We don’t prepare students for a world of potential oppression by oppressing them.

How to Ungrade | Jesse Stommel

Observation: The more that someone emphasizes the need to “prepare kids for the real world,” the less likely it is that he or she will focus on preparing kids to improve that world.

Alfie Kohn on Twitter

But let’s take a step back and ponder that phrase “subject kids to unpleasant experiences” in more general terms. We often hear an argument that runs as follows: If adults allow (or perhaps even require) children to play a game in which the point is to slam a ball at someone before he or she can get out of the way, or hand out zeroes to underscore a child’s academic failure, or demand that most young athletes go home without even a consolation prize (in order to impress upon them the difference between them and the winners), well, sure, they might feel lousy—about themselves, about the people around them, and about life itself—but that’s the point. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, and the sooner they learn that, the better they’ll be at dealing with it.

The corollary claim is that if we intervene to relieve the pain, if we celebrate all the players for their effort, then we’d just be coddling them and giving them false hopes. A little thanks-for-playing trophy might allow them to forget, or avoid truly absorbing, the fact that they lost. Then they might overestimate their own competence and fall apart later in life when they learn the truth about themselves (or about the harshness of life). We do them no favors by sheltering them from the fact of their own inadequacy or from the cruelty that awaits them when they’re older.

That’s why a teacher-blogger had no reservations about describing herself as coercive, insisting her approach is justified because, first, “the role of school is inherently to prepare students for adulthood,” and second, “when we become adults, life itself is coercive by nature. Most everything we do, we do with some amount of coercion present, in one form or another.”18 Now take this logic one more step. If children are going to have teachers who coerce them, then parents should start coercing them even before they start school. One parenting author offers the cautionary tale of a boy who was distressed when his preschool teacher punished him; the fault, according to the author, lay with his parents who hadn’t “prepared him for the real world” by punishing him earlier.19

In sum, the best way to get children ready for the painful things that may happen to them later is to make sure they experience plenty of pain while they’re young.

When the premise is spelled out so bluntly, it sounds ridiculous. But that summary captures a mindset that is widely accepted and applied. I call it BGUTI (rhymes with duty), which is the acronym of Better Get Used To It. It brings to mind a Monty Python sketch that featured “getting hit on the head” lessons. When the student recoils and cries out from the pain, the instructor says, “No, no, no. Hold your head like this, then go, ‘Waaah!’ Try it again”—and gives him another smack. Presumably this is extremely useful training . . . for future experiences of getting hit on the head.

Kohn, Alfie. The Myth of the Spoiled Child (pp. 86-87). Hachette Books. Kindle Edition.

Alongside conditionality and scarcity we find the ideological engine behind BGUTI—namely, a determination to make sure that things aren’t too easy for kids. The premise here is not only that deprivation, struggle, and sacrifice are useful preparation for life’s hardships, but that there’s simply something objectionable about sparing kids from having to cope with deprivation, struggle, and sacrifice.22

I’m reminded of a famous ad campaign to sell Listerine mouthwash, which was based on the assumption that because it tasted vile, it obviously had to work well. The flip side of this way of thinking is that we ought to be wary of anything that’s too appealing. “Feel-good” and “touchy-feely” have become all-purpose epithets to disparage whatever seems suspiciously pleasurable. This is particularly true in education, where these terms are often applied to authentic ways of evaluating learning (in place of standardized tests), a course of study that emphasizes creativity (rather than the memorization of facts), and having students learn in cooperative groups (instead of alone or against one another).

Here, again, evidence that such practices are more effective may simply be waved aside. If something is enjoyable, that’s reason enough to describe it as touchy-feely and deem it unworthy of consideration. Progressive educators may make a case for creating a more engaging curriculum or for bringing kids in on making decisions, only to be informed rather huffily that life isn’t always going to be interesting (or responsive to kids’ preferences), and students had better learn to deal with that fact, like it or not.

“Like it or not,” in fact, is a favorite phrase of people who think this way. Another one begins “It’s time they learned that . . . ”—the implication being that children should be introduced to frustration and unhappiness without delay. There’s work to be done! Life isn’t supposed to be fun and games! Self-denial—whose adherents generally presume to deny others as well—is closely connected to fear of pleasure, redemption through suffering, and fury at anyone who coddles or indulges children. H. L. Mencken’s definition of Puritanism seems apt here: “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

Sometimes one suspects that the tacit message from such traditionalists is: “I don’t get everything I want—why should they?” The educator John Holt once remarked that if people really felt that life was “nothing but drudgery, an endless list of dreary duties,” one would hope they might “say, in effect, ‘I have somehow missed the chance to put much joy and meaning into my own life; please educate my children so that they will do better.’”23 Is our primary goal to help kids take delight in learning, or is it to train them to do what they’re told, even if (or especially if) those things are unpleasant?

Kohn, Alfie. The Myth of the Spoiled Child (pp. 113-114). Hachette Books. Kindle Edition.

Regardless of the experiences that might be found among certain individuals, though, to endorse BGUTI is a way of saying to a child, “Your objections don’t count. Your unhappiness doesn’t matter. Suck it up.” (This attitude is made strikingly explicit with posters and buttons that feature a diagonal red slash through the word whining.)24 People who adopt this perspective are usually on top, issuing directives, not on the bottom being directed. “Learn to live with it because there’s more coming later” can be rationalized as being in the best interests of those on the receiving end, but it may just mean “Do it because I said so.” It functions as a tool to ensure compliance, which has the effect of cementing the power of those offering this advice.

Kohn, Alfie. The Myth of the Spoiled Child (p. 115). Hachette Books. Kindle Edition.

Some teachers say, “Life is hard and full of insult. We must prepare children to cope with it by giving them a taste of insult in school.” It is true that modern life is often like a rat race. People struggle to be first in line; they push, wrestle, insult, and lie.

Do we want to prepare children for such life? No. On the contrary. We need to tell children that rat races are not good for people. We want school to be not a replica of, but an alternative to, raw reality. Such a school needs teachers with sophisticated sensitivity and effortless empathy.

Haim Ginott

We have normalised violence against Black people in this country. So normal is this violence that instead of fighting a government that enables the creation of such violent and debilitating conditions for a Black child, we want to talk instead about how Black CHILDREN must just work hard, just endure the pain of poverty, the pain of neglect, the pain of being dehumanised, the pain of being second-class citizens in their own country, and they will be fine. We want to measure the strength of Black CHILDREN by how much pain and suffering they can take without breaking. Suffering is normal to us. We even romanticise it. That distinction is only truly meaningful because the student suffered to have it. We applaud our children for surviving a ruthless system as if it is an initiation into being a functional human-being, when in reality, it creates Black adults who spend their entire lives recovering from their childhoods (and often failing).

This violence that defines Black lives in our country is not normal and we must stop normalising it.

Malaika Mahlatsi

Read more about how “coddling” vs. “preparing for the real world” is bad framing on our “Coddle” glossary page.