> I'm not surprised that honors high school students cheat, but I wonder
> whether it's really due to an over-inflated sense of self-worth, or
> actually an underdeveloped sense of self-worth and ability. If they
> really thought they had the ability to do the work, and were proud of
> their own capabilities, why would they be cheating?
In high school, academically speaking, I was in with this crowd in
question, in three different high schools. Two of them were very
challenging - one public, one the largest private school in the nation (in
Hawaii). The sense I get from having been in such academic situations and
knowing kids who were also in these situations - is that part of it is due
to pressure to perform, whether it's from the parents or from the school
itself. Faculty and administrative folks at these schools would tell us
that we, as opposed to students at other high schools, were going to be
the leaders of tomorrow in our communities. That may lend to some
inflated sense of self-worth, yes. That's why students of these schools
were never very popular with other students. But there is a lot of
pressure to perform, to get good grades, to get into the best college, to
get the scholarhships, to get the degree from a brand-name school, to get
the big bucks after graduating college. It's an 17 year old's perspective
on the rest of the adult world. That the job (and therefore the quality
of the rest of your life, professional and otherwise) depends on the
college and the college depends on the grades in high school, plus you
don't want Mom and Dad on your back about keeping 3.8 GPA...That sort if
gets back into the previous thread on education as a commodity. But at
least in the school I went to in Hawaii - that's really how they pushed
it. It was all advertising and flash and lights and glitter. The other
kids - who aren't the ones in the top 10-20% of their graduating class -
perhaps (don't fry me on this one, for my upper-middle class blinders!!)
Perhaps these kids aren't looking at the same kinds of professional lives,
post-high school as these "gifted" students - law and medicine and science
and engineering, etc, that competition is so stiff for. I'd be curious to
know about the suicide or depression or substance abuse rates among
"gifted" students are, compared to "regular" students.
I've blathered too long!
abe :)
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"Uh Lady ... you don't work here!"
-Ani DiFranco, concert in Tempe
