Tag Archives: cognition/learning/understanding

“Unchallenged kids get the message. If adults expect little of them, expect that they must be reminded, hectored, hassled, expect them to be goof-offs, then they will goof off. Of course, some people will goof off no matter what expectations are set. But teachers should assume the highest standard of performance until they are shown that it is not forthcoming. This is the proper start for each young person’s education. If that standard is substantial and persuasive–if it symbolizes the dignity of a demanding expectation–more often than not, adolescents rise to the occasion.”

Excerpted from: Sizer, Theodore. Horace’s Hope. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.

“As I begin to consider whether some educational practices resulted in higher educational achievement, I began to think in terms of patterns, types, and syndromes. Can educational practices, philosophies, and beliefs be classified into broad patterns and types? Do some students learn better when exposed to one pattern or another?

I thought this was a particularly appropriate time to ask such questions. The number of proposed educational reforms seems to be at an all-time high. And precisely when we need stability, we seem to be investing our hopes in one educational change after another—with little evidence that any one of them will improve student achievement levels. Whether because we have too little supporting evidence or simply fail to use that which we have, we go about debating the merits of one or another practice as though we were in an intellectual vacuum relative to our own past experience.”

Excerpted from: Chall, Jeanne S. The Academic Achievement Challenge: What Really Works in the Classroom? New York: The Guilford Press, 2002.