Don't forget your history
Know your destiny
In the abundance of water
The fool is thirsty
Rat race, rat race, rat race!

Rat race!
Oh, it's a disgrace
To see the human-race
In a rat race, rat race!
You got the horse race
You got the dog race
You got the human-race
But this is a rat race, rat race!

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

Better Get Used to It

BGUTI actually takes two forms. The positive version holds that it’s beneficial for children to have unpleasant experiences of the type they’ll presumably encounter later. The negative version says that the absence of unpleasant experiences—or the presence of experiences that are “unrealistically” supportive or reassuring—is harmful. Thus, if children are spared from having to do things that cause them anxiety, if they’re permitted to revise and resubmit a school assignment without penalty or introduced to cooperative games (where the point is to accomplish something together rather than trying to defeat one another), a typical response is “That’s not how things work in the real world!”

Kohn, Alfie. The Myth of the Spoiled Child: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom about Children and Parenting (p. 88). Hachette Books. Kindle Edition.

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.

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.

Conditionality, Scarcity, and Deprivation

Behind the claim that rewards are required to motivate people is a commitment to conditionality. Behind the claim that competition produces excellence is a commitment to scarcity. And behind the claim that failure or unhappiness offers useful preparation is a commitment to deprivation.

Kohn, Alfie. The Myth of the Spoiled Child: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom about Children and Parenting (pp. 102-103). Hachette Books.

Conversely, no matter how high the quality of students’ thinking, from this perspective we’ve abandoned our commitment to excellence if a lot of those students receive A’s. This attitude perfectly captures the scarcity mentality, the assumption that education, like life itself, is a race in which most cannot prevail. Once again, that’s not based on the reality that everyone can’t win but on an ideology that confuses succeeding with winning.

Kohn, Alfie. The Myth of the Spoiled Child: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom about Children and Parenting (p. 113). Hachette Books.

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.

Vertical Justifications

This kind of reasoning is especially popular where curriculum is concerned.  Even if a lesson provides little intellectual benefit, students may have to suffer through it anyway because someone decided it will get them ready for what they’re going to face in the next grade.  Lilian Katz, a specialist in early childhood education, refers to this as “vertical relevance,” and she contrasts it with the horizontal kind in which students’ learning is meaningful to them at the time because it connects to some other aspect of their lives.

Vertical justifications are not confined to the primary grades, however.  Countless middle school math teachers spend their days reviewing facts and algorithms, not because this is the best way to promote understanding or spark interest, but solely because students will be expected to know this stuff when they get to high school.  Even good teachers routinely engage in bad instruction lest their kids be unprepared when more bad instruction comes their way.

In addition to forcing educators to teach too much too early, the current Tougher Standards craze has likewise emphasized a vertical rationale – in part because of its reliance on testing.  Here, too, we find that “getting them ready” is sufficient reason for doing what would otherwise be seen as unreasonable.   Child development experts are nearly unanimous in denouncing the use of standardized testing with young children.  One Iowa principal conceded that many teachers, too, consider it “insane” to subject first graders to a 4½-hour test.  However, she adds, “they need to get used to it” – an imperative that trumps all objections.  In fact, why wait until first grade?  A principal in California uses the identical phrase to justify testing kindergarteners:  “Our philosophy is, the sooner we start giving these students tests like the Stanford 9, the sooner they’ll get used to it.”

Getting Hit on the Head Lessons (#) – Alfie Kohn

We Have Normalised Violence

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

Disrupt This Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

But people don’t really get better at coping with unhappiness because they were deliberately made unhappy when they were young.  In fact, it is experience with success and unconditional acceptance that help one to deal constructively with later deprivation.  Imposing competition or standardized tests or homework on children just because other people will do the same to them when they’re older is about as sensible as saying that, because there are lots of carcinogens in the environment, we should feed kids as many cancer-causing agents as possible while they’re small to get them ready.

Getting Hit on the Head Lessons (#) – Alfie Kohn

“You’d better get used to it” not only assumes that life is pretty unpleasant, but that we ought not to bother trying to change the things that make it unpleasant.  Rather than working to improve our schools, or other institutions, we should just get students ready for whatever is to come.  Thus, a middle school whose primary mission is to prepare students for a dysfunctional high school environment soon comes to resemble that high school.  Not only does the middle school fail to live up to its potential, but an opportunity has been lost to create a constituency for better secondary education.  Likewise, when an entire generation comes to regard rewards and punishments, or rating and ranking, as “the way life works,” rather than as practices that happen to define our society at this moment in history, their critical sensibilities are stillborn.  Debatable policies are never debated.  BGUTI becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Getting Hit on the Head Lessons (#) – Alfie Kohn

I’d like to propose a different response: Encourage young people to focus on the needs and rights of others, to examine the practices and institutions that get in the way of making everyone’s lives better, to summon the courage to question what one is told and be willing to break the rules sometimes.

Kohn, Alfie. The Myth of the Spoiled Child: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom about Children and Parenting (p. 178). Hachette Books.

Further Reading

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