First to the buzzer

Impalas are fast so that they aren’t eaten. The stakes aren’t quite so high for us. (Image by Christo Ras)

I spent ten years exploring the possibilities of slowness in learning.

As a musician, the surest route to mastery was through mindful, deliberate motion from one note or chord to the next, fully present in the process and letting go of what the finished product would sound like.

I helped my students to do this. We extended the length of a beat from a fraction of a second to several, swimming in the space like we had become microscopic organisms in its ecosystem.

And then, I started a school and found myself in front of a classroom again. Slow, thoughtful action was the furthest thing from anybody’s mind.

What I quickly realized was that speed was heavily overvalued by my students, most of whom were products of public school.

Some kids were naturally quick thinkers. When faced with a question or problem, these kids made an effort to be first to the buzzer, so to speak, even if they didn’t already have an answer prepared. It was important to be right, but it was even more important to be fast.

Other kids needed a little more time to process. When faced with a question or problem, they checked out. There was no point in doing any thinking if the quick kids were just going jump in right away.

What neither group of kids expected was that I would be asking questions that didn’t have a right answer — or, at least, questions they didn’t already have the answer to.

No, my questions were opportunities for everyone in the room to think. Generally speaking, no one knew how to do it.

The quick-thinking kids would volley a number of guesses, like we were playing Pictionary. Surely one of these would be a winner! They had never learned anything because they already had the answer to all of the questions being asked.

Meanwhile, the kids who needed a little more processing time would just sit there. They had never learned anything because they never got enough time or enough reps before the class moved on to the next topic, leaving them with a weak foundation of knowledge and skill.

I discovered that, to the students, being fast meant you were smart, and being slow meant that you were not.

As I worked with the students one-on-one, the implications of this showed up in many ways. Students who were used to quickly getting the right answer felt dumb whenever they didn’t have it. Presented with a topic that they hadn’t already been exposed to, they struggled to engage and would keep trying to leap past the learning to the “already knowing.”

Students who never had the right answer in time also felt dumb. They were not used to the learning process, either. Each new lesson seemed like an exercise in futility. Having never had the experience of spending enough time with a concept to feel it click, they either went through the motions without seeking understanding or gave up entirely.

My work, over the decade I spent operating the school, was to help students to explore that same mindful space I had learned to cultivate as a musician and music teacher. Everyone needed to learn what learning felt like. Everyone needed to know that how long it takes you to grasp a concept is irrelevant to your ultimate understanding of it. Everyone needed to learn compassion for themselves and for each other.

Being the first one to hit the buzzer measures only your response time. Unfortunately, so many of the students I worked with had come to believe that their response time was all that mattered. Hopefully, through our work together, some of them were able to emerge with a stronger confidence in themselves and a greater sense of their own ability to grow and learn.

I have no doubt that those of us who experienced competitive, fast-paced school educational environments as children continue, as adults, to carry some of the same messages we received back then. For each of us, the work is to dismantle the beliefs that are holding us back or even actively causing harm.

“I’m safe because I’m fast and therefore smart,” is just as potentially troublesome as “I’m hopeless because I’m slow and therefore stupid.” These are two sides of the same coin, relentlessly emphasizing speed and automaticity as the basis for our self-concept.

These beliefs can prevent us from trying new things, sticking with things, and having compassion for ourselves and others. These beliefs can be dismantled when we allow ourselves to delve into areas where we have little knowledge or skill and make space for ourselves to improve, however long it takes.

You don’t have to be fast. You don’t have to be first. Your value as a human being doesn’t follow from that, and neither does your intellectual potential. If anything, you might learn the most from going slow. I know I have.