Recently, I opened a discussion about the difficulties that are often inherent in school assignments such as science projects and research papers. I ended the post with a question:
If requiring students to complete challenging projects (like a
research paper) creates so much misery, why are we still doing it?
Today, an observation: In many cases, educators aren’t requiring
such projects anymore.
Why? Because
so many students describe these kinds of assignments with words like this:
Time-consuming
Inconvenient
Challenging
Unpleasant
Uninteresting
Unnecessary
Perhaps one word builds upon another in this
way:
Such projects are time-consuming,
which makes them inconvenient.
which makes them inconvenient.
This inconvenience creates a challenge,
which causes students to
experience a certain amount of unpleasantness.
Unpleasantness causes students to grow uninterested.
And if students are uninterested,
such assignments must be, by
definition, unnecessary.
In short, such projects aren’t engaging.
And, because the world of education has put such an
emphasis on creating classwork which engages our students, teachers are working
from a new set of criteria. If an
assignment is to be considered engaging, it must at least minimize--or, better yet, complete avoid--being labeled with one or more of the above-mentioned traits.
Yet as I work to meet this new set of criteria, a troubling question keeps emerging:
Despite (and perhaps as a result of) all of our efforts,
are educators undermining the very skills we claim to be cultivating?
I hope not,
but I'm afraid so.
In our efforts to engage our students,
we are unintentionally but actively
enabling their sense of entitlement
rather than encouraging their sense of efficacy.
but I'm afraid so.
In our efforts to engage our students,
we are unintentionally but actively
enabling their sense of entitlement
rather than encouraging their sense of efficacy.
I've been thinking about this a bit, and one way I've framed it is that we've redefined "engaging" to mean "makes them smile." And yes, I think educators are culpable, for a number of reasons. One of these reasons that it is nearly impossible to conceive an engaging, challenging assignment that doesn't include lots of one-on-one time with each student. Others include exhaustion, fear of reprisal from the "customer," and complacency. All of the fault cannot rest on a broken system; they are still students and we are still teachers. The responsibility remains. How to make things better? I'll wait for that gritology post....
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