Posted on 02/21/2014 5:24:09 PM PST by Zeneta
Why Can’t College Students Write Anymore?
Is it just me, or are student competencies like basic writing skills in serious peril today? Granted, I am about a decade in to my teaching career, but even within this fairly short span, I have noticed a startling decline in the quality of written work turned in by my students, regardless of which institution (community college, private, four year school) the papers are coming from.
It’s not just that students aren’t demonstrating critical thinking skills in their writing, basic competencies like proper syntax, spelling, and even proper structure like paragraph indentation and how to cite sources are being done very poorly. Teachers have been reporting anecdotally that even compared to five years ago, many are seeing declines in vocabulary, grammar, writing, and analysis (e.g. Westin, 2013; Bloomberg News, 2012). Moreover, on an international scale, our standards in literacy is similarly on the decline (McGuire, 2014).
There are only so many times you can correct a “their” that is meant to denote “there” before wondering, when was the last time this college student’s writing abilities were actually assessed? As a psychology professor, I am starting to feel like an English instructor, because so much of my feedback on these papers is focusing on such basic writing skills, that the coherency or theoretical merit behind the content is getting lost in the shuffle.
Snip
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-first-impression/201402/why-can-t-college-students-write-anymore
(Excerpt) Read more at psychologytoday.com ...
When I was an assistant at Fordham in 1977, the students were unable to write, or think. The professor I assisted had taken to handing out the answers to his ESSAY questions. That’s right. He wrote essays and gave them out. The students were graded on whether they were able to regurgitate something resembling an essay. Most of them weren’t.
And yet, during the almost 40 years since then, I’ve been reading articles that decry the precipitous decline in student literacy since “five years ago.”
The government schools have been succeeding for over 100 years in turning out illiterates. And they have been getting more and more and more successful all the time.
The “low-information voter” is PRECISELY what Horace Mann, Andrew Carnegie, John Dewey, J.D. Rockefeller, et al., WANTED to produce by imposing government schooling on America.
And let’s not forget that Holder is currently pressuring schools to not hold minority students to equal behavior standards. Because, of course, doing so is RAAAAACIST.
“Come Original”
You got to
You got to
You got to come original you got to come original
all entertainers come original
you got to come original you got to come original
all entertainers
hear why
To come original it ain’t nothin’ strange
you got to represent you got come full range an’
full range of emotion full range of styles
when you come to town you’ll have them comin’ for miles and
Come original you got to come original
all entertainers come original
you got to come original you got to come original
all entertainers
hear why
Black Eyed Peas they comin’ full range and
NOFX they comin’ full range and
Roni Size he comin’ full range
the one Mr. Vegas you know it ain’t easy
A warning to the crews out there who think they’re hot
if you’re not original rockers you will get shot
down by the kids neglectin’ your art, the stuff you did
eventually it get so bad puts you to bed
cause when the lightning flashes sweet electricity
all the world then stands revealed with the clarity
of raw voltage, briefly we see and the hope is
you’ll be able to tell just what dope is
Come original you got to come original
all entertainers come original
you got to come original you got to come original
all entertainers
hear why
Funk slap bass mixed with the dancehall and
hip-hop beats and punk guitar and
deadly on the mic is the one SA
the name is 311 and you know it ain’t easy, ha
(Come on, come on)
This is not a test there’s no time to mope
how you gonna cope with radioactive isotope
and boss DJ illness upon you now quickly
infecting you fast upon the airwaves
this message brought to you by the so large system
activate and attune yourself with meditation
and green plants they’ve got mad life they’re sentient
they’re beautiful as you and they like to dance
(1, 2, 3, 4)
Everything we do we gotta come original
put your hands up in the air and prepare for battle
sit upon the rhythm like a tire upon a rim
we do it non-stop and then we do it again
some a them whine and some a them bitch
they can not do it never switch
comin’ up from the heart and
delivered with a wild pitch
sit up on top the rhythm like a wild stallion
this is the ruling system
Come original you got to come original
all entertainers come original
you got to come original you got to come original
all entertainers come original
you got to come original you got to come original
all entertainers come original
you got to come original you got to come original
all entertainers
Come original
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWo-02Hsab4
The financial inducement is there because the high school degree has become dumbed down to near-worthlessness. The college degree is the new high school degree.
And because of EEOC lawsuits, business effectively cannot use their own testing as a barrier to entry. So, they/we are stuck with using the college degree, and thus the financial inducement.
>> map-reading lessons
There is a skill about to be almost completely lost due to the ubiquitous GPS. And I’ve seen anecdotal indications that even the military isn’t necessarily doing that great of a job teaching it these days.
Retweeted by David Webb
GOOD NEWS for liberals: Jellyfish have survived for 650 million years without brains.
I usually start with the statement: The top of the map is ALWAYS North.
That is a lesson my darlin' wife has yet to grasp, but all three granddaughters have it down pat.
The GPS has probably become a necessary option on a car -- because I don't think they teach geography anymore. I wonder if they even use maps as teaching aids.
Many of the maps published in newspapers or broadcast on TV are totally botched.
Wow. They are spectacularly awful.
Kids have to be given good writing to read, not just any old thing. At the first publishing job I had, we used to call books that were competently written with no artistry “linoleum”: they did the job but had no beauty.
Many books that are best-sellers today are linoleum. They are plot-driven, and they keep those pages turning, but there is nothing to marvel at in the prose.
I have to have both when I’m reading for pleasure: Elmore Leonard, John le Carre, the two Amises, others I can’t think of now. In nonfiction, James O’Keefe, Pat Buchanan, the Game Change and Double Down books, Ann Coulter.
The English have an unfair advantage, it being their language. Their education in reading and writing is better, but also the English are clever in the way they speak. They don’t just blurt out any old thing but value wit and good phrasing and succinctness in their daily talk with others. Totally unfair.
Several years before the late Allan Bloom published The Closing of the American Mind, he wrote an eye-opening article for National Review documenting and warning about what has come to be known as political correctness at colleges and universities. That was years before the scourge of political correctness completely overran not only our institutions of higher learning but every aspect of our society: government, the workplace, the courts, the media, the military, churches, etc. I would like to find an reread that article someday.
My children are 21 and 24. My son graduated from college two years ago; my daughter will graduate in May. Although I did not home-school, I taught them how to write. I made sure that they could create a well-written essay. Attending college here in Liberal Hell (a.k.a. Massachusetts), both of them were often at odds with their professors. My daughter had to write a paper extolling the virtues of single-payer health care. Needless to say, she took the opposite approach. The comments noted on her paper included “this is the best written essay I have read in years although I disagree with almost all your positions”. My son’s feminist English professor had similar comments when he was asked to write about something in his life that profoundly affected him. He wrote about his experiences becoming an Eagle Scout. (Her comments included that the Boy Scouts was a terrible organization and other such drivel. She thought he wrote well about a “bad influence”. But, that is a topic for another day.)
Although I did not exclusively home-school, I supplemented my children’s education. I guess one could call that “semi-home-schooling”.
(Note: I have not had coffee yet. Please ignore any grammar errors. :)
Public schools, unions.
And in addition, 100% of the remainder of student loans are forgiven after 10 years (120 consecutive payments) of gov. or secular non-profit service. Thus fostering liberals predominating in these areas.
LOL!! Good one.
Liberalism is truly a mental illness. That woman is profoundly sick.
“Liberalism is truly a mental illness. That woman is profoundly sick.”
She is an English professor. He was a microbiology major and never had to take another class with her.
Asked a woman in her late 30s if her 10-year-old son was in Boy Scouts. Cutting a glance in his direction, she replied, sotto voce,:”No. They have a bad reputation.”
This is a ubiquitous opinion among young parents, from what I have been able to observe.
I taught college courses in writing and worked in a writing clinic in the late 90s and early 2000s.
They can’t write because they aren’t taught the basics of grammar before they get to college.
Some fully tenured professors simply overlook the writing component in their grading of papers because so many would fail-—and their own grading by the students wouldnt be very good if that happened. And then there are those who believe that writing in Ebonics is a legitimate language skill.
Writing is a skill which will get worse as illiterate students are graduated with degrees in education as “teachers”
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