I read a post from a college-level writing teacher that stunned me. The entry was part of a piece entitled "'Before and after' – stories of life-changing events that shaped peoples' lives." He (or she) wrote as follows:
"[I]t might well
be this semester's papers turned in by students. I teach writing at the
university level, and the papers were SO awful and so many students SO
apathetic that I just can't even imagine doing this job anymore.
"I can point to one single paper that broke me. I
actually had a real breakdown and spent last week in a crisis
stabilization unit. It is TERRIFYING to watch education ebb like this,
and to see students not participating in their own lives. I do not
expect people to love writing, but at least be *present* in your own
head! The entire system is dumbing down, which means that the American
people are dumbing down too."
Okay, having to enter a crisis stabilization unit over poor writing seems a bit extreme; but still, I have to ask: Is it really this bad? Obviously we're aware the quality of public education has been declining for years – it's why we homeschooled our girls, after all – but is it to the point where college students are essentially illiterate? What are educators doing through decades of education to produce such "terrifying" results? I'm not in the trenches, so I don't see it.
Is the English language so reviled that no one teaches its usage anymore? Those with teaching experience, please chime in. Is it really this bad? And if so, why?
If a teacher had to spend time in a crisis stabilization unit over a bad paper, he or she is part of the problem!
ReplyDeleteYeah, they're too busy worrying about their feelings and not teaching properly.
DeleteOur daughter taught Freshman English for three years while getting her Master's Degree. YES! Education is that bad. She was aghast at the poor writing skills of the freshmen, and their lack of basic knowledge of grammar, punctuation, capitalization, sentence structure, paragraphs, etc. They often couldn't form thesis sentences or write anything but "feelings" about a subject. Then there were the excuses for lateness, and expectation of second (and third, and fourth) chances. And the expectation of high grades no matter what. She was so tired at the end of the three years! When one of our sons was in 6th grade (economic reasons forced us to put our youngest into public schools) his teacher didn't teach spelling, explaining that everyone used spell checkers so no one needed to know how to spell. Which is why people have such trouble with homonyms, and don't even know what that word means! English isn't reviled so much as it is just not taught, for many reasons.
ReplyDeleteYes, it is! One of my children competes in the Academic Decathlon. Their team has been state champions for several years and places at the national competition. They are very bright kids who can give speeches, ace interviews, and compete academically on a national level. I help judge their essays (locally) and... they are (mostly) horrible! They just can't whip out a standard 5-paragraph essay. They don't know how to properly use punctuation, and there are plenty of sentence fragments or run-on sentences. They don't know the difference in their/there/they're, effect/affect, etc.
ReplyDeleteOne of my kids had a 9th grade English teacher that spent the first 10 minutes of each class on grammar, until the (new) principal informed that teacher that grammar was not a high school subject (ie, the kids were supposed to have mastered it in younger grades). The English teacher was covering grammar because those kids hadn't "got it" and they needed the practice! Said teacher quit the next year because she said the administration wanted to dumb everything down more and more across the board and she couldn't take it.
I homeschooled my kids when they were younger. We read a lot of books, and they became great readers. Their grammar and spelling are much stronger than their peers'. I think that reading (and being read to!) is a key to literacy and now kids are glued to screens for entertainment.
I just listened to a Jordan Peterson podcast on "identity" (highly recommend BTW!) .. one of his anecdotes was regarding grading (dismal) college essays. He said when students were asked why they should want to write a paper, the best he could get out of some of them was "to get a good grade" ... but to think beyond that (to learn something, to develop an idea, to pass the class in order to obtain a degree which would then allow for a career, etc) was beyond most of them. He argues that critical thinking is lost on an entire generation.
ReplyDeleteBy design:
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_march_through_the_institutions
I am very interested in this topic. I have a 3 year old niece with some emerging special needs, the extent of which is yet to be determined. She has spent 2 months in public schools in special ed preschool and they are meeting her needs so well. My niece is being raised by my 68-year-old mother, who surely will not homeschool. When will this terrible shift occur that the media is hyping, where my niece stops learning? (It won’t, if I have anything to say about it…)
ReplyDeleteIt will appear in elementary school, as teachers are forced into the role of "classroom management" in place of teaching.No one is reading to their kids at home - they just get parked in front of a screen. So, as their schoolwork becomes more challenging, they are more inclined to act out (especially boys, it seems). Behavior problems will rear their heads in the kids that are not being disciplined/taught how to behave at home. Increasing numbers of parents view this as "the school's problem" as the kids are in school as much or more than they are with parents. Especially when you take into account the before and after-school programs (government babysitting). My advice after raising 4 kids - READ, READ, READ, help them develop a love of books, and delay exposure to electronics/screens as LONG as humanly possible!! (I have one older teen who developed a severe "screen addiction" as soon as she got a phone, which we allowed when she got a driver's license. She spends all her spare time scrolling her phone and sees no problem with it. Worst mistake EVER.)
DeleteAnonymous, NOW WHY IN THE WORLD IS A 3 YER OLD IN PUBLIC SCHOOL for 2 months what grade is a 3 year old in??, try a different lie
DeleteShe said the niece was in PRESCHOOL.
Delete- Patrice
Original poster stated that her niece had special needs. During the preschool years, the state offers (state-funded) therapy (speech therapy, occupational therapy, etc) through the public school system, so I suspect that is why the 3 year old is "in public school".
DeleteRead to your niece, invest yourselves in figuring out what works well for her particular special needs (without a lot of fuss), avoid the twin traps of low expectations and expecting her to be made “normal,” and don’t teach her resentment, self-hate, entitlement, or defeatism at home, and it may NOT.
DeleteWow, someone doesn't know much about schools or special needs children. Since I have a 10 year old with special needs I do know how the system works. Any child from birth to age 3 that has special needs qualifies for government funded early intervention programs which consist of PT, OT, ST, and other behavioral programs. Although in most places they don't have enough therapists and so you pretty much get no help with that program, and unfortunately a child cannot get approved for actual therapy in that age range, unless you can prove that they are not receiving the proper therapy from the early intervention program. It's a nightmare really to deal with. At age 3 if a child is still deemed special needs they qualify for a special needs preschool, either at a local public school or at a head start location. Although in my area of Idaho, refugees and ESL children get first shot at the schools, so very few actual special needs kids can get into the preschool. My daughter qualified but was denied entry at the area head start and several public schools because all the slots were filled with ESL kids. But once a child hits actual school age they either attend a special needs classroom at a public school, which in many cases are a complete joke, it's basically free daycare, or they attend regular classes with a para. Just depends on how bad the special needs are. I'd never send my child to a special needs classroom, we do home school, and we've made way more progress than doctors or therapists said was possible. Let kids be kids and make learning fun. Basic playing with simple toys can be made educational, especially with younger kids. Don't force too much on them, it can just make things worse. The child will learn as they go along at their own pace, let them lead the way, some kids favor different learning styles. If motor skills are an issue; play-doh, blocks, animal/dinosaur figures, duplo bricks, etc. can all be very helpful tools.
DeleteCollege students really are this bad. They can't write because they've not seen good examples of writing. They've not seen good examples of writing because they haven't been encouraged to read anything not from social media. I'm a college academic advisor and they only get marginally better over the four years (or five, or six) before they get their degree. Most of them can't write so much as a paragraph without a spelling, grammar, or punctuation error.
ReplyDeleteJohn Wilder had some comments:
ReplyDeletehttps://wilderwealthywise.com/is-the-bottom-20-killing-america/
Very good points!
DeleteI can only say, I spent a year helping my grade school aged grand children after school and the reading/spelling level wasn't even at the kindergarten level. Our 5th grader couldn't read a letter written in cursive. We spend many hours reading, practicing spelling words, and reviewing punctuation. I heard many excuses from them stating that they didn't have to do it in school or at home, so why should they have to learn it at my house. One of greatest pet peeves is listening to people reading a book that do not know how to pause and read one big run on sentence. Needless to say when the kids stopped coming to my house the amount of learning they are getting has dropped significantly. Unfortunately parents aren't much help.
ReplyDeleteI think the root of the problem is parental. Parents take the side of the child over teachers/principals. Classroom discipline deteriorates and grade inflation also follows. Parents elect school boards more interested in national cultural issues than academic achievement. Some parents take control back with homeschooling, but that means the forces to drive improvements is weakened. I'm not sure what the answer is beyond more parents have to care before things get better.
ReplyDeleteEverything is video anymore. Students can't learn how to write by watching videos of everything. Free time used to mean reading good books which expanded your vocabulary, ability to spell, stimulated thinking, and allowed the reader to see the printed word used properly and effectively. Society needs to value proper language and writing before students will be convinced it's worth learning. Do student's have favorite authors or just favorite influencers? It's complicated.
ReplyDeleteWhen I got my MA in Education, I was an older student. I got a job as a GED teacher in a prison. As I taught estimating, one mean student told me he saw no reason to learn to estimate, that it would not help him at all. He was very discouraged I was wasting his time. I told him if he had $100 in his pockets and saw shirts for $21, he could estimate how many he could buy. He was cocky for the class and told me he never had to worry about money or how much he could buy because he always had lots of money in his pockets. I guessed why he was in prison.
ReplyDeleteLater, maybe the next day, he was very happy to tell me how estimating could help him. He said if he bought a bunch of drugs (all in drug dealer terms) and wanted to divide them up to sell (some other druggie terms), he could estimate how much money he could make. All it took was for him to see how education could benefit him. I am a great cheerleader. lol.
Several classes later, I was teaching him to add fractions with unlike denominators. We were at one side of a small room and other students were listening as they worked or not. Finally, we got to the answer--5/2--five halves. He objected, saying there were only 4 halves, there could not be five halves.
I picked up the box of pencils we provided. I broke one, two, three, four, and then five pencils in half. I counted out five of the broken pieces of pencils, five halves and triumphantly counted them out to him.
He had the biggest grin on his face, looked at all the other watching students and proclaimed, "Now, that's teaching."
Yes, it took effort on my part, but we had the human touch, not a video or workbook!
I could go on, but I won't.
I love GED and any sort of tutoring or remediation!
I have always been privileged to attend, and to send my kids to, public schools in reasonably conservative, working-class communities. I was certainly taught all those skills in my English classes; they were there for the taking for anyone who wanted to learn. I’m both pleased and deeply saddened to see, as my kids go through school, that they are still taught, but a lot fewer young people (one of my four sadly included) want to learn. Too many distractions?? Too few consequences, or too much insulation from them (God knows if I turned in stupid work I could expect to be shamed, and if I brought home a grade lower than a B, Grandma was there to tell me I could look forward to nothing in life)?? Too much concern for making sure Tommy and Suzy always feel good about themselves?? I don’t know, but it’s more than the quality of public education.
ReplyDeleteAll else I can say is…
DeleteMy kids spent years begging me to homeschool them. I guess they thought it would be easier??
Well covid happened. We spent two years in cyber school. They were NOT happy with my standards— I expected a five-paragraph essay out of a fifth-grader, and an organized paragraph out of a second-grader. I was happy enough with the curriculum provided— I can now vouch that civics ARE still taught in public school— but I asked a lot of WHY questions.
They said I made it too hard, and after two years they were THRILLED to go back to the classroom.
When you vote in a self proclaimed fascist dictator, this is what you get. what could possibly go wrong?
ReplyDeleteMy wife teaches math at an Idaho university. The quality of student preparation, class attitude, and stance of university administration has caused her to choose to retire early (quit!) rather than continue. Lots of tales that don't add any more to the discussion ... although I'll state that in my profession in a hard science, companies are less willing to hire new graduates.
ReplyDeleteI think the educational mess public schools have thrust our country into may soon undergo some editing.
ReplyDeleteOur local news just broadcast information on coming school choice, and how money will be available for people to send their children to private schools, and some money available even for homeschooling. Then of course they started moaning about how this funding for other options could be detrimental to our current ( public) school system. Well, I certainly hope so! The public school system has become too political and entitled. People paying school taxes who have children are financially handicapped into having fewer children in order to care for the few they do have, if they want their children to learn properly and in an environment conducive to learning.
DOE doesn't need to go. It's a rats nest that needs cleaning out. New people, new rules and regulations, and less money will do that department a world of good.
Ten to fifteen years ago my husband taught Public Relations at the local campus of our state university. Upperclassmen in a PR program might reasonably be expected to write at a college level, but the papers he shared with me might have been written at an early high school level. I myself taught at the workforce level, and a fair amount of my career was spent teaching business writing (letters, emails, etc.). Our employees did not have the most basic skills. These are only anecdotal, but ther are our experiences from the trenches.
ReplyDeleteI am a retired college instructor and, yes, unfortunately, things ARE this bad. The students coming up from our local high schools had appalling writing skills. One of the local districts refused to allow teachers to fail anyone. Even if a student didn’t do a thing in class, he/she would be given a “D” grade. This started many – many years ago – not just lately. Teacher education classes are filled with the “newest” ways to teach which is not teaching at all. They are not taught to use phonics to help a student learn to read, and math in the “new” way is ridiculous. When my oldest son was in school (he’s 53 now) his English teacher refused to correct any grammar or spelling errors. She has a stamp created after I complained about it that read, “Graded for content and not for mechanics.” When his son was in school, the teachers did not correct any spelling or grammar errors and said they didn’t want to hurt his feelings. One of the main reasons I retired was that I just couldn't take the whining and outbursts of anger when students didn’t get the grade they thought they should have. The straw that broke the camel’s back was a student who received a failing grade because she had not completed all of the assignments even though it was clearly stated in my syllabus that ALL of the assignments had to be completed. She complained to my department chair that, “I chose very carefully the assignments I wasn’t going to do.” You can’t make this stuff up!
ReplyDelete