Over-Responsibility in Education
Anxiety has fundamentally shaped who I am as a teacher. People with anxiety suffer from “cognitive distortions”--thinking patterns that color how we view the world. One common cognitive distortion is called over-responsibility. In this thinking error, the anxious person takes responsibility for things that, in reality, other people are also in control of. If, for example, a date did not go well, it must be your fault–the other person bears no responsibility. This line of thinking, of course, ignores the agency of the other people involved.
I have found, though, that as a teacher, there are many incentives and structures in place that incentivize over-responsibility, even among teachers who don’t suffer from clinical anxiety. For example, under the current “accountability” regime in public education, a student failing a class is the responsibility of the teacher. While there can always be some element of truth within maladaptive thinking, placing the blame solely on teachers denies the agency of the student.
Indeed, in all three schools where I have taught, there is always a huge burden placed on teachers to ensure that all students pass a class at the end of a semester–calling parents, chasing down students at lunch, or allowing students to make up assignments that were due 2 months ago. This, of course, isn’t the fault of administrators–they, too, face pressure from policymakers to ensure high graduation rates, which they then pass down to teachers. But is placing such a high burden on teachers to pass students really good for the student? Students get passed on to the next grade without necessarily having learned the content or skills they need to be successful, and they have learned that as long as they put in minimum effort at the end of a term, they will pass their class. Rinse and repeat.
This is part of a larger problem in education: one that places an emphasis on measurable outputs like graduation rate and seat time without looking at what’s going on under the hood. Under the “serving time” model of education, students merely being present (or, over the past years, even regardless of presence in the classroom) is qualification enough to pass a class.
Ultimately, I believe that there needs to be a rebalancing; we need to honor the agency of students in a developmentally appropriate way and provide supports for students to be able to take responsibility for their actions. But in order for this to happen, we also need to lower the stakes of failure. One reason why there is so much pressure placed on teachers is because failing a class (or failing a term) has so many negative consequences. We, instead, need to normalize struggling and normalize failure by decreasing the impact of failing grades while at the same time demanding that students be able to demonstrate competency before moving on to the next grade.
