There are some good points in this article (although the irony of
Stanford inveighing against elitism is pretty broad). When the author
writes, however, that students today have no time to hang out or delve
into deep problems or reflect on what they are learning, I suspect that
she has strung together disparate aspects of her own mental life and
theirs.
I only wish the problems I ran into were overworking students.
Admittedly, York is not elite by any measure. I am still surprised
(well, maybe just saddened) that in my stats class every year, some do
not know what an exponent is, most do not know what a factorial is, and
nearly all are unable to do (or even follow?) the three lines of algebra
I perform each year to convert a simple power formula into one that
gives the number of subjects required (I am so used to NOT losing them
with the phrase solve for n that I can hardly say it anymore). Perhaps
they have been too busy learning the finer points of soccer and piano.
If so, I am content with that trade-off. Perhaps too many of them have
full-time jobs on the side. If so, then it is one of the few problems
that can be easily solved by the application of money (and we should do
that). I fear, however, that too many have been too busy learning Grand
Theft Auto and Call of Duty.
Chris
--
Christopher D. Green
Department of Psychology
York University
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3
Canada
416-736-2100 ex. 66164
chri...@yorku.ca
http://www.yorku.ca/christo/
==
Mike Palij wrote:
On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:31:53 -0800, Edward Pollak wrote:
I wish I could send TIPS some of the blog entries written by a
young cousin of mine who was teaching English in China at some
private schools for the children of fairly wealthy families. The poor
work ethic, sense of entitlement, lack of respect for authority
that she described (for the majority of her students) was appalling
even by modern American standards. Of course she also describes
some outstanding students but these were a decided minority. If you
consider that only the cream of the Chinese crop get to come to
the USA for study, the comparison made in the original article is
not a fair one.
I don't mean to defend the lack of work ethic in the bulk of our
modern student body you can't compare what are likely elite Chinese
students with run-of-the-mill American students. Another factor: the
Chinese students are likely from the privileged classes and don't have
to hold down part or full time jobs while studying here. Many of our
students do.
The issue of biased sampling in U.S. account of students should also
be kept in mind. Consider the following article which talks about
U.S. students who are likely to be elite as well though the point of
the article is that trying to be elite may take a significant toll; see:
http://ed.stanford.edu/suse/faculty/displayFacultyNews.php?tablename=notify1id=401
In NYC, the financial and social elite often reckon the trajectory of
their children's educational and social life course at an early age.
This is what make stories about not getting one's child into the
right pre-school program so hilarious and so sad.
-Mike Palij
New York University
m...@nyu.edu
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