One sentence — one single, simple sentence, the contents of which students already had planned in class. It was merely a matter of taking two phrases and generalizing. That was one class’s homework last night. In fulfillment of one of the many instructional standards for the eighth-grade language arts curriculum, students were working to write a single sentence that expressed the main idea of a multi-paragraph non-fiction text. We’d examined the text in class. Student effort hadn’t been stellar, but the majority fulfilled the most basic criteria for the small project. We had in place everything we needed to write that sentence, but we’d run out of time. The homework was something like leftovers: we didn’t have time, do it at home.
One sentence, probably no longer than ten words. Out of a class of twenty-five, four did the “work” in its entirety, one had begun writing the sentence but was less than half finished, three had the presence of mind to jot the sentence on a piece of paper as I was checking that other students had completed the work, and the rest did nothing.
One sentence, and sixty-six percent of the class was too lazy, too unmotivated to do it. “I had better things to do with my time,” one “student” said. “I forgot,” another said. “I just didn’t want to do it,” a third explained.
In a flash, I saw the possible future, and it was terrifying. Students in the second world — countries like China, Brazil, and India — see what we have, and they want it. Their parents see it, and they want their children to have it. And so they work for it. They work for the education that will give them the job that will allow them to buy that smartphone, that flat-screen television, that car — their little version of the American dream, exported and translated.
“Yet we already have it — we’ve won. We’ve got nothing to worry about,” replies the consumer prevailing (often unacknowledged or even unrealized) “wisdom.” True, we won. In the Cold War, we came out on top. What spurred us? A moment like we’re facing now, a moment where we realize our ascendancy is being eclipsed. We’ve grown complacent, though, and most feel our current reality could never truly disappear.
Yet looking at the standings of US students among those from the rest of the world, it certainly does appear that they want education — and all that that brings with it — more than we in the already-ascended West.
And add to it the points made yesterday by Krugman in the NYT. Here:https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/26/opinion/white-rural-voters.html?searchResultPosition=3
It’s related. Feelings of entitlement, and then resentment/rage when they you don’t do as well as the “other” person.