I must remind myself that education and learning is practicing something. We don’t have the convenient reminders like doctors and dentists do, that they work in or at a practice; that they own a “medical practice” and “practice medicine.” I think we “practice education” but we don’t have the reminder all the time that we are doing well at the thing by trying to do it at our best level.

Practice goes deeper than preparation. In Buddhism, practice is the thing. There’s a famous story about the Zen center in New York that people would arrive and the master would sit them down and say “we’ll get started soon.” Then everyone was just sitting. They were doing the thing they were waiting to do, unaware of it. This was somehow the perfect kind of practice – not concentrating, not thinking about it too much, and letting your mind go and think and imagine what is coming. Seems like good Zen practice to me.

Practicing something is being in it and doing it, practicing it not to prepare for the real thing, but practicing it because we care for it and we want it to be good all the time, every time. Practice is something that is done to improve or get better right now. Certainly not for when it “really matters.” This is a big mistake that a lot of well-meaning teachers make. We have the following well-meaning but horrible trope:

“In the real world, this work/behavior will not be accepted by your boss or employer”

I hear this one a lot. I think this is lazy. This is a fear appeal, that whatever practices are going on in the classroom are permissible to a degree, but not the degree that you are preparing for in the world. In other words, your behavior would be rejected in a situation that really mattered, where the stakes were high (translation: the classroom doesn’t matter; low-stakes). The teacher pins their authority on the questionable one of the forced labor market of capital and the idea that they are saving the student from a material punishment in the future.

Another related one is that the student “disrespects” the instructor through their lateness or poor work. I don’t understand this one either. Why are instructors in the immediate position of deserving respect straight away? A more equitable relationship is one where respect is the finishing place not the starting place of the teaching relationship.

These two examples misunderstand the role of practice. What are you practicing? How to be yourself. This requires intense attention daily. When you are reading you are practicing being yourself reading; when in class, you are practicing that. You are practicing speaking when you share your thoughts; you are sharing yourself, you are practicing how to be in the world with others.

This doesn’t mean that what happens in class is less than or somehow not high-stakes, it’s the highest stakes as it is the real world. No distinction. Whatever happens in a classroom is as real as it gets. The students and instructor have to face it together and account for it. There’s no game or fakeness. It’s the real deal, it’s the same practice you will do for the rest of your life out there without a classroom to “protect” you or a school to make sure you don’t mess up.

Practicing practice is the focus of education and what higher education should really be thinking about right now. How do we encourage serious practice of our practice? Are there multiple practices? How do we engage them and make sure the practices are good? How do we sustain the focus and attention on our practice of thought, writing, speaking, and reading? This isn’t just up to each individual; this is a community effort and at the same time is and becomes the practice of community.