Reply to What did the top 10% of students do differently?

Forum Index » Schools and Education General Discussion

Reply to "What did the top 10% of students do differently?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m a teacher in a Title I school. The teachers in my school work hard and many kids work hard and their scores don’t reflect the hard work. I do think IQ is genetic and I also think that environmental influences greatly impact memory and learning. So my students who were born from a mom who couldn’t afford good prenatal care into a family where the parents have to work two jobs and the kids  are cared for by an older sibling, who have poor nutrition because they can’t afford better, who don’t sleep well because there are 4 families living loudly in one apartment…well all the odds are stacked against them. [/quote]

I used to teach at a Title 1 and agree with this. It's not just nature and not just nurture, it's the whole package. Sometimes kids from these rough backgrounds show these sparks of intelligence early on, but the home environment combined with peer pressure from the community (which is often very anti-intellectual) stamps it out.

It is very hard for someone with a high school education or less to raise a college-bound kid. Not impossible, it happens, and we should rightly commend the parents who manage to do it. It takes a lot of self discipline and a level of maturity you don't see in every parent (even the educated, wealthy ones). One thing that can happen is that uneducated parents who have kids young can become envious of a child who is showing signs of academic promise. They almost view their kid as a rival. It's very sad.

People are more products of their parents than we culturally believe. Not just genetics but everything (including genetics). We have this fantasy of individualism in the US, that can manifest as a belief that every person is a blank slate and a meritocracy will enable them to go as far as their own hard work will carry them. It's just not true. So much about our lives are scripted before we are even born. You can do more or less with your lot in life, but everyone doesn't start in the same place at all. And never will. Even if everyone had the same amount of money and academic opportunities (not possible, but pretend), there would be kids who were loved and nurtured and encouraged to succeed and kids who were not. Guess who would go further? It's not rocket science.

The best thing you can do for your kids, regardless of your socioeconomic status, is encourage and support them to learn and keep learning. If your child's learning starts to exceed your own, find opportunities for them to be around adults with more education than you. Put them among kids who value learning, whose families value learning. I'm not rich but this is what I have done and my kid is a straight A student. She works hard but I do whatever I can to put her in a position where her hard work matters.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics