In an interview with SUNY’s chancellor, Nancy L. Zimpher, Ian Wilhelm attempts to get to the root of the problem with unprepared college students. Students who enter college straight out of high school are typically lacking in motivation and adaptive skills necessary to a successful undergraduate career. However, this interview also mentions students who are simply not as exceptional as schools in the SUNY system prefer. Rather than pointing finger at the K-12 system and demanding better students, Zimpher hopes to collaborate with them by training teachers to become better educators and advisors. Excuse me? Isn’t that simply sugarcoating their previous allegations? True, there may be educators who are not dedicated or qualified enough to prepare their students for college, but the exact problem lies in the overall education system, not simply in incompetent teachers.
I draw upon Nel Noddings’ “An Ethic of Caring and Its Implication for Instructional Arrangements” that I read for one of my education courses to argue my stance:
“If it is not already obvious, let me say explicitly that I think university educators and researchers are part of the problem. Our endless focus on narrow achievement goals, our obsession with sophisticated schemes of evaluation and measurement directed naturally enough) at things that are relatively easy to measure, our reinforcement of the mad desire to be number one- to compete, to win awards, to acquire more and more of whatever is currently valued- in all these ways to contribute to the proliferation of problems and malaise” (Noddings, 226).
Many blame teachers when children do not do well on tests, or when they seem to not be learning or on par with their classmates and others their age. However, teachers are only following the curriculum. If the system dictates that teachers must meet a quota, then this places teachers in a difficult situation. As a prospective educator, this is also my concern. I want to teach my students to be motivated, caring, and hard-working future leaders, but the system tells me that this is not enough, and this is not the way to cultivate the American mind. Instead, they say our children should fight to be at top, but these administrators and politicians do not realize this is only harming the children and placing the future of America in peril. Rather than stressing school readiness in preschool and academic excellence in elementary school, the K-12 system should promote an encouraging learning environment by placing emphasis on creative thinking and personal growth. Children who are exposed to an environment that values abstract and critical thinking earlier on will have the capacity to succeed in college, which is more or less a forum for active discussion and debate. Remove the adherence to standardized tests and rules, and focus on discovering the child’s potential instead.
http://chronicle.com/article/Video-Owning-the-K-12/236400
I really enjoyed reading this article because it brings up another thing that I read earlier in the semester about something fairly similar. It does seem like a Catch-22 when people suggest students need to be better while others suggest teachers need to be better to help the students. Unfortunately I don’t think its so cut and dry. The K-12 system in theory is good but i think the issue ends up being the leaps and bounds both students and teachers have to take throughout this process.
I recently read a study where researchers found out that among their sample sizes students who go through a K-8 are more successful than students who go k-5 then 6-8. Honestly I consider this a pretty good test/solution for the issue that your article brings up, for a k-8 the students for the most part know each other by the time they hit that akward 7th grade stage. Bodies are changing people are emotional and the only thing that makes it worse is that you don’t know that many people so they’re scared. K-8 Eliminates that. Also teachers will be able to create a proper lesson plan hierarchy for the school system. It’s easy for a 6th grade teacher to get more out of their students when they’re on the same relative page for the topic as opposed to having much of the class from different schools some not even close to knowing that topic.