From Aptitude to Effort: A New Foundation for Our Schools.

Abstract

TWO CHALLENGES FACE AMERICAN EDUCATION TODAY: 1 ) raising overall achievement levels and 2) making opportunities for achievement more equitable. The importance of both derives from the same basic condition?our changing economy. Never before has the pool of developed skill and capability mat tered more in our prospects for general economic health. And never before have skill and knowledge mattered as much in the economic prospects for individuals. There is no longer a welcom ing place in low-skill, high-wage jobs for individuals who have not cultivated talents appropriate to an information economy. The country, indeed each state and region, must press for an overall higher level of such cultivated talents. Otherwise, we can expect a continuation of the pattern of falling personal incomes and declin ing public services that has characterized the past twenty years. The only way to achieve this higher level of skill and ability in the population at large is to make sure that all students, not just a privileged and select few, learn the high-level, embedded, symbolic thinking skills that our society requires. Equity and excellence, classically viewed as competing goals, must now be treated as a single aspiration. To do this will require a profound transformation of our most basic assumptions about the enabling conditions for learning. What we learn is a function of both our talents?our aptitude for par ticular kinds of learning?and how hard we try?our effort. But what is the relationship between aptitude and effort? Are they

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