read ALL the instructions and do what was asked as asked.

2.       Start at the start not at the end.

Most of us claim we do our best work under the stress of a deadline because that’s the way we’ve always done things! If you are given a week to write an essay, develop a translation, complete a short speech, or read a book, when you start that task says a lot about your executive function. A lot of students who claim to struggle academically are just struggling with time management. Those who wait until 45 minutes before the deadline to get started will never perform as well as a person who put in more time, effort, and planning. Your potential is damaged by procrastination not by a lack of academic wits. The superstars are simply those who carefully and conscientiously plan their time and use it as planned.

3.       Set up boundaries and margins in your schedule.

Some students will set themselves apart academically by taking on every honors course and every AP class, plus every chance for extracurricular sports, dramas, dance, music, debate, and every competition their community opens. Woohoo! These students are living their best life right now! Except now these students have no margin for error and no down time. One bad week might mean things derail quickly. Some of these students are burned out before they start college. Adult life is a lot less stressful than being in school…said no one ever. Trying to do it all in high school and college is likely to leave you bitter, exhausted, and usually both. Instead of doing it all, try just doing most of what you want to do. Build in down time and margin for when your family needs you to help or when you need rest, recover, recuperation. Some of us are wired to GO-GO-GO! If this describes you, knock it down to just go-go while you also occasionally stop to smell the roses. Take it from a typical type-A personality: “I wish I had stayed much busier” is not something you’ll wistfully repeat about your youth.

4.       Do some every day.

The best way to memorize something, master a new topic, or finish a huge project is in small chunks scattered through your schedule. One of the big benefits of a homeschool education is that your life isn’t restricted to 60-minute class sessions and a 10 minute passing period. If you find you get easily distracted or bored, change out your task every 15-20 minutes. Use a timer and give yourself a small reward for staying on task that whole time. 20 well-spent minutes will allow you to get more done than 60 distracted minutes.

5.       Get some support.

If you have time management issues (procrastination or over-scheduling), if you get easily overwhelmed by the details of a project (oh no! research project!), or if you get easily intimidated by the material (you are a creative who has been tasked with a chemistry class), get support. Find somebody who will help you with accountability for getting things done on time or not signing up for too much. Clarify instructions if you aren’t sure what steps to follow next. Set up a friendly competition with a sibling or peer to prompt you to do a little better each time. Find different ways to understand new material through videos, songs, charts, tutorials. In other words, don’t just abandon hope and give up. Support, help, advice, accountability are all great coping mechanisms for whatever challenge comes your way.

6.       Offer yourself some grace.

Most of us want to be good at the tasks we are assigned. We want to feel competent, and we want to manage ourselves well. As much as we want all these things to happen for us daily, we are going to encounter challenges and failures. Traffic demolished the time we reserved for homework. A sibling got sick so the afternoon was spent at the doctor’s office instead of the library. You thought you understood the assignment, but you blew right past important details at the end. These things are all part of life. They are normal issues. When disaster strikes (and it will regularly) you have to offer grace to yourself. Grace may not improve this week’s poor scores but it will help you climb back on your feet for next week’s new set of tasks. Stand up, dust off, keep going.

Prepare to be More

The Importance of Being Articulate

By Amy Barr at The Lukeion Project

Parents, educators, and students themselves want the keys to success to get ahead in collegiate academics and—more importantly—future financial opportunity and abundance. That’s a tall order and one that is becoming increasingly difficult and more expensive. Pressure to set oneself out in front of the crowd is hard enough as an adult. This burden is often too much when placed on the shoulders of our already stressed young people. Is there a better way?

Students were once advised to add an AP class or two to their high school schedule to distinguish one’s transcript and college application. Now our most ambitious kids are taking three, four, or even five AP classes PER year of high school at the risk of utter burn out. Though such a classes offer the carrot of possible college credits and weighted grades (an A grade factors as a 5 instead of a 4 to boost one’s high school GPA), most colleges have stopped accepting weighted grades. Now that many applicants come to the table with dozens of "free" credit hours earned, many colleges have continued to raise the score required for a student to get college credit from an AP class. Very competitive schools now accept only a score of 5 to grant college credit for a student’s AP course. Universities don't enjoy losing loads of cash over all those AP credits so they've made it harder on students. 

Students are encouraged to prepare for the SAT but drive themselves to exhaustion trying to place in the top percentile. The exam was originally intended to assess students' readiness for college in terms of literacy, numeracy and writing skills. It provided an even measure of that student, whether she completed her work in a one-room schoolhouse or a massive mega-high school. As I understand it, the essay portion of the SAT was discontinued after the 2021 exam. "Literacy" is gauged by how well students can comprehend short stories and pick the best multiple choice answer. Over 1,400 four-year colleges have discontinued the requirement for a standardized test like the SAT or the ACT for a variety of reasons.

Students can set themselves apart by writing an excellent college application essay. Once-upon-a-time, these essays offered proof that an applicant could articulate his or her academic potential, aspirations, and college readiness. Now many colleges require a 250-word essay or—if one is lucky—a 500-word essay (about the amount I’ve written already in this blog) in which a student must distinguish herself above all others by answering prompts like “what’s the hardest part about being a teenager,” or “tell us about your worst anxiety.”

Meanwhile, some students forego important life skills and experiences in the mad dash to impress an admissions counselor. Many skip attending summer camps, learning a new instrument, getting involved in community theater, or getting in touch with nature through gardening or animal care. I won't even mention that many get through high school without finishing a whole book, learning how to cook, changing a tire, balancing a check book, learning something creative like painting or metal working, or sitting on a porch to chat for an hour with a grandparent (no phone). 

WHAT IF students (with the support of parents, and educators) started preparing instead for competency and excellence in life and, as a lovely side-effect, also enjoyed a multitude of benefits from wielding that competency? College education, trade school, medical school, wilderness training, or a wide variety of other appealing life options could suddenly be on the table along with overall improved life-satisfaction. Sounds great! What’s the plan?

WHAT IF we spent our best, brightest, and most youthful energy on simply becoming more articulate?

Howard Gardner includes Linguistic Intelligence in his multiple intelligence theory, a comprehensive non-exclusionary view of human learning potential that accounts for far more than one’s ability to deduce the correct answer under pressure on a multi-choice college readiness exam. Linguistic Intelligence is the quality that allows people to understand language (spoken, written), as well as to communicate with others effectively, fluently, and competently. High linguistic intelligence has been linked to improved problem solving, as well as to increased abstract reasoning so there's plenty of room in STEM fields for this factor.

Having a high Linguistic Intelligence offers a clear advantage in business, politics, sales / marketing, law, medicine, and entertainment as well as communications of all kinds. Naturally, this is the super power you need if you want any profession in the humanities (literature, linguistics, journalism, economics, psychology, history, political science, philosophy, and sociology). Being well-spoken and well-written will open doors for a lifetime. Once you walk through the doors of your choice, you’ll feel comfortable being there because you literally speak the language.

How Can One Build One’s Linguistic IQ?

• Associate with those who have a high Linguistic IQ
• Read excellent pieces of literature written by those with high Linguistic IQ (do not limit yourself to recordings of books - grow comfortable with real books)
• View movies and interviews of others with high Linguistic IQ
• When you don’t understand a word used, look it up and add it to your daily list of new words to master.
  
• Keep challenging the linguistic difficulty level of things you read and view
• Challenge yourself to write more and more proficiently and then expertly. 
• Challenge yourself to write more daily. Add journaling or writing a blog (even if nobody reads it)
  
• Develop the mental discipline of taking notes when listening to lectures, classes, interviews
• Put yourself in courses (or take on personal challenges) that place demands on you to continually improve your writing proficiency, speed, and ease.

• Challenge yourself to grow your own personal linguistic database
• Master and maintain excellence in English grammar, a subject that has been dumbed down or removed entirely from many formal education programs
• Intentionally learn new English vocabulary (give yourself a daily 10 new words)
  
• Learn foundational languages like Latin or Classical Greek
• Travel as much as possible