Hey students! Hard work yields success

This time of year, faculty members adopt tactics both subtle and not-so-subtle to implore students to set aside the gadgets and crack open the books. And, yes, it is true that hard work can (and does) yield academic success, but for reasons that are largely cultural, hard work has become feared and praises of hard work are deemed politically incorrect. Two articles spotted today seem to indicate how significant this cultural problem is.

First, take a look at Tom Friedman's article from Saturday's Times in which he cites another article in the Washington Post on the lack of student motivation as a major problem that besets America. The U.S.A. has dropped to no. 11 in a "ranking" of best countries, and there are good reasons why the U.S. is underperforming. Excerpt:

The second piece, which could have been called “Why We’re No. 11,” was by the Washington Post economics columnist Robert Samuelson. Why, he asked, have we spent so much money on school reform in America and have so little to show for it in terms of scalable solutions that produce better student test scores? Maybe, he answered, it is not just because of bad teachers, weak principals or selfish unions.
“The larger cause of failure is almost unmentionable: shrunken student motivation,” wrote Samuelson. “Students, after all, have to do the work. If they aren’t motivated, even capable teachers may fail. Motivation comes from many sources: curiosity and ambition; parental expectations; the desire to get into a ‘good’ college; inspiring or intimidating teachers; peer pressure. The unstated assumption of much school ‘reform’ is that if students aren’t motivated, it’s mainly the fault of schools and teachers.” Wrong, he said.

  The other article comes from the University Affairs, a Canadian university monthly for faculty, administrators and others. In that article, Alan Slavin, a Physics prof at Trent University in Ontario discusses the failed curricular reforms in that province made during the late 1990's. But, then, in a revealing aside near the end comes this:

I recently reviewed the drop-out rate from my introductory physics class that I have taught quite regularly from the 1980s. Over this time, the drop-out rate has increased gradually from eight percent in the early 1980s to more than 20 percent now, with one glaring exception. In the Ontario double-cohort year of 2003-04 and the next year, (which included about 25 percent of the four-year students who stayed in high school for an optional fifth year), the drop-out rate plummeted to eight and 10 percent, even though the class performance was not exceptional. Similar results were seen at Brock and Guelph universities. The best explanation is that these students were told that they would have to work very hard to gain one of the limited places at university. The work and study habits they developed then carried into university, and helped them through their first year. The lesson is that at least some student problems can be reversed very rapidly if the incentive is large enough.

The double cohort is a reference to the year in which grade 12 and grade 13 students graduated together, thus swelling universities' freshman year classes. Revealing though...