The Rigors of Cooperation

Over the course of my 25 years working at progressive independent schools, I’ve picked up on something from parents, sometimes boldly, sometimes in the form of wisps of concern: a nagging worry that their children’s education will be soft. Overly idealistic, overly curated or too precious maybe? Not *real world* enough. I hear sentiments like, “It’s hard out there,” “The world is competitive,” “Does my child need to toughen up?” I intuit an unspoken fear underneath these intimations: “Will my child be prepared?” I’m here to say that staying committed to, staying invested in, and living out progressive education ideals and the values expressed in Westland’s mission is actually tougher than traditionally structured schooling or the “real world” out there. Not only that, I contend progressive education is preparing our children better for the real world. 

What Westland does is different. Our default is collaboration, not individual work. Westland’s default is cooperation, not competition. Westland’s default is finding satisfaction and curiosity from within, not through outward rewards or threats, like grades. Westland has been countercultural for 75 years; we still are. 

As I was exploring this notion –  that whole child education and placing a robust emphasis on social-emotional learning is harder and rigorous in its own way when compared to more traditional competitive approaches to education – I was delighted to read David Brooks’ perspectives in The Atlantic following the election. Brooks outlines the issues currently plaguing our modern meritocratic society and his concern that “People no longer grow up learning how to be decent to one another.” (In fact, a current Westland grandfather, who sent his children to Westland, put a hard copy of The Atlantic on my door with the message, “The case for Westland!”)

Brooks writes about solutions. Brooks really is making the case for Westland: “Elementary schools and high schools should require students to take courses that teach good social skills, and thus prepare them for life with one another. We could have courses in how to be a good listener or how to build a friendship.” This is what Westland has always done, what we do, and what we will keep on doing. 

I picture in my mind a slide projected during the Group One Curriculum Night each fall. It’s a list of the social-emotional skills that the children in Group One will be developing throughout their first year at Westland. I see it as the list that children in all groups are developing at Westland from there on out: 

• Naming and expressing feelings and emotions

• Developing self-awareness

• Figuring out positive ways of connecting and joining play

• Developing tools for managing big feelings

• Learning how to ask, “What do I need?” 

• Noticing and listening to what others need

• Developing empathy

• Building resilience

• Feeling empowered with decision-making 

• Building the habit of reflection 

Some of these exact concepts are in the Atlantic article. And what strikes me is that these are skills that I am still working on as an adult human! (And I imagine you are too.) These are skills that I use every day in my professional work, in my volunteer work, in my life as a parent, partner, friend, and citizen. These skills are not easy, nor are they soft. They are rigorous. 

The practice of having accurate self-awareness, building resilience through hardship, learning to ask for what I need while being cognizant of what others around me need – these skills are harder than any multiple-choice test or final. They are skills that last a lifetime, not from test to test. 

Here’s the catch, too. Children need these skills to pursue academic, intellectual and creative pursuits. When I think about the persuasive essays Group Six wrote recently, skills like “building resilience” and “learning to ask ‘What do I need?’” are as imperative to learning as how to compose a compelling thesis. And the children need many of these skills in order to write a compelling thesis, to find solid evidence, and to dig into their analysis – all the while generously supporting the writing process of their classmates, not trying to “one up” them. We believe it is important for children to know how to be a good friend, and to be decent within an academic setting.

I wonder what the cost of being competitive is, growing up with the desire to be better than others. I wonder, what is the cost of not learning how to take on the perspectives of others? What is the cost of plowing through an issue with little to no self-awareness? What is the cost of not learning about emotions and stuffing big feelings instead of dealing with them? What is the cost of not knowing to ask for what I actually need in order to draw necessary boundaries? What is the cost of mindlessly moving onto one task or test after the last, processing on a solely cognitive level without tending to emotional intelligence? 

Being task-oriented might be easier in the short term and avoiding habits of reflection feels more comfortable. But our children are humans. They deserve these social-emotional skills. They need them too – as teenagers and adults. Children are not, as Brooks admonishes, our “little avatars of success.” Yikes. And not only is Brooks thinking about what our children and young adults need, but he is thinking about what our world needs: a counter to the current flawed system. 

It is helpful to know that an alternative calling is steeped in history. Social-emotional learning isn’t a modern-day movement. It’s not a new craze or fad. One of my commands this year as Westland celebrates its 75th anniversary and celebrates its progressive principles comes from Colonel Francis Wayland Parker: “A school should be a model home, a complete community, an embryonic democracy." I have been meditating on his words often, this being a big year for our democracy and a big year for Westland, where we celebrate democracy in education. Parker called schools “a home,” not a factory. Parker called schools “a community,” not an institution for individual pursuits. Parker called schools an embryo, which is a warm place of growth, not a bubble that is fragile and pops. His intentional words emphasize what I deeply know to be true: that learning is a social act. It is this fact that makes learning lifelong for Westland children. 

John Dewey, so often called “The Father of Progressive Education,” actually deemed Francis Parker the Father of Progressive Education! I believe that Colonel Francis Wayland Parker is an American hero. Off the top of my head, he has schools named after him in California, Illinois, and Massachusetts. Born in New Hampshire in 1837, Parker started out as an elementary school teacher who began his career in education in a one-room schoolhouse at age 16. Following the Civil War, Parker founded several schools that emphasized critical thinking over rote education. He believed in whole-child education. He believed in democracy. When I read Francis Parker’s work, I am consistently making connections to Westland’s mission statement and progressive philosophy. 

When I think about Parker’s life experience, I slow down and consider, “Here’s a man who fought in a war – as traumatic and sobering as it gets – and he returned to the philosophy of developing not only children’s academic skills but their moral and social-emotional skills too.” Parker and progressive education thinkers like him knew what we know now (and what David Brooks knows), that our society desperately needs schools to tend to the whole child and the inextricable connection among children’s social-emotional development, academic development, and physical development. 

This past month at the “Westland Eats!” Salon, three alumni parents whose children are now in their 20’s and 30’s, approached me separately with sweet and earnest sincerity to let me know how good their adult children are. “Melinda, we know we owe it to Westland.” They described adult children who are humbly confident, look people in the eye, care for others, and have jobs of meaning and purpose. The word goodness came through again and again in these conversations. I wondered to myself, not knowing these parents who were at Westland in the 90s and early 00s, what was their experience as parents? Did they have this confidence back then? How did they move through the journey of faith to conviction, or were they always convicted? I thought of that Group One Curriculum Night list. 

This is a list, indeed, for society. This is a list for us all. This is the list our children get to experience every day – not only as they learn to be friends and community members but also as they learn to be readers, writers, researchers, scientists, artists, thinkers, and lifelong learners. This is a list for good people who know to serve the commonwealth. This is a David Brooks list and a Francis Parker list. This is, indeed, a Westland list. 

Brooks asks something I have asked, too: are we, as parents, willing to step out of the frenzy for our children? Our society desperately needs a critical mass of parents to do so. More importantly, our children need us to do it too.