A hype-heavy treatment of a recent study (named vaguely as the “American Freshman Survey,” in the article, but not actually cited or dated… I found a copy of a 2011 report).
While students are much more likely to call themselves gifted in writing abilities, objective test scores actually show that their writing abilities are far less than those of their 1960s counterparts. Also on the decline is the amount of time spent studying, with little more than a third of students saying they study for six or more hours a week compared to almost half of all students claiming the same in the late 1980s. —Mail Online.
Successful people with high self-esteem have a good reason to esteem themselves highly — they’re successful people.
We’re confusing causation and correlation if we start out with the high self esteem first, rather than encouraging students to choose their goals carefully and be willing to work hard for those goals, and praising students when they can point to the concrete progress they’ve made towards those goals.
Lou Recine Ofs liked this on Facebook.
ha, I think the more awesome thing to do would be to redo the title to match what facebook did –
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151169764262551&set=a.10150137415507551.281040.603452550&type=1&theater
A title saying “Even those that can’t read or writ” is hilarious for an article on how college students think they’re awesome but can’t actually read or write… :D
Reading and writing are fairly well covered here in our schools (and are supplemented by my children’s mother, aka, moi). However, what I find to be sorely lacking is any fruitful discussion about how to study.
For grades K through 6 the kids are given study guides for each test. This is fine for children who need extra help in organizing thoughts, have executive functioning issues, fine motor problems, etc. However, when the children hit middle school in 7th grade, the school admin. and teachers suddenly expect the kids to know how to synthesize information from texts, take notes, and study. There are no lessons in this, no instruction–just the “go forth and do.”
This problem is echoed with group projects as well: teachers don’t teach students how to divvy up the workload responsibilities and benefits. Without showing how to elect a leader, meet deadlines, etc. how do we expect our children to try to do this right?
Tres interresant!
Curse you, limited line lengths! The full title ends with “…can’t read or write and barely study”
The headline on facebook says “even those that can’t read or writ”…lol