Unmentionable

Robert Samuelson, a contributing editor at Newsweek, recently wrote that the biggest reason school reform routinely fails "is almost unmentionable: shrunken student motivation." I'm guessing what Mr. Samuelson really finds almost unmentionable is not the lack of student motivation, because everybody talks about lack of student motivation, but rather it's cause. Here Mr. Samuelson bucks the standard line, which is that lack of student motivation is either the school's or the teacher's fault. Mr. Samuelson asserts that the reality is otherwise. According to Samuelson, as schools are including more and more students who formerly would have dropped out and as the adolescent culture has strengthened, school and teacher authority has eroded. "Motivation is weak," writes Mr. Samuelson, "because more students (of all races and economic classes, let it be added) don't like school, don't work hard and don't do well." http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/09/06/why_school_reform_fails_107033.html

Bracing, as is Mr. Samuelson's next assertion: "The goal of expanding 'access' -- giving more students more years of schooling -- tends to lower educational standards." I am reminded of a quip I once heard from a college professor friend of mine, "The only way we're going to not leave any child behind is if we don't go anywhere."

Could it be we are coming back to the realization that many students fail because they don't like school, don't work hard, and in some cases, don't belong in school in the first place?

Unmentionable indeed.