Is there a difference in NYC?
I think the moral of this story is closer to: Stop pretending that NY public high schools actually teach anything.
Only a foolish liberal would be surprised by this result.
Is there a difference in NYC?
Not everyone is capable of college level study, and that is why the college degree USED TO be worth more in the economy, because of the relative scarcity.
And, yes, the schools are not preparing students to be thinkers or learners, but to be cogs in the socialist system.
I’m reading “A Well-Trained Mind”, and the main point of it is that kids need to be trained in “the trivium” of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. A student that is classically trained will be able to learn and discern.
Discernment is the enemy of socialism, so this is intentionally NOT taught.
Must disagree with you a bit.
“Smart” implies intellectual capability - I don’t think the article was condemning these students as being incapable of mastering the material presented at the collegel level. The High Schools are lowering the bar, such that the dumbest (most intellectually challenged) can graduate with a minimum of effort. This handicaps everyone, because those who are intellectually gifted never get to ‘push themselves’ to see what they truly can accomplish.
As a result, because everyone in High School must trudge along at the rate of the lowest denominator; when they get to the college level - they are woefully behind what the average college student is expected to know.
I experienced this first hand; my High School’s qualifications for our Math Department was a strong background in Physical Education (pronounced “Football”). Our Math teacher did not comprehend basic Algebra - we would spend many sessions of school each week going back and correcting lessons in which he had been babbling about a lesson he did not understand. So, despite getting an ‘A’ in Algebra in the late 70’s; I had to take remedial math in college (Pre-Calculus). And that was many years ago. I’m sure it’s even worse now
First we should stop pretending that public schools are primarily for education rather than what they are: a lavish support system for unionized public employees. Then we’ll need to stop pretending that the cirriculum is designed to prepare children for the real world rather than what it does: advances children regardless of achievement in order to protect the public employee system, while imparting just enough ‘instruction’ to inculcate the kids into unthinking secular progressivism.
I graduated from a rural high school back in 1983. When I finally started college about 10 years later, I, too, had to take remedial math. Quite a bit of it. I’m terrible at math and barely squeaked by. Time to quit pretending that college is just the next level. College is harder than high school; it’s supposed to be. Unless you are really quite bright, it’s going to be a struggle. The only reason I got through is because I am naturally good at reading and writing. But math just kills me.
>>“Passing the Regents don’t mean nothing,” Ms. Thomas said.<<
Perfect example of a) not teaching and b) not learning. This country was better off without mandatory education. Thomas Edison never finished high school. Neither did George Washington, Luther Burbank, Robert Fulto nor Booker T. Washington.
This problem has existed for decades.
With the advent of junior/community colleges in the 70s and 80s, many secondary schools pushed their students through because they knew the junior/community college would be the interim step to the senior college/university.
In the 60s, nearly 1/3 of freshmen entering state universities were ‘tested’ into remedial classes. The junior/community colleges took much of that burder off the universities in the later decades.
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When testing is the predominate factor, teachers teach to the tests.
Or even Trade School. Nikita needs to make another run at learning how to use the English Language correctly as well.
Not everyone is college material and there have to become consequences for failing to learn and perform.
You want to succeed in life? Work for it. If you don’t work for it and don’t succeed in something there have to be consequences, it is a choice. These people need to find something that can make them a living. Fear of failure and the consequences of failure have been a great motivator in life for me.
You want to have masses of babies, feed them, there have to be consequences. How do you deal with the moral issue of the babies who didn’t choose to be born? How do you make real consequences for the cretins who choose to become baby factories? How is this problem solved without starving children who did not do anything wrong? How do we protect the rights of those who do right? Why has it ever been right for the innocent to bear the burden of the guilty?
I recall a story a few yrs back about a school in NYC. One of the test questions was "What's 2+2?" And, some students wrote 3. The test came back from the teacher and said "No, it's 4...but if you feeeeeel good about your answer, it's correct.
Lovely.
Amen!
Actually, the fantasy that everyone has equal potential--or anything remotely similar--is denying children the opportunity to develop any talents they actually have. It is a vicious form of the evil of the egalitarian/collectivist compulsion.
In 1961, a much older friend, who was on an upstate New York urban school board, visited me in Cincinnati, and pointed out that even by that time, those scoring in the upper ten percent on the New York Regents tests, were only at the median level in 1900--and that was relatively early in the educational decline produced by the Welfare State mindset. In other words, the average student in 1900 would have scored in the upper ten percent by 1960.
Anyone who seeks to pretend that the world of make-believe--as in "No Child Left Behind"--is not damaging America, is unable to offer anything of much value on this.
See Trust In Government Or Education? Those We Dare Not Trust.
William Flax
Could it be that the schools want you to start at the very bottom? That way you need more classes from them to graduate...
Just another classic case of “getting what you’re measuring.” If you measure graduation rates, the system will give you increasing graduation rates. If you measure grade point averages, the system will give you rising grade point averages. If you measure the percentage of kids passing math, the system will give you more a rising percentage, etc.
Until we put the public school dollars directly into the hands of parents, in the form of a voucher that can be cashed by any educator, anywhere, we will continue this insane cycle of getting what we measure, but failing to educate our children to anywhere near their learning potential.
A simple test colleges could do to see if prospective students should be allowed inside their venerable institutions is to ask the prospective student if they’ve ever read a book from cover to cover. Then they’d have to name the book and give a short synopsis. Then give them a simple math test of addition and subtraction that any sixth grader could do. I’ll bet a large percentage of prospective college students would fail that simple test.
Pass them and forget them. Someone else’s problem.
Apparently not!
