According to this article, "8 out of 10 public high school juniors in Illinois aren't considered ready for college classes in all subjects." (Chicago Tribune, 2010) This was based off of ACT scores of students. This statistic did not shock me. I have been very concerned with the education that students are receiving over the past several years, heck, even the education that I once received. Growing up, my mother would correct my essays or papers I had to turn in and she would also comment on the punctuation problems that she would see. I remember hearing her ask "What are your teachers teaching you at school these days?" Still, to this day, my grammar and punctuation are not the best, but I have to admit it is better than the students I encounter today. I am not talking about my special education students because that is a whole different story, but I am talking about the girls I coach in soccer. I have the girls fill out a survey each season about what they are expecting to get out of being part of the team and what they would like to get from their coaches. Reading over their answers, I am shocked by the number of errors I see. Now, I only see the English errors so I cannot comment about all subject matters, but I am just shocked at what we are really teaching students. How are they going to be able to write essays when they get into their English 101 class? I feel as though education has gotten watered down over the years and though we are pushing for students to take more math, science and English classes, the content that is being taught is not nearly as high of a caliber as it used to be. High expectations are not followed through with and with teachers being more worried about students passing the classes to make them look good, teachers are letting things slide and not holding their students accountable for actually learning the material. I think that expectations need to be brought up again and maybe a step back needs to take place in pushing for students to take more classes.
I also think that there needs to be a class that really prepares students for life outside of their home. I have had many peer tutors come into my classroom throughout the past 3 years who have had no clue on how to do laundry, cook or even clean. Yes, English, science and math are important, but I am seeing many students not even make it through one year in college because they were never prepared for life outside the walls of their parent's home. Education needs to go back in time and continue with the classes that taught life skills and then build from there.
I have seen the same thing in my math classroom. I am the "mean" math teacher that makes her students define, contrast, compare and analyze different terms and ideas in complete sentences. Students first freak out when I ask them to write in complete sentences on a math test, but they also can't seem to put their ideas down in words. Ask a student to solve an algebra problem, and they can without any difficulty. Ask the same student to describe the steps they take in words and they freak out. But, in addition to poor grammar and sentence structure, I notice countless misspellings. If you can't put your ideas down so that others can understand them, why right them? Diction and sytanx are extremely important in all classes.
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