In the 1960s, Political Correctness in partnership with the unproven theory of soft, obsessive self-esteem driven parents rewrote the rulebook for parenting in America resulting today in the “average” American parent that talks to his or her child less than five minutes a day.
Out went the soap that was once used to wash the mouths of vulgar children and teens leading to the common use of the “F” word in almost every spoken sentence.
In addition, spanking (corporal punishment) was all but outlawed and identified as child abuse by many.
However, Religious Tolerancesays, “Corporal punishment is strongly recommended in the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament).
Most of the biblical quotations advocating corporal punishment of children appear in the book of Proverbs.
“The phrase “spare the rod and spoil the child” is often incorrectly attributed to the Christian Bible. It does not appear there. It was first written in a poem by Samuel Butler in 1664.”
This video shows both the wrong and right way to spank a child.
Instead, Proverbs 13:24 says, “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes (diligently).”
Proverbs 19:18 says, “Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying.”
Proverbs 22:15 says, “Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.”
Proverbs 23:13 says, “Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die.”
Proverbs 23:14 says, “Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and deliver his soul from hell (Shoel).”
Proverbs 29:15 says, “The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself brengeth his mother to shame.”
The Old Testament was the oldest parenting guide in the Western world and was used for several thousand years until the 1960s.
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).
His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves
Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”
In a recent March 2011, 60 Minute segment, Katie Couric reported on an experimental New York City charter school founded on the idea that paying teachers $125,000 annually would attract the best people for the job and make a difference.
The principal’s name was Zeke Venderhoek. The students were mostly African American and Hispanic and almost all came from poor families. The teachers often put in 80 to 90 hour weeks.
When the fifth graders from Venderhoek’s charter school took the New York State Math and Reading Exam, the results revealed that on average the public schools in the district scored better than the charter school.
At the conclusion of 60 Minutes, Venderhoek said one year wasn’t enough to show improvement.
Halt!
Wait a minute!
I taught in public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005) in a barrio with multi-generation, Latino street gangs, and often worked 60 to 100 hour weeks. From my classroom doorway, I witnessed a drive by shooting one year. Another year, in the evening when I was working late, a student was gunned down outside my room next to the school gate as he was leaving the campus.
However, over the years, district records revealed that my students often outperformed all other student in the district at the same grade level on standardized tests with improved writing skills. District administration said the records showed this to be true year after year and I did not teach in a charter school.
In the early 1980s, one African-American mother with a seventh grade, twelve-year-old daughter came to me. The mother was upset because the previous year’s standardized test scores said her daughter was reading several years behind grade level.
I told the mother the only way that would change was for her to turn off the TV and spend time with her daughter every evening and on weekends making sure her daughter did the homework, studied for tests and quizzes and read at least one hour or more every night seven days a week with a discussion before bedtime about what had been read. If there were questions, call me.
By the end of the year, that student’s literacy level had improved five years. That mother made the difference, and my mother did the same thing for me when I was in grade school. Without my mother’s effort at home, I would not be able to read today.
Why couldn’t Venderhoek’s Charter School show similar results?
The answer may be found from a 2009 Stanford University Charter School study that discovered only 17% of almost 5,000 nationwide charter school delivered on the promise that they would succeed where public schools often failed.
Seventeen percent is a FAILING grade and many of these charter schools had smaller class sizes, longer school years and days with stricter behavior codes with school uniforms.
In fact, students that did not perform could be sent back to the public schools, which is something private school may also do.
When will the country wake up and hold parents and students responsible to turn off the TV, shut down the Internet, study, do homework and read? Teachers cannot do it alone.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
Associated Contentsaid in 2006, “Every day, as many as 77 percent of American youth are labeled by special definition: Latchkey Kids.”
In the US, a latchkey kid is one that leaves school in the afternoon to go to an empty house because the parent or parents are working. If no parent is home, who is guiding the child?
It didn’t help that I made more phone calls to parents than any other teacher on campus.
It didn’t help that I stayed in my classroom at lunch and at least an hour after school to help kids who wanted extra help, but none of my English students ever took advantage of that help and we couldn’t make them.
However, I was there year after year. Every day I reminded my students that I would be there. There was a sign posted on the wall as a reminder, and it was placed near the door where no one could miss it.
At lunch and after school, I often sat an empty classroom but I didn’t waste my time. I used that time to correct the student work that had been turned in.
By the time I left teaching after thirty years, less than five percent of my students were doing the homework and it didn’t matter how many phone calls I made to parents.
It was obvious that most of the kids I taught did not have the types of parents I had. Many of the parents of my students didn’t speak English and were illiterate, so books were not important and children learn from their parents’ lack of interest.
It is obvious that President Obama’s mother and grandparents were great role models that made a big difference in his education. Why can’t he see that?
That fact that Obama is as blind as Bush was, is because it was probably a teacher’s fault.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
Studies and statistics show that the “average” American child spends about 10 hours a day either having fun watching TV or playing video games or social networking on Facebook or sending endless text messages with a mobile phone.
The high school I taught at in Southern California for many years has a low state ranking and was one of those underperforming schools and still is five years after I retired.
One year, there was a story in the news about the school’s scores going down and one of my students with a failing grade mentioned this in class, which caused others to laugh with looks on their faces that said it was a teacher’s fault.
I said, “Walnut Valley High School has a state ranking that is a nine out of ten and our school is a three. If we swapped students from Nogales to Walnut move the teachers, that ranking would go with the students and Nogales would have a nine and Walnut a three.
“The score comes from the students—not the teachers. You started kindergarten in a different school. After seven years, you went to an Intermediate school. By the time you walked through my classroom door, you had been in school ten years and probably had fifty different teachers.”
They stopped laughing.
At the time, half the students I taught were failing my classes. The reason they were failing is that they didn’t read at home, do the homework or study for tests. I should know. I’m the one who recorded all those zeroes in the grade book.
I’m the one that called or attempted to call parents to get them involved.
Then when students fail, Washington D.C. blames and punishes teachers.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
There are many ways to measure the success or failure of public education in the United States, and one way is to compare functional Illiteracy in the United States to similar English speaking countries and Mexico, because culture plays an important role in children’s attitude toward education and literacy.
It’s arguable that the four MOST similar countries/cultures in the world, when compared to the United States, are Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, because they share an Anglo Saxon heritage, culture, and the same language. In addition, almost 80% of the U.S. population is white alone (in 2013, 77.7% were white), and the more than 13% who are African American, who have been in the U.S. for several generations, due to slavery, are no longer linked to an African cultural heritage. If you doubt that, consider that 78% of African Americans are Protestants and 5% are Catholics and—forced—immigration from Africa stopped and/or slowed drastically after the Civil War in 1865. What this means is that African Americans with roots that reach back 150 years or more are culturally American. If interested in this topic, I suggest you read a study out of Yale: African vs. African-American: a shared complexion does not guarantee racial solidarity
The United Nations defines illiteracy as the inability to read and write a simple sentence in any language, and it’s arguable that English is one of the most difficult languages to learn—if not the most difficult—if it is your second language. To understand this, I suggest you read 10 Reasons Why English is a Hard Language
Huan Japes, deputy chief executive of English UK, a trade body for language colleges, says a rule of thumb is 360 hours—120 hours for each of three stages—to get to the standard the government expects benefit claimants to reach. …
Dr Elaine Boyd, head of English language at Trinity College London, says, “If someone is really highly motivated, they can learn really quickly. It’s common for children under the age of 11 to be very immersed and be fluent in about six months.” …
Philida Schellekens, a language consultant, says that when she researched English language learning in Australia a decade ago the figure of 1,765 hours was used. That could mean four years of classes. It signifies the standard needed to do a clerical job in an office.
InEnglish Spelling Confuses Everyone, Professor Julius Nyikos, a linguistics expert born and raised in Hungary, learned numerous languages in his elementary school, high school, and university training. He came to the US in 1949 and, after a few years of studying English, was able to continue his profession as a linguist that he began in Europe. He spent many years as a professor at Washington & Jefferson College in Pennsylvania studying the languages of the world. In his scholarly article for the 1987 Linguistics Association of Canada and the United States Forum, titled “A Linguistic Perspective of Functional Illiteracy,” he made the statement, “It would be both ludicrous and tragic if it took lawsuits to jolt us into the realization that neither the teachers, nor the schools should be faulted as much as our orthography [spelling], which is incomparably more intricate than that of any other language (emphasis added). If English is not the absolute worst alphabetic spelling in the world, it is certainly among the most illogical, inconsistent, and confusing. This is due to the developmental history of the present.”
Literacy is the ability to read and write. In modern context, the word means reading and writing in a level adequate for written communication and generally a level that enables one to successfully function at certain levels of a society.
The standards of what level constitutes “literacy” vary between societies.
In the United States alone, one in seven persons (i.e., over 40 million people) can barely read a job offer or utility bill, which arguably makes them functionally illiterate in a developed country such as the US.
In 2003 the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), conducted by the US Department of Education, found that fourteen percent of American adults scored at this “below basic” level in prose literacy. More than half of these persons did not have a high-school diploma or GED. Thirty-nine percent of persons at this level were Hispanic; twenty percent were Black; and thirty-seven percent were White.
Now, to compare the five countries listed in the post to the United States.
First – Mexico: The OECD reports that 7.2 years is the average years of schooling of adults in Mexico.
Second – Canada: In 2012, Indicators of Well-being in Canada reported that 22% of adult Canadians had less than a high school education in addition to 16.5% reading at Level 1 or Below Level 1. Canada has five literacy levels. Canada’s Below Level 1 and Level 1 are equal to Below Basic in the United States. 83.9% of Canadians read at levels 2, 3, and 4/5. If Canada measures literacy the same as the United Kingdom, then 48.5% are ranked at Level 2 and below and are functionally illiterate.
Third – United Kingdom: The Telegraph reported that one in five Brits is functionally illiterate—that’s 20% that read below level 2, the common definition of functional illiteracy, and the OECD reports that the UK is ranked 22nd for literacy and 21st for numeracy out of 24 countries. BBC.com
Fourth – Australia: Uses the same five level literacy skill level rating system as the UK and Canada, and in 2006, almost 46.4% of adults read at Level 2 or below and were functionally illiterate. abs.gov.au
Fifth – New Zealand: The distribution of literacy skills within the New Zealand population is similar to that of Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. Analysis of New Zealand Data from the International Adult Literacy Survey reports that 45% of adult New Zealanders were in Levels 1 and 2 for prose literacy.EducationCounts.govt.nz 5731 andEducationCounts.govt.nz 5495
Sixth – United States: 14% or 30 million were ranked below basic on the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), and 49% of adults who ranked below basic had less than/some high school but did not graduate from high school or earn a GED/high school equivalency. The United States has four literacy levels compared to five for the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. 87 percent of American’s read at basic or above. 65 percent read Intermediate and above. As reported by the OECD, one in six adults (16.6%) in the United States scored below level 2, in literacy. nces.ed.gov
In Conclusion, in case you are wondering why I included Mexico in this comparison, the PEW Research Hispanic Trends Project reports that “The number of Hispanic students in the U.S. public schools nearly doubled from 1990 to 2006, accounting for 60% of the total growth in public school enrollments over that period. There are now approximately 10-million Hispanic students in the nation’s public kindergartens and its elementary and high schools; they make up about one-in-five public school students in the United States. Most if not all of these students come from the poorest population in Mexico, and they bring with them the same attitudes toward education that they held before they came to the United States.
Ranking functional literacy in English speaking countries and Mexico
1st Place: In the United Kingdom, 80% read at Level 3 or above.
What explains the UK having such a low functional illiteracy rate? The Guardian.com reports that the “UK publishes more books per capita than any other country.” Does this translate into the UK being a more literate society? If this is the reason, it might be a cultural difference between the other major English speaking countries with similar cultural heritages.
2nd Place: In the United States, 65% read Intermediate Level or above.
3rd Place: In New Zealand, 55% of adults read at level 3 or above
4th Place: In Australia, 53.6% of adults read at level 3 or above
5th Place: In Canada, 51.5% of adults read at level 3 or above
6th Place: In Mexico, 64% of adults do not have a high school degree or its equivalent, and the The World Bank estimates that in 2012, 52.3-percent of Mexicans lived in poverty in their home country compared to 15-percent of the U.S. population who live in poverty—and 25.6% or about 12 million are Hispanic, and 35-percent or 6 million of the 16 million children who live in poverty in the U.S. were also Hispanic. In fact, over half of Mexican youth at age 15 are functionally illiterate and cannot solve simple equations or explain basic scientific phenomenon. WorldFund.org
In addition, theNew York Times reports that many of these children from Latin America are boys between ages 15 and 17 when they arrive in the United States, and they come from some of the poorest regions in those countries. Do you think these children arrived in the U.S. functionally literate in their own language?
_______________________
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).
His third book isCrazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir.“Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves
Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”
Over on Diane Ravitch’s Blog, a site to discuss better education for all[highly recommended], I left a comment for one of her posts that mentioned an author’s lecture I attended back in the 1980s. The comment was about a memoir written by the father of a son who was retarded [the father/author’s words not mine]. The son also had learning disabilities. After more than thirty years, all I remembered was the basics and I think the father said his son had an IQ of 80 [I could be wrong. It might have been lower]. I’ve forgotten the name of the author and his memoir. I once had a video of the lecture but loaned it to another teacher who loaned it to another teacher and I never saw the video again.
Anyway, the anonymous person who replied to my comment didn’t think the kid was retarded with an 80 IQ, and it turns out this anonymous commenter was right. He also said 80 wasn’t far from average—also correct.
I attended that lecture more than thirty years ago, and the son did have learning disabilities severe enough to land him in special education classes. The parents had to fight to get him in regular classes. They also unplugged the TV at home and stored it on a shelf in the garage where it sat until both of their children were in college. The TV was replaced with family reading time. The result, the son ended up at Harvard and graduated with a degree in engineering.
The Stanford-Binet Fifth Edition IQ Classification [it’s obvious that the language has been changed to placate critics of IQ tests—check out older versions of IQ tests to see what I mean]:
40-54: Moderately impaired or delayed
55-69: Mildly impaired or delayed
70-79: Borderline impaired or delayed
80-89: Low average
90-109: Average
110-119: High average
120-129: Superior
130-144: Gifted or very advanced
145-160: Very gifted or highly advanced
There’s also the Current Wechsler IQ classification; the Woodcock-Johnson Test of Cognitive Abilities; the Kaufman Adolescent and Adult Intelligence Test, etc.
I don’t want to spend much time on learning disabilities [LD], because I want to focus on the small fire that I seemed to have started when I brought up IQ on Ravitch’s Blog. But LD’s should be mentioned because they may affect children with even high IQ’s. The home environment, lifestyle, health, diet and exercise also play an important role in a child’s ability to learn.
LD’s are a group of varying disorders that have a negative impact on learning. They may affect a child’s [or adults] ability to speak, listen, think, read, write, spell or compute. The most prevalent LD is in the area of reading, known as dyslexia, and as child I had severe dyslexia; so did my older brother, but the education experts didn’t know what dyslexia was in the early 1950s. Instead, my mother was told that I was so retarded I would never learn to read or write. Years later when I took my first IQ test, the results said I had an IQ of 135, and it’s obvious that I overcame the dyslexia and learned to read and write, but my brother didn’t.
It seems that one politically-correct camp in the United States and maybe Europe—because I have no idea where the critics of IQ live—believe we shouldn’t use IQ to measure a child’s intelligence. In fact, this politically correct group wants IQ removed as a way to measure intelligence probably because it might hurt the child self-esteem. In fact, the politically correct self-esteem movement would like to do away with all competition, grades and GPA ranking. They’ve had some success in this area—one of the causes of dumbing down the schools in the United States.
I don’t disagree with evidence from studies that offer theories that even slow learners with lower IQ’s may achieve success in life but it’s arguable that the lower the IQ, the tougher the odds are of a child achieving their dreams as an adult later in life depending on what those dreams are—after all, few end up becoming President of the United States—and for instance: billionaires, millionaires, rocket scientists, super models, Academy Award winning actors, Grammy winners, or win gold medals at the Olympics.
While a high IQ is not a ticket to success and wealth, the evidence suggests that it helps. It’s also arguable that a person with a high IQ who also has high social intelligence (SQ/SI) stands a much better chance at success and a better quality of life than someone with a low IQ and high SQ/SI. Other factors that lead to the success of a child achieving their dreams later as an adult are motivation, discipline, perseverance, the ability to learn from failure, and evidence suggests that writing detailed goals and reading those goals daily also helps. There’s also emotional intelligence that some think is important. (examiner.com)
My biggest sin to the politically correct camp of self-esteem was to dare to mention the difference in average IQ’s between racial groups. The word one commenter used was racism. However, the fact remains that there is a difference in average IQ’s between racial groups.
Princeton.edu says, “The connection between race and intelligence has been a subject of debate in both popular science and academic research since the inception of intelligence testing in the early 20th century, particularly in the United States.” Forgive me if I don’t post that IQ comparison here. If interested, Google it.
Be warned, if you dare to step on this politically correct sacred ground that has been anointed by the holy water of the self-esteem movement, tread carefully.
However, it is arguable that IQ does play an important role in success and it’s not racist to say so. Instead of looking at IQ by race, we may also compare average IQ by country with the highest average IQ found in Asia where the top five are located: Hong Kong #1; South Korea #2; Japan #3; Taiwan #4, and Singapore #5. Those who argue that IQ tests are flawed because they were created by Caucasians in Europe/the United States, take note of the top five.
The United States is ranked #19 [tied with Hungry, Poland, Spain, Austria, Denmark, France, Mongolia, and Norway] with an average IQ of 98 and Finland is #25 with an average IQ of 97.
The ten countries with the lowest average IQ are all in Africa. Equatorial Guinea is the lowest with an average of 59. (Statistic Brain.com and Nation Master.com)
Using IQ as an indication of the odds of success may be measured from other comparisons besides race.
First—Let’s look at income (World Top Incomes Database; Real U.S. 2010 dollars):
Psychology Today.com reports, The average IQ of individuals in the top 1% who earned $857,477 was 137. The next level was the top .1% with an average income of $3,693,111 and an average IQ of 149. Then we have the top .01% earning on average $16,267,243 with an average IQ of 160.
The other 99 percent with an annual income range of $0 to $335,869 had IQ’s—on average—that ranged from 60 to 136.
Second—a few examples of the average IQ of college majors:
The average IQ of a Physics and Astronomy major was 133; Mathematics Sciences 130; Engineering 126; Chemistry 124; Humanities & Arts 120; Agriculture 115; Health and Medical Sciences 111; Education 110, and Social Work 103. For the complete list, I suggest you click on Statistics Brain.com.
Third—Number of billionaires by continent in US dollars:
Africa has 13 (population of 995 million—1 for every 76.5 million people)
Asia 412 (4.14 billion—1 for every 10.048 million)
Europe 390 (739 million—1 for every 1.89 million)
North America 486 (529 million—1 for every 1.088 million)
South America 51 (386 million—1 for every 7.56 million)
Four— Poverty and low IQ:
Ascd.org says, “The effect of environment on the IQ of young children can be significant, particularly for children living in poverty. As the influence of poverty decreases, the importance of environmental conditions as a limiting factor on intelligence also decreases. By addressing the environmental issues created by poverty, it may be possible to weaken the link between low socioeconomic status and poor student performance on IQ (and other) tests.”
“A childhood spent in poverty often sets the stage for a lifetime of setbacks. Secure attachments and stable environments, so vitally important to the social and emotional development of young children, are often denied to our neediest kids. These children experience more stress due to loneliness, aggression, isolation, and deviance in their peer relationships, and they are more likely to describe feeling deprived, embarrassed, picked on, or bullied. As a result, they more often face future struggles in marital and other relationships.” (Ascd.org says)
Psycnet.apa.org says, “It is posited that low IQ children may be likely to engage in delinquent behavior because their poor verbal abilities limit their opportunities to obtain rewards in the school environment.”
Leading from the Sandbox.com says, “Signs of poor EQ include the inability to listen to others, defensiveness, unawareness of how we come across, lack of sensitivity to others’ feelings, an inability to deal constructively with conflict, a drive to control others, narcissism, and the need to have our own way.”
Conclusion: The evidence suggests that average to high IQ—when a child lives in a middle income or higher environment with stable parents—does have a vital role to play in later success, but IQ by itself isn’t enough to predict outcomes.
It is also possible, but rare, for a child to escape poverty as an adult. The odds are also against children with IQ’s lower than average.
In the end—no matter the IQ; SQ; EQ or LDs—parent involvement is the key that overcomes almost all obstacles to a child’s education. A key study in the UK says:” Overall, research has consistently shown that parental involvement in children’s education does make a positive difference to pupils’ achievement.” (nationalarchives.gov.uk)
Based on 49 studies, It is noted that the bulk of the research finds that a positive learning environment at home has a powerful impact on student achievement. The second approach is illustrated by Rhoda Becher’s extensive review of parent education literature, which finds numerous studies documenting effects of school-based programs that train low-income parents to work with their children. Effects include significantly improved language skills, test performance, and school behavior, as well as important effects on the general educational process. The third approach is illustrated by studies of community involvement which suggest that the degree of parent and community interest in high quality education is the critical factor in the impact of the school environment on the achievement and educational aspirations of students. (eric.ed.gov)
When the parents are not part of the learning process; are dysfunctional and/or abusive, the odds are against success no matter what teachers do in the classroom.
_______________________
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.
His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”
More than twenty years ago, I attended a lecture at one of the Claremont Colleges. I do not recall the speaker’s name but he was a successful journalist that wrote for major publications such as The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
He had published a memoir of raising his normal, above average daughter and a younger son with an IQ of eighty. The lecture was about how his wife and he raised the son to graduate with honors from high school and be accepted to Harvard where he earned a degree in engineering.
I wish I could remember this journalist’s name and the title of his memoir, but it has been too long. However, I have not forgotten his story. If anyone reading this post knows the title of the memoir, please tell me in a comment.
When this journalist’s son was old enough to start school at age six, the parents agonized over how to raise him so he could live a normal life and compete for jobs in the marketplace as an adult.
Job hunting and earning a living is not without its challenges and competition (on July 6, 2012, The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 12.7 million Americans were unemployed, while the number of Americans living in poverty was more than 47 million and many go hungry daily).
For the journalist’s family, to achieve their goals as responsible parents, it was decided to retire the family television to the garage and read books every night with a family hour before bedtime to discuss what each family member read.
Twelve years later, the son with the eighty IQ earned a perfect score on the SAT and the high school principal claimed he had to have cheated. The father argued that his son had not cheated, so the school made the son take the SAT again in a room without any other students, and he was monitored by three staff members. The son earned a second perfect SAT score. Soon after that, the son was accepted to Harvard
The post is worth reading—specially the comments. However, the problem is not kids—it’s parents.
In fact, I read one comment from the Headless Coffee Guy that said, “Hey, I hope my daughter will grow up to be a super genius who will find the unified theory in physics, solve world hunger, save the whales, and write her first symphony at 4. … But alas, I think ultimately, it’s really not up to the parent to decide what their child wants to be. We can only nurture and suggest, but it’s really up to the child to make up their own minds. All I really want for my daughter is to be happy.”
Is there anything wrong with Headless Coffee Guy’s concept of parenting as expressed in that previous quote?
When I read, “All I really want for my daughter is to be happy“—that was, in my opinion, a possible excuse to shirk responsibility.
There so much more to parenting than a parent wanting his or her child to only be happy.
What does happiness mean? I’m sure that most everyone would have a different answer. I have several answers depending on the circumstances. I’m happy when my monthly CalSTRS retirement payment is deposited in my bank account, watch a good movie, read a good book, eat a tasty meal, finish daily exercising, have no pain and especially when my wife is happy since that makes life better for me.
However, many today seem to think “happy” means you have to avoid being bored even if that includes not doing homework, classwork, reading or drinking water.
You might say, “What, drinking water?” Dr. Michael Dedekian, a pediatric endocrinologist at Maine Medical Center, says, “I have children who come to me, and they are being absolutely honest when they say, ‘I can’t drink water. It tastes disgusting to me.’ (They say) that water has become unpalatable.” Source: Minnesota Public Radio.org
Why?
The answer comes from Track Mom.com, who said, “Surveys have found that parents are major role models for their kids’ eating habits, even more so than their peers. … Almost one-third of the children surveyed drank soft drinks daily, and most drank ‘regular,’ not ‘diet,’ drinks. … Virtually all of the respondents liked or ‘strongly liked’ the taste of soft drinks.”
Like most parents, my wife and me wanted our daughter to be happy too. However, we felt it was more important that she be happier as an adult than a child and that meant making sacrifices.
Yes, my wife and me felt it was more important that our daughter be happier as an adult than during her childhood, which is why we left the TV off, no video games, no social networking (at least until her second year in high school), limited the number of school dances she attended, no mobile phone for personal use and focused on her reading books, doing homework, learning ballet, piano, how to change a flat tire, install a toilet, change a lock, install drywall, tile a floor, etc.
And last but not least, we never bought or drank any brand of soda. There was water and then there was water (sometimes there was fruit juice such as apple or orange juice).
Needless to say, many of our daughter’s peers in middle and high school felt sorry for her, because she wasn’t having as much fun as they were. However, our daughter graduated from high school with a 4.65 GPA and was accepted to Stanford University (the only student from her high schoolthat year) where she is starting her third year majoring in biology with goals to pursue a medical degree.
Contrary to popular opinion, she’s happy and loves to dance and play the piano and enjoys reading books. She has a boyfriend at Stanford she loves too and the two share many similar interests. She might want to be happy every waking moment and have loads of fun but she learned as a child that there is a difference between work, happiness, entertainment, bring bored and depression.
To achieve a better chance at adult happiness, her mother and me had to say no to many things leading to boring hours doing homework and studying in addition to reading books to fill the empty hours.
After all, according to the law in California (it varies by state ranging from age 14 to 18), one is a child until his or her eighteenth birthday. Then the child becomes an adult with a life expectancy of at least 84.9 years (on average) if he or she has a college education and earns an above average income. You see, education and income has a significant impact on health and a higher life expectancy and the average college graduate earns much more than a high-school dropout or high-school graduate.
Science Daily reported, “New findings from Harvard Medical School and Harvard University demonstrate that individuals with more than 12 years of education have significantly longer life expectancy than those who never went beyond high school. … Overall in the groups studied, as of 2000, better educated at age 25 could expect to live to age 82; for less educated, 75.”
In addition, The Economic Policy Institute discovered “While life expectancy has grown across the United States between 1980 and 2000, the degree to which people live longer has become increasingly connected to their socio-economic status.” The average life expectancy of the least well-off in 2000 was 74.7 years while it was 79.2 years for those that were most well off—meaning they had more money and usually a better education.
However, if left up to most children in the average family that does not live in poverty, happiness means not exercising, eating lots of sugary foods swallowed with gallons of sugary sodas, watching TV, listening to music, social networking, playing video games, hanging out with friends after school and on weekends, sending daily text messages by the dozens—and according to surveys and studies that is what the average child in America is doing ten hours a day.
Where are the parents?
Then there is this thing about parents blindly encouraging kids to follow their dreams without a realistic backup plan.
Kids are immature, lack knowledge and a sense of reality—at least those American children that are sheltered from the harsh realities of life and competition.
Therefore, many childish dreams are totally unrealistic, such as becoming President of the United States. My wife and me know a family where the oldest son, now a graduate student at Stanford University, dreams of becoming the governor of California one day, yet he hasn’t joined a political party yet.
Anyway, for children dreaming of becoming president of the United States, the odds are almost impossible. After all, there is only one position for that job and since April 30, 1789, when George Washington took the oath of office as the first President of the United States, there have only been forty-four presidents counting President Obama.
Then there is the requirement that one be at least 35 years of age to qualify. With 310 million Americans and two major political parties, competing to become the president of the United States is a long shot with a tough road to follow.
How about professional sports (another popular dream job)? Over the years, while I was still teaching, many of my high school students, mostly boys, told me that it was a waste of time for them to study because they were going to be pro athletes and did not need an education.
However, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there are only 16,500 jobs in competitive sports and the median pay is $43,740. Most professional athletes do not earn tens of millions of dollars. Only a few earn that kind of money, but those few are all we hear about in the media. From 2010 – 2020, only 3,600 new positions will open up in pro sports or 360 a year (on average). The competition to land one of these positions in pro sports is fierce but not as fierce as president of the US.
How many plumbers are there in the United States? According to the BLS, in 2010, there were 419,000 plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters working in the US with medium annual pay of $46,660 per year. Plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters install and repair pipes that carry water, steam, air, or other liquids or gases to and in businesses, homes, and factories.
Using the BLS Website, we may quickly discover that the number of jobs held by accountants in 2010 was 1,216,900 and there would be 190,700 new jobs coming available between 2010-20 or about 19,000 a year, while the average medium pay for actors (another popular dream job) is $17.44 per hour with new openings numbering 260 per year (on average)—a ratio of 73 accountants to each actor.
I read once that about 40,000 aspiring actors flood into Hollywood each year to compete for those 260 potential positions that pay $17.44 per hour (on average).
Another popular dream job, mostly for girls, is to become a fashion model. According to the BLS, the annual medium pay in 2010 was $32,920 with about 200 openings per year (on average). On the other hand , median pay for barbers, hairdressers and cosmetologists (beauticians) is $22,500 per year and there are 10,000 new positions opening annually (on average)—a ratio of 50 barbers or hairdressers for each fashion model.
My son, who is currently in his thirties, refused to have a backup plan. Last I heard he was a waiter/bartender. The median pay for waiters/bartenders is $18,130/18,680 annually. He wanted to be an actor/singer.
I was a public school teacher for thirty years and the median pay in 2010 was $53,230. In 2004-2005, my last year in the classroom, I earned more than $80,000. There are 3,380,000 teachers working in the US public schools. Teaching was my back up plan. My dream was to become an author and there are about 145,900 working writers and authors in the United States and the median pay in 2010 was $55,420—a ratio of 23 teachers for each writer/author.
The odds favored teaching.
Just because you can dream, that does not guarantee that the dream will come true. I never gave up on my dream and after I retired from teaching in 2005, my dream became reality in 2008 with the first of three novels of “The Concubine Saga”. My dream was born in 1968 and became reality in 2008—it took forty years.
I’m glad I had a backup plan.
However, I can still hear the average American parent telling his or her child how proud they are that he or she is going to be president of the United States or a famous pro athlete, or actor, or fashion model one day, and then the TV is turned on to watch a popular reality show such as American Idol where the odds of winning are sixty-thousand to one but no one tells us that.
The UK’s Telegraph reports, “Formal schooling should be delayed until the age of six or seven because early education is causing profound damage to children, an influential lobby of almost 130 experts warns.”
Why do I disagree with these so-called experts?
The last time fools [my opinion]—like these—sparked a revolution in raising children, it led to the average American parent boosting a false sense of self-esteem in his or her children raising a generation of narcissists and/or sociopaths as recent studies have pointed out.
I’m sure some of these so-called experts will argue that in Finland children start school at age seven, and Finland has one of the most successful public school systems in the world.
But what you will probably not hear is that most parents in Finland start teaching their children a love of reading as early as age three—at home; are very supportive of education and teachers and that Finland’s teachers, who are in charge in the classroom, belong to a very strong teachers union.
Parents in Finland do not wait for teachers to do their job for them—a job made difficult for teachers in the United States where many children who have not been exposed to books at an early age have no love of reading when they enter the classroom for the first time [at any age].
Why can’t America just copy what Finland does in its public education system?
Because Finland’s population of 5.2 million is almost 100% white and 79% belong to the same religion, the Lutheran Church—and I’m sure that this has something to do with family values being similar and not as diverse as in the United States. [Note: In America there are more than 310 different religions and denominations and almost 30 million do not belong to any religion]
For a fair comparison of Finland to the United States [with a population of 316.7 million], we should turn to Wisconsin where the population is 88.2% white.
Why did I pick Wisconsin? Because its on-time high school graduation rate is 90.7% compared to the national average of 77.9%.
There are also other states that compare to Finland. For a few examples:
Vermont’s population is 95.4% white and it has an on-time high school graduation rate of 89.6%.
Minnesota is 86.5% white and it has an on-time high school graduation rate of 87.4%
North Dakota is 90.1% white, and it also has an on-time high school graduation rate of 87.4%
Iowa is 92.8% white and it has an on-time high school graduation rate of 85.7%
Now let’s look at the state with the lowest on-time high school graduation rate in America—Nevada has a white population of 77.1% [below the national average of 77.9%]. Hispanics/Latinos make up 27.3% of Nevada’s population and 8.9% are Black or African American. And Nevada’s on-time high school graduation rate was 56.3%. Source: America’s Health Rankings.org
How about comparing the on-time high school graduation rate by race for the entire United States?
Comparing the on-time high school graduation rate by race for the entire United States shows a truth many may not want to admit. And before you blame it on racism and discrimination consider that Asian-Americans are a minority with a history of brutal discrimination in the United States, but that discrimination has not held them back from achieving academic success.
The Asian-American on-time high school graduation rate was 93.5% in 2010 [Source: Bloomberg.com]
For Whites: 83%
Hispanics: 71.4%
Blacks: 66.1%
Next, a look at the Hispanic/Latino culture:
If we look closer it is easy to discover the cultural differences between the average family values of Hispanic and Blacks in America when it comes to literacy and education, and it has nothing to do with racism or discrimination.
Only parents can make sure that the TV is turned off and homework gets done.
For example, Inside Schools.org reports that Mexican youth have the highest dropout rate in New York City. “Mexicans are both the fastest growing and youngest major ethnic group in New York City, with nearly half under the age of 25. Yet only 37 percent of the city’s Mexican population, ages 16-24, are enrolled in school…”
Why the high dropout rate among Mexican students in NYC? All we have to do is look at Mexico for a powerful example that demonstrates how the average family values an education in this culture. “High-school graduation rates therefore provide a good indication of whether a country is preparing its students to meet the minimum requirements of the job market. In Mexico, 36% of adults aged 25-64 have earned the equivalent of a high-school degree, much lower than the OECD average of 74%.” Source: oecd better life index.org
Regarding Latin America and the Caribbean, usaid.gov says, “By the time these students reach the 6th grade, 20% will still be functionally illiterate. … Many factors contribute to the low literacy rates, but primarily disorganized schools and poorly trained teachers. … When children cannot read, it limits their ability to learn other subjects such as math or science and also impacts their ability to participate in society in the long run.”
If people are not taught to value education in their home countries before they immigrate to the United States, why should that attitude change after they arrive in America?
What factors in America’s Black community/subculture play an important role that makes it difficult to achieve functional literacy?
Single Parent Households by race [Source: Kids Count.org]
Black: 67%
American Indian: 53%
Hispanic or Latino: 42%
White: 25%
Asian or Pacific Islander: 17%
The National Center for Fair and Open Testing says, “The powerful impact of poverty on literacy development has been well documented. Children of poverty, in addition to the obvious problems they face, have very little access to reading material ; they have fewer books in the home, inferior public libraries, inferior school libraries, and inferior classroom libraries, (e.g. Duke, 2000; Neuman and Celano, 2001). This means, of course, that they have fewer opportunities to read, and therefore make less progress in developing literacy.”
“Children from broken families [meaning one-parent families. I understand from my research that the term broken families is not politically correct in the United States at this time] are nearly five times more likely to suffer damaging mental troubles than those whose parents stay together, Government research has found. It also showed that two parents are much better than one if children are to avoid slipping into emotional distress and anti-social behaviour. The findings say that children’s family backgrounds are as important—if not more so—than whether their home is poor, workless, has bad health, or has no one with any educational qualifications.” Source: Daily Mail.co.uk
America is a complex multicultural, multiracial country with the world’s third largest population behind China and India. Finland doesn’t compare.
If you are still not convinced, then let’s look at literacy levels by race in the United States There are four literacy levels: below basic, basic, intermediate and proficient. We are going to compare Intermediate and proficient—the two highest literacy levels—by race.
Sixty-eight percent of whites read at the two higher literacy levels; 54% of Asians; 33% Blacks, and 27% Hispanics. Source: National Center for Education Statistics at nces.ed.gov
TheNational Association for the Education of Young Children [naeyc.org] says, “Children take their first critical steps toward learning to read and write very early in life. … But the ability to read and write does not develop naturally, without careful planning and instruction. Children need regular and active interactions with print. …
“The single most important activity for building these under- standings and skills essential for reading success appears to be reading aloud to children (Wells 1985; Bus, Van Ijzendoorn, & Pellegrini 1995). High-quality book reading occurs when children feel emotionally secure (Bus & Van Ijzendoorn 1995; Bus et al. 1997) and are active participants in reading (Whitehurst et al. 1994).”
In addition, naeyc.org says that parents and family members should read daily [in front of and with their children]; read to children and encourage them to read to you; encourage children to use and enjoy print for many purposes; continue to support children’s learning and interest by visiting the library and bookstores with them on a regular basis.
This latest nonsense that children should just have fun and play to age seven before starting school and then start learning to read is a recipe for a disaster of biblical proportions. Learning to love reading [and books] should be a fun activity that starts in the home at an early age as it does in Finland.
However, because the evidence suggests that too many American parents—especially among Blacks and Hispanics—do not make reading/literacy important at home; early education programs that start at a young age and focus on literacy must not be abandoned.
Another way to look at this issue is to study the family values of Black and Hispanic/Latino students who are successful in school and are reading at or above grade level. What is the difference between successful families and those who are not succeeding?
I’m sure we don’t need a study to answer that question.
_______________________
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran who taught in the public schools for thirty years.
His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.
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Crazy Normal - the Classroom Exposé 