Rules for Schools?: An Interaction with Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life (Part 1)

Chaos is all around us. Education certainly has its element of chaos, given that we are dealing with multiple human beings in the classroom, each bringing his or her own indeterminacy and potential. With this in mind, we could say that the teacher’s role is to cultivate order in the midst of chaos. Order and chaos go together, we cannot have one without the other. I liken this to architectural and organic structures. For instance, in gardening we use trellises for plants such as clematis or roses to climb. Beauty is created through a combination of organic chaos as the plant climbs an uncharted path up the architectural structure we’ve placed there. Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life is an exploration of both order and chaos. There are quite a number of ideas he explores that provide tools for us to use as teachers.

Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist from Canada and teaches psychology at the University of Toronto. He has risen to fame through the new media by posting class lectures on YouTube and participating in debates and panel discussions with people like Sam Harris, Douglas Murray and David Rubin (side note: I think the Vancouver debate between Peterson and Harris is an excellent example of charitable debate). Peterson’s career has focused on emotional wellbeing through the creation of meaning especially through systems of religious belief and cultural mythology. His first book, Maps of Meaning, amounts to his theoretical exploration of how humans construct meaning in life, while his second book, 12 Rules for Life, spells out more practically some of the abstract concepts contained in his first work.

Peterson has attracted criticism for his views, especially concerning his opposition to state-mandated politically correct speech, identity politics, climate change and gender roles, the latter of which we’ll explore briefly below. Despite criticisms of his work, I have found many his ideas compelling and full of potential educational value. While I might differ with him on, say, the particulars of biblical hermeneutics, or might question some of the applications of his major ideas, I think Peterson has thoughtfully articulated many ideas that frame the nature of our modern culture and that provide a compelling way forward toward creating lives of meaning.

A Posture to Learn — Looking to Lobsters

The first rule Peterson sets out is stated, “Stand up straight with your shoulders back.” The rule is based on Peterson’s analysis of serotonin and dopamine neurochemicals in lobsters, which have a very similar neurochemistry to humans. In a dominance hierarchy, winners enjoy a release of positive neurochemicals and losers produce lower levels of serotonin, which is then reflected in their posture. A dominant male lobster raises his claws in a show of self-confidence, demonstrating its positive outlook on life, whereas the lesser lobster cowers physically, mired in a wash of negative neurochemicals. Our culture is less prone to the physical blows lobsters land on each other in the deep sea, but we still have this basic hormonal setup. Peterson’s advice, then, is to take on the posture of the winner: stand tall with your shoulders back. We can enjoy the benefits of positive neurochemistry by striking a positive pose.

For educators, I think this can be translated into good postural habits. Students slumped over their desks or tipping in their chairs are not positioning themselves for optimal academic engagement. Sitting up straight with shoulders back, eyes forward in an open and ready position is going to help a student place their focus better. A student striking this positive pose is more likely to feel more positively about their learning. It’s no surprise that students who strike a defeated pose feel defeated by their school work. As teachers, we should hold our students accountable to their posture by cultivating habits of posture, such as sitting and standing up straight.

The Hierarchies of Life

More controversially, Peterson identifies how both lobsters and humans (not to mention all animal life) operate within hierarchical structures. The dominance model of hierarchies implies that an individual climbs to higher rungs in the hierarchy through success in interactions with others. The dominance hierarchy is pretty old, since it is hard-wired into our nervous system. Even if one doesn’t accept an evolutionary paradigm, Peterson’s work here provides a neurological basis for hierarchy that is still demonstrably embedded in our humanity. It explains our positive and negative reactions to success and defeat. Peterson’s advice to walk tall with shoulders back is a recognition that hierarchies are a reality in life and are here to stay, for better or for worse. If life is chaotic (which it most certainly is), then taking upon ourselves a posture to meet the challenges of life by bringing order to our chaos is to our benefit. To see ourselves as part of a hierarchy enables us to take responsibility for our role in the hierarchy, whether in a family, school, work, or society.

Peterson has received much of his criticism for this point from feminists who see Peterson’s claims as a promotion of a tyrannical male hierarchy. The feminist claim is that male dominance has been tyrannical throughout history, making Peterson’s claims about roles of men and women within society’s hierarchical structures a threat to the egalitarian aims of feminists. While it is true that hierarchies can be misused by tyrants, Peterson does not think that becoming competent within a hierarchy entails tyranny. Quite the opposite. It is competence, he claims, that would lead to mutual happiness between men and women in marriage and broader society.

Peterson has clarified over the course of several interviews his stance, championing equality of opportunity for women and men over equality of outcome when it comes to careers. Removing barriers for women to compete for jobs with men is a desirable outcome. But creating mandated quotas actually undermines freedom of choice, which is bad for society. He notes that in many Scandinavian societies that have created the most egalitarian laws, we see some of the widest differences in career choices, meaning that when given equality of opportunity, men and women will often choose careers based on a set of criteria that is grounded in factors such as personality and gender differences.

These are important issues for educators to work through as we contemplate how best to serve our students, creating opportunities for all while recognizing that not all will fit into our cleverly devised metrics. Thus, enabling all students to take our highest level courses is a noble aim. But if more girls than boys opt into advanced language courses and more boys than girls opt into advanced science courses, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the system is broken. It wouldn’t necessarily be in the best interests of the students or the school to force more girls to take advanced science or more boys to take advanced languages. In my experience, these trends seem to ebb and flow, with some classes skewing one direction and the next the other. This ebb and flow is organic.

Less organic is the posture we take toward roles within hierarchies. In my previous post on Jesus as a learner, I mentioned how he learned obedience through what he suffered (Heb. 5:8). He embodied particular roles with the hierarchy of authority in various spheres, such as submitting to authority within a family or learning from the teachers of the law. Our students should learn how to live properly under authority, with respect and obedience. This is not some tyrannical power trip over children. Instead, it is teaching them to be at peace with their role as students who are under the authority of their teacher. It is not as though they will not live within structures of authority later in life. There will be bosses and magistrates. Cultivating a proper posture toward authority will enable students to enter into the world as self-controlled, competent people.

Practice Makes Better

Finally, there is an element of “fake it until you make it” mentality in Peterson’s first rule. Taking on the posture of standing tall with shoulders back doesn’t occur when we feel like it. Instead, the feeling of worth and wellbeing often occurs later. How do we begin to get rid of the feelings of self doubt and personal defeat? By doing something simple but powerful in posturing ourselves differently. When I used to teach string bass lessons to middle and high school students, one of the rules I taught my students was to act like an accomplished bass player before playing. They could visualize themselves as top performers who could rip through the difficult passages with grace and composure. I often saw this advice translate into better practice and better performance. Yes, they still had to put in the work of practicing the difficult passages. And yes, they still often made mistakes in performances — everyone does. But the mistakes weren’t as earth shattering as they once were. The confidence in their performances went up. And the joy in their music making increased.

Much of what a student does is practice. We often think of practice as homework exercises, construed as largely academic work. However, it is a wise teacher who considers the whole child. We are also helping the student practice their posture, their perspective on their work, the affections and loves. Learning how to practice when one doesn’t feel like it can be as important a skill as completing a set of long division problems. Peterson’s first rule, stand tall with shoulders back, is not simply about posture. It also speaks to a mindset that an individual take responsibility for their lives by focusing on one simple thing to practice. By getting some forward momentum on that one habit, others begin to follow.

Peterson writes about setting up automated routines in our life:

The acts of life we repeat every day need to be automated. They must be turned into stable and reliable habits, so they lose their complexity and gain predictability and simplicity. This can be perceived most clearly in the case of small children, who are delightful and comical and playful when their sleeping and eating schedules are stable, and horrible and whiny and nasty when they are not. (12 Rules, 18).

Imagine how complex getting started on homework is. Find a place to work, unpack the bag, identify the problem set, get yourself into work mode, stave off distractions that are likely more prevalent at home than they are at school, etc. If we were able to craft a stable and reliable set of habits where the time and space are automated each day, it reduces the complexity and effort it takes to even begin doing homework.

Homework is just one area, and probably not even the most important area, we should consider helping our students create practice routines. Organizing our folders, sequencing packup, and a whole host of the day’s routines can be a wellspring of opportunities to engage students in learning how to bring order into the chaos of the school day. We should never merely teach content. We are helping our students acquire rules for life so that these children may shape lives of meaning and purpose. As we craft our lesson plans and call upon our students to engage in academic work, we also ought to be mindful of ways we can cultivate healthy habits in our students’ lives.