Posted on 01/21/2006 10:26:44 AM PST by voletti
WASHINGTON: More than half of students at four-year colleges in the United States - and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges - lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks such as understanding credit card offers, a study found. The literacy study funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the first to target the skills of graduating students, finds that students fail to lock in key skills - no matter their field of study. The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips. Without “proficient” skills, or those needed to perform more complex tasks, students fall behind. They cannot interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school. “It is kind of disturbing that a lot of folks are graduating with a degree and they’re not going to be able to do those things,” said Stephane Baldi, the study’s director at the American Institutes for Research, a behavioral and social science research organization. Most students at community colleges and four-year schools showed intermediate skills. That means they can do moderately challenging tasks, such as identifying a location on a map. There was brighter news. Overall, the average literacy of college students is significantly higher than that of adults across the nation. Study leaders said that was encouraging but not surprising, given that the spectrum of adults includes those with much less education.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailytimes.com.pk ...
Take it up with Rummyfan (see post #16). I merely cut and pasted his post in order to respond...
Please read
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1562298/posts?page=76#76. I mistakenly addressed my question to durasell.
Done
Considering that 80% of courses in Liberal Arts are pure drivel, is this surprising.
I heard Walter williams, filing in for rush the other day, say that the "Education Department" at universities is the "educational slum" of achedeima. He said it is an acknowldged fact that wtudents with the lowest SAT scores apply to get Ed degrees.
Williams also said that those graduating out of Ed departments seeking to get into law or med school, score the lowest on entrance exams for those graduate schools.
Thats who is teaching our kids today - their tenure protected by union rules. It is virtually impossible to fire even the worst peforming teacher in the public schools.
Fully seventy percent of all freshmen entering community colleges have to take remedial math and/or English classes before they can even think about taking college level courses that will count toward their AA degrees. That figure was per one of my community college professors when I went back to school to finish my prerequisite work for getting into engineering school.
And that was over ten years ago - I can't imagine that percentage is any lower today, and it's probably higher. So now we have colleges teaching kids what they should have learned in K-12, and according to this article, it's more and more up to employers to teach them what they should have learned in college!
But at least we can take pride in the fact that no one can put a condom on a cucumber better than our high school and college "graduates."
I sent my girls to college to get their AA's because I thought they needed at least the same education I received in high school to be able to compete with the immigrants in todays business world.
Upon reflection I may have made a mistake. They both came out of college as half baked liberals though thankfully they have read and understand the conservative view of the U.S. Constitution, thanks to my wife grilling it into them.
Now for trade schools, either of them could operate a cattle ranch, which is another dying industry, so I'm not quite certain where they stand competitively. Maybe I'll suggest a career in enviro only because they recognize weeds from grasses. The older one could train cutting horses and the younger one could raise varmits, I mean soft cuddly rabbits.
>> I'd say he had a point, especially about educating the ineducable.
Now there's a real issue. The flip side of "no child left behind" is that all too often, "no child gets ahead".
Sure, there were mild embarassments being part of a particularly low-skill zone, and a bit of pride in being in the top zone, but the beauty of the scheme is that the kids could apply themselves and move into other zones as their skills progressed. Hard work = move up. What a concept, huh?
A decade later there was so much emphasis placed on "feelings" and social skills that pursuit of the three Rs was relegated to a secondary goal. Dumbing down, not building up, became the norm. Sensitivity became more important than ability. Answers became subjective, not definitive. It's no wonder society is in its current state.
(For the record, I homeschool my own kids. I wouldn't send them to public school for a million dollars.)
http://www.toptechnews.com/news/Many-College-Students-Not-Literate/story.xhtml?story_id=11300BMOVKW9
You might like the students reaction to this study funded by the The Pew Charitable Trusts.
"Jillian Buchan, a UW junior majoring in biology and art, admitted that she might not be able to understand credit card information or handle other financial matters; her parents pay for her tuition and handle most of her finances. "
"I haven't really been forced to learn it yet," she said, while taking a break from studying bioscientific Latin and Greek. "Right now I'm focused on school and studies."
"A college diploma is not a certificate of higher intellegence. It is only proof of further education."
My British Lit professor called me 'the Jane Eyre expert' and deferred to me any questions she couldn't answer. She did her Masters thesis on Jane Eyre and I only read the book twice. Further education isn't all its cracked up to be.
Even if Mom and Dad want to be involved, there are a lot of things that prevent them from making any impact other than pulling their kid out of that school:
1) The kid gets "good grades" and no indicator arises at an early age that points to a problem. Teachers routinely lie to parents and say things like "They're just slow to start reading and will be just fine in a few years". School administrators are extremely reluctant to make any changes that might get the school in union trouble or cause them any additional work.
2) Kids are up at 6 and out the door by 6:30 or so to get to school, then don't get home from school until 4 or so. They then may have extracurricular activities and/or homework that further sucks up their time. After that they are so tired or need a break that any attempt to "reeducate" the kid doesn't stick/work. John Taylor Gatto once estimated that kids have only 15 hours a week of free time after school, sleeping, TV , meals, and the like are calculated.
3) The parents don't recognize what a good education should be, and so have no frame of reference by which to judge their kids' efforts.
4) Over 20% of kids in a lot of schools are inappropriately referred to special ed for learning disabilities many of us would call "curriculum disabilities" or "disteachia". They are then pushed onto behavioral drugs or psychological counseling, and the parents are fed BS to get them to agree. These kids are thrown away almost before they start to really learn anything.
5) The parents are clueless, being taken up with their own lives more than the well-being of their kids. Or, both parents work such long hours to make a living or attain luxuries that the easiest thing for them is to do whatever the school thinks is best, not what's best for their kids.
Only 50 years? There was dissatisfaction with the schools back then, too. The Public Schools have never been bastions of acedemic excellence.
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