Chapter Five- The Betrayal of the Mentors
In this chapter the author focuses his attention to the lack of adult mentors who are involved with troubled youths. He goes on to explain about a program titled Art Show: Youth and Community Development that focused its efforts towards saving students from dropping out of school because of failing grades in core curriculum classes such as Math, English, and Science. This particular group of students involved had artistic talents and they used these artistic strengths to assist students with their core classes. As the program evolved, these students overcame the educational obstacles and pushed forth with great success in the business world. Their artistic abilities were later used for artwork and business designs for many large companies. This is an example of how important mentors can be to young adults. The author states and I quote, “The long-term value stems from their human capitalization, the conversion of marginal young Americans into self-sufficient, confident, creative citizens.”
The author then goes into a discussion about a group of youth called “Twixters”. This group of individuals range in age from 22 to 30, have some college coursework or degrees, are raised in middle-class households, and live in cities or suburban areas. The interesting part about this group is their lifestyle choices once they are finished with college. Twixters aren’t overly worried about long-term career plans, having a home of their own, or finding that perfect someone and settling down. My personal favorite quote from this section is “They drift through their twenties, stalled at work and saving no money, but they like it that way. They congregate just as they did before college, hopping bar to bar on Friday night and watching movies on Saturday. They have achieved little, but they feel good about themselves.” This group is not following the rules that society has set. Society believes that at the age of 18, one should know what their future paths are and be ready for adult responsibilities.
The chapter goes on to talk about Poirier’s essay and a different mentoring approach. This approach was more student friendly but in the author’s words “yielded a terrible outcome”. It tells how independence and creativity were lost and so no learning occurred. Poirier stated that universities needed to change their academic structure to the new style of learning. He stated that traditional ways were not the way to teach young adults. The author goes on to state, “the teachers help, sometimes, but usually students consult “their own wits” and the input of their “close friends” matter more than in-class lectures.” Youth from this generation lack intellectual independence and rely primarily on their friends for information. This lacks the conviction that “knowledge itself is worth receiving.”
Youth from this generation are mostly concerned with themselves. Narcissism is plaguing the minds of young adults to the point that they do not see their competencies accurately. Mentors lack the knowledge of teaching young adults about empathy and sympathizing with their peers. Often times youth believe that they can accomplish far more academically then their achievement scores prove. The author states that higher level education classes such as calculus send a majority of students scampering to the registration office to drop the course. This generation would rather take the easy road to a college degree then to challenge themselves with higher-level classes. The author ends this chapter with “they need mentors to commend them when they’re right and rebuke them when they’re wrong. They need parents to remind them that social life isn’t everything, and they need peers to respect their intelligence, not scrunch up their eyes at big words.” The generation this book is talking about feels as if life should be handed to them on a golden platter and the silver spoon is destined to stay in their mouth.
The author points out that today’s kids don’t want to learn anything about those wiser than they are from the past. (Page 168) “It is the nature of adolescents to believe that authentic reality begins with themselves, and that what long preceded them is irrelevant.” The ruler of maturity no longer stems from formal learning. It takes several people to create out of our youth great policy makers and intellectuals, but he worries that with the “Dumbest Generation,” society is headed for a breakdown. I was surprised that Bauerlein argues for a traditional classroom, he discovered that the more equal and accessible a teacher is (using learner centered pedegogies) the less the students will access the teacher. He discovered that while some people believe that teacher centered instruction bores kids, and that student centered instruction will motivate kids, the opposite is actually true with lower level learners. (Page 189) We tend to overpraise kids and they want something for everything these days. What happened to hard work being the reward for hard work? “Few things are worse for adolescent minds than overblown appraisals of their merits. They rob them of constructive self-criticism and obscure the lessons of tradition. I can’t help but think here about the schools that don’t cut kids from sports. They create a second team so as to not hurt anyone’s feelings, which in the end deprives the kids who should have made the only team from playing as games are now split between the two teams. Those talented kids miss out on playing time which could advance their skills as a ballplayer and as a result, we end up with a bunch of mediocre kids and a lack of enthusiasm for the game.
ReplyDeleteIn chapter five Bauerlein makes it clear that today schools are not helping today’s students. I have heard from administrators that we need to make learning “fun”. If we do this then students will want to learn…. Clearly that is not the case. I tell my students that learning can be fun but not always. That we also learn from our mistakes and it is ok to make mistakes but you have to figure out what you did wrong. Students don’t like to hear this. They want everything to be easy. Why do I have to work so hard on and on… For some reason students feel they should not have to think or work so hard. They should get things right the first time. I am not sure where this philosophy came from but it is rampant among students. I now tell students you will get out of your learning what you put into it. If you work hard and try you will do well. If you don’t you will not do well. Simple common sense seems to have left education.
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