Above from Google searches of vigorous and rigorous
Vigor means having [intensity, energy, and enthusiasm], and the potential for enhancing “active strength of body or mind”. When something is invigorating, it’s “stimulating…energizing…restorative”. A vigorous thing challenges you, and tests your abilities in a creative way. Even if it’s difficult, at the end of the experience you feel empowered and ready to try again.
Vigor in education is likely to be driven by internal motivation, passion, careful guidance and mentoring. You can expect to be pushed to your limits, but only so far as you are capable until the next go-round. No one learns to lift 200 pounds in a month. And the delivery method is likely to be diverse and adaptable to strengths and weaknesses. It’s systematic and deliberate, yet flexible. You are taught by your mistakes in a comprehensive way, without humiliation and with thorough evaluation of performance and attributes.
Think about it like weight training or aerobic exercise – the activities are diversified often so that you round out and get at all your muscles. You are given targets yes, but you can reach them in countless ways. You can use many tools or terrains to exercise. The results are measured in a variety of ways too – cholesterol levels, oxygen in the blood, heart rate at rest and peak heart rate over time, muscle tone, limberness – even sleep quality and ease in going to the bathroom are measures of a body that gets good exercise.
Like vigorous exercise, vigorous learning is “dynamic” and can be achieved with multiple methods and systems.
Rigor implies something more sinister. A dictionary definition of rigor is “strictness or severity, as in temperament, action, or judgment.” It implies brutality, being unrelenting and “harsh”. Rigor is also defined as being heavily reliant on “validity” and “credibility”.
When governments, schools, and parents cry out for more rigor in education, they are usually asking for the following things. The first is strictness in behavior. Students must act within a rigid set of behaviors – quiet unless spoken to, not allowed to move freely from place to place, and so on. The next is physical confinement. Learning only happens in a building, and in a classroom, and at a desk (even educational field trips are limited mostly to museums and indoors exhibits). In class you are often assigned a seat. Little children are conditioned to prevent themselves from squirming. Physical education is confined to a gym, designated field, or a racetrack. Another factor is a limitation on play time (up until its complete absence in high school), The fourth is uniformity – the same subjects taught in the same way by fact heavy text books peppered with politically correct analysis. There are banned book lists, and grade level book lists. Most of all, champions of rigor are attracted to harsh judgment of performance in the form of formulaic tests, standardized portfolios, GPA rankings, number and letter grading systems, and tiering of all kinds. “Accountability” if you will. There are always “stakes”, consequences, and tight requirements.
So I think it is worth noting why schooling is judged by is rigor and not its vigor. What does this simple shift in letters say about our society’s values and expectations?