In the seventh grade, I turned 13. That year, my classmates and I were allowed to compete in track and field meets for the first time, representing Good ’ol Memorial Jr. High School. My friend David Simons and I became fascinated with the pole vault, and we built a pit in my backyard.
After finishing the pit, we cut down an oak tree limb about 9 feet long to use as our pole. Setting the bar to 7 feet, I approached first and nearly burned the skin off my hands. Next, David attempted his vault, but the tree limb bent almost double, and he fell flat on his back. (Don’t worry; our family’s yard was 4 1/2 acres, so my mom could not see us.)
We scratched our heads and pondered what to do. Finally, we stumbled upon a solution that made all the difference–we lowered the bar. That’s right, we dropped the bar to 4 feet.
The fact was we could almost hurdle the bar at 4 feet. Yet it allowed us to reboot, learn our craft, and eventually raise the bar. We worked at our vaulting, and within a few weeks, we were clearing over 8 feet using sawed-off tree limbs. Amazingly, we never impaled ourselves and somehow survived our experiences. Those are fun memories, and I learned valuable lessons from them, like this: in life, you sometimes have to lower the bar to raise it one day. By that, I mean you have to harmonize conflicting variables—and you can best do that earlier in the process.
For example, twenty years ago, my wife Judy and I were privileged to serve as foster parents. Our first foster child, whom we’ll call Amy, entered our home when she was three years old. Amy came out of a rough environment. Once, the police found Amy sitting on the floor in a remote aisle in a small town grocery store at 2 o’clock in the morning. Amy had wandered over from where she lived while her mother and boyfriend were recreationally using illegal drugs.
This emotional separation between mother and daughter created a lot of pain for Amy, as did the disappearance of her biological father from her life. As you might imagine, Amy arrived at our household with a lot of anger.
At first, we demonstrated an immense amount of understanding. But the stress mounted as Amy continued to lash out. The breaking point came one day when I found her spitting on our nine-year-old daughter.
Exasperated, I let my anger get the best of me and hissed, “Do you think I am as stupid as I look?” I know, brilliant, right?
Bless her heart, she looked at me, her big ‘ol tear-filled brown eyes, nodded her head, and answered, “Yes.”
I laughed and said, “You know what? I think I am, too.” I hugged her, apologized, and then addressed her behavior, which I should have done in the first place.
We didn’t have many “Amys” when I was growing up. Now, sadly, there are too many–too many children growing up in broken homes with fragmented lives.
When my parents were raising me, almost all the children at my school had a mother and father. They sometimes misbehaved. Oh, how they could misbehave! (I could, too!) But rarely in the classroom. Not so today. More children are growing up in environments lacking the structure to nurture them to adulthood effectively.
You’re probably aware of the emotional price for a child. Perhaps you’re not aware of the physical toll. Research continues to reveal that the abuse and neglect many children experience today can unleash a trauma inside their brain so dramatically that it rearranges the brain. This rearrangement impacts in many ways – including the child’s emotional stability and behavior. This is only one example of the damage to the brain that can take place in a home where the child is an afterthought.
All of that to say, we have a problem in contemporary America that has reached a crisis point in public schools. Public schools are, in reality, America’s babysitters. Teachers must attempt to teach unruly kids who choose not to learn. This helps explain Pepperdine University’s study, which found that the average high school graduate will have a substitute teacher for two of his twelve school years. There is a reason these teachers are leaving the classroom.
Let me assert here that if I were king of the world, I would organize the discipline of public school children in a much different way. But I am not. So, I must address public school discipline realistically—not as I wish things were.
Let’s return to my confrontation with Amy. What caused me to stress out and lash out? Unrealistic expectations. Amy was experiencing the emotional equivalent of a soldier traumatized by war. At the deepest level, I expected her to behave like my biological children, who had been reared in a loving home.
Amy had the biological age of a three-year-old but the life experiences of an adult. Emotionally, she was a 1-year-old child trapped in the body of a three-year-old. Life became much more manageable when I made reality my friend and lowered the bar. Happily, Amy’s story had a good ending. Her mother got her life straightened out, and mother and daughter were reunited.
After that, though, I looked at our public schools differently. Many of these schools are filled with students who are emotional second graders trapped in eighth graders’ bodies. To further complicate matters, our federal government has mandated two competing and mutually exclusive goals: public school babysitting and high test scores. Good luck saying to these students—“Snap out of it, obey, and do right.” Many educators view student behavior and test scores as a battle of wills.
In contrast, many students view it as a life-and-death struggle. They will not obey and comply if their fear, anger, or anxiety outweighs everything else. And they will outlast us.
Thankfully, people like the late Professor Karen Purvis (who established the Institute of Child Development at TCU) have redefined how we can strategically love these children and, yes, discipline them in a healthy way that literally and organically recreates healthy brain tissue. These children can become productive and good citizens. All of this entails more conversation, but today, we do well to recognize that, as counterintuitive as it sounds, we need to lower the bar of present expectations to raise the bar of future performance. After all, David Simons pole vaulted 8’6” on a stick for crying out loud! But he had to lower the bar first.
I urge all of us to make reality our friend and agree on one item regarding public education: we need to lower the bar now to elevate performance later.