Posted on 08/24/2009 8:43:18 AM PDT by bs9021
Core Curricula Deconstruct
by: Malcolm A. Kline, August 24, 2009
The rush to relevance begun by college administrators in the 1960s never stopped. “The low marks received by many institutions show students are graduating without math, science and other fundamentals and underscore the urgent need for parents, students, and policymakers to focus on what colleges expect of their students,” the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) declares.
ACTA has just published a study entitled, What will they learn? A report on General Education Requirements at 100 of the Nation’s Leading Colleges and Universities. “Out of 100 institutions we examined, 25 received an F for their core curricula, 17 got Ds, and 20 got Cs,” the survey shows. “Only 33 out of the 100 earned Bs and only 5 out of the entire group earned an A.”
The results get even more depressing when you realize that ACTA surveyed schools which have received the U. S. News & World Report seal of approval—the magazine’s top 20 in fact. Moreover, ACTA only looked at course catalogue titles not classroom content.
The group will, though, include graduation rates on the whatwilltheylearn.com website. It is in the classroom, as groups such as Accuracy in Academia and others have frequently discovered, that even traditional subjects become the cause du jour of experimenting professors.
ACTA itself has come to the same conclusion in some of its earlier, equally painstaking polls...
(Excerpt) Read more at campusreportonline.net ...
They’ve known since 1980 or earlier that our schools were in the toilet bowl as well as colleges and universities.
A NATION AT RISK
http://www.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/risk.html
The Childrens’ Story by James Clavell
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/llefler/clavell.htm
perfect candidates for mindless unquestioning obedience to the fuhrer/czar.
A dear friend, now deceased, was the Dean of Admissions at a large Florida community college. He said the majority of students spent at least two semesters doing remedial high school math and English courses. But they could say to all their friends and family: "I goin' to collie" (misspelling intentional to reflect their pronunciation of the word "college").
A Harvard-and-Yale-suck-big-time-and-have-no-valid-core-curriculum bump.
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