What have I learned in a Community College?

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Fr. Peter Stravinskas considers how far the nation has fallen educationally, and how it has come to this.

I think that maybe this essay should have been titled: “How several generations of students have been cheated out of an education.”

Two excerpts:

“On the first day of class, I tell my students that when I shall be identifying their mistakes, they should not be offended since most of their educational “gaps” are not their fault; they have been cheated.

I go on to observe that, in all likelihood, their experience of school to this point has been one of no discipline, no standards, grade inflation, uninterested and lackluster teachers. This litany caused one boy to exclaim: “You must have been to my high school!””

“More recently, Mark Bauerlein upset the bureaucracy with The Dumbest Generation. The road from Maritain in 1943 to Bauerlein in 2008 has not been a long and winding road; it has been a direct and inexorable decline because the nation’s educational establishment have been hell-bent on repeating their mistakes, all the while clamoring for yet more money to support the failed experiment.”

 
Yes. Or like we did, homeschool them.

We have no grandchildren yet (although our son and daughter in law are pregnant). I’ll send them money if I have to to keep the child out of public school.
 
Policymakers and those deciding on curriculums don’t seem to care. They’re too busy with sex ‘education’. Making it mandatory and starting it at younger and younger ages are their prime objectives. Too bad they don’t think multiplication should start at 6 years old and pre-algebra no later than elementary.
I watched a BBC documentary a few weeks ago where the reporter gave a South Korean high school class a math exam from England and Wales and the entire class finished it in no more than 25% of the expected time. The students there explained they saw the material in elementary school.
I’m not saying we need to be like South Korea. There are many negative attributes but it goes to show how bad the situation is.
Policymakers complain about massive skills gaps but have they actually tried at guessing why they exist? Why so many are ill-prepared and having difficulties in entering the labour market?
Then you have that story from California where they want to water things down because minorities are doing worse. Instead of this insulting and blatantly racist proposal, they should try helping struggling students.
 
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I used to think that grade inflation, low standards, mediocre teaching, and dumbing down of the curriculum was just me looking at the past through rose colored glasses. Besides, it seems that kids are learning more in kindergarten now than they did in my day.

But I’ve seen too much evidence of it as time goes on to doubt what’s happening. Colleges often have to do remedial high school work. What used to be C level work now merits an A or a B. What used to be good university work is now graduate level work. No one learns the basics of English or History or writing. Interpersonal skills are abysmal. Work ethic has declined.

Fr. Stravinskas relates his experience from a Community College, and I’m beginning to believe that if community colleges get more instructors like him they will far surpass large universities in value and in outcomes.
 
JimG said:
But I’ve seen too much evidence of it as time goes on to doubt what’s happening. Colleges often have to do remedial high school work. What used to be C level work now merits an A or a B. What used to be good university work is now graduate level work. No one learns the basics of English or History or writing. Interpersonal skills are abysmal. Work ethic has declined.
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I think some of this is coming from the push to have every student get into college. It used to be that college was for those students who were particularly academically inclined, and getting a job right out of high school was considered a good option. So the students that now need remedial classes wouldn’t have gone to college at all - they’d have gotten a job in construction or a factory or something.
 
Definitely this over here too. People pushed into university whether it’s right for them or not just so the school can boast about the percentage of it’s intake that goes on to higher education.
 
This is my 21st year teaching in the public schools, I am a union member, and I can assure you that the teachers in my school are some of the finest educators in Colorado.

We are not apathetic about student learning.

We are not lazy or in this career for a money grab.

Those of us who joined the union did not do this so we could read magazines while the students run wild.

Remember the Sandy Hook massacre? The principal and the school counselor didn’t hunker in place the way protocol dictates. They ran into the hallway to try to stop the gunman, and they laid down their lives in their efforts.

I assure you that every teacher and staff member in my building wouldn’t hesitate to do the same.

And yet people like this author – who made the effort to list all the compliments his students gave him! (arrogance anyone?) – like to slam public educators as the bane of human existence.

He’s spent his career among sheltered elites. His first foray into the real world was harder than he expected, and he definitely made a difference. Good for him. But then he uses that experience to tell all of us who are giving our lives to the education of children that we are destroying the world.

His next step should have been to work in a public high school. He thinks it’s all so simple, let him try it. Let him try to teach what he thinks is best while upper administration tells him to do what they want or pack his bags. Happens All. The. Time.

And when he sees the pathetic state of high schools and has to deal with parents complaining about everything from the texts he uses in class to the parking situation, he can move on to teaching in a public middle school.

And when he sees the gaps those students have, he can try elementary.

He can work his way down through the levels and be part of the solution.

Telling all educators to read some book so we understand the problem is arrogant and ignorant. WE KNOW THE PROBLEM better than he ever will! We are trying to be part of the solution, even while every petty politician uses our students as pawns, and every know-it-all condemns us and our life’s work as failures.

And if he thinks he can do better, let him come show us how it’s done.
 
Gertabelle said:
And yet people like this author – who made the effort to list all the compliments his students gave him! (arrogance anyone?) – like to slam public educators as the bane of human existence.

He’s spent his career among sheltered elites. His first foray into the real world was harder than he expected, and he definitely made a difference. Good for him. But then he uses that experience to tell all of us who are giving our lives to the education of children that we are destroying the world.

His next step should have been to work in a public high school. He thinks it’s all so simple, let him try it. Let him try to teach what he thinks is best while upper administration tells him to do what they want or pack his bags. Happens All. The. Time.

And when he sees the pathetic state of high schools and has to deal with parents complaining about everything from the texts he uses in class to the parking situation, he can move on to teaching in a public middle school.

And when he sees the gaps those students have, he can try elementary.

He can work his way down through the levels and be part of the solution.

Telling all educators to read some book so we understand the problem is arrogant and ignorant. WE KNOW THE PROBLEM better than he ever will! We are trying to be part of the solution, even while every petty politician uses our students as pawns, and every know-it-all condemns us and our life’s work as failures.

And if he thinks he can do better, let him come show us how it’s done.
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I come from a family of public school teachers and I agree that most teachers are good.

Perhaps I missed something, but when I read this, I didn’t feel that it was an attack on the teachers, but rather the public school system.

Teachers do the best they can do within the system. But the teachers are handicapped by policies of the school administration, the district, the state, the federal government, etc. They are also handicapped due to the demographics of the kids and parents.

But that doesn’t mean that we should stop teaching kids about Plato, Aristotle, & Socrates. It doesn’t mean we should stop teaching about Mozart, Bach, etc in music class. It doesn’t mean we should stop reading Shakespeare and Homer in English class. It doesn’t mean we should stop teaching the history of Western Civilization or stop teaching about the founding of the United States of America. It doesn’t mean we should stop teaching cursive handwritting… After all, if you can’t read cursive, you can’t read ancient documents.

There seems to be general focus on Math and Science, to the detriment of Classical Philosophy, Ancient History, Grammar, Classic Literature, Classical Music, Civics, Cursive, etc.

There also tends to be a focus on teaching to the state exams.

At least that’s what I’ve taken out of the article, and what I’ve heard from many other priests (like this author, who’s a priest) and even including public high school teachers.

God Bless
 
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It seems like teachers are always up against whatever ideology has been imposed on them.
 
JimG said:
Fr. Stravinskas relates his experience from a Community College, and I’m beginning to believe that if community colleges get more instructors like him they will far surpass large universities in value and in outcomes.
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I think this is already true for most majors today.

You can start two years in community college and then fish else were to earn a bachelors.

And most community colleges now have their programs lined up with a number of 4 year colleges to insure credit transfer and to insure kids won’t have to go more than 4 years (assuming the major doesn’t change).

God Bless
 
One has to be careful not to look for personal insult where there is none.

When I read the article, I agreed with many of the author’s observations. Namely, the children today don’t know their multiplication tables, grammar, and history. They can’t write cursively or they have messy penmanship. I would add they often don’t hold their pencils properly. I’m Canadian and all these things are happening here.

These are just gaps in the children’s educations. It doesn’t mean that the rest of what they’re learning is useless. It just means that there’s room for improvement, with which I’m sure you’ll agree.

There is no way to correct educators without them becoming upset. They are part of the elite in Canada. I’m quite sure the author of the article was part of the solution, just like you are part of the solution.
 
Lara said:
They can’t write cursively or they have messy penmanship.
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Yeah, my two younger cousins (they are both in their early twenties) never learned how to write in cursive when in public school.

At least one of them, can’t even read cursive - and they were in honors courses!
 
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To be fair I never use cursive as an adult. Working in medical admin I have literally known one clinician with legible cursive.
 
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