A recent best seller in ‘The Power
of Habit’ Charles Duhigg discusses the power of habits and how to
get good habits to help your life. The habits formed and reinforced
through education are not particularly covert, abstract or
complicated, and yet many bad habits are formed and reinforced mostly
by default. To be excellent at anything requires doing important
things habitually. Doing things everyday or one particular day a week
or month etc. is easier than every 2 or 3 days or when needed. One
quote from a top wrestling coach was ‘if it is important do it
every day’. If excellence or any high standard is the aim then it
is essential to do certain things everyday (good habits) and some
things (bad habits) hardly ever if at all. Top level sports people
have to work their muscles with good technique of the essential
skills practically daily. They also have to develop fitness and
mental aspects similarly daily or habitually. Avoiding bad diet, bad
technique and distractions is also part of the mix. For a musician
the daily practice or any job is the same pattern. Also being a
competent, healthy person needs the same pattern if not at the same
level as the top performers.
The easiest habits to keep are the
ones you start young. This is where education can contribute (but
positively please). Getting the learning and the health habits are
key. Here a key factor is motivation. The old model comes from the
ancient battlefield and royal palaces. Here for an army (could be
servants) need to work together doing the right thing at the same
time and coordinated between all areas. No army has ever done it
perfectly, but like the best music conductors with the best musicians
amazing results can be created with this coordinated effort. The
famous battles and generals are studied and restudied and
occasionally actually learnt from by the later generations of
generals. Education is not usually (but there is room for) putting
together a group (team or group) for high performance. The first
stages are to help the development of good and excellent
practitioners. The autocratic approach requires the performers or
learners to be motivated mainly by obedience acting on cue or
expectation. The traditional method of getting obedience of course
was the death of those that failed to conform and perform. This may
have been toned down within schools (but yes that’s where the model
came from) to increasingly lesser punishments, but without this
disciplined action of learners performance suffers. In war the army
without discipline often died in or around battle. In the classroom
if an autocratic approach is to succeed discipline with fear is
essential. Take away the fear of punishment and the performance is
reduced.
So the habit of motivated learning and
practice is needed where discipline comes internally. This has to be
encouraged and nurtured (with progression and development). Many
education environments simply ignore and prevent internal motivation.
Once these people are not punished at every turn, progress is
prevented. Early teaching (and parenting) needs to discover the
internal motivation and help with provision and guidance to develop.
When a child trusts the abilities and intention of the guider they
will listen, cooperate and practice. Guiding the learner to question
effectively on learning and competence rather than question authority
and disrupting (having seen adults make mistakes and fall back on
their status to keep the power position). It is looking back at where
behaviours come from. Why are learners in large numbers often
distracted, unmotivated, uncooperative and generally non progressive.
Here is where ignorance of the learner in large groups magnifies the
later difficulties. Early de-motivation has to be recognised and
turned round. Developing the good habits is the key. Later it may be
one habit at a time but early on it must be just good habits all the
time.
The
first skill is to risk assess the important things. In life the
skills of communication and numbers form the basis of academic
learning. Movement, nutrition and sleep form the basis of health.
These of course need to be started prior to school age. For instance
your taste buds develop before school age and your tastes for either
healthy or unhealthy are massively affected
before 3 years of age. Choosing good habits in what a learner is
motivated in is more important than drilling badly and incompletely a
prescribed skill or knowledge. These build up resistance to teachers
and parents (who
have credibility issues) and
create a competitive situation against
progress. Now trying to be a perfect parent is a pipe dream (rather a
Sisyphus like task) The causes of resistance to progress need to be
addressed for a non autocratic approach. Allowing people to profit
from resistance building where unhealthy (physical and mental)
products and services distract from children’s development. Just as
Tobacco companies have been restricted and made to pay (ish) for the
damage their products do. Other industries need to pay the price of
making their profit (not just financial!) These promote bad habits.
Where some people form groups as the
larger community alienates them in a self protection pattern. The
same is done for other unhealthy habits that compensate for the lack
of provision and acceptance. The ‘bad’ behaviour is a symptom of
other behaviour. When you have the power of a king you can use fear
to motivate. To encourage rather than force requires early ‘good’
habits. It is always funny when the oldies blame the youth, who do
they think the ‘youth’ learnt from?
All the way through education but also
the rest of life the good habits need to be encouraged and made easy.
Very few work places make healthy habits easy often preventing them
and not paying the price of the consequences of bad habits of their
workers that they contribute to. Maintaining as well as developing
good habits go together.
This is not a new idea religions have
been enforcing ritual for thousands of years. Demanding obedience and
conformity. Rather than superstition perhaps health and learning
could be encouraged as a positive alternative to superstition and bad
habits.
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