When I was younger, I used to fight and wrestle with my younger brother a lot. He is six years younger than I am, and small for his age. Now most of these fights were real fights (many of them over petty issues), but I would have my brother charging at me with anger.
Now I can say that I have gotten into a couple of fights in school and on the football field, but fighting with my younger brother was somewhat more challenging. One, when I'm fighting with someone about the same size, I can go all out. With my brother, I have to adjust my strength to avoid serious injuries (and also getting in trouble with my parents). Two, my brother never knew when to give up. I wasn't that strong as a kid, but I was a lot stronger than my brother. And trust me, it's harder trying to stop someone's punches than it is to throw a punch. So throughout most of my fights, I tried my best to drill this into my brother's head: I am stronger, and you will lose, so don't even try. It was hard trying to convince my brother that he is weaker than me. And he kept coming back for more. Once I accidentally smacked his head on the floor which sounded really bad, and he laid there crying and saying he will one day get his revenge. And I wondered, when will he learn that he's not going to beat me?
The same challenges apply in the classroom. Calibrated meanness. How do you convince a kid that they're not good enough, without demoralizing them? How do you tell a kid who thinks he's too smart that he's actually an idiot without snuffing out any future potential?
Sometimes we avoid telling kids they suck, because we want to give them space to fail, give them hope to continue. But sometimes you just need to tell them they suck, or else they will forever be content and complacent with their current status.
I do this in art class sometimes. I tell them, if this isn't your 100%, then I don't want to accept it. I tell my kids if I was coach, I wouldn't take any of them to be school team representatives in football. Sometimes it drives the kids to try harder, sometimes they think I'm just talking rubbish. But I've always believed that improvement can only happen when we're good enough to know we suck. Which is why so many of our talented friends always downplay their gifts. They KNOW what the real deal is. They KNOW what greatness in their respective fields are. That's why they believe they suck. If we think we're good enough, maybe we're not. Even 2-time Guitarist of the Year Tommy Emmanuel thinks he's not good.
I came across a quote which I think will sorta tie together these random strings of thoughts. It's by a chess coach in the U.S. named Elizabeth Spiegel:
... when they lose a game of chess, they know that they have no one to blame but themselves. They had everything they needed to win, and they lost. If that happens to you once, you can usually find some excuse, or just never think about it again. When it's part of your life, when it happens to you every single weekend, you have to find a way to separate yourself from your mistakes or your losses. I try to teach my students that losing is something you do, not something you are.
