Rebekah Averill Eng.

111 Lucia Elden 10-23-13

Educational Flaws in the 21st Century

Today's educational system demands more of college freshmen than ever. As teachers are focusing more and more on fulfilling the requirements that the state has set, and preparing the students for tests like the ACT, high school students are starting to lack in the skills that are needed to succeed in college. The issue of college readiness is an issue that teachers and students across the United States are realizing and wondering why nothing is being done to change it. College readiness is a big issue in today's society. Schools spend all their time teaching students the skills that they need to pass state mandated tests and not the things they are going to need to know to pursue a higher education. For example, I spent my ninth, tenth, and eleventh grade english classes reading books, learning about grammar, and learning how to write a 5 paragraph essay. Once I got to my twelfth grade class, College Eng 111, I was stumped. We were writing papers that were four to five pages long. the format that I knew and had been using for the last three years was now irrelevant. My classmates were in the same boat. We had written very few research papers in our high school career and those that we had were no more than two pages long. We had no clue how to even start to write a five page paper. We didn't know what synthesis was or how to even begin writing a paper using it. It was as if we were just learning how to write a paper, even though we had been doing it for over three years. In the article Politics of Remediation Mike Rose addresses the issue of college readiness. Rose States :

Rebekah Averill Eng. 111 Lucia Elden 10-23-13 Many young people come to the university able to summarize the events in a news story or write a per-sonal response to a play or a movie or give back what a teacher said in a straightforward lecture. But they have considerable trouble with what has come to be called critical literacy: framing an argument or taking someone else's argument apart, systematically inspecting a document, an issue, or an event, synthesizing different points of view, applying a theory to disparate phenomena, and so on (16, Rose).

This is exactly what the issue is, student are taught how to be Parrots. They can tell the teacher exactly what they want to hear by piecing together items or thoughts that the teacher had said. This Parrot concept is touched on again in the article The Banking Concept of Education by Paulo Freire. Freir states The student records, Memorizes and repeats.... without perceiving...the true significance (240 Freire). This is a skill that students are taught so that they can get by in the lower level of education. Student's are not taught the skill of critical thinking, or the ability problem solve. Students are always told that when they needed help ask for it, so they do. Every time they get stuck they automatically ask for help even if with a little problem solving they could have figured it out themselves. Once a student gets to College though, their professors expect them to have their own opinion on subjects. Students are still expected to ask for help, but they are also expected to try to figure it out on their own first. Problem solving is a skill that most middle and high school teachers don't require students to use, and when a teacher does require it student complain that the class is To Hard. My junior year in highschool I had a teacher like this. He made us figure things out on are own .While we were struggling through those physics equation we hated him

Rebekah Averill Eng. 111 Lucia Elden 10-23-13 for challenging us, but after we did figure it out or, it Clicked in our minds, we thanked him. That was the most challenging class that I ever took. It resurrected that problem solving mindset that had been drummed into me during my homeschooling years. It made my brain reopen or reprogram that pathway .As stated in the article Is Google Making Us Stupid by Nicholas Carr, The brain has the ability to reprogram itself... altering the way it functions (373, Carr). Our brains are the most powerful processing tool in the world, yet we only use a fraction of its ability. We take this incredible instrument and essentially throw ninety percent of it out the window. as with most situation though different people employ the items they are given in different ways. In my life I can see the difference between myself and others. I was homeschooled up until third grade , so that has had a large impact on the way that my brain is wired. I tend to think and struggle through problems instead of taking the easy way out by asking for help. there is nothing wrong with asking for help, but if you have the ability to solve an issue yourself why would you. When challenged Some rise to the occasion while others give up. Rose Suggests when asked to produce something that is beyond them, writers might also fall back on strategies they already know(18 Rose). This is one of the risks that teachers take when challenging their students. Some will succeed and they will have learned and important life lesson while others will fail and will have learned nothing. Teachers should not have to teach to the slowest person in the class. This hinders those who wish to learn more, thus wasting the time of those who wish to be challenged. Challenging students with the task of linking information that they already know and information that they are learning. This is what students need to be able to accomplish in college.

Rebekah Averill Eng. 111 Lucia Elden 10-23-13 As Rose exclaims There is little need for them to remember the material...... Next year it will be... a new textbook..new documents.. and the same reason to forget (Rose, 21). The content that students learn from year to year in most cases does not build. Students then memorize the required information, storing it in their short term memory because there will be no use for it in the future. As Freire states The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness ( 242 Freire). Students are taught throughout their school career to repeat what they have been told, exactly the way it was told to them, if it isn't exactly the way that they taught it its wrong. You can't expect every student to learn and process the same topic or equation the same way. Every single person's brain is wired differently, no 2 mind are alike. For example in my Math 105 class, our teacher showed us a single way to do each problem. if we didn't do the problem the way that she showed us, then it would be marked wrong even if the answer was correct. Most teachers expect every student to a certain problem a certain way. students aren't allowed to try to put their own spin on it. This is why student are not ready for college. Teachers are forced to teach student certain information so that they can get into a good college, but in doing so students then lack the knowledge needed to succeed once they have gained entrance. Teachers need to be more willing to engage and challenge their students even with the chance that a certain margin of them will fail. Student need to be willing to challenge themselves and pursue their goals even if they must do it on their own. This lack of creation, Critical thinking, and problem solving skills is why the majority of student are not prepared properly to continue with their education into college.

Rebekah Averill Eng. 111 Lucia Elden 10-23-13

Works Cited: Freire, Paulo. The Banking Concept of Education. 2000. In Composing Knowledge: Readings for College Writers. By Rolf Norgaard. (pp. 239-253). Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2007. Rose, Mike. The Politics of Remediation. 1989. Lives On The Boundary. By Mike Rose. New York: Penguin Group (USA), 1989. Carr, N. (2013). Is Google Making Us Stupid? In Exploring Relationships: Globalization and Learning in the 21st Century (pp. 370-377). Boston, MA: Pearson Learning Solutions.