False prerequisites

No law says that you have to have read a book in order to display it on your shelf. (Image by AP-Berlin)

What I love about teaching music is the immediacy of it.

No matter how old you are, you can make a pleasing sound on a drum, ukulele, or harmonium on your first try. Given a few more minutes, you can create an ostinato (a repeated melodic or rhythmic pattern) that you can build into a song. It’s so fun that it makes you want to do more of it.

Ironically, however, much of music instruction turns music into something intimidating and remote. Often, you’re not learning to play music—you’re learning about music. And even if you’re actually taking lessons on an instrument, you have to learn to read music, play with proper technique, and master a series of exercises that don’t sound like anything. You don’t get to the good stuff until much later, if ever. The experience is shallow and unsatisfying, leading you to quit in frustration.

This phenomenon shows up in many areas: a direct, natural route to a certain outcome has become convoluted and stuffed with obstacles. Sometimes, this happens on purpose. To become a surgeon, you can’t just show up with a scalpel and start cutting into flesh. You have to go through extensive education and training, board certification, and many hours of guided practice. However, not every discipline or undertaking requires such rigorous oversight. Sometimes the prerequisites that we take for granted are, in fact, unnecessary. It can be useful to question them and find workarounds that allow us to have exactly what we want.

When I started The Little Middle School, I made it a homeschool program because that was the simplest way to proceed. Nine years later, it is still a homeschool program, and an unaccredited one. When I looked into accreditation, I found lists of requirements that seemed arbitrary to me. For example, a certain number of students requires a full-time librarian. A certain additional number of students requires a second, part-time librarian. Nothing against librarians, but I didn’t see how pursuing accreditation would contribute meaningfully to student outcomes. It would be better for me to put my resources where it was already obvious that they would be needed.

Susan, the proud owner of Spirit, the Cornish pilot gig that was built by the Apprenticeshop in 2017, takes a group out rowing three days a week during the boating season. Almost every week, there is a person who has never rowed before. Although Susan offers a brief lesson in terminology and technique on the dock, the new rowers learn how to row from the experience of rowing. They observe the others, receive a bit of coaching, and get an hour of practice with an oar, in the boat, on the water. The only requirement is a life jacket. The only prerequisite is enthusiasm.

While there are certainly situations that merit caution, it’s often possible to ensure safety and create memorable experiences at the same time. We can consider the results we are looking for and work backward to orchestrate those results with a minimum of red tape. This makes the job of the teacher or coach more difficult in the short term, and it can be more demanding of the participants. However, the upside can be quite compelling. This is the “hands on” learning that everyone always talks about. It leads to powerful self-efficacy and more progress in less time.

You don’t need to knit a scarf before you can knit a hat. You don’t need to learn piano before you play the drum set. You don’t need to create a website before you can sell your thing. You don’t need to become wealthy before you contribute to causes you care about. You don’t need to wet your toothbrush again after you put the toothpaste on. Some prerequisites exist for a good reason, but some are merely conventional wisdom that can be called into question and worked around. Some are actually our own limiting beliefs.

Whatever you want to do, there’s probably a way to simplify it, work around the obstacles that seem overwhelming, or take a different route to get the outcome you desire. You might not have to spend years paying your dues before you can have what you want—or at least the start of it. And if you’d like some help figuring out how, that’s my specialty.

What false prerequisites have you identified in your life? How have you navigated them?