Why Education Is Important

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By high school, many boys (and some girls) have disengaged from their studies and no longer apply themselves.

Even for the estranged, however, teachers can foster resonant interactions with students and between students.

Team competition, especially for boys, can enhance motivation, create accountability, and promote cooperation.

“I spent a year as a high school teacher. I was shocked to discover the cleverness and ingenuity of the dumb boys.” These words come from Redford (pseudonym), a remarkable young man I interviewed in September. The “dumb boys,” of whom his math classroom was chiefly composed, were those who had disengaged from their studies years earlier and no longer applied themselves with any real effort. In his classroom, he maintained, they came alive.

It is no secret that by high school, many boys (and some girls too, of course) feel little self-assurance in the classroom. They may be confident elsewhere, such as on a sports team, yet, toward schoolwork, they have become indifferent or dismissive. They find instruction an imposition and become unreceptive to it. Many conclude their teachers dislike them and have even given up on them.

Many factors contribute to these attitudes, and I’ve written earlier about the debilitating effects of early education and the felt absence of compelling reasons to invest or work hard. But whatever the reason, for many boys, school is boring, conflictual, alienating.

Even for the estranged, however, as Redford’s experience illustrates, classrooms can become places of vibrancy and connection. In terms of what inspires and invigorates students, it is fair to say the actual curriculum plays only a secondary role. The real factors are resonant interactions, both among the students themselves as well as with the teacher.1 There is no formula for this, but Redford’s unorthodox experiment suggests three approaches that can promote engagement.

Teachers often recognize that the curriculum and especially its rigid enforcement can get in the way of learning. They lament how the obsessive focus on student achievement metrics has led to a high-surveillance, low-trust, and intensely programmed school day. Under this regime, education can get reduced to........

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