We Need to Stop Saying "This is Easy"

Education thought leader Kevin Honeycutt was recently quoted as saying "Every time we tell kids 'it’s easy' it’s like telling them they are stupid."

As I read, pondered, reread, and pondered the quote some more, two insights resonated for me (these are my takeaways - yours could be different).

My first takeaway deals with how we approach assigning activities. All of us give assignments, whether its to preschoolers who are "learning to do school" for the first time, or doctoral candidates seeking the highest degree our profession can award. In every case, if we give students an assignment while telling them it’s "easy," what we’re telling them is that we expect very little from them and we believe they can best succeed only on “easy” assignments.

Telling our students that we're giving them an "easy" assignment doesn't build confidence or self-efficacy, it builds hesitation in our learners; it creates self doubt in them; it creates in them a sense that any activity that doesn't qualify as "easy" is simply beyond their ability.

The quote also spoke to me in terms of how we approach reteaching or repairing misunderstandings. I vividly remember my neighbor watching me struggle to ride a bike free of training wheels (I was around five years old). He was new to the neighborhood, having moved across the street with his wife and he was probably just hoping to make some inroads with his new neighbors when he walked across the street to offer me wise counsel on bike riding techniques.

As I continued to struggle he kept telling me how easy it was to ride a bike and how I would never feel the "wind on my face" (over four decades later I still remember his exact words) if I didn't master this "easy" task. I didn't master it that day, and decided that our old neighbors were preferable to this new guy.

Eventually, I managed to learn to ride that bike and did, in fact, feel the wind on my face; but, the neighbor wasn't around when I did it. No one was around. I was alone in the driveway behind my house. I didn't want an audience because I believed they would just tell me how "easy" it was to do what I was so desperately trying to do (although I did run in and excitedly tell my mom once I had successfully circumnavigated the driveway sans training wheels).

I share that memory because it helps me illustrate my second takeaway: If a student is struggling with an assignment and you say, “come on, this is easy,” you tell them that they might never find any kind of success because they even struggle with what is “easy.” No teacher wants to make a student less confident in themselves after spending time in his or her classroom, but we can inadvertently chip away at a person's confidence because of a poorly worded attempt to motivate (especially when it's a motivation born of compliance, not of achievement).

So, what do we do?

How about we tell students that we’re giving them assignments that challenge them; and acknowledge that some assignments are “just plain hard?” That will let learners know that their effort and tenacity (a couple of “soft skills”) mean every bit as much to us as do their successes.

Instead of saying, "this is easy," why not say, "you're not allowed to give up" to struggling students? After all, if they're going to hear your voice in their head in forty years, what do you want it to be saying?

In 1962, John F. Kennedy said that America chose to go to the Moon because it was hard, not because it was easy. The Moon! How far can kids go with the right kind of encouragement? How far can kids go if they know we trust them to do the hard work that builds mastery? I think they'll surprise us by rising to the occasion and surpassing our expectations - because they most often do.

That's the story I want to tell, I want the world and my community to know that we're beyond just doing the "easy," we are determined to master the challenging.