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SALT LAKE CITY -- Teachers get a lot of the focus and blame for student achievement. So do parents; but what about the students?
I think we just do not expect enough sometimes.
–- Utah Higher Education commissioner William Sederburg
A lot of blame is placed on teachers, parents, funding and more for how students do. But more people are starting to point to student motivation as a problem in our society.
"The larger cause of failure is almost unmentionable: shrunken student motivation," said Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson in a recent column. "Students, after all, have to do the work. If they aren't motivated, even capable teachers may fail.
Newsweek says in a 2008 survey of public high school teachers, 21 percent judged student absenteeism a serious problem; 29 percent cited 'student apathy.'
"What do we as a society expect of students, and students and young people will always rise to the expectation. I think we just do not expect enough sometimes," said Utah Higher Education commissioner William Sederburg.
Sederburg says students will do more if we expect more and require more of them.
"If we set the expectation and the requirement, everything will align themselves correctly and I think the students will respond positively to it," he said.
For example, Sederburg says many seniors may look for a fluff year or easy classes. But if they were required to take, say, another year of math, then they would do it.
E-mail: mrichards@ksl.com
