An article on foxnews.com today caught my eye: Study: Many Teens Overconfident, Parents to Blame. The article states that, after years of research by Jean Twenge of San Diego State University, compared to the 1970s, teens today are overconfident and are very unrealistic about future aspirations. Parents and teachers are the number one cause of this, according to the study. Parents give out endless praises to children inspiring them to do what ever they set their minds to. Teachers "give out" 'A's more often than they did in the 1970s. The study also states that statistics show students today have far less homework compared to 1970s' students.
When I was growing up, I remember my parents were always pushing me to have straight 'A's in school and to participate in AP courses or the gifted and talented program. This always bothered me. It wasn't that I wasn't capable of doing these things because I was. My parents always told me that I could grow up to do anything I wanted and that college was always in my future. They wanted me to have what they didn't have. I think this was common for most of the kids that I grew up with in school. The part that bothered me was the feeling that my parents were pushing their childhood aspirations on to me. They wanted me to accomplish what they never had the option to. This leads me to agree that parents are partly to blame for this new overconfidence. After being repeatedly told "You can do or be anything you want to be." you eventually start to believe that.
Other factors could be involved in this rise in confidence. If you think back to the 1970s there wasn't as many career options out there as there are now. This time period was on the verge of the shift from kids growing up and doing exactly what their parents wanted to kids having their own thoughts on future careers. This could have had an affect on the data that was collected.
I am very grateful that I did in fact take those advanced courses in school. I will be the first to admit that my high school courses were hard. I had homework every night. I also worked full time hours most weeks, sometimes getting overtime. But I still graduated with a 3.9 GPA, and I worked my butt off for it. While not all high schools are the same, I know that my classes were not as hard as they could have been. I've know others that went to various other high schools and had much harder courses than my AP classes. But I am going to have to disagree with teachers "giving out" 'A's. My yearbook advisor had a poster on her podium that I saw every day for three years. "I don't give out grades. You earn them." I witnessed this on every exam, homework assignment and class activity. Yearbook was not a free-for-all class like some thought. There was a certain amount of points you had to earn each nine weeks by taking pictures, writing articles, completing page spreads, selling ads or various other tasks assigned. I know some of the smartest kids that failed yearbook because they didn't participate or didn't want to put in the effort. So, no, teacher don't "give out" grades.
I'm don't know exactly where the research came from for this article but I think there are many factors to be taken into account for the way the statistics fell.
No comments:
Post a Comment