CandidProf is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at a state university. He’ll be sharing his thoughts and experience teaching today’s students anonymously every Thursday— anonymously because that’s the only way he can write really candid posts. Read the first half of this post here and all of his posts here.
Now, these are kids that don’t want to go to school in the first place. Giving a lecture about school is boring to them. It is not the way to reach out to them. Instead of a Powerpoint presentation, I have some demonstrations. I have a table full of equipment. I show them several things, and then ask them questions about what they think will happen. I force feedback. They are not just going to sit passively.
Then I say that the mathematics shows that certain things will happen. Lo and behold, what happens is what the math says will happen! I pick some of the more showy demonstrations—things that I remember from decades ago, and things that my students still find exciting. Then I show a couple of 30 second videos, such as the famous Tocoma Narrows bridge collapse (after showing a demonstration of a similar phenomenon). I explain how each phenomenon relates to everyday life.
The kids wake up. I get started only three minutes before they are supposed to leave. The secretary asks the person in charge if I need to stop since it is time for them to go. He decides that the bus can wait. This is important. Finally, someone is engaging the kids.
When I am done I caution the kids that this is all fun and it was what got me interested in the field. But that if they want to study science and engineering they need to STUDY in high school. They need to take the tough science and math classes even if they don’t want to. They won’t make it in college if they are not ready to come here.
I don’t think anyone else told them that. But it is wrong to lead them on to make them think that all they need to do is enroll in college to get a college degree. Too many slackers in high school come to us with the same mind set. They don’t make it. And, I think that too many people let them think that they can get away with it.
Where I live, as well as in other states, there is a move to get more students to go to college, particularly the “at risk” students. They try to get more of the students who had no plans on college to go to college. BUT there is not much plan on what to do with them once they get here. The state is moving towards “performance based funding.” But performance is not defined as teaching. Performance is not defined by how well students are prepared for the workforce. Performance is defined by the number of students coming to college from under represented demographics. Performance is defined by how many students complete classes and get degrees. Performance is not defined by the quality of those degrees.
This tends to put us in a bind. They want more at risk students, most of whom are not prepared to go to college, to be accepted. And they want those students to graduate. So, come colleges drop standards. They water down courses. They put pressure on faculty to pass students no matter how poorly they perform.
Already, the beginnings of this movement have had their effects. Degrees are weakening. And many American educated students are having difficulties competing in graduate school with foreign educated students. At my institution, academic standards are still being held high. But, if our funding is eventually tied to how many students finish, those standards will have to drop. If standards drop all over the country, then what will a college degree mean?
We’ve seen this before. The states took a look at pre-college education, and they saw that not enough students were completing high school. Too many students failed classes. They began tying teacher pay to the number of students who passed. So students began passing even if they had not learned. Any teacher that added work to students to make them learn more was disciplined.
In the city where I live, the local suburban school district had a case of a mathematics teacher who was noted for being far tougher than other teachers. The parents of the students in this teacher’s class complained that their kids were working too hard. The teacher gave far too much homework. Too many of her students did not pass. Eventually she was fired.
Then word then came out that her students scored FAR higher on the state assessment tests and the SAT than other students in the district. But that did not matter. Learning and scores on those tests are not performance measures.
Sometimes, I get very discouraged at the direction that education is heading. But it is important to keep going.
Someone needs to hold to standards, and that is what an effective leader does. You hold the standards even if it is unpopular.
Is this is what “no child left behind” means?
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Image credit: bobt54 CC license
Finally, I just received an email (thanks Sunie!) with this picture and comments on the spelling of “bokay.” Many florists use this spelling in their marketing, but one of the comments made me cringe, “I thought is was spelled bowkay” and the writer seemed serious.
