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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (93017)	1/9/2005 7:19:22 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Many parents in this country do not push their children in school the way children in some other countries are pushed to succeed. Based on my observations I can say that it is far more likely that parents will encourage their kids in extracurricular activities (mostly sports), than it is likely that the parents will be nailing their children to the kitchen table to study. People on SI often like to blame the education system on the teachers, but quite frankly I think many of the teachers now are much better than the teachers I had in high school, The problem is not the teachers, the problem is the students, and the families the students come from. When parents aren't home to push their children to succeed in school, and when they aren't available to supervise their children while they do their homework, and when there is no ethos in the home or community that getting educated is your lifeline to a better job and lifestyle, and that it's crucially important, you can't expect any but the most self-motivated students to do well (which is what happens now). In poor countries, and even some not so poor countries that have tracking, doing well in school determines whether you will live well, or live very badly indeed. The pressure can be intense, but the flip side of that is that children know it matters. Most children (and many adults) are unable to see the benefits of education, and without painful external motivators, many people will just slack off rather than work at educating themselves- because that is what school is- a place in which you educate yourself with the help and guidance of a teacher. Sure it would be easier if you could just crack the student's skull open and pour in the knowledge, but alas it doesn't work like that- a teacher needs the cooperation of the student, and unfortunately many students come to school without the desire to learn, stemming both from our society's ambivalence to education, and parental negligence. There isn't much a teacher can do about that.