A Little Ditty on Education

My English Degree was earned from Elon University (College, when I was there) and in order to graduate, Seniors had to write a Graduate Thesis and take and pass the GRE whether or not they were going to pursue a Graduate Degree in English or not.

That is not the case today.

When I first attended Elon College as a Freshman in 1966, I had just returned back to the US after living in Cairo, Egypt for 4 years attending high school. My high school graduating class had a total of 28 people in it, representing 18 different countries. My Freshman class size was over 500 and all Freshmen had to arrive a week early their first semester in order to attend an Orientation,

I remember sitting in an auditorium with ALL those people wondering what I had gotten myself into, when our first speaker said the following to all of us:

Everybody look to your left... then, look to your right... by the time you leave for Christmas break only 1 of you will still be here.

Now I was really wondering what had I gotten myself into.

That is not the case today.

So, what is not the case today?

Freshmen still have an Orientation albeit only a day or two, but no one tells them anymore that 2 out of 3 of them will be gone before the first semester ends.

Why?

The need for revenue is greater than the need for truth.

No longer are Seniors required to write a Graduate Thesis and no longer are they required to take and pass the GREs.

Why?

Because a Graduate Thesis is only required for Honors Students and not the entire student body because their skills in writing are not the best and the GRE is no longer required because a majority of the Senior class, it is feared by administrators, would not pass it.

How has this happened?

More importantly is: How has this happened in America?

One of many items that I remember from my English Professors was always, when creatively writing, write about something that you know.

So, this is what I know because of all my years of teaching:

Students in general are no longer properly prepared in high school for college from the standpoint of writing skills, grammatical skills, critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, or looking below the surface skills.

I don't know why that is... all I know is that these were the kinds of students that were attending my classes when I taught for my last employer.

I recall quite vividly that one of my first classes was an MBA class which should be a “cut above” all the rest and when they turned in their first writing assignment, they all received an F which did not stand for FINE.

What happened was... a few of the aggressive students visited the Dean and complained that I was grading too hard... the Dean and I had a discussion about my regrading of the papers and taking into consideration that this was their first assignment and that I should be lenient.

Shall I tell you what my response was?

No, better not as this was a Christian School... and, in my professional judgement I decided not to say anything at all... but I did nod my head.

In what direction I will not share... but, I was put on THE LIST.

My undergraduate students were no better except for 1-3 out of a class of 30, but I never backed off on my writing assignments; in fact, in all of my classes, I usually required 7-10 assignments of 3-5 pages in length or about 1,200 to 1,500 words.

They did not like it but they did it and I spent ALL WEEKEND grading each assignment which was not much fun but it had to be done the right way.

On the first day of each class, I would ask my students to write a 2 page paper just to “get the feel” for their level of writing skills. I would ask them to answer only 2 questions.

• Who are you?
• What do you know?

Inevitably, none of them would know where to begin or how to begin and did not think they could write anymore that 25-50 words for each question which amounts to about one half of a 8 X 10 page.

When reading their responses many of them wrote about something that did not pertain to either question.

There were plenty of athletes in my class but it was not just them, it was everybody... and, that is really sad because I taught only Juniors and Seniors and one would think by the time they got to that level in their educational journey that they would have had plenty of opportunity to practice their writing skills.

But, they all told me that I was the only Business Professor that had them write other than Business Communications and all that class amounted to was writing memos, letters, emails, and resumes.

It seems like perfecting one's writing skills is no longer important but our educators do not seem to realize that writing skills are important and as one develops one's writing skills, it also helps one develop one's speaking skills... and, part of speaking is listening...

But that is another article...