Work Hard vs. Work Smart, part 1

Hello everyone,

Below is an excerpt from last Friday's email. Below that is an email sent in reply. Still further below are my comments.

Subject: Re: Daily email: American attitudes in education

In a message dated 5/11/2007 10:16:36 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, jeffery.combe@lausd.net writes:

Of course, we need to combat the effects of American entertainment on our students. Many of them honestly but falsely believe that all their dreams can come true if they only dream firmly enough, rejecting all disqualifying factors or necessary hard work. This may be suggesting that the old American ideal of hard work is eroding (ya think?), but we are in a good position to teach our students that hard work is still rewarded, and that realistic dreams (I don't intend that to be an oxymoron) can come true with a combination of good planning and hard work.

"Work hard and you'll get ahead... work hard and you'll get ahead!" I've heard it my entire life growing up from the old man next door who spent most of his life pushing electrical supplies like an elephant until he dropped dead at sixty-five from a heart attack, leaving thousands in unpaid tax bills. Perhaps the "work hard" story is something that once held true in our capitalistic society; however, some of my students may not hold a lot of consideration for it because they have parents who work extremely hard, yet rarely get ahead. They live paycheck to paycheck... kind of like I do at the moment. The "work hard and you'll get ahead" philosophy is not self-evident their lives. Hence, the "why should I bust my tail working hard if it will not advance me in life?" attitude wins over. This may be how our students perceive the "hard work" ethic in contemporary American society; it may be their reality. If this is the case, then maybe we should consider changing the "work hard" scenario to "work smart?" Do you think that our students would differentiate between the two or would they would see both as work? Yes. I think that the old American ideal of hard work is eroding and I believe that it should be replaced with a work smart attitude. Why should we work hard if we can do it the easy way and have more success? Is it wrong not to work hard? What are your thoughts on this?

Many of our students understand hard work to be continuous physical labor that produces food or money immediately. It's hard for them to understand the idea that one might put a lot of effort into something with no immediate benefits so that the results a few years down the road will be exponentially better.

Part of this may be the result of the adolescent inability to project into the future. As teachers, we often have to try to help our students make long-term decisions when their brains aren't fully developed enough to do it on their own. In just a few years, when they are able to project better, they come and thank us; for now, when many of them are cognitively unable to understand the cause and effect of their own impulses, they hate us.

As I started to read the teacher's response above, I thought, "Of course, I should have drawn a distinction between 'working hard' and 'working smart,' and by the end, I saw that the teacher had also wanted to draw that distinction.

I don't see "working smart" as necessarily the easy way, however. It's just more efficient in the short term (we get better results out of our labors) and more effective in the long term. I think that teachers would do well to structure their lessons (and especially their homework) around the concept of intelligent, efficient, effective work. When we're just doing "busy work," we all get frustrated. We want our work to have results.

To me, "working smart" does not mean being lazy. It means that I accomplish my goals with no extraneous labor. It's like the old idea of letting your money work for you. If you can defer spending your money so that you have savings, then your savings will earn interest; the day may come when the interest will equal current payments and you can retire. Spending the principle loses both the principal and the interest, so you have to work yourself to death.

"Working hard" means that I am focused and on task when I need to work. It does not mean that I work without let up or rewards, though the rewards may be deferred for a time. Since our students are unable to sustain work with the prospect of a long deferment of rewards, we may need to construct some other rewards to help them keep working.

One of the problems that I referred to in American culture is that we seem almost completely unwilling to defer any rewards, and our students have that attitude. I understand it when it occurs in the context of poverty (food and shelter can't be deferred for very long); I reject it when it occurs in contexts such as poor impulse control and incomplete cognitive development. In the latter cases, we have a responsibility to try to help them do what they need to do, keeping in mind that they also need to make decisions and learn the consequences of those decisions.

Jeff Combe