“Why Do I Need To Do This?”
Children and teenagers want to know why they must learn what school or their parents insist upon and often they are met with an authoritarian response: “Because I said so,” or “That’s what the boss/curriculum/teacher said you should do.” We’ve all had our questioning shut down this way at some point in our lives as children, parents, and workers. A dynamic example is this video made by Prince EA in 2023: What Is School For?
In most conventional classrooms the bottom line is still, “Sit down, shut up, and do as I say.” There are schools and curricula that don’t follow this model but they are dismissed as not being academically rigorous or too coddling for serious educators. Despite this dubious claim, alternative schools, homeschooling, private and charter schools continue to grow because the conventional system is not adapting to change—and there are cracks appearing in the overall authoritarian teaching model that are worth noting.
I learned about Minnesota’s St. John’s University head football coach John Gagliardi, in the 1990s and wrote about him in my preface to the 2001 edition of Teach Your Own. Gagliardi doesn’t have a football playbook because, “The guys learn everything on the field,” he says. … “To me, a lot of this [printed] stuff is like giving a kid a description of how to ride a bike. You can write it up, but the kid doesn’t understand it. He’s just got to get on the bike and try it a lot of times.”
Gagliardi developed an approach to teaching and learning football that he called his “Winning with No’s Philosophy.”
No player cut.
No one considered too small.
No grading of game files.
No signs in dressing rooms.
No laps.
No use of the words “hit,” “kill,” etc.
No practice on Sundays or Mondays.
No statistics posted.
No cheap shots tolerated.
No practice in rain, mud, or excessive wind.
No timing anyone in forty yards, mile, etc.
(“Unorthodox coach gets results.” Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 23, 1994, p. 13)
Gagliardi achieved great results with his program. He was the winningest active coach in collegiate football in 2002 and the second all-time winningest in collegiate football history. Wikipedia notes, “On November 8, 2003, Gagliardi broke the record for career coaching wins with his 409th victory…” Despite his success, Gagliardi isn’t as well known or revered as conventional pro football coaches, and I’d forgotten about him as time marched on. Then I read these words in a recent article, “Why Bill Belichick, Perhaps The Greatest Coach In NFL History, Didn’t Land a Job.”
…There’s also been a change in the way players want to be coached. So many current players want to relate to their coaches as people, often feeling that’s how they’ll show up at their best for seven days a week, and they prefer to feel empowered by the staff….
The latest wave of new-age coaches doesn’t have as much of an authoritarian complex, demanding players do everything they say simply because they’re their bosses. Players want to know why they’re doing things, whether it’s the weightlifting schedule or a schematic technique, and coaches who can deliver their message in such a way have become more appealing.…
I think not just sports players but all citizens want to know why they must do things, especially when they are ordered to do so. But most people consider such questioning as undermining the mission of the institution or leader, so it can be a difficult endeavor. Further, our conception of school as a fixed, science-based processing plant for young brains prevents us from reimagining school as an ongoing, adaptable, social gathering for learning through dialog, play, and chosen activities.
If we can take the example of Joe Gagliardi and say “no” to all the set-in-stone ideas we have about motivating people to excel, if we can listen to our children and students and provide the time and space needed for the mentoring and friendship they seek instead of just giving them instruction and tasks, then we will see how we all learn and grow by “learning everything on the field,” not just in classrooms.
