I like your thinking on this. We now have a generation that screams at the microwave, "Hurry! What do you mean dinner takes 3 minutes!?" It's no wonder they have difficulty seeing the benefit of knowledge they might not use for years. But, that is part of our challenge.
You've drawn a top-notch comparison. It makes such elegant sense. ithink even my high school freshmen could understand it. May I use it with them?
Sure! Thanks for the words of upport.
I disagree with you. I see many children, both my own and their peers, willing to work quite hard at not particularly fascinating tasks for a long-term reward, in athletics, for example, at computer languages and programs, and at various arts or crafts. The problem is that in traditional academic subjects as they are increasingly taught, there is no commmensurate reward for the effort, because they are taught so ineptly.
How can a child taught reading with Whole Language or artihmetic using Everyday Math fail to perceive that they are being conned? If their teachers do not teach them using a comprehensible method, so that reading or math become an ordeal to be endured, how can we plausibly say to such people that they have to "earn" their grades?
I finally told my daughter that, now that she is in her third year of Everyday Math and has made little progress, to just forget it. I will show her how to do her homework in a few minutes, and then we open up the workbooks I bought an B&N (total price: about $23) and she'll work on those. My wife, concerned, called my daughter's teacher. The teacher hated Everyday Math and said it was a disaster, but she was powerless.
Interestingly, when I mentioned this to a friend of mine last weekend, he was surprised, and said he was doing pretty much the same thing.
The really sad thing is that my daughter put far more effort into doing her math homework every night than my wife or I ever did, but learned far less.
How do we say to the millions of such students that they have to "earn" their grades?
Commenting by HaloScan
