On 4/10/07, Booth Martin <booth@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I liked the post. It shows insight and caring.
The last sentence is the whole nut to my mind. How do we get the
average kids to care?
I cut in right here in the midst of your questions because I believe this is
the question to answer first, before any of the others. If you get the kids
to care, and they learn how to work hard, these kids will always, IMO, fare
better than those that don't care and don't learn to work hard. The answer,
again (I think I'm striking a chord here?), is that it is up to the parents
to nurture the right attitude. If not them, then someone who has a major
positive influence on the child. It is difficult for me to imagine how any
child can just decide to work hard in school without the proper nurturing
role of a parent or guardian. I can almost hear the follow-up question: "Do
we just let these kids fall through the cracks?" My belief is that this
type of nurturing requires personal attention, and is not something that any
government program can solve. IMO, it really can't be a "it's takes a
village" kind of thing either, because I believe it takes a one-on-one
*personal* relationship of the type that is ideally the parent-child
relationship. If one has real concerns about this for the general
population and has the time commitments to do it, perhaps Big Brother/Big
Sister mentoring is an avenue to help. Will there be kids that fall through
the cracks? No doubt. There are all kinds of worldly ills I would like to
wave a magic wand at. Let me know when someone finds it.
Where are the jobs? Why would any kid want to
work hard, get average grades, graduate, and get a job schlepping
fries? Where are the middle class jobs today? Not everyone is going to
be above average, in fact probably only about half the people will be
above average. So where does the below average person go to get a
worthwhile job?
I cannot guarantee to my "engineering" kid that he will have a high-paying
and/or satisfying job in ten years, but I like his odds a whole lot better
than the kids just "sliding" through school. Personally, I don't believe
that kids should look at the state of the job market to determine how hard
they should work at school. Is getting a good job the only reason we send
our kids to school? I realize that the older a child gets, the more that
his/her attention focuses on "life after school". But this shouldn't be a
*major* focus until the 12th grade, maybe 11th. The focus should be to
teach them how to learn, and how to work hard, and that rewards will
normally follow, but also there are never any guarantees in this life. If
the work ethic is ingrained at an early age, the 12th grader is less likely
to look at those questions you asked and just slack off.
Again, just my 2¢,
Dan
Dan wrote:
> ... For the most part, the kids at these schools are there
> because they want to be. I believe this is key.
>
> Just my 2¢,
> Dan
>
