A mother in Chicago wrote for help: "Dear Abby: All of my grown children are underachievers. When contemporaries talk about their children getting jobs, getting married, having kids, going on vacation, buying a house/car, I have nothing to contribute. My children do not have lives; they work low-paying jobs and scrape by. Worse, they have no ambition to do better."Dear Abby responded with little insight: "Your children are adults. If they were motivated, they would be doing more with their lives than scraping by. Be glad they are independent and have good relationships with each other--it's a plus, and continue living your life."
Dear Abby has nothing to say about the curious mysteries of absent ambition and missing motivation. She, and the unhappy mother, should consider the possibility that major factors have so far been ignored in this Q&A.
What could be more devastating to a child than pervasive, day-by-day failure at school? Most pundits agree that public schools do a terrible job on the basics and essentials, particularly reading. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which tracks fourth and eighth graders, consistently reports that two-thirds of American kids are "below proficient." This causes a crippling slowdown in every direction. How can they learn history, geography, science, literature, or anything else if they can hardly read at all?
It's a safe bet that the kids and adults "scraping by" are not good readers. We hear the terms illiterate, functionally illiterate, struggling, poor readers, and such. Point is, they don't read effortlessly; and they can't read for fun. Naturally they have trouble filling out forms and understanding manuals. Wouldn't it be surprising if these kids were motivated? It's much simpler to drop out, hang with your friends, and smoke a joint.
The real questions are: why do our schools do such a poor job; and how do they get away with this? Rudolf Flesch answered the first question 65 years ago in Why Johnny Can't Read. He said the problem is obvious: we use the wrong method (sight-words); we should use phonics.
But what about the second question, why is no one concerned with the collateral damage done by inferior methods? Where are the scholars, professors, and scientists who can investigate the impact of dysfunctional education? Isn't it a safe bet that a major side-effect will be declines in motivation and ambition?
American schoolchildren seem to be in double jeopardy. The literacy experts do a lousy job; and then the people who should be checking on these so-called experts do an equally lousy job. Millions of kids can't read and everyone pretends not to notice. There seems to be a conspiracy to use the worst methods then look the other way.
Here is a child therapist who may have as limited a grasp of the problems as Dear Abby: "I am often told, 'He's not motivated. All he wants to do is watch television or play video games." Parents urgently ask, "Why doesn't he put more effort into his schoolwork? Why doesn't he care?" Many parents believe that their child is "lazy."...The answer to these questions is almost always, "Because he is discouraged." He may also be anxious or angry, and he is stuck in this bad mood.".
Another professor inspired this headline: Research Increasingly Finds More Screen Time Makes Kids Depressed And Illiterate...The Atlantic reported on social science research about the effects of young people's constant phone and computer use. "Teens who spend more time than average on screen activities are more likely to be unhappy, and those who spend more time than average on nonscreen activities are more likely to be happy."
Here is a better hypothesis: teens who spend more time than average on screen activities will spend less time than average on reading, most likely because they don't know how to do it very well.
Now for the weirdest research of all. An expert claims to prove that too much interest in literacy and academics will hurt a kid! Researchers at the University of Virginia analyzed survey responses from American kindergarten teachers between 1998 and 2010. "Almost every dimension that we examined...had major shifts over this period towards a heightened focus on academics, and particularly a heightened focus on literacy, and within literacy, a focus on more advanced skills than what had been taught before."
That's almost a sick joke. Literacy levels are low and, if anything, have been dropping for years. What does it matter if there is a claimed focus on "advanced skills"? Common Core is full of things that might be presented as advanced but they are merely dysfunctional. Close Reading, for example. Constructivist Learning for another. Reading-from-Context for yet another.
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In this study, there is a clear bias against academics. We are supposed to be alarmed that the percentage of kindergarten teachers who said that children should learn to read in kindergarten increased from 30 percent in 1998 to 80 percent in 2010.
It is a most peculiar situation. Our Education Establishment enforces the worst methods, and then all the people with psychological or administrative oversight carefully pretend to be oblivious so they won't have to deal with the real problem.
Interested in motivation? Google will bring up such items as: "Does Your Child Lack motivation?" "The Motivation Equation: Understanding a Child's Lack of Effort" "How to Motivate the Unmotivated Child" "How to Motivate your Child - Tips for Unmotivated Children" "Don't blame kids if they do not enjoy school, study suggests."
These articles offer expert opinion by smart people about the psychodramas of children who won't get up, won't dress, won't do their homework, etc. Basically, parents are told to master child psychology and become expert kid-wranglers. Instead, why not start the kids off right? They should learn to read in the first grade and then everyone's life will be more pleasant.
Does anybody bother to check whether children in private schools have the same bad scenarios? These kids are taught to read and are actually learning facts and knowledge. That probably feels really good. Their motivation and ambition will increase.
It's amazing that our disingenuous professors keep pushing methods they know don't work. It's amazing that the society's leaders tolerate this malfeasance and the subsequent cover-up.K-12 education reveals a hard truth. The public will get what the public settles for. Obviously, the public should stop settling for misguided schools that deliver predictably bad results year after year.
A mother in Chicago wrote for help: "Dear Abby: All of my grown children are underachievers. When contemporaries talk about their children getting jobs, getting married, having kids, going on vacation, buying a house/car, I have nothing to contribute. My children do not have lives; they work low-paying jobs and scrape by. Worse, they have no ambition to do better."
Dear Abby responded with little insight: "Your children are adults. If they were motivated, they would be doing more with their lives than scraping by. Be glad they are independent and have good relationships with each other--it's a plus, and continue living your life."
