by Terry Heick
Quality: you know what it is, but you don’t know what it is. But it’s contradictory. But some things are better than others, that is, they have more quality. But when you try to say what quality is, apart from the things that have it, everything goes poof! There is nothing to say. But if you can’t say what Quality is, how do you know what it is, or how do you know it exists? If no one knows what it is, then in practice it doesn’t exist at all. But for all intents and purposes, it actually exists.
In Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenanceauthor Robert Pirsig talks about the elusive idea of quality. This concept – and the “Church of Reason” tangent – heckles him throughout the book, particularly as a teacher when he tries to explain to his students what quality writing looks like.
After some difficulty – internally and with students – he abandons grades altogether in the hope that students will stop looking for reward and start looking for “quality.” Of course, this doesn’t turn out the way he hoped; the students revolt, which only pushes him further away from his goal.
So what does quality have to do with learning? Quite a bit, it turns out.
A shared sense of what is possible
Quality is an abstraction: it has something to do with the tension between a thing and a ideal thing. A carrot and a ideal carrot. A speech and a ideal speech. The way you to want the lesson to be followed and how it actually unfolds. We have many synonyms for this idea, “good” being one of the most common.
For quality to exist – for something to be “good” – there must be a shared sense of what is possible and some tendency towards variation – towards inconsistency. For example, if we think there is no hope of something getting better, there is no point in calling it bad or good. That’s how it is. We rarely call walking good or bad. We just walk. Singing, on the other hand, can certainly be good or bad, that is, have or lack quality. We know this because we have heard good singing before and we know what is possible.
Additionally, it is difficult to get a quality sunrise or water drop because most sunrises and water drops are very similar. On the other hand, a “quality” cheeseburger or a performance of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony makes more sense because we A) have eaten a good cheeseburger before and know what is possible, and B) can feel a big difference between one cheeseburger and another.
Back to learning – if students could see quality – identify it, analyze it, understand its characteristics, etc. – imagine what that requires. They need to see all around a thing, compare it to what is possible, and make an evaluation. Much of the friction between teachers and learners comes from some sort of discord between students and teachers trying to guide them toward quality.
Of course, teachers are only trying to help students understand what quality is. We describe it, create rubrics, point out it, model it and sing its praises, but more often than not they don’t see it and we push it closer and closer to their noses and wait for the light to come on.
And when it doesn’t, we assume they don’t care or aren’t trying hard enough.
The best
And the same goes for relative superlatives: good, better and best. Students use these words without knowing their starting point: quality. It’s hard to know what quality is until they can think of one thing to begin with. And then further, to really internalize things, they have to see their quality. Quality for them is based on what they consider possible.
To call something good – or “best” – we must first agree on what that “thing” is supposed to do, and then we can discuss that thing in its original context. Think of something simple, like a lawn mower. It is easy to determine the quality of a lawn mower because it’s clear what it’s supposed to do. It’s a tool that has a certain degree of performance, but it’s mostly an on/off switch. Either it works or it doesn’t.
Other things, like government, art, technology, etc., are more complex. It is unclear what quality looks like in legislation, abstract painting, or economic leadership. There are both nuances and subjectivity to these elements that make assessing quality much more complex. In these cases, students have to think “macro enough” to see the ideal functions of a thing and then decide if they work, which of course is impossible because no one can agree on the “ideal” functions and we are back to zero. Like a circle.
Quality in student thinking
And the same goes for teaching and learning. There is no clear, socially accepted cause and effect relationship between education and the world. Quality teaching will produce quality learning that This. It’s the same with the students themselves: in writing, reading, and thinking, what does quality look like?
What causes it?
What are its characteristics?
And more importantly, what can we do to help students not only see it, but develop eyes that refuse to close.
Being able to see the circles in everything from their own sense of ethics to the way they structure paragraphs, design a project, study for exams, or solve problems in their own lives – and do so without using adultisms and external labels like “good job,” “excellent,” “A+,” and “you’re so smart!”
What can we do to nurture students who are willing to sit and live with the tension between possibility and reality, bending it all to their will in each moment with affection and understanding?
