Does your teen know that studying at home is part of the learning game?

So here’s the big question: Why are the majority of students these days — especially from high school through college — not learning what they should?

Coaching based on assumptions

Picture this: A new coach is talking to his team. “Alright team, are you ready to go? We’ve got a lot of work to do. Remember: The name of this game is practice, getting better each day, listening to what I teach you, working as a team, setting goals, and being dedicated to becoming a winning basketball team.”

One of the team raises his hand: “Sounds great, coach, but what is basketball, anyway?”

Teaching based on assumptions

Picture this: At the beginning of the semester, the teacher says to her students: “Alright, listen up. This course is about American history. You’ve got a lot to learn, it’s going to take a lot of work on your part. You have to pay close attention to what I have to say. You have to study, study, study at home. I want you to participate in classroom discussions. I want you set goals each day to learn more and more about history. If you do all this, you’ll learn history. Okay, are you ready to start?”

A hand is raised: “Ms. Smith, what exactly is studying, and what does it have to do with learning?”

A fundamental micro-problem

Putting all the broad problems of education aside, I think the biggest problem is, ironically, a micro-problem. It’s the reason everything else, big and small, is out of whack. I believe that students don’t understand what studying is, what it means in terms of time — and its relationship to learning, for that matter. They're clueless.

Researchers who examine the behavior of students tell us that students in high school and college are studying fewer hours per week than ever. Yet they are getting grades higher than ever. (It's a complex and complicated situation, but it's true.) Is it surprising that these students see no connection between studying and learning?

If there were a poster in every classroom proclaiming that Learning is the Result of Studying, and Studying Requires Time, I wonder what students' reactions would be. I guess it would be like the reaction of the basketball players: What is basketball anyway?

Students are missing these simple, basic, yet crucial, maxims of studying and learning. You can’t have one without the other. Some schools teach this; some do not.  How many hours of uninterrupted study do you think your student puts in during a week (away from the TV in the background, cell phone calls, and other distractions)? You might want to count the hours.

If your student has not yet developed mature learning techniques and created a learning routine in a place that contributes to study, you may have to step in at home, as hard as that may be. Make the connection between time spent studying, (in a quiet place), and learning — and remind your student of this relationship regularly.

If your student is one of the "clueless," maybe you just have to say, “Get out there on the court and practice, practice, practice!” After all, they're getting ready for college. That's the BIG game.  

The need for parents to help their teens in getting ready for college work – Part 3

Part 3 of a 3-part series

Part 1: The U.S. standing in relation to the rest of the world in terms of learning.

Part 2: The big difference between what’s expected in college and how unprepared high school students are to take on independent study. (It’s a small part of why the large majority of college students take 5-6 years to graduate.)

Let’s return to Mr. Friedman’s article that began this 3-part post. In it, he cites Amanda Ripley’s new book, “The Smartest Kids in the World, and How They Got That Way.” To quote Ms. Ripley, “other countries are doing ‘a lot better’ than the United States in education because—simply put—they’re more serious about it…And that sense of educational purpose has its roots in both policy and in culture.”

I’d like to focus on culture for a moment.

Mr. Friedman’s article featured a teacher letter. And this teacher nails just one aspect of the kind of “after-school” lack of seriousness that is a cause of un-readiness.

The teacher explains, “This is a real conversation I had with a failing student who was being quite sincere in her comments: ‘I know you’re a really good teacher, but you don’t seem to realize I have two hours a night of Facebook and over 4,000 text messages a month to deal with. How do you expect me to do all this work?”

Parent role at home
For the great majority of teens who are to immature to guide themselves on what they “should” be doing after school, parents need to start the process of helping their teens assume responsibility for themselves and on how they use their time. (That includes being “over-scheduled” after school, too.)

Parents should discuss setting boundaries and limit time spent electronically. Explain that productive study is uninterrupted by any devices. It’s a lesson teens can learn only with parental guidance. (Teachers do not go home with students to see that they study.) The alternative of not learning this lesson is hugely expensive college costs—accompanied by a delayed degree or no degree at all.

Parent participation in school
To quote Mr. Friedman, “And Amanda points a finger at you and me, as parents—not because we aren’t involved in school, but because too often, we are involved in the wrong way.”

“Parents,” says Ms. Ripley, “are happy to show up at sports events, video camera in hand, and they’ll come to school to protest a bad grade.

“We love going to our kids’ games and seeing them perform on stage in a play or in a concert…But to really help our kids, we have to do so much more as parents. We have to change expectations about how hard kids should work.”

Find out more things parents should know about un-readiness and how to prevent it.

The need for parents to help their teens in getting ready for college – Part 2

Part 2 of a 3-part series

In Part 1, you saw some of the numbers that describe our declining educational position in the world. Now consider these very telling numbers (I call them “quick stix”):

• Nearly 65% of COLLEGE-BOUND high school seniors study fewer than 6 hours a week. Only 15% study more than 10 hours — the “highest category” in the research. In college, these students will need to study 25-30 hours a week to succeed.
• This study-time gap alone carries enormous implications.
• 84% of college faculty describe high school graduates as unprepared.
• One-fourth of the 84% flatly stated that students are not prepared.

These few statements set up a very simple case of cause and effect for not being prepared for college work. Now consider that most college freshmen will be “on their own” for the first time. Will their study times rise or fall?

Study quality, study maturity, and study regularity also come into play. But looking at the scant amount of high school study-time quickly makes the point, painting a simple and revealing picture about college un-readiness.

To discover the parents’ role in all this, please go to the last post of this 3-part blog. Find out more things parents should know about college un-readiness and how to prevent it.

Go to Part 3

The need for parents to help their teens in getting ready for college work – Part 1

This is Part 1 of a three-part series about U.S. education in broad terms and eventually narrows its focus to the role of parents: specifically, their involvement in after-school activities and study times.
On January 18th Thomas Friedman, Op-Ed Columnist for the “New York Times,” gave President Obama a “homework assignment:” to consider using a recent speech of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan as the State of the Union address.

Mr. Friedman felt that the secretary’s speech shines the spotlight on problems in U.S. learning that are growing more serious each year and should be disturbing us all. The columnist would like to see a national discussion that focuses on this topic. So would I. It has prompted this three-part post. However, I am an educator and not a politician, so you must read these three posts with that in mind.

Here are some items from the Duncan speech: 

• “America now ranks 22nd in math skills and 14th in reading among industrialized countries…”
• “In today’s knowledge-based, global economy, jobs will go, more and more, to the best-educated workforce.... Your children aren’t competing just with children in your district or state—they are competing with children across the world.”
• Now, some would like you to believe that our mediocre achievement results are due just to… large numbers of low-income and minority students…Not true…While we’ve been treading water, other countries have moved ahead.
•  “…right now, South Korea—and quite a few other countries—are offering students more, and demanding more…”

Duncan’s speech goes on to cite ways to improve our lagging educational status in the world, one of which is parents’ involvement. Mr. Friedman agrees, “…too many parents and too many kids just don’t take education seriously enough and don’t want to put in the work needed today to really excel.” That's the focus of Part 2. 

Find out more things parents should know about college un-readiness and how to prevent it.

Go to Part 2