by Amanda Ripley
Your kids are off from school by now, enjoying their summer, but in South Korea, students are still hard at work. The other day, I sat in on a public school class at a high school just outside of Seoul. It was an English class, and the kids were doing comedy sketches as part of their midterm exams. Two by two, they pulled out sunglasses, electric guitars and assorted other props and performed skits they had written in English.
The Korean school system is not famous for fun. But in that classroom at Jeong Bal High School on that day, great fun was had. The kids blushed, laughed and cheered. I saw scorned lovers, burned-out rock stars and, perhaps inevitably, a “Who farted?” skit, which was the audience favorite despite its questionable narrative arc.
In fact, the class could have been in America, a country renowned for its creativity – except for one critical difference. After all the students sat down, still tittering about their theatrical exploits, the teacher walked to the front of the room and read their names and grades aloud. It happened so fast and with so little ado that I almost didn’t notice. The kids listened to their scores, which ranged from mediocre to perfect, and then headed off to their next class.
I’ve spent the past few months traveling around the world visiting different schools and trying to figure out what we can learn from them back home. In Korean high schools, kids all know each other’s grades and class rank. High school tests are all graded on a curve. This competition goes too far, as anyone in Korea will tell you. But I am starting to suspect that American schools have the opposite problem.
Kids here are protected from competition and suffering, even in high school. In a 2010 survey sponsored by Intel, for example, 85 percent of the American teenagers interviewed said they were very or somewhat confident in their math and science abilities – despite our consistently unimpressive performance on the world stage in both subjects.
In a 2003 OECD test of 15-year-olds around the world, kids were asked whether they generally get good grades in math. Out of 41 countries and regions, guess which country scored highest? A blaring 72 percent of American kids reported that they get good grades in math, topping the world – even as our kids’ work ranked 24th on the actual math problems on the very same exam.
The kids who knew the most math on that test tended to come from countries where good grades were scarce. In Japan, only 28 percent of kids said they got good marks in math. In Korea, only 36 percent said so.
I returned home from Korea to discover Lori Gottlieb’s Atlantic cover story on how the cult of self-esteem parenting is handicapping our kids. Since the 1980s, indicators of self-esteem have gone up among U.S. middle-school, high-school and college students, she reported. But at the same time, rates of anxiety and depression have risen among these cohorts. As a psychotherapist, Gottlieb noticed this generational emptiness in many of her young patients – and began to see the connections in her life as a parent. Modern parents, she argues, bend over backwards to protect their kids from falling – and then wonder why they have such poor balance when they grow up.
This same culture of coddling extends to the classroom. Despite all our agonizing about over-testing our kids, the vast majority of standardized tests have zero consequences. We call them “high-stakes” tests, but they are only high-stakes for our schools and (in some places) our teachers. They are no-stakes for kids, who are likely to experience far more agonizing over real life’s setbacks on the football field than they do in the classroom.
In fact, in other parts of the world, from Korea to Finland to Poland, standardized tests are used very differently – primarily to motivate and sort students, not schools. Although upper-income American parents lament the pressure on their kids to get into a top university or get a high SAT score, that stress is child’s play compared to what other kids experience in the fastest-growing economies in the world. Relatively speaking, we wait until our kids grow up to let them discover (too late) that the world is a brutally competitive place.
Interestingly, American kids are clear-eyed about our country’s academic limitations overall. On that same 2010 Intel survey, even as a healthy majority of the American kids said they get high marks in math, 90 percent of them ranked other countries as better at math and science.
Lucky for them, American kids aren’t graded on a global curve. Indeed, they take math in a special class, quite apart from the rest of the world. This class is a rather dull and forgiving place, relatively speaking. American math classes offer less challenging content, as evidenced by multiple studies comparing curricula in different nations. They are often taught by teachers who know less math themselves than their counterparts in top-performing countries. And in this soft moon bounce of a classroom, most of our kids have little reason to doubt their own prowess.
Now, before I am accused of being just another ruthless Tiger Mother, I should be clear about what I am suggesting. I don’t want to emulate the Korean education system. The kids sit in school all day and then spend another four to nine hours studying in private tutoring academies or on their own. Even though Korean kids outperform most of the world in math, reading and science, they do so at an unreasonable cost. Korean kids tend to be miserable in high school, which partly explains their high teenage suicide rate.
But that doesn’t mean that we can’t learn from some of Korea’s successes, or from other kinder, gentler nations that still manage to foster more accountability in grading. Take Finland, where kids are not even allowed to receive grades until about age 11, yet good marks in math are far harder to come by than in the U.S. On the same 2003 OECD exam, 56 percent of Finns reported receiving good math grades (16 percentage points fewer than in the U.S.), even as the same Finnish kids ranked No. 1 in the world on the actual math portion of the test.
Our schools have a lot of problems, and many of them have nothing to do with our kids’ motivation. But the shortage of rigor and professionalism among too many American superintendents, principals and teachers trickles down to the students, where not enough is expected of our kids – for all kinds of reasons.
At this moment in history, America is engaged in a divisive, painful fight to finally improve its schools at scale. To remain competitive in a fast-changing world, we are demanding more from our teachers than we ever have before. We should do the same from our kids – even if it makes them (and us) uncomfortable.
Amanda Ripley is a Bernard L. Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation. Her forthcoming book, The Smart Kids Club: How other Countries Saved Their Schools (And Taught Their Kids to Think), will be published by Simon & Schuster in 2012.
*Photo courtesy of sansreproache.
I own a small company and constantly struggle with these coddled youths as the enter into society. It is amazing to me how these youngsters have entered the workforce totally enamored with themselves, and – quite frankly – unhinged from objectively evaluating their own performance. And I hire only college graduates. In addition to an overestimation of their capabilities, I also see a lot of confusion about their roles vis-a-vis others in the company, particularly supervisors. They want to be equals before they earned the right to that status. Not sure how this will all play out, but I do yearn for a young generation that is more capable, more qualified, and more respectful.
I am a former teacher and the mother of two very successful young adults. I still spend some time working in the schools, and I am passionate about the topic of education.
I generally disagree with your assertions, although I understand that this is a complicated topic. In fact, it is the simplicity of your approach to this topic that concerns me.
You make the sweeping statement that self-esteem is rising while feelings of anxiety and depression are rising, as well. Yes?…And?…
How do you come to this correlation between self-esteem and depression? You mention emptiness. How does “emptiness” result from high self-esteem? How exactly does empowerment result in anxiety? I don’t get the connection here.
Is it possible that our kids feel empty because our society has chosen to value capitalism over community? I can list you hundreds of examples of messages that our kids receive each day that would make anyone depressed, but I won’t. Suffice it to say, we live in a society that says we value life and then we systematically, institutionally, fundamentally behave in a way that contradicts this value. That’s enough to drive anyone to the liquor store or the medicine cabinet.
We are teaching our kids to think! I witness kids learning every day. The primary problem with our schools is the funding structure. You know how it works. I don’t have to go into detail here.
I’m just really frustrated with this whole “scapegoat the uppity youth” mentality that has emerged in recent years, This scapegoating is being spewed very successfully into the national mindset by…my generation! I guess we are regretful and jealous. Hmmm, I think this is called middle age. And this is just one more example of how some elements in society are trying to turn back the clock and rescind social gains that have been made in the past 30 years.
I empowered my kids and have tried to empower every single kid I have ever come into contact with, and I will continue to do so. I am a child advocate. I am not afraid of progress.
Please, please, please! Let’s start identifying and talking about the real problems, society’s structural problems that are making both kids and adults “depressed.”
Trust me on this. Today’s youth is more dedicated, compassionate and worldly than past generations. We need to continue to empower them with all the self-esteem in the world. And we need to support them instead of moaning and groaning about how many awards they get. (Really, think about it. Doesn’t that sound kind of petty? “I mean, where were my awards?”)
So while some may want to turn back the clock to the “good old days” when a young person knew his or her place and self-esteem was just a term for something you were told you needed but knew you didn’t have, I say let’s give each kid an award every day just for being willing to show up and participate in this huge, often ugly mess of a society that previous generations have made.
To address Lisa Scott first — there is a huge problem with giving a kid an award for just showing up. I used to be a tutor at a center for educationally handicapped kids (children who have no learning disability, but some gap in their prior education that causes them to be unable to learn things years later — often very difficult to diagnose, but once discovered, can lead to rapid learning and easily catching up with their peers). I had a student struggle with one issue for weeks, and when he finally got a breakthrough, it was huge — for both of us. I literally cried, and he could not wait to tell his parents.
The next day, he was so down I could hardly get him to speak. He told me his parents “didn’t care at all.” I was shocked. I had met these people. They were very invested in his education and progress (believe me, our center was not cheap).
I made him explain further, and he told me that when he showed the work to his mom, she said it was great. I didn’t see a problem with that, but then he said, “She says everything is great. If I get out of bed or hang up my clothes, she tells me how great I am. Can’t she see that this really was great?”
He was so distressed that there was no way to show his parents that he’d actually achieved something, which made it a lot harder to get him to work as diligently again to achieve the next thing. Kids know when they’re being snowed, but by then, it’s often too late. Self esteem, without the achievement to merit it, is completely hollow. And that hollowness is what leads to emptiness and depression. Do you watch American Idol? Do you see how many kids who cannot sing truly believe that they can because they’ve been praised their whole lives for something they are not good at, which might have just kept them from working to get good at something they could have achieved. Self-esteem is the enemy of self-worth, and if we want our kids to have self-worth, they have to work for it.
As to Amanda Ripley’s great article — there is a giant element missing here, and that is the pressure on American schools to give good grades to get students into the right colleges or grad schools.
Do you know what the grading standards are at Stanford? You cannot fail a class. If you get an F, the class simply never shows up on the transcript. Students can drop a class after the final exam if they feel they didn’t get a good enough grade, with it never showing up on the transcript. One of my colleagues from another university was teaching there and had a student turn in his paper and take-home final two days after grades were due (4 and 3-weeks late, respectively), and he gave him a B, docking the grade for the lateness, but making the mistake of telling the student it was A work that only got the B because it was late. The student filed a grade protest and on investigation (yes, my colleague was required to write a formal explanation of the grade), the administration changed the grade to an A, claiming that A work should receive an A.
What are those students learning — that there are no consequences to failing, or getting a lower grade, or turning work in late? How will they perform in the workplace, when there are no do-overs?
Grade inflation is so egregious that admissions departments have to keep grade adjustment charts that track which schools’ grades can be trusted and which can’t, which sadly makes a multiple choice test (the SAT or GRE) the only field leveler, which harms a lot of great thinkers who express themselves better in essay form.
High expectations, delivered in a firm, loving way, lead to high achievement. Rewards for mediocrity lead to more mediocrity. Nobody should get a trophy for just showing up. This county wasn’t built by people who just showed up.
Good and interesting article
I can tell you this, I have taught grades 3,4,5, and 6 for 12 years. Here are some of the problems that exist for some of us who actually teach kids.
In my case at this particular school where I’ve been working for 5 years: Only about 1/2 of my students complete all their homework, despite my efforts to “facilitate” their ability to complete it without parent help, incentives/rewards, notes, and calls home.
I have spent a lot of my lunches and break times sitting with students who don’t complete assignments, checking in late assignments during instructional time to make sure it’s done before they go home because there’s no follow up at home. Or checking in on students after school, delaying my lesson planning, tutoring students, and correcting the work of the 50% who DO do their assignments. Despite countless emails, notes, and calls home I don’t get the parents to follow through on getting their kids to complete their assignments.
I buy incentives to keep motivating those students who work hard because I know they witness how their classmates keep passing from grade to grade (and getting ipods from mom and dad) when they do very little work. What do you think happens when I try to assign more interesting or rigorous projects that I hope will lead to class discussions and class presentations? The same half of kids does a good job and the other half does not, or doesn’t even turn it in. This has a very negative effect on lesson planning and the progress of the whole class because I have to manage and teach BOTH the half who works and the half that doesn’t.
Another example: My colleague last year wrote a letter to the students and the parents of the upcoming 6th grade class. It included a reading list with great literature at various reading levels for the students to choose a book they could actually read over the summer. Just ONE book, so that the teachers could form discussion groups and develop reading comprehension activities in September. I thought this was such a great idea (especially considering the school year is shortened now). How many kids do you think came back having read the book? Less than 1/2. Do you think that same teacher is going to once again take the time to compile a list of books at various levels, type up a letter, and enclose it for 78 parents/students?
I couldn’t agree more with all of the comments made by Lisa M, Lisa S. and Valerie A, and I will shed some light on this problem as well. I’m 55 and have worked nearly all my life (30+ yrs) in small and large law firms starting from the bottom up as a word processor; ending my career as a paralegal. I’ve seen every kind of young kid come in, and no matter the gender, age, ethnicity, etc., the majority of them have these same characteristics. Many end up leaving because in legal work one, generally, will not be coddled and they find this out within the first month. Oh, there are exceptions because they were hired as a favor, etc., but if they can’t deliver they are summarily dismissed. Believe it or not, the real problem is not about self-esteem, competition, suffering, abuse, depression, neglect, or even drugs. The problem is the lack of work-ethic. It’s true, this generation is probably the best and brightest; they’ve had ever technological resource at their fingertips; every advantage no matter their financial background. And, their parents have seen to it that they get the best education starting from pre-school age; I’m all for that, too. No, there’s nothing wrong with their brain power or competitiveness or anything of that sort, even if you threw in drug abuse, that’s not the problem. The REAL problem is lack of work ethic. They don’t know how to work, take orders, wait in line, pay their dues, patiently await results for their efforts, treat their co-workers AND bosses with respect. It’s become a society of really bright kids who want INSTANT results and will not take no for an answer nor will they apply real work ethics to achieve success. That’s why they are unhappy and move around a lot. Business management knows this. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had to take over for these youngsters who are smarter than me, I’m sure, but they don’t want to do the “dirty work” to get the job done. Personally, I was always excited to work with and mentor them, but many people were not. Partners and management always felt these kids were too “coddled” from their parents, schools, society and were lacking the fundamental responsibilities to prepare them for real work. For the most part, parents need to go back to basics and instill serious work ethics in their kids with duties/responsibilities focused in their OWN homes and communities, alongside schooling. For myself, I can remember working as a young girl around 8 yrs. old with small chores and then working every summer picking berries at local farms and doing odd jobs throughout the year and all through high school. As a matter of fact, my social security status reflects that I began working and paying into my SS at the age of 14! Contributing about $32 or $64 that first year, but the truth is I was babysitting and working at small jobs years before that. So, for a gal who had been working non-stop for nearly 45 years, I say we need to teach our children how to learn to LOVE to work to secure their future, but that must start in the home at a reasonable age; if not, you see the results.
[...] {repost from Zocalo Public Square} [...]
Very quickly, I’d like to point out that Ms. Lisa Scott’s response was quite good and that her final paragraph, the one in which she said, “I say let’s give each kid an award every day just for being willing to show up,” was clearly a rhetorical flourish and ought not to be taken as a summation of her lucid insights.
In support of Ms. Doukissa and others, I would like to offer a reason for the lack of work ethic being so pervasive. We live in a world where Google clicks “Enter” for us. The general sense of our technology, that is, harder/better/faster/stronger/everything right now/oh oh oh explode right now auggghhhh!!!!, is a constant cycle of desire and gratification. This is controlled by the neurotransmitter dopamine, and of the prevalent chemicals in our brain, dopamine is the one that is easiest to manipulate. It would seem that the field of advertising, which is a field best served by technology, figured this brain-chemical secret out before the rest of us knew what had happened.
So, unfortunately, we’ve got a lot of work to do to catch up.
The point is, if we want our kids to work hard, (and, as a teacher for ten years and the son of a teacher for thirty, I agree that a good half of them aren’t), we need to address our societal behavior too. It’s a “meet in the middle” sort of deal: we are affected by both individual choices and societal pressure at the same time, and until we are aware of both, nothing can change.