Funny how I came across this article that almost reads like it is
talking about this very debate.
http://nyti.ms/9ksQQr
“The larger cause of failure is almost unmentionable: shrunken student
motivation,” wrote Samuelson. “Students, after all, have to do the work.
If they aren’t motivated, even capable teachers may fail. Motivation
comes from many sources: curiosity and ambition; parental expectations;
the desire to get into a ‘good’ college; *inspiring or intimidating
teachers*; peer pressure. The unstated assumption of much school
‘reform’ is that if students aren’t motivated, it’s mainly the fault of
schools and teachers.” Wrong, he said. “Motivation is weak because more
students (of all races and economic classes, let it be added) don’t like
school, don’t work hard and don’t do well. ...’ ”
"... it is a microcosm of a larger problem we have not faced honestly as
we have dug out of this recession: We had a values breakdown — *a
national epidemic of get-rich-quickism and something-for-nothingism*. ..."
Enjoy the read... being on the opposite side of students I still
advocate for not pushing the blame to them before ensuring that we have
done everything possible on our side.
cheers, Mulo
On 15/09/2010 09:38, Arinda JB wrote:
Having followed this discussion closely i feel i also need to put in my
view especially having been a student a few years ago.
first every generation will always have something to destruct them from
Reading fortunately or unfortunately currently its face book. I remember
at our time my friends who were offering other causes not Computer
science like me made me look a failure in life after i failed to give
them 'Click here' steps on how to access chart rooms. Chat rooms were
the leading motivating factor for students to become computer Literate.
Secondly i remember Paul used to always remind us that Programming is
not Magic but Logic and all you need it to break the problem down to
small parts etc etc although almost every one was quietly disagreeing.
The biggest problem there is fear and some one made it clear with that
typical statement of "how do you expect someone from Kihihi.........".
Make a competition for EA you will be over whelmed by applicants but
tell them that even the son of Bill G can apply for the competition and
many MUK students will ignore it and open their face book pages.
Another thing Programmer don't want to acknowledge is that Programming
in very Hard especially for starters hence takes extreme stubbornness at
least in our uganda for a student to choose it among the other available
alternative fields in IT.
I back my submission with a life example of a girl i found in MUK
labs wondering how her code of seven lines was giving double errors i.e
14 errors. She confessed she had been trying to debug the program for 4
hour but all in vain. On looking at her code i showed her a semi colony
that was missing and the program compiled well instead of her being
happy i saw tears in her eyes as she made one statement that "no wander
all our programming lecturers are sadists they always just want to get
us retakes if this is what the do for a leaving then they must already
be insane! "
Tell me what you can do to such a girl to join Google code summer. You
blame Lecturers for northing they have done their parts but some
decisions are taken by individuals and becoming a ruthless programmer
is one of them.
Just my thoughts
Regards
Arinda JB
On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 7:25 PM, Mike Barnard <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 4:36 PM, Mugarura Cavin <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Lug,
i like the very good ideas, that have come in,
problem is, am not sure, if we are treating symptoms or the core
of the problem.
its very easy to blame students, lecturers, and the weather. We
can also throw around very cool ideas, and my question is, what
will be the real effect. Since we have baseline data for the
past few years (as zero), can we predict that next year we shall
have 15 students, since these ideas that are very good, have
been circulated.
Uganda, was more developed than Singapore, and many of the Asian
Tigers. The problem is not students, who dont read, or lecturers
who use "Databases for Dummies". The problem is else where,
short of solving the problem, we can whine all day, and the real
effect will be zero.
Cavin, you say, 'the problem is else where' meaning that it is not
students who are not interested or lectures who cannot create an
enabling environment... so, where or what is this problem that you
have seen?
--
Mike
Of course, you might discount this possibility, but remember that one in
a million chances happen 99% of the time.
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