HK, I think the phrase "willing to work" sums up my feelings. If the schools could reinforce the concept of being willing to work, reward doing your work, penalize or neglect students for not doing their work, whatever your ability is, it would teach the most important lesson a school should teach. That lesson could truly be differentiated and reach every student at their level. Instead (ime) they let smart students get away with not doing their work because "they're fine, they're smart" and they try to convince poor students to "try" harder to do their work. The school is the authority. They should make it clear that they expect children to do their work, support and teach, but set the standard that they expect ALL kids to do their work. Studiously doing your work should be the main take-away from spending your time going to school. Everything else, imo, is optional. Learning to work on learning should be the whole purpose of school. jmo, or what is school for?
