I just wanted to quickly look at the role of the Spirit of Capitalism in our schools, which I know we all have lengthy experience with. I'm guessing the routine of jumping out of bed to get to high school, trying desperately not to fall asleep and then going back home to work on school work until some AM hour, might sound somewhat familiar. And now in college I know many of us feel perpetually behind on reading and every so often (or more often) lock ourselves in the library/dorm room/cafe and swear to catch up. 13 units is the minimum to be a full time student, and the University standard is that 3 hours should be spent outside of class time for each 1 unit. Thus 39 hours outside of the 13 hours is 52 hours per week. So we should be expecting 7 hours each day to spent on school each week as a full time student. In addition, we tend to want to spend time doing other things than reading Marx on the beach, like sleep, eating, trying new things and seeing friends. How can PE&SC give us new perspective on the role of the student?
Gossip Girls and Boys Learn to Be Nice
In this middle schools, the staff has felt the need to reteach or perhaps for the first time, how to be nice to others. The article cites busy schedules and workloads as placing pressure on children, perhaps leading them to ignore the finer sides of etiquette and kindness.
This Fall, More Sleep For Students In Wilton
And of course, students don't get sleep. Often in order to finish that deadline, students push to the side the necessity of sleeping enough so that you are not a zombie the next day.
Funny thing is that even as I write this, I feel guilty for suggesting that school may be structurally too taxing on students, and lazy for not simply committing myself to better time management and constant rigorous, focused work.
Last Post/Reflection
16 years ago
1 comment:
This is so sad...and with all this spirit of capitalism, American students are still falling behind many of their international counterparts in various academic areas.
This is interesting, Kristina. I can definitely relate. Every year we hear how it gets harder and harder for high school students to get into colleges, so every year the competition becomes more fierce. Every year the acceptance rate is lower as more people apply. People who went to UC Berkeley and UCLA twenty years ago did not take many AP courses, if any at all. Now, it's typical to meet students who have taken at least 5 before coming to college (I know someone that took 13 AP tests), along with community college classes taken during high school. It's not enough to get a good GPA, you need to do extra-curriculars, get a good SAT score, etc.
Before, getting a B.A. or B.S. was enough. Now, more and more people are getting Master degrees to stand out. Now, more and more students are scrambling in masses to take "internships" and various other career-orientated jobs in an attempt to distinguish themselves from the hundreds of thousands of other undergraduates in the state who will be looking for jobs.
And...all of this creates a lot of psychological anxiety. And, I agree. I feel like I'm CONSTANTLY behind on everything. Especially this month, all my classes decided to make April the month of hell.
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