February 27, 2025

Five Lessons We Should NOT Teach Our Students

There are many lessons we want and need to teach our students. Schools are designed to present students with a set of lessons, related experiences, and feedback to build their learning, and they typically have a formal curriculum that presents the learning that students are expected to gain. Consequently, we spend most of our time designing lessons and experiences that are aligned with intended outcomes and that we hope will result in learning.

However, there are times when we may also be teaching our students lessons of which we are not conscious or do not intend. We may do so by habit, neglect, or tradition. In fact, they may be lessons that we were taught as students, and we are simply passing them along. Yet, they can narrow our students’ understanding of learning, leave them with assumptions that cap their learning potential, and limit their preparation for life. Here are five lessons we need to be careful not to pass along to our students.

Lesson #1: Learning is primarily for the purpose of getting good grades. We often tell students to study hard and practice so that they will get a good grade. However, the purpose of studying and practice should be to learn. A good grade may follow good learning, absolutely. A high grade gained by any means other than learning is not worth much. A better lesson to teach is that studying and practicing are for the purpose of learning. When study and practice are done well, good grades will typically follow.

Lesson #2: Adults are supposed to ask questions and students are to give answers. The traditional school structure features teachers questioning students to determine if they have learned. Students are to respond with expected answers. While this process has a role in the teaching and learning process, too often it focuses students’ attention on what adults want to hear, not on what students want to know. In fact, student questions are often discouraged because they take up precious time and may lead to distractions from a planned lesson or activity. Yet, meaningful learning often comes through discovering answers to questions students ask, not just the questions presented by teachers.

Lesson #3: Learning only happens when students are quiet and listening. Certainly, listening is one way to take in information and being quiet can facilitate listening. However, learning can occur through many channels, including when students discuss, debate, and engage in dialogue. Learning can happen when students try something and it does not work as they expected. Learning can result from what students wonder about and choose to explore. In fact, experience-based and curiosity-driven learning often lead to deeper understanding and longer recall than when students are only told how something works. There are times for sitting quietly and listening, but we need to be careful to balance listening with other types of learning.

Lesson #4: Compliance is of greater value than curiosity. Our schools were originally designed to prepare students to become compliant workers. Our system of education was created at the dawn of the moving assembly line; employers needed workers who would show up, do what they were told, and ask few questions. Moving assembly lines did not encourage or accommodate curiosity or creativity. Yet, the world for which we are preparing today’s students will require constant creativity, incessant curiosity, and ongoing initiative.

Lesson #5: Every problem is solved by finding one right answer. Most problems presented to students in school, in fact, have only one correct answer. The questions are designed for that to be the case. Yet, teaching students to always find the one correct answer is inconsistent with how the world works. In life, there are often multiple right answers. Some answers may be better than others. Some answers work better in one circumstance or at one time than others. While being precise has a role to play in learning, so does speculation, intuition, and suspicion. We need to be careful to avoid having students learn that problems they will encounter always have to be solved with the one right answer.

Obviously, these are only a few of the potential lessons we want students not to learn from us. What other examples of lessons not to teach might you suggest?