Where did we go wrong?

[Hassan Darkside]

Some random thoughts/discussion, please don't let this somehow rabbit trail down a political path or something against the TOS.

Anyway, this is prompted by a discussion I had with a Mexican co-worker. She struggles with her English and doesn't know what to do to get better, so she was asking me. So far she had taken every English class at the local community college, aced all of them, but still doesn't feel her English has improved. She went to her professor and asked him to explain her grade because she didn't feel she earned it. I suggested she get a tutor and I asked what her schedule is like and she said she could do it for up to 5 hours a day after work and all day on the weekends. She already works full time. On top of that she gets novels from her coworkers to help her English/reading comprehension and reads through them in 2 weeks. I asked what her husband does and he works full time as well (2nd shift), comes home, studies for 2 hours, sleeps for 4, gets up, goes to class, wash rinse repeat. But ultimately, I was able to see a strong passion to improve from both of them and it makes me wonder if that's just them or a culture thing.

She also went on to describe the attitude of her classmates, how none of them wanted to read or write. How they were all boring and didn't want to do anything and she couldn't understand it. Which is when I had to remember my college/high-school self and the attitudes I had towards school/anything regarding my own development that I had to work towards. At some point in time when I was a kid I let my attitude become acceptable. And you can see it around here too when people post threads asking for help on something when the simple answer is "get off your butt and just do it" but I say that while I'm sitting on mine lol. Which leads me to my ultimate question...why?

What has made us this way? What has made mediocrity acceptable? Is it more environment? How we're raised? The school system? Personality traits? Where exactly do we (or they?) go wrong that ultimately allows us to adopt an extremely lax attitude towards achievement? The "American Dream" seems to have shifted to "get what you want as fast as possible with as little work as possible."

tl;dr: Why are we mediocre?

[Blzer]

Re: Where did we go wrong?

I want to write an essay about this, I really do. I just don't have the time.

As far as your first one, I don't know man. Sometimes you have to learn a second language at an earlier age. I started taking Spanish in high school and did four years of that, then two semesters in college. I can speak and write it pretty well, and I can read it out loud just fine... but I might have trouble "decoding" what I read, and I most definitely cannot have a conversation with somebody who speaks Spanish. I just had to learn earlier, really. Not saying I couldn't if I tried every day or studied abroad in Spain or something, but sometimes a later age just makes it more difficult. You can't blame somebody for that, I suppose.

As for the other one, hot damn it's like people take pride in laziness these days. Now don't get me wrong, there are some truly standout kids out there. In fact, when I was substitute teaching I got both sides of it. Now I have a few students who... trust me, I love to teach because I really want to see if I can rub that Mr. Feeny vibe off on them... but they can be lazy, and I'm not afraid to say that. They question every possible external motivation without ever creating internal motivations. I'm going to keep trying more and more next year, but I don't want things to turn into long lectures on berating them either. It needs to become positive. I tried that at the beginning of the semester (when I started with them), but because I didn't start with them at the beginning of the year I feel it's possible I won't rub off on them the same way.

I want students to look forward to school. I'm not yet sure what the best way is of doing that (and come on, who really likes the daily routine of Geometry? I get that), but in large part there is this section of students today, or maybe in general I don't know, that think it's the cool thing to kind of rebel against any school functions, fail classes, and be behaviorally incoherent. It's today's freakin' cell phones and... reality TV man. I don't know what it is, but I'm trying to see if I can sway some of them for the better. I couldn't care less if they come out of this year remembering the five congruency conjectures; I care that they come out as better students and people, though. I care that the things I say and the way I act can be an influence on their lives. For some, I know it has. For others, you truly do wonder if there's anything you can do to change them.

At any rate, I'm late to go to school (gotta be there at 6:00 AM to get ready for these rugrats).

[SPTO]

Re: Where did we go wrong?

On the first point I agree with Blzer, sometimes you have to learn a new language at an earlier age as it becomes more difficult when you're older. How good do you think her english is? I watched a program here where they were doing a panel discussion with immigrants about their accents etc etc. One thing that stuck out in that discussion was that almost no matter how well they speak the language the accent often betrays them vis a vis other people as they are judged more on the accent than by the actual content of their words. It can be a difficult thing to deal with. I'd suggest that maybe she go out to places where she can use her english in a social setting rather than at work.

As for the 2nd part of your post, I don't really want to go too much into it because I may stray into TOS areas but one thing i'd point out is that culturally in North America we've been conditioned over the last 15-20 years that if it isn't easy than it's not worth working your butt off to achieve something. We live in an age of gratification where we can seemingly get whatever we want with a push of a button or use connections to get a cushy job etc etc. At the first sign of real resistance there are a lot of people that will gamely try to achieve their goal but give up if it takes too long. We've pretty much lost the ability to tackle "hard times" as some of the things we complain about are things that people in past generations would roll their sleeve at and keep working through.

That's just my opinion so I could be completely off base. Again there's more to it but it could get into sticky areas so i'll just leave it at that.

[SuperBowlNachos]

Re: Where did we go wrong?

I checked out for half of my classes because I felt they were useless and a waste of time. I had no reason to take a theater appreciation class, but I got to pay $700 to take it. Same can be said for literature classes. My education did not benefit from reading a novel written in the 1800s using old English.

I think if trade schools were pushed more then society would be better off. The first two years of college are useless for 90% of people.

[LowerWolf]

Re: Where did we go wrong?

Short answer: We, as a society, have an incredible sense of entitlement with very little sense of responsibility.

We used to take pride in working our butts off to get what we wanted. Now we take pride in finding shortcuts. It's a by product of the "everybody gets a trophy" attitude we started to instill in our kids.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: Where did we go wrong?

When were we ever righted?

[MrSerendipity]

Re: Where did we go wrong?

When were we ever righted?

This. I've never really understood the mindset that former generations handled life any better than the generations running things right now. Are there some entitled and lazy people out there? Absolutely. Are they more abundant than they were in past generations? Probably so. Does that mean we've lost our way? I don't think so. While personal accountability seems to have exited stage left lately, we're doing things that prior generations never could.

It's like when people refer to the good ol' days. I don't want to violate TOS so if a mod sees this and would like for me to change my post, I'll gladly do so. But in my opinion, there weren't good ol' days. Generations before us slaughtered Indians for their land, enslaved African Americans and refused jobs and voting rights to women.

I'm not sure we've ever been righted. While I agree people need to take accountability for their life, I don't think those people that won't should be considered a representative of modern society.

[Hassan Darkside]

Re: Where did we go wrong?

First half of my post was more of a back story, not really looking for a solution. And to clarify her English isn't very good. I can understand what she means but as far as proper sentence structure, use of vocabulary, punctuation, etc she lacks. But the point I was making with that is that her professor not only said it was acceptable but very good by giving her an A in the class. But her ambition and desire to get better are much much greater than the people she sat in those classes with.

And I'm not saying we were ever right to begin with but it seems like our standards for acceptability seem to be dropping across the board (as well as accountability as mentioned above) and we try to justify that phenomena with logic and scientific reasoning to help us sleep at night. And I'm speaking from my own experience, how I was able to reason with myself that because I'm having a hard time in a class I should drop it or getting average grades in college is acceptable because of the work load or everyone else has unrealistic expectations... Except for myself of course. Basically making such elaborate excuses for my short comings that I become comfortable with them rather than actually trying to improve them. What I struggle with is trying to figure out how/why I even spawned such a thought process as I work to break myself out of it.




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[mb625]

Re: Where did we go wrong?

They say that unless you have started learning a language by the age of 6 or 7 (I think?) it is impossible for you to ever become completely fluent in said language. I've got professors who have been in the US for 30+ years and still aren't completely fluent in English.

[NDAlum]

Re: Where did we go wrong?

Political talk


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