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For Once, Blame the Student
Failure in the classroom is often tied to lack of
funding, poor teachers or other ills. Here's a thought: Maybe
it's the failed work ethic of today's kids. That's what I'm
seeing in my school. Until reformers see this reality, little
will change.
Patrick Welsh, Special to USA Today, March 7, 2006
For more articles like this
visit
http://www.bridges4kids.org.
Last month, as I averaged the
second-quarter grades for my senior English classes at T.C.
Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., the same familiar
pattern leapt out at me.
Kids who had emigrated from foreign countries — such as Shewit
Giovanni from Ethiopia, Farah Ali from Guyana and Edgar Awumey
from Ghana — often aced every test, while many of their
U.S.-born classmates from upper-class homes with highly educated
parents had a string of C's and D's.
As one would expect, the middle-class American kids usually had
higher SAT verbal scores than did their immigrant classmates,
many of whom had only been speaking English for a few years.
What many of the American kids I taught did not have was the
motivation, self-discipline or work ethic of the foreign-born
kids.
Politicians and education bureaucrats can talk all they want
about reform, but until the work ethic of U.S. students changes,
until they are willing to put in the time and effort to master
their subjects, little will change.
A study released in December by University of Pennsylvania
researchers Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman suggests that
the reason so many U.S. students are “falling short of their
intellectual potential” is not “inadequate teachers, boring
textbooks and large class sizes” and the rest of the usual
litany cited by the so-called reformers — but “their failure to
exercise self-discipline.”
The sad fact is that in the USA, hard work on the part of
students is no longer seen as a key factor in academic success.
The groundbreaking work of Harold Stevenson and a multinational
team at the University of Michigan comparing attitudes of Asian
and American students sounded the alarm more than a decade ago.
When asked to identify the most important factors in their
performance in math, the percentage of Japanese and Taiwanese
students who answered “studying hard” was twice that of American
students.
American students named native intelligence, and some said the
home environment. But a clear majority of U.S. students put the
responsibility on their teachers. A good teacher, they said, was
the determining factor in how well they did in math.
“Kids have convinced parents that it is the teacher or the
system that is the problem, not their own lack of effort,” says
Dave Roscher, a chemistry teacher at T.C. Williams in this
Washington suburb. “In my day, parents didn't listen when kids
complained about teachers. We are supposed to miraculously make
kids learn even though they are not working.”
As my colleague Ed Cannon puts it: “Today, the teacher is
supposed to be responsible for motivating the kid. If they don't
learn it is supposed to be our problem, not theirs.”
And, of course, busy parents guilt-ridden over the little time
they spend with their kids are big subscribers to this theory.
Maybe every generation of kids has wanted to take it easy, but
until the past few decades students were not allowed to get away
with it. “Nowadays, it's the kids who have the power. When they
don't do the work and get lower grades, they scream and yell.
Parents side with the kids who pressure teachers to lower
standards,” says Joel Kaplan, another chemistry teacher at T.C.
Williams.
Every year, I have had parents come in to argue about the grades
I have given in my AP English classes. To me, my grades are far
too generous; to middle-class parents, they are often an affront
to their sense of entitlement. If their kids do a modicum of
work, many parents expect them to get at least a B. When I have
given C's or D's to bright middle-class kids who have done poor
or mediocre work, some parents have accused me of destroying
their children's futures.
It is not only parents, however, who are siding with students in
their attempts to get out of hard work.
“Schools play into it,” says psychiatrist Lawrence Brain, who
counsels affluent teenagers throughout the Washington
metropolitan area. “I've been amazed to see how easy it is for
kids in public schools to manipulate guidance counselors to get
them out of classes they don't like. They have been sent a
message that they don't have to struggle to achieve if things
are not perfect.”
Neither the high-stakes state exams, such as Virginia's
Standards of Learning, nor the requirements of the No Child Left
Behind Act have succeeded in changing that message; both have
turned into minimum-competency requirements aimed at the lowest
in our school.
Colleges keep complaining that students are coming to them
unprepared. Instead of raising admissions standards, however,
they keep accepting mediocre students lest cuts have to be made
in faculty and administration.
As a teacher, I don't object to the heightened standards
required of educators in the No Child Left Behind law. Who among
us would say we couldn't do a little better? Nonetheless,
teachers have no control over student motivation and ambition,
which have to come from the home — and from within each student.
Perhaps the best lesson I can pass along to my upper- and
middle-class students is to merely point them in the direction
of their foreign-born classmates, who can remind us all that
education in America is still more a privilege than a right.
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