Rewarding failure in children by parents and in students by teachers is a very troubling trend that has seemed to be gaining momentum. I read the article I pasted below, and it got me to thinking about how much lee-way children get today. I really think it is an issue that needs to be addressed immediately.
Education reform: the problem with helping everyone reach 'average'
The crisis in US education isn't just overall poor national performance. Even our best students are less competitive. If we really want to 'win the future,' we have to target our brightest students, not ignore them in the fight to bring all students up to 'proficiency.'
By Ann Robinson
posted March 11, 2011 at 11:39 am EST
Little Rock, Ark.
(Read Full Article)
I recently went back to college to get some computer education, and I had an opportunity to see the effects of this first hand. I had the good fortune to score a 100% on my English mid-term test. I was very happy, yet I was confused as to how it was possible that I achieved this. I decided to actually talk to the professor about it. I approached him and said, "I am not complaining whatsoever here, but how is it possible I scored 100% on a college level mid-term while being a 37 year old laborer who hasn't been in school in nearly 20 years?".
He replied very matter-of-factually, "We lowered the standards." (...WHAT!!!...) I wasn't sure I heard that correctly, so I asked him to explain himself.
He was more than happy to do so. He shared his experiences by telling me how 10 or 15 years ago on the day before a test he could tell his students that they'd better get it together for the test or he'd fail every single one of them. The next day the students would arrive for the test and half of them looked like they'd crammed all night long, and all of them would somehow manage to do well on the test. He then conveyed that somewhere back a few years ago, almost overnight that if he said his same test prep speech to them it didn't yield the same results. He said that the day of the test maybe 5 students didn't even show, half of them were very stand offish and either scored poorly or outright failed, and only a small percentage would score well. He said that colleges can't have a 30% success rate, and they were forced to lower their standards. This really seems important to me. Does it bother anyone else?
I will continue on this topic later.
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Willing to relocate for the right job.
- Harlan W. Olsen
- Whatcom County, Pacific NW, United States
- I am currently seeking employment in the IT field. You can review my resume in your preferred format at the bottom of this page. I have been working in IT since I took my internship in the beginning of 2007. At the end of my internship, the 'real' Administrator gave his notice. I then had the wonderful experience of becoming the Systems Administrator, and that is when I really got the opportunity to to see 400% growth in the company in under six months! In a mission critical environment, there is a sense of urgency that school just doesn't have. With such a rise there was inevitably a fall, and I was phased out. I believe that as a sole administrator for a multi-site company helped to accelerate my learning,and I am more experienced than my years in IT would indicate.
It's a problem in everything pretty much. We give jobs prestigious names just so people will feel better about themselves and stay working at a dead end job.
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