Saturday, September 27, 2008

Not worth the paper its written on..........

I write about a wide subject matter base on this blog (science, philosophy, politics, sports etc) but I am of the impression now that Worldoreason needs a new focus. While I will continue posting on the areas mentioned above - I have made the decision to include more items dealing with my chosen vocation: teaching. One issue that pains me in particular, as an educator, is the dumbing down of the curriculum - I posted a commentary in this regards on my sister blog worldohistory earlier this month. The article postede below is taken from USA today. It is disturbing to read but does an important question: To what extent have we sacrificed meaningful education for the paper product of a high school diploma and university entrance?

Colleges spend billions on remedial classes to prep freshmen

It's a tough lesson for millions of students just now arriving on campus: even if you have a high school diploma, you may not be ready for college.
In fact, a new study calculates, one-third of American college students have to enroll in remedial classes. The bill to colleges and taxpayers for trying to bring them up to speed on material they were supposed to learn in high school comes to between $2.3 billion and $2.9 billion annually.
"That is a very large cost, but there is an additional cost and that's the cost to the students," said former Colorado governor Roy Romer, chair of the group Strong American Schools, which is issuing the report "Diploma to Nowhere" on Monday. "These students come out of high school really misled. They think they're prepared. They got a 3.0 and got through the curriculum they needed to get admitted, but they find what they learned wasn't adequate."
Christina Jeronimo was an "A" student in high school English, but was placed in a remedial course when she arrived at Long Beach City College in California. The course was valuable in some ways but frustrating and time-consuming. Now in her third year of community college, she'd hoped to transfer to UCLA by now.
Like many college students, she wishes she'd been worked a little harder in high school.
"There's a gap," said Jeronimo, who hopes to study psychology. "The demands of the high school teachers aren't as great as the demands for college. Sometimes they just baby us."
The problem of colleges devoting huge amounts of time and money to remediation isn't new, though its scale and cost has been difficult to measure. The latest report gives somewhat larger estimates than some previous studies, though it is not out of line with trends suggested in others, said Hunter Boylan, an expert at Appalachian State University in North Carolina, who was not connected with the report.
Analyzing federal data, the report estimates 43% of community college students require remediation, as do 29% of students at public four-year universities, with higher numbers in some places. For instance, four in five Oklahoma community college students need remedial coursework, and three in five in the giant California State university system need help in English, math or both.
The cost per student runs to as much as $2,000 per student in community colleges and $2,500 in four-year universities.
Jeronimo was hardly alone at Long Beach City College, where 95% of students need remedial coursework, according to President Eloy Oakley.
"It's the number one issue to Long Beach City College and the entire California community college system, easily," Oakley said. "I don't believe that the public in general really understands the magnitude of the problem."
Simply dumping the remedial students into large classes isn't necessarily expensive for colleges, although it's also not very effective. But smaller classes typically require more attention and money. Some states have refused to fund remedial courses at the university level. In California, Oakley said, state funding for community colleges favors credit courses. Remediation (or "basic skills" as he and many educators call it) is typically noncredit.
Educators are working to improve remedial courses. Long Beach is developing "success areas" that give extra time and attention to students. Community colleges in Tennessee have completely redesigned giant introductory and remedial courses where many students were struggling.
Boylan says colleges are learning such courses must also teach study skills to be effective.
Indeed, students often report that the hardest aspect of the transition to college isn't the material. It's the new rhythm and structure of college-level work.
"One of the things that they don't teach in high school is time management," Jeronimo said.
Eric Paris, who earned a 3.8 high school GPA but is finding his freshman year at Virginia Tech much more challenging, says the big difference is "it's all on my own." In class, "it's up to me if I want to sit on Facebook or pay attention." He, too, wishes he'd taken more challenging high school classes but thought a high GPA was more important.

For the rest go to the Source:

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I got out of teaching after 17 1/2 years because I could no longer abide the "dumbing down" of the curriculum. The damage that this is doing to every kid's future, all in the name of promoting "self esteem" in the present, is incalculable. I would not recommend that ANYONE go into teaching, it is truly a profession with no future; as long as education is controlled by the state I see no hope of improvement.

I witnessed too many bright, talented and eager kids drowned in the swamp of mediocrity, and nothing I could do (or, more accurately, was ALLOWED to do) could save them. I have seen way too many kids who could have been set on the right path if only they would have been told the truth- but telling the truth to a child (or a parent) was the quickest path to unemployment available. I couldn't save anyone else, so I had to save myself.

NexusofThought said...

Thanks for the comment.

This is my sixth year as a teacher. I moved into the profession having working seven years in an engineering related capacity (telecommunications). While I love teaching Physics/Chemistry and challenging my students, I am as you are disturbed by the dumbing down of the curriculum. For example in the senior level physics course here in Ontario it now appears that all aspects of Modern Physics are to be purged from the course. According to the thought police at the Ministry of Education ..physics ends with James Clerk Maxwell. Quantum Mechanics and Relativity are too difficult for students to grasp even in the simplified form that it is currently offered. In Calculus.... and I still can't believe this.... students at the High School Level are not expected to know anything about Integration while Euclidean Geometry (the cornerstone of Deductive Reasoning) has been reduced to a mear smattering. What has been added is more class time working with such 'crutches' as graphing calculators and manipulatives (all the rage now as apparently students struggle to visulalize without props) Its not that I am opposed to technology or new pedagogical aids (I am an engineer after all) but such an introduction should not come at the expense of the basics.

I agree in that what we have here is a paradigm shift that has made mediocrity the benchmark of education. I have foreign students from China and Eastern Europe who were taught what is currently on the Grade 11 curriculum here as early as Grade 8. Are these students any smarter? Perhaps...but I also believe that the education system has fostered a mentality of perceived helplessness. This has drastically worsened the situation.