So, I read this article today. Apparently American students think school is too easy. Presumably they're unaware that they seriously lag behind their international peers. As our book points out, Americans are struggling to compete in the globalized job market.
I've commented before that we're working hard to engage, to spark, to motivate our students when perhaps we could be or should be focused on challenging them. But the study referred to in that article makes me wonder if students know what it feels like to take up a challenge and see it through. They're accustomed to an a la carte experience, both in entertainment and in school.
Clearly, they won't have the skills ("combining the skills of MIT, MTV, and Madison Avenue" according to our authors) to create their own entertainment unless our society begins to see some value in the un-entertaining task of toiling away at a difficult project to completion.
To be fair, I'm pretty sure my generation was just as comfort-seeking and adversity-avoiding as the teens we teach, and we are now in the spot where self-examination is needed in order to avoid contributing to America's continued falling behind.
I agree with you that many of our students don't really understand what it is to be challenged. I also agree with you that our generation was just as bad. I don't ever remember being truly challenged in a high school class. It wasn't until college (Calculus) that I felt I had to step up my game in order to keep up.
ReplyDeleteI think we as teachers need to come up with ways to challenge our students and then we need to hold them accountable and turn a deaf ear to the inevitable complaining and whining that will come. We also have to hope our principals support us. A couple of years ago, I actually had one of our principals (No longer at HH) come to me and tell me that some of my Calculus kids had come to him and complained about the difficulty of the class. He didn't tell me to ease up, but he implied that I should be more receptive of their feelings. Not a one of these kids ever came to me to ask for help!
I think the challenge is finding a way to teach that is both engaging and challenging. My BEST teachers in high school and college were entertaining, engaging, AND challenging and thought-provoking.
ReplyDelete"I think we as teachers need to come up with ways to challenge our students and then we need to hold them accountable and turn a deaf ear to the inevitable complaining and whining that will come. We also have to hope our principals support us." Joel, I think you're right on. And I think we also need to be prepared to face the complaining that we're going to get from people OTHER THAN students as well.