I have this conversation with students from time to time. From my perspective as an AP Economics teacher, students have access to more infomation AND they are expected to synthsize far more information than my generation (I am 49 yrs old) every was required to. I, and daresay, my peers, never took a class in High School as difficult as AP Econ (I will let other AP teachers defend their disciplines). This dovetails with what students seem to wholeheartedly agee on: "Kids Today" are less committed to doing things that they simply dont feel like doing or feel are necessary. I like this charitable description because many social critics would say students today are lazy, shiftless, unmotivated, have a sense of entitlement, etc. I, however, do not go THAT far. I believe some of this can be put on the historic notion, starting after the advent of the industrial revolution, parents wanted their children to have it easier than they had it. All the posturing by social critics for the past 100 years as to what this might wrought, well, this is what it has wrought. Reading the cited article for me is like looking "Back to the Future". She talks about how the Chinese, Brazilian, Indian, Thai, students are hardworkers and taskmasters. Seems this an apt description of what the educational elite in the US, post-industrial revolution to the 1960's, looked like. Or is that easy for her to say because the students from those mentioned countries are selected from an elite pool of students. In other words, she has the privilidge of seeing only the best and brightest and not the "average student" from those countries.
Bottom line for me: Students (from top to bottom) are technically brighter and have more potential than previous generations BUT are not as quite as ambitious and hardworking (you might be the exception, I am looking at the rule)...Am I right, wrong, or I have no clue as to what I am talking about?
I think once students figure out what they really want to do with their lives, they start focusing and devoting their efforts and time. For many students, it just takes a while to find their passion.
ReplyDeleteUsually, foreign students seem to be more committed and devoted because it is their "privilege" to study abroad in U.S. They often were selected from the top class or they just had better-off parents who could afford that. These foreign kids' passion IS studying in America.
ReplyDeleteI really think you can't generalize about these things. It's all on a case by case basis. There will always be those who are driven and motivated and those that aren't - it's just the culture has changed so that those who otherwise would have been motivated by some parental or familial pressure are not as often so pressured. Parents are more worried about their kids feeling like their life is THEIR life and not imposed upon them, which gives way to those who ARE driven to do something doing more, and those not driven don't do things they otherwise might have achieved.
ReplyDelete-Nick Mercer