The Kohelet Prize and the Importance of Systems versus Goals

The Kohelet Prize just released their database celebrating progressive Jewish education. These hundreds of entries from Jewish day schools across North America are brimming with ideas to take back to my school. It will take me the long weekend and beyond to go through them all and likely months to properly digest their innovations. The entrants were drawn by the generous prize offered by Kohelet, full disclosure I was one of them together with a team of my esteemed colleagues, our slideshow going through the process and pedagogy of our Yad Hayotzer project appears below. You can see our entire entry on the Kohelet database here.




However the process of creating this entry was so much more important than the prize.

Let me explain.

I have recently become obsessed this election season with the blog by Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip Dilbert. Whether you or agree or disagree with his approach, Scott Adams postings in general and before and after the elections in particular have been highly original. However, this blog is NOT about politics and never will be so that's all I have to say about that.

The blog led me to Scott Adam's book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life, in which his major thesis is the importance of setting up a system rather than focusing on specific goals.

In his lingo, goals are for losers. An individual who sets goals for herself will be in a constant state of not living up to these goals. Even on those rare moments in life when the goal is achieved, one then will have a "now what?" moment, not knowing how to proceed since one's primary focus was on a specific goal.

Setting up systems, on the other hand, is the hallmark of a truly successful person. One sets a system to follow every single day. If one follows this system, one will always be a winner every single day. Even if one fails most of the time, continuing to follow the system assures that through one's good habits (and a bit of luck) one will eventually achieve success.

This is how I view this Kohelet Prize and the many other grants that I apply to on a regular basis. I have a system in place in which every day I wish to learn and share my learning with others, both my fellow teachers and students. Collaborating on our Yad Hayotzer project was one notable example where a number of us were able to sit down and think deeply about a project that we have been implementing with our students for a number of years. The process of collecting and presenting the pictures, videos, course materials, and pedagogy to a wider audience has helped us further refine this learning activity for the benefit of our students and the wider audience who will now be able to view our entry in the database.

I think it is essential that we communicate this concept with our students. I like to say that in our hyper college-centered environment, students will do almost anything to get the good grade. Often in school, the ones who get the A in a certain class are not necessarily the ones who work the hardest or learn the most. They are the ones who have figured out how to "get" the teacher and perform exactly to her liking. This might be a good school skill that might result in achieving one's goal for a high grade, but it is not a system for lifelong success. If we and our students can realize the importance of implementing a good system, to learn new things every day, be kind, collaborate, and share, this will ultimately help to achieve much greater lifelong success.

My favorite category from the contest was the Kohelet Prize for Risk Taking and Failure. I did not have the guts (or creativity) to design an entry in this category. But if I could, it would be about setting up systems as opposed to aspiring towards a specific goal. Then even when one fails most of the time in reaching a goal, which is a basic rule in life, one WILL fail most of the time, one will always learn from these "failures", adding them to one's system for lifelong success.