Six Ways Young People Can Do Better in School

1) APPRECIATE THE SWEET DEAL. Unless you plan to run away from home and live on the streets, you’re going to be in school. It’s the law. Why waste energy complaining that you can use in more productive ways? Children 10- or 12-years old used to go to work in factories or fields. Instead you get to sit around all day, never breaking a sweat, never getting your hands dirty. A lot of people have worked very hard and sacrificed a lot so you can enjoy this free, all-you-can-eat buffet. So enjoy it.

2) TRY HARDER. The more you put in, the more you get out. It’s like a relationship; it’s like lifting weights; it’s like everything else in life. If you try twice as hard, you’ll get twice as much out of it. Making the effort is its own reward. How, you ask, does that work? Because doing it in school will accustom you to doing it in ALL SITUATIONS. Sure, there may be a few geniuses who have huge success without much effort; sure, that happens a few times every century. Which has nothing to do with the rest of us. For most people, EFFORT and DISCIPLINE are the two most essential ingredients of a successful life. There are lots of ways to grow, you know. Try harder and you’ll learn more. You’ll be smarter. In the future you’ll be a better citizen, a better parent, a better worker, a better employer, a better voter, probably a better person. You’ll be more independent, resourceful, and adaptable, more able to succeed in the future whatever happens.

3) RISE ABOVE THE BAD METHODS. There’s no use denying that there are plenty of bad schools, and plenty of nonsense even in good schools. You have to learn to recognize the bad stuff, so you can maneuver around it and take advantage of the good stuff. It’s impossible in a short article to explain all the silly methods used in our public schools, for example, Constructivism, Whole Word, Reform Math, Cooperative Learning, Self Esteem, No Memorization, and many more. You’ll know in your heart when things are not helping you at all. No Memorization, for example--even a 10-year-old will sense that there are some things you just need to know. Self Esteem, for example--every kid knows that being praised for doing a bad job is really lame. Reform Math, for example--probably every student in the class wonders why there’s little emphasis on mastering basic arithmetic. Ask your teachers if other approaches could be used, or supplement what the school is doing with what the school SHOULD be doing.

4) DEMAND A BETTER EDUCATION. Let’s do a quick test. Look at a map of the world--can you point to Japan? Do you know what 7 x 8 is? In what year did Columbus sail to the Caribbean? Let’s say for the sake of discussion you don’t know these three things. You are in a terrible school! You’re going to have to work hard to rise above this. In the case of geography, you should be able to point at the 20 countries most commonly mentioned in the news: China, India, Mexico, Germany, etc. In the case of arithmetic, you should memorize multiplication tables up to 12 x 12, at least. In the case of history, the quickest way to have a sense of time and historical structure is to memorize a few dozen of the main dates. You’ll be glad you did. Anyone saying otherwise is NOT your friend.

5) MASTER THE ESSENTIAL SKILL. The most important single thing is reading. Unbelievably, many schools do a bad job of teaching this basic. (You should refuse to be a victim of these incompetent people.) Now, it’s very easy to test yourself. All you need is a newspaper and someone who can definitely read. This person points to a story; you read the story at a comfortable speed for one minute, as the person follows along from the side (or perhaps better, follows on a second copy of the newspaper). This person will then know whether you can read by answering three simple questions: did you leave out any words that are there; did you add any words that are not there; did you substitute one word for a quite different word? If you do any of these things, you’re probably a victim of Whole Word and you should immediately learn phonics from scratch. Learn the alphabet and the sounds that each letter symbolizes; make sure you’re always reading from left to right; memorize poems or songs that you have a printed version of; read everything that passes in front of your eyes. Read, read, read. Play with the letters, and the lovely way they blend together to make new sounds. Say you have INK, you can add R to get RINK, and then D to get DRINK. Once you see how that works, and how logical and delightful it is, you’re halfway home. If you have trouble with reading, never be ashamed of this. It’s the school’s fault. Virtually all children can learn to read in the first grade if they are properly taught. If you weren’t properly taught, send an indignant letter to your school, and then find some other people in the same situation and help each other.

6) LEARN MORE. Education is all about learning more facts and adding to your store of knowledge. The more you know, the more you can understand, and the more you can grow. Education should not be a game called let’s-pretend-we’re-students. It’s more fun if you actually are a student! In that case, every day you know more than you did the day before. Make it happen.

Okay, now at least you have a basic map. As Arsenio Hall often said: “Let’s get busy.”