Like many, I have read ‘Start with Why’ by Simon Sinek, and while it is not specifically targeted towards education, I cannot help but to think about it in those terms. In his book, Sinek describes that good enterprises begin with their Why in mind, that is, what is the purpose of their existence. From here, flows the How, describing how said enterprise tries to meet that purpose. This leads to the What, which are the goods and services that the enterprise follows. He uses Apple for example. Apple's Why reflects the creative spirit and the challenge to the status quo. Their How involved technology that allowed users to do so and the What were the specific devices such as iPhones or the Apple I computer.

I think that for many educators, we are a little confused about our Why. To be clear, this is not the case for every educator, as I feel that there are many educators who are very clear about their Why. For these educators, it is clear in their practice, in their attitudes and in their beliefs. You can spot them a mile away. It is these educators who are bursting with energy, they are full of creative and innovative ideas and they are remembered long after their students leave their classroom. Their Why is in alignment with their practices and they are truly exceptional in their field.

But for many others, I think there is some confusion, and it is this, that leads to burnout and to a proliferation of ineffective pedagogies. This is also true of the larger system itself, in that the Why of teaching is often misaligned with systemic policies and practices.

The Why of educators ought to be something along the lines of ‘to work towards creating better people’. There are, of course, variations on this concept using different slogans or words, but essentially the spirit will remain the same. To keep things simple, this will be the operational definition that will continue to be used here. Also in the spirit of simplicity, we will not spend too much time on the definition of ‘better.’ For our purposes, ‘better’ will refer to being better equipped to thrive in their role in the world, whatever that might be for any given individual.

For some they may be tempted to say the Why of teaching is to create better learners. This is always a worthwhile pursuit, however, I would argue that while this is integral, becoming a good learner does not necessarily translate to being a better person. Learning is an internal process, where we accumulate knowledge and skill sets for ourselves. However, to be of benefit to the larger community we must put that learning into action and leverage it into the service of others. Being a skilled doctor that does not practice helps no one, including that person. Being a better learner helps us make better informed decisions, like voting for example, but if we do not vote then of what use is it to anyone else including ourselves? So it is not enough to become a better learner, we need to produce better learners that can use this learning to become better people.

You should notice from this that the Why of teaching is NOT Education itself; Education is actually the How. We are trying to create better people through the vehicle of education. When thinking in these terms, it naturally lends itself to educational reform.

If Education is the How and not the Why, then when we examine pedagogical practices through this lens we quickly re-evaluate practices. These individual acts of pedagogy then become our What. For example, the practice of giving a final exam is a What. Connecting it back to our Why, then final exams should seek to create a better people. Assigning a worksheet should contribute towards the creation of a better person. Lecture-style teaching should contribute to the creation of a better person. By now you can see what I am getting at.

In many cases, our practices do not align with our why. Other than forgetting, or not recognising, our true Why, I believe there are three major contributors for this:

1. We have made Education itself our Why rather than being a How. From here, we can see how some ineffective pedagogies get supported. It can be argued that Final Exams serve to support the institution of Education itself rather than support those people education was designed to serve. In theory, the purpose of a Final Exam is to allow a person to demonstrate all they know on a topic. However, it is a narrow instrument that often does not lend itself to doing this, since it invariably does not give a student this opportunity, it merely gives them the opportunity to ask pre-selected questions in the hope that all concepts taught can be demonstrated through answering them. I would argue that a deep conversation with someone would prove much more insightful, or a portfolio showing the diversity of learning.

This propagates more ineffective practices than simply Final Exams since we have elevated Education as an entity unto itself. The goal becomes to create better students rather than better people. Students are only students so long as they exist within the Educational system, they stop being students when they leave the system. As such, the creation of better students is self-serving in that it perpetuates Education as a Why rather than as a How, and ultimately, becomes less valuable once these students are no longer in the system we were supporting by their creation.

2. The Why of educators may have been more internally focused rather than externally focused. I have mentioned in other writings how I feel there are some who went into the field of education because it was familiar, pradicable, and comfortable. It was low-risk in that they spent many formative years in a school setting, and then, chose to go into a line of work that operated in the same environment. For these individuals, the Why was that teaching was that comfortable and predictable for them. Thus, pedagogical practices serve to reinforce and support this Why.

These lead to compliance and control-based lessons. Worksheets with rubrics for completion, or lecture-style lessons where the speaker controls the content and tempo of the lesson. In this scenario, students are passive rather than integral parts of the classroom. Many students then resist this Why because they see no value in it for themselves, and in truth there really is none, educators become frustrated because they cannot fulfill their Why. This frustration continues to mount and burnout results since neither student nor educator has a clear Why that can be met.

This is not to say that educators with this Why are bad educators. There are many educators who leverage this familiarity as a Why to allow them to operate at their fullest since they can manage anxiety and work in their comfort zone. They can work in conjunction with the larger Why of making better people by operating within an environment that works for them while simultaneously changing that environment to better adapt to the students in their care. It only becomes a bad thing if educators have the internal Why while forgetting the service component of what they do and are unwilling to grow with the diverse needs of their students.

3. We have made the supporting of the System the Why, in that we are subservient to the System itself. This is often the case when decisions are made less to do with education and more to do with other factors, for example, finances or liability. When we continue to operate in a field where decisions are made that are contrary to our Why, we displace our Why with a variety of other factors. This inevitably clouds the Why of creating better people. Class sizes, for example, are primarily a cost-driven factor more than an educational factor. Most would agree that a class of 24 students would be a better environment than a class of 34 students, especially when given the variety of needs that exist in the modern classroom. However, extra teachers cost money, and a lot of it. Not to mention the problem of space, in that many schools could not suddenly accommodate a half dozen new teachers and new classrooms. As such, we have class size caps that are not in alignment with the Why of educators, but are instead in alignment with the System in which it exists.

Because the Why of decisions like this is motivated, not by creating better people, but by other constraints, it becomes easy to become disillusioned with our Why and give over instead maintaining a system, reversing the idea that the system should support the people in it and not the other way around. Those working within the system become jaded and disillusioned since they may feel they are making decisions aimed at creating better people, while having to operate within constraints or under people for whom it appears there is a different Why.

So how do we re-align our Why as educators? I could say that it starts at the top but it actually starts at all levels. We cannot simply ignore the systemic constraints, for example, there will always be financial constraints since there is no endless pot of gold from which to draw from. In addition, there will always be policies put in place to prevent liability to protect both students as well as employees that are created for reasons not in alignment with our Why.

However, we ought to re-examine some policies and practices where possible and how we allocate resources to ensure that they are directed towards the Why of producing better people. We can still work within the system to create policies that are more in alignment with our Why of creating better people so long as we keep that at the forefront of decision making, and be honest and transparent when decisions contrary to our Why to this get made and clearly illustrate their rationale. It is important that we do not make too many decisions contrary to our Why or we run the risk of blurring or losing sight of our Why.

We also need to remember that there is a service and servant component to teaching. educators exist to teach young people. No students, no teachers. Educators need to keep at the forefront of their thoughts ‘how does this make the young people whom I serve better people?’. This means better people and not necessarily just better students. Creating better students serves to support the construct that is the Education system. We often seek to make better students, who perform better on assessment instruments created by a system to measure its own effectiveness rather than using those same instruments to determine if students are becoming better people. Creating better people will naturally result in creating better students since they will be more skilled to meet the challenges ahead, though the opposite is not necessarily true. Creating better test-takers may mean creating better performing students but not necessarily better people since test-taking is a skill only useful inside of academia. For the majority of people, we do not write tests outside of school structures, other than your driver’s permit.

It is critical that educators keep our true Why at the forefront and not substitute it for an imposter. Doing so will, by extension, create a better experience for our students because it will engage them and make their school experience meaningful. It will transform our pedagogy into meaningful and purposeful practices to create the future for our society. It will also produce teachers who are innovative, energized and less prone to burning out when practice and purpose are in alignment.