I thought some of you might find this article, Many High School Grads Unprepared for College, interesting. It's based on a report of Maryland State high school and college students, but these data could be extrapolated to students across the country. "Thirty-eight percent of those students needed help in math during the first year of college, and 25 percent had to take remedial English and reading, according to the report." In community colleges, it looks worse. "From 1995 to 2000, between 49 percent and 56 percent of the less-prepared students who attended a community college needed remedial help in math, the study found." As the United States works harder and harder to make college affordable for everyone -- through loans and tax incentives -- we're making high school less and less valuable. Soon the B.S. degree will be the H.S. diploma of years ago.
Are high schools at fault? Or are they saddled with having to educate everyone, including the uneducatable? Not to mention the ones that don't even want to be there. In times past, many kids had to leave high school to help with family farm or business, or they had to go to work. High schools concentrated on the better students (or the wealthier), maintaining higher standards. Now, high schools have to educate just about everyone. On top of that, they're being tasked with making everyone college-ready? That's unfair. The U.S. has the best set of universities in the world. One of its finest attributes is its immense size, affording a much larger proportion of the population opportunities for a college education than is found anywhere else in the world. But the onus has to be on the individual student. Don't blame the schools for not prepping someone who wouldn't even be in school a few decades ago, much less asking the schools to prepare him/her for a college education. It's not reasonable. (If there is evidence that there are otherwise able students who simply cannot get into college because they were denied sufficient--not optimal, sufficient--educational experiences, I'd like to see it. Perhaps it exists; this isn't exactly my area of expertise.)
It is not just an issue of high school graduate having problems. I have taught as an adjunct at the graduate level, and basic writing skills are missing from many stuedents with bachelors degrees. The art of the term paper is gone and writing skills appear diminished.
Obviously these are, for the most part, people who wanted to learn; they wouldn't be going to college otherwise. Starkman
I agree these were people who wanted to learn. Most were very bright as well. However, basic writing skills were missing.
---------------------- Writing (and thinking) skills are indeed missing. I have for many years tried to teach these to learning disabled secondary students in persuasive rhetoric and composition.. I have usually used the method of finding a newspaper or magazine article of interest to the students and posing a question from it. As I live in Oregon where we hunt perhaps the question would be based on a picture of hunter holding up the dead deer's head proudly. Then after reading the article I'd ask a question. A discussion would follow where students could freely express opinions, but they'd have to give reasons. The reasons would be probed to develop thinking as : Question: Is it right to kill deer? Student #1,Opinion: "No it is wrong to kill deer?" Teacher, "Why?" Student #1 "I don't know," Student #2, Reason: "Because they are living things" Teacher, Probe, "But we eat hamburgers don't we?" Student#3 Response to probe "Yeah, but we raise cows to eat" Teacher Probe, "So, cows have different rights because they are raised to be eaten?" Student #4 "But someone owns the cows, no one owns the deer" Probe: "so ownership gives us the right to do what we want with what we own?" The discussion goes on for about 20-30 minutes. Then using a thesis format the students write their opinion on the question as: First paragraph: introduction and opinion stated Second Paragraph: first reason for opinion Third Paragraph: second reason Fourth paragraph: third reason Fifth paragraph:summary conclusion This sort of lesson on hundreds of topics I've done for years. It is enjoyable and I think effective. I've also found students not identified with special needs can profit from such, though requiring far less support. It is effective because it probes student thinking and leads to better written expression. What I find sadly missing in my own DL graduate experience, excepting only the Super's comments on UZ thesis chapters, is that "graders" wish only to grade a paper and not probe the student's thinking. One would suppose that in DE such interaction over student products would be considered vital.
I agree that this can and should be taken to the much deeper issue of critical thinking. I have used a very similar method with my graduate students. A question is posed regarding some important issue in rehabilitation. It is thougtfully discussed and then students are asked to write in very much the same format you proposed. These apaers are not graded, rather they are used to help the student develope skills on the way to writing a term paper. It allows writing skills to be enhanced before the product for grading is presented. It seems to me that the teaching process should be more about development than aout the grade. Critical thinking and thoughtful communication will take students further than almost anyting else in the classroom or in life.
........................ Good points. Were I ever to teach a DL course in my own area of interest (Bible/theology) I would hope that I could do it differently than I've experienced. What I've experienced is: read the text, read some other, write 2-4 papers, papers returned graded. Period. What I would think better is : read text, read other, write papers. These count 50% , Then "prof" writes 8-12 probing questions on each of the papers requiring more research and refinement of thinking. Student revises papers for second 50% of grade based on student responses to prof probes which are incorporated into revised papers. Seems this strategy would encourage more thinking and better written expression.
I really like this idea and will add it to my tool box for future classes that I teach. I am in themiddle of preparing a "guest lecture" for an on-line class. The idea is to provide a short paper that initiates the topic and then several thought provoking questions. This then initiates a week-long on-line interaction with the students. I am very hopeful about the possiblities. It adds a sense of collegiality to the DL methodology.
In a recent article for The Atlantic Monthly, Jonathan Rauch suggested that school vouchers made U.S. higher education the success that it is today, and that they may do the same for elementary and secondary schools. While the main theme of the Rauch article--entitled "Reversing White Flight" (The Atlantic Monthly, Oct 2002, pg. 32)--was to describe recent research that shows how vouchers may improve neighborhoods in poorer school districts, he included his take on two other arguments for vouchers. The first is moral*, the other speaks more to the issue at hand: "The second strongest argument for vouchers is that competition would improve the performance of public schools, just as it improves the performance of people and companies and, for that matter, public universities. American higher education has long been effectively voucherized, because students can take their government loans and grants to private colleges. Not coincidentally, America's public universities are the best in the world. Vouchers would jolt public schools at first, and some would flounder and fail, but competition advocates--myself included--expect that many others would shape up and flourish with a new vigor." I agree with Rich that public schools today are saddled with what might be an impossible task--teaching kids who are not educable in the current public system. Vouchers, necessity, and the private sector could merge to create nontraditional schools that could serve their needs as well. Ultimately, the quality of college preparation for these kids could be improved by a system similar to the one that has created many of the best colleges in the world. ________ *Rauch writes: "The strongest argument for school vouchers is moral. It is simply wrong for rich, predominantly white liberals to insist that poor, predominantly minority children attend dysfunctional and often dangerous schools that rich, predominantly white liberals would never allow their own children to set so much as one foot in. It is callous for rich, predominantly white liberals to continue to tell inner-city parents, year after year, 'Urban schools must be fixed! Meanwhile we're outta here. Good luck.' "
No Child Left Behind is an attempt to accomplish the goals mentioned above. Unfortunately, the end result may even widen the gap between the "haves and have nots".
