So why do American kids find school boring? Is it because of poor teaching as the No Left Turns guys say? Probably to some extent, but there's more to it than that, as many of our readers have pointed out.
American kids are jaded by affluence. It takes a lot to excite young people surrounded by stimulants that appeal to their hedonism and materialism. Having never wanted for anything, many students find any kind of intellectual work unappealing and unnecessary. They do enough to get by, but any glimmer of concern for the life of the mind is easily extinguished by social and extra-curricular concerns.
Schools minimize academics. In many schools today only lip-service is paid to the importance of academics. Everything else the school does implicitly sends students the message that the least important thing they do in their school day is what they do in the classroom. At the school at which I taught for thirty-five years a student could be taken out of an academic class for almost any activity imaginable, but a teacher of an academic subject dare not insist that the student remain in class nor could he take the student out of another activity to do academic work. For instance, if the band needed to rehearse, or the swim team had a meet, or the student council had an activity students could leave class to participate, but a classroom teacher was not permitted to take the student out of band class, or swim practice, or student council to tutor him/her on what was missed.
In other words, every activity trumped the academic program in my school, and, I suspect, the same situation exists at most schools. When the school administration tacitly communicates to the student the lesson that academics are the school's lowest priority, only the exceptional students can be expected to take a particular interest in them.
Modern culture devalues great literature, art, history, and philosophy. The value of these disciplines is intrinsic, not instrumental. One studies them for the intellectual satisfaction and enrichment one gains from them, not because they'll enable the student to one day buy a new Lexus. Our culture, however, tacitly disdains any curriculum which is not oriented toward a career or the making of money. Subjects which are pursued for their own sake are deemed less important than those which are more utilitarian. Students realize this and take such classes only because they are a state requirement, and they embark upon it with the attitude that they'll put forth the minimum effort necessary to get whatever grade they feel they need.
Finally, many kids in many schools come from homes and neighborhoods which are so dysfunctional that the student starts out way behind and can never catch up. He/she has no idea what's going on in the classroom and tunes it out. This starts in the earliest grades and continues all through school. By the time the student is in tenth grade he/she is often languishing at a second or third grade level. Understanding nothing of what's going on in the classroom it's little wonder they're bored.
So, to Peters Lawler and Schramm at No Left Turns, yes, there are too many teachers in classrooms who are uninspiring and apathetic, but that situation certainly exists in schools in India and Asia. It's in fact probably worse there than it is here. So why do those kids do so well and ours perform sub-optimally? Look at the affluence, look at the importance placed on academics and the life of the mind, and look at the culture.
RLC
