September 12, 2024
The National Association of Independent Schools is spotlighting the idea of “navigating the tension between tradition and innovation” as part of a focus on “creating sustainable schools.” Sounds like a noble idea. It certainly connotes respect for tradition and equates the value of tradition with the value of innovation, but in my experience, tradition has been accorded more respect than it often deserves, especially when it is so frequently used to thwart innovation. Typically, tradition is the Goliath, the odds-on favorite, against the much weaker innovator David.
Tradition—the “way we’ve always done things,” the refuge for unexamined practices and assumptions—tends to be tenacious and is often wielded as a weapon by those who fear and loathe change. Plenty of traditionalists still continue today to work to resist legislation that would extend rights to women, people of color, Jews, Arabs, and the long alphabet of the shunned, so I shouldn’t be surprised by the many ways educators continue to brandish tradition to defeat innovation in schools.
I respect tradition. I just believe that people need to be more careful in distinguishing between the traditions that deserve preservation and those that do not. My lifetime in independent schools has taught me that one tradition in particular deserves preservation: the focus on mental and physical health of young people and the desire to help them navigate the often troubled waters of childhood and adolescence. Most school teachers and administrators genuinely like and care about young people. They enjoy getting to know their students, not just in their role as teachers in the classroom but as advisors, mentors, coaches, and (in some schools) even dorm parents. Our mission statements focus on developing the “whole child”—academically, artistically, athletically, ethically, emotionally. This focus on healthy child development is a tradition that needs preservation.
But what happens when traditions clash—when one tradition undermines the goals of another? This conflict is at what I consider to be the heart of what researchers Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and her colleagues are discovering. Traditional school structures and practices subvert not just the healthy development of children and adolescents but even the learning goals and outcomes that educators claim traditional schooling promotes:
Our standard educational systems and structures . . . are generally not designed to prepare students, teachers, and educational systems to operate or meaningfully innovate within evolving civic, cultural, or technological domains. There is a fundamental mismatch between the developmental needs and potentials of youth and the design of the systems in which youth are meant to develop and learn, and this mismatch directly undermines young people’s potential and well-being. . . .
A wide range of evidence from across disciplines supports this shift in understanding and reveals how many of the most tenacious beliefs on which our modern education system is founded are at odds with current psychological and neurobiological evidence. . . .
Too often, the beliefs on which educational decision-making is based . . . conflict with current understandings of the science of development; they do not represent why and how humans actually learn. (Immordino-Yang, et al., 2024)
Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and her colleagues
Essentially, in schools, tradition conflicts with tradition: The traditional aim to ensure successful human development clashes with the desire to retain traditional school structures and practices inimical to healthy development. This self-defeating conflict makes it unlikely that even graduates of our most competitive schools and colleges will have developed the skills and understanding to tackle the various crises that threaten our society and planet. The ability of young people to develop what Immordino-Yang calls “transcendent thinking” (a cognitive process that focuses on implications and meaning and that depends on the healthy development and functioning of three neural networks) provides the foundation for deep learning, morality, successful social functioning, mental wellbeing, and happiness.
Traditional school designs prevent the building of this foundation. Transcendent thinking relies on the healthy functioning of the brain’s default mode network activated for inwardly directed attention, but the practices and structures of schools favor the executive control network, activated for the external attention demanded in most traditional classrooms and activities: “Pay attention. Eyes on me.” “Stay on task.” “Here’s your next worksheet.” Too much externally directed focus seems to impede the ability to toggle smoothly from one network to the other—a significant problem that is compounded by students’ rampant obsession with social media and technology. While educators now devote considerable attention to research into smartphone addiction, they need to pay more attention to research that suggests that heavy reliance on executive control undermines healthy brain development, especially when the observed pattern of healthy brain function revealed during the research is “the OPPOSITE of the patterns that are currently being associated with anxiety and depressive mood disorders in young people.”
Unfortunately, the conflict between traditions is just part of the problem, for there can also be a conflict between innovations. On one hand are innovations that focus on addressing “the mismatch between the developmental needs and potentials of youth” and the designs of the schools themselves. These innovations question everything about the standardized, one-size-fits-all structures, practices, and policies that continue to characterize most schools. On the other hand, and far more popular, are innovations that come in the form of band aids, “interventions” that provide educators with the illusion that they can retain the traditional structures and school design that undermine healthy human development and learning. In short, many traditionalists and many innovators share the same goal: to maintain the systemic status quo.
The waters (“the tension”) between tradition and innovation are much more turbulent than many educators want to pretend. Teachers and administrators will benefit from becoming more aware of the cross currents and shoals. A good strategy might be to carefully assess the worthiness and effects of the specific traditions that they want to preserve and the worthiness and effects of the specific innovations they want to adopt. But before they undertake these assessments, they need a context in which to make the assessments: a context resulting from reading, studying, and understanding the research that focuses on healthy human development and “how humans actually learn” rather than the research that results only in tinkering with a system that does neither. To focus only on “learning outcome” strategies like improving memory, recall, and test scores is to miss the point. Sustainable schools will rest on an ever-evolving understanding of learning, the brain, and human development and on a willingness to change. Resistance will result in extinction.
Immordino-Yang puts the challenge succinctly: “At the core of the solution is a paradigm shift in how we understand human learning and development and the purpose of schools.” She goes on to say, “We think of learning as the aim of school, but actually it isn’t. It shouldn’t be. The aim of school is development.”
Creating sustainable, effective, healthy learning environments requires that all of us—parents, teachers, administrators, school boards, politicians—all of us understand the developmental processes and structures that support meaningful learning. A good place to start building this understanding is with the very readable paper Immordino-Yang and her colleagues recently published:
“Weaving a Colorful Cloth: Centering Education on Humans’ Emergent Developmental Potentials,”
by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang (University of Southern California)
Na’ilah Suad Nasir (The Spencer Foundation)
Pamela Cantor (Arizona State University)
Hirokazu Yoshikawa (New York University)
You may also be interested in reading more articles written by Alden Blodgett for Intrepid Ed News.
