REPOST: American Schools Are Training Kids for a World That Doesn’t Exist

American students are falling behind children from other countries in terms of their reading and math skills. In the following article from Wired.com, David Edwards discusses why the country’s education is ranking poorly on the world educational performance scale:

Image Source: wired.com

Are Americans getting dumber?

Our math skills are falling. Our reading skills are weakening. Our children have become less literate than children in many developed countries. But the crisis in American education may be more than a matter of sliding rankings on world educational performance scales.

Our kids learn within a system of education devised for a world that increasingly does not exist.

To become a chef, a lawyer, a philosopher or an engineer, has always been a matter of learning what these professionals do, how and why they do it, and some set of general facts that more or less describe our societies and our selves. We pass from kindergarten through twelfth grade, from high school to college, from college to graduate and professional schools, ending our education at some predetermined stage to become the chef, or the engineer, equipped with a fair understanding of what being a chef, or an engineer, actually is and will be for a long time.

We “learn,” and after this we “do.” We go to school and then we go to work.

This approach does not map very well to personal and professional success in America today. Learning and doing have become inseparable in the face of conditions that invite us to discover.

Over the next twenty years the earth is predicted to add another two billion people. Having nearly exhausted nature’s ability to feed the planet, we now need to discover a new food system. The global climate will continue to change. To save our coastlines, and maintain acceptable living conditions for more than a billion people, we need to discover new science, engineering, design, and architectural methods, and pioneer economic models that sustain their implementation and maintenance. Microbiological threats will increase as our traditional techniques of anti-microbial defense lead to greater and greater resistances, and to thwart these we must discover new approaches to medical treatment, which we can afford, and implement in ways that incite compliance and good health. The many rich and varied human cultures of the earth will continue to mix, more rapidly than they ever have, through mass population movements and unprecedented information exchange, and to preserve social harmony we need to discover new cultural referents, practices, and environments of cultural exchange. In such conditions the futures of law, medicine, philosophy, engineering, and agriculture – with just about every other field – are to be rediscovered.

Americans need to learn how to discover.

Being dumb in the existing educational system is bad enough. Failing to create a new way of learning adapted to contemporary circumstances might be a national disaster. The good news is, some people are working on it.

Against this arresting background, an exciting new kind of learning is taking place in America. 

Alternatively framed as maker classes, after-school innovation programs, and innovation prizes, these programs are frequently not framed as learning at all. Discovery environments are showing up as culture and entertainment, from online experiences to contemporary art installations and new kinds of culture labs. Perhaps inevitably, the process of discovery — from our confrontation with challenging ambiguous data, through our imaginative responses, to our iterative and error-prone paths of data synthesis and resolution — has turned into a focus of public fascination.
Against this arresting background, an exciting new kind of learning is taking place in America.

Discovery has always provoked interest, but how one discovers may today interest us even more. Educators, artists, designers, museum curators, scientists, engineers, entertainment designers and others are creatively responding to this new reality, and, together, they are redefining what it means to learn in America.

At Harvard University, where I teach, Peter Galison, in History of Science, asks his students make films, to understand science; Michael Chu, in business, brings students to low income regions to learn about social entrepreneurship; Michael Brenner, in Engineering and Applied Science, invites master chefs to help students discover the science of cooking; and Doris Sommer, in Romance Languages, teaches aesthetics by inviting students to effect social and political change through cultural agency. Similarly, in the course I teach, How to Create Things and Have Them Matter, students are asked to look, listen, and discover, using their own creative genius, while observing contemporary phenomena that matter today.

Because that’s what discoverers do.

A New Kind of Learning Lab

Learning by an original and personal process of discovery is a trend on many US university campuses, like Stanford University, MIT, and Arizona State University. It also shows up in middle school, high school and after school programs, as in the programs supported by the ArtScience Prize, a more curricular intensive version of the plethora of innovation prizes that have sprung up in the last years around the world. Students and participants in these kinds of programs learn something even more valuable than discovering a fact for themselves, a common goal of “learning discovery” programs; they learn the thrill of discovering the undiscovered. Success brings not just a good grade, or the financial reward of a prize. It brings the satisfaction that one can realize dreams, and thrive, in a world framed by major dramatic questions. And this fans the kind of passion that propels an innovator along a long creative career.

Discovery, as intriguing process, has become a powerful theme in contemporary culture and entertainment. In art and design galleries, and many museums, artists and designers, like Olafur Eliasson, Mark Dion, Martin Wattenberg, Neri Oxman and Mathieu Lehanneur, invite the public to explore contemporary complexities, as in artist Mark Dion’s recent collaborative work with the Alaskan SeaLife Center and Anchorage Museum on plastic fragments in the Pacific Ocean. Often they make visitors discovery participants, as in Martin Wattenberg’sApartment, where people enter words that turn into architectural forms, or sorts of memory palaces. In a more popular way, television discovery and reality programs, from Yukon Men to America’s Got Talent, present protagonists who face challenges, encounter failure, and succeed, iteratively and often partially, while online the offer is even more pervasive, with games of discovery and adventure immersing young people in the process of competing against natural and internal constraints.

All this has led to the rise of the culture lab.

Culture labs conduct or invite experiments in art and design to explore contemporary questions that seem hard or even impossible to address in more conventional science and engineering labs. Their history, as public learning forum, dates from the summer of 2007, when the Wellcome Collection opened in King’s Cross London, to invite the incurably curious to probe contemporary questions of body and mind through contemporary art and collected object installations. A few months later, in the fall 2007, Le Laboratoire opened in Paris, France, to explore frontiers of science through experimental projects in contemporary art and design, and translate experimental ideas from educational, through cultural, to social practice. And in the winter 2008 Science Gallery opened in downtown Dublin to bring contemporary science experimentation to the general public (and students of Trinity College) with installations in contemporary art and design. Other culture labs have opened since then, in Amsterdam, Kosovo, Madrid and other European, American, Asian, African and Latin American cities. In the USA, culture labs especially thrive on campuses, like MIT’s famous Media Lab, Harvard’s iLab, and the unique metaLAB, run by Jeffrey Schnapp within Harvard’s Berkman Center. These will now be joined by a public culture lab, Le Laboratoire Cambridge, which opens later this month near MIT and Harvard, bringing to America the European model with a program of public art and design exhibitions, innovation seminars, and future-of-food sensorial experiences.

The culture lab is the latest indication that learning is changing in America. It cannot happen too fast.

We may not be getting dumber in America. But we need to get smarter in ways that match the challenges we now face. The time is now to support the role of learning in the pursuit of discovery and to embrace the powerful agency of culture.

Philanthropist Ken Von Kohorn believes that education should be more competitive and accessible to all students. Follow this Facebook page for the latest updates in American education.

REPOST: What the U.S. could learn from the Polish education system

Coming from the bottom ranks in education, Poland has risen to the top in the past decade. And with the difficulties that the U.S. education system is currently facing, it may be good to learn some things from the Polish. Read more about this in this article from USA Today.

Image Source: usatoday.com

Is it time for the student to offer the teacher a few lessons?

Twenty-five years ago, Americans like economist Jeffrey Sachs were running around Poland helping to turn moribund socialism into a vibrant market economy. Now, with the U.S. trying to fix its lagging educational system, it might just learn a thing or two from Poland, which in the past decade has moved sharply forward from the rear of the international pack and beats the U.S. on most performance measures. And it didn't even spend a lot money to get there.

Poland now has the fourth-highest number of higher education students in Europe, behind the U.K., Germany and France. Reading, once an obstacle, became an asset — more so than in the U.S., the U.K., Germany or France. And 19th place in math on a survey by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has helped it produce some of Europe's brightest talent in the technology field. The U.S. ranked a "below average" 27th.

"Our curriculum is mostly based on the effects of education — not just what students know but what they can do, and how they can use their knowledge practically," Ewa Dudek, Poland's undersecretary of state for education, tells OZY. Dudek believes Poland's success comes from allowing students more scope for feedback on their education.

Of course, it's much more than that.

It was 1998, almost a decade after the fall of communism, and the country was flying in the aftermath of Sachs' market reforms. Deregulation and privatization made Poland's economy one of Europe's fastest growing.

But its schools lagged far behind and continued to rely on course materials barely changed since the Stalinist 1950s. Kids osmosed ideology and vocational training, grooming them for careers in heavy industry that had largely disappeared.

Leaders in the capital, Warsaw, saw a growing generation of underserved and uninspired students as an economic bear trap. Without drastic reforms, the country could kiss its decade of prosperity goodbye.

"We have to move the entire system — push it out of its equilibrium," urged then-Education Minister Mirosław Handke.

Handke got his green light. With remarkable speed, in a year academia in Poland was unrecognizable. The demagoguery was ditched and in came a new form of general education that resisted specialization. Just a year after that, in 2000, Poland began to leap up the international league tables.

By 2012, the last time the OECD conducted its survey, Poland was one of the best teaching countries on earth.

In fact it's the only one to have gone from below average in the chart, which now measures 510,000 15-year-olds in 65 territories, to above — with a GDP ranking just 46th globally. On key indicators — math, science, reading — it came from behind to rank well ahead of the United States.

How did Poland do it?

Back in 1998, Handke, a former chemistry teacher, was staring at a horrible formula. Polish children went to primary school for eight years before being funneled into vocational training at age 14.

Under the revamped system, primary school lasts six years, followed by three years of a new comprehensive lower secondary school, before a decision is made on whether to send a student to vocational training. Knowledge — reading, writing, 'rithmetic — is valued above technical skill. Foreign language — especially English — became a key component. In 2000 only 1 percent of kids received four hours or more of language classes. By 2006 that figure was 76 percent.

But it's not about money. Poland spends around $5,000 per student annually from primary through tertiary education, but outperforms the United States, which spends around three times that amount.

Poland has its socialist past to thank for the rapid progress, says Izabel Olchonowicz, an education consultant: "People were very eager to modernize; they were waiting such a long time," she says. "Right now is the result of that."

The economy has continued to be strong. When Europe's economies were tumbling in 2009, Poland was its only island of growth, getting a 1.6 percent lift. Poland is far better off than when Handke had his say.

Teachers might disagree. Poland remains a low payer — around $650 a month for teachers compared with the national average for all workers of $945. Slawomir Broniarz, the country's most senior teachers unionist, warns that low pay might put Poland's trajectory in doubt, primarily because of slipping standards of training. "We've asked many times for the reform of teacher training, because they are not good enough for these times. We need new attitudes, programs and better preparations for future challenges."

"Teaching is very demanding," says Olchonowicz, "and I think that what they get for it is not enough. It is not motivating, and if Poland needs to advance its education system, the salaries of teachers have to come with it."

Poland's rapid development of foreign language training may also have a negative side effect. Many Poles are leaving home to gain skills abroad. While that helps the technology sector if they return, many don't.

But despite the cracks, Poland's educational system is an example to most other countries, and proof that it's not just money that makes good students.

Ken Von Kohorn is a socio-political writer and a big believer in quality education for all. Follow this Twitter account to keep track of the reforms in the U.S. education system.

REPOST: Is Competition The Cure For Mediocre U.S. Math Scores?

Can the introduction of more competitive atmospheres improve mathematics competency and proficiency in American education? James Martin Crotty of Forbes.com writes about how some states and schools are helping the U.S. get back on track.

Image source: Forbes.com

Even though the U.S. lags in international tests of math competency — as my previous post, ‘The Cause of Mediocre U.S. Math Scores’, made clear — recent assessments of math proficiency at the national level suggest that the U.S. is slowly gaining traction. According to the National Assessment of Education Progress, 36 percent of 8th-grade students showed ‘Proficient’ or ‘Advanced’ comprehension of mathematics in 2013, compared to 15 percent in 1990.

4th-graders showed similarly promising statistics, increasing in mathematics comprehension from 13 to 42 percent between 1990 and 2013. Forty-one percent of public school students at grade 4, and 34 percent at grade 8, performed at or above the ‘Proficient’ level in mathematics in 2013.

So, what has suddenly changed? While state-to-state, proficiency in mathematics varies widely — between 19 and 59 percent — it seems that some district outliers have found strategies that drive home math comprehension much more effectively. And their success has bolstered the U.S. national math average.

As just one of several examples, take Baldi Middle School, situated in one of Philadelphia’s poorer districts. Despite its low economic status, Baldi Middle School excels at mathematics.

In a nationwide online math competition involving 6,000 schools in 45 states, Baldi ranked fifth, with students solving more than 17 million math problems correctly in just 10 months. Baldi has consistently ranked among the top ten schools in the nation for this type of competition for the past five years.

All this because, according to Huffington Post columnist and Suntex International CEO Robert Sun, Baldi’s 1,200 students are “engaged, empowered and energized” by the school’s high-performance “culture.”

Sun writes.: “It begins with a concept known as Deep Practice. In sports, when we swing a bat and miss the ball, we receive instant feedback through our senses. Players learn easily and naturally through a practice loop where proficiency is attained through immediate awareness of success or failure.”

To create this environment, Sun conjured up the First in Math Online Program, a software package where students feel like they’re playing a video game, even as it requires students to exercise math skills in a kind of immersive, brute-force approach. One of the statistics First in Math tracks is the number of math problems students solve. Since 2002, the number has climbed into the hundreds of millions.

The game itself, 24 Challenge, is nested within a nationwide network of schools that compete against each other, so students also have an additional, and more elemental, urge to do well.

One year after adopting the game, the Philadelphia School District showed a 7.4% increase in fifth grade students scoring at the Proficient and Above level, compared with a 5.2% increase for students statewide. Improvement for eighth graders was even more impressive: an 11.1% increase in students scoring Proficient and Above versus a 6.1% increase statewide.

Philadelphia students continue to show success, solving 948 million math problems in the past nine years and increasing the percentage of students scoring Proficient and Above on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests every year, for a total gain of 39.5%.

Sun attributes the success not to the game itself, but from the learning philosophy of Deep Practice that the game was built on. The lesson: if you create a system of instant, non-judgmental feedback, math becomes less intimidating, and students will be more willing to independently engage with it.

Gildo Rey Elementary in Auburn, Wash., shares success similar to Baldi, but from more of a hands-on approach taken by teachers.

The Seattle Times reported earlier this year that Gildo Rey Elementary, despite a poverty rate of 88 percent, saw students’ test scores ascend to a 95 percent passing rate, up from the 30’s just ten years before. To restructure a system accused of “teaching to the test,” teachers at Gildo Rey now jointly plan lessons, pore over student work, test students frequently, and adjust the curriculum weekly — sometimes daily.

The Seattle Times reports: “Teachers conduct class at a quick clip, starting sentences that students promptly finish, or telling them to raise their hands when they know an answer or whisper it to their neighbor.”

This system, built on a framework of “explicit instruction”, fosters deep concentration and intense engagement from the students, creating an environment that psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “Flow.”

Csikszentmihalyi described the meaning of “flow” to Wired in 1996: “[Flow is] being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”

To achieve flow, a balance must be struck between the difficulty of the challenge and the skill of the performer, and both must be set equally high. If skill and challenge are low, the result is often apathy.

Apathy can also stem from a lack of goals, says Csikszentmihalyi. Goals, or competition, can help “turn a random walk into a chase … Competition is an easy way to get into flow.” Just ask Michael Jordan.

The goals and rewards in a rigorous mathematics education should be implicit in the education itself. But, that’s admittedly a hard sell to a population where, according to a Raytheon survey, 44% of students “would rather take out the trash than do math homework.”

If the goals of mathematics are simply too vague or out of reach for US students, maybe a competitive approach is a solution this nation — which is highly competitive in other spheres (sports, commerce, political and military might) — should take a closer look at. I certainly found competition to be highly effective in getting otherwise recalcitrant learners to fully engage in the rigors of debate research and argument, as my documentary Crotty’s Kids makes clear.

Perhaps if we made Math more like a high-stakes academic sport, my experience, and now anecdotal evidence, suggests that US math test scores might start to go up dramatically.

Ken Von Kohorn is a sociopolitical writer who is passionate about issues surrounding educational proficiency. Follow this Twitter page for more on in-depth discussions on these issues.

REPOST: What The U.S. Can Learn From Finland, Where School Starts At Age 7

NPR correspondent Claudio Sanchez delves into Finland’s primary education system, where all teachers have a bachelor’s degree and all kids under 7 enjoy the right to child care and preschool.

Finland, a country the size of Minnesota, beats the U.S. in math, reading and science, even though Finnish children don't start school until age 7.

Despite the late start, the vast majority arrive with solid reading and math skills. By age 15, Finnish students outperform all but a few countries on international assessments.

Krista Kiuru, Finland's minister of education and science who met with education officials in Washington recently, chalks success up to what she calls the "Finnish way." Every child in Finland under age 7 has the right to child care and preschool by law, regardless of family income. Over 97 percent of 3- to 6-year-olds attend a program of one type or another. But, says Kiuru, the key to Finland's universal preschool system is quality.

"First of all, it's about having high-quality teachers," Kiuru says. "Day care teachers are having Bachelor degrees. So we trust our teachers, and that's very, very important. And the third factor: we have strong values in the political level."

Political consensus and support help, Kiuru says.

Author Amanda Ripley says she didn't really believe it, so she went to Finland and several other top-performing countries to see for herself. She wrote The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way. Compared to Singapore, South Korea or Japan, she says, Finland's approach is pretty laid back, even though its standards — like what preschoolers should know and be able to do — are set by Finland's National Curriculum Guidelines for early childcare.

Image Source: www.npr.org

"Kids are almost all in some kind of day care, all of whom are working in the same curriculum that's aligned with what they're going to learn in school," she says. "That's a level of coherence that most U.S. kids will never experience because we don't have a coherent system with highly trained people in almost every classroom."

It's a level of coherence that President Obama has repeatedly called for. Until there's a national consensus on standards and what quality preschool should look like, Ripley says early childhood education in the U.S. will remain fragmented.

Then there's the money issue. In Finland, of course, preschool and day care are basically free, because people pay a lot more taxes to fund these programs. Another glaring difference is the child poverty rate, which is almost 25 percent in the U.S. — five times more than in Finland.
"And in most countries I've traveled to, they see poverty and education as linked. You cannot separate them," Ripley says.

In Finland, children from poor families have access to high-quality preschool. In the U.S., most poor children get poor quality preschool, if they get any at all.

"It's very clear from the research in the U.S. that our problems with inequality [and] school failure are set when children walk in the school door," says Steve Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. Sixty percent of the poorest 4-year-olds in the U.S. get no preschool. Most, says Barnett, start school 18 months behind.

"Those kids are going to be in a spiral of failure, and we set that up by not adequately investing before they get to kindergarten," Barnett says. "We certainly can learn from countries like Finland."

Kiuru says she's in no position to say why the U.S. is struggling so much with this issue, but if her country has a lesson to offer, it's this: "If you invest in early childhood education, in preschool and day care, that will lead [to] better results," Kiuru says.

That, she says, is the "Finnish way."

Ken Von Kohorn is a socio-political writer and a big believer in quality education for all. Read more about his views and advocacies on this Facebook page.

REPOST: Cats Host Big Brothers Big Sisters Clinic

Aside from the basketball, the NBA is also known for its charitable acts.  Recently, the Charlotte Bobcats and the Lady Cats welcomed the Big Brothers Big Sisters for a basketball clinic.  Read the full story in this article from NBA.com.

Image Source: www.nba.com

Members of the Charlotte Bobcats and the Lady Cats reached out to the community by hosting the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Charlotte for a basketball clinic on Jan. 27, 2014 at Time Warner Cable Arena.

The night began with an introduction of the Bobcats players, then children ages 6-13 and their mentors dispersed and participated in several stations set up to teach them important basketball skills. Players instructed the kids on the value of practice and teamwork through passing, shooting, dribbling and defensive drills.

Guard Ramon Sessions reflected on his childhood and stressed the importance of the event being an enjoyable experience for the kids involved.

“I reminds me of growing up as a kid just being out here and having fun,” Sessions said. “Just seeing the smiles on their faces, it’s tremendous. It is really a joy to be here.”

Forward Cody Zeller also enjoyed his time with the kids and was thankful to be in a position to give back.

“I remember coming to camps like this growing up and how big of an impact it had on me,” Zeller said. “I feel that it’s a part of my duty to give back to the kids and it’s neat to team up with the Bobcats to put on an event like this.”

After mentors and kids spent six minutes at each of the five stations, they were given the opportunity to ask any question to the Bobcat players. Some of which evoked laughter from the players and kids. After the Q&A, kids, mentors and players posed for a group photo and the kids were given a gift bag upon leaving.

Director of Match Support for the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Charlotte, Jenelle Martin, expressed the importance of the event for the program.

“It’s great that they have role models to look up to that are positive,” Martin said. “It’s a really great opportunity for our littles to experience interacting with the players and having fun.”

A philanthropist, Ken Von Kohorn has been an active “Big Brother” in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, working with a boy who will be in college this fall.  Follow this Twitter page for more articles about the Big Brother Big Sisters program.

REPOST: Science Education In The U.S. Is Mediocre. Here’s

WBUR.org contributor Jacqueline Miller laments the dismal state of science education in the U.S. She then discusses in the article below concrete actions that would help develop science-literate citizens.

Jacqueline Miller: American students are simply not learning the content and skills that will help them succeed in the 21st century, where technology and science are core to everyday life.
(Image source: wbur.org)

Once again, U.S. students have performed poorly on an international test and the hand wringing has begun. This time it is the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, which measures how well students can apply what they have learned in reading, mathematics, and science to practical problems. Out of 34 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member countries, United States students ranked 17th in reading, 26th in math, and 21st in science.

As observed by Diane Ravitch and other education historians, the U.S. has rarely fared well on the lineup of international tests that began in the mid-1960s. Whether these tests are a meaningful indicator of the quality of education and global economic success is subject to debate.

What is not debatable, though, is that science education for all students in this country is, in and of itself, mediocre. American students are simply not learning the content and skills that will help them succeed in the 21st century, where technology and science are core to everyday life.

Over the years, I have observed classrooms where students had already decided that science and math were not for them. “I hate science, I hate math,” came the exasperated refrain. But when I asked them what they hated and how it could be made better, I discovered that they actually loved the experimentation of science and were engaged by the relevance of math to their lives. What they hated was how these subjects were taught.

As stated in the National Research Council’s 2012 report “Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century,” students thrive when they are engaged in course content that focuses in depth on core concepts within a discipline, contextualizes the learning in real-world situations relevant to their lives, and provides investigative experiences that require transfer of knowledge to address a challenge or answer a question.

Yet, for most students, the study of science is still an exercise in memorization and regurgitation. A jumble of disconnected facts is presented, unaccompanied by opportunities for investigative, problem-solving experiences. We are not educating students to succeed on international exams, but, more importantly, we’re not developing science-literate citizens or encouraging future scientists, either.

Studies have shown that curriculum and teachers are the two most important determinants of student learning and achievement. Effective curriculum shapes not only what content is taught but how it is taught. This, in turn, affects student achievement of the learning goals. Today, far too few schools are using pre-K through 12 science curricula that:

• Build students’ understanding of big, fundamental concepts over time in a coherent conceptual flow
• Explore fewer topics in greater depth
• Promote understanding and use of the practices and competencies required of scientific investigations
• Incorporate ongoing assessment to inform instruction
• Motivate students to learn by engaging them in hands-on investigations and real-world problems

Simultaneously, far too few teachers have the opportunities or support they need to implement these types of materials. Extensive testing requirements have driven too many teachers to cover massive amounts of content and teach to the test. A lack of instructional and pedagogical resources thwarts their chances to move their own practices to a more ambitious teaching model. And although we know that digital tools can enhance student learning and extend teaching practice, few teachers have access to training and support in using these tools appropriately.

Achieving deeply rooted change that ensures students’ success and equips them for life in the 21st century starts with our teachers. Providing these dedicated individuals with ongoing professional development experiences that help build a strong content background, knowledge of effective teaching strategies, and understanding of appropriate uses of digital resources should be the standard, not the exception.

We also need policymakers who are more concerned with what students are learning than how they are performing on international exams. If, as a nation, we make a concerted effort to improve the learning and teaching of science, then better test results will surely follow. Policy-making groups who will lead this effort must include teachers who, more than anyone, understand the reality of the classroom and can lead U.S. science education from mediocrity to excellence.

This indictment of science education goes far deeper than PISA scores. But we know how to fix what’s wrong. Let us start now — and not lose a generation of science-literate citizens, mathematicians, and scientists to a failure in teaching when the inspiration to explore, to experiment, and to learn is all around us.

Nonfiction writer and philanthropist Ken Von Kohorn believes that literacy helps shape the future of America. Follow this Twitter account to keep track of the reforms in the U.S. education system.

Failure as motivation to success

One of the key problems with education in the United States at the turn of the 21^st century is the increased focus on self-esteem as a driver of student performance without objective justification for the merits of such paradigm.  It had been correctly assumed as late as the early 1990s that self-esteem was related to better exam results, but the correlation between them was misinterpreted.  Students were made to feel good about themselves with the hopes that this would help them excel.

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It was discovered much later that the correlation, in fact, works in reverse.  While students should be encouraged to excel, artificially lowering the bar meant that they lost motivation to learn.  Moreover, denying children the learning experience gained from accepting failure curtailed development toward success.

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Handled correctly, failure can be used as a catalyst for future success.  Professionals such as Dr. Martin Seligman suggest that failure, if treated as isolated events that have specific causes, would encourage children to learn behaviors that would instead lead to success.  By treating failure not as something to be avoided but as a welcome challenge for further learning, students could top their current performance and be motivated to improve.

Image Source: www.cloudfront.net

As life is nothing without failure, children should learn to accept and learn from their mistakes as they grow and earn their sense of self-worth through their successes and through the failures they overcome.

Ken Von Kohorn is a Connecticut-based nonfiction sociopolitical writer who is deeply invested in the success and welfare of children. Visit this Twitter page for more updates on literature, education, and more.