diligence vs. rigor
During our early days of “adventure school” I sought to be in nature as much as possible, but there was a foreboding sense of doom that accompanied our hope to reclaim childhood. It seem that my husband and I had been taught to view education through a set of lens that is no longer supported the family culture we were building. So we chose to do school differently during the pandemic. It came from a longing to connect with our children deeply and learn alongside them. It is a privilege to cultivate creative learning rhythms, but we did feel pressure to conjure some form of rigor so we could validate our learning. This thinking only created anxiety within our home and hearts. While I sought heart-led learning, I found myself turning to performance-based worksheets in those moments. After some deep dives, we discovered the difference between diligence and rigor. We are hoping to cultivate diligence, not rigor. We are hoping to cultivate wonder and beauty.
“..the word “rigor” comes from the Latin “rigorem” which means numbness, stiffness, hardness, firmness, roughness, rudeness. If we are aiming to order our children’s affections, learn to love what is lovely, join in the great conversation, and cultivate a soul so that the person is ready in every sense of the word to take on the challenges around the corner and on the other side of the college entrance exams, then, they said, work for “diligence” instead. Diligere mean to single out, value highly, esteem, prize, love; aspire to, take delight in, appreciate…what we really mean by rigor is not just doing hard things, but cultivating a habit of focused attention.”
-Sarah Mackenzie
A moment in time: I could have chosen to correct the direction of her nozzle or let her be, let her imagine “misting magic” over her favorite plant at time. I’m not sure why I thought play didn’t count as learning (even thought we sought play-based pre-Ks!), but the pervasive thought of rigor was rooted deep within my being.
A confession: I use to cringe when they did school work in a non-traditional way, like under their fort because it wasn’t at a desk. I guess I feared they’d forget to how to learn seated at desks and in chairs. Silliness, I know. As I saw that learning happens EVERYWHERE and ALL. THE. TIME ( best of all under a fort!), I began to shift my self-talk to, “You want to do narrations under the fort? Sure thing! We get to do “school” differently in this season, it is a gift, I do not need to make it look or feel like a classroom for it to count . Under the fort, my eldest discovered that she quite enjoys latin and greek. I was surprised to find her spending extra time looking over words and breaking them down into their groupings! This doesn’t happen every single day, but often enough for me to see that the fruit of diligence is different than rigor at a heart-level. There is a season for everything under the sun and that includes learning. We know how it feels to push ourselves beyond what feels life-giving and that is not a legacy I’d like to leave.
Have you ever navigated diligence and rigor outside of school? How do you cultivate diligence in lieu of rigor?
