THE CARNIVAL OF EDUCATION IS UP: And here’s a related item from today’s USA Today:
Last month, as I averaged the second-quarter grades for my senior English classes at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., the same familiar pattern leapt out at me.
Kids who had emigrated from foreign countries — such as Shewit Giovanni from Ethiopia, Farah Ali from Guyana and Edgar Awumey from Ghana — often aced every test, while many of their U.S.-born classmates from upper-class homes with highly educated parents had a string of C’s and D’s.
As one would expect, the middle-class American kids usually had higher SAT verbal scores than did their immigrant classmates, many of whom had only been speaking English for a few years.
What many of the American kids I taught did not have was the motivation, self-discipline or work ethic of the foreign-born kids.
Politicians and education bureaucrats can talk all they want about reform, but until the work ethic of U.S. students changes, until they are willing to put in the time and effort to master their subjects, little will change.
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE: A reader of Indian parentage emails:
Your post about student work ethics reminded me of the following incident. As a kid in gradeschool (in the 70s), I was given a test to determine my ‘natural’ math abilities, and based on this test, placed in the ‘C’ group. There was an ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ group, as I recall, and the idea was to give you work according to your ability. My father, a math professor who raised and educated in India, didn’t care for this. So, he went and spoke with the teacher, then sat with me and tutored me, and had me retake the test. I got into the ‘A’ group. What I remember most about this experience was that it gave me confidence in myself: not that I expected to get an A all the time, but that I had to work, work, work if I wanted something. It also taught me that I was really lucky to have a father like mine :). I know I have just re-enforced every stereotype about the overanxious Asian parent, but wait! My parents cared that I was having fun, too, and I did have fun growing up in that little Iowa town. Sounds pollyannish, but I did, I had a ball. It’s just that in addition to fun, they wanted me to put real effort into a task. They thought there was value in struggle. Oh, I also learned that girls can do math, because my Indian father never got the whole memo about girls not being able to doing math. Did. Not. Compute.
(Okay, maybe I wasn’t so positive as a kid about the whole studying instead of playing for an extra hour a day, but it did stay with me. The idea that without real effort, any natural ability I may have toward a subject didn’t mean much. I have had varying successes in life, good grades and bad and an academic record with rough spots. Some people from my past might be surprised at what I am today, but hey, it’s a marathon, not a sprint!)
Americans tend to make a cult of brilliance. That’s nice, but you still have to work.