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Is the 'lazy student' a myth?
YES
Mel Levine
All students would be happy to work
There is no such thing as a lazy child. Of course, all students (and grownups too) have their lethargic lapses, their intermittent mental recess periods. But all kids have a deep yearning to be productive, to perform in a way that garners praise from important adults and respect from classmates, and in a way that generates all-important feelings of competency.
Children accused of being lazy when it comes to schoolwork always have a good reason for their low productivity. They are the innocent and often misunderstood victims of a phenomenon I call “output failure.” Certain aspects of their brain wiring are making it hard for them to meet work demands in school. These often hidden handicaps or neurodevelopmental dysfunctions are especially evident when the student faces written assignments.
Teachers can observe a child in class or inspect samples of a student’s writing in seeking the reasons for his or her output failure. A teacher may see a child struggling with an awkward pencil grasp (a frequent sign of graphomotor dysfunction) or she may notice that the child has trouble getting his ideas into words and elaborating on thoughts. The teacher may find that a child has trouble spelling, punctuating and recalling facts all at once on a quiz but seems able to remember any of these needs in isolation, suggesting the student may have trouble with simultaneous memory (i.e., recalling several things at once). These and other such observations can lead to very practical ways of helping a child overcome any obstacles to productivity.
Most important, by understanding the underlying reasons for a child’s low academic output, we can share our insight with the child and parents alike. Such “demystification” alleviates guilt while it raises self-esteem and empowers the child to come up with strategies to enhance the flow of worthy products. It also helps the child understand and accept any help we may offer. On the other hand, accusing a student of wanton laziness becomes a call to inaction and a potential self-fulfilling prophecy; it also runs the serious risk of making that student appear to be ever more lazy as time goes by.
Mel Levine, M.D., is co-founder of All Kinds of Minds and author of A Mind at a Time and The Myth of Laziness.
NO
Gary D. Askins
Can you say 'militantly apathetic'?
Of course students are lazy. I pondered this issue while climbing over two days’ worth of dirty clothes and moist towels in my 16-year-old son’s bathroom on the way to forcing him out of bed at 11:55 a.m. and asking him to clean up. Did I ponder if the request could have been done in a more entertaining manner, motivating him to treat the chore like a game? Did I question the methodology implicit in my request? Could I have offered a cooperative group effort? Well, he’s the only son left at home, so the answers are: No, no and no.
My son, along with most of his peers, is occasionally lazy because he chooses to be. My students are all above average, just like in Lake Wobegon, but they are, at times, immune to requests to perform honest work. You know, student stuff like: Read this chapter, do these problems or write this essay. In my 30 years of teaching, I have encountered the militantly apathetic scholar who aggressively tests the system as well as the wannabe slackers who have adopted intellectual indolence as a lifestyle. The former need professional and/or parental intervention, and the latter will probably make a movie or computer game about it and retire at age 24.
A survey of 12,000 high school students showed that students admitting they cheated on an exam at least once in the past year jumped from 61 percent in 1992 to 74 percent in 2002; the percentage saying they lied to their teachers and parents also increased substantially (70 percent to 81 percent). Now let’s see—they are not doing the work and they are lying about it. I think that’s lazy.
We are all at times lazy because we can be. Our students are lazy because they have learned, and we have taught them, that they can take the retest, get an extended period of time for that essay or they can always do extra-credit assignments for those zeros. Is this high-output failure or low-input demands? Beats me. It’s the way it is. My son is out of bed and cleaning his room. His past “low output” has threatened the use of his telephone, television and computer. I’m on the way to my La-Z-Boy recliner with a cool beverage. Now where’s that TV remote?
Gary D. Askins is a classroom teacher of math and theater arts at Salado High School in Texas.
