Tiger Mom (Amy Chua) new article about education in America

[LNC]

I loved this! Anyone want to discuss?

 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2011-05-10-Reshape-US-education_n.htm

[OrganicAnn]

Kids spend 66% more time watching TV than in school? I calculated the numbers and that would mean kids spend 7 hours per day, seven days a week year round to equal a rough estimate of the hours kids spend in school. I can't believe that number. Especially considering kids being involved in activities.

[LNC]

Kids spend 66% more time watching TV than in school? I calculated the numbers and that would mean kids spend 7 hours per day, seven days a week year round to equal a rough estimate of the hours kids spend in school. I can't believe that number. Especially considering kids being involved in activities.

 

Yes, I thought that too - except when you consider all media combined.

Here's an example:

http://www.kff.org/entmedia/entmedia012010nr.cfm

[JudoMom]

Here are the stats she linked to:

 

Hours per year the average American youth spends in school: 900 hours

Hours per year the average American youth watches television: 1500

[Barb_]

Kids spend 66% more time watching TV than in school? I calculated the numbers and that would mean kids spend 7 hours per day, seven days a week year round to equal a rough estimate of the hours kids spend in school. I can't believe that number. Especially considering kids being involved in activities.

 

I was confused too, until I figured in summers.

[Annie G]

I have read that when they count media use, they double and triple dip. So when teens watch tv while chatting on Facebook, the time counts twice. (One hour watching tv and surfing the internet counts as two hours of media use) It can add up quickly when they combine like that- though the article simply said tv watching - and that sounds like a LOT.

[lauracolumbus]

She seems saner in this post.

 

Laura

[Jenny in Florida]

She seems saner in this post.

 

Laura

 

I'm curious as to whether you read her book?

 

I did, and I came away with an entirely different impression than the one that has been promoted in short blurbs.

 

The book is very much about her experiences learning how to parent two very different daughters, about how she had to learn to loosen up and give up a lot of control and about how their family is happier when she does.

[OrganicAnn]

Sorry I'm totally hung up on that numbers. It can't be 900 hours in school that would be that kids are only in school half of the year.

 

So if a kids is using media 7 hours a day, then that would be from 3:00 to 10:00 and this is an average. So for kids involved in sports, dance, music, clubs or with part-time jobs etc there would have to be some kids using significantly more time to average out to 7 hours. I'm sure some kids are on this much, but I can't believe that is the average. oh well I'm just it just doesn't make sense to me.

 

I was thinking about how we do bring ideas from foreign countries about education to the US. Montessori, Waldorf, Charlotte Mason, Singapore Math, Classical Education, all come originally from other countries. It might be argued that anything that comes from England came from basically the same culture - so CM, Dorothy Sayers Classical Ed, Universities, etc. Of course many of these have changed/evolved over the years and may not resemble the origin source.

 

Just a thought.

[Julie Smith]

For those doing the math, did you figure in weekend? Always on tv houses? My SIL has a 900 square foot house, in it are three tv screens, two computers, and 1 laptop. And yes they all could be on at the same time. 2adults, 2kids.

[Karen in CO]

And people like my sister's family - my niece turns on the tv to watch it for an hour before school then watches from the time she comes home before 3 until she goes to bed at 10 or 11. I can see how kids can watch that much, I just don't understand it.

 

My niece was pretty sure she'd die when she spent the summer at my house. :)

[Jamee]

I'm curious as to whether you read her book?

 

I did, and I came away with an entirely different impression than the one that has been promoted in short blurbs.

 

The book is very much about her experiences learning how to parent two very different daughters, about how she had to learn to loosen up and give up a lot of control and about how their family is happier when she does.

 

I actually enjoyed the book too and was happy to see how it resolved, and know that her daughters were involved in the writing of it. This article goes along with my DH and I had been discussing earlier, I showed him the post about PS students having to take remedial courses.

 

Something has to change in American education and looking at those countries that do it differently and in regards to test scores better, should be considered. Social promotion needs to be done away with. I think that right there would be a HUGE improvement and motivator. DH has taught for a few years now and gets so frustrated with those kids who do NOTHING! Absolutely nothing, ditch school, have parents lie about their absenses etc. What motivation is there to do anything when they know, and are, passed on to the next grade?

 

As for the TV math, yeah, I believe it when you count in all the weekends, holidays, tv on while doing homework.

[Peela]

I like the article- and I think she has a good point. It gives a different picture to the previous article, that's for sure.

And as a commenter below the article said....homeschoolers are already going for this.

It's a good point that its best to teach kids discipline and how to learn when they are young- when they will listen. It sure is hard to teach that sort of thing to an unwilling teenager- and by then, they should be learning to find their way.

Maybe we get it back to front by trying to be so creative when they are young and saving the hard stuff for when they are teenagers.

[Hedgehog]

Really interesting. Thanks for posting.

 

I so agree with this:

 

"If in their early years we teach our children a strong work ethic, perseverance and the value of delayed gratification, they will be much better positioned to be self-motivated and self-reliant when they become young adults."

[Catherine]

I have not read her book, but have followed the conversations about it closely. This in particular I find to be spot on:

 

If in their early years we teach our children a strong work ethic, perseverance and the value of delayed gratification, they will be much better positioned to be self-motivated and self-reliant when they become young adults. This is a way to combine East and West: more structure when our children are little (and will still listen to us), followed by increasing self-direction in their teenage years.

 

It sounds like homeschooling, no?

 

I don't think I've done a great job of this, and I only have one left young enough to implement this plan. LOL. But I think she is absolutely right. Teaching work ethic and self-dsicipline is harder than I thought it would be.

 

Catherine

[Jane in NC]

From the article:

 

Our society's need to ignite "mommy wars" is especially odd because anyone can see that there are many ways of producing happy, healthy children — and clearly no one right formula. Yet if someone has a different philosophy of child-rearing, we instantly feel judged and lash back.

 

Amen, sister.

 

When we chose to send our son to a Montessori school and not the local public school, I was asked why I was condemning the latter. I was not. I was choosing another option for my son. Same for homeschooling

 

Alas, I feel that Americans often believe that the world functions in dichotomies: It is this or it is that--place yourself in the left or the right, Group A or B, only one or the other. And then argue like heck that you are correct.

 

Sigh.

 

Good article. Thank you for posting.

 

Jane

[Jenny in Florida]

And the statistic quoted looks realistic to me.

 

I checked the website of our local schools. Elementaries are in session for about 30 hours per week, middles for almost 31 and high schools for 32.

 

In every case, school is out between 2:00 and 4:00, leaving a good five or six hours per day of potential TV time five days a week. Even that adds up to over 1000 hours of potential screen time per year.

 

Between summer, weekends and holidays, there are about 185 non-school days when there is even more free time for screens.

 

If we assume a child is watching TV or playing on the computer "only" half of the potential time each school day, that's: 3 hours * 5 days a week * 36 weeks = 540 hours. Assume a child watches a little more than that on weekends during the school year (maybe a couple of hours of cartoons on Sunday morning, a movie at night with parents, etc): 4 hours * 2 days a week * 36 = 288 hours. If we assume the child watches twice as much TV each days during the summer: 6 hours * 113 days = 678 hours.

 

540 + 288 + 678 = 1506

 

And I honestly think the original three hours per day estimate is pretty low.

[mom31257]

I like that the article really puts the responsibility of improving American education on the parents, not the school systems. I wish more people would realize this fact.

 

Now for my rant on public education. :rant: My dh is a public school teacher in a school that the state has taken over, and let me tell you, the parents and kids are never to blame for the problems there. It's always the teachers' faults. :confused1:

 

And the answer to fix it...tons of paperwork from every bureaucrat that walks in the building (state and federal employees that need a paper trail to justify their 6 figure salaries). :banghead:

 

We are anxiously waiting to find out what is going to happen because they just got reports yesterday on the graduation test results. He teaches in the social studies department, and they were told their passing rate went down 16% from the year before. My dh says that group of kids was the most difficult group he's ever had to teach as far as discipline goes. Will that come up in conversation about what the problem is? No, it will be centered on how teachers are to blame.

 

I just get frustrated that high school teachers are expected to spoon feed many of these teenagers. He's not allowed to give kids zeros for any reason, and when they miss it's his responsibility to make sure they get their assignments. How is this preparing them for the real world?

 

He hears in so many meetings, "You all just don't understand where these kids are coming from", like being from a poor family, single parent home on welfare, etc., is justification to coddle them. It's very frustrating for him.

 

Thanks for letting me get all that off my chest. I hope no one is offended. It really builds up sometimes!

[ktgrok]

 

Something has to change in American education and looking at those countries that do it differently and in regards to test scores better, should be considered. Social promotion needs to be done away with. I think that right there would be a HUGE improvement and motivator. DH has taught for a few years now and gets so frustrated with those kids who do NOTHING! Absolutely nothing, ditch school, have parents lie about their absenses etc. What motivation is there to do anything when they know, and are, passed on to the next grade?

 

.

 

They have done away with social promotion here, and it causes it's own problems. For instance, there are 15 and 16 year olds in 6th grade. I do NOT want my 12 year old in with 16 year olds!!!! They also have 18 year old high school freshman! This is an issue for all of us that have smart, good kids that are now being influenced by 18 year olds that are just waiting to drop out.

[twoforjoy]

Social promotion needs to be done away with. I think that right there would be a HUGE improvement and motivator.

 

Can you point to research indication that retention actually leads to better academic outcomes? Every piece of research I've seen into the issue shows the opposite. That's why schools use social promotion.

 

It's not because they just looooove to pass on failing students, or because they don't want to hurt anybody's self-esteem even though it would be academically better to keep them back. It's because we have decades of research showing that, when you compare students (matched for performance, obviously) who are held back with those who are "socially" promoted, there is either no difference in academic outcomes or, in most cases, a much poorer outcome for those held back.

 

Holding children back a grade, in a traditional classroom setting, does not catch them up. It doesn't get them back on track so that they then go on to perform better in later grades. This is especially true for students held back after first or second grade, at which point the outcomes are only negative. Those students tend to fall further and further behind, and have higher dropout rates than students who performed at similar levels but were not held back.

 

In theory it sounds simple: just hold them back, and they'll catch up. But in practice it doesn't work out that way. It can be beneficial, in some cases, for a very young student (K-2) to repeat a year, but even in those cases it's generally much more that the extra year to mature gets the child developmentally ready to read, and not that repeated instruction made a difference. But research pretty unanimously indicates that for students in third grade and up, holding them back will not give them a better grounding in basic skills, will not get them working at grade level, and will not benefit them in the future.

 

If you stop to think about it, it does make sense. After all, we're talking about traditional classroom instruction, not a one-on-one setting like homeschooling where a parent can change curriculum or methods when it's clear that something hasn't worked for a child. Instead, retention just means making a child spend one more year being taught material they did not understand in a manner that didn't work for them. I think we'd consider any homeschooling parent who, when their child was unable to grasp fourth-grade math and language arts, decided to just spend the next year covering the exact same curriculum in the exact same manner they did the year before to be doing something very silly and ineffective. We'd realize that simply repeating something over doesn't help a child to understand it any better, if the method didn't work for them.

 

That's exactly what retention does, though. So students are often better off moving into a new grade where maybe the material they didn't understand last year will be presented in a way that will click for them. We do know that they, at the very least, won't be worse off if they are simply "socially promoted," and in most cases they'll be better off academically.

 

Sorry, but this is a high-horse issue for me. So many people are outraged by "social promotion" without realizing that there are very, very sound reasons for it, rooted in many decades of research. It's not about "self-esteem"; it's not about making life easier for teachers; it's not about lowering standards. It's about wanting the best academic outcome for each and every student, and retention in a traditional classroom setting is not an effective means to that goal.

[twoforjoy]

For those doing the math, did you figure in weekend? Always on tv houses? My SIL has a 900 square foot house, in it are three tv screens, two computers, and 1 laptop. And yes they all could be on at the same time. 2adults, 2kids.

 

Does that count as actual time watching TV, though?

 

I grew up in a home where the TV was always on, but I've never been a big TV watcher. It was background noise to me, the way the radio is in some homes.

 

I'd be very hesitant to equate the amount of time a TV is on in the house with the amount of time a child is actually watching TV. In my house, right now, Sesame Street is on and my DD is watching it, but my son is playing with Snap Circuits. I suppose we could say he just watched an hour of TV, because he's in the same room with the TV, but I don't think that would be an accurate assessment of how his time was spent.

[LND1218]

Sorry I'm totally hung up on that numbers. It can't be 900 hours in school that would be that kids are only in school half of the year.

 

Well our schools have 170 days (that's half a year) and 7 hours but that includes lunch/recess. So actual school hours are 1020.

 

That would take not quite 3 hours a day all year around to exceed school hours. 4 hours a day is 1460 hrs a year.

You know they often spend more than that on weekends and summers. I think it's very accurate that the average American kids does spend that much more time watching TV.

Edited May 12, 2011 by Steph

[Jamee]

For social promotion, something needs to be done to put some accountability on the students and parents. Perhaps it's not the solution for all, but I also think it would be a more motivating force to some. When DH first started teaching, he was doing 8th grade math and literally had students who had "figured out the system" and did NOTHING. Like a PP said, he couldn't give 0s, had do all he could to allow late work. Like Mom pointed out too, I don't think the kids should be tested against previous years, but against their own year group. How much improvement did that student make, not that class against last year? Sure a kid could be behind, but if he improved that year, isn't that what matters?

 

For the issues of having kids years older in lower grades, perhaps that's where alternative ed needs to come in, but not in a bad way. These kids need help and it's obvious the school system isn't giving them what they need, nor does it look like they are able to with traditional classes.

 

Perhaps ending social promotion isn't the best solution, but I sure think it would help. And giving teachers the freedom to teach and grade as they see fit would be a benefit too. What good are you doing a student if you don't allow them to fail? What are you teaching them when they enter the "real world"? They're not going to get second, third, forth chances at a job or life.

[AvasMom]

I'm curious as to whether you read her book?

 

I did, and I came away with an entirely different impression than the one that has been promoted in short blurbs.

 

The book is very much about her experiences learning how to parent two very different daughters, about how she had to learn to loosen up and give up a lot of control and about how their family is happier when she does.

 

:iagree: I think she's fabulous. I'm a huge fan!

[Carrie12345]

Sorry I'm totally hung up on that numbers. It can't be 900 hours in school that would be that kids are only in school half of the year.

 

 

 

Sure it can. I'm in a 180-day state. That's just under 1/2 a year.