Is Our Children Learnin? By Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture

December 10, 2010 Whitney Farmer 0 Comments

Whitney runs a rock music venue on the beach in L.A.. She has an MBA, and that means she went to alot of college.

On Tuesday, U.S. educators and policy makers were distressed to learn that our children perhaps are not naturally gifted enough to allow them to succeed without effort. More alarming, that effort must come from more than just the students themselves.

The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released the results of its latest administration of its academic achievement indicator, the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment). The test of roughly 5,100 15-year-old students throughout each of its member countries placed Shanghai-China first in Reading, Math and Science. The United States ranked 17th, 31st, and 23rd respectively. The U.S. was outperformed by Estonia and Liechtenstein, perhaps partly because our students were neither able to spell those country names correctly nor find them on a map.
As with any test, the end game is what is critical. What is being measured, and why is this relevant? If it is important, can recommendations be defined that are applicable and replicable? Educators in the U.S. are facing challenges that can make weak hearts fail from fear. The budgetary support for the public education system — once an appropriate cause for celebration and bragging internationally – is being affected by the financial disintegration that continues to spread across sectors and borders internationally. It has been happening for a long time, but the consequences have had a delayed roll out like a bad movie. Now, even the hope of remediation or ‘catching up’ on weak skills via community colleges is evaporating as limited funds have closed the door to the most at-risk and the most in-need student prospects. In California as an example, if all schools and prisons were closed immediately, the budget would still fail to balance.

In reviewing the results of the PISA, there is perhaps some wisdom that can be gathered from both the successes as well as the failures. U.S. officials have cried ‘foul’ and stated that students in China go to school on average 41 days more each year. Also, students tagged to participate in the test were encouraged to participate in additional academic preparation and tutoring rather than extracurricular activities such as sports. There is also additional social encouragement to perform well with students being given the overt message that national pride rests partly on their slim little shoulders.

There was a time in the not-too-distant past, perhaps 20 years, when Japan was at the top. They also had an inverted statistical pattern of suicide with the peak risk occurring at 7 years of age. It was known and clearly articulated that a child who didn’t get into the right preschool wouldn’t get into the right kindergarten and elementary and high school and ultimately into Tokyo University, where academic demands fell away. This left time for televised monumental domino structure building and destruction. But then the Company Man became a fable as lifetime employment promises were abandoned even by the zaibatzus in the face of international competition. When faced with a pink slip after sacrificing a childhood, the Angry Young Man demographic tentatively made an appearance and led to a consequent increase in consumer spending and decreased academic assessment rankings.

There is a better way, a point between the child sacrifice to the fiction of brain-bank bragging and the John Wayne fallacy of U.S. jeans — I mean genes — giving our kids the ability to do calculus without trying. It is possible to help children want to learn, and to experience individual joy in their accomplishments that can be pooled into national achievement.

Pleading for public funds that do not and more than likely will not exist for perhaps a generation is not the solution. The pull-through effect of this strategy has perhaps come to the end of its life expectancy. What is needed is to light a fire inside students that will create a push-back effect against all the factors that are working towards their failure. Kids have to want to achieve, and they have to want it first for themselves for it to be sustainable. There is a time in the life of all that the fascination with the world does not have to be encouraged. A child reaches out to discover, and experiences delight when something new is grasped. Despite the best efforts of the well-intentioned, this innate passion is cooled by a system that hasn’t managed to incentivize students.

Using a mild but hopefully accurate example, look to video games. Once upon a time, kids would get lost in imaginary worlds but be left with flaccid muscles and carpel tunnel syndrome. Now, gamers can enter these electronic adventures with both their bodies and their minds engaged as virtual gaming has become a full contact sport. Telling kids what they should do ultimately will fail. Stoking the fires inside them, and then helping them channel that heat is our solution. HOW…therein lies the rub. Ponder the following:

Step One: Define our end game.

Step Two: Ask kids what makes their hearts beat faster.

Step Three: Reverse engineer a connection between the two until we accomplish what will become our modern equivalent of a moon launch.

To paraphrase our beleaguered President Obama, “It’s Sputnik time.”

Quote of the Blog from a fortune cookie from China which is attempting to perpetuate the John Wayne mythos which has led to the decline of American vigor: “You will get something because of your charm.”