Are Kids Too Coddled? By Frank Bruni Analysis

Alfie Kohn’s Article “How Not to get into College” analyses many key factors of how the current school system does not work and how we as members of society need to work together extensively to remodel the system to ensure the success of future students by valuing education over grades. By looking at how students only join clubs and and worship numerical grades only to impress colleges; students facing pressure from parents, teachers, and society to get good grades and succeed in life; and how students live through many mental health implications due to a multitude of factors surrounding their educational life, we can determine that systemic factors of this society have turned students of this generation into grade grubbers.

Education is a long-term investment. We, as students, work hard to acquire knowledge and to hone our skills so that we may use them one day. The effort we put into a single assignment should be considered as both for that specific assignment and for our rounding as complete, educated individuals. And with this mindset, students should be motivated even more to put more effort and hard work into academics, with the goal of bettering themselves for the future and advancing their prospects as individuals. And with this hard work and effort will come progress, and this progress should be reflected in the grading—not necessarily on individual assignments, but on the student’s education as a

As both the standards of school work and stress levels of student’s rise, the American school system remains unaltered, unchanged, and unaffected for over a hundred years. School is an institution that can serve as a massive gate in life granting you access to a job, stability, and a future or it can become a giant pillar in the way of everything you wish to achieve. While we recognize that a student’s own motivation, study habits, and will to learn, are cardinal in any schooling system, we must also understand the issues with an institution that is fundamentally unsound from the ground up. In today’s world, students are shoved with the hands of docility, and amenability as they render themselves in a system that has inadvertently failed them, by neglecting to celebrate their differences, and varying learning patterns. Conformity in the education system has shown to damage the personalization and

We live in a culture where success is increasingly defined by a paycheck and is seemingly as important to the parent as the child. Raising children to be “successful” is increasingly becoming an obsession for upper-middle-class-parents, who encourage certain activities and scores to provide their child with the best chances of attending elite schools. The article focuses on the inherent advantage upper-middle-class parents provide but fails to mention those who the parent’s action affects: their children.

An education provides people not only with the academic skills required, but also the social skills such as having the self confidence and belief in ones self to achieve a fulfilling and happy life. It is every child’s human right to receive such an education from early years to higher, and therefore several stages in which they must travel for this to happen.

Schools and college professors, who give you a good grade for excellent productivity on assignments, allow students to perform poorly, but still benefit relative to a person with an A. Two articles that observe grade inflation, find the rising problems of grade inflation, and finding solutions for grade inflation. Stuart Rojstaczer, an author from Grade Inflation Gone Wild, is a professor of geophysics at Duke university, and created gradeinflation.com in regards for his concern about grade inflation. On the other hand, Phil Primack is a journalist and teacher at Tufts University, and published in the “Boston Globe” Doesn’t Anybody Get a C Anymore? While college students, who work with little effort and still attain easy A’s by working poorly on assignments and exams, Primack and Rojstaczer, develop a firm connection towards grade inflation and the solution that can regain control over real education.

Julie Lythcott-Haims explains to us all what a perfect child is; straight A student, fabulous test scores, gets homework done without parents asking them to do it… She has the right idea, the right mindset of a parent, every parent wants their child to succeed in life. The way that parents are parenting their children is messing them up. They don’t have a chance to become themselves, they are too focused on whether they did good on that test that they were stressing about for a week, they are too worried about getting the best grade to be able to get accepted into the biggest name colleges around. The parents become too consumed with hovering over their children making sure that they are doing flawlessly in school, the parents are directing their every single move they make. The children then began to think that their parents love comes from the good grades. Then they start making this checklist; Good grades, what they want to be when they grow up, get accepted into good colleges, great SAT scores, the right GPA, the jock of the sports team.

Many people believe that we need to have our children competing to be the best of the best when they are young. Therefore, giving them a head start on a great future. In Rose he says, “Students will float to the mark you set.” (Rose 154) This means that if we set the mark at college, there are kids that will compete to be the best out of their class and will strive to become the most successful. Although we do not realize this, but by setting that mark it is giving the slackers something to aim for even though they never seem to compete for anything. This means that by having an environment that is willing to push even the slackers in school shows that they to can have something to compete for in the future. The environment of students plays an important role in helping students compete to become better. We tend to see better scores from students in private schools rather than students in public schools, this is because students are pushed harder in private schools and are competing to be the best because they know that if they start to fall behind they will be left in the dust. These students become the slackers. Problems start to form when the parents of the slackers start to shelter them and say that competing is not that important. Young adults are smart and they see this as an opportunity to use their parents. When reading Katherine S. Newman, “The Accordion Family: Boomerang Kids, Anxious Parents, and the Private Toll of Global Competition” we find it interesting when she brings up the topic on how “Adult children are migrating home or refraining from leaving in the first place, and there they stay for many years longer.” (Newman 91) With this being said we can right away notice that there is no motivation to become better or to even compete in the work for to be able to be living on their

Mike Rose in his piece I Just Wanna be Average and Richard Rodriguez in Achievement of Desire approach the subject of education from the view point of the uninspired and highly motivated student respectively. Both authors examine the importance of teacher expectations on achievement, and the role school and home environment plays in academic success.

Wow, is all I could think as I read this statement in the article. To expect great work, educators must provide students with the necessary skills to produce great work. The example of a teacher assigning a complex paper on the first day of school without guidance, and expecting the students to submit quality work was an awesome example to drive this point home. This statement made me reflect on my instructional processes. I remember having a teacher in high school that was guilty of this offense. She had the reputation of being the tough teacher, but really her instructional methods didn’t support the high expectations that she had for the students in her class. Therefore, students never meet her expectation, but it was because of her lack of instruction. Moving forward, I will now assess my teaching more closely. I refuse to be the teacher that assigns challenging work, and not teaching challenging

In the novel, Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids, author, Alexandra Robbins conveys the message that today’s society, including school systems, parents, friends, and students themselves, puts so much pressure on students to succeed (which means doing well well on standardized tests having high GPAs/class ranks, and being accepted into prestigious schools and universities.) This extreme amount of pressure can result in students not learning as much while at school, as well as unhappiness and other issues. Robbins conveys this message throughout the novel by following multiple students around school at Walt Whitman High to discover what the “perfect” overachiever secretly goes through in order to be successful.

When my chemistry teacher handed back the test we took, I frustratingly wiped sweat away from my eyebrow. Another C- no saving my grades now. Even if I studied diligently for eight hours a day and aced everything, I can do no better than a B-. I thought about my friends who go to a less prestigious school; they can put in minimal amount of work in chemistry class and still manage an A-. Then, I stumbled upon “In Praise of the “F” Word”. In her article “In Praise of the “F” Word”, Mary Sherry makes a case that high schools are giving students grades that they don’t deserve or didn’t work for, producing “semiliterate” graduates. “In Praise of the “F” Word” attempts to persuade teachers to grade harshly on students in order for them to truly comprehend the material and be prepared for the workforce when they graduate. Sounds fairly reasonable at first glance, doesn’t it? However, if one analyzes this proposal, it’s not hard to find a myriad of underlying consequences with it. If teachers decide to go through with Sherry’s plan, they put their students at an immediate disadvantage and jeopardize their chances of getting into a better college.

In Carol Dweck’s speech “The Power of Yet”, she explains how praise affects students in school. A school in Chicago used the term ‘not yet’ in their grading system, allowing the students to understand their abilities can grow. Those with fixed mindsets seemed to bask in their ‘failure’, unlike those with a growth mindset, who looked at the fail as a learning opportunity, Dweck observed. By praising wisely, like praising effort rather than grades, we can change from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. Even children from Native American reservations did better than Microsoft kids due to this growth mindset. With this in mind, the Hart District should consider using the power of yet in their school system. To do this, the Hart District should bring growth mindset into our school by praising students widely and correctly, as well as having individualized learning programs for students.

Have you ever had a feeling that no matter how hard you study, you still cannot get a great test grade? Have you ever had a feeling that no matter how hard you are working, you still receive an undesirable outcome? I believe many people will say yes to those questions. Take meself for example, I played the piano when I was in middle school. In the month before my Piano Rank Examination, I practiced piano for four hours everyday, but I still could not play a full song without making any mistakes which made me feel very upset. However, I did pass the Examination in the end. The natural talent is needed, but only a talent person who works hard will succeed in the end.

When it comes to poverty experience during an educational journey, children from working family background did not suffer from the education process. Working families ensure an improved education for their children differently from poor families “Personally, I had all school needs, my parents were working. I work hard for my children too. I know the value of education, so I’m working to ensure that my children acquire the education they deserve. I am employed.” One participant noted. Although she had a “pleasant experience” as (Van Manen, 2014) put it in her educational journey, she indicates what (Van Manen, 2014) once again called “unpleasant experience” (Kindle Location 2479), regarding poor children’s education. The participants noted that “But there are poor children. I can see little children asking to wash dishes for payment instead of going to school, a child who is supposed to be in primary school asking for a house work, skipping school […].” She continues that although the law does not allow child labor, but still