Bob Herbert in the Times, "Roughly a third of all American high school students drop out.
Another third graduate but are not prepared for the next stage of life
— either productive work or some form of post-secondary education.
When
two-thirds of all teenagers old enough to graduate from high school are
incapable of mastering college-level work, the nation is doing
something awfully wrong."
One of my students sent me a link to Edwards on Colbert. Alexandra Stanley has more on politicians making an ass of themselves on TV.
The best bidet commercial ever.
Apt. 11d 
I just read Herbert’s column and it raises a few questions for me.
1. Where are these students dropping out? Where are they graduating unprepared for the workforce? (I know about the dropout factories, but what about the second question?)
2. “Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, offered a brutal critique of the nation’s high schools a few years ago, describing them as “obsolete” and saying, “When I compare our high schools with what I see when I’m traveling abroad, I am terrified for our work force of tomorrow.”” But when Gates is criticizing high schools for not teaching kids what they need to know to work in the workforce of tomorrow, is he really talking about the things Herbert is horrified about, i.e., “In the Common Core survey, nearly 20 percent of respondents did not know who the U.S. fought in World War II. Eleven percent thought that Dwight Eisenhower was the president forced from office by the Watergate scandal. Another 11 percent thought it was Harry Truman.”
In other words, I still think no one agrees on what a “good” education is. Is Bill Gates really worried that people think Eisenhower or Truman was related to Watergate? I think not. I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere until we understand that the memorization of cultural trivia is not the same thing as preparing the workforce of tomorrow.
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Nobody knows what the “workforce of tomorrow” is going to need to know. (For all we know, the key to future employment is going to be the ability to say “do you want fries with that?” in Mandarin.) However, we do know what the citizen of tomorrow needs to know. She needs to understand her country’s history (which means lots of “cultural trivia”) and how it works today.
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Well I got on my soapbox over at Vindauga and talked about how they should have voted for Edwards and then came here to see your link. Well done! I am in public education and have strong beliefs about why we have so many drops outs and ner-do-wells in today’s schools. It is because we are raising children who have been taught that they are the center of the universe, that the world should care about them rather than vice versa, that they are ‘too young’ to accept real responsibilities, that they need to have time for fun, that homework impedes ‘family life’ and should be limited, that sports are more important than academics and that no one should be held accountable for their own actions. Just take the current mortgage crisis – banks loaned money to people who could not afford to pay it back, people bought houses that were too big, too expensive for their pocketbooks and now they want the government (you and me) to bail them out of their own financial decisions. Kids don’t study, don’t do their homework, plagarize term papers, and spend money they haven’t had to earn and then expect the teacher to 1. let them do a makeup test 2. let them do an extra credit assignment 3. mark on a curve 4. apologize for ‘picking on the child’ 5. give open book tests 6. accept plagarized work 7. ‘give them a break’. If all your life you have never had to accept the natural consequences of your actions why should you believe you need to graduate from school to earn a living. Shouldn’t your parents or the government support you in the lifestyle you prefer? I believe the word of today is ENTITLEMENT.
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carosgram — the problem is that the children you are describing do graduate, and end up doing well in the workplace. Law school is full of such kids. I agree that’s no way to raise a rounded successful human being, but I don’t think that is the problem regarding graduation.
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carosgram — the problem is that the children you are describing do graduate, and end up doing well in the workplace. Law school is full of such kids. I agree that’s no way to raise a rounded successful human being, but I don’t think that is the problem regarding graduation.
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Amy, I don’t really disagree with you to some degree, but I think that the problem with any of our discussions of reforming education is that we simply don’t have a consensus on what we want our kids to know. And Herbert’s column made that strikingly clear.
I think Carosgram has a bit of a point, though I don’t find all of her reply persuasive. I teach developmental grammar as one of my classes, and I have come to believe not that they haven’t learned what they need to know, but they just do not care about their writing (on the level of grammar, at least–but then we get into the issue of whether good grammar is the same as good writing, or whether someone can be a good writer while still making spelling and grammar errors). Writing is a skill, and what often happens is they meet the expectation, then they simply stop caring and let the skill atrophy from lack of use or attention.
As you can tell, I’m not into arguing about the parental rights issues. Give me education or Clinton vs. Obama any day. 🙂
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So, I go to see the bidet commercial (instead of the Herbert article) and I can’t help but notice that there seem to be several videos on bidets. So, I did a search and found that there are 703 bidet videos on YouTube. I don’t know why, but this fills me with a strong desire to stockpile canned goods and maybe buy a small farm with its own well and a wind-mill generator.
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Wendy,
Speaking of Bill Gates, haven’t a bunch of his expensively funded education initiatives had disappointing results?
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Amy, not a clue. *Googles* Hm, this is fascinating.
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I agree with E.D. Hirsch Jr.
when he writes this. There is still no definite, coherent academic curriculum in the early grades. That is the principal source of the low academic achievement of our high school students.
The educational establishment’s disparagement of content as “cultural trivia” is a huge factor in the failings of our high schools. I’m able to observe this with an n=1 in my teenage son. He has done amazingly well in his AP World History class, which mainly deals with analysis of history, including comparisons and patterns of past events. His strong background of historical facts and figures, gained mostly by his own independent reading and History Channel viewing I will add, serves as a critical foundation for his success. Another example that I read so much about is the struggle many students have with algebra because they never sufficiently practiced and mastered arithmetic skills, including fractions.
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Wendy
I am not finding the idea that ‘someone who has not mastered good spelling/grammar/punctuation could be a good writer’ a compelling statement.
A person lacking those skills could be very thoughtful. They could have great ideas. And be very smart. But if they do not possess the skills required to clearly and compellingly articulate the thoughts and ideas they hold in written form – then they are not ‘good writers’.
I have to admit that when I read your post, I wondered why the idea that some people don’t care about writing seemed to be acceptable or appropriate in your mind. Especially if the context of you teaching them/the people being your students.
Being able to complete a writing exercise at a certain point in time does not confer mastery in writing. Writing skills are not something that the average person loses, even if they are not writing all the time. In this, I would compare writing to riding a bicycle. Once you know how to do it – you never forget. But if you only learn to ride a bike with training wheels – you may well run into problems if presented with a bike without training wheels years later. And it seemed, implied within your response, that you and others are allowing your students the mistaken belief that they had mastery in writing and just chose not to keep it due to lack of interest.
It has been my experience that most students “lose interest” when they feel they have not and cannot master the material they are presented. The ringing refrain of “I’m bored” rarely means that the works is just too too easy for the intellect and skills of the person whinging. Rather, it usually is a great indication of a huge stumbling block to that person moving forward because they cannot do the work. That’s when they need more help, not the reassurance that great writing (or whatever skill we are talking about) is already theirs. It clearly isn’t, and pretending that it is perpetuates the entitlement that student may already feel (I can get by without really having to do what I was supposed to) along with the belief/knowledge that either the teacher is an idiot or a liar (the only explanations that would explain the teacher accepting the idea that the person in question has skills the person him/her self knows they don’t.
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chicagomama, your reply has grammar errors. Does that mean you are not a good writer?
I think you’re assuming I was trying to make an argument about writing skills and developing writers when in fact I was simply throwing around some ideas and questions trying to provoke thought and/or discussion. If you could reframe your response to address my reply that way, I’d be happy to engage. Instead you seem more interested in tut-tutting.
Do you teach writing?
Tex, you wrote: “The educational establishment’s disparagement of content as “cultural trivia””….
I’m not exactly the educational establishment. 🙂
I am *really* curious to know whether Bill Gates is talking about “trivia” or something else when he’s talking about high schools not preparing kids for the workforce.
Totally off the topic, did you know that the word “trivia” is derived from Latin roots meaning “where three roads meet”?
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“Tex, you wrote: “The educational establishment’s disparagement of content as “cultural trivia””….”
“I’m not exactly the educational establishment. :)”
Not exactly, but you were expressing an educational establishment meme that drives people like me or Tex nuts. I believe a popular way of expressing it is to say that in our rapidly changing world, kids don’t need to learn facts since facts are always changing and anyway, you can always look it up. (This is wrong on many different levels, but I’ll leave it for the moment.)
With regard to Bill Gates, I’d be amazed if he knows what he means.
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I turned up a 2006 story on a Philadelphia “School of the Future” created as a partnership with Microsoft. As described in the story, the school has no books, just laptops. There’s also a focus on “real life problems.”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6210622
I don’t know what Gates thinks he is paying for all his money, but it’s clear what he’s getting.
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Apparently, in Colorado Bill Gates learned that simply breaking up big schools into small schools did not cure all ills. From what I’ve read, I think his foundation has bought heavily into the constructivist teaching style. That would probably mean less content, and more “learning how to learn”.
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. . I think that the problem with any of our discussions of reforming education is that we simply don’t have a consensus on what we want our kids to know.
And no consensus on how we want them taught. More reasons to support school choice.
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Apparently, in Colorado Bill Gates learned that simply breaking up big schools into small schools did not cure all ills. From what I’ve read, I think his foundation has bought heavily into the constructivist teaching style. That would probably mean less content, and more “learning how to learn”.
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Gosh, it’s hard to believe that college students would have forgotten their writing skills unless as suggested the instruction in K-12 was superficial and not taught to mastery. On the other hand, superficial and inferior K-12 writing instruction is NOT hard to believe. I’m sure it’s common.
I confess I have no idea what a developmental grammar class is.
(Sorry for the double post.)
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There is actually a longitudinal study at Stanford about student writing. Here are some results suggesting that students sometimes regress as they adapt to the expectations of different genres of writing. Is digital writing one of those genres? Does it have different expectations?
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I feel like my writing has completely regressed since I started commenting on blogs. And, I’m only being slightly facetious.
It’s an interesting phenomenon, ’cause you’d think more writing would improve writing, but I don’t think it does. It’s kind of like “perfect practice makes perfect.”
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Here’s an uncomfortable thought: we all get a grade on our post grammar and spelling.
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Matthew Yglesias is a compelling writer and a poor speller. Drives my internal copyeditor nuts, but there ya go.
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maks senZ
2much txtN cn >U 4 en lit cls
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Doug,
Speaking of compelling writing, how did the article on Australian health care come out? 90% of what I know about Australia comes from Bill Bryson’s book and the closest he came to health care is several lengthy discussions of ways you can die in Australia that are largely unique to Australia.
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Speaking of Colbert, Bears.
Be careful out there.
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MH, Good enough to get approved by the client; not what I would call especially compelling, although the hook was decent: There’s a steady inland breeze in the Perth area that’s called the Fremantle Doctor, so I was able to set the scene with the relief the good Doctor brings and then segue into the nuts and bolts. Under the circumstance, 800 solid words with decent quotes. It was the last piece before the magazine went off to the printer, and now I am ready for the next issue.
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Speaking of bears,
(the last comment is hilarious. Apparently the Parnassus PD is setting up the poor bear to be shot. Sometimes the police department just can’t get a break anywhere, no?)
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