“Rigor” is sometimes just white supremacy.

But sometimes it’s not. But sometimes it is.

There’s already hella boring ed-reformer think-pieces out there about “rigor,” so I hesitate to even get in on that conversation. I’d much rather be talking to the people who are talking about critical, culturally sustaining pedagogy — centering the conversation around a reverence for students’ humanity rather than for difficult curriculum in some sterile abstract.

But I must.

Is rigor rigor if the students don’t assent to learning? Like, if I expect that students independently read Shakespeare and then independently write a literary analysis essay on it, is that rigor, periodt.? Even if many students just… don’t do it? Does that count as a rigorous class even with a gradebook full of Fs?

I just don’t think so. I don’t think a class’ rigor is driven by the complexity of texts read or the difficulty of the assessments. Rigor is relational.

Yes, I want to challenge my students academically, and I want them to authentically accept that challenge. All of them — with special attention to the students of color, English learners, students from low-income communities, and/or students with disabilities or mental illness, millions of whom withhold their assent to learn every weekday in American public schools. More often than not, whether they articulate it or not, marginalized kids withhold their assent to learning because of the historical and systemic whiteness of the institution and what that means for their daily experiences with the curriculum, assessment, personnel, discipline practices, you name it. The institution was never designed to foster intellectual thriving among people who are not white, English speaking, neurotypical, or financially secure.

We accept as normal the absurdly disproportionate number of marginalized kids pushed out of our schools by suspension, expulsion — or, on the kids’ end, unwillingness to tolerate how boring, irrelevant, and grossly inadequate what we’re offering them is. We accept failing our marginalized students as normal and then comfort ourselves by holding fast to our traditional, white elitest classes that we can call rigorous and go home feeling good.