The opening to a seminal movie on education and learning environments.
The most simplified version of this lesson: Self-control is difficult to learn, but the sooner you learn it, the more successful you will be.
We’re going to read a few texts closely. They are separated below into different categories, as much to teach you the words erudite and quotidian as to space out any close-reading assignments. Read each section carefully. Assignments will be given to you in class and through Google Classroom.
Updated in January of 2020.
Three Ways of Discussing Self-Control
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#1: The Erudite Way
The following article is about akrasia:
The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do and What to Do About It
It’s lengthy, entertaining, well researched — and probably, when it is assigned like this, an opportunity to talk about akrasia itself. In all likelihood, you won’t want to read this, even when it is assigned. You will struggle to delve into the text. You need a way to hack that resistance, right?
It’s also important to note that this idea — that we don’t follow through on things, even when we know the benefits — is so old and so firmly entrenched in human nature that the Greeks gave it this term. There is also a Latin phrase describing the same concept: Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor, which appears in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It means, “I see better things, and approve, but I follow worse.” In other words, “I know what the right thing is, but I choose to do the wrong thing.”
That’s what we mean by erudite: You can study the classics to learn about human nature.
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#2: The Quotidian Way
You can also turn to contemporary authors. Here, from David McRaney’s You Are Not So Smart, is an article on procrastination:
You don’t need any Greek or Latin terms to understand what McRaney writes. He does a lot to clarify the concept, though, including the image of “capable psychonauts,” or people who think about thinking, which is a helpful way to look at improving your learning. It proves, once again, that these skills and traits are universal.
That’s why the word quotidian fits this approach: Procrastination is the most common, ubiquitous, mundane version of a lack of self-control. It’s embedded in our culture.
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#3: With a Video
McRaney’s article on procrastination was adapted for the book trailer for You Are Not So Smart, which is embedded below. It might not delve into anything as complicated as the ancient idea of akrasia, but it gets at the faults and weaknesses common to all of us. It also gives you a way to respond to these concepts and apply these lessons to yourself, even if you can’t fight your nature enough to read the other two assigned texts.
Flying Guillotines
But you are assigned those other two texts. You’ve been instructed to read the more difficult text and the more accessible one. You’ve been told to watch the video, too. You will have assignments that benefit from a close reading of all three.
This is, in point of fact, why we study akrasia: to identify it in ourselves, and then to defeat it. To beat procrastination. To plan around our Future Selves. Sometimes, the motivation is an open hand; sometimes, it is a flying guillotine.
Those guillotines are another example, like Dürer’s Rhinoceros, of using a unique metaphor or image to clarify an idea. There are enough clichés about self-control to fill a thousand posts, and you’re likely to hear many more in your life. Guillotines are something you likely haven’t seen before, and the novelty creates a bit of stickiness.
In this course, the failure to develop self-control has an exponential impact on your success. Unlocking the “second course” explained in this post is important, but there’s also the other threat. There are guillotines flying through the air, and if you stand there, you will end up like this:
It’s the part right after this in the video that ought to concern us, metaphorically speaking.
You must work hard, and you must develop a feedback chain. That’s how you are evaluated, which you’ve seen in handouts and posters and a half-dozen other forms. Self-agency and self-control are two of the major problems to explore through the Humanities.
But more immediately, If you don’t develop self-control, you are going to lose your head.
Iterative note: There are a couple of interesting Medium essays from many years ago that explore this same idea with some of the same metaphorical language. They are embedded below:
I agree that people, because of human nature, like to get what they want when they want it and would rather choose what is bets for them right now rather than what they want in the future. If someone was told that they needed to have 5 writing assignments done by Friday and if they don’t it will bring down their grade, would they get them done faster than if it was an “optional” assignment? Yes. But having a sense of the future is imprtant As a teacher, is it hard to teach that lesson? Is it easier because there’s nothing really to “grade?” Is it hard to be objective when someone is telling you what they, themselves think they have done to do their work with no gratification? How do you analyze someone’s ability to deal with delyaed gratification, and how do you work to improve that? I’ve never thought about grades as a gratification thing, and its interesting to see that now in our lives, that we have to wait for something that has always been just given to us for our entire school lives.
What’s interesting is that you often had to wait in the past, too. I know that it took me a long time to get essay grades back to students, because each one took 45-60 minutes to annotate fully. My own experience grappling with that is why I focus so much on this instructional post: A Better Form of Feedback. It’s a shift away from the more drawn-out feedback I clung to in the past. The hope is that this approach is teaching what it needs to teach. With insight and effort like yours, it just might.
These posts bring up an interesting point. People naturally want to procrastinate instead of working toward what they want in the future. People will make plans to do something great in the future and will never follow through because it just feels better for them not to. How do you want us to combat that in class life and keep us on task but for projects far in the future? Has this always been hard for your students?
It’s always been hard for students — and for me, too, if that’s helpful to hear. When you see me staying well ahead of our work, remember that I have a life outside of school; in that life, I procrastinate as much as anyone, even when I know the repercussions. It might be a visit to the dentist or cleaning the gutters, or it might be following up with a colleague who is interested in this way of teaching. I think it’s that we all have a finite amount of time, sure, but more interestingly that we have a finite amount of willpower. Read this: Do You Suffer from Decision Fatigue?