🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sat, 25 Feb 1995, Cherie Lehman wrote:

> hard for it.  I studied for two hours on Wednesday night."  Of course,
> we spent nearly three weeks on the unit, but these students didn't do
> any studying until the night before the test.  What's the matter with
> these kids today?  8-)
>

Your question was obviously rhetorical and tongue-in-cheek. We all know
what's 'wrong'. The kids are intellectually lazy. Kids have always been
lazy. We were lazy when we were in school. But those of us who went to
school decades ago (in the dark ages) were not allowed to exercise our
laziness. We knew that laziness=flunking. Teachers did not *allow* us to
get by without doing homework.

So what has changed? The system, and those in it have changed. We have
inflated grades to the point where they are meaningless. We have removed
the most powerful motivation available to us: the fear of flunking. In my
day the fear was more tangible: a real whack on the side of the head by
the hand of the teacher. (In our school teachers *were* allowed to strike
students.) Now I don't advocate that, mind you. But I am honest enough to
admit that for some students it worked. I'd much prefer students to learn
because they are genuinely intellectually curious, and eager for
knowledge. Now if anyone knew how to bring about that utopian state of
affairs, I hope they tell the rest of us. I've seen educational panaceas
and fads come and go, and one thing is common to them all. None have
worked. In fact, it seems obvious that in educational inovations "Nothing
works if the students don't."

Anyway, if the students aren't working, we have ourselves and the system
to blame. We haven't had the courage to *insist* that they work, nor the
courage to throw sports out of the school system entirely. We have
elevated ex-jocks to administrative positions, ensuring that sports will
continue to be the most important part of education.

Today the goals of education have changed. No longer do we expect students
to demonstrate understanding, insight, dedication and motivation toward
academics. Instead we socialize them, trivialize course content, bend over
backwards not to bruise their supposedly tender egos, and never, oh,
never, give them low grades for that would reflect badly on the teacher
and the system. We dispense information without giving students the tools
to evaluate and use information (math, critical thinking, skepticism). We
confuse training with education. Students emerge with huge gaps in their
understanding, and huge amounts of misinformation. Worse, they are totally
unaware of the deficiencies in their achievements. They have the
*illusion* of understanding. The whole enterprise is a smoke and mirrors
operation to make everyone involved look good and feel good.

        -- Donald