Rigor in Schools

This week’s article summary is Out of the Shadows and its focus is the debate in education about rigor.

If you ask parents what they want for their children in school, most will say a ‘rigorous’ education.

The challenge for schools is that the word ‘rigor’ means different things to different people.

For most, a ‘rigorous’ education equates to a lot of work, especially homework. 

One of my kids as a high school senior took an AP American History class because he thought it would look good on his transcript. He didn’t particularly like history (his interests were more math, science, and technology) yet he thought he could handle this class. The problem for him was the course required a herculean amount of daily reading. He couldn’t keep up and didn’t have enough of a history knowledge base to help him read and digest the material more quickly. Two weeks into the class, he knew he was in over his head. 

His AP history class was clearly rigorous yet he didn’t get much out of it except a lot of frustration and a distaste for history.

The term ‘rigor’ needs to be redefined. For me, the article provides a better definition: Rigor in schools is ‘the degree to which a student is in equal parts intellectually challenged, engaged, enriched, and empowered.’

While last week’s article summary discussed the negatives of Bloom’s Taxonomy, the taxonomy at least helps a teacher avoid solely focusing on one type of thinking. AP American history for my son provided  challenge but no engagement, enrichment, or empowerment. 

The article reminds us as teachers to avoid an onerous workload for our students and to provide them with ‘provocative, stimulating, sometimes vexing challenges of grasping complex ideas that make learning meaningful and rewarding.’

We in elementary schools naturally implement the article’s definition of rigor in our classrooms to help our kids develop, as the article says, ‘emotional intelligence, listening and empathy, collaboration, creativity, problem solving, generosity, and fairness’. 

Of course, we teach a lot of content knowledge, yet we do so in a way that asks much more of our students than simply reading a ponderous textbook.

Joe

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Academic rigor has been “catnip” for many parents who associate it with favorable outcomes ranging from high standardized test scores and weighted grades to the grand prize, admission to elite colleges and universities.

But what does rigor mean in the classroom? 

The usual association is with difficulty – rigorous classes are hard – and not necessarily that they are intellectually challenging and conceptually deep. Rigor is more often associated with piled-on reading, homework, and assignments that produce anxiety, sleep deprivation, isolation, and emotional fatigue. Rigor as suffering.

This is not to suggest that academic achievement, ambition, or aspiration aren’t worthy and noble drivers, but there is an argument to be made against unnecessary, unhealthy, and inhumane academic distress – about the peril and the ethics of putting student achievement ahead of student wellness, and the fallacy that the two are competing aims. The additional layers of stress placed on young people during the pandemic have added urgency to the need to rethink rigor in middle and high schools. 

The irony is that parents who push schools to implement the hard-nosed conception of rigor are not helping their children prepare for the “best” careers. Many elite companies are looking for a different set of skills: emotional intelligence, listening and empathy, collaboration, creativity, problem-solving, generosity, and fairness. Certainly students need exposure to direct instruction, core knowledge, memorization and recall, and automaticity – and some students truly blossom when fed and watered by facts, but this is only part of what young people require to lead fulfilling lives. 

Here’s a new definition of rigor: The degree to which a student is in equal parts intellectually challenged, engaged, enriched, and empowered. The big idea is challenge, not in the sense of an onerous workload but the provocative, stimulating, sometimes vexing challenge of grasping complex ideas that make learning meaningful and rewarding (as well as empowering) to master. And this has to be tuned to students’ incoming knowledge, skills, and attitudes, so that work is at the Goldilocks level – not too difficult and not too easy. 

As schools courageously embrace a new conception of rigor that rises above merely a crushing workload, we expect to see both increased student wellness and higher levels of more-meaningful academic achievement. Even the most driven parents should be persuadable around the goal of producing graduates who are also healthy, well-adjusted, confident, and happy.