Posted on 01/08/2014 6:41:06 AM PST by RightGeek
(CNN) -- Early in her career as a learning specialist, Mary Willingham was in her office when a basketball player at the University of North Carolina walked in looking for help with his classwork.
He couldn't read or write.
"And I kind of panicked. What do you do with that?" she said, recalling the meeting.
Willingham's job was to help athletes who weren't quite ready academically for the work required at UNC at Chapel Hill, one of the country's top public universities.
But she was shocked that one couldn't read. And then she found he was not an anomaly.
Soon, she'd meet a student-athlete who couldn't read multisyllabic words. She had to teach him to sound out Wis-con-sin, as kids do in elementary school.
And then another came with this request: "If I could teach him to read well enough so he could read about himself in the news, because that was something really important to him," Willingham said.
Student-athletes who can't read well, but play in the money-making collegiate sports of football and basketball, are not a new phenomenon, and they certainly aren't found only at UNC-Chapel Hill.
A CNN investigation found public universities across the country where many students in the basketball and football programs could read only up to an eighth-grade level. The data obtained through open records requests also showed a staggering achievement gap between college athletes and their peers at the same institution.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
As for Caltech, in 1945 there were approximately 700 undergraduates. In the mid-80's, it had roughly 880. Today, it has roughly 980. Not a big increase in enrollment compared to the number of students of college age at those times.
I could assert, but not prove, that these schools are actually more selective, since the number of student in college has dramatically increased, but not the number of students at these schools.
Wow! You really must have no life. I got the 5% off a graph from google image search — didn’t know I was up against an anally retentive wacko.
By the vigor of your responses, and the effort you’ve applied to researching them, I must really be hitting a nerve! I don’t think you are elite, and it really bungs up your mind.
Enjoy your mediocrity.
Excellent post-- and the reason why so many corporation, etc. have their own reading and writing tests as a condition for employment. They cannot count on transcripts or test scores any longer. I had to take a basic reading and writing test to become a beginning teacher in the district I work for. Also, coaches and PE teachers, those who majored in PE, are required to take classes such as physiology and anatomy to satisfy their major. I'm married to a high school coach and he tells me it irritates him to no end when PE majors or coaches are assumed to be idiots who took the easy route in college. College athletes who are lacking in basic skills usually major in communications or ethnic studies, not in PE.
Are we sure they aren’t talking about CNN workers?
I remember an athlete who said the only book he opened in college Obama’s biography
I am waiting for CNN to announce the results of the scientific study that details why the moon comes out at night.
I had no beef with you when this started. I merely responded to what you said. I wasn't trying to be confrontational, but just pointing out there are some good institutions that have not watered down their programs. I don't see why that is an issue to you.
BTW, the research took all of 15 minutes, if that. Besides, if I were mediocre, I would just look up a simple graph to support my point, instead of doing the research.
If you want to discuss the facts, let's talk facts. If you want to play internet tough guy, I'm out.
What’s disgraceful is that we’ve let the Education Bureaucracy drop a system that worked, phonics, use whole language (or what ever they call it), and fail generations of kids. And many, far beyond these players. At least they are getting a remedial education. What about all the ones that aren’t basketball stars? They could have been taught to read by age 8, too.
Like I said in my previous, I’m glad they got a shot at remedial education. The real issue is our broken semi-monopoly public K-12 education system with its surrounding layers of bureaucracy at the local, state, and national level.
>>One doesn’t need to read to sell/cook burgers—the company uses PICTURES.
I have a friend in the graphics design business who has done that work for Taco Bell and perhaps some others. You are spot on about not having to being able to read to learn how to make fast food. That was a fundamental success criterion for his work.
Thank you! I don’t know why there haven’t been more comments on this much bigger picture issue that this story highlights.
Huzzah for your own smart Coach-husband!!
I had Hispanic students in college who were often forced to quit school and go to work because their parents NEEDED them to work to help support the family.
I used to encourage them to keep at it. I told them that when THEY were parents THEIR children wouldn't have to quit school because they would be better parent$ who would be able to afford to allow THEIR children to stay in school.
I also gave them two examples in my life.
1. My husband dropped out of college at 18 and did lots of fun things. At 29 he returned to college and became a mechanical engineer. He did have some school loans but they were chump change compared to what he made as an engineer.
2. My mother, at 55, retired from her school job and started two new directions: art school and law.
At 60 years of age she took the California state bar exam and passed it the first time. It took Nixon three tries. She then practiced family law for twenty years and retired at 80.
Her art work stopped at 80 as well, after becoming quite proficient at water color and etching.
My dad was an artist, oil and charcoal. My sister also was an artist...painting, made jewelry, sewed, cooked, baked...everything.
I have none of their talents. However, they are all passed on and I am still around. I play squash--the game, not the vegetable.
NO cookin' no stinkin' "GRAN" macs for me, mon, not my yob!! I gonnna be an ENGINEER!
Who is the school system cheating when it allows 18-year-olds to go into the working world illiterate?
Where were their parents?!
Community colleges USED to have to help students HONE their reading and writing skills with "Bonehead English." there USED to be three bonehead classes.
Now entering students are still at the "Dick and Jane" stage--SO far behind that they WON'T be able to compete in the college arena unless they are extremely motivated and hard working.
Well, they have three choices:
1. Work at MacDonald's forever.
2. Get an education.
3. Go on welfare.
It's almost never too late to get an education. Sometimes people aren't ready for the work to get an education until they are older, like my husband at 29. He was 34 when he finished school. And then I married a full-blown mechanical engineer with his degree from from U.C. Berkeley. My sister introduced me to him because they both worked at the same company.
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