Ron Clark and the Wussification of American Schools

Wussification (noun): to make one like a wussy; ineffectual, fragile 

Recently we watched a Ted Talk in our Teacher Ed class by Ron Clark. We have watched a fair amount of Ted Talks in class and I have found all of them very interesting, but none has inspired and moved me as much as Ron Clark's.

The first thing you should know about Ron Clark is that he has A LOT of passion, enthusiasm, and energy! Something you will notice as soon as he steps onto the stage, or walks in the room. I have never seen or heard of an educator with this much genuine passion, enthusiasm, and love for their work (he said it was because kids don't learn from a boring teacher!), and that truly inspired me. I fed off of this energy and got even more thrilled to be a future educator!

One of the things I really connected and agreed on with Clark, very strongly, is that we are dumbing down our education system and wussifying our children.

Let me explain further...

Clark elaborates on how we have dumbed down our education system by "teaching to the middle". This means that in a class when there are various levels of intellectual (the high/gifted, the middle/average, and the low) that instead of trying to compensate and help/challenge all students to learn and grow at their own personal level teachers just teach to the middle. This hurts our children and our education system because our low intelligent kids are struggling to get help, and our gifted kids aren't actually as gifted as we think because they are simple excelling in an education system that has been dumbed down and not actually challenging them.

We are further hurting the gifted students because they have never been properly challenged and therefore don't know how to cope with it, thus setting them up for failure in the real world. What teachers should be doing is teaching to the gifted kids in the class! BUT WAIT! Wouldn't that cause all the other kids to suffer? Actual no! A study found that when a teacher taught to the gifted and raised the standards, the other kids were still able to meet them and even excel. Often we are lowering the expectations in education, but when we raise these expectations the students are able to grow and excel like we never thought possible. One great example of this was a 5th-grade class learning and excelling at 8th-grade algebra in an urban school that was not known for their academic achievement.

Another thing I found interesting is that many countries plunge most of their educational funds into gifted programs, challenging and growing their young gifted minds.  Could this explain why our global testing scores are so much lower compared to many other countries? I believe so! We do need more funding for gifted programs in America because we hardly fund gifted programs at all. We basically leave them alone because we think they already have it all figured out, but in reality, our gifted programs need the most support and funding because they have the most potential.

Back to the wussifying of students...

I touched on this briefly when explaining how Ron Clark said gifted children aren't being challenged and therefore suffering when going into the real world, but this happens with all intellect levels of children in schools.

We have cuddled and softened our children so much that we are setting them up for failure! Teaching kids that everyone gets a trophy or everyone gets a reward for "trying" is hurting them because in the real world just "trying" is not good enough, if all you do is try you will fail. Our education system is raising our kids like we are in a socialist country instead of a capitalist one, and when they are released into the real, capitalist, country they often get a rude awakening that ends in disaster because we have not properly prepared them, but done the opposite for them.

Ron Clark also explains in his Ted Talk about how he established his revolutionary school (The Ron Clark Academy), how it works, what goes on there, HOW HE MET OPRAH, and it's truly fascinating. He also explains much more in-depth (and much more clearly than I) about the wussification of the American education system.

I STRONGLY suggest if you have time to watch this Ted Talk, it's truly eye-opening, informative, and entertaining.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY8XkWVBEpc