On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 2:04 PM, Val Smith<vsm...@ku.edu> wrote:
I lay much of this decline at the feet of their parents, who seem to care
progressively less and less about knowledge. I recall a particularly
notable incident from over a decade ago, when my youngest daughter's grade
school Principal retired. The new Principal unilaterally decided that
Science Fair projects for grades 2-6 should become completely voluntary,
rather than remaining as a formal requirement that had long been
embedded in
this school's outstanding science preparation curriculum. On the
day of the
science project evaluations, I expressed dismay about this undesirable
change to another parent, who at that time was almost 20 years my junior.
Her response was to shout across the room to her husband, "John (not his
real name), this guy thinks everybody should have to do a science fair
project, and /that this is all about learning science/!" and she
then turned
to me to say, "If everyone has to do a project, that lowers the chance that
our child will win the Best Science Project award. That's unfair
competition." And she walked away.
As I was reading your post, I was hoping you would mention the role of
parents in any decline in the quality of the American education.
I think it started with the baby boom. After the Depression and World War
II, parents wanted the best for their children, but by providing the best
materially, many raised children with an inflated sense of entitlement and
self-importance. When these children raised my generation, self-esteem was
seen as the most important quality you could promote in a developing mind,
so many of us grew up feeling even more entitled and important. Also, since
self-important people like today's parents don't respect authority figures,
parents now tend to side with their children over teachers when there is a
student-teacher conflict. Worse, since the entire class is, on average,
not as prepared as it should be to learn the material you're trying to
teach, disgruntled students can look to low average performance for the
whole class to assure themselves that it's your fault if they don't get high
marks. With students and parents both blaming you for low grades, and a low
class average apparently supporting their arguments, it's easiest to lower
your expectations and standards. (And you'll probably get higher teaching
evaluation scores if you do.) When you do, you end up passing on students
who aren't prepared for the next level of education.
I understand the importance of questioning authority, and Wendee Holtcamp's
example of childbirth in American hospitals attests to that
importance (though I believe the doctors rush the delivery because they're
trained to believe it's best for the patient, not because they put their
spare time ahead of patient care). However, there's an important
distinction between questioning authority and assuming authority is wrong.
With respect to the original conversation thread, while I certainly agree
that it's a problem that people with the appearance of authority are making
BS claims on television, I don't think that's the only major threat to
scientific authority. Another threat is the widely-held perception that
any scientist who thinks they know more than you do about their area of
expertise is arrogant (and wrong). Because scientific knowledge is
contingent on future results, scientists sometimes find themselves admitting
that they were wrong about something. Unlike pundits or politicians,
scientists can't blame some other party, and people will hold onto those
errors as evidence that we're not as clever as we think we are, so they can
ignore us if they don't like our message. Also, some people just don't like
smart people much, so mistakes made by smart people are cherished as proof
that they aren't so smart after all.
Mind you, I have little evidence for most of the generalities I'm making
here, but this is just my model of why students seem to be less prepared
than they used to and why scientific authority doesn't get the respect I
think it should.
Jim Crants
