"Really? So now you are saying that any child can achieve success which just means doing your homework, and homework now includes anything, whether part of the work teachers give out or just anything in the world. And it counts as homework if the student does it at school.
That’s like saying anyone can be a millionaire if he just saves $1,000,000."
-That makes perfect sense. We call millionire a person who has assets of $1,000,000. However, saving this much is much harder than having all As. As my D. keeps commenting: “I am not smart, I am hard working”, all I do is to continue supporting this type of attitude. Yes, it takes certain attitude and it is nothing but willingness to work as much as it takes in each class. I do not know about now or then or 10 years ago, I know that doing your homework and do it on time and well produces results and I know nothing else. That is what I told my D. when she was 5 after few months that it was determined by several of her pre-school teachers and the test givers that she is absolutely not ready to be in kindergarten. Apparently, my strategy prevail over their predictions. So, why I would change my opinion if it worked and currently is working just as well for my grandkids who happened to be in totally different school system in different state.
We have some excellent schools in this country and it’s highly probable that some, if not most, of the professors who taught your daughter attended an American high school. She doesn’t seem to have suffered for it.
We go to school to learn, not to get straight A’s. Doing homework every day, even if you get all the answers right, doesn’t necessarily mean you really learned anything. I went to school with plenty of kids who could spit back whatever they studied. But students have to be able to think critically, not just memorize facts. Those same students had no interest in exploring anything that wasn’t going to be on the test or taking any risks that might result in a grade lower than an A. I find that pretty sad.
To me, succeeding in college involves real learning. It can be messy, and sometimes results in a grade that contains no vowels. But when we’re in a crisis situation at work, I’ll take the kid who takes risks and can think over the kid who was worried about getting straight A’s every time.
Interesting theory. Have you bounced that off any admissions committees lately? They still labor under the impression that GPA is the single best predictor of academic success.
I overstated that some. GPA is a good measure of how hard working a student is, which is why it’s the single best measure of academic success. But it doesn’t tell you how smart or creative the kid is. You need test scores, essays etc. to do that.
Maybe you didn’t realize that some pretty smart and talented people went to some effort to develop tools to help determine how smart or creative students were. They have a lot of names, but we generally refer to them as tests.
I was assuming this poster was referring to tests generally taken by all college hopefuls…the SAT or ACT. Those do not test creativity or intelligence.
Of course there are assessments…tests…that deal with creativity or intelligence. But the very very vast majority of college hopefuls do not have these in their files…and do not send the scores or reports as part of their admission application for college.
Intelligence covers a wide variety of different aspects, but for general usage, the SAT is the closest most older students come to taking an intelligence test. The ACT, not as much. Short of daily life, anyway.
It irrelevant if you think grades and test scores are unimportant because that is what colleges and scholarships base tings off you for the most part.
Also for doing well in school, just doing the work does not guarantee anything at all. Just cause you study for a test doesn’t mean you get better grades. Its about how you remember the information that is important.
Then, once you’re in college, all the high school stuff is practically irrelevant. You don’t include all those good grades and achievements on a resume. Employers want to know what type of internships you’ve had, what clubs/organizations you belong to and if you do volunteer work.
“Also for doing well in school, just doing the work does not guarantee anything at all. Just cause you study for a test doesn’t mean you get better grades. Its about how you remember the information that is important.”
-This is just an opinion, not the fact. The work that you do in preparation for each class and each test and each exam does make the difference. On the other hand, not every class requires memorization at all. Most math classes. Gen Chem., Physics are NOT memory based. There are few facts / formulas to remember, but the rest of concepts are mostly based on understanding of the concepts. Both memorization part and understanding part are correlated to the amount work and the type of work specific student needs to go thru based on personal abilities. To be efficient is based on developing the customized plan / approach in each class. It is different from class to class and from one student to another.
Kids’ abilities vary a lot in different classes. So, if one needs to spend 30 hours to study for one exam, then spend these 30 hours! If one needs only 1 hour to whirte an English paper, then take advantage of this fact. There is no general rule / solution. Just do what it takes. But saying that the amount of work / effort is irrelevant is greatly misleading! Tell it to any pre-med who knows that every B is simply a great danger for his goal. They will laugh into your face.
The least that parent can do is to point out to all help available at college in each class. Many are hesitant to use it. Why? My kid was on both sides of it. She was a Supplemental Instructor for chem. prof and helped good deal of kids. But she also made sure that she understood all concepts correctly and used prof’s office hours a lot (specifically for Physics). Why not? Both are paid out of the students’ tuition. So, use them as widely and frequently as needed.
Gee, Miami, it will probably make your head explode to know that not only did we never consider homework important in elementary and middle school, we told our son it was optional; he could do what he found useful/interesting. Most of it was uninspired busy work, drill sheets, and meaningless grind, certainly not anything designed to stretch the intellect or inspire a love of learning. The principals of both his elementary and middle schools knew our position and partly agreed. We simply said that if his teachers needed to give him an “F” for non-participation in homework, that was fine with us, but we valued family time and his childhood freedom more than “partnering with the school” on homework. If we found that he wasn’t catching concepts or able to do well on assessments, we would have addressed those gaps, but we never believed that homework in those grades was related much to true learning. We’ve never cared much about grades and we certainly never would have dreamed of telling him something as soul-sucking as school being the most important thing in his life.
He just graduated from a highly competitive high school where he did exceptionally well but where “just doing the homework” was beside the point of an education there and certainly did not guarantee A’s for anyone (what a strange concept IMO). You do not have a very good handle on the range of American high schools yet you continue to beat your single-tone drum regarding your daughter’s story. I don’t hang on this side of the forum much but it seems every time I wander over, I can count on hearing your beat. It gets tiring and it does not provide any useful insight on the topic of having your child succeed in college.
I just thought I’d add one counter story of a student who did not have a single focus on homework but who is off to a great college anyway and who will certainly become a productive member of society even without a magic formula simply because he loves to learn and has sharpened his critical thinking and reasoning skills along with the ability to express his ideas clearly and persuasively from a compassionate heart. Homework didn’t teach him any of these things, his education did.
" You do not have a very good handle on the range of American high schools yet you continue to beat your single-tone drum regarding your daughter’s story"
-No, I do not, that is for sure. I only know about HS that is #2 private in our state - D. graduated as #1 from this and the other schools that I am aware are test-in very hard to get in HS in NYC. Granddaughter is a straight A student at one that had 30000 applicants for 900 spots of freshman class and grandson just got in into another that is even harder to get in and his sister tried to get in unsuccessfully. I do not know about other HS’s since there are no other experiences in my family.
D. keep saying the same over and over: “I am not smart, just hard working”. When I complimented my grandson about his academic (and incredible non-academic) achievements, his replied was: “Just doing my homework, grandma”.
But, frankly, I lied. No, it is not a hard work. They have been consuming the special water “Magic A in HS” and “Magic A in college” and “Magic success in Medical School” They were just not aware of it…they simply thought that they just working hard. I will keep this secret from them.
So, for parents. Do not tell your kids that they should be prepared for each class, do not tell them that they should seek all help available at college. It will not work without magic water!
