A 9-Hour Crash Course Encourages Failure and Undermines Educators
Full credit for a course is awarded based on 180 hours of class time. However, schools all across NYC will be offering “Credit Recovery Courses” sometime this year. These courses will meet for 3 hours a day, for 3 days and will allow students who have failed an English or Social Studies course to earn a full credit. Students will be required to “make up the work” and “not the class” as an administrator told me yesterday. Either way, they are earning credit in a course that they failed because they deserved to fail. And they will be making it up in 9-hours.
So what are we telling our students? What are we telling those students who decide that coming to class or doing work is not important? What are we telling those students who work hard every day for their grades and their credit?
Socrates commented on a previous post that “Johnny needs to be brought out of submission by the self-confidence that comes from real achievement. That is a balm stronger than any other intervention.” While I don’t tend to agree with him often, I do agree with that. I agree that adults have a responsibility to teach children that success is not necessarily about the end result but more about the work that it took you to get there. But what about the child’s responsibility?
As an educator, I am annoyed that my job- the one that takes me all year to do- is being reduced to a 9-hour course, a few movies, and an essay. As a parent, I am annoyed that schools are more focused on quantity rather than quality. The DOE wants to increase the number of students who graduate in four years but to do so they play into the idea that failure is not a problem because someone will always be there to correct the situation.
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Comments
Very well said. I was discussing this with my mom and she said, “great, just what we need. People who are constantly being bailed out of trouble never learn how to stop getting in trouble.”
I could not have put it better.
You can give a man a fish or you can teach him how to fish for himself.
See, it’s better to give it to him because then he’s dependent on you to supply him with fish.
Because he’s never learned to fish for himself,he’ll keep buying his fish from you.
Then, you can raise the price of fish. Not knowing how to fish for himself, he’ll have to pay the price.
Soon, everyone will buy their fish from you. You’ll buy a fish franchise.
You’ll make so much money that you and your children and your children’s children will be set for life.
Who cares what happens to the people who spent all of their money buying your fish?
They were too stupid to figure it out for themselves.
[...] will be setting up online learning communities in which students will be able to participate in credit recovery. This is not new in US education. Staff members at Worthington Evening High School in Ohio have [...]
[...] It is perfectly acceptable to show moves every day during the 3 day credit recovery class and require one paper. However, during a 10 day class showing 25 minutes of different movies everyday- movies that fit [...]
I just came back from my night class, and we were having a similar conversation. We were talking about the way that no one is tough on kids anymore. We were saying that our parents and teachers were really tough on us. Today, they’d be accused of ‘corporal punishment’ or hurting our feelings for demanding standards from us.
This guy said something to me that I thought was amazing.
He said, “Yea, we learned the hard way from people who were really tough on us, but we learned it. I can”t even imagine how these kids are going to learn. They’re either going to be dead or on the poverty line.”
Well said.