No previous study, to my knowledge, has demonstrated that the well-known gender gap in school grades begins so early and is almost entirely attributable to differences in behavior. The researchers found that teachers rated boys as less proficient even when the boys did just as well as the girls on tests of reading, math and science. (The teachers did not know the test scores in advance.) If the teachers had not accounted for classroom behavior, the boys’ grades, like the girls’, would have matched their test scores.I suppose one could make an argument that there's a problem here. Teachers of primary and secondary schools are almost exclusively female, after all; perhaps there's some sexist preference for well-comported girls over unruly boys. However, my guess would be that male teachers mostly like well-behaved students also.
Rather, we have a kind of sorting going on whereby people who are good at sitting still and learning to speak (and think) in an approved way go into certain kinds of jobs, and people who are uncomfortable with that find other ways to make a living. In terms of the long-term happiness of everyone involved, that's a good thing.
It happens to be true that one class of such jobs pays better than the other class, but that's an artifact of the present moment. As the article itself points out, it didn't used to be true: and as technology continues to change, more and more options open up for people who just aren't very well adjusted to the 'sit-still, be-quiet, watch-what-you-say' environment that predominates in the schoolhouse and the New Model Office. It's a pretty oppressive and unpleasant environment, as unpleasant as any factory to those who chafe at it.
So yes: boys are more unruly. It's very important to try to teach them to obey the rules and show respect. But on the final analysis, their happiness as adults doesn't depend on learning to sit down and only say things considered polite. It depends more on them finding a way of life that comports with who they are. The economy won't stay like it is forever, and the office won't be the dominant mode of economic life forever.
Besides, if you're really unruly you can go into politics. We need a whole new political class anyway.
29 comments:
In terms of the long-term happiness of everyone involved, that's a good thing.
I disagree. Your conclusion here would seem to imply, for example, that one cannot be a good warrior and a good scholar, but I don't see that at all; you yourself are a counter-example.
In addition, I believe it is generally accepted that our schools are failing our students*. I don't think we should blame our students until our schools are fixed. In the process of remaking the schools, why not make them better-suited to the rowdy as well as the quiet?
*Solutions vary widely, of course.
Some disciplines of scholarship are as disputatious as a warrior could want. The most obvious is the law, which has harbored many good warriors over the years, since at least the Viking Age. Philosophy has known warriors in its midst since Socrates, who was famed for his excellent qualities as a fighting man; see e.g. the Laches.
But we need only so many lawyers, of whom only a subset are of the disputatious type, and only so many professional philosophers. (Of course I think philosophy is an important part of the good life for everyone; but I don't think everyone needs to pursue a high degree in it to engage it well.) Imagine if you got a degree in law, expecting the joy of courtroom fights, and ended up instead in a quiet office where you were expected to sit quietly for 70 hours a week and produce genteel and polite social interactions while engaged in legal research into things like patent law.
The bulk -- not all, certainly, but the bulk -- of jobs produced for the college educated are closer to the latter than the former. If you really hate the New Model Office, with its emphasis on not just political but social correctness, and carrying on the submissive good behavior of the schoolhouse throughout your adult life, these careers are not for you.
There is some room in some disciplines for the spirited and disputatious, and that's fine. But if the majority of boys don't go that route, it may in part be because the majority of jobs on that route are not right for them. If that's the case, teachers aren't failing them, they are serving them well by steering them onto a different path.
I'm glad you wrote about this, Grim.
I found the article (as well as the one on the "masculinization" of parenting, amusing because I'm female and in both cases, they could have been describing me ... and my Dad....and my oldest son... and one of my oldest female friends :p
Didn't mean I didn't have to learn *enough* of how to do what was expected of me to get by, but I've found it was also helpful not to take jobs that required me to do things that aren't my forte.
It's not a matter of what a boy is suited for, but a matter of what potential he will be allowed to develop. When you give a boy bad grades for being rowdy(as opposed to his academic performance), you are foreclosing certain options for him.
That boyhood rowdiness can be mastered if the man cares enough and wants to, e.g., become a historian. But destroy his academic record and you close that option for him.
Now, if he doesn't have the intellectual ability, that's a different matter. Then you are doing him a favor by giving him bad grades (though here, too, it's for academic performance). But if he has the intellectual capabilities and it's just his youthful exuberance you are grading him down for, then you are doing him injury.
...but a matter of what potential he will be allowed to develop.
Now, if he doesn't have the intellectual ability, that's a different matter.
So, a "potential" is an interesting kind of thing. On the one hand, it's not fully actual: that's why it's a potential, rather than an actual, capacity for intellectual work (say). But at the same time it is actual: as you say, if you don't have the intellectual ability, you don't have a potential. So if you do have th e potential, you actually do.
This is Aristotelian, and it's one of the chief things that contemporary philosophers get wrong. A potential is what Aristotle calls a first actuality, because a potential has to actually exist to be real.
So my question is, do they have the actual potential to enjoy a life of sitting down and being quiet, or do they not? If they do not, it's no service to train them in that direction.
If they do, well, then they do. If they don't have at least that first actuality, you're just going to make them miserable if you manage to force them through college and direct them toward a lifetime of jobs they will hate.
If they do, though, then developing their potential will run on rails -- because the potential is already there. If they have the potential and they want to develop it, they're doing something that both (a) has a basis in their nature, as potential, and (b) they have willed for themselves. For such people, it may be a struggle, but they'll get there.
Furthermore, the unspoken corollary of these findings is that men dominate absolutely every serious field of academic endeavor. This is the more true the more serious the field really is (i.e., the more competitive and contentious because you can genuinely be proven wrong -- remember our discussion of the null hypothesis?).
So it may be that a minority of boys has the potential. That doesn't mean those boys won't be developed. It just means that the majority, without it, are well served by being led to other paths.
You're welcome, Cass. I found a lot to laugh at (in a good way) in the article on men as parents. About half of the things I've done as a father have occasioned outright rebellion from my mother. (Though not my wife, for the most part -- she tries to moderate my preferences for risk-taking, but not to put a stop to them.)
part I
Tom, honestly I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for that argument. No one is "destroying" boys' academic records. What the article says is that boys' grades don't match their aptitude scores. That is NOT evidence that boys get lower grades because they're "rowdy", nor is it anything even close to that.
Read this carefully:
The researchers found that teachers rated boys as less proficient even when the boys did just as well as the girls on tests of reading, math and science. (The teachers did not know the test scores in advance.)IOW, we're still talking about standardized test scores - that's why their teachers don't know their scores.
Now comes the idiotic conclusion:
If the teachers had not accounted for classroom behavior, the boys’ grades, like the girls’, would have matched their test scores.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but ... BULL. My grades never matched my standardized test scores either. Because I didn't complete assignments on time (or sometimes, at all).
If you do well on tests in school and complete your assignments, you're not going to do badly. And if you irritate and p*ss people off in general (whether at work, in school, or simply in society), people will view everything you do with suspicion and bias. That will hurt you on subjectively graded assigments but has little/no effect on tests, the majority of which are graded with a key and are multiple guess. Either you know/guess the answer or you don't. Behavior doesn't enter into it.
part II
I raised two boys, and boys respond extremely well to a firm hand. Do you really believe that our parents didn't have strict rules in school? Because I can guarantee you that my Dad did, and so did his grandfather. They had to learn to behave themselves (otherwise known as self-control). That's one reason they're called the Greatest Generation - they were required to live up to standards.
No one expects boys to be angels, but it's a HUGE mistake not to teach them basic self control and self discipline, or to let them think it's OK blow off assigned work. I know - I struggled with this with my oldest boy and it was a nightmare. But eventually, he grew up and his grades magically improved :p
I have always suspected that a big part of the problem with today's boys is that their parents aren't bothering to teach them basic skills needed to get along with other people and basic self discipline/control. When my boys were small, I was appalled at how many of their friends clearly had never been made to do anything they didn't "feel like" doing. That's not a recipe for success at anything (nor is allowing a boy to watch TV, surf the Net, or play video games for ridiculous amounts of time):
Over the past 20 years, US children have been participants in what is called, a “mass media explosion.” In 2000, 97% of American homes with children had television sets, 97% had a video cassette recorder, and 89% had a personal computer or other video game-capable equipment.1 More than 70% of US homes had >1 television set, 69% had cable television, and 15% had satellite television service.2 As a result, children spend ∼40 hours per week consuming all forms of media; more than half of this time is spent watching television, movies, or videos.
Having spent a good 20+ years watching my sons and their friends grow up, I never saw a single thing that made me believe boys are not capable of learning basic self control and self discipline. But I saw a LOT of signs that parents who expect too little result in kids with bad grades and behavior problems.
It ain't [just] the schools, or the boys. It's also the decline in parental standards:
Weekday screen time, weekend screen time, and cable movie channel availability all decreased with increasing maternal support, maternal control, child self-esteem, grade, parental education, and school socioeconomic status and increased with increasing rebelliousness, sensation seeking, and older age for grade. Parental R-rated movie and television content restriction increased with maternal support, maternal control, child self-esteem, parental education, and school socioeconomic status and decreased with increasing grade, rebelliousness, and sensation seeking, and the correlations with these last 2 variable were particularly strong. As compared with girls, boys reported higher weekday and weekend screen time and less parental restriction of television content and R-rated movie viewing.
Both my sons had problems with reversing letters throughout elementary school, and I'm pretty sure one had ADHD. We taught him he needed to work hard to overcome it, not be medicated or have the world accommodate him. Some people just have to work harder at some things - it's not a bad lesson. My son was wicked smart (still is) but that lesson was the making of him as a man and he still benefits from it as an adult and as a parent.
It's such a mistake to treat boys like they're backwards/retarded girls. They're not. They will rise to expectations, though it may take lots of love, time, and patience.
http://www.pediatricsdigest.mobi/content/118/4/e1061.full
...people will view everything you do...
Well, in my experience the real issue re: grades is what you don't do. I had terrible grades, because I realize I already understood the material and the additional exercises were a waste of precious time that could be spent outside. There's a point of diminishing returns, whereby doing another hundred versions of the same problem doesn't greatly increase your understanding of that kind of problem.
Now, if you were motivated by social approval, you wouldn't do what I did. You'd do what you were supposed to do. You'd get better grades, because you handed in the assignments to be graded rather than simply blowing them off.
Likewise boys who screw around and play in the classroom instead of quietly doing their work. If they're pulling the same scores on standardized tests as the hard-working girls, then they understand the material well enough. They just have other things they'd rather do than win approval from the teacher (or any other authority figure).
Now, the bulk of jobs are of the quietly-win-approval-from-authority type. But the very best jobs are of the defy-convention-and-do-something-awesome type. If you can't have the very best jobs, though, you could still be fairly happy with the I-don't-make-a-fortune-but-I-live-by-my-own-rules type of job. My grandfather raised his family on that kind of work: never rich, never very poor, hard working but his own boss.
If that is what is right for you, it's a good way.
Your part II is about parents setting standards, and I broadly agree with that. It doesn't derail my general contention (which I think you share) that people are happier if they live in a way that is right for them.
But standards must be high for children. It is how they learn what their potentials really are. Some things they'll rub against and find they just can't do; other things they'll find they can do if they want. At some point, as they become adults, it will be about what of their potentials they will to actualize.
At least, it will if they have learned that they have potentials, and that they can actualize them with hard work in that direction.
Well, in my experience the real issue re: grades is what you don't do. I had terrible grades, because I realize I already understood the material and the additional exercises were a waste of precious time that could be spent outside. There's a point of diminishing returns, whereby doing another hundred versions of the same problem doesn't greatly increase your understanding of that kind of problem.
That was me, as a child :)
My ego was just invested enough that it was important to me not to be behind other kids. But once I had demonstrated that I "got it", I had no particular desire to earn a good grade.
The reward, for me, was knowing I understood the material. I couldn't have cared less about grades (and was in fact rather disdainful of students who I thought worried too much about them).
It never occurred to me, either as a child or as a parent of a child just like me that teachers had some nebulous duty to overcome that attitude or "help me do better".
We've got to leave parents something to do here :p
Cass:
Actually, I'm wholeheartedly for teaching and strictly enforcing basic standards of behavior. However, especially in kindergarten and elementary school, I don't believe the proper way to enforce those standards is with the grading system, which is what the article says is happening:
Teachers of classes as early as kindergarten factor good behavior into grades ...
I'm also not sure that what counts as 'good behavior' actually is good. I'd want to know what the standards were and whether they were realistic for students of the ages in question. When a little girl gets suspended for threatening to shoot a playmate with a pink plastic bubble-blowing gun, I have to wonder who's making the call on what constitutes good behavior.
Secondly, the article itself points out a number of ways education has been made less boy-friendly:
... the decline of recess, zero-tolerance disciplinary policies, the tendency to criminalize minor juvenile misconduct and the turn away from single-sex schooling.
A long, loud, boisterous recess is a fundamental human right and we should sentence any administrator who infringes that right to thirty years chained to a desk. Oh, wait ... Maybe it's revenge they want?
Seriously, this issue is recent; shouldn't we at least look at the educational environment and ask whether or not some relatively recent change in it might have been a factor?
Third, I completely agree that parenting is a problem in the ways you mention. That doesn't mitigate the education system's responsibility to do the best they can with what they've got.
Grim & Cass,
Yeah, 'destroy' was overly dramatic, and, with a little more relaxed reading, I see I misunderstood some of what Grim was saying as well. Apologies for overreacting.
Grim, Aristotle's view of potential is interesting, but that seems to merely moves the claim from something that is positively being done to unknown, as we don't genuinely know most of the time what the potential of others is. (That is, assuming I understand his view. Always iffy.)
I would say K-5 (the ages of the children in the study) is a bit young to be writing people off for white-collar careers. I would also say that if we had more rowdy men in those careers, maybe they would improve. We certainly need more of them in teaching and history.
Well, even if your grades are terrible up to 5th grade, but you should mature in middle school and do reasonably well in high school, you'll be well equipped for college. I think there's plenty of room, assuming there's a matching potential.
But the real issue may not be intellectual ability. Lacking serious deficiencies, most people could handle at least a two-year college. But is there a potential to enjoy this kind of social environment? That, more than their capacity for intellectual work, is what I think is at issue. US Special Forces is a moderately learning-intensive field -- they require a good score on the language aptitude test, for example, which tests you against an artificial language to see how good you are at learning languages. It's not subject to the extremely strict social constraints of the modern office.
Sure, you're right. Also, there are fields like geology that get you out and about, in the oil industry, for example.
The main reason my oldest son is a cop is that he didn't want to be stuck behind a desk. 10 or so years down the road, he's basically happy with the decision he made but wants a job that pays better and is more mentally challenging, so he's going back to school. There's a balance.
That article really was kind of awful. It makes all sorts of leaps that I'm not sure are grounded. Recess is important and you're not going to get any argument out of me on that score. But I regularly hear truly appalling arguments from conservatives on this issue: boys can't sit still (nonsense), boys can't remember to do assignments and shouldn't have to (double nonsense), teachers should teach in "boy friendly" ways (triple nonsense - no one has time in a class of 30 kids to individualize instruction. Also, my boys learned completely differently from one another), boys shouldn't have to read anything they're not already/"naturally" interested in (Yikes - doesn't this defeat the entire purpose of education?).
*sigh*
The skills we're talking about are even MORE important for boys to learn than they are for girls. They mostly come naturally to a lot of girls. Boys need to learn to channel their natural aggression and energy into positive outlets. And they really, really NEED to learn self control.
Finally, it has been well established for as long as I can remember that boys mature later than girls. By puberty, they start to catch up but that process takes place well into their 20s. When my kids were tiny (they're both in their 30s now) it was well documented that girls outperformed them in school until about middle school, when the trend began to reverse itself. So the idea that this is something new (or attributable to feminism) is not supported by much of anything. I observed the same thing watching my sons.
This isn't an immutable trait, by the way. Boys in 3rd world countries and boys who marry or become self supporting young mature sooner than boys who aren't even asked to do chores, much less do their homework.
Forgive the passion on this topic, but it's something I feel so strongly about. I think *we* are hurting our boys via the whole soft bigotry of low expections dealio and it drives me nuts. They are capable of so much.
... is there a potential to enjoy this kind of social environment?
Hm, I don't think that's the only environment a degree leads to. The job I have now requires a bachelor's & prefers a master's, and it doesn't fit your description. There are other professions that require a bachelor's but don't land you in an office most of the time, like the oilfield geologist I mentioned.
Really, I think very few are suited for the New Model Office jobs as you describe them. The rest do them because they prioritize other things over work satisfaction, like a higher salary.
On the other hand, I also think we're doing many students a great disservice by pushing them solely toward college, as if that were the only worthy goal, so I think we broadly agree.
Cass,
In general, I agree with you. However, I think you are wrong about this not being new. As you say, boys used to start outperforming girls in high school; they don't anymore. I think girls are now outperforming boys at every level. This is a recent change.
There are a number of correlations: our education system has changed a great deal, but so has our society in general. Parenting has changed, the way neighborhoods work has changed, technology has changed, public morality has changed, and I'm probably missing some other big changes as well. We need to look at all of them.
For my part, however, I have little faith in the public education system. I think our education schools and teacher standards are mostly nonsense (though states vary). The educational changes I've read about in the news and heard about from public school teachers I know have been generally negative, often compounding bad policy with poor implementation. So, maybe I am too ready to accept that schools are at fault for just about any problem students may have.
In any case, given that I believe the education system is full of nonsense, it makes sense that I think we should look at fixing it before we blame the students. I'm not saying students have no responsibility, but surely the teachers, administrators, ed school profs, and parents should bear more responsibility for the system they are enforcing than the 6-to-12-year-olds who have little choice but to go through the system prepared for them.
I don't blame the students, though.
I blame the parents for not teaching their kids what it takes to succeed in life, and for not holding their feet to the fire.
When I see a spoiled or badly behaved child, I don't blame the child. I blame the parents (while being aware that some kids are more challenging to raise than others, and some have very real issues).
I don't buy the notion that schools are so messed up that students *can't* succeed. If anything, school is easier than it has ever been...and yet too many boys can't manage to learn even a dumbed down curriculum?
That just doesn't pass the common sense test.
For my part, however, I have little faith in the public education system.
It depends on what we're expecting from it. If the goal is to offer every student the *chance* to get a basic education, I think the public schools do a fantastic job.
I'm not kidding, by the way. Education isn't a spectator sport.
It requires effort and participation from students. If a student does nothing more than work diligently and complete assignments, he or she will graduate with a very good basic education. So from that standpoint, the public school system is quite good.
If you want more (I did - I wanted my children to be proficient with writing, to be well-read, to be numerate, which includes not just doing calculations but understanding what they were doing), then public schools may well not be enough. Though in all fairness, there are plenty of advanced placement and baccalaureate programs out there in most locations.
My sons spent more time in private than public schools because my goals for my sons made that the right choice. That said, had I only wanted a basic education for them (or had we not moved as often as we did) I think they could have gotten almost as good an education in public schools.
But in both cases, the primary determinant of their achievement was never the school, but rather the habits I taught my sons and my expectations for them. Schools can't replace parents, and shouldn't try to.
Even with private schooling, my sons wouldn't be as proficient as they are in writing had I not personally oversaw their education and reading. No school has the time to do what I did as a mother.
American parents seem to have this bizarre belief that they can just turn their kids loose in school and magically, they will learn what they need to know. And for some kids, that may be true. It wasn't for mine, though. And they're both very smart.
They needed more, and I never thought it was the school's job to figure out what my sons' educational goals should be, or even necessarily to assess their potential and design programs that brought it out. That was my job as a parent, and I'm utterly mystified at the articles I see the suggest somehow this is a proper activity for public schools.
I view it as a usurpation of parental authority and judgment.
*sigh*
"overseen"
English really isn't my second language :p Editing in place will be the death of me!
I blame the parents for not teaching their kids what it takes to succeed in life, and for not holding their feet to the fire.
When we talk about fixing schools, we can discuss possible policies to improve things, but what is your solution for the parenting problem?
I harp on the school system for two reasons. First, I'm a teacher (though no longer K-12). Second, I believe there are realistic solutions to that set of problems.
We can talk about how parents ruin their children's lives all day long, but so what? Can we change that?
Maybe we can, but the solution to the parenting problem may well be to fix the education system and produce better parents. And there I am again, going on about fixing the education system.
I don't buy the notion that schools are so messed up that students *can't* succeed. If anything, school is easier than it has ever been...and yet too many boys can't manage to learn even a dumbed down curriculum?
The point isn't the curriculum. Look at the problems we've been talking about: grading on behavior instead of academic performance; silly rules; watered-down recesses. It's the school environment we're talking about. I know very well that even with the best curriculum, an environmental factor like a teacher with a poor attitude, or bad teaching methodology, can have a powerful negative impact on a class of students. Institutionalize a bad environment and fewer students will be able to make the grade.
Some always will, of course, but why make it harder than it needs to be?
That said, I am actually for higher standards for the curriculum, and grade deflation so that C is actually average, and I agree that one thing kids need is more intellectual challenge. All of that would make it more difficult, but in productive ways. What I oppose is making things more difficult through added administrative hurdles.
It depends on what we're expecting from it. If the goal is to offer every student the *chance* to get a basic education, I think the public schools do a fantastic job.
Heck, Cass, students would have that chance with no school system at all. Public libraries and good parents could go a long way toward giving every child a basic education. For half my state's budget every year, I expect more. Competence, for example, would be nice.
I sincerely agree with a lot of what you say, Cass. But schools are part of the problem, and of all the difficult problems involved, it is the one I can actually envision making great improvements in. So that's what I'll keep on about.
Tom:
I don't want to be argumentative :) I love discussing this stuff and can go on and on and on....
[thud]
When we talk about fixing schools, we can discuss possible policies to improve things, but what is your solution for the parenting problem?
I'm not sure there is one any of us would be willing to entertain. But then I'm not sure the schools can make up for bad parents or lack of parental involvement/commitment to education either.
Teachers can't follow kids home from school and force kids to do their homework, or study. So how do schools make kids try? Certainly in some cases they can inspire some kids, but I don't think there's a one size fits all solution that a "system" can fix.
I really don't. My kids grew up in a home with wall to wall books, two educated parents who read several books a week, etc. And I still had to exert a LOT of effort to get my oldest to do his work. He was lazy (frankly) and wouldn't do a durned thing unless his feet were held to the fire.
So was I, as a child. My parents spent money on tests and sent me to super duper magnet schools and I got mediocre gredes until my senior year. The only reason I pulled my grades up was that I suddenly realized I was utterly uncompetitive aside from my SAT scores.
Look at the problems we've been talking about: grading on behavior instead of academic performance;
Again, this was never established in the article. Grades are computed on a completely different set of things than standarized test scores. It's just plain idiotic to conclude that if grades < test scores, teachers are grading on behavior. It's a conclusion that doesn't follow from the "evidence".
...students would have that chance with no school system at all. Public libraries and good parents could go a long way toward giving every child a basic education.
Actually, I doubt this is true for any but the most motivated kids (ones with parents who were incredibly motivated and involved. Left to themselves, kids aren't going to do lots of math problems, and practice is actually how most people learn math. It's a skill - you can't memorize or recognize the answer.
I read voraciously... but I didn't read about science b/c I couldn't have cared less about it. I was better read at 15 than most adults, but my reading was skewed to what interested me. I can't recall, for instance, reading a single book on physics.
It's just plain idiotic to conclude that if grades < test scores, teachers are grading on behavior. It's a conclusion that doesn't follow from the "evidence".
By the way, that wasn't aimed at you but rather at the author of the article. She's a good writer, but the danger there is she can make anything sound plausible (especially when she's preachin' to the choir, so to speak).
Here are some things I think would help that will never happen:
1. Better educated teachers. I always corrected my sons' writing because frankly most of their teachers couldn't write worth a damn.
2. Intense reading programs. Kids have GOT to read (and not crap, either) if we want them to be educated. My boys read literature - classics. So did I as a child. Quality materials will excite kids, but you have to be willing to set firm limits on Internet, TV, cell phones, video games that displace less exciting endeavors.
3. Activities that build the power of concentration.
I firmly believe that boys in particular aren't learning to sit still and concentrate. It's a skill that gets better with practice, but parents don't make their kids practice.
And you can't master difficult material if you can't pay attention to anything for longer than 20 seconds.
I see an alarming lack of focus in today's kids, and I think it's directly related to internet/tv/media/games. Schools pander to this by trying to make everything seem like a game so it will compete with games, but this is really misguided.
Math requires concentration and focus. So does writing. And kids - boys in particular - are developing neither skill.
I don't want to be argumentative ...
Since when!? :-P
I don't think schools can make up for bad parenting either, but they should be as good as possible. Surely, bad parents + good schools > bad parents + bad schools, no?
Teachers, according to the article, say they include behavior in their grading. True, we don't know her sources, but if we take her at her word, then yes, teachers are grading on behavior as well as academic performance. (I shouldn't have said 'instead of,' really.)
Better educated teachers.
No, wait. That's MY line! :-)
I like your answers, especially #1 (in part because I think #s 2 & 3 will follow if we have #1).
I would go much further (e.g., seriously weaken or end teachers' unions, eliminate undergraduate education degrees and replace them with a one-year certificate program) but that would be a great start, and over time might effect even better changes than I can think of now.
I don't want to be argumentative ...
Since when!? :-P
Now, Tom, it's not nice to cause your host to laugh himself to death. :)
I laughed at that, too :)
I think that one wins the comment thread!
Tom, I agree with pretty much everything you just said. I don't think schools are no part of the problem, or that they shouldn't/couldn't be better.
I just believe that there are lots of societal forces that combine to produce kids who, for whatever reason, have it in their heads that they shouldn't have to work at learning.
I think teachers are partially complicit in this when they dumb everything down (the foolishness about "at least they're reading" - as though what they're reading made no difference comes to mind).
When I was in college, I did a lot of tutoring in math/calculus/stats. In virtually every case, the problem was simple: students weren't willing to put in the time needed to master the material. You could say that schools caused part of the problem b/c some of these kids shouldn't have passed their prior classes and math is cumulative and sequential in a way many other subjects aren't.
Despite all this, students who were willing to work generally passed. I tutored almost exclusively girls/women. The guys behaved so differently that it puzzled me. They didn't try to get help until they were so over their heads that there was no way they could catch up and the few I tutored refused to work the number of problems they needed to work to get the material.
You can't help someone like that until they're ready to accept help. I get along really well with guys - I've had male friends my whole life. But I never had a single male student pass - they often admitted to me that they didn't really care about failing the class.
It was pretty frustrating. I'd forgotten all about this (it was a good 20 years ago) until just now. One of the things I used to tell my students is that math is a skill, like riding your bike. You can't memorize how to ride a bike and you can't just skim a book on bike riding and expect not to fall down a time or twelve at first. The only way to learn is to practice.
And if you can't be bothered to practice (as in the young man who informed me that he had a job he needed to make the payments on his new Corvette, and weekends were for parties so he had no time to study) then you generally don't succeed.
How do schools combat that mind set?
Now, Tom, it's not nice to cause your host to laugh himself to death. :)
I'll be more circumspect in my use of snark and faux outrage in the future, I promise. :-)
Cass, I agree.
How do schools combat that mind set?
There is no cure for that mindset; it's probably just human. But I think schools could partially address it in a few ways.
First, make school meaningful to the students. E.g., math was never meaningful to me until I got interested in land navigation and surveying. Another example: When I teach history, I begin with "Why is (some weird or contentious issue) today like this? How the heck did it get this way?" and then I guide the students through a historical narrative that answers the question, asking tons of questions to elicit their own prior knowledge and get them to make connections to broader historical themes themselves. When we're done, they have a better understanding of some small part of their own current lives.
Second, teaching is a form of leadership, but teachers are not allowed to lead. We live in a CYA environment where it's more important to avoid responsibility for possible problems than it is to prevent or solve problems, especially ones that might get us or the school sued. We need to change that (which, BTW, would include hiring better-qualified people).
Third, another part of 1 & 2 is demonstrating the values we want students to adopt. If we want our students to develop focus, our teachers need to demonstrate its value. "Yeah, it's hard," our example should say, "but look at what you can do once you have it."
I think there's more, but that's all my brain can do this evening.
'night!
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