A Trip to Remember

There is perhaps no greater teacher than experience.

Almost any lesson taught by parents, school teachers, and books cannot compare to the lesson taught through the hard knocks of life. I have been blessed with my fare share of personal “learning opportunities” through missteps and mistakes.

It is with this in mind that I proudly share one my worst teaching days. This particular event took place four years ago but has not dimmed from my mind. Ironically, this difficult lesson came during a class trip that was celebrating an academic achievement. Generally speaking, I take my class of a trip every once in a while to accentuate a milestone in learning and to foster a positive social spirit within the class.

In the democratic spirit upon which this country was founded, I chose to allow the class to decide where they wanted to go. Here was the plan: each member of the class could nominate a destination within certain logistical and financial parameters. After the nominations were in, we would vote and narrow the ballot to three options. Of these three places, everyone could vote by putting the places in order of preference. We would go to the place that would bring the most joy to the most people. You may have guessed what happened by simply reading this ingenious plan.

It failed miserably!

No one seemed satisfied by the remaining choices. I am not sure what exactly went wrong but I remember driving this big van with everyone in a bitter argument about where we were off to (or more precisely where we were not off to!) Although the exact final destination is unclear in my mind I am sure that: (a) it was far away from school, (b) the activity cost money and (c) the activity was significantly more enjoyable than class work. All this did not seem to matter in the minds of my students. They were so focused on the places that did not get chosen that they could not appreciate any aspect of the trip. Every participant, teacher included, returned frustrated, emotionally drained, and in no way recharged to enter the classroom with new found vigor. The trip had the exact opposite effect than I had intended.

Future trips were not developed in such a democratic way. Generally, I decide where the trip is and keep it to myself until the last minute. Then I announce that everyone should just go the van for a surprise. Trips since that day are fun and definitely add camaraderie and excitement to the classroom environment.

For a while, I have wondered about this odd phenomenon. Why did giving the students more opportunity and choice make them less happy? Recently I came across a book by Harvard Professor Dan Gilbert that answers this question.

In Stumbling on Happiness (http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/gilbert/) Gilbert explains many surprising facts about what makes people happy. Among his many ideas he expresses the fact that human beings adapt to the realities life gives them.

He asks the following question;
“Here’s two different futures that I invite you to contemplate, and you can try to simulate them and tell me which one you think you might prefer. One of them is winning the lottery. This is about 314 million dollars. And the other is becoming paraplegic. So, just give it a moment of thought. You probably don't feel like you need a moment of thought.
Interestingly … the fact is that a year after losing the use of their legs, and a year after winning the lotto, lottery winners and paraplegics are equally happy with their lives.”

He brings study after study that indicates that we find happiness in the reality we are stuck with and not in the decisions that we have made. Remarkably, our ability to choose our destiny does not add to our happiness, in fact, it can deter happiness. Gilbert supports this with a study that found that people enjoy gifts that they get stuck with more than gifts they can exchange. Being stuck with a decision seems to allow the person to come to peace with the reality.

The lesson to take to the classroom is that although we are conditioned to think that more choices lead to more happiness it can have the opposite effect. In my case, giving the power to decide the location of the field trip made it a miserable one. There are many similar examples that can come up daily

You may attempt to learn the limitations of choice from Dr. Dan Gilbert’s book or this article but I have a feeling that the lesson will truly hit home on that unfortunate day that you misuse it in the classroom. Been there.

Please note: There are defiantly situations in which giving choices works positively. Many wonderful ways of using choices as a tool are dealt with in Jim Fay’s popular Love and Logic program http://www.loveandlogic.com/.