.7 Student Empowerment

I want you to try and empower the students that you are working with. So that they feel in charge of their lives, like my own children. I try to empower them, so they can be in charge of their lives. And that is much more important than the kind of grade point average they get, because if students feel empowered then they use the learning they've had much more effectively. If they don't feel empowered, then however much they've learned ultimately it will be useless. Because they'll have to wait for somebody else to tell them what to do with it. That 's one of the real strengths of the American school system that however much we may slouch through things and however much we may not have some of the rigorous standards that other systems have. One way or another the American
school system does create people who are creative. The Japanese system creates people who are imitators and they don't know how to be creative. That's the reason that Americans win more Nobel Prizes disproportionately to our population than any other nation in the world. Japan is I think has had only two Nobel Prizes in history and yet there population is half as much as ours and they are an industrial country. Why do they have so few Nobel Prizes because their emphasis is on this repetitive behavior that does not
encourage people to take responsibility for their own lives or be creative. So you see we're talking about objectives which are pretty substantial. We're talking about objectives which in many ways are paradoxically, we are achieving at the same time that we don't value them. We still are valuing that straight A average. Even though we find that our strength as a society comes from the kind of empowerment that isn't necessarily associated with that straight A average. So it's kind of a paradoxical and interesting situation that
our success ultimately has come from the result of not being able to achieve what we say we want to achieve, but we organize ourselves more creatively and differently. I mean, parents really want their kids to spend time as children in childhood, in China, why parents force their kids to spend all of their time studying. I mean the kids have virtually no time for play at all. All right, and American parents want their kids to have time playing but we'd like to have the kind of rigor that the Chinese produce in terms of their schooling But we aren't willing to pay that price-thank goodness we are not willing to pay that price. Because if we were willing to pay that price
we wouldn't get the result that we are getting even though we are getting it now for the wrong reason. And I just feel that we're all better off if we can analysize things a little bit more straight forwardly and help people understand exactly what they are working four and toward and why.

So accountability and the lack of accountability is one of the real barriers to American education. We related the accountability today to class room management and class room management practices and remember some of the stories that I told and how that fits it.

	What is paradoxical about the American social and educational climates?	Answer Here
	Karen is a student in her junior year of high school. Her parents insist that she maintain a grade point average of at least 3.5 while working part time and volunteering on weekends. One of Karen's teacher, Mrs. Cross, feels that Karen should be allowed more time to participate in extracurricular activities and social outings of her own choosing. Which influence in Karen's life can eventually empower her more?	Answer Here