Where We Live: For the Love of Learning
Educating kids in the age of meritocracy
By Where We Live - WNPR
Published: May 28, 2010
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Where We Live: For the Love of Learning
As college commencement season winds down and high school seniors prepare to graduate---it’s a good time to ask your favorite student---so, what did you learn?
It’s been nine years since David Brooks first wrote about the “organization kids,”---those high achieving students with broad interests and charming personalities, raised to do whatever it takes to succeed in school. Brook's concern about this new class is that they seem oddly deferential to authority figures and unwilling to take risks, intellectual or otherwise.
Today we’ll talk about how the education system, with its emphasis on achievement and advancement, might be cheating students out of something more important---the opportunity or inclination to explore, to enjoy, to think.
You can join the conversation. Are we so busy racing to the top that scores and grades have become goals in and of themselves… commodities in a society obsessed with merit? Is there still such a thing as learning for learning’s sake?
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I think American education today is perhaps the most delusional part of our society, where good teachers....know what ought to be done and virtually all schools are engaged in educational practices that contradict what we know about human learning.
-Steve Nelson, Head of the Calhoun School
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listener email from bob; montessori
You can home-educate. Montessori doesn't have anything that you can't give your child at home, they just charge mega-bucks for it.
Listener email from Jim
Shut up, just plain shut up.
Why do you always have these over paid specialists talking about how schools can be improved. I never hear teachers or students on your shows.
Well, I know why you can’t get teachers, it is in their contracts that they cannot “offend the board of ed” least they be fired. I dare to have you pin teachers against administrators. That is where they problems are. Administrators are never challenged, threatened with tests, have their salary commensurate with student success. Bs of E are the ones that choose administrators, why not challenge them?
Listener email from Bob
I teach at a state university and my grading is as follows:
You do exactly what is expected, perfectly, and “to the code” and you get a “C”.
The “B: student will take the assignment and modify it by using different parameters and applications of what is assigned.
If you go beyond the assignment, explore the internet and bring in extras, apply critical thinking, you are the “A” student.
This totally mesmerizes some students. “But what do you want me to do?”. What do I have to do to get an “A”?
If I suggest something then that will become a qualifier for the “C” wouldn’t it.
The interesting point that I see is that students will know this throughout the term, many will continue to work at the “C” level, then complain when they get the “C” at the end of the term and then complain to the hoed of the department. From the beginning of the term, I told them that I have already discussed this with the Dept and have inspired other teachers to explore this method.
On another show, you seriously should explore the Sudbury School in Framingham Mass. There they have no transcripts, no tests, no teachers as such and 75 % of the students go to the college of their choice while most other students go off to start their own businesses.
Listener email from Chris
I see how this focus on achievement is impacting kids even outside the classroom. I'm 38, and I play a lot of online video games. I'm not as focused on being the top player as I am enjoying the experience and having a fun evening. But I see many kids...teens and young adults...who care more about being on top of the ladders than actually having a good time. They spend hours and hours testing every weapon, tactic, and game mechanic so as to come up with the best options to be "number one". They couldn't care less about the narrative or story. They have turned a fun game into a spreadsheet.
Listener email from Scott
Comment- One of the problems is that we confuse the need to master a body of knowledge with the need to be able to think about a problem.
Question- If we don’t grade students how do we identify those students who want to go into complex fields where only those with greater aptitude are likely to succeed?
Listener email from Laurie
I believe that many in our plutocratically ruled society WANT education of the masses to be training to do what you're told. Creative thinkers challenge the status quo.
Look at the administration who put in "No child left behind"...and the other policies they created.
The rich will train their own children to take over, ....the poor who opt out of "schooling" are often the most creative....and therefore dangerous to the status quo.
Listener email from Bob
For the first 5 years of my daughter's life she was enrolled in an accredited Montessori school. By age 5 she was able to read, write, and do basic arithmetic. She was a very engaged child, loved school, and I really enjoyed watching her thrive there. I believe strongly in alternative education, however, I am a middle-class white collar worker and my wife is a stay-at-home mom. We simply could not afford to keep my daughter in Montessori much less both of our children. We truly believed it was the best place for our children and it broke our hearts to pull my daughter out when it became a financial hardship to pay for the tuition.
I was hoping your guests could address the simple fact that alternative education seems to only be accessible to the upper class, and how we can make it more accessible to those, like me, who believe in it, but simply can't afford the tuition.
Listener email from Bo
I work at a university and I just wanted to comment on student attitudes. I think we have created a culture where for the majority of the students what matters is the piece of paper (the diploma) they get at the end and not what they learn. That is reflected in the attitude of most students who walk into classrooms asking what do I have to do to get an A, or a B or whatever grade they're looking for and not what am I going to learn in this class.
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