It would appear from the training I received in my instruction on how to become a professional educator the primary focus today is how to build a students’ self esteem. We have become so concerned with the student winning we have forgotten that at some point we have to teach the student how to lose. Is it possible for both teams to win in a game? If it were would there be any point to playing the game?
Statistics show that regardless of effort any group of individuals working toward a measurable goal will fall out along a bell shaped curve. So many will earn A's and so many will earn F's. The operative word here is the students will “earn” a grade; the teacher does not give them one. If all students in a group regardless of effort earn an A what would be the point in the lesson? Did the students really learn anything? Yes they learned that regardless of the effort expended they will win. With this in mind what would be the point in putting out any effort?
If the student is not taught the value of effort how will that student learn anything or improve on any but the most basic of results? After all few great artists, inventors or writers produced great works without practice and requisite failures. We all learn from failure and one of the first things that we must all learn is that failure is possible. When we can accept the possibility of failure we can also accept the concept of improvement. No great work comes about without the proper foundation.
Statistics show that regardless of effort any group of individuals working toward a measurable goal will fall out along a bell shaped curve. So many will earn A's and so many will earn F's. The operative word here is the students will “earn” a grade; the teacher does not give them one. If all students in a group regardless of effort earn an A what would be the point in the lesson? Did the students really learn anything? Yes they learned that regardless of the effort expended they will win. With this in mind what would be the point in putting out any effort?
If the student is not taught the value of effort how will that student learn anything or improve on any but the most basic of results? After all few great artists, inventors or writers produced great works without practice and requisite failures. We all learn from failure and one of the first things that we must all learn is that failure is possible. When we can accept the possibility of failure we can also accept the concept of improvement. No great work comes about without the proper foundation.
An element of that foundation is an appreciation for well done hard work. In today’s society though we have become fixated on making sure that all work is “safe” and that all workers are “secure”. A product of that drive has been to push young workers out of the entry level market. As a boy growing up on a farm in the 50’s and 60’s I learned from my father how to do hard work well. With that lesson I could hire myself out to neighbors when he did not need me on our farm. I was in competition with all of my friends so it was incumbent upon me to do a good honest days work.
Today though federal regulations have made it all but impossible for kids to learn to work and be proud of the accomplishment of that work. Because of that we now hear about the invasion of workers from the south willing to do work that Americans will not do, but I believe its not that they are unwilling to do the work, they are forbidden to do the work. We have allowed our government to intrude into the entry level training grounds that used to teach us how to work.
Today though federal regulations have made it all but impossible for kids to learn to work and be proud of the accomplishment of that work. Because of that we now hear about the invasion of workers from the south willing to do work that Americans will not do, but I believe its not that they are unwilling to do the work, they are forbidden to do the work. We have allowed our government to intrude into the entry level training grounds that used to teach us how to work.
A job well done provides self esteem. The realization of truly winning provides self esteem. Learning that we don’t always win provides self esteem. Practicing at anything till we become good and striving toward excellence is its own reward. Like many worthwhile things in life, self esteem cannot be given, it must be earned.
2 comments:
"Self-esteem" based on winning is not self-esteem at all, but a debilitating compromise with being better than the loser. The fact that education is based on earning ones self-esteem by efforts to conform to teachers' outlook, get the right answers, keeps true self-esteem secondary to a diploma on the wall.
It is clear that you have never been in a real classroom. But rather you have been in the classrooms spawned by the drive of Liberalism to create all people in one image, no creative thought, no thinking outside the box and most decidedly no individual thought.
Post a Comment