Thursday, May 04, 2006

A very brief follow-up on my "scholarship" post:

I know there are people out there who give a darn about their education. Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, it's the people who roll their eyes about learning what DNA is that I remember.

But anyway: last night at the cookout the kids were talking about school. One of the kids asked another: "I heard a rumor that you had 24 zeroes in Math this year"

(I had to ask what it took to get a "zero": not doing your homework on a particular day). The accused kid kind-of-sort-of denied it, one other guy piped up to say proudly that he had "NO zeroes!" and another guy turned to 24-zero-guy and kind of shook his head and said, "24 zeroes? Dude, that is NOT COOL."

So there is positive peer pressure out there - the question is how to keep it going, through high school and beyond.

1 comment:

TChem said...

That positive peer pressure thing is something my husband talks about a lot, because between 7th and 8th grade he moved from a school where he was teased for being smart and conscientious to a place where everyone thought he was fantastic for those same qualities.

There are people who would be the way they are no matter what, but there are plenty of folks in the middle for whom positive feedback makes all the difference.