Friday, February 24, 2012

Future Community College Students

Stumbled upon this clip on YouTube of students at a Washington State high school.  Watch it and weep.


This is representative of a fair number, although certainly not all, of the students I see at the community college where I teach.  And we have earnest discussions in various committees about what we can do to improve retention rates since so many of the poor darlings end up placing into remedial English and math courses and eventually flunking out of college.  The State and Federal government wonder what WE'RE doing wrong at the college level since so many students start college yet never complete degrees.

Colleges blame the high schools, high schools blame the middle schools, middle schools blame the elementary schools, and elementary schools blame the parents.  The bottom line is that academic standards need to begin in 1st grade and enforced throughout the student's public education.  Otherwise we get what we have now, young adults who never read books, can't write a coherent paragraph, can't calculate a 15% tip, and have absolutely no sense of history or western culture.

You reap what you sow (I bet these students don't know what that means or where the expression comes from).

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