Human Voices Wake Us

Dan Meyer has a new post about a seventeen year old kid who does amazing photography.  Look at the pictures; they are phenomenal.  Dan’s post got me to thinking.  Why are we always so stunned when kids acheive great things? We expect achievement from people in their 40s, 50, etc, but we’re surprised by high achievement of people in their teens, twenties and even thirties.  Why is this?  Why do we expect so little from our young people?  We know the stories of “kid geniuses” ala Doogie Houser.  Why don’t we expect more kids to reach this greatness?  Can it be a lack of “high expectations?”  Okay, I’ll stop asking questions and tell you what I think.  I think we are shortchanging our kids - of every age.  We expect them to be juvenile, expect them to not care about learning, and don’t allow them to discover what they do well - and do it exceptionally well.  I think of the 16 year old student I had who brought a computer to school - in a suitcase, which he built from scratch.  I think about the 15 year old mother who took care of her child and came to school and held a job.  I think of the 18 year old who won a film festival and is now making over $40,000/year.    I read this article once about how educators get from teenagers exactly what we expect - typically “teenage” behavior.  We should treat teenagers like adults, like they were treated years ago when they got married at 14, started working the farm and taking care of their siblings.  We shouldn’t believe that that type of responsibility at those ages suddenly disappeared.  The culture evolved to where we don’t have to get married young, or work the farm (though some still do).  Maybe if we gave our students and young adults true responsibility (not the manufactured -bring your spiral to class - kind), valued their opinions as partners in their education, we’d get more out of them, and they’d get more out of education.

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