Text extracted via OCR from the original document. May contain errors from the scanning process.
278 Teaching Minds
hoops they have to go through. They do what they are told. Similarly,
students try to get through high school so they can go on to college.
As long as students are not in school to get an education, you can be
pretty sure they won’t get one. Most of our graduates have learned to
jump through hoops, nothing more.
Confined children: Children like to run around. Is this news to
anyone? They have a difficult time sitting still and they learn by trying
things out and asking questions. Of course, in school sitting still is the
norm. So we have come up with this wonderful idea of ADHD, that
is, drug those who won’t sit still into submission. Is the system sick or
what?
Academics viewed as winners: Who are the smartest kids in
school? The ones who are good at math and science, of course. Why do
we think that? Who knows? We just do. Those who are good at these
subjects go on to be professors. So those are certainly the smartest
people we have in our society. Perhaps they are. But I can tell you from
personal experience that our society doesn’t respect professors all that
much, so something is wrong here.
Practical skills not valued: When I was young, there were
academic high schools and trade high schools. Trade high schools
were for dumb kids. Academic high schools were for smart kids. We
all thought this made sense. Except that are a lot of unemployed
English majors and a lot of employed airplane mechanics. Where
did we get the idea that education was about scholarship? This is not
what Ben Franklin thought when our system was being designed, but
he was outvoted.
The need to please teachers: People who succeed at school are
invariably people who are good at figuring out what the teacher
wants and giving it to her. In real life there is no teacher to please
and these “grade grubbers” often find themselves lost. When I did
graduate admissions, if a student presented an undergraduate record
with all A’s, I immediately rejected him. There was no way he was
equally good at or equally interested in everything (except pleasing
the teacher). As a professor, I had no patience for students who
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023964