Posted on 02/03/2020 7:33:58 AM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion
I was head coach of a local swim team and was working with a 12-year-old girl who had enormous talent, beautiful technique and a gift for moving effortlessly through the water. I was pushing her hard . . . [but] Nothing would make her really try.
So I called my friend Larry Liebowitz, a wonderful coach I knew . . . “Dan,” he said, “you want this more than she does.” I frowned, and realized he was right. Then he added the kicker: “You’ve got to realize, there’s nothing morally wrong with not wanting to swim.”
. . . I love sociology, and I believe in its value, just as I deeply believe in the value of liberal arts education. But when students don’t like sociology, I let them know that I’m not insulted. You can’t force motivation on a person; that door is locked from the inside.
We should know by now that students have other things going on in their lives besides school. For some, it may simply be the wrong time to focus on education. More than that, we should know that when we respect students’ choices, they are more likely to respect ours, and they may better respect the ideas we want to share with them. But whether they do or don’t is their choice.
There’s nothing morally wrong with not wanting to swim. And that’s fine.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Mr. Chambliss is a sociology professor at Hamilton College and a co-author of “How College Works.”
If they don’t want to swim, don’t make them swim. Focus your time on those that do.
She’ll either wise up, or drop out. Either way, it’s not your problem.
Likewise, not wanting to study should be self-correcting. If they don’t study, they don’t pass tests. If they don’t pass tests, they flunk the course. If they flunk enough courses, they are kicked out of college.
Therefore, they should either shape-up or go get a job. Spend your time trying to help those that are eager but may need help.
Sociology is a great online class check reviews for a great program.
I went to college and was too young to embrace it and get the most out of it I could. That maturity and the desire, curiosity, need to understand and want to learn came later.
I have an engineering degree, but I took a sociology course as an elective. This was 35 years ago.
I’m glad I did. It taught me even then that:
1) there are interesting things other than engineering, even if to just learn more about human nature. Just don’t expect them all to provide you a primary source of comfortable income.
2) the sociology dept at my conservative school even then was a bastion of liberalism
Most people don't want to work.
“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”
People don’t get this, and it applies to more than just swimming.
To be really good at a thing, it takes not just talent, but desire. It takes both to be really good. I have three daughters. All three are really talented singers, but the oldest is truly talented above the other two. She sang a solo at a church event at the age of 14 and sounded like a full grown woman, and a REALLY good full grown woman. It was all there, right out of the box.
But she is not interested in singing publicly. She’s now almost 40. My other two daughters have been in various bands and one is still having a lot of fun with it. They have the talent and the desire to pursue it as a fun hobby. And that’s great.
And she pursues other things, and that’s great too.
What is a class check review?
When it came to sports, I always told my kids that they had to finish the season. This was middle school and high school. College is a different story. Athletics—even at the worst D3 college—is a job.
I smashed my ankles in high school. I went on to play college. After a year, when my ankles stopped swelling some time around New Years, I decided I was not going to play again. I wasn’t going pro.
Ping.
I like this a lot. Some children who are exposed to education simply “don’t get it” and have, in varying degrees, a hard time throughout their formal education.
That positively does NOT prove that they will be lifetime failures - as anyone who has been to their 50-year high school reunion is likely to have noticed.
But that is the impression which schools self-interestedly promote.
I agree, but it does seem a shame when someone is particularly gifted at something that does not interest them.
When I went the first time I got terrible grades. But I got something more valuable than all my degrees. A wife. When I went the second time I made nothing but A’s. But we had no social life for the next 20 years.
Truth be told, you never would have known because he never let it interfere with his teaching.
That was a while ago
There’s no money in swimming outside of a couple of successful but completely lunatic splashers. The kid has more on the ball than her instructor.
My son had a friend 20 years ago who went with us to shoot skeet to get ready for deer season. His friend had never fired a gun. His FIRST time at skeet he missed ONE target. I told his parents they should really develop that as it might “pay for college”. They didn’t. He’s an Air Force pilot now.
gift that does not interest them
My daughter was playing soccer in elementary school, she was chubby and kind of slow so the coach never put her in; 2nd half in one game they were getting killed and he let her play; she was like Christian Ronaldo, she could do anything, stole the ball, scored three goals, they lost but practically carried her off of the field. The next week she started and did not give a rats ass and quit the team a week later.
It certainly does seem a shame when that happens - but the only thing to be done about it is to do your best to make sure that person is making an informed decision.There is such a thing as persuasion but, as Dale Carnegie put it, “You have to bait the hook to suit the fish.”
Just because you love strawberries and are revolted at the thought of eating a worm is no sign that you can put a strawberry on a hook and get a fish to bite.
I tell my kids “fish gotta swim”.
This means that God given talents need to be expressed and that we should accept it. We won’t be happy when we suppress those talents.
An abstract student is one thing. When it’s your kid it’s another.
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