Students' Search for Meaning

For the last few days, I have been reading Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, a book based on his experiences in Auschwitz. As a psychologist, he sought to understand what it was that allowed survivors to endure what others could not. 

In his introduction to the book, rabbi Harold Kushner begins by quoting Nietzsche in summing up Frankl's ideas: "He who has a Why to live for can endure almost any How."

Kushner then discusses what is, for him and me, one of the core arguments from the book, writing that "life is not primarily a search for pleasure...or for power..., but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life. Frankl saw three possible sources for meaning: in work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times."

This quest for meaning calls to mind our own ideals of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," which inevitably leads me to ask how these relate not only to my own life but what I teach and how I teach it. It was the richness of one's inner life and the depth of love one felt for another (his wife, in Frankl's case) that sustained many during the terrors and trials of their time in the camps.

I find myself challenged by the book to ask what I am doing in my classroom to cultivate that inner life of the mind and spirit through what we read, discuss, and write about.

Comments

[Michael Umphrey]

This book was hugely important to me, partly because it's a great book full of truth, and partly because I read on an airplane trip as two huge crises were unfolding in my own life.

I think if we're not assisting students on their own personal search for meaning, we're doing close to nothing. I think literature and their own personal relationships are the key--using literature to deepen their insights and their questions, and writing to link those insights and questions to the persons and events amid which they live.

[Dawn Marie]

I must say that the child-care workers my children spend time with before and after school are able to do much more creative and innovative projects with my children than they experience during their academic school day. I laud these teachers, one of whom is providing authentic inquiry opportunities for her students. She has a mechanic lined up to come and teach my 8 year old daughter, about car engines. At the middle school, the child-care worker held a pumpkin drop and that motivated my daughter to learn about the physics involved. (His mom was my husband's AP Physics teacher.) In the school classroom my daughters, with some exceptions, are handed their quests-high test scores = success. They both meet the challenge with diligence every day, without analyzing the meaning behind it. In their after school child-care settings my children get to set out on their own with the help of a professional guide. I'd say that since the child-care workers don't have the pressure to spend her days preparing students for tests, they probably have more time and motivation to read texts like Frankl's.

[Rrmurry]

Thanks for posting this Jim. I apologize for my lengthy response ahead of time, but you have triggered deep feelings for me.

This is, to me the crux of real teaching. To help a student begin to find their "true meaning and purpose" for their life.

When we allow others to reduce our work to test scores, we allow them to cheapen, not just the profession of teaching, but the conscience of our society.

To allow students to begin thinking that only the high test scorers are able to "achieve" (and that is a student's conclusion as they compare their scores) is to not only disenfranchise another generation of young people, but to deny them the opportunity to believe they have something to contribute to making a better world.

Frankl's Work, Love, Courage conclusions are as valid today as it was from a Auschwitz. Rabbi Kushner's "big enough why" is a teaching philosophy in need of greater consideration in the 21st Century than it was in his day.

My class motto (7th grade Social Studies) is "Social Studies is not a class you take - it is a matter of life, death, and survival." My students begin to see this as a reality when they see what they have never seen before in the countries we study (Congo, Sudan, South Africa, Nigeria, China, Koreas, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, and elsewhere). Everything is new to them. Almost overwhelming.

When it comes time for testing, I know they have been given the pablum of my state standards. I also know that my students understand much more than our standard-writers would expect them to know about their world. I have to help my students understand that they know more than will be required of them, and the the test is now about their life and survival...because it is, unfortunately.

I let my students (88% minority and ELL) know that the state believes they cannot pass their test. I let them know that for tests to be valid and reliable, a certain number of students must fail them. I let them know those students who will fail didn't come through my classroom. It's not a false hope.

Yes, I make the state and federal government to be their enemy in their current struggle for life, death, and survival - and their opportunity for a better future.

Teachers need to stop thinking how these test scores will affect them personally, and realize that these test scores pre-determine the opportunities today's students will have in their life.

Enough for now. I think I need to move to a post of my own. Thank you, again, Jim, for your time and space for this necessary discussion. I applaud you for reading works that many have forgotten (or neglected) that make the difference between a teacher and child-care worker.