May 23, 2008

Are Unhappy Students the Exception or the Rule?

Posted by Aaron Tang at 5:12PM

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If you want to know how good a school is, here's a novel idea: ask the students.

At a bad school, you'll hear complaints that are well-founded, such as a number of the quotes from a powerful report published earlier this week in Washington, DC .

One elementary school student complained, "Give us harder work, not the busywork that we already know."

A middle school student, when asked about her teachers, said that "they let you know you are failing but then let you go on struggling and then send you to summer school."

A student at the same school reflected, "Teachers don't teach us a thing throughout the entire period. When visitors come, they start working."

And at one of the city's high schools, one history class had an almost unbelievable lesson plan, where students were asked, "Where is your favorite place to shop?"

The concept of students complaining about school is not a novel concept, of course, especially at this time of the year when summer is just around the corner and patience grows thin on the part of adults and students both. But there is something telling in these comments from DC's students--and its telling more because of who says them, than what they are saying.

After all, were you really all that surprised to hear that it was students from an inner-city with high levels of poverty complaining about bad teachers, low expectations, and overall low quality of education? I hear similar statements from students all the time in my school, and I have to confess that they are often on point. In short, reports of student discontent are numerous in DC, St Louis City, and other areas with high concentrations of low-income and minority children, and they often hit on important themes, such as those having to do with low quality teachers or run-down school buildings.

Meanwhile, if a school is actually pretty good, you'll likely hear a combination of compliments and complaints. The difference about the complaints, however, will be marked. Instead of focusing on obvious problems such as inept teachers, broken facilities, lack of safety, and inadequate student support and discipline, in the nicer suburbian schools, complaints will sound a lot more like the student in the video below, which is to say high on passion and energy, but low on common sense. (Message to student: you are right that some teachers focus too much on rote memorization, but trust me when I say that learning vocabulary words does serve a purpose in the end!)