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March 25, 2006
When Average Becomes Acceptable
I often rail about the decline in education standards; I'm a parent who pays through the nose for a school system that is unusable, so my opinion is somewhat informed. But when a working teacher reports from the trenches her words carry a stamp of authenticity that's hard to beat. Over at Sigmund, Carl and Alfred, guest blogger Mamacita emphatically seconds my standing protest against the acceptance of the average as the standard (hat tip to AJStrata):
I do not apologize in the least for stating that I believe our schools should be catering to the HIGHEST denominator, not the lowest. If we continue to award kids for merely showing up, and continue to tell a kid he’s the GREATEST because he went for a whole two hours without hitting someone, and continue to give kids limo rides and restaurant lunches for remembering to bring a pencil to class, why should we expect our bright kids, who generally get nothing because continually performing well and behaving properly doesn’t get a kid any notice in a public school, to take education seriously? Nobody else seems to be.And self esteem, if it is to be worth anything, must be earned. I’ve listened to clusters of low-performing kids who made out like bandits on Honor Day, and they’re not humbly grateful or proud of themselves. They’re in the restroom laughing their asses off at the pretense, at the adults who actually believe these kids got something to be proud of. They’re LAUGHING at the beaming parents and the grinning principals who handed a certificate and a trophy and a special award from Kiwanis for improvement to a kid who should have gotten a big red F and a retention notice. Even the stupid kids aren’t THAT stupid; they know what they really earned. The awards should go to those kids who earned an award, with quality, above-average work and good citizenship.
Self-esteem is important, yes. But only if it’s genuine. Otherwise, it’s worse than meaningless; it’s condescending, and there is nothing worse in the world of education than condescension.
I recently met some parents of a classmate of my kiddo; they had sought out our modest, achievement-oriented private school after their public school district sacked their gifted and talented program. Their child was left sitting with nothing to do for long periods while other kids received extensive attention.
It's understandable that resources naturally gravitate to the less advantaged kids, but it's inexcusable that the standard be reset to reflect the average learning of the general population. The standard should be set on what a child needs to know, and if the kids aren't measuring up, so be it. It's not doing any of us any good to sweep poor performance under the rug.
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Comments
I thank you for the mention and the link.
Posted by: Mamacita at March 26, 2006 05:17 PM
Alas, I'm afraid I can offer little help, link-wise. But you're very welcome, anyways, and I'll continue to do what I can.
Posted by: Jeff at March 26, 2006 11:44 PM
