And now it’s time to take on the rigor. Grit and rigor – sounds like a scouring powder or bathroom cleanser rather than a prescription for learning.
Take a look at these definitions and then consider why on earth people would want to associate it with children and learning.
Time to retire rigor, rigors and rigorous from the edspeak lexicon. As Jerome Bruner put it – teaching is the art of intellectual temptation. It should not be grinding in with the heel inculcation and learning is not the breaking of teeth on iron nuts and bolts.
So here are a few alternatives just for starters: challenge, adventure, excitement, elan, temptation, journey, engagement, dare, joy, way of being.
Please feel free to suggest more.
The two-forty-five express — Paddington to Market Blandings, first stop Oxford—stood at its piatform with…
Changing your mind is perfectly normal—and often essential. After all, it’s what education is all…
One childhood ritual during the days between Christmas and the return to school was the…
“That woman is pursued by demons,” Wally Brigley, the Board chair, declared as he settled…
“You look about as festive as a radish sandwich,” Midge had said. And she wasn’t…
"We were young and we were keen; Europe was in flames, and we were ready…
View Comments
Well said--it's high time to retire rigor! It's another word like grit, in this era of hardening our schoolchildren (as you pointed out in an earlier post). On this same issue, someone once noted that "rigor" in education is best understood as "rigor mortis"--learning that is stiff and dead rather than life-giving and conducive to growth. I liked your alternatives.
Inspiring .....curiosity.....