When our kids were younger and living at home, they also frequently had dishwashing duty. Even today we haven\u2019t gotten around to buying a mechanical dishwasher, but when five people were living (and eating) at home, it was good not to have to do all that by ourselves.<\/p>\n
But as anyone who has ever enlisted the services of children for this job will surely remember, the process needs to be refined by practice. Even more importantly, though, no matter how good the process seems to be, it can\u2019t be considered a success if the outcome is not up to par. At different points, when I pointed out a dirty glass or pan in the drain, all three of our kids responded with, \u201cBut I washed it,\u201d as if that had fully discharged their responsibility.<\/p>\n
The problem is that though they might have washed<\/em> it, they had not cleaned<\/em> it. The purpose of the washing (a process, which can be efficacious or not) is to have a clean article of tableware or cookware (the proper product of the task). Product trumps process: the mere performance of a ritual of cleansing may or may not have the desired result. Inadequate results can at any time call the sufficiency of the process into question.<\/p>\n This is paradigmatic of something I see more and more these days in relation to education. The notion that completing a process \u2014 any process \u2014 is the same as achieving its goal is beguiling but false. Depending on whether we\u2019re talking about a speck of egg on a frying pan or the inadequate adjustment of the brakes on your car, that category mistake can be irksome or it can be deadly.<\/p>\n In education it\u2019s often more than merely irksome, but usually less than deadly. I\u2019ve already talked about the \u201cI translated it but I don\u2019t understand it\u201d phenomenon here<\/a>: ; the claim has never made sense to me, since if you actually<\/em> translated it, that means that you actually expressed the sense as you understood it<\/em>. No other set of processes one can do with a foreign-language text is really translating it.<\/p>\n Accordingly I\u2019m skeptical of educational theorists (including those who put together some of the standards for the accreditation process we are going through now) buzzing about \u201cbest practices\u201d. This pernicious little concept, borrowed with less thought than zeal from the business world, misleadingly suggests \u2014 and to most people means<\/em> \u2014 practices that are ipso facto<\/em> sufficient: pursuing them to the letter guarantees a satisfactory outcome. And yet sometimes the dish is dirty, the translation is gibberish, or the brakes fail.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not really even a good idea in the business world. An article in Forbes by Mike Myatt in 2012 trenchantly backs up its title claim, \u201cBest Practices \u2014 Aren\u2019t<\/a>\u201d; in 2014, Liz Ryan followed up the same concept with \u201cThe Truth about Best Practices<\/a>\u201d. Both articles challenge the blinkered orthodoxies of the \u201cbest practices\u201d narrative.<\/p>\n The problem with any process-side validation of an activity is that, in the very act of being articulated, it\u00a0tends to eclipse the purpose<\/em> for which the task is being done. Doing it the right way<\/em> takes precedence over doing the right thing<\/em>. Surely the measure of an education is the learning itself \u2014 not the process that has been followed. The process is just a means to the end. In Charles Williams\u2019 words, which I\u2019ve quoted and referred to here before (here<\/a>\u00a0 and here)<\/a>, \u201cWhen the means are autonomous, they are deadly\u201d.<\/p>\n Of course they may not in any given situation cause someone to die \u2014 but means divorced from their proper ends inevitably subvert, erode, and deform the goals for which they were originally ordained. This is especially true in education, precisely because there\u2019s no broad consensus on what the product looks like. Accordingly the only really successful educational process is one that\u2019s a dynamic outgrowth of the situation at hand, and it can ultimately be validated only by its results.<\/p>\n Liz Ryan notes, \u201cThey’re only Best Practices if they work for you.\u201d There are at least two ways of understanding that phrase, and both of them are right: they\u2019re only Best Practices if they work for you<\/em>, and they\u2019re only Best Practices if they work<\/em> for you. Their utility depends on both the person and the outcome. Nor should it be any other way.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When our kids were younger and living at home, they also frequently had dishwashing duty. Even today we haven\u2019t gotten around to buying a mechanical dishwasher, but when five people were living (and eating) at home, it was good not to have to do all that by ourselves. But as anyone who has ever enlisted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-character-formation","category-edu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scholarsonline.org\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scholarsonline.org\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scholarsonline.org\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scholarsonline.org\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scholarsonline.org\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=567"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.scholarsonline.org\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":578,"href":"https:\/\/www.scholarsonline.org\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567\/revisions\/578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scholarsonline.org\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scholarsonline.org\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scholarsonline.org\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}