Tag Archives: education

Stanford University is one of eight schools where wealthy parents fraudulently secured spots for their children as part of a nationwide college admissions bribery scheme. HarshLight, via Flickr
Commentary

Meritocracy’s Casualties

The individualist credo is exacerbating already steep inequality and driving elites to protect their privilege by any means—even criminal ones.


The college admissions scandal that implicated Hollywood stars and other wealthy parents produced its first convictions in September, with actor Felicity Huffman among the growing list of those sentenced to prison time for engaging in bribery and fraud to get their children into a selective college (though in Huffman’s case for a short term of fourteen days). The nature of this scandal—which involved FBI wiretaps, paid-off SAT proctors, and even doctored photos of students playing sports—turned an intense media spotlight on the spectacularly unethical behavior of certain well-off families. But the scandal is a symptom of a much deeper problem in modern American life: widening income inequality and the destructive competition it engenders across the class divide.

When income inequality rises, the stakes of the economic game rise. Where children end up along a steep gradient of academic achievement matters all the more for their chances later in life. For example, in 2018, edging your way into the top 5 percent of earners would have made your household $119,000 richer than one that had just made it into the top 20 percent; back in 1978, that difference was just $56,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars. Because every step up the ladder pays off more, parents feel greater pressure to do all they can to improve their kids’ prospects. The payoff for cheating grows, too—even elaborate frauds of the sort that William Rick Singer and his team allegedly perpetrated to get his high-profile clients’ kids into Stanford, Yale, the University of Southern California, and other schools. (Singer, who pleaded guilty to fraud and a host of other criminal charges in March, admitted to bribing university administrators and colluding with wealthy parents to secure admission for their children.)

Beyond the ranks of celebrities and the elite, economic anxieties abound. It has become commonplace to observe that children from middle-class families are less likely to achieve a better standard of living than their parents. And as those chances dwindle, a greater burden falls on children and their parents to ensure their future success.

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Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

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The city of Oaxaca's zócalo, or central plaza. M. Thierry, via Flickr
Blog

Ghost Lives

Robert Joe Stout

“Mira!” Erika wagged a slim forefinger toward vendors, gawkers, and ice cream-smeared toddlers moving through the city of Oaxaca’s central plaza as she turned to face me. “You think you’re seeing people but they’re not people, they’re ghosts!”

Erika had taught high school for nearly thirty years and was a member of the state teachers’ union. She had recently participated in a strike for better salaries and working conditions—a strike that the government had crushed just months earlier. “Ghosts,” she repeated with a sigh. “Oaxaca exists in the past. Maybe all of Mexico does.”

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Photo by Patrick Emerson, via Flickr
Jacksonville, Florida
Commentary

Failing Grades

I was torn about failing a fifth-grader. In a poor, predominantly black school, there were plenty of tests but few right answers.

Chris Schumerth

“Man, I don’t know any of this stuff!”

It was Lamar, one of my fifth-grade students. He and his classmates were taking a reading assessment. Within minutes, Lamar had given up.

“Mister Schuma, I ain’t doing this!”

“Lamar, you need to be quiet while your classmates are testing,” I said. “I’m sure you’ll do fine if you give it a shot. No more talking.”

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The first girls to graduate from high school in Deh'Subz, an Afghan district outside Kabul. Photo by Beth Murphy, Principle Pictures.
Washington, DC
Reviews

Taught, Post-Taliban: A Review of What Tomorrow Brings

What Tomorrow Brings is an intimate portrait of a girls’ school in rural Afghanistan and the challenges its students face in trying to get an education.


In an early scene of What Tomorrow Brings, Pashtana, a seventh-grader at a girls’ school in rural Afghanistan, describes just how much her education means to her. “My biggest hope is to finish school,” she says, smiling brightly. “That’s how my life will turn the corner, and I’ll be on my way.”

Her smile fades. “But I’m worried there are people around me who will try to stop me.”

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Chelsea Rudman is an international development professional and freelance writer who lives in Washington, DC. Her writing has previously been published in the NY Press and Matador Travel.

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Blog

Bored to tears


A few weeks ago I did a demonstration for my chemistry classes. They had begged me for days to do this particular experiment. So, one Monday morning, we assembled outside on the grass. A volunteer student set down a bottle of Diet Coke. He opened the bottle, dropped a stack of about six Mentos into it, and ran. The rest of us stood several feet back to observe. The fizzy pop shot up and out of the bottle very forcefully and traveled about fifteen feet in the air before coming back down. It was quite a sight. I was impressed. My students were not. I looked around and saw their bored faces. They looked at each other with expressions that said “That’s it?”

Failing to impress my students is not unusual. And in sharing with other teachers, I have found it is not unusual in any subject. On another day, I showed a video of the explosion that occurs when sodium mixes with water. My students refused to find it interesting unless I performed the reaction in class so they could see it first-hand. I tried that experiment in the classroom once, a few years ago, and some flying sodium hydroxide hit a kid in the ear. He was ok, but never again.

I read an article about a year ago that discussed the high-school drop-out rate. Apparently, nationwide, the rate is on the rise. The article suggested the reason for increasing dropouts is boredom. Apparently teenagers are so bored at school that they would rather drop out and find a job than continue. This insight astounded me. Is school really that bad? I remember taking some boring classes in high school, but I always looked forward to at least two or three subjects.

I try to make class interesting for my students, but as I explain to them, you can’t expect to be entertained all the time. Sometimes we all have to push through the boring stuff in life to get to something good. Having said that, I think that school can be too dull sometimes. The main issue, I believe, is relevance. Many high schools present a curriculum that has no relevance to their students’ lives. As teachers, we need to teach in a way that challenges students to think about their futures and that prepares them for careers. Actively engaging in developing their lives should not only prepare them for success, but also keep their interest.

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Blog

Teenage monsters


The first thing people say after I tell them that I am a high school teacher is “how do you do it?” And what they mean is, “Are you crazy? Don’t teenagers scare you?” I find that almost every adult I encounter has this fear of teenagers. People have an image of monsters who have no respect for authority and who are as likely to pull a gun as an iPod out of their pockets. I think most people forget what it was like to be that age. They forget that they were not really different people then. They were just unsure of their identities and severely lacking in self-confidence.

During my semester of student teaching, my first real teaching experience, I worked at a high school with more than 2,400 students. The building, huge and imposing, overwhelmed me at first. I couldn’t find the teacher’s lounge or the copy room on my own for the first two weeks. Eventually, I found my way around and became comfortable with my students. Except for Emily. Emily tested me from day one. She had a terrible attitude. She thrived on being able to challenge me at every turn, trying to find mistakes in my calculations, asking me how I knew every detail I lectured about. And when she asked questions, it was not with the delightful innocence of youthful intellectual curiosity; it was malevolent. Her eyes glinted with wicked delight if she caught an error. Her sarcastic tone silenced the rest of class as they waited with baited breath for my response. I tried to take it all in stride. She intimidated and irritated me, but my number-one lesson learned as a teacher was to never let them know your buttons have been pushed. I smiled pleasantly as I responded thoughtfully to her every challenge. I admitted graciously any mistakes I made. I was the picture of patience. Then one day, Emily stayed after school to make up a test she missed. As she brought the completed test up to my desk, her face was terribly long and sad. I asked her what was wrong and the flood gates opened. She cried and told me about everything that was wrong. Her family just moved here, she didn’t feel like she fit in yet, she still got lost in the building, she missed her old friends, she was afraid she wouldn’t make the soccer team and she felt like she just failed that test. The poor thing was unhappy about everything and I just sat quietly and listened to her for thirty minutes. When she finished, she said she felt better and went on her way. The next day and every other day Emily smiled at me and treated me with respect. She stopped challenging me and seemed genuinely happier.

Now, whenever I grow weary of the attitude of some of my students, I try to remember what it was like to be a teenager. Every problem and bad circumstance seemed so monumental. I never wish to go back to my teenage years. I remember the uncertainty, the doubts and fears. Because I remember, I do not fear my students; I understand them, at least a little.

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Blog

Child’s play


Right now I am teaching a seven-day creative writing program at a public elementary school in Buffalo, New York. On the second day I had the students write collaborative stories: One child wrote a fictional story's beginning, another wrote the middle, and a third penned the conclusion. Most of them struggled with this. Exchanging papers was an ordeal, and many were not happy with the stories they were expected to add onto. Girls did not want to write the plot for a story about football; others thought the people with whom they were supposed to trade papers were icky. But some rose to the occasion and collaborated to produce solid stories.

One in particular caught my eye. It was about someone serving in Iraq. Here's what the students wrote:

Once there was a man named John. He was going to Iraq. He was going to fight for our lives. But then he got a little scared because he was thinking of what might happen to him. But then he was feeling sad because he missed his family. Then he went to Iraq, and when he got there, he felt really better. So he got a popsicle, then he said, “I am going to write a letter to my parents.” He got another popsicle, then he went back to war. This time he was not scared, so he got all the stuff he needed. He got the best gun he could. He wanted to see his parents.

Say what you will about the popsicles and the fact that John ceases to be scared when he gets to Iraq, there is some real awareness here about the dangers of war.

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