Aptitude or attitude, which are we teaching?

Some students have learned the advantages of playing dumb. When using self-paced doctrine, the students are allowed to proceed at his/her own pace, however the student soon learns that the reward for "a job well done" is more and harder work, so why bother?! And at the same time the students who are doing poor work are given less and easer work.

Students in special education (academically disadvantaged) are not given more work, or more study time, or more advanced teachers. They are instead given easer work, fewer demands, and lower standards to meet. It has become to easy for students to just say "I can't."

Where elementary teachers had 15 students, the middle and high schools now have 30 to 150 students. Because of these numbers, students can no longer be held after school for unfinished homework assignments or extra study help. Of the few schools who do detain students after school, the students are most often made to sit in an office or waiting room for their period of detention. This school time is wasted if nothing is learned.

The cure for this lies not in trying to place blame, but in reforming the system. In this circumstance, reform does not mean overhaul, and it does not mean we have to spend millions of dollars either. Some parts of the education system work very well and therefor should not be changed, while some parts need reformed, reshaped, or remolded to work better or more effectively and efficiently. Some areas that need reformed are:

1) Hard courses Vs. easy courses: We cannot say that an "A" in remedial math is the same as an "A" in algebra. Some students need remedial math, and should be allowed, and in some cases required to take it, but not for an algebra equivalent credit.

2) Homework: Homework must be backed up with a guarantee. If one F or two D's would mean an extra hour of school in a study skills class, it would help motivate the student, and the study skills class would teach better ways to study. This could be both an incentive and a learning tool.

3) Attendance: The penalty for missing (skipping) class must be both immediate, and greater than the time gained by the student being out of class. For every one hour skipped = two or three hours of class, (not sitting in an office) would quickly detract from the temptation.

4) Deglamorizing the alternatives: Most remedial schools attend half days, and therefor look like a better alternative to less motivated students, like threatening a fox with banishment to the chicken coop.

Self-paced learning allows the student to learn at his own pace, however it does not encourage learning, it does not motivate, and many times it does just the opposite. If a student is by himself trying to learn from a book, he is bound to at one time or the other, think about how he is doing in relation to the other students in the class.

Consider if the student thought he was smarter than his classmates, he may feel he is doing so much better than his classmates that he can "coast" and do less work than he is capable of.

At the same time another student may feel he's not as good or not as smart as the other students, and think he's getting farther and farther behind, so he gives up with the attitude of "Why try if I can't do it."

Now we have two students preforming at less than their abilities. The system has failed, only due to the students own low self-esteem or vision of self.

Larger classes make teaching more difficult and homework more elusive. There must be an "It's better to do it" level of understanding with the students. Most schools use a four point grading scale where A=4...F=0. Why not use a five point scale, where A=5...F=1, and zero for work not done. This is a way of telling students that poor work is better than no work. Once this is instilled in the student, we can advance to a "want for excellence" level of understanding.

Because remedial classes are for the learning disadvantaged, they should be geared for that purpose. By using longer school days, teaching more study skills, and using the best teachers, so that the students can reenter the educational mainstream.

Attendance is one of the most important aspects of the educational system, after all "you can't learn if your not there!" The common penalty for skipping school is to be expelled for three days. Think about this logically, If a robber stole one dollar, would you insist that he take three dollars more as his punishment? Would it not be better for the student and the school system as a whole, if instead the student were given three extra days of school? Not just detention, but attending classes.

This can be done in several ways. The student can spend his free time at school to make up the time, or after school, or even on Saturdays. Study halls, should not be used, as the student would be here anyway.

This would require some extra effort on the part of the school and staff at first, but would soon slow infractions, and therefor soon diminish the need for the extra effort.

The United States are one of the few remaining world powers that use less than a full calendar year for their school year. A hundred years ago, the children were needed on the farms during the summer to help with the work. I believe it's time we moved into the twentieth century, and gave year round education, then we could work on moving into the twenty-first before it gets here.

We do not need to overhaul our education system, but rather the learning system within it. The United States was recently rated 14th. of the worlds developed nations in the educational level of high school graduates. There are too many educators who lower their expectations to the students level of apparent understanding, when we need to raise our expectations to the level required by employers and colleges.

The children are the future, and we owe it to ourselves, and especially to them, to see that they get the best education they can, even if it does take some extra effort on our part.

This article has been published several times, E-mail Dr. Bill for reprint information.

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