Manufactured Difficulty

'Challenge, challenge' everywhere

What is it with education and its infatuation with the notion of ‘challenge’? It seems to be unspokenly necessary, in many worldviews, that to proceed from a state of ignorance to one of knowing—or, one of true knowing—one must pass through some kind of challenge. We are told that we must challenge students, that curricula must be challenging, and so on, in a million other variations. Why? Why must these things be so? Why must ‘challenge’—nebulous, polyseminal, functionally decoupled ‘challenge’—be deliberately inserted into everyone’s educational formation somewhere, somehow?

I’m reminded of the observation, many years ago—still true today, no doubt—about the extraordinary amount of life trauma on display among the video biographies of reality show participants. This, of course, was and is on display only because television executives discovered that people rubberneck trauma stories, which increases ratings. It has usually nothing to do with the participants’ appearance on the show, except across some circuitous story told by the participants themselves, prompted by the show itself. This could be the reason that education sees the need to insert ‘challenge’ wherever it looks longingly—not because it is a copied architectural feature of most reality TV, but because it is a necessary ingredient to the ancient story structures of rags to riches and man against the world. The character must encounter confusions and struggles—challenges—else her gain in the end seem immoral, unfair, or of poor value.

Still, ‘challenge’ is not a necessary component of any scientific learning model out there. It might make for a good story, and even one that we have a hard time not writing, but this is not persuasive as an argument for the necessity of ‘challenge’ in learning. Of significant concern, too, is what is meant by the term ‘challenge.’ Are we talking about exposing students to curricular material that is a bit ‘higher’ on the sequence of instruction than normal? Or are we talking about deliberately introduced psychological hardships around learning? Some challenges are certainly reliable goods, whereas others may just be mean or sadistic, and only given cover by the universal story of ad astra per aspera that we tell ourselves in various ways.

Of course, students should not be protected from all challenge. But it seems to me to be challenge enough to acquire the knowledge we transmit to students. Why must we invent more challenges? And so stupidly at that. Is it for the students or for our photo galleries and administrative records?