Work, Toil, and the Quest for Academic Rigor

American educational culture is obsessed with the idea of academic rigor. It shows up on marketing materials, core value statements, and school comparison charts. Rigor has become the gold standard of education, separating the wheat from the chaff and the excellent from the mediocre. Public schools, private schools, classical schools, progressive schools–they all claim academic rigor as a distinctive, leading to a market overrun with near-identical tag lines.

The irony, of course, is that when competitors lay claim to the exact same distinguishing factor, the supposed distinctive ceases to function as such. In the case of many schools today, the idea of academic rigor has devolved into a banal slogan production center, generating a growing pile of hackneyed expressions and predictable cliches. 

Now let me be clear: I have no qualm with academic rigor in and of itself. Central to a true educational renaissance exists an element of academic rigor properly conceived and implemented. But we must think carefully about what ends we hope to achieve when introducing rigor into our classrooms. What good does it bring? How does it impact students? Teachers? Society?

In this series I am exploring insights from Teach Like a Champion 2.0 (TLaC for short) for classical educators. Classical educators, more than anything else, are committed to an educational project that seeks to shape human beings, making them virtuous, or at least, putting them on the path of virtue, through training in the liberal arts. The impetus for this series has therefore become taking TLaC’s myriad of insights gleaned through field research and reworking them for this classical vision of education.

The Benefits and Limitations of Techniques

Author Doug Lemov dedicates Part 2 of TLaC, entitled  “Academic Ethos,” to helping teachers reach the maximum level of academic rigor in their classrooms. The techniques he shares in this portion of the book are focused on extracting as much brain power out of each student as possible.

For example, Technique #13, “Stretch It,” advises rewarding right answers with harder questions. These questions can take the form of directives (“What evidence tells you that?”) as well as nondirective prompts (“Say more”). Or consider Technique #25, “At Bats.” The advice here is to give your students lots and lots of practice mastering knowledge or skills. Rather than settling for two or three repetitions of practice, teachers should provide generous amounts of time for independent, mixed, and differentiated practice.

Both of these techniques capitalize on pushing students towards mastery through deliberate practice and opportunities to exercise their intellectual muscles. This is a worthy aim, to be sure, using well-documented techniques confirmed by modern research.

But why? What is the purpose of it all? The reader is never quite sure. If the subtitle of the book is any indicator, the goal is to gain acceptance into the college of one’s choice. But then what? Obtain the career or salary of one’s choice. To what end? The maximization of earthly pleasure. And then what?

The techniques offered in this field manual give teachers a reliable “how,” but not a compelling “why.” This, in turn, renders even the initially high-regarded “how” suspect.

Dealing with Persons

A robust case for an academically rigorous education must be considered in light of whom it is for. The answer, of course, is people. Education is for people and therefore must be tailored for them to promote their flourishing as creatures of mind, heart, body, and soul. While TLaC effectively engages the mind of a student, it fails to fully consider the other facets of their personhood. However, even its engagement of the mind can be problematic at times when it focuses too heavily on information recall at the expense of mind-captivating ideas.

As a corrective to this thin and misguided view of students, I direct readers to the writings of Charlotte Mason. In a chapter for When Children Love to Learn, which is a great introduction to the writings of Charlotte Mason, Dr. Jack Beckman of Covenant College writes,

“Within the pages of her [Charlotte Mason’s] six volumes of applied educational philosophy, we may feast abundantly–living books and ideas; the primacy of the home in the life and learning of the child; nature studies; art and musical appreciation; the discipline of habits; the knowledge of God, man and the universe; the centrality of history–all of these and more fill the search teacher’s heart and mind with a perspective, a view of teaching and learning that truly comes together” (57). 

Here Beckman sheds light on what an education for persons should be: Holistic. Life-giving. Unified. It must take seriously the full-orbed humanity of students as creatures of mind, heart, body, and soul. But this sort of complexity is difficult to maintain if there is no unified philosophy to keep it together. Beckman continues,

“The fundamental underpinning is the capital idea that the child is born a person–not an object to be manipulated as the behaviorist believes. Not a rudderless and morally neutral explorer as the cognitive theorist would think. Not an animal at the mercy of drives beyond his or her control as believed by the Freudian theorist. But rather a person made in the image of God, both active and interactive in his or her own life and learning. Fully a person, not a person to ‘become’ “(57-58). 

Academic rigor can be a valuable element in a child’s education if it operates within the bounds of what is appropriate for educating persons. This entails viewing students as free and responsible agents, endowed by their Creator with the desire to know deeply, not merely for rigor’s sake, but for the meaning rigor brings through deeper understanding, or wisdom.

The Value and Vanity of Rigorous Work

There is no question that humans were made to work. We see this calling in and throughout scripture, beginning in Genesis 1 with the creation mandate. Work can be enjoyable, life-giving, and fulfilling. When work presents a challenge that engages our abilities in a way that is rigorous but not overwhelming, there is a sense of great joy and accomplishment when the task is completed.

This past weekend, for example, I replaced the storm door on my house. This project took many hours of labor, and before that, many more hours of research. Given both the aesthetic and protective roles a storm door plays, I really needed to get it right. When I finally completed the project, after hours and hours of hard work and being in the flow, I could not have been happier in that moment. Not only because the work was finished, but because I was proud of the work. It was rigorous and therefore rewarding.

But even rigorous work has its limitations. In the book of Ecclesiastes, the author laments,

“I hated all my toil in which I toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 2:18-19 ESV). 

The limitation of our work is that we ourselves are finite creatures, destined to one day breath our last. There is a time when we were not and there will be a time when we will leave our work behind. This stark reality can throw into question the meaning of our work and the rigor it often requires. All that time I put into the storm door–is it really worth it?

The Redemption of Rigor

But the author of Ecclesiastes also provides encouragement:

“I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceived therefore that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil–this is God’s gift to man” (Ecclesiastes 3:10-13 ESV). 

The truth is that the realization of our own finitude, coupled with the realization of the infinitude of God, unlocks for the worker–the person–the student– a sense of peace and security. The security is that all things are in the hands of God, indeed, He has made everything beautiful in its time. God has given us gifts to enjoy throughout our lives and these gifts can be enjoyed and magnified through the work we invest in them.

A Christian, classical response, then, to Part 2 of Teach Like a Champion 2.0 is not to excise academic rigor from the classroom, but to reframe it. When teachers give their students meaningful and rigorous assignments, their personhood is honored and given opportunity to flourish. Indeed, when work is assigned to students that affirms their capacities for freedom, responsibility, and creativity, the rigor of work is injected with meaning. And ultimately, when Christians view work as their God-given duty to cultivate goodness, truth, and beauty for His kingdom, it is redeemed as a core ingredient for a life of service to Christ our Lord.

Other articles in this series:

“Teach Like a Champion” for the Classical Classroom, Part 3: Check for Understanding

“Teach Like a Champion” for the Classical Classroom, Part 2: Teacher-Driven Professional Development

“Teach Like a Champion” for the Classical Classroom, Part 1: An Introduction