This is the kind of report that makes teachers everywhere scratch their heads and wonder if the makers of the survey actually realize that people they are talking to are teenagers. These are the same people that often hum “Call Me Maybe” while texting naked photos to each other before downing a 750 Grey Goose from their parents liqueur cabinet. These are people that like Snooki and believe that Lebron James is one of the best basketball players ever to pick up the rock.Coach Brown does a good job in his post discussing why we should take such reports with a bin of salt.
Why the skepticism of the report? It’s probably the twelve years of teaching experience or something to that effect. And while I’d agree that students want to be challenged to think, they want to do so on their own terms that are set up by their own work ethic built around their own values. Basically they want to think like an adult while still acting like a teenager.
Education, politics, and anything else that catches my attention.
Sunday, August 05, 2012
Students Say High School Is Too Easy
So again we have a report that students think high school is too easy:
I would say most kids do find high school too easy because it probably is at all but the top 25-30% of schools or in some classes at the above average schools. While my honors and AP classes (and even my CP/CE classes) have been called hard, brutal, and grueling, my (and yours and Coach's) rigor and expectations are not the norm in this country.
ReplyDeleteI left a perfectly acceptable "above-average everything" suburban school in Illinois because of this mediocrity. In reality, many kids know they can show up for a C, do the homework and listen in class for a B, and strive for an A - but who needs that (Bs and Cs are fine to get into college).
Here's what i think. I agree that high school is fairly easy however, there's a difference between having a difficult course and learning. You don't have to struggle to learn things and although I know some people feel that they need that rigorous challenge, it's not necessary. For example, mr. miller's pre cal class :) wasn't difficult (to me at least) but I learned plenty.
ReplyDeleteEhh idk this whole statistic seems pointless to me as long as students still get their prerequisites completed and learn something
-Ray