Saturday, January 11, 2014

Common Corpse - No Childhood Left

Gear-Up Peace Homework Holder (Photo credits: PB Teen)

Fukitol .. When Life Just Blows ... Hackers steal $680,000 from church fund for homeless (July 01, 2011) ...item 2.. Atlanta Cheating Scandal Suspects Surrender (04/02/13 10:06 PM ET EDT) ... (Photo credit: marsmet522)

As found on Vagabond Scholar

A Blog About School

It would be one thing if a teacher asked parents if they were interested in signing their kids’ homework all the time. I would still decline the invitation, but at least my kids wouldn’t get a misimpression of how to ask politely for someone’s assistance. Instead, the typical approach is simply to tell the kids they must get the signatures, or to tell the parents they must provide them. (For example, “You will sign the log sheet to show the reading has been completed.”) Isn’t it rude to assume that someone will not only agree with your intervention, but actively participate in it, and that you don’t even need to ask nicely?

The practice sends bad—and factually inaccurate—messages about authority. It’s hard to think of a more basic principle of justice than the principle that the government cannot punish you for someone else’s acts. If anyone wants to explain to me how it would be constitutional for a public school to penalize a child for a parent’s refusal to sign homework, I’d like to hear it. Yet, when my wife has been away and I’ve told my kids that I won’t sign the homework, they have always been anxious about getting punished. One thing the school has taught them well: No one should ever disobey the authority figure.

Quote for the week

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them . . . .

—Frederick Douglass

Quote of the Week Archive

An archive of quotations on education.

Post inspired by above

Teacher in a Strange Land

( Kudos to Robert Heinlein. The book included descriptions which might be considered as a rejection of societal expectations because the protagonist...didn't have any ; he lacked the programming. From Wikipedia : In 1968, Tim Zell (now Oberon Zell-Ravenheart) and others formed a neo-pagan religious organization called the Church of All Worlds, modeled after the religion founded by the primary characters in the novel.[ Precursor : Scientology is a body of beliefs and related practices created by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986), beginning in 1952 as a successor to his earlier self-help system, Dianetics.^[6] Hubbard characterized Scientology as a religion, and in 1953 incorporated the Church of Scientology in Camden, New Jersey.[ And you thought Universals were imaginary. )

Taking Responsibility: Who Signs Off on Learning?

In three decades of classroom teaching, I was a participant in hundreds of parent meetings convened because there were concerns about a student's academic performance. These meetings invariably ended by creating an action plan, with everyone present making promises about What Will Happen Next.

More often than not, parents and teachers agreed to additional duties: Daily planner checks at home. Weekly written progress reports from school listing current grades, missing assignments and "citizenship." Parent signatures on all completed homework. Often this campaign began with a supervised locker and backpack clean-out, the so-called "fresh start."
The only person not wholeheartedly embracing all this taking of responsibility for learning? The student.

Liebig nails the reasons why excess hovering--and endless parent confirmation signatures--can turn out to be counterproductive:

I want my kids' school work to be their business. I want them to get experience with being independent and taking care of their own affairs. I think that kind of autonomy is a key ingredient in building a sense of agency and competence.

[Signing] presumes them to be slackers* until they prove themselves otherwise, over and over again. It encourages them to see themselves as doing the work to satisfy others, rather than to make it their own. It elevates rule-compliance over substance.

( There is another facet to this : living down to others' expectations is a form of rebellion. Placing that option in front of a teen is like asking water to run downhill. Heck, that's unnecessarily derogatory to teens ! )

Something important is lost, however, when kids assume that mom will always play backstop to any academic negligence. It's the reason why students now expect to get good grades simply for completing and turning in mediocre work in college.

A friend who has a son this age appreciates the tight control she currently exercises over her son's schoolwork, checking daily and signing off, keeping tabs on everything. She reminds me about research on the impulsive, risk-seeking teenaged brain.

Nancy Flanagan

11:16 AM on March 7, 2013

One day after the blog was posted, I have already heard from two researchers confirming that kids who are faced with genuine responsibility for their own learning actually learn more.

In many ways, this is hardest on parents who fear that letting their children flounder will, somehow, result in some version of spoiling their "permanent record." Elevating the record over the actual personal growth...

Roseanne Eckert

11:40 AM on March 7, 2013

My experience is that schools and parents DEMAND that parents teach, hover, review, do, and take responsibility for homework. Want to solve the problem? Don't send us homework! And if you do, make sure that it is developmentally appropriate so that my child does not require my assistance (or my laptop) to complete it! Children do not have fully developed frontal lobes so if three different teachers assign long term projects to a normal eleven year old, the child will fail without parental assistance in planning and organization. Most adults have a hard time juggling multiple projects. One project at a time, with instructions, is something that a preteen can manage. Just don't get me involved, please.

MRM

.....

This post addressed the "helicopter parent"; but, ironically, my problem from a parent's perspective is the school! Students are told exactly where, when, and how much they have to be, do for homework, study, and so on. (Plus, what Roseanne Eckert said.) Even into the high school, they treat them like kindergartners. Students have to have a hall pass to go to the library after lunch for cryin' out loud. In high school! (Who is going to give them a hall pass in college?)

So much of what they do is test prep. Labs in science are frequently "demonstration" labs. My husband and I talk all the time about how our kids can't think or do anything practical for themselves. He relates things from his teenage years like riding his bike 15 miles away to go water-skiing or hooking up a single-line phone to a car battery so he and his friend down the street could have a direct line (when he was 12!). Then we look at our kids and shake our heads because they are so helpless; and I blame the school (and what it has become thanks to the "rephorm" movement...)

....

Somehow there has to be a balance. I don't think you just hand out tasks to children without teaching them the specific skills to deal with them. Elementary T's approach (above) demonstrated some wonderful teachable moments and provided a great model. (But p.s. she didn't just say to the kid with the sandwich problem, "Tough luck. Figure it out."...)