She tried to get to the bottom of their reticence by asking them to respond in journals. What she found was even more troubling.
"My favorite part of this class is taking vocabulary quizzes, because I can just put the right answer and hand it in."
"I don't participate or answer questions in class because I don't want to be wrong."
"I'm not interested in doing "fun" activities. Just get to the point and tell me what I have to do to get an A."
And perhaps most unsettling, "I don't participate or discuss because, not to be mean, but I don't care what other people have to say. What does it matter to me?"
My first thought was how lamentable it is that this particular group of high-performing students lacks the intellectual curiosity to appreciate or value the importance of diverse viewpoints. My second thought-- How has our educational system created students who admittedly prefer rote memory regurgitation to a dynamic environment of exploration, debate, and intellectual-risk taking?
I think most would agree with Vicki Davis that students need a rich, diversified experience outside of performing well on tests:
Students who can speak well in front of an audience, who can write a blog post well, upload photographs and produce video as easily as producing an essay are part of my definition of well-educated. Someone who can debate and think and figure things out as well as study for and do well on a test. Being able to do the measurable AND the more generalized bigger picture sorts of things are BOTH part of being educated.
Cool Cat Teacher Online, Cool Cat Teacher Blog, Mar 2010
So how to we get students who have somehow grown up without being weaned from the "safety" of read, remember, regurgitate, to understand that true academic excellence is comprised of far more than the ability to accurately fill in the bubbles on a scantron sheet?
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