A Traditional Focus on Constantly Moving Forward
I have shared an Internet meme that has resonated with many in education. It goes a little something like this:
“Tradition is peer pressure from dead people.”
It is meant to jokingly challenge that we should not be focused on only doing what is in our past, but always asking, “Is there a better way?”
Truthfully, I am not against tradition.
And that word (tradition) is something I have wrestled with over the years in this very space.
In 2013, I wrote a post titled, “Does the “Traditionalist” have a fixed mindset?” which I argued that your values can be traditional, but teaching practices should continuously progress.
“Now I would not say that I think the “traditionalist” doesn’t believe that they can improve, but it seems that if they refer to the way things were in school as almost being utopian, do they not have a fixed mindset on what school could be?”
I hate that I wrote the above, mainly because I did something that I am adamantly against, insinuating (then) that if you don’t agree with me, your mindset is “fixed.”
I have grown in my thinking, as evidenced (I hope) by this post in February 2020:
“I also think that the notion of not having a growth mindset has been used to label people that don’t agree with a particular direction of an organization or school.”
For example, one of my favorite things to do is tell stories, probably the oldest teaching strategy in history and probably the most widely used. As Matthew James Friday shared in the Edutopia article “Why Storytelling in the Classroom Matters,”
“Storytelling is the oldest form of teaching. It bonded the early human communities, giving children the answers to the biggest questions of creation, life, and the afterlife. Stories define us, shape us, control us, and make us. Not every human culture in the world is literate, but every single culture tells stories.”
Matthew James Friday
If you do something in your classroom that was done 100s of years ago, and it still works with students today, you should keep doing it.
On the other hand, I don’t think we should do new stuff just because it is “new.” It is really easy to hop on trends and embrace them wholeheartedly, but if it doesn’t improve learning (I am not talking about test scores, which is not necessarily the best way to measure learning), why would we do it?
I am against doing things just because we have always done them.
Tradition is not the issue; I am focusing on the problem of doing things repeatedly without asking if they still serve us today.
I share this with you all today as I reflect on recently working with St. Michael Schools in Minnesota (#WeAreSTMA), and before I spoke, I saw their motto:
“Excellence is our tradition.”
Hmmmm…
Should I share my “tradition is peer pressure from dead people” sentiment and possibly challenge the organization I am speaking to in a way that might not be helpful, or should I move forward and skip that part?
I decided to step back and reevaluate the motto; “Excellence is our tradition.”
The focus of that sentiment (in my opinion) isn’t “We are rooted in the ways of the past,” but, in my opinion, focusing on “excellence” as the constant standard means that you are continuously committed to your own growth and development.
All of a sudden, I kind of liked the idea.
No matter what we do, “excellence” should be the standard.
For example, when I was growing up, athletes were not necessarily as “athletic” as they are today. Today’s athletes benefit from a better understanding of working out, eating habits, and the importance of sleeping.
However, “excellence” for the top athletes throughout history has focused on taking advantage of what you know and can do at the time.
Focusing on “excellence” in learning is as important today as it was when I went to school, as it should be in the future.
That tradition should continuously move forward and one I can definitely get behind.
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