THE GREAT SCAM. Opinion Section by David Cerdá

The principle of maximum effort

Mankind has forged its extraordinary evolutionary success on merit and effort

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David Cerdá

The controversy about effort and meritocracy is an invention: no author and no serious person has ever suggested that effort is enough and that there are no other factors, like socioeconomic, that affect students. But one thing is certain: the more vulnerable one is, the more will depend on his effort to be capable and skilled to compete head-to-head with the wealthy one.

I have lost count of how many teachers and supposed educational influencers are playing to spread straw men to vilify merit and effort: In the face of any new statistic that emerges showing that water is wet (= that the level of income is correlated with educational performance), they lash out at the double obviousness that merit matters and that educating without the student making an effort is impossible.

The controversy, as usual, is invented. There is no serious author, nor even just a half-serious one —you only have to glance at the number of people writing and/or speaking about education to find out— who says that effort is enough, that effort is everything. I know this not because I have heard or read everything (nobody has), but because in any occasion I have met those who complain about this nonsense, I have asked for references and I was never given any. They were rhetorical requests, of course: How on earth is someone going to spoil a piece of paper by writing something like “effort determines education, regardless of the other factors”?

The supposed controversy gets struck down with a single thesis: effort is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one for education. That is to say, of course there are accidental, socioeconomic and even genetic obstacles that can make it very difficult for a student to acquire the essential knowledge and therefore to pass the course (without the latter being what matters most). And it goes without saying that a democracy worthy of the name must be able to thwart the genetic and socioeconomic lottery to the largest humanly possible extent, because it is a matter of strict justice. Remedial classes, tutoring, personalized attention in class as far as possible: we must combat all these impediments, because it is our duty, that is the proper thing for an ethical, honorable education system.

Once we’ve already pointed this out, we must add somethig else, which is hardly ever heard: you cannot teach someone who does not want to learn, that is, someone who is not willing to make any effort. Laziness, that character flaw that overflows its normal rates at certain ages – we already know what adolescence entails – may hinder the aim of having a proper learning. And coming to this point, we must add one more thing: To be educated at school it’s not only a right, but also a duty. Are we telling this to the students? Do they hear at home that they owe something to their society and to all of humanity, to this immediate and global project in which they are immersed, whether they’re aware or not, and whether they like it or not? I suspect  we don’t.

Nevertheless, we claim to the point of exhaustion about the duty of teachers to “motivate” the students”. But the truth is that this duty does not exist. The teacher’s duty is to be a great professional in his subject, that is, to know a lot about what he’s got to teach and to be extraordinarily capable of communicating it. He has a duty of passion for his discipline, true, and also enormous responsibilities regarding the development of the class, objectivity in grading, etc. So yes, he has to be stimulating. But he cannot take charge of the student’s desires, nor he has to. If there is something he can do about his students circumstances, apart from being understanding, he should do it. But he cannot activate the student’s will.

The sentence “there are no bad students, but bad teachers” can only be shamelessly proclaimed by someone who has never taught, or in case he has, by any other one whose judgment and criterion are corroded by ideology. There are students who are really bad and it is impossible to make a career out of them, simply because they do not let you. And with the same rotundity, but from another perspective: there are students so bad that, to make a career out of them, you would have to neglect the rest of the class. And if we’re talking about injustice, that is an outrageous one. I already know there are almost always circumstances that can explain, but not excuse, what happens to them. But it turns out that there are other kids in similar or even worse environmental factors who, since they’re pushing hard, they keep moving forward. We certainly must redouble efforts with younger students, and to be generous to the point of exhaustion with this type of student, but not to the point of ridiculous. Because, what happens when they turn eighteen? Whatever had been done to them, the burden of responsibility is trespassed to their own plate at great speed, because that is life. The result is sometimes a drama; but, as Freud said, the world is not a nursery.

Joan Manuel Serrat sang that the truth is not sad, but inevitable. Effort is in itself a powerful motivator, and school necessarily has to train character. We are doing wrong to lower the demands on students: it is a —increasingly less— subtle form of contempt. Making an effort is the unavoidable way to respect ourselves and feel capable. As the psychologist Albert Bandura pointed out in his studies on self-efficacy, it is a central element of our personality and therefore of our mental health to think and feel that we are a relevant cause of what happens to us. If we continue, for example, inflating grades (high school average above 8, 27% in 2015, 43% in 2021; source: Ministry of Universities) we will continue to degrade the demand and, incidentally, the effort.

Mankind has forged its extraordinary evolutionary success on merit and effort, despite the weight of other factors that elevate the mediocre, such as power and money. Let us recognize how much we can still do in order that those virtuous factors regain their preeminence and we will be on the path to revers the current ongoing decline.

Source: educational EVIDENCE

Rights: Creative Commons