Final Blog

The reading that struck me as most interesting was the excerpt from Dweck which discussed setting the standards for academic learning. He states that we (Americans) have in a sense, enabled our children and have inadvertently educationally handicapped them. Dweck stated the following: "lowering the standards just leads to poorly educated students who feel entitled to easy work and lavish praise" (p. 187). Due to the push for raising test scores, teachers often only teach what is needed for their students to pass the national examinations. In doing so, students often don't have the opportunity to expound upon their learning, which could make it difficult to independently construct their own meaning by way of critical thinking through materials presented in the classroom. As a whole, teachers provide just enough information in one particular educational content, and then move on to the next subject in order to meet the markers for national standards. Dweck talked about a teacher who was reprimanded because she decided to push her students into thinking outside of the box. Some of my most memorable classes in grade school, undergrad, and graduate courses are in courses in which I had teachers/professors that were willing to push me out of my comfort zone in which I had to critically think about the material presented to me. It was through those experiences that I learned the most and can still retrieve the information that I learned. However, I am unable to recall most information from those classes in which I memorized terms long enough to be able to recognize them on multiple-choice tests. William James was on to something when he talked about teachers varying their method of instruction and teaching in a way that students can take the information and build upon their current knowledge structures.