Have You Seen Our Finals Schedule?????

Earlier this afternoon, I was looking up dates for the end of the school year and I discovered some shocking information. According to the official New Trier Calendar, our first day of second semester finals is on a Friday. The weekend after is Memorial Day weekend, so we have the following Monday off. Then exams will wrap up on Tuesday and Wednesday. Oh, yeah. And the commencement ceremony for the seniors is on that Sunday.
      Aside from the problems this causes for my personal calendar, this raises some issues.
      First of all, I think that having three extra days in between the first and second days of finals is awkward and possibly harmful to students' studying. The end of school is a distracting enough time, and to draw finals out for a time longer than necessary encourages end-of-year slumps. Will students really be able to use those three days effectively? I don't think so.
     Also, having a weekend surrounded by finals really defeats the purpose of a weekend. We are supposed to have those two (or three) days to catch up on work and sleep, and maybe to have a social life. But if students spend the weekend stressing about what is to come on during the next week, we can't rest.
    The lack of a true weekend also means that many New Trier students and their families will not observe Memorial day at all. Especially in light of the current war, every American should make that extra effort to acknowledge our armed forces.
     Finally, Memorial Day weekend has traditionally been a family-oriented time. It is the last major block of freedom most people have before everyone parts ways for the summer break. Without it, a lot of annual events and family vacations will likely be forgotten.
    I have a feeling that the reason for this strange schedule is to make extra time for the potential construction over this summer. Is it worth it? What are your opinions?

The Virtue of Incentives in Education

After watching Barry Schwartz's speech in class today, one of the thing that he said stuck out to me in particular. (You can view it here.) He told a story that served as a warning against relying on incentives to live a virtuous life. Apparently, in Switzerland citizens would ask if they would be opposed to having nuclear waste stored in their neighborhoods. Somewhat surprisingly, about 50% of them said that they would be okay with it because they felt like it was their duty as citizens. Here comes the crazy part. Another group of people were asked the same question, but they were also offered six weeks' salary as a compensation for the waste storage in their neighborhood. This time, only 25% accepted the plan. 
       This story clearly demonstrates a very interesting aspect of human behavior. We will agree to do something on strictly moral grounds until financial gain is brought into the picture. Then we suddenly take on a much more self-serving attitude and can no longer do the right thing based solely on what we believe is right an wrong. 
      Since I do not live in Switzerland and no one has ever surveyed me about nuclear waste storage, this specific example does not directly pertain to my daily life, but its message does. Our education system today is largely based on providing students with the incentives to learn. We receive grades for almost every assignment and we make a huge deal about final semester grades. For almost every student at New Trier, grades are a huge motivator to learn. 
     But why not learn just for learning's sake?
      To take myself as an example, I genuinely like to learn. I think new concepts are pretty cool. In Spanish, we are supposed to be learning how to speak another language, but sometimes I feel as if all that I am really learning how to do is get a good grade in the class. If we are assigned two pages in the workbook, I always do them, but I usually do not really put much thought into it. I do the minimum amount of writing so that I can get all of my homework points. I know that I am not the only person in my class who is guilty of this. But when I try to make myself feel guilty about blowing off my homework, I realize that the incentive of getting a good grade in Spanish really hurts my ability to learn properly. I truly believe that if I didn't have to waste so much time trying to get a good grade, then I could properly learn the language, which is something that I am interested in doing even without the grades (which is why I signed up for the class in the first place).
       My final point comes from the Chicago schools. Recently, they created a program that paid students for getting good grades. (I don't know what the current state of the program is, but the basic idea is still relevant.) I think that the problem with adding extra, unnecessary incentives to things is that the new incentives actually undermine the original ones. This "money for grades" program is telling students that getting good grades is not enough reward in itself. For that matter, grades in general send students the message that learning for learning's sake is not worth it. We need that extra validation from an outside source, rather than just being able to be proud of ourselves. I'm not sure that this is healthy.
      What do you think??

One Grain of Rice (Slightly Belated)

When I was younger, one book that both my brother and I enjoyed very much was One Grain of Rice, a folktale by Demi. It is a picture book with beautiful illustrations depicting a historical India. The story goes that a Raja thought that we was wise and fair to his people, most of whom were rice farmers. He took most of their harvest each year to keep safely in the royal storehouses in case of famine. Then, one year, almost all of the crop failed and the starving peasants went to the Raja, begging for the rice that he had promised. But in the interest of self-preservation, he denied them, not knowing how long the famine would last and needing rice for his own feasts. So the people continued to starve.
      Then, one day a young girl was walking past the royal rice-carriers when she noticed that one of their bags had a hole and was spilling rice. Being very clever, she walked beside them and caught all of the rice in her skirt. When they arrived at the palace, she was so honest that she returned all of the rice to the Raja. He was impressed, and offered to grant her any wish. She explained to him that all of the people were starving, and asked that he give her one grain of rice that day, then gave her two the next day, and four the next, doubling the amount each day for a month.
     The Raja agreed immediately, thinking that the girl was foolish to ask for so little. Of course, he had not mastered the subject of mathematics, and by the end of the month, he had given the girl all of his rice. She then turns around and distributes it the the hungry people. One thing to take note of is that despite the fact that he realized that all of his rice was disappearing, the Raja kept his word and did not go back on his promise. 
     There are a few different messages in this story. The first is that generosity is key to success in life. The Raja will not give his people rice, and he loses big by the end of the story. The main protagonist is very generous. She does not keep all of the rice for herself, as the Raja did. I think that this is a great message to send to kids, especially in our material age. The other good message is that anyone can change the government and that even the seemingly smallest person can have a bearing on a ruler.
      A final positive moral is that education is quite important. If the Raja had had as good of a grasp on simple math as the girl, the story likely would have had a different ending. It is clearly saying that knowledge is power.
     In fact, I could not find any examples of bad morals or "brainwashing" in this whole book. Not all of the messages that we give children in media are negative. There are good ones too!

The Ethics of Advertising

The short clip that we watched in class yesterday really got be thinking about the ethics of targeting children in advertisments. Personally, I do not think that there is any ethical problem with targeting the age-group that the prodct is designed for. That is, after all, the most effective way to sell something, which is all any company is trying to do. If the "nag factor" is what makes adults more likely to buy a product, then the realy problem lies in parents' attitudes toward their own children. If a child learns early on that they can get anything that they want from their parents merely by nagging them, then that lesson will stick. The parents are allowing this cycle to begin the first time they cave in to their child's wanting. The lessons that parents teach the children can have much more bearing on the way that their children develop than the media that they absorb. However, sucessful parenting may include limiting this media.
          This said, I did find one study that shows that advertising a certain type of product very negatively effects children, both mentally and physically. This is the advertising of food. A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation that I came across (view it here) suggests that the main reason that childhood obesity has become such a problem in the past few years is due to food advertisements directed at children. It says that the average child will spend almost six hours in "screentime" (TV, computer, gaming) every day. It also said that every year, each child will have seen over 40.000 commercials on TV alone. I found this to be the most telling sentence: "The majority of ads targeted at children are for food: primarily candy (32%), cereal (31%), and fast food (9%)". Although advertising for toys and chuckie-cheese's is not really that harmful, this clearly is.

       Ads for non-food items will bombard the average American daily for the rest of our lives. What better time to prepare for this than during our childhood, when our parents can help us to regulate our purchasing and consuming? Food advertising, on the other hand, is quite harmful to children, many of whom have parents who also struggle with obesity and overeating. This habit will cause even more health problems later in life that are tied to obesity, causing the health care system billions every year.

      This may seem like overkill to some, but after reading this study, I have come to believe that food products should not be advertised on TV to anyone, regardless of age. Thoughts?