Some Remedies Within Reach - Part 4

What is wrong with our country??? Having served our nation for nearly 25 years in the United States military...I am deeply concerned about our future.

I have read multiple Pentagon reports that cite the decline of our nation's intellectual prowess and failure to develop skilled trade professionals as two of the most dangerous threats to our national security in the 21st Century.

Recently, I ran across a paper published by Paul Trout entitled "Student Anti-Intellectualism and the Dumbing Down of the University." This paper was published in Spring 1997, but I feel Paul Trout's words are more true today than ever before. Anti-Intellectualism appears to have infected every part of our society in 2018.

In Paul Trout's paper, he calls for citizens to help spread the word regarding the "Anti-Intellectualism Epidemic" spreading across the United States like wildfire.

Therefore, in my feeble attempt to continue to serve our nation and our citizens, I will be sharing Paul Trout's publication through a series of social media posts. Please read, share, and take action...our national security and economic prosperity depends on it!

“There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.” - Alexander Hamilton

#SmartCitizensUS...Get Smart America!

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Fourth, practice "authoritative" teaching. Evidence shows that students raised by authoritative--not "authoritarian"--parents do best in school, as measured by their grades, attitudes toward school work, and the time they invest in their studies (Steinberg 117). Such parents mold children into healthy adults through careful cultivation. They are caring but they also set limits. They are less concerned about whether the child is happy and more about whether the child is responsible and mature. Their children are more confident, poised, persistent, self-reliant and responsible than children who are not. They know that they, not their teachers, their genes, or the luck of the draw, control their scholastic fate (Steinberg 124).

College instructors would do well to adopt some of these traits. Research shows that "the teacher who receives high ratings from students but is below average in terms of student achievement appears to be a highly expressive extraverted type who is friendly.... The teacher who engenders high levels of student achievement but is not highly rated by his students...[is]...a tough taskmaster who pays little or no attention to students' personal needs.... The teacher who excels in both student ratings and student achievement is apparently able to draw a delicate balance between being strict and demanding on the one hand, and friendly and expressive on the other..." (H. A. Murray, "Teacher ratings, student achievement, and teacher personality traits," a paper read at the annual meeting of the Canadian Psychological Association, qtd. in Damron 13).

I would like to call this delicate balance authoritative teaching. Authoritative instructors are more concerned with students' long-term development than with students' short-term desires or end-of-semester "happiness." Authoritative instructors do not coddle students, or release them from their obligations, or give them easy praise or undeserved high grades out of a misguided desire to raise self-esteem. Instead, authoritative instructors announce clear and high (but reasonable) expectations and standards and commit themselves to helping students achieve them, but hold them responsible when they do not. The authoritative professor tries to engage students, but does not dumb down material so that everybody is having a good time. One might say that the authoritative professor is "a warm and fuzzy brick wall." A professor cannot make up for eighteen years of bad parenting, but he or she can refuse to perpetuate it.

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Works Cited

Bauer, Henry H. "The New Generations: Students Who Don't Study." A paper prepared for the annual meeting of AOAC International, Orlando (FL), 10 September 1996.

Damon, William. Greater Expectations: Overcoming the Culture of Indulgence in Our Homes and Schools. New York: The Free Press, 1995.

Damron, John C. "Instructor Personality and The Politics of the Classroom" (revised). 1996. Online posting <[email protected]>.

Esty, Warren. "Idle students are hurting everyone." Exponent 21 April 1995: 5.

Levitt, Paul M. ??? The Chronicle of Higher Education 4 May 1988: B3-B5.

Manno, Bruno V. "The Swamp of College Remedial Education." Academic Questions 9.3 (Summer 1996): 78-82.

Murray, David W. "Racial and Sexual Politics in Testing." Academic Questions 9.3 (Summer 1996): 10-17.

Owen, John D. Why Our Kids Don't Study: An Economist's Perspective. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.

Sacks, Peter. Generation X Goes to College. Chicago: Open Court, 1996.

Sax, Linda, et. al. eds. The American Freshman: National Norms for Fall 1995. Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, University of California, 1995.

Sowell, Thomas. Inside American Education: The Decline, the Deception, the Dogmas. New York: The Free Press, 1993.

Steinberg, Laurence, et. al. Beyond the Classroom: Why School Reform Has Failed and What Parents Need to Do. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.

Stone, J. E. "Inflated Grades, Inflated Enrollment, and Inflated Budgets: An Analysis and Call for Review at the State Level." Education Policy Analysis Archives 3.11 (26 June 1995). Online posting (a peer-reviewed scholarly electronic journal) <https://olam.ed.asu.edu/epaa/v3n11.html>.

Sykes, Charles J. Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read, Write, or Add. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995.

Toom, Andrei. "A Russian Teacher in America." Journal of Mathematical Behavior 12 (1993): 117-139.

Willimon, William H., and Thomas H. Naylor. Abandoned Generation: Rethinking Higher Education. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1995.

#StudentAnti_Intellectualism, #DumbingDownofOurUniversities, #BoredTeachers, #GetSmartAmerica, #RevengeOfTheNerds, #CounterApathy, #SmartCitizensUS

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