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My remedial class in the college started with 28 students. We are down to 20. Out of he 20, six own books and seven hand in homework. Many come in late and leave early. Attendance is atrocious. They don't know multiplication tables and tell me they" don't do fractions or decimals." They certainly don't study. The last test I gave had grades ranging from 0 to 71 and 0 was not even an outlier. The majority of the grades were below 50. It is impossible to remediate in 4 months topics that should have been studied and learned in 12 years. It is impossible to get through to kids who see no reason to ever open a book.
The college is trying to help these kids through a special mentoring program. They are offered extra help and counselors. At a recent pizza lunch, the students were asked how many hours a week outside of class were spent on school work. The majority answered two to three hours. Homework interefered with jobs, televison, Facebook and friends. Most are taking 12 credits, some more. The "freak" of this group admitted to studying eight hours had close to a 4.0 index. The mentors tried to explain why studying worked. The students either didn't get it or didn't care. They survived elementary school, middle school and high school without doing any work and saw no reason to start now. Most will be gone as soon as their financial aid is used up.
This editorial in the Post is only a small start, but it is a start. If it is truly the goal of the government to keep our country strong, something has got to give. We did better as a nation when not everyone was pushed into college. Even drop outs did better than the kids we are turning out today. At least they knew they didn't get something for nothing.
3 comments:
This is not sad, but extremely depressing....
Too many times I tutor a student in math, only to discover the reason they have hit a roadblock in their current homework is because they have no idea what a fraction means, or why you can manipulate numbers in ways I know are taught in their previous classes. It is one of the most eye-opening and frustrating things to new, soon-to-be educators like myself. I very much liked the article and I enjoyed reading your commentary.
A couple of weeks ago, we had a wasted afternoon (I know this will be repetitive) of "professional" development. It was all of this crap about rigor and all of these catch words. I searched high and low for on all of the paper they wasted to give it to us for ONE word. Or a simile, but that word was no where to be found. That word was STANDARDS. It did not exist anywhere or in any form. Mayoral control is a big giant ponzi scheme. Perpetrated by his desire to break the union and aided by the his lap dogs on the editorial boards of the newspapers that are afraid he will raise their rates for his news services if they do not "follow the company" line.
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