Reply to Algebra 1 - In 6th Grade

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am a STEM professor and I’m becoming increasingly frustrated at the way many students view their education as a series of boxes to be checked rather than an opportunity to learn. Now that I have kids who are getting older, I can see that this starts early. The school districts create this mentality of “hurry up and get to the next thing”. It’s a real problem when mentoring them in a research lab because they aren’t learning how to think about scientific questions in a way that will help them become independent investigators one day. Parents seem very caught up in which AP courses are offered at their kids’ high school. These kids are taking AP courses in subjects on which they have no interest, all so they can show rigor on their college applications. Again, just boxes to be checked rather than exploring interests. Very few students show true intellectual curiosity anymore. They just want to know what they need to do to get a certain grade or to get the project done. 
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The place where the blame lies is with the colleges and their admissions process and not with ES, MS or HS.  ES, MS and HS programs and kids are merely responding to the onslaught of information being put out by admissions offices at colleges, college counselors, high school counselors and products like Naviance which tells a kid whether they are "on track" to get into the college they are interested in.  It has become a crazy mess and I totally agree that it is all about a checkbox mark, but I disagree on where to place the blame--it absolutely belongs with colleges and the state of college admissions today.  [/quote]

I am sure this comes as no surprise, but the people in upper admin and the admissions offices certainly don’t ask professors what they want to see in the students they will be teaching. So I would hope parents can talk to their kids and tell them that no one is going to be impressed with them once they are in college if all they care about is points on an assignment or completing research or other hand on tasks without understanding why. If they want to be better than AI they will need to bring some kind of value to their future workplace in terms of being able to take in information, think critically about it, and ask the right questions.  [/quote]

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