Results vs. Systems – The Responsibility of Education

When outcomes are all that matter, your work habits (and nearly everything else) will be left to you.

We think we need to change our results, but the results are not the problem. What we really need to change are the systems that cause those results. When you solve problems at the results level, you only solve them temporarily. In order to improve for good, you need to solve problems at the systems level. [James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, 2018, p. 25]

Problems in education are often addressed at the level of results. Grades and test scores are demanded with little regard for how they’re achieved, how temporary the effects are, or what habits do or don’t develop along the way. Solving problems at the systems level, however, involves a student’s habits, environment, mindset, and identity. If we want to “improve for good,” we should explore the effects of results-based environments and, considering their limitations,

ask what systems-level responsibilities fall to students and parents.

[1][1]In many cases the limitations of schools aren’t their fault. They can’t do everything—and we shouldn’t expect them to. Indeed, it’s the fantasy that schools can solve all our educational problems that allows many people to abdicate the educational responsibilities that are within their purview.

Here are some reasons why schools often can’t effectively address habits:
– Long-term habit formation benefits from an inquiry into behavioral influences beyond the scope of schools, i.e. friends, family, community, culture, physical and mental health.
– Habit formation also benefits from goals that are intrinsically motivating, such that students will continue to pursue them away from the pressure of the school, but students’ learning behaviors often begin and end with extrinsic motivation.
– Forming effective habits takes time, and schools are on a tight, rigid schedule, often moving on before a habit can take root; teaching a student “how to learn” takes valuable time away from the necessary curriculum.
– It is difficult for a single teacher to give a large group of students the individual attention that systems-level solutions demand—they must make due coaxing results.

Results-based environments implicitly teach a fixed mindset. When people don’t address the importance of habits, how consistent effort leads to growth over time, or the tools students can use to make these small improvements, they communicate that these things aren’t important. They send the message: “You either have the talent and motivation to succeed, or you don’t.” This mindset makes it a matter of pride to “get results” with the least amount of effort—the least healthy habits; it’s proof that you’re “smart.” These “smart” students don’t develop the learning systems they need to transcend their inborn capacities or accomplish more demanding academic work. Neither do those students who, for various reasons, find schoolwork difficult and therefore figure: “I don’t have what it takes, so why even try?”

This focus on outcomes also distorts the meaning and function of tests. In school, we learn that a test is an end, the culmination of learning, instead of a means of learning. Testing ourselves regularly and associating the challenge of recall with positive progress should be an important part of our learning habits. But we’ve been conditioned to fear and avoid tests and the challenge they pose. We associate the struggle of recall with stressful, inflated judgments, often the only reward for which is permission to move on and jettison what we’ve “learned.” We don’t use tests as learning tools, as feedback to inform our ongoing studies. We treat test results as final products, the extrinsic weight of which is often our sole, fleeting motivation.

In addition to these effects, results-based environments teach students to: choose easier tasks, rely on external evaluations and extrinsic incentives, discount intrinsically attractive pursuits, and retain and comprehend material less effectively in the long term.

It’s no wonder many of us find it hard to work autonomously, without an imposed structure or extrinsic motivation. Granted, this kind of work has a degree of unavoidable difficulty, but I believe our efforts are hindered most by this fact: Our work has been externally governed so completely and for so long that we lack the systems to govern it ourselves. The habits and skills that would allow us to do self-directed work have been neglected and undermined. And significant environmental influences on these habits have been disregarded.

Of all our educational concerns, these may be the most important and overlooked: Will you be prepared to do the work you genuinely want to do, that which will actualize your potential, that which the world needs most from you? Will you have the tools to make slow, difficult progress toward lofty, personal goals? Will you have built an environment that empowers you, or one that distracts you? Will you see yourself and your aspirations as worthy of serious dedication? Will you give yourself permission to think and work with professional intent?

Others are unlikely to ask these questions on your behalf, particularly when they’re pressured to focus on narrow metrics with limited time. Your work ethic and study habits—your search for vocation and purpose

—will be left to you. You might be able to get by with a good grade, with minimal effort, at the last minute. This may meet the standards of others and achieve your prescribed goals—it may even earn you some praise.

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[W]here in our educational system do we introduce this crucial concept [of purpose] to our students? And when do we spend the time and effort to help our students match their abilities and interests with particular job choices (or even, in economic language, with the demands of the labor marketplace)? Too many young people are left to their own devices with respect to some of life’s largest questions: What is my calling? What do I have to contribute to the world? What am I here for? It is as if we are running away from these questions, apprehensive about facing them, either for ourselves or for our children. …

In order to find purpose, children must survey the world around them and determine where and how they can make their own contribution. They must get to know themselves well enough to see how their own talents and interests match some niche that the world has to offer. This means that they must come to understand both themselves and the world that they are growing up in, which may not be the same world their parents grew up in. They must formulate a long-term goal to make a difference in that world, and they must learn how to make a realistic plan to pursue their objective. [William Damon, The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life, Free Press, 2008, pp. 46-47, 132]

But this is a poor way to discover what you’re really capable of. And it’s poor preparation for the discipline required to build the life you want. Whether you’re struggling in school, getting by, or getting straight A’s, you should ask yourself: What kind of habits am I reinforcing in the process? How are the “results” I’m optimized for shaping my behaviors, mindset, and identity? What personal standards and goals could I optimize for in order to build healthier habit-systems?

This systems-level approach should inform our learning, and also our teaching. If you want to really teach someone something, it isn’t enough to craft a lesson and leave it to the student to either learn or not. You should help the student plan an approach to the work needed to make the most of that lesson. You should offer them the tools to facilitate that work, and establish habits that will serve them in the long term.

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The therapist’s problem refers to the fact that it’s hard to at once help young people when they’re under our care and prepare them to apply their skills effectively after they leave our care. …

For many parents, most of the time they will spend with their children in their lifetimes will be over when their child turns eighteen. Have they spent that time wisely, in a way that will stay with their children for the next seventy or eighty years of their lives?

Secondary and postsecondary teachers get … [r]oughly four to five hours per week for nine or ten months. Have we given our students content knowledge and learning strategies that will help them in the next year’s class—let alone throughout their academic careers? …

[The name of this problem] in the scientific literature is fade-out. This refers to well-intentioned programs that have a short-term impact but don’t help in the long run. …

[Mentoring for future growth] solves the therapist’s problem. [This] happens when the processes we use with young people instill skills or ways of thinking that continue to help them after they leave our care. [David Yeager, 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People, Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster, 2024, pp. 282-284]

As Jacques Barzun wrote, “The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it.”

Ultimately, the student must do the work of learning. How successful they are, and how well they continue to learn throughout their life, is a matter of building the foundational systems that make intellectual work natural, habitual, and efficient. Give them learning tools, study habits, spaces rich with resources, a sound work ethic, a mindset that embraces challenge, an exemplary culture, and a confident identity as a learner. If you want to help them achieve a goal, help them translate that goal into specific behaviors, and help them integrate those behaviors into their life. Help them build supportive environments. Help them see themselves differently, and internalize the values that make their work toward that goal feel authentic.

Short-term results unfortunately matter a great deal more than they should. They heavily influence a school’s funding and prestige, a teacher’s employment, a parent’s approval, and a student’s job prospects and self-esteem. This is the high-stakes schooling environment we’ve made, which nearly always places signaling value above developing real human assets—which ignores the complex systems involved in student performance and merely coerces outcomes—outcomes that say much less about the real potential of a student than we like to believe.

Results do matter, of course. They can give us important feedback about our learning and teaching. But we should be careful about which results we prioritize.

And we should be sure that the systems of education we create and employ are optimized for the results we value most (whether or not they are easily quantifiable). When we feel pressured to focus on narrow, short-term metrics, we should remember to broaden our concern. Obsessing over these metrics can undermine what are ultimately more important standards of a successful education, and a successful life.

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To begin with, we must embrace a healthier and radically different way of thinking about success. We need to harness our fears about our children’s futures and understand that the extraordinary focus on metrics that has come to define success today—high grades, trophies, and selective school acceptances from preschools to graduate schools—is a partial and frequently deceptive definition. At its best, it encourages academic success for a small group of students but gives short shrift to the known factors that are necessary for success later in life. … [It] fails to acknowledge those students whose potential contributions are not easily measurable. If we insist on a narrow and metric-based definition of success then we maddeningly consign potentially valuable contributions to our society to an undervalued and even bleak future. …

While we all hope our children will do well in school, we hope with even greater fervor that they will do well in life. Our job is to help them to know and appreciate themselves deeply; to approach the world with zest; to find work that is exciting and satisfying, friends and spouses who are loving and loyal; and to hold a deep belief that they have something meaningful to contribute to society. This is what it means to teach our children well. [Madeline Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Parenting for Authentic Success, HarperCollins, 2012, pp. xv-xvi]

To the extent that schools solve problems, they often do so superficially and temporarily. The problems they address are far from all educational problems. The needs they serve are far from all of our educational needs. A student’s performance isn’t just a matter of innate talent or other variables confined to schools. The systems that influence performance span the largest spheres of culture, the values of families, down to the self-concepts and small habits of the individual learner. These are influences that each of us can choose to improve, in small and large ways, for ourselves and others. We can integrate healthy habits of mind and body into our daily lives, and design our environments to empower these habits. The results of this practice would be genuine, enduring, and truly profound.

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