This is the quintessential question of the sociologist. It came over me like a heavy storm cloud today, midway through 6th period, when I was discussing with a coworker (and 25-year veteran AP teacher) why our students have low motivation. She proposed that it is the mindset that has permeated them: "Someone will take care of me." I've long been perplexed at how my students have nice clothing, and yet, they're "poor."How they can have so much potential, but proceed through life like flat tires. How they can stare straight at the possibility of a luminous tomorrow, and turn it down because they would rather have fleeting fun today. How they can take education so lightly. How they can this and that, this and that....
And yet, there are social forces at play, the superstructures that mold the classes and keep them there. I thirst for my students' success, and yet feel entirely handicapped to deliver it. I want their good, but feel incompetent to give it to them; I cannot do their work for them. In fact, the harder I try, the less they get out of it. Oh! I am so exasperated at the sheer impossibility of the dreams I have for them coming true. I feel like I am absorbing the mediocrity they are settling for. How can they be convinced that more is possible for them? Is it really true that systems of inequality have locked them out of upward mobility -- and not for the sake of being rich or having the world's approval, but for the sake of the joy that streams from putting your mind to work and developing into someone who can solve problems?
Or, is it as Mrs. A suggested today during our planning, an idea I have always dismissed as callous and un-compassionate: that the welfare state utterly thwarts any desire to academically excel? That it teaches its children that they will be provided for, so investing in your future matters not. Does welfare rob our future adult citizens of a work ethic? Of the capacity to account for living costs and the ability to live within one's means? I am telling you, I grow weaker by the day as I see how wide the chasm seems between my hopes and dreams for my students, and the distance they get toward them. Maybe putting someone who dreams too much into teaching is a recipe for burn out. Adults in my life have gently criticised me on that count, that I have irrational expectations for the future and expect too much out of/for myself and out of/for /from others. Well, it's really showing now in the physical exhaustion I feel. I am grasping for ways to ignite their sprint toward an exciting future, toward an amazing, liberating, wonderful four years at college... and yet, how naive I am to overlook the difficulties and setbacks that will thwart so much of those efforts before those four years are completed, or even begun.
So, does the welfare state, does governmental provision, ultimately sap intellectual rigor? What would happen if it were taken away from them? Would our student demographic be less undisciplined, less noxiously carefree, less destined for mediocrity? And yet, who am I to judge? Maybe I am cut out to enjoy college, but not all people are. Am I just exhausting myself?
All this wondering has got me thinking:I think I want to study this relationship (between provision/income and academic excellence or failure) in graduate school (in sociology). I might study it within my very own school.... I don't know how i will reach it, but I am desperate for understanding. How can this problem (of underachievement and carelessness) be "fixed"?
And yet, there are social forces at play, the superstructures that mold the classes and keep them there. I thirst for my students' success, and yet feel entirely handicapped to deliver it. I want their good, but feel incompetent to give it to them; I cannot do their work for them. In fact, the harder I try, the less they get out of it. Oh! I am so exasperated at the sheer impossibility of the dreams I have for them coming true. I feel like I am absorbing the mediocrity they are settling for. How can they be convinced that more is possible for them? Is it really true that systems of inequality have locked them out of upward mobility -- and not for the sake of being rich or having the world's approval, but for the sake of the joy that streams from putting your mind to work and developing into someone who can solve problems?
Or, is it as Mrs. A suggested today during our planning, an idea I have always dismissed as callous and un-compassionate: that the welfare state utterly thwarts any desire to academically excel? That it teaches its children that they will be provided for, so investing in your future matters not. Does welfare rob our future adult citizens of a work ethic? Of the capacity to account for living costs and the ability to live within one's means? I am telling you, I grow weaker by the day as I see how wide the chasm seems between my hopes and dreams for my students, and the distance they get toward them. Maybe putting someone who dreams too much into teaching is a recipe for burn out. Adults in my life have gently criticised me on that count, that I have irrational expectations for the future and expect too much out of/for myself and out of/for /from others. Well, it's really showing now in the physical exhaustion I feel. I am grasping for ways to ignite their sprint toward an exciting future, toward an amazing, liberating, wonderful four years at college... and yet, how naive I am to overlook the difficulties and setbacks that will thwart so much of those efforts before those four years are completed, or even begun.
So, does the welfare state, does governmental provision, ultimately sap intellectual rigor? What would happen if it were taken away from them? Would our student demographic be less undisciplined, less noxiously carefree, less destined for mediocrity? And yet, who am I to judge? Maybe I am cut out to enjoy college, but not all people are. Am I just exhausting myself?
All this wondering has got me thinking:I think I want to study this relationship (between provision/income and academic excellence or failure) in graduate school (in sociology). I might study it within my very own school.... I don't know how i will reach it, but I am desperate for understanding. How can this problem (of underachievement and carelessness) be "fixed"?
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