America's biggest import: self-motivation?
On Wednesday of this week, another powerful statement about the influence of parental and community expectations on education outcomes. This one comes from Patrick Welsh, an English teacher at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., and a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.
Welsh teaches both American-born and immigrant kids in a large public high school and observes that the American kids typically lack the motivation, self-discipline or work ethic of the foreign-born kids.
"Politicians and education bureaucrats can talk all they want about reform, but until the work ethic of U.S. students changes, until they are willing to put in the time and effort to master their subjects, little will change," he writes.
He cites a study released in December by University of Pennsylvania researchers Angela Duckworth (former COO of GreatSchools.net) and Martin Seligman suggesting that "the reason so many U.S. students are 'falling short of their intellectual potential' is not 'inadequate teachers, boring textbooks and large class sizes' and the rest of the usual litany cited by the so-called reformers - but 'their failure to exercise self-discipline.'"
A high-schooler's self-discipline, of course, comes from his or her family and community.
I'm back to grasping for that lever I wrote about on Wednesday: how do we change the culture of expectations around education in this country?
After all, we can't outsource self-discipline, and we can only import so much of it from China, India, Africa and other places where people are hungry for a better life. We'd better find a way to manufacture some of it right here at home.
posted by Bill Jackson @ 6:42 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Thanks for the post Bill!
Many of my Asian immigrant students have so much more self-motivation than their American-born Asian peers at SF State where I teach.
Perhaps there's a cause also somewhere in the negative impact of the consumerist IPOD/GAMEBOY/corporate- media-driven American culture we live in, as well as in the parenting and community causes that you suggest.
The link between self-dicipline and student performance is certainly an interesting (though hardly counterintuitive) one to consider.
I don't think the research allows us, however, to stop worrying about, 'inadequate teachers, boring textbooks and large class sizes,' as Welsh suggests. For one, the two concerns are not mutually exclusive. It is possible to have both poor quality instruction and students who lack discipline - dare I say, they may even be related. Furthermore, the study was conducted in an academically selective magnet school (see http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01641.x?cookieSet=1 for the detailed methodology), and therefore cannot even begin to explain what's happening in our nation's worst schools.
I agree that family and community play a crucial role in students' academic success, but let's not let our schools off the hook just yet.
As a school principal with large immigrant (both Latino and Asian) populations, I have certainly seen the patterns mentioned by Patrick Welsh. I also agree with Eric’s fear of the screenhead generation. I feel it eating into my own attention span and self-discipline.
Still, I can’t swallow the author’s: “As a teacher, I don't object to the heightened standards required of educators in the No Child Left Behind law. Who among us would say we couldn't do a little better? Nonetheless, teachers have no control over student motivation and ambition, which have to come from the home — and from within each student.”
We must accept responsibility for a portion of our students’ motivation and ambition. Not all immigrant families understand how essential school is in this country. We, in schools, need to teach that it is a socially equalizing force. At all levels, schools must reach out again and again to the parents, even if they shy away. It’s almost an evangelical role that we play in order to convert the unfaithful to the belief that doing well in school makes a difference. This ambition and motivation can be taught from schools as much as it can from home.
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