I found Stacey J. Lee's book really eye-opening. Truthfully, I did not pay all that much attention to the Asian American students at my high school. I was friends with some and the differences between their culture and mine went unspoken. Two of my good friends growing up with brothers, and Vietnamese. All I know is that their parents never talked to me, and they're mother made amazing eggrolls.
One lesson I learned from this reading was the unconscious nature of racism. Lee describes how teachers will compare students of one race to another, and how these same teachers will deny the existence of racism at Academic High. I appreciate that Lee brought this topic to the forefront.
We all want all students to be treated equally and get the same opportunities, but in such a competitive atmosphere they simply cannot. The very nature of competition creates the scenario for there to be academic winners and losers. There is something about this that I don't agree with. Mainly, if you have a student compete and the odds are against them and they continuously wind up the "loser" I fear for how this affects them in the long run. They might start believing they cannot succeed, and then they may stop trying. Lee showed examples of these students, specifically "New Wavers" (74). This same situation occurs on a larger scale with the immigrants of ethnicities that cannot economically or socially succeed. They stop believing there's any hope for social mobility (64). Some people will blame these groups for their lack of success and consider them lazy, unmotivated, etc. Truth is, there is a dominant culture in the U.S., and those who don't fit into it can be made to feel like outsiders. There's also an under-lying mentality of individualism - the individual can achieve whatever they set their mind to, look out for one's self and one's family, someone else's trouble aren't necessarily yours, etc. I understand that not everyone is like this, but it is out there, enough for their to be situations like those Lee wrote about.
I wish I could remember the names of the people who did the social experiments on working from nothing to financial viability. The first one was a woman who sought out to prove that if you're poor, it doesn't matter how hard you try, you're going to stay that way. The second experiment was done in response to that. A boy from the Massachusetts area thought the first experiment utilized a defeatist attitude, which is why is doomed to fail. He changed his name, and moved away from his family, to start with nothing, and no connections. Through hard work, he proved that a positive attitude can break certain barriers. I believe that this ties into the individualism you mention. If you think you're going to fail, you're probably going to, but a positive outlook with appropriate follow-through could be the difference in favor of a more welcome result.
ReplyDeleteCompetition in the classroom may sound like a good idea on paper, but in reality it can diminish a student's self-esteem and confidence, as you pointed out. It may seem as though a healthy competition will give students a much deeper motivation to learn the material and compare themselves to their peers, but what can happen is that the students will not fully grasp and understand the material. They'll simply try to memorize it in order to beat out their fellow classmates. It can also be devastating to a student's motivation to do well if they continually finish near the bottom of the class. It may not give them the desire to work hard in school, since they feel as though they won't be able to do as well than their peers beyond school.
ReplyDeleteI'm a big believer in that there are certain set of standards that someone should learn, and if they learn those things they get an A and it doesn't matter how they do in comparison to others. The point of education is to get student to learn things and think on their own, not outdo one another.
ReplyDeleteI had a professor in college who would grade on a curve (and not in boost your grade sort of way). What would happen is at the end of the semester there would be only one student who would get an A, 7 who would get Bs, 15 who would get Cs, etc. So no matter how good you did, if you didn't have the highest grade in class, you wouldn't get an A. The competition was very frustrating to all of us in the class, and I can empathize how student in such a competitive environment can quickly become hostile toward one another.