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The Case For Lower Academic Standards
In any discussion of education reform, it’s only a matter of time before someone says we need to raise standards. It’s become such a commonplace suggestion that people repeat it without giving it any thought. Regardless, it’s being put into practice; many states, for example, now require Algebra II for graduation. Well, here is an inconvenient fact that seems to have escaped the notice of most reformers: Half of the students are below average — well, technically, below median — in academic ability. Those below-average students will not learn Algebra I, much less Algebra II. (Some of them may pass, but that is an altogether different proposition.)
And it’s not just algebra. Below-average students are not going to figure out the theme of Great Expectations, nor will they be able to explain complex metabolic processes in detail. Telling them that failure to do so should sentence them to a lifetime of poverty is an act of cruelty. This is why we should lower academic standards.
Or, rather, have more flexible standards that account for varying levels and kinds of ability. All but the least-talented should be able to write a simple paragraph that is clear in meaning and reasonably free of errors. They should be able to do the basic arithmetic that comes up in everyday life, including the ability to balance a checkbook and figure a percentage. They should have a basic understanding of how to interpret graphs and charts. They should know basic facts about science necessary to make better choices regarding health and public policy. They should know the basics of history and government necessary to citizenship. Their time in school should be spent on mastering these and similar matters, rather than having them pretend to read Paradise Lost or trying (and failing) to prove a theorem. And once they master these skills, they should be able to opt-out of school with no stigma to pursue vocational training or take a job.
An enormous amount of time in high school is spent trying to teach below-average students skills that will not be useful to them or that are simply beyond their reach. It serves only to render school a place of daily humiliation and misallocates significantresources. Reserve those resources for students that can benefit from them and let the others get on with their lives.
Published in Education
Should we even have general studies schools at all? A lot of people can make a good living doing trades. If all you’ve ever wanted to be was a programmer as a kid why not just start teaching him computer science and math and build from there?
There’s really no need to warehouse kids for dozens of years. Are you interested in x? we’ll teach you. Want to be a modern polymath? Great! If not? Leave.
And children love it.
I agree for basic instruction, competent communicator is key. And probably just improving that in our schools will greatly enhance education. My argument is that we really need to also eventually go for depth and expertise at all levels of education, to allow people to go further if they can and wish to at least on some topics.
I saw big differences even with my own kids (who didn’t go to school at all). My eldest daughter knew her alphabet early and figured out how to sound out words at five. My second daughter still didn’t know her alphabet at six, and had no tolerance for anyone who tried to teach it to her. But one day she decided she wanted to learn to read. She learned the alphabet in a couple of days, and was reading chapter books within two weeks. She ended up reading as well as her sister. Readiness is important.
It’s more than that, though. It’s handing down our culture’s accumulated knowledge in diverse fields of study from one generation to the next. With this in mind, I don’t mind high school offering a smorgasbord of courses. A student can sample different knowledge fields in introductory courses, and later in life he/she will draw upon that knowledge to comprehend reading and also make connections between seemingly unrelated fields.
My daughter’s chemistry course seems deep and detailed. Her science courses are far more challenging than anything I ever had.
Agreed. It would be nice if we had a free market in education. We’d have something to fit practically everyone.
Well said! My husband is from Scotland; he says that the school he went to focused on teaching the kids how to learn for themselves. My husband is in his fifties, and dropped out of college after half a semester, but throughout his life, he has usually earned a very good income, at a number of different professions. He is self educated, and not afraid to dive into new things; this has served him well, and made him flexible. If it’s something that can be taught, we should definitely be trying to teach it.
Alberta already does this. They have multiple tiers of courses. Math had pure (theoretical for the univeristy bound), applied (calculator excercises) and x3 (x being the grade level) remedial tier courses.
Houston French teacher accused of not speaking French.
http://www.khou.com/news/investigations/i-team-french-teacher-at-hisd-school-doesnt-speak-french/160708733
That looks like a good system.
In Ontario we had Basic, General, and Advanced (for those university bound).
My problem with the system was that every student that was university bound was lumped into the Advanced math classes, regardless of what they planned on studying at university.
I consistently failed in Advanced math, but nobody ever suggested that I drop down to General. There was a taboo against having a student in the Advanced track taking any General courses, even if that would be more appropriate for them in subjects where they were struggling (I was an super-duper-A student in English, History, computers, etc, but not so good at math, science, or French.).
I did fine at my communications degree in university, but I still wish I had better math skills, which I wager I would have if I’d been in the General math class.
My friend was in applied math I think due to grade reasons. He HATED it. He said everyone was dumb and it was a whole waste of time. Your mileage may vary.
I was watching Master and Commander and noted that the junior officers were something like 8. I think we can start vocational training earlier. I mean, really, artisan smiths learned the trade from their fathers and literally do their job their whole lives.
I honestly feel like most of my education was a waste of time given that most of what I know I learned on my own because I wanted to.
Well, in the Kansas City area, there are 100+ applicants for every job in an accredited school district. Schools have their pick of their applicants.
Which is not to say they have their pick of well-educated people.
I think can safely pull back in some areas, but basic geometry and trig is increasingly mandatory for working class jobs.
And if you can’t do a geometry proof, you don’t understand logic. The ability to combine facts and axioms and learn something new is how to think and reason. We have no business saying someone who can’t do that is “educated.”
In my case, it was because enough of the intro geometry theorems were intuitive enough that I couldn’t remember which ones we hadn’t proven yet. Proofs were easier (less risk of accidentally appealing to theorems not yet proven) when the material got less intuitive. For mechanical work, though, the same spatial intuition that makes avoiding appeals-to-theorems-not-yet-proven harder would probably be an asset.
Which is to say, I do agree that kind of logic is important, but also understand why mechanically-inclined kids might struggle with being forced to reason out their (usually correct) intuition explicitly.
Oh, I struggled with it a lot. But even if you are able to intuit the answer, you have to be able to explain it to other people. Show your work is an important concept in math, but also persuasive argument.
Besides, you don’t have to like math. Math doesn’t care whether you like it or not. You just have to be able to use it or prepare to assume the position when dealing with car dealerships, banks, and insurance salesmen.
And there exists a smaller cohort of kids who dabble gleefully in varied subjects, coast through high school (while despising it), reach college, and — when forced to specialize, and having never developed the work ethic necessary for specialization — panic.
Yes. Yes, indeed.
Or, increasingly, never learned.
rather than ability, we might consider different streams of motivation. There are plenty of ABLE students who chose to remain unmotivated, and disengaged, on a great number of pursuits, among them those that require effort and motivation, not just ability.
Teens are notorious for flexing their ‘choice’ muscle. You can’t make them do anything. You can only hope that they are motivated by any number of choices they are offered.
However, choices have consequences, and often the most motivating thing in life is suffering consequence of poor choices, then figuring out how to fix life so the consequences are better.
Too many of our teens, (even adults) are sheltered from the consequences of their poor choices.
I know people without college degrees who can teach better high school calculus than our credentialed teachers. It’s the ability to fire bad and incompetent teachers. We can’t even fire pedophiles.
More importantly, parents have to take an interest in their kids’ learning. Go to any library in a mixed ethnic town or city, you’ll see the differences between the blacks, browns and yellow kids. Larry Elder used to talk about what he saw at one library in Los Angeles. He said all the black and brown kids were playing outside, on skateboards, showing off their skills. Inside the library, all the Korean and Chinese kids were busy studying, some were on the floor, with their mothers hovering around.
So what to do with the people who aren’t capable of doing that? Let them sit in class being humiliated every day until they drop out?
Not necessarily true.
I got D’s in 10th grade Geometry.
But I was a natural born computer programmer, which I’ve always considered to have something to do with logic.
Frankly, if someone has an IQ over 80, they can learn the skill. They may need parents who care and teachers who know how to teach, but they can learn. I’ve taught algebra and geometry in inner city public high schools. There was nothing wrong with most of those kid’s minds; they were failing because they hadn’t been taught basic arithmetic. They had realized that teachers had no power over them to make them learn and their parents (assuming they even had two out of jail) didn’t care whether they learned anything or not. Even the best teachers cannot make someone learn if that someone is willing to accept the consequences of ignorance. And my fellow teachers were as far from “the best” as it was possible to be. The teacher’s union rep didn’t even have a regular teacher’s license and was technically a long-term substitute. He moonlighted 40 hours a week at the IRS and so never assigned any work that would require after-hours grading.
Yes, not everyone is capable of calculus, but everyone who graduates high school should understand enough algebra to calculate a mortgage payment. Yes, not everyone is capable of writing a dissertation, but my law school shouldn’t have to offer a class on subject/verb agreement.
Failure rates, test scores and dropout rates would suggest otherwise. I know there are incompetent teachers, but I don’t think that’s the norm. I taught high school in four different districts and the overwhelming majority of teachers I knew were conscientious and capable. And almost all of them lamented the lack of learning among a large percentage of their students.
I get Johnny One-Note on these things but 90% of is still cultural.
But the other half is IQ.
Before someone calls me out on my math in the last comment:
I don’t disagree that kids aren’t learning. I just disagree that it’s a problem with their grey matter. It’s a culture that says that learning isn’t important, or that if it is important, it’s 100% the teacher’s job. It’s telling every kid how smart they are when it’s been proven that kids actually succeed better when they’re praised for their diligence. It’s curricula designed for the teacher to have fun teaching it, or to cater to some hair-brained scheme by some Ed.D. idiot who went straight from going to grad school to teaching grad school without ever having a class of students who weren’t mortgaging their lives away to hear her nonsense. It’s teachers who brag about not knowing any math beyond what they use to complete their gradebook.
The best teacher — math or otherwise — I ever had was my father, because his pedagogical technique was to imitate how he was taught in boot camp. Forget trying to derive concepts from experimentation or group work or any of that nonsense — the Navy doesn’t have time for that. Instead, they use the proven techniques of systematic learning through lectures and internalization drill. I went from failing math in middle school to taking calculus my senior year.