Blame Students, Not Teachers

It's an interesting article pointing out that student performance isn't so much about teachers and class size, but how much effort students are willing to put into HW.

I sometimes think back on myself in HS and College and kind of want to kick myself for not putting in a little more effort. I was able to calculate in my head with my natural abilities + X (acceptable amount) of work would yield a 3.6-3.8 GPA. A lot more work would be required to get into the uber elite category and I didn't need to be valedictorian, I enjoyed my social life and played lots of sports and felt that it was good enough. There was deviation, semester to semester of course...but in the end, I landed in about that range. No teacher or parent could reasonably complain about those grades and for me, it didn't require sacrificing TV, social, sports, or anything else...

It wasn't until my junior/senior thesis in college when I started to realize the inherent satisfaction in doing something to the very best of my ability. I understood it in terms of sport - the idea of leaving it all out on the field...but the same notion didn't translate to school. School was a burden, sometimes cool, but mostly a burden - mostly work. But I began a gradual change when I was studying abroad and I wasn't having the big party everyone is supposed to have while abroad - it was cold and dreary in Cambridge and the classes were one on one with professors who seemed impressed with me and my fellow Americans writing ability and intellectual sophistication (I actually think we were a tad above the average British undergrad). I wasn't working hard for the grades - I did it because my social life was shit in England, everything closed at 11pm - and I didn't have anything else to do. So I ended up getting really good grades. In fact, the only B+ I got was from this annoying philosophy instructor who asked me what grade I would give myself and then gave me that grade. A stupid, telling event about both me and him.

My senior year in college was mostly back to my old habits until I wrote this thesis on Seinfeld and Irony. I had to work really hard because I changed my topic at the last minute and to prove I wasn't writing this joke of a Senior Thesis and was also spurred on by the fact that people sort of liked the topic and wanted to read "The Seinfeld Thesis." Anyhow, when it was finished, I was finished was like, "Goddamn, that's a pretty good paper," and felt an inherent satisfaction apart from the letter grade.

And then onto grad school and my first semester was pretty bad because there were a couple of teachers I just didn't like: Acting, Sound, and Screenwriting, and subsequently, I didn't work that hard. Somehow, I got my act together though and started concentrating more what I could get out of things and less on what I was being handed, and academically, it's been much more rewarding in and of itself. So for me, it took a really long time to realize something my parents were telling me in 6th grade...but how do you expect kids to gain wisdom?

Oh well, live and learn.