Doomed to Fail

"In Doomed to Fail, Paul A. Zoch argues that what America most needs to improve its schools is not necessarily better teachers but a wholesale shift in the way it thinks about who or what creates academic success. If we continue to look to teachers to produce our students' achievement, he maintains, we can continue to expect low student performance. It is the student from whom we must demand more." "Tracing the development of educational ideas in the United States from the time of William James to the sophisticated educational thinkers of the present day, Mr. Zoch shows how schools have adopted an obsessive focus on teachers and their teaching methods, meanwhile neglecting the disciplined effort and hard work that students must expend in order to achieve. Picking up on this prevailing view of society, most students now see their success as a product of what their teachers do in class. So they devote little effort to their studies and, predictably enough, learn little. Their dedication to schoolwork, as Mr. Zoch demonstrates, falls far short of that routinely displayed by students in other, less prosperous countries."--Jacket