Dad, Mom: Your "A" Student Probably Is IGNORANT!

Among young people in this generation of American "students," where a
grade point average is seldom below 3.5, there are many who think
Machiavelli's "The Prince" and almost ALL books are NOVELS!

Educators and scholars are finding that fewer and fewer high school and
college students today are thoroughgoing literates. A large percentage
of them find reading "uncool."

And this is a growing concern because studies show that people who
cannot analyze and understand the gist and meaning of what they read
are prone to blind obedience to authority and the foolish and often
harmful mistakes that are bred of IGNORANCE!

The next time you're tempted to gush to the neighbors about your
Brown-bound kid's 4.0, first casually ask your scholar about the books
she or he have been reading. Their answers might be surprising.
------

"Writing Off Reading"

By Michael Skube
OUTLOOK, The Washington Post
Sunday, August 20, 2006; B03

We were talking informally in class not long ago, 17 college sophomores
and I, and on a whim I asked who some of their favorite writers are.
The question hung in uneasy silence. At length, a voice in the rear
hesitantly volunteered the name of . . . Dan Brown.

No other names were offered.

The author of "The DaVinci Code" was not just the best writer they
could think of; he was the only writer they could think of.

In our better private universities and flagship state schools today,
it's hard to find a student who graduated from high school with much
lower than a 3.5 GPA, and not uncommon to find students whose GPAs were
4.0 or higher. They somehow got these suspect grades without having
read much. Or if they did read, they've given it up. And it shows -- in
their writing and even in their conversation.

A few years ago, I began keeping a list of everyday words that may as
well have been potholes in exchanges with college students. It began
with a fellow who was two months away from graduating from a
well-respected Midwestern university.

"And what was the impetus for that?" I asked as he finished a
presentation.
At the word "impetus" his head snapped sideways, as if by reflex. "The
what?" he asked.

"The impetus. What gave rise to it? What prompted it?"

I wouldn't have guessed that impetus was a 25-cent word. But I also
wouldn't have guessed that "ramshackle" and "lucid" were exactly
recondite, either. I've had to explain both. You can be dead certain
that today's college students carry a weekly planner. But they may or
may not own a dictionary, and if they do own one, it doesn't get much
use. ("Why do you need a dictionary when you can just go online?" more
than one student has asked me.)

You may be surprised -- and dismayed -- by some of the words on my
list.

"Advocate," for example. Neither the verb nor the noun was immediately
clear to students who had graduated from high school with GPAs above
3.5. A few others:
"Derelict," as in neglectful.

"Satire," as in a literary form.

"Pith," as in the heart of the matter.

"Brevity," as in the quality of being succinct.

And my favorite: "Novel," as in new and as a literary form. College
students nowadays call any book, fact or fiction, a novel. I have no
idea why this is, but I first became acquainted with the peculiarity
when a senior at one of the country's better state universities wrote a
paper in which she referred to "The Prince" as "Machiavelli's novel."

As freshmen start showing up for classes this month, colleges will have
a new influx of high school graduates with gilded GPAs, and it won't be
long before one professor whispers to another: Did no one teach these
kids basic English? The unhappy truth is that many students are
hard-pressed to string together coherent sentences, to tell a pronoun
from a preposition, even to distinguish between "then" and "than." Yet
they got A's.

How does one explain the inability of college students to read or write
at even a high school level? One explanation, which owes as much to the
culture as to the schools, is that kids don't read for pleasure. And
because they don't read, they are less able to navigate the language.
If words are the coin of their thought, they're working with little
more than pocket change.

Say this -- but no more -- for the Bush administration's No Child Left
Behind Act: It at least recognizes the problem. What we're graduating
from our high schools isn't college material. Sometimes it isn't even
good high school material.

When students with A averages can't write simple English, it shouldn't
be surprising that people ask what a high school diploma is really
worth. In California this year, hundreds of high school students, many
with good grades, faced the prospect of not graduating because they
could not pass a state-mandated exit exam. Although a judge overturned
the effort, legislators (not always so literate themselves) in other
states have also called for exit exams. It's hardly unreasonable to ask
that students demonstrate a minimum competency in basic subjects,
especially English.

Exit exams have become almost a necessity because the GPA is not to be
trusted. In my experience, a high SAT score is far more reliable than a
high GPA -- more indicative of quickness and acuity, and more
reflective of familiarity with language and ideas. College admissions
specialists are of a different view and are apt to label the student
with high SAT scores but mediocre grades unmotivated, even lazy.

I'll take that student any day. I've known such students. They may have
been bored in high school but they read widely and without prodding
from a parent. And they could have nominated a few favorite writers
besides Dan Brown -- even if they thoroughly enjoyed "The DaVinci
Code."

I suspect they would have understood the point I tried unsuccessfully
to make once when I quoted Joseph Pulitzer to my students. It is
journalism's job, he said, to comfort the afflicted and afflict the
comfortable. Too obvious, you think? I might have thought so myself --
if the words "afflicted" and "afflict" hadn't stumped the whole class.

mskube RemoveThis @elon.edu

Michael Skube teaches journalism at Elon University in Elon, N.C.




http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/18/AR2006...800976.

slipuvalad.RemoveThis@yahoo.com wrote:
>Among young people in this generation of American "students," where a
>grade point average is seldom below 3.5, there are many who think
>Machiavelli's "The Prince" and almost ALL books are NOVELS!

That is NOT what the article says. The article says that in certain
prestige universities, the high school GPA of those admitted is seldom
below 3.5

>------
>
>"Writing Off Reading"
>By Michael Skube
>OUTLOOK, The Washington Post
>Sunday, August 20, 2006; B03
>
>We were talking informally in class not long ago, 17 college sophomores
>and I, and on a whim I asked who some of their favorite writers are.
>The question hung in uneasy silence. At length, a voice in the rear
>hesitantly volunteered the name of . . . Dan Brown.
>
>No other names were offered.
>
>The author of "The DaVinci Code" was not just the best writer they
>could think of; he was the only writer they could think of.

which may mean some or all of the following, in combination
a) they've been studying their textbooks so much that haven't had time
for free reading
b) they don't bother to remember the authors' names because it is
useless information to them
c) the books that they read are chosen for subject matter, and not
because they like the writer (whose name, per b, they may not have
noticed)
d) they are considering their audience, and may have favorites, but
none that they are willing to admit to an professor.

>In our better private universities and flagship state schools today,
>it's hard to find a student who graduated from high school with much
>lower than a 3.5 GPA, and not uncommon to find students whose GPAs were
>4.0 or higher. They somehow got these suspect grades without having
>read much. Or if they did read, they've given it up.

That does not follow. It means that they haven't read anything that
they *enjoyed*, because reading has been their work, and not their
pleasure.

>"Advocate," for example. Neither the verb nor the noun was immediately
>clear to students who had graduated from high school with GPAs above
>3.5. A few others:
>"Derelict," as in neglectful.
>
>"Satire," as in a literary form.
>
>"Pith," as in the heart of the matter.
>
>"Brevity," as in the quality of being succinct.
>
>And my favorite: "Novel," as in new and as a literary form. College
>students nowadays call any book, fact or fiction, a novel. I have no
>idea why this is, but I first became acquainted with the peculiarity
>when a senior at one of the country's better state universities wrote a
>paper in which she referred to "The Prince" as "Machiavelli's novel."

Language evolves, and words don't mean what they used to mean. Words
pass out of favor. Why say "derelict" if it means "neglectful" which
more people can understand and relate to? Why say "pith" and not
"heart of the matter"?

>How does one explain the inability of college students to read or write
>at even a high school level?

Probably that someone has a misguided concept of reading or writing
"at a high school level"?

I was an English honors student in college; I had been considered a
relatively good writer in high school. My essays got covered in red
in my freshman year. High school writing is not college-level
writing. (And there were never many kids or adults who read as
voraciously as I read in high school - a new book every day or two).

>One explanation, which owes as much to the
>culture as to the schools, is that kids don't read for pleasure. And
>because they don't read, they are less able to navigate the language.

Or they use different language.

>Say this -- but no more -- for the Bush administration's No Child Left
>Behind Act: It at least recognizes the problem.

Not in the least. It won't do a damn thing for a 4.0 student who
doesn't do any free reading. It won't encourage free reading at all.
And it likely won't encourage superfluous use of erudite vocabulary to
adorn ones prosaic productions.

>What we're graduating
>from our high schools isn't college material. Sometimes it isn't even
>good high school material.

The author apparently has no clue what "college material" is.

>When students with A averages can't write simple English, it shouldn't
>be surprising that people ask what a high school diploma is really
>worth.

It has NEVER meant anything more than 12 years of seat time, doing
some minimal amount of homework.

>In California this year, hundreds of high school students, many
>with good grades, faced the prospect of not graduating because they
>could not pass a state-mandated exit exam.

I haven't seen anything saying that the students in question had "good
grades". The discussions I have seen indicate that most of them are
language minorities who struggled to get passing grades.

>Although a judge overturned
>the effort, legislators (not always so literate themselves) in other
>states have also called for exit exams. It's hardly unreasonable to ask
>that students demonstrate a minimum competency in basic subjects,
>especially English.

That is a lot easier for an English native-speaker to say.

>Exit exams have become almost a necessity because the GPA is not to be
>trusted. In my experience, a high SAT score is far more reliable than a
>high GPA -- more indicative of quickness and acuity, and more
>reflective of familiarity with language and ideas.

I'll bet that those students at the beginning of the essay who could
not name an author all had superb SAT scores, in the top 5% of the
country.

>College admissions
>specialists are of a different view and are apt to label the student
>with high SAT scores but mediocre grades unmotivated, even lazy.

Since they see lots of kids with high SAT scores AND high grades, of
course they find ones lacking the latter less preferable. But the
author, who may value a student willing to challenge his authority
more than most college professors, has a different perspective.

>I'll take that student any day. I've known such students. They may have
>been bored in high school but they read widely and without prodding
>from a parent.

They are good at doing what they want to do, but not at doing what
they are expected to do. What they are supposed to do does not
include much free reading.

The concept of SATs is that they supposedly help predict first year
success in college, but only when coupled with GPA. One needs both
aspects of educational achievement to succeed in college - a lot of
prerequisite skill in vocabulary and analytical thinking, and success
at ass-kissing of the authority figures that give grades.

>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/18/AR2006081800976.html