Are We Really Helping the Future Generations?

 By Kelly Bridgewater

Working at the University level, I see tons of students who can’t do the simple basic skill items that I was taught in High School.

Reading and comprehension has went out the window. Students don’t read instructions set clearly in an email. Students don’t pay attention to the alerts that are blinking in their face.

Simple multiplication and division that should be able to do with mental math is a thing of the past.

 

If the writing is not done in poor grammar or in emoji’s, this generation can not understand what is being asked. Are we really helping them by dumbing everything down for them?

 

I think not.

 

Read some writing of Charles Dickens.

Alexandre Dumas.

Or any other writer who wrote in the late 1900’s.

 

They use words in their stories that were common words of the day and today’s students would not understand at all.

www.istock.com

 

These are the same students that believe they have to have a college degree, but there education is not on-par with even what I was taught in high school 20 years ago. I’m surprised how many of them today don’t know how to study. Can’t write a simple 5 body paragraph. Can’t do math at all. Why are these students allowed to come to the university? They have the skills to barely pass high school, and they are here at the university level, trying to make it, but they can’t do the basics. So the high school education system has failed them, then the college professors have to go back and try to do remedial courses to try to teach them what they should already know from high school in order to pass a college class. So they flunk out of college because they can’t read thick textbooks and have passing grades. Then they cry foul and the school awards them their degree with barely a passing grade.

 

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want a doctor, mechanic, or lawyer to be working for me who could barely understand the course material and now has a job in that field.

 

I think we need to be more picky about who we allow in into our universities and allow those who can succeed and have those skills beforehand to actually be the ones who actually enter the hallowed halls of the university.

 

College is not for everyone.

 

I know plumbers, contractors, and mechanics who make more money than me, and I have a Master’s degree.

 

Because of this epidemic, my degree is really not seen as worth anything anymore.

 

Sad to say.

What about you? Where do you stand on this issue?