This film explores why our kids are facing so much academic
pressure and how to solve this problem. But I got totally tuned out at the
beginning of the film. It starts out complaining the amount of homework is a
major source of pressure; kids have so much homework that they don’t have time
for anything else, sometimes even sleep. I don’t think this is an issue, at
least not in our school district. On the contrary, I think the kids are not
getting enough homework especially for math and science. Homework is not
supposed to make you smart, its purpose is to make sure you fully understand
the new concepts and methods you learn at school and be able to correctly apply
them in different situations. I think lack of homework is one of the reasons a
lot of kids only remember how to solve certain types of problems within two
weeks of learning (the “swallow and spit”), it is one of the reasons that 50%
of college freshmen need to take retention courses. I’m glad that even my kids
agree with me on this. I can’t imagine that our school district is an exception
in terms of homework load, and I found a blog at Washington
Post that backed my suspicion with national stats.
But this film did raise several interesting points. It is
true that in today’s world our kids feel pressured to excel at every front, be
it academics, sports, music, or community service. There are a lot of
opportunities, and it is great they want to do them all. But nobody is superman,
and they need to be clear why they are doing all the activities. If it’s only
for college application, then it could well be “race to nowhere”. This is
easily said but actually hard for the kids to follow their hearts. Our school
counselors are telling the kids since 9th grade that they need to
start building their profiles for college application, they need to have a
variety of activities, and they need to choose AP classes to show their
academic rigor. And the college admission officers do care about all these
issues. What do you expect the kids to do under this kind of environment? One
suggestion is to rid of college rankings, there is no best college but only perfect match for your kid’s growth. We as parents should stop ranking the
kids based on where they go for college.
Teacher quality and evaluation is another important issue.
But it may take a generation to fix. Many Asian countries greatly value
education and highly respect the teaching profession. In Singapore top 20% of high
school graduates get a free ride through college if they choose to teach
afterwards. While here, you have to spend one extra year of no pay training and
pass the certification exams which are different from state to state. How can we attract the
best people to teacher our next generation? To evaluate our teachers, how do we
encourage teaching beyond the standard test, the joy of learning, the curiosity
toward nature, the method of analytical thinking, and the integrity and
conscience toward one’s ability? I’ve met teacher who complained that her pay
raise would be affected because my son failed to improve his test score. I’ve
also met teacher who deducted points from my son’s science test for a spelling
error. I don’t know if those teachers were evaluated properly, I surely hope so.
One other issue the film pointed out is that in today’s
world one’s success tends to be determined solely by the amount of money one
makes. So much media coverage focuses on the instant success stories of the few
and the lives of rich people. As a result, some kids only dream about same luck
will happen to them without putting in their work; they tend to focus on the money and
the presumed “easiness” of earning money while forgetting their own interests
and passion. In fact, we need to teach our kids that we are the 99% -- in terms of
being struck by luck. All of us need to put in hard work and most of us will
still end up with seemingly "mundane" works.
No comments:
Post a Comment