Teaching and learning are inherently complex entities. Entering a classroom one discovers that a wide variety of students with different backgrounds, special needs, different home experiences, diverse strengths and weaknesses, and changing moods and dispositions occupy those bizarre school desks. Teachers operating with recognition of complexity appreciate the complicated task of understanding these diverse students and teaching to their individual needs and concerns.
Such teachers learn to deal with the unanticipated complications of the everyday classroom, in the process appreciating that no generic form of teaching applies to all students in all contexts. Critics admit that there is a great impact on income, background, and family structure on educational achievements in mathematics among African American boys and Caucasian boys. The paper will concentrate on a low-income family.
Statistical results indicate that African Americans show poorer performance than their Caucasian mates (Caucasian et al 160). Following Martin: “Given the history of African-Americans in the United States, a big-picture explanation might suggest that these outcomes are the legacies of mathematical experiences characterized by differential treatment and denied opportunity in socioeconomic and educational contexts” (8).
In mathematic, mandating curricula has never stumped state and local school boards, but establishing curricula with definitive standards has baffled them for decades. Such a varied educational program does a disservice to both students and teachers, whose concerns and preferences are largely ignored when curricula and time-on-task are mandated. It also does a disservice to society at large, which has a right to expect every graduate to have learned specific skills and to have become proficient in utilizing those skills. Schools, since their inception, have reflected society as a whole, and they have been bent and swayed by the winds of prevailing political influences (Nemirovsky et al 76; Steele 145).
Much of the time, the effect has been progressing in education, but it has been progressing in fitful starts and stops, characterized by major disagreements between the schools and the public on what is required for education to be effective. Parents and the community abdicate their responsibilities to the learning process, and in many instances, educators are happy to be left alone. Because of those federal initiatives, millions of Caucasian children are turned toward success, not only academically but socially.
Recent studies have documented substantial gains in the achievements of children served by Project Head Start and ESEA. The public and political climate of that period are one of general disinterest in maintaining and improving the schools. Urban schools suffer most of all because federal orders to desegregate pupils and personnel brought disruption and violence over busing and accelerated the white flight from urban schools (Nemirovsky et al 65).
It was found that: “Parental academic involvement (maternal involvement in kindergarten, parental expectations for high levels of educational attainment) and authoritative parenting style (parent-youth communication, parental fairness, and parental restraint) were related to educational outcomes in some of the models tested” (Maton 649). A difference between African American boys and Caucasian boys is caused by different family values and relations, cultural and social influences.
Following Martin (2002) one could easily conclude from those data that the average achievement of undergraduates is above average, and the average achievement of graduate students is clearly above average. But that seems a logically odd thing to suggest, so alternative interpretations are in order. Critics admit that high selectivity in the admissions process has generated only superior students or students superior to those upon which the old norms and expectations were premised; or that students have not so much changed as instruction has improved; or both; and in those ways explain a skewed distribution of grades to the high end (Greene et al 423).
It might also be said that human nature being what it is, neither student achievement nor faculty instruction has improved all that much, so the jump in grades and GPAs could be the result of generous, even forgiving, academic standards (Caucasian et al 130). For a long time, the declining levels of achievement among African-American boys were said to be the result of increasing numbers of students taking mathematics tests, implying that more students in the lower percentiles of high school classes were taking them, thus dropping the average (Hintze 2002).
Despite the tinge of controversy in such an explanation (as more minority students were taking the tests), that seemed a plausible explanation until some few years ago when the number of test-takers leveled off, making it more difficult to attribute the consistent decline in scores on a consistent increase of poorer students taking the tests. There is no single or simple explanation for the inflation of grades and the concomitant deflation of academic standards. The causes are multiple, interrelated, and often confused and confusing (Hintze 545).
Comparative analysis between African-American and Caucasian boys from single-family shows that there is unequal treatment of boys at elementary schools. Producing individuals who have basic skills, who know and accept themselves, who can work productively with others, who know how to think and how to learn–is the contribution of an elementary school toward making citizens of the future. Agreement on the need for high academic standards is not universal (Hintze 540).
Predictions continue that raising standards of academic achievement will increase student absenteeism and dropouts by producing anxiety and frustration. Detractors point to poor socioeconomic conditions that thwart the most positive efforts to achieve established standards (Greene et al 423). They question whether it is possible to set uniformly high academic standards for all students considering the economic and cultural heterogeneity of American society. Both within and beyond the school environment, many forces can influence the reform movement. If these forces are not dealt with, they can be harmful (Maton 639).
Properly understood and directed, they can help encourage constructive educational innovations. In considering the problems of schools, educators must begin as background by understanding certain social constraints impinging on education–some of them operating positively and others negatively. Following Bandura (cited Martin 2000) the main causes of success in mathematics are:
- mastery experiences which provide direct evidence of whether one can succeed,
- vicarious experiences provided by social models and people similar to themselves who persevere to success or who fail despite the high effort,
- social persuasion, in the form of verbal messages that one can or cannot succeed, and
- physiological and affective states that lead to judgments about one’s capabilities, strengths, and vulnerabilities” (121).
Most African-Americans from a single-family expect the schools will teach fundamental skills and basic cultural values. These include proper use of the English language; the ability to reason systematically when solving problems; an understanding of the basic principles of democracy, civic responsibility, and fair play; the duties associated with the work ethic; an appreciation of the need for a sense of community among members of the society; the values of personal and mental health; and an appreciation of the fine arts, music, and the love for life-long learning (Maton 639).
The assignment of cause-and-effect relationships is extremely difficult, and probably impossible, in the evaluation of education if one wishes to view curricular content and structure as “cause” to the “effect” of student academic achievement. Still, in all, there is a growing agreement that recent college and university graduates are less prepared than students of an earlier generation who graduated from a more structured curriculum with more rigorous standards (Nemirovsky et al 87).
While it may not be defensible to say that the replacement of structured, prescriptive curricula by a relatively unstructured, piecemeal, elective curriculum produced the decline in student knowledge and skills, there is no doubt that there have been consistent and dramatic deficiencies in student academic achievement. But there is no meaning of “equality” to which all would subscribe (Nemirovsky et al 87).
In this definition equal rights means identical rights; equal treatment means identical treatment; and equal opportunity for African-American and Caucasian boys means identical opportunity. The sudden reimposition of truly defensible standards of secondary achievement as a prerequisite to admission to colleges and universities would eliminate large numbers of ambitious and natively able students, including many from minority populations, and social policies will not now tolerate that even in the name of academic quality (Nemirovsky et al 43).
The difference in academic accomplishment in mathematics among African-American and Caucasian boys is explained by differences in social policies and perception of a single-family in society. While Caucasian boys are treated as racial minority students who need support and help, Africa-American students are deprived of additional support from educators (Maton et al 640).
The argument for remediation is powerful: if institutions of higher education admissions, for reasons of social policy or not, students who are deficient in the knowledge and skills required to benefit from and complete college then those institutions have an obligation to provide the curriculum and instruction needed to help those students “come up to speed.” Many of these students, members of minority groups or not, are graduates of schools that place less emphasis on preparation for higher education than on other curricula, so students are disadvantaged even though they may well have the native capacity and personal desire for a college education (Maton et al 640).
And, truth be known, any historian of American education can show that collegiate level remediation of defects for admission is about as old as American higher education itself. But the arguments against remediation are equally powerful: the very rationale for higher education, the pursuit of higher learning as based on adequate secondary school preparation, is wounded, perhaps mortally, if the failed tasks of elementary and secondary schools are passed along, with their deficient students, to colleges and universities. Remedial instruction thus perverts the very mission of the university; it forces the faculty to offer instruction at a level at which they are not necessarily competent, and certainly far below that at which they were employed to teach (Martin 69).
Achievement of more balanced educational standards to prepare the whole man, rather than just the technical knowledge expert, is undoubtedly the most profound challenge (Martin 66). At present, no such standards exist or are being proposed to assure society that its engineers have not only the knowledge but also the fortitude to do what is right rather than merely what is required of them. The very establishment of such standards, difficult as they may be to articulate, prepare for, and uphold, would be a major act of courage by a university. It would demand value judgments, substantial curricula modification, and the willingness to abandon reliance on the acquisition of knowledge and mathematics skills as the only touchstone of professional education (Nemirovsky et al 82).
The impact of education cannot be obtained unless the whole array of new educational technologies is complemented by a determined emphasis on values and character-building (Nemirovsky et al 198). The electronic classroom and other new technology-based teaching media need to be designed to encourage three-way interactions among students, teachers, and other members of the community who have relevant feelings, values, knowledge, and experiences to contribute to the educational process. Indeed, any discussion of academic standards and of the actions needed to strengthen education–technological or any other kind–would be futile without stressing this broader context of the educational mission (Nemirovsky et al 182).
Psychological principles affecting human learning should be systematically taught using those same principles to promote the positive transfer of that learning to future learning tasks. Each individual can discover through experience and experimentation the variables that increase his motivation to learn as well as the factors that accelerate the rate and degree of his learning. A student should be able to determine the amount and duration of practice optimal for him, decide whether overt or covert participation is more productive, assess, and, if necessary, adjust his level of aspiration, determine what generates meaning for him and which are his most powerful reinforcers (Hintze et al 540).
Along with these idiosyncratic factors, a student should be sensitive to properties inherent in the content to be learned, such as position in the sequence, potential interference, and relationships that can impede or accelerate achievement. With sophistication about variables that accelerate initial learning, a student should learn to make use of factors that promote retention of what has been learned plus the most powerful accelerants of all, those factors that promote the transfer of learning so the student can realize all the gains of positive transfer of that learning to new situations that require it for problem-solving and creativity (Hintze et al 540).
Since this means reduced accountability, it is not surprising that past civilizations, relieved of pressures to worry about survival, revealed contrasting potentials for either deadly sedation or creative renewal (Hintze et al 540).
In sum, many schools become increasingly populated by poorer and socially disadvantaged students who need remedial help. In such cases, maintenance of adequate standards of performance and achievement become extremely difficult. Learning how to think and how to learn, knowing the factors that exert an influence on the function of the world’s most complex and unique instrument, the human mind, may well become the essence of education. Of equal importance is a sensitivity to those same factors that, used by others. Only by understanding the potential effects of principles of learning such as modeling, reinforcement, redundancy, and transfer, can one be free to be master of one’s own learning rather than be a mere reactor to the stimuli and experiences encountered.
Works Cited
- Greene, B. A. Debacker, T. K., Krows, J. Goals, Values and Beliefs as Predictors of Achievement and Effort in High School Mathematics Classes. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research 40 (1999): 421-424.
- Hintze, J. M. et al Oral Reading Fluency and Prediction of Reading Comprehension in African American and Caucasian Elementary School Children. School Psychology Review, 31 (2002): 540-550.
- Martin, D. B. Mathematics Success and Failure among African-American Youth: The Roles of Sociohistorical Context, Community Forces, School Influence, and Individual Agency. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000.
- Maton, K. I., Hrabowski III, F. A., Greif, J. I. Preparing the Way: A Qualitative Study of High-Achieving African American Males and the Role of the Family. American Journal of Community Psychology, 26 (1998): 639-649.
- Nemirovsky, R., Rosebery, A. S., Warren, B. Everyday Matters in Science and Mathematics: Studies of Complex Classroom Events. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005.
- Steele, D., Using Writing to Access Students’ Schemata Knowledge for Algebraic Thinking. School Science and Mathematics, 105 (2005): 142-152.