Is the stereotypical American college student lazy, entitled and more interested in video games than homework?
That's the message coming across in this opinion piece penned recently in the Boston Globe. The author, Kara Miller, is a lecturer at Babson College in Boston, and she takes aim at the American students in her rhetoric and history courses.
Those students, she says, routinely account for the C's, D's and F's she gives out, while international students, who arrive in Boston with a much better work ethic, score A's and B's even while battling a language barrier.
Not surprisingly, the story sparked quite the reaction in Boston, a city of academics. As I post this, there are 603 comments attached to the story.
Inside Higher Ed, a higher education trade publication, deconstructed the story a bit, as well. You can read that here.
To give you just a taste of what Miller's talking about, consider this snippet:
"Chinese undergraduates have consistently impressed me with their work ethic, though I have seen similar habits in students from India, Thailand, Brazil, and Venezuela. Often, they’ve done little English-language writing in their home countries, and they frequently struggle to understand my lectures.
But their respect for professors - and for knowledge itself - is palpable. The students listen intently to everything I say, whether in class or during office hours, and try to engage in the conversation.
Too many 18-year-old Americans, meanwhile, text one another under their desks (certain they are sly enough to go unnoticed), check e-mail, decline to take notes, and appear tired and disengaged."
Comments
reality
Mon, 01/11/2010 - 14:20 — Watcher9We have to begin with an acknowledgment that there IS a problem, and most teachers are too politically intimidated to admit it -- has nothing to do with liberalism or conservatism and certainly not regionalism. Has to do entirely with the anti-intellectualism, anti-scholarship, and pseudo-anti-elitism that has taken over American culture. Have been in many classrooms, both undergraduate and graduate, and Miller's right on the money.
We can stand competition and achievement in ANY field other than education, and we can ask kids to dig in, work hard, and be disciplined as athletes or performers but NEVER in the classroom. God help the "talented" school kid -- the geek, the nerd, etc. (And if you want to get regionalist about this, that kind of contempt is certainly observed in the South). As long as it's uncool to work hard and achieve academically, you'll NEVER get an improvement in the classroom, because who'd respect a former-geek teacher who won't just give you the automatic A you're entitled to just because you showed up?
A lot of this also has to do with the enfants terrible and their terrifying parents among the hyper-entitled - all classes, all races, all politics, all regions. If someone gets a bad grade, it's taken as proof that the teacher failed - yah, that's respectful all right.
The prevailing "business model" of education is that students and their families are customers and teachers are merely customer service agents -- no one tells those "customers" that paying tuition isn't the "price" of a degree, it's just the admission fee to get through the door -- no, they think if they pay tuition, they are entitled to 4 years of entertainment and painless injection of knowledge, and at the end, voila! their ticket is punched and they're educated. The problem's pervasive and what happens in early childhood education is just the first chapter -- god forbid those kids shouldn't be constantly entertained and "esteemed" just for showing up. Yes, learning should be treated as something wonderous, creativity and curiosity should be cultivated - but in themselves, they're just not enough.
Early childhood education
Sun, 01/10/2010 - 14:03 — hankmackneeThere is much redundancy in this to my previous post, but I think it is worth reading.
I would like to pass on a collection of thoughts I have about education that I have gathered. Most of the ideas are about programs that are in place, but I think that if these programs were widely expanded America education might be drastically improved.
I have been interested in early childhood education for many years. I have no teaching credentials, but I have lived a long time and I figured out a long time ago “Why Johnny Can’t Read.” The original answer was that many schools had turned away from teaching phonics to using word recognition. Another reason why many children do not become readers is that as the years go by there are more and more gadgets that entertain children without teaching them. My eldest child, now 52 years old, read extremely well before she started school. My other children also read early as did most of my grandchildren.
In 1997, reporters Tim Simmons and Ruth Sheehan of the Raleigh, NC, News & Observer did a series entitled “2little2late”. The series explained how education in the first five years of life is most important in developing brain circuits. Added brain circuits enhance learning ability for the rest of the child's life. I regret that I did not download the series, but at that time I did not have enough storage on my computer to do so. The files have long since disappeared from the Internet, but Tim Simmons sent me hard copy of the stories. The article said that a person learns the best during the first five years of life. During that period neural paths are created and the more the brain is exercised during those early years the more paths are developed. Just think about this. A child becomes fluent in a language in three years, or, or in more than one language if he/she is exposed to more than one language.
A child understands more than you thing he/she does. Before she could talk, I asked one of my granddaughters to go into the bedroom and get my shoes out of the closet in her mother’s bedroom. What a thrill it was for me when she brought me those shoes.
Point: Talk to the child. Talk about what you are doing around the house, or why you are buying such and such an item in the grocery store. And of course, read lots of books to the child. Hearing conversation will help the child learn to speak. Use your very best diction. Do not talk down to the child. Use normal conversational and do not hesitate to use big words.
As well as reading a child baby books also read to the child books such as “Wind in the Willows”, books that use vocabulary and language structure that seem to be above the child’s comprehension. I remember that one of my granddaughters used adverbs correctly when she responded to her pediatrician at her two years checkup.
Sing to the child. Especially sing the alphabet song to the child very often
Several years ago I bought a reprint set of McGuffey’s readers. They are a wonderful aid in teaching a child to read. You can Google “McGuffey Reader” to find them. You can buy them individually or you can buy a full set. The Vermont Country Store has full sets.
Blocks with letters on them helped out oldest daughter learn her letters at a very early age. She was able to read an encyclopedia or a newspaper before she started school. Her son attended Montessori School. When he was four I put together lessons to help him learn phonetics. He read 3 Harry Potter books before he started third grade. He could also do addition and subtraction before he started first grade.
Suggestions about teaching a child colors and shapes:
Buy a book about “Colors and Shapes” and use it with your child. Seeing a variety of shapes of various colors will help the child to distinguish colors and shapes.
Cut shapes out of different colored construction paper. Spread the shapes out (I throw them down on the carpet) and ask the child to pick out a color. When the child learns shapes you can ask him/her to pick out a particular color of a particular shape, such as please give me a red triangle. This works better than asking the child to tell you the color of an article.
When reading a children’s book with pictures, point out things pictured in the book and mention the color of the item you point to.
A Google search or “Teachers as parents” will get a lot of hits. The following URL will get you to the National Teachers as parents website.
www.patnc.org
The URL below gives another helpful opinion about early childhood development. I think the author is a too conservative about how much a child can learn, but there are some good points made in the article.
http://www.parentsasteachers.org/site/pp.asp?c=ekIRLcMZJxE&b=307150
The URL below talks about how to choose books to read to the child.
http://www.parentsasteachers.org/site/pp.asp?c=ekIRLcMZJxE&b=307123
Texas Parents as Teachers gathered some evaluations of Parents as Teachers programs.
http://www.idra.org/Texas_IDRA_PIRC.htm/About_the_Texas_IDRA_PIRC/PAT/
Discipline is very important. The biggest problem in schools is that many parents do not teach their children how to behave when they are very young.
I would suggest that Dr. John Rosemond gives wonderful advice about discipline. You can read his columns in newspapers or at his website, http://www.rosemond.com/.
We spanked our children, calmly, not in anger. I spanked them hard on the bottom and they were very obedient. This did not cause them trauma, and in fact, we had and have very good relationships with our children. Their friends envied their relationship with us when they were older. The child will try to get away with anything he/she can. To raise a child right you must set limits. Our grandchildren are well-behaved, but one of our grandsons had a terrible temper. When they were younger our grandchildren spent a lot of time at our house. We would babysit any time we were asked. We have had as many as 7 grandchildren spend a week with us in the summer. Three of them spent three weeks with us one time. One of them was four years old and did not get homesick. (I include the story below labeled “Trip to Mississippi” because I enjoyed the occasion.) Now we will get back to the grandson with a temper. When he got into a fight with a cousin my wife took him and held him. He screamed, but she just held him. She told him that she could not let him go until he calmed down, because she was afraid that he would hurt himself or hurt someone else. He eventually calmed down. We did that three or four times that week. During one such session he told my wife that he would not have to act that way if he could just get his own way. By the end of the week he was not having temper tantrums and has not had one since. That has been about 8 years.
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Cuddling
Cuddling is also important. When I was young people did not think it was important to hold babies and cuddle them. In fact, they thought that it was bad for babies to be touched too much. Babies were left in cribs to “cry it out”. Touching is good for people and especially good for babies. We have several pictures of me taking a nap on a couch with a baby sleeping on my chest. Cuddling a baby is good for the baby and it also enjoyable for the person holding the baby. I like the slings that young mothers use now to carry their babies against the chest.
Trip to Mississippi
My oldest daughter and her family were living in living in Jackson, Mississippi. Her two children (girls) were 3 and 9 months. My daughter called and asked us if we would drive from our home in Chapel Hill, NC to Fulton, Mississippi for the weekend to baby sit her girls while she and her husband went to a reunion in Memphis. We did. In Fulton we stayed with my wife’s family. When my daughter and her husband arrived, they dropped the girls off with us and went out to do some shopping. The baby had lots of people to cuddle her and the three year old busied herself with activities. She was sitting on the living room floor coloring when her parents got back. She looked up and with an anguished voice said, “They aren’t coming to take us home already, are they?” We kept the girls for two nights. The elder slept with my wife and the baby slept with me. They baby was a restless sleeper, but I had a good time. We spent some of the time in a nice padded rocking chair. The baby would sleep on my right arm for a while and then wake up. I would shift her to the other arm and we would go back to sleep. About 5:00 am I took her outside and we sat on the front steps and listened to the birds. That weekend was wonderful and worth driving 1400 miles round trip for.
Recently I saw an infomercial advertising a system that uses TV tapes, flashcards, etc., to teach babies to read. There cannot recommend this system because I have not tried to use it, but this system seems to agree with what I have learned about early childhood development. I was disappointed that they were charging for this, although the price is not prohibitive for poor families who need it most. I would like to see this system evaluated. If it is worthwhile I would like to see it made available on a TV channel so that poor children could view it rather than viewing some of the less educational TV programs.. The website where you can read about this program http://www.yourbabycanread.com/ce-y-order.aspx
A definite benefit to having young children read is that they can entertain themselves with a book and not demand as much attention. Children, older and younger than my elder daughter would gather around her to listen to her read. How is that for a baby-sitter? One of our granddaughters also a very early reader was writing stories on the computer by the time she was 4 and they were good stories. She won the North Carolina Reading Club writing award in the second grade for an illustrated story she wrote. If you hand her a new book, she disappears into another room to read it.
Suggestions about how to improve education in the United States
Sun, 01/10/2010 - 13:59 — hankmackneeTwo reports in 1997 provided hope for drastic improvement in the education system in America. It had been and still is my contention that just about all the problems in education are not caused by the schools but rather by the failure of parents to properly prepare their children for school and for life. We have become a permissive society. Instead of being disciplined children are fed drugs for “ADHD.” I children are properly disciplined these ADHD problems should be resolved by the time a child is three or four years old.
In 1997 N&O staff reporters Tim Simmons and Ruth Sheehan put together a wonderful series called “Too Little Too Late.” Too Little Too Late explained the importance of teaching babies. North Carolina needs to teach the babies. The United States needs to teach the babies.
Since the possible solutions involve discipline, they will have to be phased in and sold to parents and educators. Discipline, or the lack thereof, is the major problem in education today. There have been two particularly low-performing schools in Durham. I became excited when I heard that Henry Pankey, a new principal at one of the schools, was turning that school around. I worked with a woman who was upset because Mr. Pankey required the students, including her son, to dress for success. After all, according to some parents, the student has a right to dress as he wants to. The school was making good progress but, Mr. Pankey did not last too long in that school. He was transferred for some reason to the other failing school where he had a bit of success before he dropped out of sight. Both schools returned to their failing ways. Many parents neither discipline their children nor will they allow anyone else, including a principal, to adequately discipline their children.
The best first step to improving education in North Carolina is:
Operate all schools much as the very successful KIPP schools are operated
“KIPP, the Knowledge Is Power Program, is a national network of free, open-enrollment, college-preparatory public schools in under-resourced communities throughout the United States…More than 80 percent of KIPP students are low-income and more than 90 percent are African American or Hispanic/Latino. Nationally, nearly 80 percent of KIPP alumni have matriculated to college...
…The majority of KIPP schools, 48 of 57, are middle schools designed to serve fifth through eighth grade students. The remaining nine are five high schools, three pre-kindergarten/elementary schools, and one pre-kindergarten through eighth grade school.” http://www.kipp.org/
There are KIPP schools in North Carolina:
KIPP Academy in Charlotte
KIPP Gaston College Prep
KIPP Pride High School in Gaston
The most important problem in education is not inadequate schools, but rather the failure of parents to properly prepare their children for school or for life. I am glad that North Carolina Governors have emphasized education at earlier ages, but a child has educational needs before he/she is four years old. The first five years of life, from the first day of life, are the most important in brain development. In 1997 N&O staff reporters Tim Simmons and Ruth Sheehan put together a wonderful series called “Too Little Too Late.” Too Little Too Late explained the importance of teaching babies. North Carolina needs to teach the babies. The United States needs to teach the babies. “Too Little Too Late” was available online for a few years, but I did not have computer resources then to download it. After it disappeared, Tim Simmons was kind enough to send me a hard copy. I have put a couple of quotes from “Too Little Too Late” in Appendix A at the end of this document. I have personally observed remarkably positive results of nurturing early childhood education.
A good long-range plan to improve family influence on children and to improve education in North Carolina could be:
Train volunteers to teach parents how to raise children. It seems plausible that if NC State government were to dramatically support participation in the “Parents as Teachers” program, many more children would be better prepared to enter school.
“Parents as Teachers (PAT) is a voluntary family education and support program for parents of young children. The program is based on the beliefs that parents are their children's first and most influential teachers and that the early years lay the foundation for children's success in school and in life.
PAT provides the information, support and encouragement parents need to help their children develop optimally during the crucial early years of life.
The PAT model focuses on families with children from before birth to kindergarten entry, and includes these four components:
• Personal/home visits by certified parent educators
• Parent group meetings about early childhood development and parenting
• Developmental and health screenings for young children
• Linkages and referrals to community networks and resources
Read more about the NC PAT organization for parents and professionals by browsing through this web site. Click here to find a program in your area from the PAT National Center web site. Also check out the latest local training schedules for PAT professionals.
The best first step to improving education in North Carolina is:
Operate all schools much as the very successful KIPP schools are operated
“KIPP, the Knowledge Is Power Program, is a national network of free, open-enrollment, college-preparatory public schools in under-resourced communities throughout the United States…More than 80 percent of KIPP students are low-income and more than 90 percent are African American or Hispanic/Latino. Nationally, nearly 80 percent of KIPP alumni have matriculated to college...
…The majority of KIPP schools, 48 of 57, are middle schools designed to serve fifth through eighth grade students. The remaining nine are five high schools, three pre-kindergarten/elementary schools, and one pre-kindergarten through eighth grade school.” http://www.kipp.org/
There are KIPP schools in North Carolina:
KIPP Academy in Charlotte
KIPP Gaston College Prep
KIPP Pride High School in Gaston
Two factors are needed to obtain satisfactory output from a process. These factors are acceptable input and a properly working process. If we enter incorrect or inadequate data into a computer, or if the computer program is not correct, the desired output will not be obtained.
Education in America has problems with both input and process. Many children entering our schools are inadequately prepared for school, and the schools are not properly programmed to correctly process this inadequate input.
That basic problem is a lack of parental guidance and discipline. This is not particularly a racial problem. Black and white parents are failing to properly prepare their children for school or for life. Asians, until they adapt to the ways of the rest of Americans, do a much better job of preparing their children for school.
If a student is not properly prepared when he enters school, he will probably not learn as much as he would if he were properly prepared. Unlike computer input, which seldom has an effect on other input, an improperly prepared student can cause problems for other students.
In a proper school, a teacher should not have to try to control unruly students, nor should that teacher be required to plead with students for their cooperation. The teacher, the parent, and the student need to work together to make sure that the student achieves the best possible education.
If children were properly prepared for school and schools were operated correctly, we could send children to local schools and eliminate millions now spent on busing children to distant schools. Children would not spend hours each week riding on a school bus. They would have more time for other activities, and they would be able to get the sleep they require. The county and state could save vast amounts of money now spent on busing. Employees would be spared the onerous school reassignment process; in fact, jobs could be eliminated. Parents would, hopefully, be far less dissatisfied with the school systems than they now are.
In a January 18, 2008, Raleigh N&O letter to the editor, a 44-year-old woman pointed out that during her first year of school, she walked to school. The next year she attended a school far from home, and she was in the fifth grade before she went to the same school two years in a row.
A column, “Four-syllable words affect generations,” in the Tuesday, January 22, 2008, N&O elucidates the stress that is caused by school reassignment. This turmoil in the North Carolina education system cannot be good for the child’s education, nor does it provide the stable environment children need.
Possible solutions:
Since the possible solutions involve discipline, they will have to be phased in and sold to parents and educators. Discipline, or the lack thereof, is the major problem in education today. There are two particularly low-performing schools in Durham. I became excited when I heard that Henry Pankey, a new principal at one of the schools, was turning that school around. I worked with a woman who was upset because Mr. Pankey required the students, including her son, to dress for success. After all, the student has a right to dress as he wants to. The school was making good progress but, Mr. Pankey did not last too long in that school. He was transferred for some reason to the other failing school where he had a bit of success before he dropped out of sight. Both schools returned to their failing ways. Many parents neither discipline their children nor will they allow anyone else, including a principal, to make their children behave.
The best first step to improving education in North Carolina is:
Operate all schools much as the very successful KIPP schools are operated
“KIPP, the Knowledge Is Power Program, is a national network of free, open-enrollment, college-preparatory public schools in under-resourced communities throughout the United States…More than 80 percent of KIPP students are low-income and more than 90 percent are African American or Hispanic/Latino. Nationally, nearly 80 percent of KIPP alumni have matriculated to college...
…The majority of KIPP schools, 48 of 57, are middle schools designed to serve fifth through eighth grade students. The remaining nine are five high schools, three pre-kindergarten/elementary schools, and one pre-kindergarten through eighth grade school.” http://www.kipp.org/
There are KIPP schools in North Carolina:
KIPP Academy in Charlotte
KIPP Gaston College Prep
KIPP Pride High School in Gaston
The most important problem in education is not inadequate schools, but rather the failure of parents to properly prepare their children for school or for life. I am glad that North Carolina Governors have emphasized education at earlier ages, but a child has educational needs before he/she is four years old. The first five years of life, from the first day of life, are the most important in brain development. In 1997 N&O staff reporters Tim Simmons and Ruth Sheehan put together a wonderful series called “Too Little Too Late.” Too Little Too Late explained the importance of teaching babies. North Carolina needs to teach the babies. The United States needs to teach the babies. “Too Little Too Late” was available online for a few years, but I did not have computer resources then to download it. After it disappeared, Tim Simmons was kind enough to send me a hard copy. I have put a couple of quotes from “Too Little Too Late” in Appendix A at the end of this document. I have personally observed remarkably positive results of nurturing early childhood education.
A good long-range plan to improve family influence on children and to improve education in North Carolina could be:
Train volunteers to teach parents how to raise children. It seems plausible that if NC State government were to dramatically support participation in the “Parents as Teachers” program, many more children would be better prepared to enter school.
“Parents as Teachers (PAT) is a voluntary family education and support program for parents of young children. The program is based on the beliefs that parents are their children's first and most influential teachers and that the early years lay the foundation for children's success in school and in life.
PAT provides the information, support and encouragement parents need to help their children develop optimally during the crucial early years of life.
The PAT model focuses on families with children from before birth to kindergarten entry, and includes these four components:
• Personal/home visits by certified parent educators
• Parent group meetings about early childhood development and parenting
• Developmental and health screenings for young children
• Linkages and referrals to community networks and resources
Read more about the NC PAT organization for parents and professionals by browsing through this web site. Click here to find a program in your area from the PAT National Center web site. Also check out the latest local training schedules for PAT professionals.
For even more information about the Parents as Teachers program visit the Parents as Teachers National Center web site at www.parentsasteachers.org.” North Carolina Parents as Teachers. http://www.ncpat.org/
I have more dreams about education.
I would like to someday see children, during their twelve years of school, be trained to teach babies. I can remember at an early age teaching my younger cousin how to print his name. It doesn’t take a whip and a chair to teach a baby letters, numbers, shapes and colors, just simple games.
I would like to see ethics taught that would instill in young children the values and deportment I have observed in children born and reared in the South. Having been born in New York and having lived on Long Island during my formative years, I missed that training. I have observed the differences between Southerners and New Yorkers and also between Southerners and people from other states and countries. People from the Far East have a tradition called “saving face.” It is a grave offense to cause another person to “lose face.” It is not called by that phrase in the US, but Southern children learned that it is never acceptable to cause another person to be embarrassed, and in some places in the South children are still taught to behave that way. Our state and country would be much more civil if we all cared enough for each other so as to never want another person to “lose face.”