A Ladder Up

How to teach more than independence

The cowboy rides off into the sunset, secure in his independence. Horse, gun, steely determination, readiness for whatever the world may throw at him — check. On some level he rides through our collective imagination. The very image of independence, that pillar of American culture. What parent or teacher does not want to develop the skills for independence in their child?

And yet, there are cultures in the world that might consider this single-minded focus on independence to be slightly crazy. I think they have a point. An over-developed sense of independence does not show you how to care for a community, and we are nothing if not a communal species. It does not show you how to resolve conflicts, join and lead teams, or to help a community create and work toward a vision. So this goal of independence, while important, needs a balancing force.

I'd like to propose that we turn this pillar into a ladder, by attaching another pillar to it: that of interdependence. In other words: how we learn to be together. Interdependence is a set of skills and mindsets, much like independence. It is teachable, measurable, and should be developed in equal part to independence. 

If we imagine this ladder, we can see how the two pillars work together to support a series of solid rungs. To get a little more specific, let's focus on adolescents in particular, and some tangible experiences that might develop these abilities. For example:

Some years ago I was inspired to learn that Khan Lab School, an offshoot of the online learning website Khan Academy, had organized their students into Independence Levels instead of grades. Rather than automatically move up a grade once per year, students choose when they're ready to demonstrate their growing independence, receive feedback from others, and when given the green light, then advance to a higher level which offers greater responsibility and more freedom. 

I love this model for the choice and power it gives students, and because it focuses on human rhythms of growth rather than a set, machine-like pattern. Now, what if we added interdependence too? Imagine that students (or kids at home) needed to demonstrate both sets of skills in order to gain more freedom. They could show interdependence by completing one of the tasks in the ladder above, like mastering a conflict-resolution tool, and similarly with independence.

The Japanese school I profiled in an earlier newsletter, Jiyu Gakuen, has a wonderful phrase to describe the goal of these efforts: autonomous harmony. That's what this ladder brings us up to. The ability to manage yourself well (autonomy), while navigating and nurturing our communal world (harmony). Perhaps autonomous harmony is one of the highest goals for education, and what our species needs to survive and thrive.

Update on the Book

I’m putting every spare minute into revising my book, Finding the Magic in Middle School, before it goes to my editor on February 1st. So soon! A Kickstarter campaign will start in February too, helping to pay for the professionals who will turn the manuscript into a beautiful, high-quality book. I can’t believe I resisted using book-writing as an example of needing both independence and interdependence—it certainly fits the bill well!