The Point Is - That's One of the Points

When three astronauts died during the plugs-out test of the Apollo 1 capsule, an investigation was held to determine the cause.  If you look this up today, you will find the official cause stated as an arc from a frayed wire.  When I teach my 8th-graders about this event, I ask them, "If the wire in the outlet next to you arced right now, would it kill you?"  This answer is, of course not.  The kid closest to the spark would scream, and we would smell burning wire, and that would likely be it.  While the spark from the wire initiated the Apollo 1 fire, there were many complicating factors that resulted in the death of the astronauts.  There was 100% oxygen in the spacecraft under 19 psi of pressure.  There was far more velcro (highly flammable in high oxygen) in the cabin than regulations called for, and they couldn't escape because the manual hatch could not be pushed outward once the fire had dropped the air pressure inside the ship.  It was a complex interaction of causes that made this simple wire arc into a fatal event.

We like for life to be simple.  You see it after every tragic event.  What was the cause?  Who was the one at fault?  We see it in disease analysis, blaming vaccines for autism and deodorant for cancer and aluminum pans for Alzheimer's disease.  Obviously, all of these maladies are more complicated than that as we have been studying them for years without knowing their cause.  We like to simplify things because we fool ourselves into believing they will be easy to fix.  Fire the right person or remove the offending ingredient, and you have solved the problem.  We know, however, that life is more interesting than that.  Almost everything in life results from a complicated mix of cascading causes and effects.

Spend a minute on educational Twitter or sitting in a faculty meeting, and you will observe the same phenomenon.  You will hear people say, "Well, the point is . . ." about a lot of things as though things have only one point.  You can trade in a lot of your goals by pretending there is only one point in education.  If you believe the point is that your students get into college, then you will be fine with writing off the last semester of your class to senioritis because you forget that your curriculum has intrinsic value and that the skills students learn in your class are worth more than college entrance.  If you believe the point is job training, you will be fine with tracking kids from a young age and not care if they miss out on something that could have enriched their lives outside of their future career.  Those who don't want to deduct points for late work will say, "The point is that they learn the material, not when they learn it."  

Maybe, I'm just old or maybe it is because I teach the Apollo 1 fire, but I sit in these meetings thinking, "No, that's not THE point.  It's only one of the points."  Every school bag, cup, coaster, and note pad I have says "Equipping Students for Life" on it, and I take that motto seriously.  Teaching students that due dates don't matter is not properly equipping them because they will not be able to call the electric company and say, "I don't know why you charged me a late fee.  The point is that I paid it, not when I paid it."  When I make choices about projects, I know life would be easier for everyone if they did the project alone.  Group projects, by their nature, ensure that no one person learns all of the material or engages all of the skills.  If, however, I am going to equip students for life, I have to give them the opportunity to navigate the messy world of collaboration because they will most surely be doing it in the business world.  If the point is simply learning the material, the most efficient way to learn the most material would be reading the book and testing them on it, but we all know that isn't how school should work because it isn't the only point.  We want them to be inspired by the material, so we ask them to interact with it, play with it, reflect on it, and synthesize it.  

We all, in practice, do school differently than we would if THE point was just that they learn the material.  So, stop saying out loud (or typing into Twitter) that the point is simply learning the material.  You know that life is more complicated than that.  You know that you want so much more for your students than that.  If you want to make a point, acknowledge the complexity and be willing to recognize the effect of any change you make.  It may be a good consequence.  It may not.  You may decide the benefit is worth the cost.  You may conclude the opposite.  What you should not do is sacrifice your common sense for the sake of simplicity.  If this work were simple, anyone could do it.  The next time you are tempted to say, "The point is," ask yourself if it is truly the only point.  Chances are, the answer is no.