Against grit

Give Up 

New research shows that grit can be costly and unnecessary.

What if it’s more important to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, and know when to walk away?

For a recent study published in the Journal of Research in Personality, researchers from the University of Southern California and Northeastern University put hundreds of participants through a series of three studies on grit. In each, the researchers quizzed subjects about how “gritty” they are, based on how much they agree with statements like, “Setbacks don’t discourage me” and “I finish whatever I begin.”

The first test was a set of anagrams, or word scrambles, which participants were rewarded for solving by being entered into a $100 lottery for each correct answer. Sprinkled amid the do-able anagrams were 16 unsolvable words and 21 very difficult ones, like “kismet.” The participants who ranked higher on the grit assessment attempted fewer anagrams overall—a sign they didn’t skip the difficult or unsolvable ones like their less determined peers did.

Next came a computer-game exercise, which the researchers rigged such that some participants would feel like they were losing for much of the game. The grittier subjects worked harder when they were losing, but not when they were winning.

For the final test, the researchers gave the subjects a math game, which was also rigged so that some of the participants felt like they were fighting an uphill battle. They also gave the participants an offer: When things got tough, they could either drop out of the experiment and get $1 for their troubles, or they could press on and get $2 if they won, but nothing if they lost. Grittier people didn’t solve any more math problems than their lazier counterparts, even though they felt more optimistic about the test than the others. They were, however, more likely to continue the game when they were losing, even though they risked walking away with nothing.

It would seem, then, that grit comes with a downside.

Birth of a meme

The new character education, coming soon to a district near you: grit.

Students need grit, and it's the school's job to foster grit.

Because grit is more important than knowledge.

Also: grit is best fostered by means of teachers telling students to do something they don't know how to do, then refusing to answer questions. In any other context, that would be rude, but never mind.

Our new superintendent, the one who was to bring accountability and every-child-every-dayness to our district, is a big fan of grit. Hosted a book club for parents on How Children Succeed the week after winter break.

He's a fan of Tony Wagner, too, while we're on the subject of expensive new superintendents with bad instincts. Vintage, pre-crash Tony Wagner, even better. (With increasing abundance, people want unique products and services!!!! So it's time to redefine rigor!!!)

Wrong again.

Here's Hirsch. And here's Peter Meyer.

At Education Week:

Unlearning Learned Helplessness

"I need help," several students said in their geometry class at Esperanza Academy in Philadelphia.

"I don't think so," teacher John Roman replied.

Roman had just given students a handout with several unmarked triangles on it, and asked them to determine which of the triangles were congruent. He also gave them patty paper (tracing paper), and said that it might help them complete the task. He did not, however, show or tell students what to do with it.

[snip]

[K]nee-jerk calls for help are indicative of a common reason students don't learn to their potential: learned helplessness. They encounter an unfamiliar task (or word, formula, etc.), and immediately shut down or seek help.

The good news is that because it's learned helplessness, it can also be unlearned. And because students have learned it from enabling educators like me (until I stopped spoon-feeding them), we're in the best position to help them unlearn it....Turns out, for example, that John Roman's students had sufficient prior knowledge of congruent triangles. They were also more than capable of figuring out how to use patty paper to perform the assigned task. What they lacked was a problem-solving mindset. They lacked qualities such as determination and resourcefulness.

Yet students will only acquire those qualities if we put them in situations that require those qualities. ...After commiserating for a couple of minutes, a few students picked up the patty paper and began tracing triangles. Soon all students did this, with no help from Roman besides subtle reminders to a few students that the patty paper might be helpful.

The value for students of experiences like this has more to do with confidence than content. The more they learn with little or no help from us, the more they believe in themselves and their abilities. Sure it's important for students to learn math and science and social studies. But the real lesson for kids when teachers do what John Roman did is that confusion is where learning begins, not where it ends.

And the lesson for us as educators is that students will only unlearn helplessness when we unlearn helpfulness.

Bad character comes from sages on stages.

Good character comes from guides on sides.

A likely story.

---

For the record, actual learned helplessness has nothing to do with the scenario described above.

The term comes from Martin Seligman's experiments with dogs in the 1960s, which entailed giving the dogs electric shocks and inducing a state of "learned" helplessness, learned in the sense that after being repeatedly shocked with no means of escape, the animals learned not to even try to save themselves, not even when the avenue of escape was directly in front of them. Instead, when the shocks came on again, they trembled and cried, and displayed all the signs of human depression. The experiments were cruel, though I don't think the experimenters knew they were cruel, going in.

I was taught the learned-helplessness experiments in college, and the image that formed in my mind of the cowering, crying dogs too distraught to exit the shock zone -- or even try to exit -- has stayed with me.

(On the other hand, having since experienced a very similar scenario on two separate occasions, I now see things a bit differently. But that is a story for another day.)

For a teacher to appropriate the term "learned helplessness" as a description of his own students is wrong in so many ways.

UPDATE 3/17/2014: See Crimson Mom's comment. (And don't miss the never-to-be-missed Anonymous.)

Being Tough on Tough

Though I haven't read it, I honestly don't get what the big deal is about Paul Tough's new book, How Children Succeed. From what I gather from various reviews and interviews, Tough's Big Idea is that persistence and curiosity matter more than IQ does for success. But was there ever a time or place when this statement wasn't obvious? Of course IQ means little if you don't apply yourself; of course intelligence leads nowhere interesting if you lack curiosity. Does anyone--especially in this Emotional Intelligence-obsessed world of ours--really think that the successful people out there--even the genuises--achieved what they did primarily because of their IQ scores? Didn't Malcolm Gladwell already write a book back in 2008 on the findings that what makes an expert is 10,0000 hours of practice? What is it about Tough's book that's garnering so much attention?

A slightly different take on Tough's Big Idea is voiced by Joe Nocera in today's New York Times:

Tough argues that simply teaching math and reading--the so-called cognitive skills--isn't nearly enough, especially for children who have grown up enduring the stresses of poverty. In fact, it might not even be the most important thing.

Notice how quickly Nocera slips from the obvious--that teaching teach math and reading isn't nearly enough--to the ridiculous. To say that learning to read and do math might not be the most important elements of success is like saying that adequate food and shelter might not be the most important elements of staying alive (after all one must also breathe oxygen). When it come to essential elements, it's pointless to quibble over what's most important.

In interviews Tough is careful to admit that, while schools need to do more to encourage persistence and curiosity, there are no clear studies on how to do this. Refreshing though this caveat is, it, too, raises the question of what this book has to offer that's new and plausible, or at least useful.

There is one disturbing answer to that last question. To the careless reader who approaches the book from the perspective of the dominant educational paradigm, it offers yet another reason to water down academics in favor of "the whole child." The connections between grit and academic rigor, and between curiosity and well-taught academic subjects, should be as obvious as the inherent importance of grit is. Indeed, I'm guessing these connections are obvious to most people. But they clearly aren't obvious to many of those wielding the greatest power over whether or not our children succeed.

teachers in the hall, lockers in the homeroom

from The Fragile Success of School Reform in the Bronx
By JONATHAN MAHLER
Published: April 6, 2011

Upon arrival at 223, students pass through a gantlet of smiling teachers. González requires that faculty members stand outside their doors at the start of the school day, part of his effort to set the school off from the grim streets surrounding it. “In our location, kids have to want to come to school,” he says. “This is a very sick district. Tuberculosis, AIDS, asthma rates, homeless shelters, mental-health needs — you name the physical or social ill, and we’re near the top for the city. Which means that when our kids come to school in the morning, when they come through that door, we have to welcome them.”

There’s another, no less compelling reason for this policy: posting teachers outside their classrooms helps maintain order in the hallways. It’s one of a number of things, like moving students’ lockers into their homerooms, that González has done to ensure that kids spend as little time as possible in the halls, where so much middle-school trouble invariably begins. (Chaotic hallways also tend to make for chaotic classrooms.)

I went to an NEA session on bullying in schools a couple of weeks ago. The presenter stressed that the adults in the school - including "ESPs" (education support personnel, I think) - are the ones who must deal with bullying.

You can't leave it up to the kids and their parents. Kids aren't grownups, and parents aren't on site.

Project D.A.R.E.

At last!

All in one place: Project D.A.R.E. Fact Sheet

thanks to: Megan McArdle 

C. was not only required to take Project D.A.R.E. when he was in 5th grade, he and his classmates attended a Project D.A.R.E. graduation ceremony.

LaSalle High School and "kindness"

Vicky's post about the Kindness Project reminded me that I never got around to posting "La Salle High School's" approach to character and kindness, which I vastly prefer to the standard FOCUS-word approach.

from Chapter 8
One Kind of Excellence: Ensuring Academic Achievement at La Salle High School

...La Salle High School (a fictional name but not a fictional school) was chosen for study because the graduates of that high school well exceeded expectations as to academic success in their freshman year of college. Considering the relatively high socioeconomic status of La Salle’s population, its graduates were predicted to do well in college, but they did even better than graduates of other schools similarly situated....

...advocates of educational reform agree that a rigorous curriculum accompanied by high standards should be part of what we mean by an excellent school..... Simply asserting [high standards] or even requiring them by imposing dire penalties does not in itself ensure success. La Salle High School did not simply stipulate academic excellence as a standard; it instituted procedures and structures that were aimed at providing the support that such high expectations required. No school is a perfect school, but the way in which La Salle High School was organized provides one way to approach the problem of providing academic excellence for all.

"character ed" through academics

Our impression, relative to programs in other high schools being observed, is that at La Salle the mandate for academic excellence has become the medium through which the staff communicates with students. This is a distinctly different emphasis from that taken by programs that focus more directly on aspects of social development or on adolescent problems. The La Salle administrators perceive that the academic focus provides a more benign environment with respect to negative labeling than would a direct attack on students' problems in terms of emotional and social adjustment.

In some respects, the academic focus tends to mitigate negative labeling because it generally is restricted to dealing with specific student behaviors as opposed to identifying personal character traits; for example, there is a significant difference between, on the one hand, telling a student that his or her absences are affecting the quality of schoolwork and, on the other, suggesting that those absences reflect a pattern of avoidance or are indicative of an emotional disorder. The relationship between absence and failure to achieve well academically can be seen by the student as temporary and subject to correction, while the labeling of the same behavior as abnormal suggests a serious and even permanent condition. In this way, the focus on academics may serve to avoid at least some potentially destructive labels. In general, the formal system of authority that prevails at La Salle is premised on encouraging students' attention to academic tasks and not on putative emotional disorders.

The formal structure of authority also prescribe general procedures aimed at groups of students. All students in their junior year, for example, take a test designed to measure general mathematics competence. Those students who do not pass this test at least at an 80% level of proficiency are required to take a mathematics refresher course. (This constitutes about 25% of the junior class.) Up to this point, this process ma be perceived as simply an examination-driven approach to ensuring that La Salle students have achieved a prescribed level of competence. However, even after the mathematics refresher course, a few students still will not have demonstrated 80% proficiency on the skills tested, and it is for this small group that new mechanisms are set in motion. Rather than leaving these students to their own devices for developing mathematical competence, each of the students is further required to attend a mathematics laboratory at which individual problems with mathematics are diagnosed and treated on a case-by-case basis. These cases ranged from a simple lack of skill development to dealing with psychological phenomena such as reducing the effects of test anxiety and even developing means for teaching certain geometric functions to a blind student. (This meant producing teaching devices as no commercial devices were available.)

In instances such as these, it is highly significant that, while the formal structure of authority imposes high expectations on all students, it also provides extensive support services and requires students to use those services. the proficiency requirement in mathematics would in itself be virtually meaningless unless a regular screening process existed to identify those students having difficulties and, more important, involved a carefully delineated procedure for correcting them. It is in this sense that la Sale's approach differs from the more common "standard raising" approach to achieving academic excellence. Frequently, schools, school districts, and state departments of education seek to achieve excellence simply by testing alone, by raising minimum requirements on such tests, or by simplistic mechanisms such as incrasing graduation requirements. Because support systems for students are lacking or inadequate in some of these cases, excellence is not actually advanced, only proclaimed.

In spite of La Salle's general success in using academic development as a medium for maintaining authority in the school setting, the school goes to considerable lengths to deal with the problems presented by certain students who simply do not accept the school's authority structure as being legitimate. The major burden for dealing with problems of discipline and truancy falls on the two building co-principals, who are "the court of last resort" at La Salle. The principals report that in general their official approach is to take a hard line with both students and parents ("the student will have to shape up or get out") but in practice, they tend to work behind the scenes to keep the students in school. The behind-the-scenes work mahy include intervention and student advocacy with the student's teachers and establishing contact with local employers to attempt to secure a job for a student. (The job can then become a part of the negotiation process--"If we got you an afternoon job, would you be willing to remain in school during the mornings?") It is common for one of the two co-principals to send a student to the other when he or she feels unable to deal effectively with a particular case.

Thus, it appears that the formal and highly visible authority structure co-exists with a somewhat hidden and informal, but reasonably effective, informal authority structure. In other words, there is a human face behind some of the formal procedures.

Changing Course: American Curricular Reform in the 20th Century
by Herbert Kliebard (chapter 8 coauthored with Calvin R. Stone)
p. 119-120

If character education programs (and Kindness Projects) elsewhere are anything like character education here, I vote no.

Good character, inside a school, is about doing your work and striving to excel. When a student is not doing his work and striving to excel, that should be the school's center of attention, not "FOCUS" words scotch-taped all over the front window of the foyer.

Eyes on the prize.


"La Salle High School" - tracking, placement, accountability

Kindness Project

1.2 million federal dollars for a Kindness Project in a 4500 pupil district where the "schools [are] struggling on state-mandated reading and math tests."

The West St. Paul-Mendota Heights-Eagan school district has won $1.2 million in federal dollars to teach its kids how to get along.

Under the federal grant, part of a national effort to improve schools' climates, the district will hire one counselor for each of its five elementary schools this fall.

The mission of the "Kindness Project"? To create welcoming and safe schools.

"It's incredible for a small district to get this big of a grant," Superintendent Jay Haugen said. "It's great recognition for our schools."

The counselors' responsibilities range from teaching lessons on kindness and providing individual counseling to surveying families about school climate and helping students transition to middle school.

School officials received additional details this week after learning last month they were one of 53 school districts across the country to receive the grant, which will bring in $400,000 each year for three years, if federal authorities give approval after periodical [sic] monitoring of the district's program.

***

[W]ith the increased diversity and schools struggling on state-mandated reading and math tests under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, some community members believe minority students "have eroded the quality of our schools," officials wrote in the district's grant application.

The Kindness Project will enable the new counselors to work with students, and this "can only help boost achievement," Haugen said.

***

"(The federal grant) really shows that we have put a lot of thought into this," said Reine Shiffman, school board chair. "They believe we can make a difference."

I'm speechless. What if this money had been spent on tutors? Decent math curriculum? History and science classes?

comments on "Knowledge School"

original post: what do parents want?

from Paul B.:

All of these isolated success stories seem to have a common thread. Kids go at different (appropriate) speeds. Kids have clear goals. Kids are measured against those goals. The teaching is directed. The focus is restricted to academic excellence not extracurricular social reengineering.

Makes me go hmmmmmm?

Note the technology creeping into this Swedish example. I'd bet that Kunskapsporten is a DI engine. I'd bet that kids are being taught in their 'zone'. Betcha' can make money at this on the $153K per teacher being spent in the U.S. of A.

from Allison:

It does definitely sound like Paul's model for technology that adjusts to rates, and it definitely sounds like they have some actual instruction behind it. I wish we could see the courses, to know what the instruction consists of, and what the assessment looks like. Anyone know anyone in Sweden?

le radical galoisien:

This looks promising -- but of course I want to know how these students compare with other students who aren't in the voucher programme.

former KS student:

Kunskapsskolan has a demo on its Swedish website, where you can at least get a feel for what the portal looks like:

As for results, statistics from 2007 show that Kunskapsskolan performs significantly better than the national average in English and Swedish. 2008 figures are expected to show a similar advantage in Maths as well.

Thank you, former KS student! (tell us more, if you have time)


Ben Calvin:

I assume something's been lost in translation with the "better to do things the same way than to do them well" line ?

I don't think so. It's a pretty common statement when talking about standardizing anything. If you do something the same way, you know how it's being done. There may be a better way, but it needs to be implemented across the board, and not just one person (or teacher) doing something different than what the system assumes.

I went to the Sports Orientation Night at C's new school last week.

wow

We are entering a different world. It's as if we're shipping C. off to Hogwarts. The new school feels magical, and I call myself blessed that my Muggle child will be allowed to attend.

I bring this up here because of Paul's comment about social re-engineering.

At the moment, I suspect that great schools often do have an element of "social engineering," or something akin to it, but I don't know how to describe what they do.

The Sports Orientation Night was all about character & culture. You ktm-ers will love this: "We play to win." That is a Major School Value. "We play to win, but academics come first." I must have heard that about 10 times over the course of 45 minutes.

I suspect that really good schools have a mission.

A new friend of mine, here in town, sent an email a while back saying that the more closely involved with religion a school is, the better that school will be. What he meant wasn't that good schools are churches. He meant that schools run by churches are better than schools not run by churches.

I had never heard that before. Never heard it; never thought it, although I did know something about the research on urban Catholic schools.

Nevertheless, his observation made immediate sense.

Why?

Because a school run by a church is likely to have a mission.

John (Ratey) used to talk about that all the time. Kids need a mission, he said. Parents, too. Everybody needs a mission.

Well, parochial schools have a mission. By definition. So do KIPP schools. So do many of the new urban charter schools. With public schools, it's harder. There are so many constraints on a public school, so many competing interests. I think a public school can have a mission - from afar, I would say that the schools Karen H's kids have attended have a mission. (The Race Between Technology and Education explains why, btw.)

And, of course, within any public school you always find teachers who have a mission.

But a teacher with a personal mission is different from an institution with a mission.

The school mission seems always to involve character and culture, but that's about as far as I've gotten with this line of thought.


Steve Levitt summarizes The Race in 2 sentences
Jimmy graduates

The anemic response of skill investment to skill premium growth
The declining American high school graduation rate: Evidence, sources, and consequences
Pushy parents raise more successful kids

The Race Between Education and Technology book review
The Race Between Ed & Tech: excerpt & TOC & SAT scores & public loss of confidence in the schools
The Race Between Ed & Tech: the Great Compression
the Great Compression, part 2
ED in '08: America's schools
comments on Knowledge Schools
the future
the stick kids from mud island
educated workers and technology diffusion
declining value of college degree
Goldin, Katz and fans
best article thus far: Chronicle of Higher Education on The Race
Tyler Cowan on The Race (NY Times)
happiness inequality down...
an example of lagging technology diffusion in the U.S.
the Times reviews The Race, finally
IQ, college, and 2008 election
Bloomington High School & "path dependency"
the election debate that should have been

the good old days

The Public Schools 1957 and 2007

Scenario : Jack goes quail hunting before school, pulls into school parking lot with shotgun in gun rack.
1957 - Vice Principal comes over, looks at Jack's shotgun, goes to his car and gets his shotgun to show Jack.
2007 - School goes into lock down, FBI called, Jack hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized students and teachers.

A French sociologist of education spoke at the Institute of French Studies saying the same thing has happened in France. I wish I could remember the details. As I recall, the sociologist said that the kinds of things parents handled back in the day - things like fights, bloody noses, and black eyes - were now, in France, resulting in the police being called to the school.

His point was that the sight of policemen entering a public school is extremely damaging. The very fact of their presence undermines the authority of teacher, principal, and parent; it conveys the message: this behavior is so bad no teacher, principal, or parent can possibly cope.

More fights and more trouble ensue.^*

Of course, all of this is he** on boys.

Although I have a theory it's no good for girls, either.


^* I think that was part of the argument. I can't fact-check this post, so take it with a grain of salt.

rational utility maximisers of the world unite!

a comment left by Tracy:

I regularly participate in a website devoted to the discussion of Jane Austen books, and it is surprising how often someone posts saying they don't understand why one of her characters made some decision that was not rational. A surprising number of people apparently expect everyone to act like the economists' stereotype of a rational utility maximiser and are confused when they don't.

And of course, if you think everyone is a perfectly rational utility maximiser, when you encounter someone doing something bad, the likely explanation is that they fully intended it, and therefore are bad people.

It's a hard process to raise some awareness in a person that they themselves are probably flawed as well.

This is a chronic source of amazement around here.

I mean, here I sit, not doing what I'm supposed to be doing (writing Wildlife Chapter), not managing my time well (or at all), not maximizing these my Peak Years of Productivity.....and, meanwhile, over in the parallel universe that is a public middle school, kids are receiving grades of F on their notebooks for poor organization.

I don't get it!

There are so many disorganized adults abroad in the land that "Professional Organizer" is a job.

Does it seem reasonable to anyone outside a public middle school that a sixth grade child:

a) can competently organize his math notebook
b) will promptly learn to organize his math notebook just as soon as he receives a grade of F for not organizing his math notebook?

answer: No.

It does not.

how do character educators see children?

I sat in my kitchen, stunned by what I had just heard on the evening news: A young girl in a neighboring city had been sexually molested by other children under the age of 10. News reports about children and teens violently hurting one another, committing crimes, and sometimes taking lives made me wonder about what might have influenced them to act as they had. I began to consider the impact that I have on the moral development of the lst graders in my classroom. Could I do more to influence how they treated others?

I have always taught my students such concepts as honesty and respect, but usually in response to something negative that has already happened. I wanted to foster their desire to developpositive character traits before I had to deal with negative behavior. Although I believe that families provide the foundation for character development, I also agree with Thomas Lickona that "schools cannot be ethical bystanders at a time when our society is in deep moral trouble" (1991, p. 5). More than 90 percent of respondents to a 1993 poll agreed that schools should be involved in teaching such values as courage, caring, acceptance, and honesty (Elam, Lowell, & Gallup, 1993). Although I knew that my efforts could not cure all the ills of the world, I decided to try to make a difference in my little corner. My two challenges were to find time for character education and to create a program that worked.

source:
How Character Education Helps Students Grow
by Gloria Rambow Singh
Educational Leadership
Volume 59, Number 2

I'm just going to go ahead and call this moral panic.

I don't like moral panic.

bring back self esteem

I've mentioned a couple of times that I regret the fact that "character education" has replaced "self-esteem" as the psychosocial focus of public schools.

Of course, I have to assume that in practice any given school's definition of "high self esteem" may have been "self esteem on our terms," which in turn probably meant low self esteem, not high. But I still prefer self-esteem to character as a school's guiding principle.

Character education, in my experience, has been quite punitive. It almost has to be given its premise, which is that the character students have developed at home needs improvement -- and that the character of school personnel doesn't.

This is where the Bible has it right.

I'm not crazy about the notion of children as inherently more flawed than grownups to tell the truth. Very young children possesss all kinds of sweet, altruistic impulses along with the usual obnoxious impulses. Rightly or wrongly, I tend to see kids as innately good in a fundamental sense.

I'd like my kids to attend a school in which administrators, teachers, and support staff feel the same.


middle school and depression

Which brings me to middle school.

The difference between a middle school and a junior high, we have repeatedly been told, is that middle school "educates the whole child."

What does that mean?

It means, first of all, that academics often take a back seat to "character" education activities. Middle school kids here are required to attend a character ed assembly each and every month; to my knowledge the school has never, not once in 2 1/2 years, staged an assembly devoted to an academic or intellectual topic. Ed, reading Martin J. Wiener's English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit 1850-1980 last summer, wondered whether character education is always be opposed to academics. I think it may be.

Beyond this, I am coming to feel that character education, as implemented by so many of our public schools, is incompatible with the creation of a positive school environment. You don't hear Karen Pryor talking about "bad" horses and "bad" dogs -- quite the opposite. Pryor's view of dog aggression is: "It's just a behavior!"

Middle school kids would be far better off if middle school behaviors like not knowing how to keep track of 6 or 7 different courses at the same time were not viewed not as a sign of poor character.

Disorganization is just a behavior is a far more humane way to understand a spacy 11-year old. Giving a 6th grader an "F" on his notebook for disorganization strikes me as bad for the 6th grader.

Little did I know that middle schools crop up in research on the development of depression in adolescence as a contributing factor:

…evidence has accumulated to suggest that, in addition to the family influences just described, schools and neighborhoods contribute to patterns of academic and psychological adjustment, especially during the transition from elementary to middle schools (National Research Council, 1993). Therefore, the school environment is likely to be implicated in the development of depression. This view is corroborated, at least partially, by the fact that certain forms of psychological distress, including depressive symptoms, increase during the middleschool years. Perceptions of being academically competent and receiving good grades have been linked with a reduced risk for emotional and behavioral difficulties, whereas low perceived academic competence is related to depressive symptoms in children (Blechman, McEnroe, Carella, & Audette, 1986; Cole, 1991). Moreover, adolescents who do not feel a connection with school may be more likely to engage in antisocial activities and substance abuse in efforts to boost their self-esteem and sense of belonging (Rosenberg, Schooler, & Schoenbach, 1989). In general, it has become increasingly clear that problems of academic alienation, poor school performance, and minor delinquency that become more prominent in early adolescence are linked to negative mental health problems such as depression that are manifested later in adolescence (Eccles, Lord, & Roeser, 1996). Such negative outcomes have been related to diminished support for the development of competence, for feelings of belongingness, and for autonomy promotion characteristic of elementary school, but not of middle-school, environments (Higgins & Parsons, 1983). Evidence such as this suggests that the failure of the school environment to facilitate development as children progress into middle schools may contribute to motivational and mental health problems. Inappropriate school environments during early adolescence can place many young people at risk for the negative trajectories that some lives take, including alienation from prosocial activities and peers, depression, and involvement in antisocial pursuits. Importantly, positive adjustment to school, including academic engagement and achievement, is likely to serve as a protective factor against negative mental health outcomes (Eccles et al., 1996).

source:
The Development of Depression in Children and Adolescents
Dante Cicchetti and Sheree L. Toth
February 1998
American Psychologist
Vol. 53, No. 2, 221-241

Blechman, E.A., McEnroe, M.J., Carella, E.T., & Audette, D.P. (1986). Childhood competence and depression. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95, 223-227.

Eccles, J. S., Lord, S., & Roeser, R.W. (1996). Round holes, square pegs, rocky roads, and sore feet: A discussion of stage-environment fit theory applied to families and school. In D. Cicchetti & S. L. Toth (Eds.), Rochester Symposium on Developmental Psychopathology: Volume 7. Adolescence: Opportunities and challenges (pp. 47-92). Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.

Higgins, E. T., & Parsons, J. E. (1983). Social cognition and the social life of the child: Stages as subculture. In E. T. Higgins, D. W. Ruble, & W, W. Hartup (Eds.), Social cognition and social behavior: Developmental issues (pp. 15-62). New York: Cambridge University Press.

National Research Council. (1993). Losing generations: Adolescents in high-risk settings. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Rosenberg, M., Schooler, C., & Schoenbach, C. (1989). Self-esteem and adolescent problems: Modeling reciprocal effects. American Sociological Review, 54, 1004-1018.

I have more than once seen the "transition" to middle school cited as a source of profound stress in the lives of young adolescents. Typically researchers and authors seem simply to assume that "transition" from one school to another per se is the source of difficulty.

I am coming to think that the middle school model in and of itself, its core assumptions, is bad for children -- bad, or at least not good. When you assume that other people's children universally require substantial character education, how reinforcing can you be?

a 2nd child tries to tell the principal about the pamphlets

I learned today that a second child, a 6th grader, also tried to tell the principal that the brochures were "bad" or "inappropriate" in some way. The principal brushed him off with some form of dismissive hand gesture.

My friend, the clinical psychologist, told me that the principal's refusal to take these children seriously is especially bad. She says that, regardless of the wording the kids used, these children were trying to tell the principal that they knew they shouldn't be reading the pamphlets. They were appealing to the leader of their school for help.


healthfair

character ed emergency

Monday's group punishment (did I mention the group punishment? That would be the one meted out to the kids on Friday after they'd run amok at the Health Fair & then -- who could have predicted this? -- gotten rowdy at the Assembly held immediately afterwards) ..... Anyways, the group punishment proceeded as planned on Monday. The entire school reported to the cafeteria at lunchtime instead of going outdoors to play and hang-out, as they normally do. As instructed, they came bearing pencil and paper, and were given a Problem-Solving character-ed exercise to complete.

Which is really pretty remarkable when you think about it.

Over the weekend I sent all concerned a copy of my board attorney friend's explanation of group punishment, an exegesis so clear, and so obviously composed by a real live attorney, that it would certainly strike fear in my heart if I were a principal planning a three-grade group punishment in a town filled to overflowing with attorneys.

But, no.

The group punishment proceeded as planned.

Why?

Because it wasn't a group punishment.

It was a group reflection. So many of the students had been "inappropriate" that the principal felt they needed to reflect on their actions.

At the time that this characterization arrived (I figured that's what it would be, group punishment masked as character ed), I just so happened to be visiting with a friend who is a clinical psychologist.

This is what she had to say:

Whether or not Mr. W. defines a “group reflection” as punishment, most people would recognize that keeping children from any portion of their recess is experienced as a punishment by the child. The technical term for this is time out from reinforcement. The fact that Mr. W. does not recognize his action as a punishment calls into question his judgment. If he does recognize his action as a punishment, but has chosen to call it a “reflection,” this calls into question his honesty.

Furthermore, the decision to pair a behavior the school wants to increase, i.e. writing, with a negative consequence will only serve to make the first behavior less frequent.

Finally, transparency in disciplinary matters is as important to managing children as it is to managing a school district. Trust fails when authority figures say one thing and mean another.

So: group punishment, bad.

Group reflection, also bad.

At this point, the character ed situation around here is fast becoming an emergency. It has to go.

Scenes from the group reflection:

• One student, handed the Problem Solving sheet by a teacher, said politely, "No thank you" and continued walking. Teacher didn't follow.
  

• Another student filled in the various sections of the Problem Solving sheet with random terms. Egg was one, as I recall. Also global warming.
  

• One of my favorite kids in the school wrote, under the section where the kids were supposed to come up with ways to prevent inappropriate behavior at an assembly from happening again, "Stop having guest speakers."

• C.'s picks: "Set up torture chambers" and "Have disruptive students fight each other to the death."
  

• My favorite of the lot: "Extend the poetry section in ELA."
  

When that last kid showed his answer to the math teacher, the math teacher laughed.

I love Irvington kids (I love some of the teachers, too). If I had to run a school full of Irvington kids - or any middle school kids anywhere on Earth - they'd chew me up and spit me out. But I love them.

Back when we all did our middle school survey (was that just a month ago??) I had to fill in a section tell some things I liked about the school.

I wrote, "the peers."


black and Hispanic students in a Natl School of Excellence
news from nowhere, redux
meanwhile, somewhere in a parallel universe
things my child learned about gay women in school this week
also playing in a parallel universe
email to the principal, part 2
further
ktm-2 readers make up a word problem for IMS
profiles in courage
new talent at the forum
my tax dollars at work
character education emergency
invitation to the dance



healthfair

new talent at the Forum

here

and

here


black and Hispanic students in a Natl School of Excellence
news from nowhere, redux
meanwhile, somewhere in a parallel universe
things my child learned about gay women in school this week
also playing in a parallel universe
email to the principal, part 2
further
ktm-2 readers make up a word problem for IMS
profiles in courage
new talent at the forum
my tax dollars at work
character education emergency
invitation to the dance


healthfair

further

Ed said, yesterday morning, "I don't know what a dental dam is, and I am the son of a dentist."

Well, Ed, this is your lucky day.

One of ktm-2's very own, Vicky S, has Googled the answer.

black and Hispanic students in a Natl School of Excellence
news from nowhere, redux
meanwhile, somewhere in a parallel universe
things my child learned about gay women in school this week
also playing in a parallel universe
email to the principal, part 2
further
ktm-2 readers make up a word problem for IMS
profiles in courage
new talent at the forum
my tax dollars at work
character education emergency
invitation to the dance


healthfair

meanwhile, somewhere in a parallel universe

I'm going to have to have a couple of life-extending glasses of red wine tonight, I fear.

Right this minute.


update!

Ed tells me the entire 8th grade class has been given detention for being rude to the assembly speaker.

His topic: eating healthfully.

Eating what, I want to know?


update! update!

C. was praised by his English teacher today for coming up with a euphemism for masturbation: self-exploration.

She gave him a piece of candy.

"I had to wait until 12th grade to see a movie on syphillis," Ed says.


black and Hispanic students in a Natl School of Excellence
news from nowhere, redux
meanwhile, somewhere in a parallel universe
things my child learned about gay women in school this week
also playing in a parallel universe
email to the principal, part 2
further
ktm-2 readers make up a word problem for IMS
profiles in courage
new talent at the forum
my tax dollars at work
character education emergency
invitation to the dance
healthfair

178 school days left 'til summer

So.

The graphing calculator.

Probably gone, most likely stolen. First day of school. Sturm, drang, etc.

Why did you take it to school?

I thought I had to. It was on the list.

You thought you had to have a graphing calculator on the first day of school? You told me you never do any work on the first day of school.

I thought my teacher might ask to see it.

etc.

oh, brother

no common sense-y^*

no common sense-y and short attention span theater, a deadly combination

I wasn't planning to allow C. to take his hundred-dollar calculator to school ever, but, in the general chaos that is my life, I forgot to tell him so, and then I forgot to remember I'd forgotten, if that makes any sense.

It makes perfect sense to me, which just goes to show.

C., who has never, in 8 years of schooling, been asked to show his supplies to a teacher on the first day of school, went off to 8th grade fully prepared to do so just in case.

Anyway, Ed talked to Gold Star Homework Mom tonight, who said one of her kids lost 3 twenty-dollar scientific calculators last year and she made him pay for all 3. Kids steal the graphing calculators, she said, and sell them on ebay. This happens all the time.^** So this year her husband engraved their kids' names on their graphing calculators and then took the additional precaution of buying them both twenty-dollar calculators they can take to school while the hundred-dollar engraved extravaganza stays home.

So those kids now have personally engraved graphing calculators sitting on the kitchen counter in their house, while my kid's TI 84 awaits its closing bid on ebay.

Nothing like learning things the hard way.

Of course, what have I actually learned?

I've learned our family has no common sense-y and I have a short attention span.

That's not news.


^* family motto

^**Gee, do you think the school might have mentioned this in one of the gazillion greetings and newsletters and manila envelopes filled with forms but no class schedules it mailed out over the summer? Just a quick little heads-up, a "best to leave your hundred-dollar graphing calculator at home on the first day of school"-type deal?


TI 84 page on ebay
"instructional time issues"
hundred dollar calculator
178 days left 'til summer
email to the principal re: hundred dollar calculators
other people's money
what is the opposite of a silver lining?

Increased time on math and reading

The Center on Education Policy, a nonpartisan think tank, reports that schools are spending more time on math and reading instruction since NCLB was passed.

I don't think this is a bad thing, per se. It's probably a good thing, in fact.

The survey reports that about 30 more minutes a day (on average) are spent on math and reading than before. Less time is spent on social studies, science, music, art, and gym.

My only question is, why aren't they cutting character ed time for math and reading so they can preserve science, art, history, music, etc?

I'd gladly see elementary schools slash character ed in favor of math and reading, and keep the other subjects in tact.

Why isn't anyone cutting the bogus classes? How many parents would rather see time cut in science than in character ed?

I know my "high performing" school district wastes far more than 30 minutes per day in a variety of character ed kinds of things -- don't even get me started on the all school assemblies to sing and dance about "respect" and "friendship." This is where the time for math and reading instruction should come from. There is plenty of time available in the day to teach the academic subjects to mastery.

We don't need to cut one academic course in favor of another. We need to get rid of the silly stuff. Then our children will have plenty of time available for math, reading, science, history, gym, music, and art. It also wouldn't hurt to lengthen the school day in low performing schools if they really need to have more time for math and science.

greatest hits, part 4

news from nowhere (you may need to hit refresh a couple of times)

I just asked Christopher about this. He got the same assignment, but all he had to do was say how smoking would affect his 5 life goals.

No mention of cancer of the tongue.

The middle school in 2005/2006 was a very strange place. This year it's just been bomb threats and character ed 24/7.