AND THESE ARE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS ....

I suspect that the writer of this comment is an Australian

"I was edumacated in another country, so I can't comment on my own personal experiences with American gummint-provided education. However, as a university instructor (graduate student) I have noticed some alarming things that must be a result of said education. From the last two astronomy classes I taught:

- Most of the students were incapable of constructing a simple x vs. y graph and computing the slope of a line.

- Many complained about the math. One student assured me that y = mx + b was "graduate level" mathematics.

- One student had never heard of "hydrogen." (She kept putting it in quotation marks as though it were some mysterious substance scientists concocted.)

- Several didn't know the formula for calculating an average.

- Most were calculator-dependent (though I'm guilty of this, myself).

- Most had never heard of Newton or Kepler. Most knew who Galileo was, but didn't know that he was persecuted for his discoveries.

- One student wore headphones during the lectures he actually attended, and only wrote down whatever went on the blackboard. He missed at least 30% of the material that way, and ended up doing very poorly in the class.

- My personal favorite: The student who had the audacity to complain to me that it was unfair that important material was being presented in the Friday lectures. (Her weekend began on Thursday night, so this was a problem.)

The scariest observation I made was that very few students could think critically. I often structured their homework sets in such a way that the answers to, say, the first two questions would automatically provide the answer to the third question -- yet most students would crap out on the third question, even though they answered the first two correctly. They resented being made to struggle for more than 30 seconds on a question, or having to crack open a book (or even using Google to find the answer). They also could not evaluate the plausability of the answers they came up with. Sometimes a small mistake in a calculation would lead them to get an obviously wrong answer, like the distance to the nearest galaxy is 10 km from earth. But they'd just underline the answer anyway, and hand it in without even considering the absurdity of such an answer. I get the impression that students are just spoon-fed answers in high school.

I keep hearing about how hard it is to get into UT, but I don't see it. High schools must literally be giving away grades. I had students who handed in 20-40% of the required work, but still sent me emails at the end of the semester asking, How could I have possibly failed the course!? The students who did well in my class, I'm convinced, did so in spite of the lackluster education they received prior to university. The best students had great attitudes: a zest for learning coupled with a good work ethic. It was in their makeup to do well, and even the crummiest high school education wouldn't have stopped them.

I realize that not every single public school in America is necessarily horrible, but overall I still give American government-provided education -- and parents, for that matter -- an F+. People say that this generation is the entitlement generation, and I'd say that's about right. They not only want benefits without having to pay for them, but they also want an education without having to know anything.

(From the comments section on Kim du Toit's blog. Via Marc Miyake)