By Rosalie Bigongiari

America’s foundations lie in its long-standing traditions of individualism and fulfillment through financial success. These two values are prevalent in every socioeconomic division, race, generation and political party. Indeed they make up what we know as the modern “American Dream”: if you work hard enough, you can get rich, no matter what your background. Embedded as this concept is in our minds, it is no surprise that it has become the goal of our education system. Children are shepherded through the K-12 system and beyond under the pretense, whether implicit or explicit, that what they are working towards is a financially successful career. They are led to believe that if they work hard to fulfill the various requirements to earn a high school diploma or college degree, then a stable income will follow, and with it happiness. The message they are given, even if never stated outright, is “you live within a system where some people are rich and some people are poor. With hard work you can earn your place among the former.”

The problems with this setup are clear. First, the idea that riches lead to happiness is increasingly contested in the psychological community. A multitude of studies have shown that money correlates to increased happiness only to the point of being able to survive without fear of going without food or shelter. Daniel Gilbert (2007), a professor of psychology at Harvard and author of Stumbling on Happiness, cites studies in the realms of economics, psychology and neuroscience to back up his claim that the correlation between money and happiness follows the economic law of “declining marginal utility”: the more money you make, the less happiness it will bring you. Jeffrey Sachs (2012), a development economist of Columbia University, points out that “The U.S. has had a three time increase of gross national product per capita since 1960, but the happiness needle hasn’t budged.” Even modern advocates of money as the key to personal fulfillment say that this comes with qualifications. Laura Vanderkam (2012), author of All the Money in the World: What the Happiest People Know About Getting and Spending, asserts that more money does correlate to a happier life, but goes on to say that the best way to gain happiness from your money is to spend it on other people. A study by psychologists from the University of British Columbia and Harvard came to the same conclusion, performing an experiment that led to the conclusion that spending money on others brings more satisfaction than spending it on oneself (Dunn, Aknin, Norton, 2008). This suggests that the true cause of personal fulfillment is not the money itself but the selfless intent behind its allocation. The idea, then, that students should be educated for the primary purpose of landing a well-paying job is clearly misguided.

The problems with the current highly individualistic and money-driven mindset go beyond this. It is widely known that in America, a student who is living in poverty or is of a racial minority is less likely to do well in school than a rich white student. When students are told that they can “rise above” their poor backgrounds, it is implied that they will be escaping their pasts. It necessarily follows that this impoverished community from which they came will continue to be impoverished. The highly individualistic idea that poor students should work to leave behind their troubled backgrounds only serves to increase the polarity between the rich community and the poor. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire (1968) puts this idea into more revolutionary words, speaking of the “oppressors” and the “oppressed” when describing how “the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors…the one pole aspires not to liberation, but to identification with its opposite pole” (p. 45). This mentality only serves to cement the existing injustices in the system. A parallel principle applies to college-bound students from wealthy families: they learn that they should work hard to achieve financial success as their parents likely did, and that ultimately, their personal success is their main responsibility and priority. In his book How Children Succeed, Paul Tough (2012) criticizes the increasing occurrence of college graduates being funneled into jobs in the financial industry: these young adults “enter the adult world competent but lost…’driven more by a fear of not being a success than by a concrete desire to do anything in particular’” (p. 184).

This system works for some students. Indeed most kids who come from well-off families and go to college are able to achieve financial stability for themselves and, in theory, sustain a happy life. And we have all heard success stories of inner city youth who have overcome momentous obstacles and earned a place among America’s wealthiest members. However, for the most part, the current educational system fails to change the lives of the less fortunate. In America, if you are born poor, you are likely to remain that way (Corcoran, 1995).

Throughout How Children Succeed, Paul Tough explores the reasons behind the discrepancy between a poor child’s educational experience and a wealthy one’s. Through journalistic investigation and scientific research, Tough (2012) looks into “the very real fact that overall, children who grow up in poor families in the United States are doing very badly in school” (p. 187) and ultimately concludes that problems outside of the schools themselves—specifically stressful situations and lack of supportive parents—were to blame. So, if the biggest problem is not the schools themselves, what can be done in the classroom to combat this issue?

Tough’s book provides a promising hint at the answer to this crucial question. In it he cites a study done at the University of South Florida where a group of children were tested for IQ and then divided into groups based on their scores. They were then tested again, but were this time offered an M&M candy for each correct answer. The startling results showed that when offered candy, the students who previously scored lower on the test were able to achieve the same average as the students with scores in the middle range (Tough, 2012). This was powerful evidence of the power of motivation. Could the key to helping low-achieving students lie in changing their motivation?

This question begs another one, namely: why is the current goal of education, financial success for oneself, more motivating to wealthy kids? The possible reasons are myriad. Maybe children who grew up in a wealthy home see this as very possible for themselves, while poor children do not think it possible that they could change their living situation so drastically. Maybe children living in poor unsafe neighborhoods are unwilling to leave their past behind—indeed it is a lot to ask for someone to leave behind their family and everything that they know in pursuit of a better life for themselves. Or maybe the problems in the lives of poor children are such that they just need a stronger motivation with more immediate payoff in order to work through them. Whatever the reason, it seems clear that a dramatic shift in the focus of American education could help close the gap between those who are being well served by their schools and those who are not.

If the goal in improving our education system, then, is not to help individual students rise above their problems, but to help an entire class of unfortunate people “catch up” with the middle class, it seems fitting that the new motivation for students stem from this. Freire (1968) asserts that the motivation for radical social change, specifically for liberation of the oppressed class, must be love—not in the sense we most often use the word, but rather in the sense of selfless devotion towards and solidarity with all of humanity: “True solidarity with the oppressed means fighting at their side to transform the objective reality…The oppressor is solidary with the oppressed only when he…sees them as persons who have been unjustly dealt with, deprived of their voice, cheated in the sale of their labor” (p. 49-50). Freire emphasizes solidarity as the key to successful social change. This idea could easily be applied to American education: what if the motivation for students to do well in school, rather than to eventually make a lot of money for themselves, was to solve the problems they saw affecting those around them?

This is an idea which seems at first glance to be far-fetched to the point of impossibility. Our society is so deeply invested in the idea that material prosperity is crucial to feeling successful that any proposal to the contrary strikes us as highly idealistic. It seems a lofty and frankly rather ridiculous concept for children to be driven by such a selfless goal when even only the most devoted adults live their daily lives this way. But perhaps the very reason for the rarity of this selflessness in adults is that all throughout their schooling, they were taught that what they were working towards was fulfillment through a financially successful career. It is only logical that the way to break this cycle is to change the focus of schooling from the outset. If schools were able to redefine success in students’ eyes, then their overall goals, and therefore motivation for achieving those goals, would shift entirely.

Still, it seems a strange idea that a desire to help others would be enough to motivate struggling students to succeed. Young children do not have the broad perspective and grasp of things outside of their direct perception that adults do; how can they be expected to want to help people if they are not experiencing the peoples’ struggles firsthand? The answer to this is shown in the studies cited above, which demonstrated that people feel happy after spending money on others. This can be generalized to show that people gain satisfaction simply through acts of generosity. In fact the very same study included components that tested whether giving and sharing led to happiness for toddlers and school-aged children as well as adults. The researchers concluded that the principle held true across all age groups (Enayati, 2012). Based on this it would seem that not only are service and generosity adequate motivators for students, but they would likely also lead to a more immediate payoff than the promise of a successful career.

This new motivation can be used to combat the education gap from both sides. The students with less economic resources and more obstacles in the way of their learning can take full advantage of the motivational power of overall social betterment. These students are exposed every day to prevalent issues, be they poverty, gang problems, schools lacking dedicated teachers or domestic violence. Currently the message they are getting about their schooling is that with dedication, they might someday escape these problems. This can be ineffective for multiple reasons, discussed above. But if they were instead encouraged to think creatively about ways to solve the problems, they could as insiders provide effective and realistic solutions. This realization could be the motivation these students need in order to push themselves to do well in school. Paul Tough (2012) elaborates on this idea, saying that “there is no anti-poverty tool that we can provide for disadvantaged young people that will be more valuable than character strengths” (p. 195) such as grit and perseverance—two things that would serve a would-be social activist well in their goals. Exposing students from a young age to concepts of compassion combined with confidence would go a long way towards instilling these traits, allowing them to “participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation” (Freire, 1968, p. 48).

Of course it is idealistic to think that this alone is enough to end the disparity. That is where the other students come in; those who are already doing well in school because they are not facing the same problems as the poor students. If this group was taught from a young age that they are accountable not only for their own futures but for the well-being of their global community, the repercussions would be astounding. These students have the means to do whatever they choose. If all the students who currently dream of going to business school and becoming investment bankers instead believed that it would make them happier to go to business school and start a nonprofit to benefit a cause they found compelling, things in America would change immensely. In reality this change could not be brought about very quickly but would have to come as a gradual shift. But it is a plausible scenario nonetheless.

The most gaping problem with this whole idea is the question: where does this leave the American Dream? Are we really willing to give up our individual passions to pursue social equality after being raised believing that we can choose to do whatever we set our minds to? The answer to this is that we don’t have to. Right now, students in the best schools are being taught, “Whatever your passion, you can apply it creatively to make it into a financially successful career.” But an equally valid credo is: “Whatever your passion, you can apply it creatively to make the world more liveable for yourself and everyone else.” The means need not change, but only the end towards which we are working. If our schools can teach children from a young age that success comes not from money but from happiness, and that the road to happiness is paved with generosity and socioglobal accountability, all parties will ultimately benefit. This shift in the focus of education would help define a new American Dream: one still rooted in making choices and chasing success, but one that redefines that success in terms of our society as a whole rather than in terms of one’s individual paycheck. Implementation of this educational redirection would ultimately lead to more successful students and a more socially accountable society.

References

Aknin, L.B., Dunn, E.W., & Norton, M.I. (2008). Spending Money on       Others Promotes Happiness. Science, 319, 1687-1688.             doi:10.1126/science.1150952

Corcoran, M. (1995). Rags to Rags: Poverty and Mobility in the United     States. Annual Review of Sociology, 21, 237-267.

doi:10.1146/annurev.so.21.080195.001321

Enayati, A. (2012, September 17). For Kids, It’s Better to Give than Receive. CNN. Retrieved from  http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/17/living/giving-makes-children-happy /

Freire, P. (1968). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Bloomsbury.

Gilbert, D. (2007). Stumbling on Happiness. New York: Vantage.

Ledwith, M. (2012, April 4). Why Money Can’t Buy us Happiness. Daily Mail.

Tough, P. (2012). How Children Succeed. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Vanderkam, L. (2012). All the Money in the World: What the Happiest People Know about Getting and Spending. London: Penguin Portfolio.