A Note on Constructive Adversarialism
This is an excerpt from a music curriculum written for non-music teachers. The concepts here are equally valuable to parents acting as support teachers for their children at home.
The Best Kind of Competition
Teaching is a lot like cooking. Too much of one thing spoils a recipe. As someone who grew up baking with her family, I can tell you for example that cookies that are all sweet sugar without the savor of a little salt are pretty gross. Whipping up a lime dressing may include lime juice, salt, and ground chipotle, but it doesn’t really taste right until you add just a bit of honey. Flavors require balance, and when a cook is able to hit the right composition of flavors, and you’ve got something delicious.
In the same way, a great teacher knows how to balance the flavors of emotions that they evoke in their students. A teacher who is all sweet all of the time will feel cloying to students. A teacher who is only salty to their students will end up having a relationship of bitterness with their students.
Throughout this curriculum, you will notice that there are times in the scripts when you are instructed to ask your students the question, “Are you sure that you can do this? It might be too hard…” But why is this question being asked? Doesn’t his erode the confidence of the students? Is the teacher implying that the students aren’t capable, or that they don’t have faith in them?
Not at all.
When done correctly, these kind of questions act the same way salt does in a batch of cookies. In all of the sweetness of the hard work that they have done, the teacher adds a carefully-handled and intentional flavor of competition into the mix.
Let’s be clear right now: Competition is best when it creates team feeling. It is extremely rare that I (Allison) encourage a teacher to spur competition between students. However, I often encourage teachers to create a competition construct between the students and themselves. This is constructive adversarialism.
In this context, the adversary of the students is the teacher; it is never another student. The teacher is the person who gets proved wrong, or is made to look foolish - never, ever a student. By becoming the (gentle, not too salty) adversary, classmates have a reason to join together and do their best. After all, they are all now on the same team, working together to prove the teacher “wrong,” win a game, or in other ways overcome a difficulty set for them by the teacher.
The best thing that you can give your students is the repeated opportunity to say out loud, “Of course I can do this!” “It’s not too hard,” and “See? I told you it’s easy for me!” When you give children these chances, you are guiding their thought patterns away from fear and into Bravery, Confidence, and Curiosity.