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By jamie, April 6, 2012 1:11 pm

I remember back in high school, receiving tons of mail from various college. I was always being asked to fill out some sort of survey about what I was looking for in a college, and soon after I submitted it, more mail would arrive. The funniest one I received was from a college I had never heard of, thinking me for asking for information about their riding program (riding, as in horses) – I had to laugh, because I had never ridden a horse (still haven’t) and certainly hadn’t requested information about any riding programs. We concluded that someone had read my survey out loud and the persons stuffing envelopes had heard “riding” instead of “writing.” Or maybe they were just really working hard to recruit horse enthusiasts and sent it to everyone on their list. In the end, I attended a community college for my general ed requirements, a decision I do not regret, and may even suggest for my kids when they reach that stage (don’t hurry, Little Mama – you’re getting big much too quickly as it is!).

According to Robbins, studies show that Ivy League grads don’t earn more money than the rest of us, on average. Also, and perhaps the most important thing, is that teaching quality is not better at Ivy League schools. (One major study found Harvard to be nearly at the bottom based on student surveys of teaching quality “[availability] of faculty, the quality of instruction and advising, the [presence of] sense of community, and the campus social life.”) I know a little something about teaching in college, and I completely understand why this would be the case. At the more prestigious schools, the main job of a professor is to conduct research. Some of the more famous professors don’t actually step into the classroom at all, and their classes are actually taught by graduate students. Others just spend the minimum amount of time necessary to deliver a lecture/lesson without allowing their research to suffer. The rest of their time is spent writing for publication, speaking at various places, securing funding for future research, and other assorted non-classroom-related duties.

It’s easier to find great teachers at less prestigious colleges that do not place their primary emphasis on research. Some community colleges are excellent places to find great teachers (some of the best professors from my undergraduate days were at community college, and I hope to be one of those great professors someday as well).

This section of the book discusses the U.S. News and World Report annual college ranking report. As it turns out, there is overwhelming evidence that the entire list is a big scam. Colleges blatently cheat to score higher on the list (anything from falsifying SAT averages to reclassifying non-donating alums as dead so they will have a higher percentage). Some also manipulate their selectivity rating by actively recruiting students they know they will deny. Here is a quote from the book:

When the magazine’s first rankings algorithm produced a number one school that wasn’t considered elite, the algorithm (which rewarded diversity) and the statistician who created it were dumped. Instead, U.S. News went with a formula that resulted in a top ranking for Yale. Washington Monthly reported that since then, U.S. News “essentially put its thumb on the scale to make sure that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton continued to come out on top, as they did every year until 1999.” [I checked the 2011 list: Harvard, Princeton, Yale...]

Robbins interviews admissions directors in this section. According to these decision makers, it’s not necessary to play multiple sports, head multiple clubs, and engage in hundreds of hours of community service in order to be accepted into a top school. One, Matt Lawrence, said, “We’re not looking for a well-rounded student; we’re looking for a well-rounded student body.” In other words, you are being compared with the other students in the applicant pool, but not in the sense that the person with the most activities wins, but rather, your skills and experience must complement and add to theirs.

Two other items in my reading were of particular interest to me, one because I am a parent and the other because I am a sociologist:

Helicopter Parenting (again recalling A Nation of Wimps): I had already read about kids being diagnosed with false developmental disorders so they could get unlimited time on the SAT (in A Nation of Wimps – how have I not finished that great book?!?) The part that really struck me this time was parents getting their “regular” kids labeled “gifted.” These parents link their personal self esteem to the success of their children and then devote inordinate amounts of time toward helping their children achieve parent-determined measures of success – “gifted” status -> advanced classes – > perfect SAT scores – > Ivy League college – > prestigious career…

I have been struggling with this one (public confession time): I am convinced that my daughter is gifted. I can’t imagine she wouldn’t be. It bothers me that she can’t read yet, because I could read well by age three, and I just KNOW she has it in her. There are other things I’m certain she could do (like using the computer to do more than watch Netflix, play mp3s, Angry Birds or – heaven help us – poker) if I just pushed a little. But I don’t want to push too hard and have her burn out by the tenth grade, so I’m hanging back and letting her set the pace (which is very hard to do). For her birthday, I got her several learning books, (actually, I’m holding them until her party, but since she can’t read, I can post this here) and I’m thinking that I’ll “home school” her this summer if she wants me to.

The other interesting bit is about teacher expectation and students: As I tell my classes, teacher expectation can doom a student. If they are convinced you can’t handle the material they might write you off by “dumbing down” the material instead of challenging you to succeed. I hadn’t heard examples at the opposite end of the spectrum until now. Robbins describes a kid who is a “stealth” overachiever, meaning that he doesn’t publicize his high test scores or college plans. Because his teachers don’t perceive him to be in the same league as the “Ivy bound” students, his subjective grades are not as high (his English teacher gives him lower grades on his essays than her grader does – the grader does not know the reputations of the kids, and grades them only on merit). Robbins also mentions teachers (even at the college level) being pressured to raise the grades of kids who are on scholarships and those who are perceived to be particularly smart/worthy of Ivy league acceptance. That’s terrible.

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By jamie, April 3, 2012 2:41 am

I remember falling asleep in class when I was in high school. One time a teacher told me off in front of everyone else – I had gone to class at 6 am for an optional study session for Honors Chemistry after only sleeping about three hours, and I pretty much slept through the whole thing. I was convinced that something was wrong with me, that maybe I just didn’t have the drive necessary to stay awake even though everyone else seemed to be able to. Another time I was so excited to see Nelson Mandela interviewed on television – I slept through the interview and felt like such a failure afterwards.

It turns out I was just a normal, sleep deprived teenager, trying to juggle AP classes and extracurricular activities and finding that there were not enough hours in a day. The author mentions (but does not link to – at least the digital version does not include many notes – to me this is a major flaw of the book) studies about sleep deprivation and teens. (By the way, I read through Chapter 7.) Teenagers who juggle too many activities on too little sleep are, according to Robbins, more likely to be depressed, have “negative moods, decreased school performance, increased likelihood to try stimulants, and a higher risk of accidents and death.” I am inclined to believe her, because we heard similar things, and more, in NurtureShock (for example, that SAT and math scores improve when teens gets more sleep).

Another challenge students increasingly face is the emphasis on test scores over actual learning. Sometimes they tell me about their experiences with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and, because we are in Florida, the FCAT. I have heard so many horror stories. It is extremely stressful, and there doesn’t seem to be any emphasis on actually retention of knowledge. And I wonder how much fun it is for the teachers? – if they have to devote the majority of their time to making sure one test goes well in order to keep their jobs, I don’t think we are best utilizing their skills and talents. how are your skills and talents. Here is a quote from the book:

No Child Left Behind has already changed the face of the United States classroom, and the results are disturbing. The exclusive emphasis on tests has left students sick with stress in even the youngest grades; some schools reported that on testing days, up to two dozen children vomit on their test booklets. In Florida, when a seventeen-year-old honor roll student failed the state test and was told she wouldn’t graduate with her class, she attempted to kill herself.

The book explains that NCLB was modeled after a program in Houston, which sounded as though it was extremely successful at increasing test scores and discouraging kids from dropping out of college. Evidently the program, which hasn’t been successful at the national level, didn’t work in Texas either – those impressive results that led to a national program turned out to be fraudulent. (Robbins gives specific evidence of this, but I haven’t fact checked her.)

There is so much in these chapters – I could go on and on. Here are a few more highlights:

Cheating is an epidemic among smart kids. One student explained it this way: “The whole reason cheating is popular is because it’s busywork, for the most part, and you don’t feel you need to learn the material because it’s not important. For teachers I respect, if they make the effort to teach me something useful, I’m not going to cheat.”

I try to make my assignments as engaging as possible, but I have caught some cheaters. It feels terrible to be the one the students don’t respect. On a positive note, I assign a lot of writing in my classes, and the blatant cheating has only happened a few times. And sometimes the student “accidentally” plagiarized by copying and pasting large passages of text, then slapping a citation at the bottom of the page. For me it is more common for students to speak to me about their papers as they are writing them – some show me drafts, other ask questions here and there, and sometimes they give me regular updates on papers they are particularly invested in.

Not only do we pressure kids too much in the classroom, we do it on the sports field as well. Robbins gives the following statistic: “Every year, more than 3.5 million children age fourteen and younger are treated for sports injuries.” That’s a lot, particularly because many of them are the types of injuries that can only occur with many hundreds of hours of repetitive activity. I remember reading about this in A Nation of Wimps, too, and I repeat that I don’t want to ever lose my head and make my children believe that being the best at any sports is worth permanent, irreparable injury. If this keeps them out of the Olympics or the “Big Leagues,” I’m alright with that.

This section also discusses private preschools for children, and highly competitive kindergartens that involve standardized testing and personal interviews with both parents and children. Naturally, I read these paragraphs with great interest. I’m not sure how Little Mama would do on the tests. As a parent, I know it’s hard to resist the urge to compare our kids to other people’s, so I tried to imagine our girl in the interview room when the author was describing the ones she got to witness. At nearly four, she is decent at math, and spends a great deal of time voluntarily filling pages with letter practice. She isn’t reading yet, but enthusiastically points out her sight words (from school) when I read to her. She can draw a few shapes (she has been practicing stars lately – her attempts look pretty much like “A’s”), and I think she is excellent with scissors. I’m proud of her, of course.

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By jamie, October 29, 2010 12:19 pm

When I was a kid, I used to love playing with “gadgets.” Also, if I got a toy that required assembly, I would try to figure out what I could without looking at the instructions. Jigsaw puzzles – it’s cheating to look at the picture on the box! Computer programs or any computerized device – these were my favorite – I would explore everything I could to see what I could do. Fast forward to today – I have thought it must be a function of getting older, but now it takes me forever to figure things out. I am anxious to get a book on the latest version of Photoshop so I can maximize my effectiveness using it. I actually broke down and read a book “For Dummies” to figure out how to put up this blog – I would like to learn how to do more, but one day I attempted to edit the CSS file all by myself and the ENTIRE BLOG DISAPPEARED, so now I’m a little gun shy. Our nice new camera? I can point and shoot and that’s about it, even though I had actively lobbied for a camera that “does more stuff.” This one does, but I have to download the book to figure out how to use the extra features. My new cell phone? Forget it. I had to be shown how to answer the thing – the first couple of days I had to wait until the call went to voice mail and then call them back (that was particularly embarrassing). I finally got the data feature and I waited until we saw our nieces to attempt using it – it was tricky to figure out.

So, I have become “that grownup” the one who needs the kids to show her how to work the computer. I read Chapters 11 and 12 of Wimps today, and it specifically talks about the divide between kids and adults with regard to technology. Marano suggests that adults tend to fear technology, because it is new enough for us that we have to scramble to keep up with what is new while, for our children, it is “simply the water they swim in.” I’m not sure – I think I am probably of an in-between generation, because I had a computer when I was a kid, and I got a cell phone pretty early (not while in middle school, but early). Part of me is willing to believe this though, because I’m not sure I will appreciate any alternative explanation – I had thought it was because I don’t have as much free time to explore and figure things out, but I have spent so many hours trying to figure out these style sheets for this and my other blog that now I’m not so sure.

Anyway, the book gives this parental fear of technology as one reason why so many parents give their children whatever they want – some parents might subconsciously fear our children because they have the upper hand with regard to the tools of today. I guess it goes something like this – because they will ultimately “rule us” since their brains are developing with better capability to understand what is to us “new” and to them “ubiquitous,” we cede the power to them when they are still small.

This section also takes a look at parents who are taking increasingly young children to the psychiatrist, demanding meds for conditions such as “bipolar.” The symptoms? Tantrums or other willful behavior. Here is one particularly disturbing quote:

“The temper tantrums of belligerent children are increasingly being characterized as psychiatric illness.” [psychiatrist Elizabeth Roberts] singles out bipolar disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and Asperger’s syndrome as the diagnoses particularly favored today “to explain away the results of poor parenting practices.” It’s simply easier to tell parents their child has a brain-based disorder than to suggest their parenting skills need an overhaul.

I am always surprised at how casually people think of pharmaceuticals today, particularly with children, for whom we cannot possibly know the long-term effects. It almost makes me fearful in the other direction – I HATE to give Baby Girl medicine because I don’t want to do the wrong thing.

On a more positive note, some kids are growing up in a non-pressure atmosphere at a special school where the kids just play if they want to, where learning is entirely up to each child. Here is their website: Sudbury Valley School. I just spent over an hour looking at the photos and reading how the school works – my gut level reaction is that it’s ridiculous to put your children in this type of environment – if you have the money for this school, why not find one with an actual curriculum? After thinking about it a bit, the idea might be growing on me – at least these kids will grow up knowing how to be self-motivated, with leadership and social skills that can be well-utilized in whatever they decide to do next. (I won’t address my standard problems with access and socioeconomic status except to say that if it’s a school only for rich kids, it’s not for my kids, even if I win the lottery tomorrow – unlikely because I don’t play, of course).

Other posts about A Nation of Wimps:

Post 1: A Nation of Wimps, by Hara Estroff Marano
Post 2: Bathing Suits and Bogeymen
Post 3: My Favorite Subject is Recess
Post 4: Beer Bongs and Fragile Children
Post 5: Cell Phones Can Cause Depression?
Post 6: Teach Mommy How to Answer the Phone, Baby Girl

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By jamie, October 26, 2010 4:11 pm

I attended a parochial school as a child, and one day in class my teacher basically made fun of my religion in front of all the students (she knew that I was not a member of her church, but she did not know my denomination). She didn’t know what she was talking about, and she said some things that were untrue and unfair, and then she laughed about it and so did the other kids. I was horrified and devastated, but I mustered up the courage to say “that’s my religion you are talking about.” This earned me a full day of exile (kids can be so mean), but I survived it and made it home to tell my parents what had happened.

My mom responded the way she generally did with things like that – she taught me how to handle it. She helped me formulate what to say, she practiced with me how to say it, and then she assigned me to ask the teacher for a few minutes to talk about what had occurred during religion class. I hated it when my mother did this, because really I wanted her to “fix it,” but she insisted that I had to do this. So I did – I explained to my teacher why her statements were inaccurate and why they were unfair. Later that day, she apologized to me in front of the class, explained a little to them too, and I had “friends” again. There were a few more of these assignments from my mom throughout elementary school, and eventually I learned to speak up for myself without first running it by my parents.

I read chapters 9 and 10 today – we made it to the science chapters, which I love. She consolidates the negative effects of doing everything for our children (including choosing their classes and accompanying them to job interviews). We basically hinder their growth and set them up for problems with anxiety and depression. Also, working hard to achieve goals (instead of having things handed to us) causes endorphin production, which brings a feeling of well-being; the action makes us feel happier than receiving the reward

She talks a lot about cell phones: constant (cell phone facilitated) contact hinders intellectual discussion in college, makes people less interested in friendships,and keeps them tethered to their parents, which hinders them from reaching adulthood at the pace previous generations did. They can also contribute to depression – many reasons are given for this, including the brain chemistry explanations, but they include the fact that, with easy phone access there is no need to plan ahead, and it lets people think they are connected, but without the feeling of true connection (too easy to pick up when bored).

Some of today’s reading bothered me, but that is because I am more inclined toward interdependence than independence (and of course I see the value in both). This chapter pushes too hard in the direction of strict independence for my tastes – I think it’s NICE for adult children to call their parents every day, and to want their parents’ opinions about important matters. At the same time, I really think that the author, as well as the researchers quoted in this section are really talking to parents who create “dependence” – they want to control their children and their children to through adolescence and reach adulthood relying on this. “Yet one more thing that maintaining a tight parental bond does is impede young people in the development of close emotional bonds to others, bonds that should be forming in young adulthood and that become the basis of romantic partnerships.”

Some experts thing that a main reason for “hooking up,” or having casual sexual relations with people they don’t plan to see again, is one way today’s teens and young adults get around the “tight parental bond.” This way they can prolong the time when they will have to make decision about marriage and starting their own families, focusing their emotional bonds within their parental relationship instead of transferring it to their dating/sexual partners. The book asserts that many young people today “hang out” in groups instead of dating, probably for the same reason. I wonder how this will factor into the divorce rate among the generation in question.
One surprising bit of research – on a 42 point “scale of infantilization, which measures “specific ways that the behavior of teens is restricted,” U.S. teens reported experiencing over 26 different things (such as parents requiring them to take certain courses or routinely searching their rooms without permission). “American adolescents had far higher scores–indicating far more restrictions–than U.S. marines and incarcerated felons.” I want to keep my children safe, but I also hope I will trust them to make wise decisions when they are teenagers – I hope I promote interdependence, rather than making them feel like I should make all of their choices for them.

Remember when we learned that we can grow new cells in our brains? According to Marano, the chemical that facilitates this (brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF) is “missing in the brain cells of depressed or anxious people. They are frozen in ruts of thought and behavior; they have lost flexibility of response.” So does this mean that depressed or anxious people cannot learn or maintain what they learn as well as others? I need to make friends with a neuroscientist. Exercise and other challenges stimulate BDNF production, so Marano and the experts she features agree that we should make sure our children are challenged, and that they regularly work hard instead of just giving them things to make them happy.

Other posts about A Nation of Wimps:

Post 1: A Nation of Wimps, by Hara Estroff Marano
Post 2: Bathing Suits and Bogeymen
Post 3: My Favorite Subject is Recess
Post 4: Beer Bongs and Fragile Children
Post 5: Cell Phones Can Cause Depression?
Post 6: Teach Mommy How to Answer the Phone, Baby Girl

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By jamie, October 24, 2010 10:25 pm

Drinking is a major problem on college campuses. I know some people who say that the best way to combat it is to lower the legal drinking age to 18 – that way kids will be exposed to it sooner, and they won’t go crazy with alcohol consumption once they move out of their parents’ watchful eyes and into dorms with other young, repressed people. Some even say that the best way to inoculate kids from college binge drinking is to let them experiment with alcohol at home, while they are teenagers, with parental permission and supervision. Anecdotal evidence is not generalizable, but I know several people who have parents who went this route – one is now a responsible drinker, but occasionally drove while intoxicated and was once arrested for DUI before getting married and becoming a parent; another was twice hospitalized for binge drinking while in college (before being expelled altogether).

I have been of two minds on the subject. On the one hand, I think that a lot of people drink too much and don’t consider it a problem. At the same time, it’s hard to argue with the logic that says it’s better for your teen to sleep it off on your couch than to have him lie about his experimentation with alcohol by indulging somewhere he is unlikely to be caught but very likely to get into trouble as a result (make the teen a girl, and now I’m thinking that she is at an increased risk of sexual assault if she drinks anywhere but at home).

Here is a quote that has taken me off of the fence:

The Duke study suggests that heavy drinking by students is not a pastime to wink at. Drinking prior to full brain maturation damages neurocognitive functioning in many ways–it impairs decision making in the executive center of the brain, boosting preference for short-term rewards and desensitizing people to long-term losses. But the most troublesome outcome of all may be that it especially undermines the structures that allow people to impose voluntary control over drinking in the future. Sure, it impairs learning and memory–and the adolescent brain is more sensitive to memory impairment than is the adult brain–but is also increases the risk of later alcoholism by close to 50 percent.

Instead of telling our kids to “just say no” we have to tell them why they should say no. This could be tricky: What do you say to a little kid who wants to taste beer because the grownups drink it? Well, beer stinks, so that might be a temporary deterrent, but what about those fruity drinks that look like dessert and taste like it too? I think we should tell them the facts – it is dangerous for growing brains. We now know that the brain grows until around age 25, so they should know this too. I also think that we should not casually drink in front of kids.

Marano quotes psychologist Bernardo Caraducci, who studies shyness and finds that alcohol is attractive to today’s students who have not learned vital social skills: “[Alcohol] provides an instant identity; it lets people know that you are willing to belong.” I remember the first “grownup” conference I went to. They served wine at dinner, and it was interesting to be the only one who did not imbibe – everyone was stiff at first, and then they got better at socializing once they had a few swallows. They also talked louder. I’m a bit of a wallflower – I was nervous and shy, and I wondered if it would be easier if I had some wine too, but I drank my water and stared at my plate and got through dinner.

At the risk of sounding pious and obnoxious, I will say that now when I attend parties hosted by non-family members, I am always surprised at the pressure people put on me to drink alcohol. It’s strange – if there is no booze at a function, no one strong arms you into drinking a soda. But if you are the lone teetotaler (it’s easier in a mixed group of drinkers and non-drinkers), people get uncomfortable – you can’t even use the “designated driver” excuse because then they promise you coffee and tell you that you have plenty of time to sober up and that one drink won’t hurt. I can’t imagine what it must be like for a recovering alcoholic – they must have to avoid all functions where alcohol is served. It must be so hard for shy teenagers who go away to school.

I read chapters 7-8, and there is so much besides alcohol in these chapters, particularly about the difficulties today’s college students, including the mental disabilities they struggle with (mainly anxiety and depression) and the dangerous self-help techniques they use to cope (such as self mutilation and eating disorders).

Here a just a few highlights:

If infants receive a great deal of tactile stimulation from their parents (hugging, holding, cuddling, etc.) this actually turns on genes in their DNA that enables them to better handle stress. Did you know that prolonged stress can actually impede learning and memory? The affection children receive in their early days can actually set them up to better manage stressful situations for their entire lives. Reading this reinforced my belief that “cry it out” is a bad idea.

It is really important to let children do things on their own, even if it takes longer this way. The “sense of mastery” they feel when they have accomplished something all on their own lowers depression, improves well-being, makes them believe that they can solve problems on their own in the future. I have to work on this one again – my kiddo has been able to dress herself for months, but when we were potty training I started stepping in to help her so she wouldn’t make a puddle. Now she sometimes doesn’t even try, because she knows I am faster – she’ll say “it’s too tricky Mommy, you do it!” She spills her yogurt when she feeds herself, so lately she hands one of us the spoon and says, “feed me.”

The belief that children are fragile makes fragile children – they should be able to handle anger, fear, anxiety, etc., and we should not try to shield them from every one of life’s imperfections. We communicate our anxiety to our children – if we act like they need constant care and supervision, they will think that something is wrong with them. I had to struggle with this one during the ISR lessons – Baby Girl did a lot of screaming and sputtering at first. Her swim teacher had to instruct me to smile and cheer if I wanted to say sitting at the pool, because looking like I was ready to burst into tears was not doing my daughter any favors.

The protectionism that takes all the risk of life for kids rests on the assumption that children are easily bruised. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The fact is that too much protectionism creates frailty. Not only do children fail to create coping skills for life’s vicissitudes, and fall apart when they hit a speed bump, but kids come to think that something must really be wrong with them if they need so much protection. They are deprived of real opportunities for learning about themselves and for growth.

Other posts about A Nation of Wimps:

Post 1: A Nation of Wimps, by Hara Estroff Marano
Post 2: Bathing Suits and Bogeymen
Post 3: My Favorite Subject is Recess
Post 4: Beer Bongs and Fragile Children
Post 5: Cell Phones Can Cause Depression?
Post 6: Teach Mommy How to Answer the Phone, Baby Girl