Why I hate the notion of ‘catch-up’…
Every time I hear the phrase ‘catch-up’ being used about young people right now, I bristle. I find the phrase so damaging and counterproductive. It promotes this idea that our life is a kind of progress chart which – if something as inconvenient as a pandemic dares interrupt – we must somehow get back ‘on track’ with. It denies our humanity and our individual versions of what progress and success might look like and is likely to cause more problems than solutions. What bothers me most is that the concept is based on a number of unexamined assumptions:
Life is linear. The idea that life is a linear journey and that at each point we should have reached a certain stage, whereas in reality (as adults) we know it does not work like that, we know that many of us have ended up in careers we did not know existed when we were at school and have landed in them by a series of coincidences and luck. We know that huge mistakes and setbacks can be so formative and creative if we are given the space to assimilate the learning from them and think about how they might change our perspectives or our awareness of ourselves. Life is hugely complex. It is not a straight line – at best a zig zag.
We can segment ourselves. ‘Catch-up’ is mostly used to talk about young people’s academic learning and the yawning gap that covid has created between where they are versus where they ‘should’ be. Yet – even if we agree with that – we can’t treat their academic learning in isolation. What about their personal development, the state of their mental health, their self-awareness, their sense of connection, it is so critical that they have the opportunity to learn in these areas, especially in response to crisis and trauma. It is crazy to suggest that young people can race extra-fast to catch up with their academic work without paying attention to the rest of themselves. In fact if we tell them continuously how important it is to catch up, if we shorten their summer holiday and extend their school day, we are very likely to increase their anxiety, decrease their opportunity to rebuild meaningful connections and worsen our (already well-developed) mental health crisis.
The point of life is progress towards a pre-defined version of success. Words are very telling – they form the basis of our methodology at Grit – so the choice of words always makes me pay attention. Using the words ‘catch-up’ about young people tells me that we believe young people to be behind on their ‘progress’ towards a fixed point, and that this fixed point is a version of success that we have designed for them. A set of grades, numbers, milestones that are reiterated to them continuously. Of course we want to be a country that raises brilliant scientists, entrepreneurs, medics, teachers ….and those things often require a degree of study but – if we followed Bhutan’s lead – and subverted this assumption by measuring our success using happiness instead of wealth, how might things change? Perhaps we’d focus a bit more on investing in developing kind, connected, compassionate, resilient, self-aware young people capable of building collaborative communities that thrived and made a real difference to the things they define as successful.
I know I am being idealistic here but the narrative we create about what’s important for young people really matters. My work with Grit as well as my being a mother to two teenagers tells me that these are anxious, exhausting, uncertain, uncomfortable, lonely times for many young people. I wish we could be talking about how we can support them to use this challenging time to help reconsider their priorities, to reinvent themselves with new possibilities, to invest in their emotional development, to build self-awareness and resilience or even better to just get them talking, laughing, playing and being children again.