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Making the Wise Choice
by Skip Downing, Baltimore City Community College
For the last decade, I have sought to identify the choices that maximize success both in college and in life. Many of the best ideas come from innovators in education, psychology, business, sports, and personal effectiveness. As a result of what I have learned, I created and teach a course at Baltimore City Community College called the College Success Seminar. This course teaches students how to make the wise choices that empower us all to create more of what we want in life.
I quickly learned, however, that students need more than one course to reinforce their efforts to make wiser choices. Changing old habits isn’t easy. Just as students who are studying composition benefit from writing across the curriculum, so do students who are learning to make wiser choices benefit from practicing this skill across the curriculum. Consequently, I began revising my English and speech classes to help those students experience the transformational power of wise choices. The results have often been heartening and occasionally even life changing. No surprise there. After all, if we help students improve the quality of their choices, we will surely help them improve the outcomes of their lives.
I know that some educators will say, "It’s fine to be concerned about guiding students’ choices and transforming their lives, but I have a subject to teach. I don’t have time for anything extra." I understand this objection. I held this same view for twenty years: by god, it’s the 11th week of the semester, and I haven’t even gotten to the research paper!
"Collateral learning is not some educational fad we can ignore,
hoping it will pass by like so many other trends du jour."
But the reality is, there’s no escaping the invisible curriculum. As John Dewey pointed out, "Perhaps the greatest of all pedagogical fallacies is the notion that a person learns only that particular thing he is studying at the time. Collateral learning in the way of formation of enduring attitudes, of likes and dislikes, may be and often is much more important than the spelling lesson or lesson in geography or history that is learned. For these attitudes are fundamentally what count in the future."
As educators, then, we don’t have a choice about whether our students learn collateral lessons. Collateral learning is not some educational fad we can ignore, hoping it will disappear like so many other trends du jour. Collateral learning exists whether we attend to it or not! It always has. It always will. Here then, are our choices: We can ignore our students’ collateral learning...or we can make a conscious effort to influence their enduring attitudes and resulting behaviors.
My observations, research, and personal experiences have led me to select the following eight choices that I teach overtly in student success courses and collaterally in my academic courses.
- SELF-RESPONSIBILITY. Successful people accept personal responsibility for creating the quality of their lives. As one of my students put it, "Oh, I get it! I’m driving my own car through life. At every fork in the road, I decide which way to turn." Exactly! Wise choices of self-responsible students include postponing instant gratification in the service of long-term goals; eliminating victim language (i.e., excuses, complaints, and blame) from their vocabulary; and believing that they are ultimately responsible for the quality of their education.
- SELF-MOTIVATION. Successful people create their own inner motivation rather than depending on others to prod them through life. Older, returning students are often a joy to teach for this very reason: They have their own purpose for wanting to learn. Wise choices of self-motivated students include discovering meaningful personal dreams; writing down specific short- and long-term goals as stepping stones to their dreams; and visualizing their ideal future in vivid detail. As Carl Rogers observed, "It seems clear that when students perceive that they are free to follow their own goals, most of them invest more of themselves in their effort, work harder, and retain and use more of what they have learned."
The reality is, there’s no escaping the invisible curriculum.
- SELF-MANAGEMENT. Successful people know that most goals and dreams are achieved by taking purposeful actions persistently over time. Thomas Henry Huxley wrote, "Perhaps the most valuable result of education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not." I have polled nearly a thousand college educators in faculty development workshops I have led, and the overwhelming majority say that successful students choose to attend classes regularly; to do all assignments well and turn them in on time; and to participate actively in class. (Sure, you know this, but do your students? I suggest that if they don’t do it, then they don’t really know it.)
- INTERDEPENDENCE. Successful people develop mutually supportive relationships. They understand that, as Maya Angelou said, "Nobody but nobody can make it out here alone." Wise choices of interdependent students include forming and using study groups; seeking out-of-class help from instructors; and utilizing college support services like writing labs.
- SELF-AWARENESS. Successful people are aware of whether or not they are on course to their goals and dreams, and when they are not, they implement appropriate course-corrections. "We first make our habits," John Dryden noted, "and then our habits make us." Fortunately, self aware people can choose new habits. Wise choices of self-aware students include acknowledging when they are off course; identifying and revising self-defeating behavior patterns (like chronic lateness); and experimenting with new, more empowering attitudes and beliefs.
- ACTIVE AND LIFE-LONG LEARNING. Successful people possess abundant curiosity and a powerful process of learning that makes them active seekers of personally relevant knowledge - knowledge that enables them to move steadily toward their goals and dreams. Wise choices of active and life-long learners include asking insightful questions; heeding feedback; and seeing all of life’s experiences (including failures, mistakes, and obstacles) as teachers of essential lessons.
- OPTIMISM, HAPPINESS, AND INNER PEACE. Successful people have effective strategies for creating a positive experience of life, and this talent pays off in observable results. Psychologist Martin Seligman discovered that positive people maximize their potential: "In school, on the playing field, and at work, the optimistic individual makes the most of his talent. And we now know why. The optimistic individual perseveres." Pessimists, he found, fall prey to learned helplessness and are likely to give up at the first sign of difficulty. Wise choices of positive students include honoring their emotions; seeing opportunity in a crisis; and attributing setbacks to causes that are temporary, of narrow scope, and not a result of a permanent personal flaw.
- SELF-ESTEEM. Successful people demonstrate self-acceptance, self-confidence, self-respect, self-love, and unconditional self-worth. As psychologist Nathaniel Brandon remarked, "Of all the judgments we pass, none is as important as the one we pass on ourselves." Wise choices of self-esteeming students include separating self-worth from results; taking positive risks; and lovingly nurturing themselves.
In advocating the teaching of these eight wise choices (or other collateral learning) across the curriculum, I am not suggesting that we abandon or even dilute our academic disciplines. Rather I am suggesting that we become more creative in how we teach our subjects. We can consciously influence our students’ collateral learning by making purposeful choices in six domains: teaching methods, home assignments, evaluations and feedback, rules and policies, the learning environment, and our own modeling of wise choices.
By using these six domains to teach students collaterally how to make wise choices, our colleges will not only impart knowledge and skills, they will fulfill the greatest mission of any educational institution: empowering students to live rich, personally fulfilling lives.
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