Expectations and Education :: Learning Education Essays

Expectations and Education bingle of the approximately sought-after goals in the world of marketing is a senior high school degree of consumer satisfaction. But in the world of education, satisfaction by itself should non be the criterion for success. If both satisfaction and performance are high, we submit cause for celebration. If satisfaction is high and performance is low, as is currently the incident in the United States, we harbor cause for serious alarm. According to Stevenson and Stigler in The Learning Gap, Ameri crapper parents whose children loosely score below Asiatic children on tests of academic achievement, gave the most positive evaluations when asked about their childrens schools and how their children were performing. If the children are doing well, such(prenominal) high levels of satisfaction would be justified. But maintaining high levels of satisfaction with misfortunate performance creates a huge obstacle to the improvement of education. Before you can so lve a problem, you aim to admit that you have a problem. wherefore should children study hard if their parents already express high levels of satisfaction? why should schools pursue reform with enthusiasm and resolve when they already meet generally high levels of public approval? Americans want a good life for their children. They want their children to be happy and well adjusted. But Americans have not realized that access to the good life and happiness in the afterlife willing be blocked if we fail to prepare our children for the competition they will face in an ever more competitive world. As Americans, we have historically had a high opinion of ourselves. In only a few centuries we have opened up a continent, established an useful political and economic system, and brought the nation to prosperity. Americans have been thought of as courageous, industrious, and creative. untimely in the American history, people believed they could achieve almost anything with enough effor t. Nevertheless, legion(predicate) Americans assume that positive self-esteem is a necessary precursor of competency and place a higher priority on life adaption and the enhancement of self-esteem than on academic learning. They forget that one of the most important sources of childrens self-esteem is realizing that they have mastered a challenging task. We have gradually come to emphasize the limits of what can be accomplished enforce by innate differences among individuals. There are individual differences among human beings in whatever characteristics are measured. But this variability should not be see to mean that the general level of accomplishment cannot be raised.