bowyer
May 13, 2007 at 8:40 am
Although I am at risk of sounding redundant to some, neither M-Dawg’s experience nor Mrs. Chilli’s predicted results surprise me.
Grades mean little to the average student. I believe that this has become the norm for a few reasons.
1) Students don’t see any immediate reward or repercussion for performing well or poorly. They get what they get and we (teachers) generally move on anyway. [Fix - Make them repeat the material on their own time until they succeed. Don't allow them to accept a zero.]
2) Students don’t see any future reward or repercussion for performing well or poorly. Their friends and siblings seem to get into higher education or get jobs regardless of respective success in school. We laud the accomplishments of celebrities, politicians, business people, etc., when they succeed in the face of poor performance. (No one bothers to mention persistence, hard work, luck and other extenuating conditions of their successes.)
[Fix - Provide incentives and take away supports from those who willingly circumvent education. (This is a topic for another discussion and can not be properly addressed here.)]
3) We (teachers and our material) can no longer compete in a world of immediate gratification. Text messaging, cell phones, on-demand programming, DVR, mp3, and all of the other pieces of technology all allow people who make poor decisions like our students (although they are not the only culprits) to focus their attentions in and out of class on anything but learning. (Fix – Probably none, unless lawmakers want to play hardball with companies, parents, and students regarding our way of life.)
Society’s lack of respect or value for education is not lost on children. My class could be interrupted on any given day for general announcements, discipline by administration, tardy students, assemblies, fund raisers, phone calls to me from administrators, (Yes, during class. Sigh.), and various incidental interruptions from the student body or other teachers.
In the last week I know of a student who missed two afternoons of class for a doctor’s appointment for her one day and one for her brother on the other because she drove him there. When asked what this student’s parents used to do before she received her license, she replied that they worked around their schedules but now that she can drive it doesn’t matter any more.
Another student missed school for a hair appointment, when asked why she didn’t schedule it after school she replied that it would have interfered with her sport practice.
To wrap it up, school in general means almost nothing to the average student now (grades mean even less). Until we make success in school matter again, this mind set will remain and likely even proliferate among the masses as the “good” students see the other students “succeeding” with little effort or ability.
Reply