A Bridge to Cross the Rivers of Life: Inspiring (In)dependent Learners

This post originally appeared as a guest post on the blog of Dr Ron Ritchhart of Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero.

“No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the rivers of life.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche.

Over the past few months I, and a team of colleagues here in Milan, Italy, have been participating in Project Zero’s online course Creating Cultures of Thinking. Along with my responsibilities as a department head I spend most of my time teaching philosophy and the Theory of Knowledge, so the notion of Cultures of Thinking seemed to make obvious and appealing sense to me. Of course we need deep and rich thinking cultures in our schools, I thought to myself. After all, as a philosopher thinking is at the very heart of what I teach . What I came to see, over the months of working with my team and other colleagues in teams around the world, was that there were wider dimensions to building that kind of culture than I’d yet realised.

At the centre of our teaching practice exists a set of relationships. The relationships we hold with our schools and institutions, those we hold with our colleagues, those we hold with parents and the communities we teach within and at the centre of all these nested relationships are the relationships we hold with our students. These relationships run in many directions because just as our students depend on us in all manner of ways we depend on them too. How these lines of dependence and independence operate benefits from careful thought and attention as the relationship between dependence and independence is complex and difficult. 

Through participating in the Creating Cultures of Thinking online course the change, for me, has been in understanding these complexities and difficulties - seeing where they emerge and how, seeing the role they play in balancing dependence and independence, and coming to learn how I can begin to shape, change, and structure these aspects of my teaching and my students’ learning.

Sharpen your axe

I’ve referred in the past to a line I had always heard came from Lincoln though I’ve still not checked if that’s the case or if it is apocryphal. It’s one of those lines that’s so true it doesn’t seem to matter if it’s not true at all; supposedly Lincoln said that if you’ve got two hours to cut down a tree spend the first 90 minutes sharpening the axe. Through the Creating Cultures of Thinking online course I’ve come to think that the culture I build as a teacher and educator is that axe-sharpening time. I am often tempted, pressured, even encouraged, to spend as much time as possible hacking away at the tree but I have to resist. I have to sharpen the axe. This takes time, it takes diligence, it takes consistency and habit. 

If I am thinking about dependence and independence in the metaphor of sharpening the axe, I’m laying the groundwork for other successes to occur and, as in the metaphor, it takes the lion’s share of the time.

Do less but do it better

I had worried for a long time that my students were too dependent on me. I felt that their parents and their culture made them overly needy, that the schooling system, and school as an institution fostered and encouraged that dependency and, as a teacher, I fed it too. I was concerned that I was producing young people who could jump through the hoops given to them but would flounder when the challenge shifted or when the rules changed. I spoke to parents who asked what additional work I could give their sons and daughters, I met with students who asked to be given examples, structures, plans, and papers - all which, I was concerned, made them successes in a narrow range but entirely dependent on me and what I could give them.

When I tried to push away from this current that I thought I saw I encountered difficulty and resistance. Students would underperform, work wouldn’t be completed, complaints would come in from those in my class as well as their parents. I took this as a sign of failure, on my part.

A healthy dependence, a healthy independence

I think I see the fundamental relationship differently now. I see dependence and independence as both carrying with them potentially unhealthy and healthy approaches to teaching and learning. I see them as running in a complimentary, even intertwined manner - what is crucial is not dependence or independence *in themselves* but the nature and form of that relationship. We cannot have students who exist entirely independently of us. That is not to say learning cannot take place without a teaching relationship, plenty of times we do and must learn by ourselves, but the purpose of school is to teach and learn within a relationship and that is predicated on a form of dependency. The reciprocity of learning can only exist if we depend on one another. 

The shift to online learning of late has helped me see some of this with greater clarity. With much of the extraneous trappings of the school system removed or stripped away it opens up to greater clarity the relationships that are at the heart of what we do. I have been able to see that it is not down to walls, and resources, and books, and materials - although these can all be valuable tools - but it is absolutely, and fundamentally, about the relationships built and nurtured.

Striking a balance

Most tellingly I’ve realised a few very key things about dependency and independency through working with Creating Cultures of Thinking as well as through the shift in how we have all been teaching in the last few months. I’ve seen that dependency in students is necessary and healthy, but that it has to be of a particular form. It must be the relationship that is needed, rather than what I can give, provide, or distribute. If I am just a means to an end the dependency is not healthy and I, and the teaching I provide, and possibly education more generally, will run like a commodity. If it is me who is needed for who I am then that dependency can be healthy, it can be regulated by the input and thought of the individuals involved. 

I have also seen that independence is not an a priori good, but is good only in particular forms. Again, if that independence is because those around the student are no longer of use as furnishers of answers, or past papers, or grades then the independence is empty, it is meaningless. The kind of independence that matters is that of being equipped to form other relationships of learning and growth. These two factors, when healthy, are not mutually exclusive. A student can have a dependency on the teaching relationship that has been formed as well as the independence to forge and foster new learning relationships. A balance is needed. 

The relationships run both ways

I have also come to see that this balance runs both ways. We look at how our students are, how they are engaging, succeeding, and improving, but I am also part of this learning relationship. It cannot be healthy if it is only sustainable and valuable for one party. The relationships of learning formed with students must balance dependence and independence for the teacher too. We have to see our students as more than receptacles for homework and teaching and we have to understand that we are, in a very significant manner, dependent on them - as people, as learners, as other minds and lives we come in to contact with - whilst also holding our own healthy and robust independence. 

I need to hold my nerve when I feel, instinctively, that time spent building balanced, healthy, organic relationships is time well spent. I need to remember that the relationships run both ways and my sense of dependence and independence plays a powerful role in the learning relationships that I build. I need to see that neither dependence nor independence are goods in themselves but are only good if they are in their right and proper form. To do this I want to resist the structural and cultural urge to go fast, cover lots of material, and be “productive”. I want to hold on to the desire for depth as that is the space in which the richer relationships can form and lasting learning can bloom.

I have seen brought into greater clarity how crucial language and emulation are to this process and those will be the tools that will help me reach the point I aspire to. I have to speak in a way that builds, reflects and demonstrates the relationships and that community I am looking to construct, and I must act and live in a way that makes present what I am wanting to be part of.

When I teach the *Tao Te Ching*, the students are often struck by many verses but it is usually a few very particular lines that stay with them. One which particularly resonates here comes at the end of Verse 38:

Therefore the Master concerns themself,

with the depths and not the surface,

with fruit, and not flower.

(Trans. Stephen Mitchell)