Behind the Classroom Door; 19

The topic on this week's Behind the classroom door from Northern Illinois University is College of Education is why some capable students fail in school. Here's the moderator Robert Taft up why capable students fail. I think we need to explain this a little further. We're going to approach this not why capable students fail a course or fail in college although we'll be touching on this what we really are most concerned with is why capable students failed to live up to expectations. In other words we know very well that the college student for example with the highest IQ aren't always the highest achievers in college. Is there something else that enters into the picture. I'm wondering what we mean when we say capable student. How do we know that a student is a capable student after all if he isn't achieving. Is he a capable student. I think this is a difficult question to answer in a way because we

have our intelligence test we have our achievement tests that show grade standard. Grade level standards. I think that one of the problems we have is that occasionally these test results are misused by people who don't know how to use them correctly. But Joy doesn't it also possible that an underachiever so-called under achiever someone who isn't working up to his potential may also be an underachiever on intelligence to us is very unlikely because a basic premise upon which intelligence tests are based is that the the items that the individual is requested to respond to are commonly acquired within that environment of that individual. This is where you come. Oh yeah I know where we come into difficulty. Yeah you're so mean now that the student who takes the test is trying to answer the

questions correctly and what I'm saying is he may not be motivated about anything having to do with the school. When he takes a test. I've seen intelligence tests where students have gone down the IBM marking sheet and it's a A or A B C there's no way they may not even have read the question. Well it's not too difficult to discover the student who lacks this motivation and who doesn't try and this is the first thing that a test administrator tries to determine is this individual putting forth full effort. In fact some tests have trick questions that show up the individual who is my lingering which is a term that is used some time over the under motivated individual into finding capable students I think we might be a little more specific. We might take the student who in the elementary school was very successful he obtained good grades and he moved into the junior high school and perhaps was not successful. Or we might take the child who was very successful in the

junior high school but when he moved on into the senior high school he did not perform up to his capabilities or we might move on to the college or university. And the consumer of the child who was very successful in high school but for some reason or other never caught on that college let him carry it one step further Leo. Why is it that some very successful college students fail in life. So here we have gone through the whole gamut of life's processes as far as formal education and work. And I think that it's not as hard to identify capable students as we may have felt here initially. I think we know that a student can be doing better than he is at the time. Well why why do such capable students if we can identify them. Why do they fail to live up to expectations.

Well first of all I think we should. I think we've already tried to point out that it isn't always easy to determine what whether a student is capable of doing it things that we think he is should do or sometimes we may set our expectations for him too high or too low. And it isn't easy because many times you hear a first grade teacher say to a parent or say to the principal of the school and this child isn't working up to his capacity he could do better. And if you question her as to why she thinks that. Many times you refer you back to test scores maybe of an IQ test taken at the kindergarten level on it and anyone who was given an IQ test had to get a garden level knows that they're very difficult to to interpret. Well this teacher may have some other insight like the child may function in a certain situation in a much higher level than another situation. The first thing I would do with the young or older students is to have a thorough

physical examination made was many times a hearing defect or a visual defect or malnutrition or any number of types of ailments can interfere with the learning process and the person doesn't measure up to expectations. And I think motivation is something that's key. If the child isn't motivated. Seems to me that it's the teacher's responsibility to of course find out if there is anything physically wrong with them. If there is nothing physically wrong then to try different means of motivating him. In some cases it seems that perhaps the solution is simply to say that he isn't working up to capacity. Wow. To me that's simply a diagnostic statement. You have identified something that is wrong with the child but certainly the school has a responsibility to go much further. And again re your the point you made previously in other presentations.

The cooperation of the parent. I think it's imperative that the teacher and the parent get together. In the case of a child who is not apparently motivated or for some other reason not working at capacity. And I think their cooperation is exactly what we want but in some cases a parent is put on the defensive. Your child isn't working up to his capacity. And the assumption is made that there must be something wrong in the home. In fact I've gone through some research already goes in terms of why children do underachieve and it bothers me because almost everyone blames the home for the underachiever. Well the woman is important in the life of the child in all respects I don't think we should blame the whole but it is important. Yes I agree that it's important but for example under achievers tend to come from homes in which the fathers see themselves as

failures. Maybe they are failures but that is the son of the child to me again. That's no solution. I mean so yeah so the child comes from my home and where the father sees him self as a failure. Should you go I don't. What do you do about I mean yes you're dealing with a different generation. And certainly there are children who had parents who regarded themselves as failures in which the children stood still did very well. You have some other although you know back indicate that the mothers failed to protect children. I protect them from what it doesn't say that my concern is that mothers over protect children and perhaps they don't widen their horizons and have the experiences they should have. There's one that I do agree with and I think it's a rather common one and it's parents who encourage sibling rivalry especially when an older child has been a good student. In other words if John for example

is the older of two children and he goes along getting straight is. And Mary goes through school and Mary comes home with BS. The parents may actually be unhappy with married BS and that type of sibling rivalry rivalry certainly can be reflected in the school situation and by the way this is typical of some misjudgments that could be made in determining the capacity of a youngster. Just because the older one was right in what it takes to learn in school book learning doesn't mean that the younger one will be even though they come from the same parents. How both of you have mentioned motivation. And of course I think the school has a tremendous responsibility here in motivation. If the child isn't interested in what's going on in the classroom the teacher needs needs to motivate and so anyone and teacher has Did he teach you training knows that that motivation is very very important in the teaching process.

Well discovering the cause discovering the cause for Giles inability or disinclination to work at capacity is just the beginning. I think you are noting that research indicates the home has a great deal of influence. This is important for the teacher to understand and perhaps do we work out compensatory activities or social relationships or what have you. So the child's adjustment in the school is better than usual and it compensates for the home. We recognize that the schools are doing this repeatedly and that the child won't work at full capacity unless he is reasonably well adjusted socially and is physical and psychological health is good. Isn't it also true though that at times a person in the town has to overachieve although I realize that term and somewhat impossible. But somebody who strives for straight is may

not be as well developed emotionally as the individual who goes along being quite content to get average grades. It's entirely possible that the straight-A student should be told take it easy. Spread your interests involve yourself in some of the extracurricular things that are going on. And this is a place where a person. It might be less than capable who needs to develop their skills. If a child needs recognition I'm certainly every person needs recognition and the only place a person can get is recognition through high grades in school. Then it seems to me he may be displaying a certain type of emotional imbalance by striving for the straight is that another child who gets affection from home and who has other sources of gaining recognition from his peer group may not display and yet the teacher may be unhappy with the individual who

doesn't quite seem to be doing as good work as the teacher would expect. Well there's a wide range of individual capacities actually. Psychologists have said that we never attain our psychological maximum in any area. And I think this is been proven in many cases where you perhaps are disinclined to study a foreign language and then with the proper motivation you catch up and you get interested the motivation builds up and you move along very successfully in this. Well we there are some intangibles some very difficult things to face I know parents every be tiddly said I just don't know how I can get my boy. And usually it's a boy who got serious about school. And of course we have to recognize that there are some qualities of the typical classroom that lend themselves more toward the feminine

nature. And let us admit that girls sit down longer or they're neater they're more punctual they conform more and therefore they fit into the typical classroom better. Boys tend to want physical activity they tend to be sloppy or they tend to not take it as seriously as girls do for a period of time. It's interesting to see this reverse itself however. By the time they get to college those boys that manage to go on to college and of course there are fewer that are eligible for college admission than girls out of high school simply because of this slow development of seriousness. We know in college the boys start to achieve very well. But there are a lot of specific things we can do aren't there to get at why children and adolescents fail to work up to capacity for example study habits. I think that along the way parents but notably teachers that he's

level can start to instill study habits so when the person goes on to college he's ready to go on his own. I think that's an extremely important point. I think very often and I'm starting on the elementary schools students are told on our study those and learn in the US but they're not told how to study it. And. In general it seems that studies that have been made of why students fail or underachieving at the higher education level indicate that the student has acquired poor study habits and often get in many cases poor reading habits. It's not necessarily a poor reader but he doesn't know how to read in terms of studying of skim reading. Going back and revealing and I did some courses or some schools have put in separate courses and study habits However these seem to be quite on satisfactory because the study skills required for example in

mathematics are not the same as those study skills required in English so that I believe that every course should include basic instruction and how to study for this particular course. But actually there are some practices that we follow in the school that are contradictory to proper study habits for that. For example the whole idea of final examinations is not in harmony with the laws of learning as we used to call them but as a way an individual should study and should learn. It is wrong to cram. They've proven pretty thoroughly that if you cram that is study in a concentrated period of time just a few days before an examination you lose it about as rapidly as you gain it. Whereas if the study is extended over the period of time say several months prior to the examination which all good students should do then the examination is handled much more readily.

I've even heard such good students say I like the day before an exam that's when I relax and don't study. I'm so ready for the final examination. It's actually the day he should relax because he was better and I think there's a certain degree of evidence that individual prior to taking part in examination should try to relax. But since underachievement tends to be an individual problem I do think that the teachers and parents have to deal with each individual differently. You diagnostic determine what the problem of the youngster is and then set up some type of remedial program to correct the problem. But in many cases I think this isn't done until it's almost too late and the teachers at in the elementary grades should be very alert to students who tend to be falling behind their no on potential. I think one of the differences in types of organization that exists between

the elementary school and the junior high school and senior high school has much to do with the lack of success on the part of some students. It's general that we have the self-contained classroom on the elementary school level where the child will receive the attention of the teacher throughout most of the day. Then when this child moves into the departmental wise situation on the junior high school level or senior high school level he has an entirely different situation where he has more freedom and he works with a number of teachers and some children because their personalities have a very difficult time adjusting. You know the student that I've never quite understood is a student who says well I'm not getting a good grade in this course because I'm not interested in the subject. On the other hand many many students

are able to involve themselves in a variety of subjects and this is the way our curriculum is constructed particularly at the general education level where we want people to have a breadth of understanding in cultural matters. You are required to take subjects that may not particularly interest you somehow or other the individual has to become motivated to do this. In my own case I can recall embarking on a new course with a great disinclination and lack of interest. But very soon I learned that get involved in the corps and you start to enjoy it. You start to discover things that you didn't know before about the course and develop an entirely new interest and I am sure this is one of the objectives of general education. Of course sometimes I think at the college level our grading practices somewhat. Prevent an individual from getting into areas that he doesn't know

all. Every individual I think wants to be a fairly well educated person with a good liberal education background. And yet when you get into a field as you were mentioning being top where you don't have the background or the proper inclination the greed may be uppermost in your mind because it may hurt you considerably in terms of your overall grade point average. And one thing and some schools are doing that I think is very promising is to introduce a pass fail system so that each semester student is able to select one class in which he receives either a pass or fail. To me this encourages the individual to get into fields in which he does not have a background equivalent to the backgrounds of other individuals in the class. But at the same time enables him to broaden his

own. Intellectual background if you read the results of this pass fail system. They wondered what this what impact this would have on the motivation of the students and discovered that the good students work just as hard even though they didn't get anything but a pass they didn't get the way that they would have gotten in an ordinary class but they worked just as hard. I think this teaches us something anything really that the motivation somehow or other should come from the subject matter and the teacher has a responsibility in this regard. I think he that would indicate that the child is not working for grades but for some personal satisfaction that he gets from mastering the subject matter and chances are that if this child did not receive any report card or any grades at all he would achieve in a similar fashion. I think many elementary schools have done basically the same thing. They eliminated the letter grade. Most cases just at the

primary level but in some schools Nala non graded schools through the sixth grade or the intermediate level and have given written reports to parents. The difficulty is that there is pressure from the schools at higher levels in other words the senior and junior high schools for letter grades. They want letter grades when the child transfers to parents do want letter grade. If you want to see this it has a certain exactness to it. You know we've mentioned the effect of motivation on a John success but I'd like to bring up this idea that motivation may work in the opposite direction also especially on the. Say on the eighth or ninth grade level where the child is affected greatly by his peers. A child who previously might have received very high grades many A's is suddenly in May may not be so so successful in school primarily because she

feels that her peer group is frowning on her success and school and they are resenting the fact that she is getting some money so that she might just deliberately set out to do things which would. Well you know if she was unsuccessful becomes very complicated. But one of the things I think we should never forget and that is interest in learning something new is natural and normal and a part of the human personality. And you see this so completely with young children it's hard to find anything that children are not interested in at an early age. And as they go on through the elementary schools I've often been struck by the fact that boys and girls about fourth grade are so interested in science and scientific things. And this should be satisfied we should capitalize on it. I really have a feeling that in some instances we have killed the interest of the

individual in a particular subject matter either by pushing them along too rapidly before he's ready or somehow or other mishandling it making it too difficult for him so they could enter into it smoothly. I think a number of people would agree especially now with the great doubt Phasis on cognitive learning at an early level Bringers studies a number of experts in the field of education. I might mention people who have had very little to do with education until recently have stressed the idea that a child can learn such and such material at a very early age. Well. As a result I think many teachers are trying to teach much too much to children in the primary grades. It seems to me that the key question is and how early a person can learn a particular subject or particular skill. It's when is the most

opportune time to teach him that when can you teach it to him and which it will take the least amount of time to teach the skill or the subject and the period in which he'll be able to retain at the mosque this is been researched pretty carefully if you introduce really reading for example to early all you do is turn the child against this particular type of intellectual activity and I think even if he likes that. Walking for example middle class parents push walking and he gets to a point that one mother's ashamed to talk to another mother in the block because the one mother's son perhaps walked a month earlier than the other and they look at. The child is oh you must be mentally retarded and here he is a month older than mine and he still hasn't learned to walk. But the key question should be will that child learn to walk early be able to walk any better when he's 6 years old or 10 years old or 15 years old than the one who did not learn until

maturation actually had taken last. You know at the college level you know we find all kinds of interesting reasons why a person who should be succeeding does not succeed as well at least as he should be for example just coming from a small high school to a large university. Yes the excitement of it and the confusion of it and the many people there were and few friends can cause this individual to stagger and perhaps actually fall before he can recover. Boy Girl Problems at the high school and university level can enter the picture so that just a love affair can get in the way. We know for example in a contrary way however that a married seems to improve the college boys achievement. It gets serious and gets worried I suppose starts working harder and the grades tend to go up. Generally speaking a large number of veterans who

returned after World War 2 especially those who had been married did. Much better in school than the earlier ones I think Leo's point that he made earlier though is a very significant one that a person may be able to do much better than he does but after all he's motivated by how he is regarded by his peer group. And if is friends would kid him about bein a. Highest student in the class on a test. I think there may be a chance that on the next test an individual would not try as hard especially again if he feels insecure and feels that he does need the approval of that peer group at the college level a high school level the impersonal nature of the situation even down further if the teacher somehow or other is incapable of relating to children the feeling of strangeness or impersonal nature of the classroom can

interfere. Of course we've mentioned the excessive concentration on the academic and there are other things we could bring up and I think many schools today have. Teachers that are more alert these problems are talking about and I also have specialists in the schools. If a teacher feels there is something wrong with the child he is not working up his capacity. She can refer him to the proper people and for and services in the school system to to diagnose and give recommendations to her in a classroom. I think it's not unusual for a student at any level to feel a need for an adult with whom he can confide a person to tie to a person who understands him personally. Give him some good advice and in whom he can confide some of his deeper problems and worries. And this prevails at both early levels and later levels. Sometimes it's we parents who fail to keep contact

with their children as they grow up and to demonstrate an interest in school and what they're doing. And I think many a teacher has enabled a student to reverse the trend failure and to become a success just because he took a personal interest in the student. And I suppose it all boils down to the human element and learning plus a reasonable capacity. However we measure it to do the job that determines whether a person really succeeds. Behind the classroom door produced by WFIU in cooperation with the College of Education at Northern Illinois University each week focuses its attention on one of the many challenging aspects of public school education. The program is moderated by Dr. Robert F. top dean of the College of Education at Northern Illinois University. Today's guest were Dr. Raymond B Fox associate dean of the College of Education. Dr. Leo Loughlin

head of the Department of Administration and services and Dr. Lloyd Leonard head of the department of elementary education. Next week's topic will be. So you want to be a teacher. This program is distributed by the national educational radio network.