Okay,  so I know exactly what Renee is talking about. I breezed through high school without much trouble, but I did not learn what they wanted in college, nor did I learn how to study. When I started college, as an engineering major, I too had great difficulty because I wasn’t sure what was being asked or what was wanted and I didn’t know how to navigate the system. This is something I’ve also seen with some of my students who have gone to college as first generation college students.

This lack of understanding the expectations and the system is truly propagated by the system particularly in the Freshman and Sophomore levels when classes or study sessions are taught/lead by graduate assistants who typically have no teaching experience and expect you to sink or swim. I see it as a weeding out process. I still have not too fond memories of my Chemistry professor, who as Sarah pointed out in her post was in the position because of the money he brought into the University for his research, that did not have any office hours himself, showed up to lecture 3 times a week, and was not even present when tests were given. Our closest contact was our lab TA, and although he conducted study sessions prior to exams in addition to the running the lab section was much like one of those Chess geniuses that was mentioned in one of our first readings in that he did not connect with my level.

I truly applaude Graff’s intentions, but I am skeptical of it actually happening. Our whole educational system needs an overhaul and in my opinion it needs to happen from both ends: Colleges and Universities need to work from the top and Elementary schools need to work from the bottom and there needs to be a meeting in the middle. I do not pretend that I have the answers, but I think that it begins with a reoccuring theme in many of our readings: “The sheer cognitive overload represented by the American curriculum prevents most students from detecting and then learning the moves of the underlying arugment gmae that gives coherence to it all” (3). Once again, a mile wide and an inch deep.

Graff talks about the importance that has been placed on the college degree by society and the realization that high schools do not expect that all of their students will go on to college…the problem here is that even though the realization has been made as we talked about in class last week with the TED presentation – the money has been focused on preparing students to go to college so programs that would help prepare them for careers that do not require college and/or tech schools have been cut. This of course is because we rely on what the universities have told us they expect students to be able to do and this is what is focused on. Again the problem lies in the fact that there is no single answer – anyone ever look at the AP Biology or AP Chemistry curriculum – no way a student could learn all that or a teacher teach all of it successfully.

Then at the lower grades a focus needs to be placed on the ability to decipher…I cannot tell you how many times I’ve asked a student to tell me what they have just read into their own words and they are at a complete loss…I know we’ve discussed this in class before, but it goes back to only asking basic info questions that recall specific events or things and not meaning.

 The whole system is broken and I just wonder…are we perpetuating the problem?