Post by Melissa W. on May 24, 2012 10:00:29 GMT -5
The Unteachables: A Generation that Cannot Learn Posted By Janice Fiamengo On May 20, 2012 @ 12:00 am In Uncategorized | 392 Comments
“The honeymoon is over.” Instructors who award low grades in humanities disciplines will likely be familiar with a phenomenon that occurs after the first essays are returned to students: former smiles vanish, hands once jubilantly raised to answer questions are now resentfully folded across chests, offended pride and sulkiness replace the careless cheer of former days. Too often, the smiles are gone for good because the customary “B+” or “A” grades have been withheld, and many students cannot forgive the insult.
The matter doesn’t always end there. Some students are prepared for a fight, writing emails of entreaty or threat, or besieging the instructor in his office to make clear that the grade is unacceptable. Every instructor who has been so besieged knows the legion of excuses and expressions of indignation offered, the certainty that such work was always judged acceptable in the past, the implication that a few small slip-ups, a wrong word or two, have been blown out of proportion. When one points out grievous inadequacies — factual errors, self-contradiction, illogical argument, and howlers of nonsensical phrasing — the student shrugs it off: yes, yes, a few mistakes, the consequences of too much coffee, my roommate’s poor typing, another assignment due the same day; but you could still see what I meant, couldn’t you, and the general idea was good, wasn’t it? “I’m better at the big ideas,” students have sometimes boasted to me. “On the details, well … ”.
Meetings about bad grades are uncomfortable not merely because it is unpleasant to wound feelings unaccustomed to the sting. Too often, such meetings are exercises in futility. I have spent hours explaining an essay’s grammatical, stylistic, and logical weaknesses in the wearying certainty that the student was unable, both intellectually and emotionally, to comprehend what I was saying or to act on my advice. It is rare for such students to be genuinely desirous and capable of learning how to improve. Most of them simply hope that I will come around. Their belief that nothing requires improvement except the grade is one of the biggest obstacles that teachers face in the modern university. And that is perhaps the real tragedy of our education system: not only that so many students enter university lacking the basic skills and knowledge to succeed in their courses — terrible in itself — but also that they often arrive essentially unteachable, lacking the personal qualities necessary to respond to criticism.
The unteachable student has been told all her life that she is excellent: gifted, creative, insightful, thoughtful, able to succeed at whatever she tries, full of potential and innate ability. Pedagogical wisdom since at least the time of John Dewey — and in some form all the way back to William Wordsworth’s divinely anointed child “trailing clouds of glory” — has stressed the development of self-esteem and a sense of achievement. Education, as Dewey made clear in such works as The Child and the Curriculum [1] (1902), was not about transferring a cultural inheritance from one generation to the next; it was about students’ self-realization. It involved liberating pupils from that stuffy, often stifling, inheritance into free and unforced learning aided by sympathy and encouragement. The teacher was not so much to teach or judge as to elicit a response, leading the student to discover for herself what she, in a sense, already knew. In the past twenty years, the well-documented phenomenon of grade inflation in humanities subjects — the awarding of high “Bs” and “As” to the vast majority of students — has increased the conviction that everyone is first-rate.
This pedagogy of self-esteem developed in response to the excesses of rote learning and harsh discipline that were thought to characterize earlier eras. In Charles Dickens’ Hard Times [2], Mr. Gradgrind, the teacher who ridicules a terrified Sissy Jupe for her inability to define a horse (“Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth … ”), was seen to epitomize a soulless pedagogical regime that deadened creativity and satisfaction. Dickens and his readers believed such teaching to be a form of mental and emotional abuse, and the need to protect students from the stigma of failure became an article of faith amongst progressive educators. For them, the stultifying apparatus of the past had to be entirely replaced. Memorization itself, the foundation of traditional teaching, came to be seen as an enemy of creative thought: pejorative similes for memory work such as “rote learning” and “fact-grinding” suggest the classroom equivalent of a military drill, harsh and unaccommodating. The progressive approach, in contrast, emphasizes variety, pleasure, and student interest and self-motivation above all.
It sounds good. The problem, as traditionalists have argued (but without much success), is that the utopian approach hasn’t worked as intended. Rather than forming cheerful, self-directed learners, the pedagogy of self-esteem has often created disaffected, passive pupils, bored precisely because they were never forced to learn. As Hilda Neatby commented in 1953, the students she was encountering at university were “distinctly blasé” about their coursework. A professor of history, Neatby was driven to investigate progressive education after noting how ill-equipped her students were for the high-level thinking required of them; her So Little For the Mind [3] remains well-worth reading. In her assessment:
The bored “graduates” of elementary and high schools seem, in progressive language, to be “incompletely socialized.” Ignorant even of things that they might be expected to know, they do not care to learn. They lack an object in life, they are unaware of the joy of achievement. They have been allowed to assume that happiness is a goal, rather than a by-product.
The emphasis on feeling good, as Neatby argued, prevents rather than encourages the real satisfactions of learning.
Of course, the progressive approach has advantages, not the least of which is that it enables university administrators to boast of the ever-greater numbers of students taking degrees at their institutions. Previously disadvantaged groups have gained access to higher education as never before, and more and more students are being provided with the much-touted credentials believed to guarantee success in the workforce. Thus our universities participate in a happy make-believe. Students get their degrees. Parents are reassured that their money has been well-spent. And compliant professors are, if not exactly satisfied — it corrodes the soul to give unearned grades — at least relieved not to encounter student complaints.
More than a few students know that something fishy is going on. The intelligent ones see their indifferent, mediocre, or inept counterparts receiving grades similar to their own, and the realization offends their sense of justice. Moreover, there is little satisfaction in consciously playing the system. The smart student with his easy “A” knows that he has not been challenged to develop his intellect. I remember once walking in the hallway behind a student who had just picked up her final term essay; as she joined her friends, she flipped to the back of the paper without reading any of the instructor’s comments. “An A,” she said jubilantly, but with a strong undertone of derision. “And I didn’t even read the book!” As the paper thudded into the trash basket, her friends joined in the disdainful laughter.
In contrast, the weak student who believes in his high grades has also had a disservice done him. He has been misled about his abilities, falsely persuaded that career paths and goals are open that may be out of reach. Eventually, the fraud will be revealed: by an employer who finds him inadequate, by his own dawning recognition that he cannot achieve what he hoped. The reckoning will likely be bitter; evidence exists that the pedagogy of false esteem can even cause psychological harm. When students who have always been praised must confront the reality of their low achievement, their tendency is, as researchers James Coté and Anton Allahar [4] report, not to confront the problem directly but to hit back at its perceived source — the teacher who has given them the bad news, the employer who does not renew a contract. Far more than their adequate peers when faced with difficulties, these students experience a range of negative reactions, including anger, anxiety, and depression.
Even more seriously, such students have not only been misled but fundamentally malformed. They have never learned to listen to criticism, to recover from disappointment, or to slog through difficulties with no guarantee of success except commitment. The person who is never challenged is also never refined, never learns to cope with the setbacks that come on the way to high endeavor. And it is not only in the academic realm, of course, that they may be hampered: a full life outside of university also requires the ability to confront one’s weaknesses and recover from defeat. Despite the admittedly important emphasis on character formation in our schools — on tolerance, anti-racism, refusal of bullying, and so on — it seems that we have failed to show students what real achievement looks like and what it will require of them.
There's a chapter in Nurture Shock that talks about this concept. Since reading it, DH and I have been much more cognizant about only rewarding DDs "accurately" for their accomplishments (not going over the top to make them feel better), and praising the accomplishment itself rather than an inherent trait like "You're so smart".
There's a chapter in Nurture Shock that talks about this concept. Since reading it, DH and I have been much more cognizant about only rewarding DDs "accurately" for their accomplishments (not going over the top to make them feel better), and praising the accomplishment itself rather than an inherent trait like "You're so smart".
We are the same way. Instead of saying you are smart, we praise hard work and results.
I will say things like "I like listening to you play cello" vs you play so well because honestly that's a lie...
Post by Melissa W. on May 24, 2012 10:30:11 GMT -5
I read Nuture Shock after PCE recommended it. It made me hyper aware of the compliments that I give the girls. I definitely changed my approach to it and try to be specific.
Post by heightsyankee on May 24, 2012 10:32:56 GMT -5
Not to sound like a broken record, but this is one of the fundamentals of Montessori education, too. When you go to my kids' schools, you hear "I like how you did that" or "I can tell you're working hard on that." We have started to model this at home, as well. Sure, a "you're so smart" still creeps out every once in a while, but we love our kids. We just can't help it.
There's a chapter in Nurture Shock that talks about this concept. Since reading it, DH and I have been much more cognizant about only rewarding DDs "accurately" for their accomplishments (not going over the top to make them feel better), and praising the accomplishment itself rather than an inherent trait like "You're so smart".
We're doing this, too. Not complimenting her on things she can't control (like how smart she is). We try to be more specific in our compliments, too. "I like that color of red you used, and I can see you were really trying to stay in the lines." Laugh if you want, but all the "Good job, you're so smart" shit clearly hasn't worked.
My grandmother always said that she didn't believe in telling people they were smart. She feared that it would make a person lazy. "Oh, I'm smart! I don't need to study!" Or maybe something along the lines of, "What's the point? I'm not smart. Why work hard? I'll never be as smart as Jane." Whenever I did well in school she would say, "Your dad told me you made the Headmaster's List! That's so wonderful! I know you worked so hard for that. Isn't it a great feeling when all your hard work pays off?"
Her belief was that most people were intelligent enough to do well if they worked hard enough. She was willing to concede that some people might need to work harder than others, but in the end it was just a matter of accepting the amount of work you needed to put into a given task.
Oh, and this article describes my little sister perfectly. It's honestly eerie. I felt awful for her professors. She actually made my parents go with her to the dean of a department to complain about a grade that a professor had given her. Twice. With two different deans. From the moment she was born my mom was totally different with her and praised her every move. I can remember when she was a baby and she started pushing up to lift her head when she was on her stomach. My mom would clap her hands and enthusiastically cry, "Yea, for Jane Doe Smith! Yea, for Jane Doe Smith!" I asked her why she was doing that and she said, "So she can get accustomed to hearing people cheer her name." Totally serious. I'm not making that up at all. Though I did obviously change my sister's name for privacy reasons.
So many articles bemoaning the entitled nature of today's youth...and never once do I see an awareness or acknowledgment that these kids were all raised by their baby boomer parents to be this way. I'd like to see an article written by a boomer that says "my child is kinda an entitled twat...it's actually all my indulgent parenting fault."
So many articles bemoaning the entitled nature of today's youth...and never once do I see an awareness or acknowledgment that these kids were all raised by their baby boomer parents to be this way. I'd like to see an article written by a boomer that says "my child is kinda an entitled twat...it's actually all my indulgent parenting fault."
The biggest criticism I get on my teaching evaluations is that I am too harsh of a grader. I'm actually about to become even harder in the fall. I've decided that after the 2nd error, I'm just going to stop grading and give the assignment a 0.
However, I also get more comments on my evaluations that say things like "I had to work so hard in this class but I learned so much from it."
I tell them the first day of class my expectations. They are high, but not unreasonable, and I don't back down from them. End of story. I don't tolerate bullshit excuses. When I get them, I call the student out on it. I have laughed in a student's face before.
This past semester, I had one student email me after failing a major assignment and tell me she was suicidal over her grade, and it wasn't fair, and she worked so hard. Not only did I email her back and explain why I would not back down from the grade she earned, but I also forwarded her email to counseling services. She later said "Why did you send me to counseling for that?" Um, you said you were suicidal. If you're just being dramatic, choose a different word.
In two years I've earned the reputation of hard but fair. Some kids are going to fight me on this every step of the way, and I realize this. I've had parents call me (bless FERPA) and demand I do something about their preshuses grades. I had a student stomp her foot at me.
I don't give a flying shit how entitled they think they are. Do I think they can't learn? No. They can. I just think there's a specific way of handling them to get them to learn. Not all of them will accept that, and some will hate you for it. But the ones that do are going to learn, do well, and get a tremendous amount out of the class.
The biggest criticism I get on my teaching evaluations is that I am too harsh of a grader. I'm actually about to become even harder in the fall. I've decided that after the 2nd error, I'm just going to stop grading and give the assignment a 0.
However, I also get more comments on my evaluations that say things like "I had to work so hard in this class but I learned so much from it."
I tell them the first day of class my expectations. They are high, but not unreasonable, and I don't back down from them. End of story. I don't tolerate bullshit excuses. When I get them, I call the student out on it. I have laughed in a student's face before.
This past semester, I had one student email me after failing a major assignment and tell me she was suicidal over her grade, and it wasn't fair, and she worked so hard. Not only did I email her back and explain why I would not back down from the grade she earned, but I also forwarded her email to counseling services. She later said "Why did you send me to counseling for that?" Um, you said you were suicidal. If you're just being dramatic, choose a different word.
In two years I've earned the reputation of hard but fair. Some kids are going to fight me on this every step of the way, and I realize this. I've had parents call me (bless FERPA) and demand I do something about their preshuses grades. I had a student stomp her foot at me.
I don't give a flying shit how entitled they think they are. Do I think they can't learn? No. They can. I just think there's a specific way of handling them to get them to learn. Not all of them will accept that, and some will hate you for it. But the ones that do are going to learn, do well, and get a tremendous amount out of the class.
My absolute favorite teachers were also my hardest.
So many articles bemoaning the entitled nature of today's youth...and never once do I see an awareness or acknowledgment that these kids were all raised by their baby boomer parents to be this way. I'd like to see an article written by a boomer that says "my child is kinda an entitled twat...it's actually all my indulgent parenting fault."
That would be refreshing wouldn't it?
Damn, yes. The thing is, at least from articles I've read and what I've seen, the boomer parents never actually view the kid as entitled. It just goes on and on, right through college, right through working, that the parent continues to enable their perfect preshus, and hell on the professor or even hiring manager who thinks otherwise.
Example: my SIL got kicked out of a teaching internship program one summer after college for showing up one morning stinking of booze. Having been raised by a pretty strict mother, I had to freaking scrape my jaw off the floor listening to her parents rail on about how unfair the school was being, and never once did they mention that *she* fucked up.
My absolute favorite teachers were also my hardest.
You probably rock.
You teach at college, right? What do you teach?
I do teach college. I'm primarily public relations for the undergrads, so I am obnoxiously hard on them for style, spelling and grammar, because PR is such a writing intensive field. I refuse to let them go out into the world making simple spelling and style mistakes.
I teach mass comm theory/research methods/sports communication for the graduate students.
My absolute favorite teachers were also my hardest.
You probably rock.
You teach at college, right? What do you teach?
I do teach college. I'm primarily public relations for the undergrads, so I am obnoxiously hard on them for style, spelling and grammar, because PR is such a writing intensive field. I refuse to let them go out into the world making simple spelling and style mistakes.
I teach mass comm theory/research methods/sports communication for the graduate students.
Sounds good to me. The best english teacher I ever had would take off 50 points from a paper (so....automatic F) for every run-on or sentence fragment. Two non-sentences = 0 score.
People thought it was insane, but she figured if you couldn't identify a sentence by 11th grade you didn't deserve to pass.
it worked. People learned to actually proof their work.
it worked. People learned to actually proof their work.
I think that's what a lot of it boils down to - simple laziness and lack of proofreading. I mean, if you can't look over your work and tell that "Implanon" is not the same as "Implementation" or that you have misspelled "Washington, DC" - ESPECIALLY when the damn red line is there telling you it's wrong, then you deserve to fail.
Which is why I think I'm going to go to the "I'm going to stop at your 2nd error, and just give you a 0" rule next semester. That will be so awesome. ;D
it worked. People learned to actually proof their work.
I think that's what a lot of it boils down to - simple laziness and lack of proofreading. I mean, if you can't look over your work and tell that "Implanon" is not the same as "Implementation" or that you have misspelled "Washington, DC" - ESPECIALLY when the damn red line is there telling you it's wrong, then you deserve to fail.
Which is why I think I'm going to go to the "I'm going to stop at your 2nd error, and just give you a 0" rule next semester. That will be so awesome. ;D
It'll save you TONS of time for the first few assignments at least!
The biggest criticism I get on my teaching evaluations is that I am too harsh of a grader. I'm actually about to become even harder in the fall. I've decided that after the 2nd error, I'm just going to stop grading and give the assignment a 0.
However, I also get more comments on my evaluations that say things like "I had to work so hard in this class but I learned so much from it."
I tell them the first day of class my expectations. They are high, but not unreasonable, and I don't back down from them. End of story. I don't tolerate bullshit excuses. When I get them, I call the student out on it. I have laughed in a student's face before.
This past semester, I had one student email me after failing a major assignment and tell me she was suicidal over her grade, and it wasn't fair, and she worked so hard. Not only did I email her back and explain why I would not back down from the grade she earned, but I also forwarded her email to counseling services. She later said "Why did you send me to counseling for that?" Um, you said you were suicidal. If you're just being dramatic, choose a different word.
In two years I've earned the reputation of hard but fair. Some kids are going to fight me on this every step of the way, and I realize this. I've had parents call me (bless FERPA) and demand I do something about their preshuses grades. I had a student stomp her foot at me.
I don't give a flying shit how entitled they think they are. Do I think they can't learn? No. They can. I just think there's a specific way of handling them to get them to learn. Not all of them will accept that, and some will hate you for it. But the ones that do are going to learn, do well, and get a tremendous amount out of the class.
One of the college classes I worked the hardest in was also one of my best and most memorable classes. I got a B+ and was happy as a clam. The professor started you off at a B- and said if you did everything he asked, it would stay there. There were specific things you had to achieve to raise it, too. Out of 40+ students, only 2 got and A-, so like I said, I was stoked about my grade. I knew I had earned it.
FWIW, it was a class called "ethical issues in mass communication."
There's a chapter in Nurture Shock that talks about this concept. Since reading it, DH and I have been much more cognizant about only rewarding DDs "accurately" for their accomplishments (not going over the top to make them feel better), and praising the accomplishment itself rather than an inherent trait like "You're so smart".
We're doing this, too. Not complimenting her on things she can't control (like how smart she is). We try to be more specific in our compliments, too. "I like that color of red you used, and I can see you were really trying to stay in the lines." Laugh if you want, but all the "Good job, you're so smart" shit clearly hasn't worked.
I really like this idea.
I think that part of why moving from school to work has been difficult for me is because I was largely a rockstar in school. Things were easy for me, and I was praised a lot. In the real world? LOLsies, not so much. And I'm realizing that a lot of my self-esteem was built on that. I don't think I fell into the category of the unteachable - heck, I thought college was easier than high school. But I do think that my mom's good intentions may have had some unfortunate results.
angryharpy, I have heard nearly every single one of my 15+ nieces and nephews in the 26 and under age range express that same sentiment. All their lives they were told how special and perfect they were so as not to stifle their development or confidence or whatever. The real world, where one just doesn't get that kind of constant positive reinforcement, was an extremely harsh awakening. It's like they appreciate the upbringing they had, but also feel misled and a bit betrayed by how easy they were led to believe it was all going to be.
This boggles my mind. It has actually never occured to me to contest a grade or contest a grade for my kids. If I see a shitty grade, my first thought it what do I/they need to learn or work on to get a better grade next time?
It throws me that other parents don't think this way.
Although, I do think it's important to tell your kids they are smart. However, it should be in context. For instance, I have to tell pinky she's smart. This kid looks at her brother's grades and thinks this makes her an idiot by contrast. I have to say, Pinky, you are a smart girl, you can do this or she feels stuck and she won't even try.
But you have to say more to your kid than you're smart or you're pretty and it certainly can't be the overall lesson.
Post by sporklemotion on May 24, 2012 18:16:46 GMT -5
Great article! I teach HS English and I face student resentment all of the time. The most common response I hear from students when I point out something vague or illogical is, "I meant to say..." followed by an explanation of what the paper should have said, but didn't. One student this year actually said that I didn't read his paper correctly-- I should have seen what he meant, even though it was not clearly phrased or coherent.
I think part of the problem is that we have students submit several drafts of their papers before they get a final grade. When they get to college, they're not used to thinking of the initial evaluation as final because they've been allowed to rewrite.
I insist that they tell me what sort of feedback they'd like and try to limit myself to that, because otherwise I'd be proofreading their papers for them (which will make them even less prepared for college). I've had students get upset with me because I didn't point out usage errors after they'd asked me for help with ideas.
I've had several parents tell me (and my colleagues) that we are destroying their children's "love" of writing by giving them constructive criticism or a low grade.
This boggles my mind. It has actually never occured to me to contest a grade or contest a grade for my kids. If I see a shitty grade, my first thought it what do I/they need to learn or work on to get a better grade next time?
It throws me that other parents don't think this way.
I had a parent call me my first semester teaching and tell me I needed to make special accommodations and arrangements in my syllabus for her child who was doing an internship in Atlanta that semester and commuting in only for my class.
All that was going through my head was Wayne's World. "A sphincter says what???"
So kids should take constructive criticism, but teachers don't have to. Wonder where the kids are learning their habits?
Please enlighten me. What exactly is constructive about a parent calling the professor of their 22 year old child and telling - not asking, telling - the professor that they will need to make special accommodations for a 22 year old that has chosen to intern in a different city?
Please. I'm all ears as to what constructive criticism I missed.
So kids should take constructive criticism, but teachers don't have to. Wonder where the kids are learning their habits?
Please enlighten me. What exactly is constructive about a parent calling the professor of their 22 year old child and telling - not asking, telling - the professor that they will need to make special accommodations for a 22 year old that has chosen to intern in a different city?
Please. I'm all ears as to what constructive criticism I missed.
In my opinion, you give constructive criticism to teachers away from the confines of your grades.
For instance, I wrote pete's teacher a rather polite but pointed letter of criticism when she made some shitty ass assumptions about my kid's ethnic background and how it related to his life. She pretty much called him out in front of his classroom. I felt she was in the wrong and I told her to.
However, at no time did I think it was appropriate for me to request a grade change. I might ask how she is grading them and what they can do to get a better grade in the future. I might even criticize the way she handles her classroom but I will not ask for a grade change.
Still waiting on that explanation on how I missed the constructive criticism that was apparently offered to me.
HAB, are you serious about the assumption on Pete's ethnic background? That is so inappropriate. There is no scenario I can even imagine where that could be considered appropriate. Damn.