You may wonder why I still have the research paper I wrote for my advanced biology class my senior year of high school. Well, look at the page number, and you’ll understand why. Thirty-six pages. Typed with a manual typewriter. On onion skin paper with pink lines for margins. Footnotes were at the bottom, above the pink line. If you messed up, you had to (dramatic effect here) Retype. The. Entire. Page.
I told my mother never to throw it away. Too much work. Six hundred notecards, if I remember correctly. And Mr. Stubblefield (one of my favorite teachers) checked every one, or at least he convinced us he did.
I wonder if teachers expect as much from students today. I remember my seventh grade social studies teacher, who had us memorize maps and capitals of countries and states. No multiple choice tests. He tested us individually. He held up an index card with the state or country name as we took turns sitting across a table from him, and individually (sweating bullets) we told him our answer. He was moved to the high school, and of the three senior English teachers, he was the one I ended up with. I can’t count how many poems we had to memorize and recite in front of the whole class, how many sentences we diagrammed, and other challenging activities. My research paper for him was a twelve-page piece about the Grand Canyon. He let us pick whatever topic we wanted, and I was homesick for Arizona. The same teacher gave an F to any student whose research paper title page was done incorrectly. He didn’t even grade the rest of it. His defense to the school board? Not everyone can write a good paper, but anyone can follow directions. So if a student didn’t take the time to follow the directions, he wouldn’t take the time to grade the work.
In my thirty-two years as a teacher and principal, I noticed the expectations dropping, and it is not necessarily the fault of the teachers. It’s because of the bureaucrats. Even college is easier than it was in “my day.” To those of you near my age, did you know that in colleges many professors give guided notes to help students get the important points? Guided notes? For those not in education, that’s fill-in-the-blank.
At the college level.
That’s incredible to me. Sorry, I’m old school, but I believe a college degree should mean something. It should mean that students had to work to achieve. And maybe my perception is skewed because I was always so grade conscious. I have no idea what other students were doing. I studied hours and hours for tests. I remember studying a minimum of ten hours for every history, geology, or biology test that I took in college. The history tests were always essay. You had to buy a blue book, and by the time you walked out fifty minutes later, that blue book was full of short answers, compare and contrast essay (compare and contrast the administrations of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson focusing on their stance of whatever), and biographical sketches of at least ten important people in history.
To my peers, I don’t know how much you studied. And some of you have turned out to be much more financially successful than I did. I always thought I had to make A’s, but I know of several who were happy with those B’s and C’s who went on to successful careers.
As universities deal with bureaucrats who care more about the graduation rate than they do the skills and work ethic learned, the dumbing down of America continues. I know plenty of graduates who can’t find jobs, even with that degree. They’ve got the degree, but they don’t have the education.
I could go on and on about the ills of education as I see them. The parents who think teachers expect too much. The state agencies who are out of touch with what is going on in the real world. The local education agencies who are forced to jump through the hoops for the state and federal bureaucrats so they can be in good standing. Oops, I’d better stop before I get carried away.
I welcome your comments, whether you agree or not. I hope that I’m wrong. I hope we are graduating young men and women who will be outstanding practitioners in their fields. I hope we are graduating a huge number of students who will cure cancers, who will cure the ills of society, who will make this world a better place, and who will make their communities a better place.
I truly do.
Life As I know it 