Joan Goodman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied no-excuses charter schools, notes that no-excuses charters are sensitive to complaints that their heavy emphasis on discipline is joyless. Therefore, many of them have now inserted “joy” into their curriculum or made it a part of their mission statement. True, students must obey the rules to a T, and they must remain silent in the halls, but there will definitely be a time and a place for “joy.” It shall be so.

She writes:

Uncommon Schools promotes *joy* as one of its five values; Democracy Prep advertises a *joyous culture* with enthusiasm as one of its DREAM values; Mastery lists *joy and humor* among its nine core values; and Achievement First includes the child’s joy in its assessments of student progress. Success Academy says that, along with rigor, its schools stress *humor (joy)…making achieving exhilarating and fun!* Meanwhile, KIPP includes joy’s close cousin, *zest,* as one of the seven character strengths on its Character Growth Card. Chicago’s Noble Network has likewise embraced *zest.* According to Doug Lemov, a major source of CMO pedagogy, the Joy Factor, one of his 49 essential techniques, is *a key driver not just of a happy classroom but of a high-achieving classroom…. people work harder…when their work is punctuated regularly by moment of exultation and joy.*

When I first began visiting no excuses schools, I was struck by the striking juxtaposition of teachers presiding over silent class periods during which children diligently followed instructions, only to interrupt them periodically with the demand for reciprocal clapping, rhymed motivational cheers, and choral responses that seemed more appropriate to an athletic or marching event than an academic environment. The effort of schools to whoop up excitement appeared artificial and disingenuous given the often tedious tasks students were assigned, and the passive/receptive role they were, for the most part, expected to assume.

The intentional artifice is particularly clear in teacher training videos, when leaders like Lemov, or Doug McCurry of Achievement First, talk about how teachers must be skilled at quickly turning arousal on and quickly turning it off so that it serves its purpose – aiding their academic objectives. Stimulating this shallow *joy* is, then, just another control technique designed to foster high achievement. Joy has become a *character strength,* like grit, because of the results it produces, not for its own sake.

To elicit joy, the CMOs use emotional arousal techniques such as choral chanting, finger snapping, and gestural sequences. For instance, to lend *sparkle* to a lesson, Lemov advocates the Vegas Technique. This entails breaks from instruction, as brief as 30 seconds, for a ritualized routine loosely associated with the lesson. Students might, for example, do an action-verb shimmy, clap a routine to accompany a pronoun, or perform a vocabulary word charade. Achievement First’s McCurry advises teachers to plan *joyous interludes* by using four chants accompanied with gestures and 10 cheers per class. One chant, for example, is: *hey hey hey, I feel all-right,* followed with a stomp. The phrase is repeated with two stomps, then three stomps and finished off with: *I feel motivated to learn. And graduate college.*

Does it strike you that there is something unnatural about a program that tells you when to feel joy? It rings a bell for me, but I don’t want to be too harsh. It reminds me of a trip I made to China many years ago, about 1986. The government arranged the schedule, and the first stop was a women’s prison. Our group was treated to a performance by prisoners who sang and danced about how joyful they felt because they were being socially rehabilitated. It was joy on command. There was no real joy. It was a performance.