Chemical Education Today
Editorial
Getting By If we challenge students with higher standards and a more structured learning environment, will they learn more? How will they respond? With hostility? Frustration? Indifference? Or thanks? A report titled Getting By: What American Teenagers Really Think about Their Schools (1) provides some answers—and challenges for all of us who teach at any level. Public Agenda, founded two decades ago by Daniel Yankelovich and former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, carries out studies of critical policy issues to help both the general public and the nation’s leaders understand better the public’s point of view (2). Getting By is one of six reports on education that document what Americans expect from public education, why support for public schools is in jeopardy, what public school teachers think about how education in general and their students in particular are faring, how teachers of teachers view public education, and what employers and college and university faculty think about the quality of the product of the K–12 education system. In just over 50 pages, Getting By documents and analyzes the telephone-survey responses of 1000 randomly selected public high school students within the continental United States, an oversampling of several specific groups, and discussions with a dozen focus groups. Here is a very brief summary of its nine key findings: •
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Most teenagers believe that “getting an education” is important, would like to do well in school, admire classmates who make good grades, are somewhat skeptical of “highly educated” people, and plan to continue their education beyond high school because it is essential to a good career. Most students do not actively dislike their schools, but many say that there are too many disruptive students, classes are too crowded, and there is insufficient discipline and challenge in the schools they attend. Teenagers see very little reason to study academic subjects such as history, science, and literature; they exhibit little curiosity or sense of wonder and view most of what they learn in their classes—apart from basic skills and values—as tedious and irrelevant. Many of these attitudes seem to have come from adults, including teachers. Teenagers support the call for higher academic standards that all students should have to meet. They say they can get good grades with little effort and that higher standards would prompt them and their classmates to learn more. Students have honed to a sharp edge the skill of just getting by. Students think that having good teachers is the most influential factor in helping them to learn more. Tougher requirements and tests will not suffice to spark genuine commitment to excellence. Students sometimes look back with gratitude to a teacher who had seemed too demanding a year or two before.
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Students’ expectations of an excellent teacher are very high. Interesting, engaging teachers who care about them personally are the ideal, and teachers who are demanding and consistent are respected. But only 30% of public school students say that most of their teachers care personally about them. Both students and teachers complain of a lack of civility and respect in public schools, of widespread cheating, and of a teen culture that is destructively obsessed with clothes and looks. Minority students are more likely to identify poor teaching and lack of discipline and order as problems. They are also more likely to say that traditional academic course work is important and that a strong academic background is essential for success. Private-school students give their schools and teachers outstanding ratings and perceive their classmates as more respectful of teachers than do public-school students.
The main message from the authors of Getting By is reflected in the title of their report. Students have perfected the art of getting by, and, reading between the lines, so have we as teachers. It seems clear that students recognize that they could be working harder. They seem ready and willing to be challenged and motivated to achieve more, and they think they need to be. It is appropriate for us as teachers to raise the barrier in creative and supportive ways. I have a tendency to try to help students so much that they may end up not doing the work themselves, and I think this is a pitfall that many of us face. Indeed I see it as a failing of the field of education in general—empathy and generosity can lead to our underestimating and underutilizing students’ abilities to learn for themselves and solve their own problems. We set standards that are too low, with a resulting loss of respect on the part of both students and the public at large. The students surveyed by Public Agenda are crying out for teachers who respect them enough to ask for their very best performance, many of them are insulted by the minimal demands placed on them, and they want schools to exemplify and reward ethical values such as honesty and hard work. The students also agree that classroom teachers will be the most important factor in improving the current system. Instead of just getting by, we should resolve to apply our best efforts to addressing the challenge they have placed before us.
Literature Cited 1. Johnson, J.; Farkas, S.; with Bers, A.; Friedman, W.; Duffett, A. Getting By: What American Teenagers Really Think about Their Schools; Public Agenda, 6 East 39th Street, New York, NY 10016, 1997. 2. Public Agenda, http://www.publicagenda.org/, accessed Jan. 23, 1998.
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 75 No. 3 March 1998 • Journal of Chemical Education
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