I met Trace Pickering through the group Education Reimagined. Trace was a co-founder and director emeritus of Iowa BIG, a Cedar Rapids-based opportunity for traditional school students to expand into out-of-school human-centered education. Last fall Trace wrote an article for Getting Smart online titled “Perfection is a 2nd Rate Idea.”
Pickering writes,
“While listening to a podcast interview with the famous music producer T-Bone Burnett (think Roy Orbison or Counting Crows or Krause/Plant’s ‘Raising Sand’ albums), he said something that hit me in the deep way. While discussing why so many bands and records end up short of their potential, Burnett said (and I paraphrase), ‘The problem is that too many people are trying to make the perfect album. They don’t understand that perfection is a second-rate idea and striving for it is a waste of time.’”
“I immediately backed up the podcast to listen again. I began thinking about all the ways traditional schools implicitly and explicitly send students and educators the message that perfection is the goal and (more insidiously) that it can and should be met. From celebrating the student with perfection attendance to the student with the perfect ACT score to the student with the perfect record of taking all the AP courses, schools send the message that perfection is both attainable and the best way to a successful life. Sadly, this approach has some devastating consequences.”
“Burnett is right. Seeking perfection is a second-rate idea. Should one always strive to be the very best one can be? To get one step closer to the pinnacle of whatever is being pursued? Absolutely. But perfection? What are the costs of trying to be perfect? In the setting of a traditional high school the costs can be quite high:
Stress, anxiety, unhealthy study/work habits, depression, suicide, feeling less-than, fearing mistakes, hiding or denying one’s shortcomings, denying one’s own humanity, inflated sense of a self-worth or self-loathing, cheating and short-cutting, and missing out on other fulfilling aspects of life”
“Chasing perfection is an aversion to learning. Learning requires mistake-making. You don’t learn by doing things you already do and perfection, if ever attained, is wildly unsustainable. Any system that implicitly values and promotes the perception of perfection is, by default, a learning-averse system.”
“Once students cross over to growth and improvement and away from the idea of perfection, we see stress and anxiety melt away. We see students slow down to engage deeply in learning – something they don’t always know how to do yet. We see students who boldly take on new challenges. And we see students who begin to see that their value isn’t in being a 4.0 student or valedictorian, it’s in being a voracious learner who is curious, engaged, and interested not only in their own learning but learning in community. I saw it in my own daughters. Once they realized that the game of school wasn’t about being ‘perfect’ but was really supposed to be about learning in pursuit of getting better every day, their learning took off, their stress and anxiety dramatically decreased, and their quality of life improved dramatically. Now, as professionals, they excel because they aren’t afraid of taking risks and learning instead of spending most of their time trying to maintain a charade of perfection.”
“Sadly, we often see this perfection affliction in the educators we work with. Living nearly their entire lives in a system that values perfection, we see them stressed. We see them hide their weaknesses from their colleagues meaning little chance of actually improving their practice. We see them get major anxiety when evaluated because, for some reason, not getting all 5’s on the 1-5 rubric scales for the ridiculous number of teaching competencies means failure. We see them forgo relationships and care for rigor and ‘toughness’ to show they are a ‘great teacher.’ We see them ignore, dismiss, or even refute mistakes which, in reality, means they are refusing to learn and grow. We see it across the education profession.”
“This is likely one of the reasons schools are widely seen as ‘second-rate’ today. We’ve chased second-rate ideals for too long – perfection, standardization of humans, measures without much meaning, etc. We need human-centered systems focused on growth, not perfection.”
Trace is spot on here, but here’s where the two of us probably disagree.
I don’t think the traditional system can change or will change when it comes to endorsing perfection.
Just like other practices associated with our current public school system, perfection-focused ideas like a 4.0 GPA, perfect attendance, most outstanding player, top choral singer are not going to disappear from the traditional school culture. And, as long as the traditional system continues to emphasize and endorse “perfection,” then it is unlikely that a real growth mindset on the part of school students, teachers, and administrators alike will ever become a reality.
Sad, but true.
Til tomorrow. SVB
A Better Path to Learning 
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