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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.
