‘College Prep’ Without ‘College’ or ‘Prep’

Original Article

My believe is that the cause is the lack of responsibility - which likely is our fault for not teaching them( kids) that.

“when students enter algebra I unprepared, the teacher may adjust the instruction to a lower level accordingly.” — We are all human and it likely you will adjust your course level accordingly and I don’t think there is anything wrong. However, this is part of the reason of the grade inflation, it’s may not be intentional, but effects are real.

Now the question is what if the dominant school culture is not to take academic seriously? — I am sorry to say that’s exactly what I felt while working with my kids and their friends.

I will say the solution is to set objective goals and let the truth speak the reality.

If people in the world with less resources can do better in these objective tests, shame on us.

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As pointed out by J Miller: “behaving more like adults than pre-adults!". Unfortunately, I am questioning if we, as the adults, did well as a society. I think the resistance to state (Nebraska), nation or world wide objective tests say a lot about ourselves.

As to the point of activities, isn’t that’s what we, as an adults, should device the environment? Do we understand that everyone only have 24 hours? There simply no way for a person to do all. We need teach our youth how and what to choose. Do we weight part time jobs more than academics? What’s the reasonable balances?

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To Randy Vlasin
Executive Director
FutureForce Nebraska

I know the importance of research data. On the other hand, I questioning the importance of research data. We know that 3rd world countries are getting competitive, I wonder if they have
the luxury in doing all these researches - I do not imply that they will not face the same problem we have today and following the same path of requesting research data.

As pointed out by J Miller at:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/05/16/act
which is exactly what I experienced. There are kids that are bright but not taking academic seriously. As you said yourself, the big environment is different from ours and that of 3rd world countries.

The first question is do you think is there anything wrong with it and why? Of cause, from kids point of view, there is nothing wrong with it. Should we believe that we have a better vision
than out kids?

My believe is that the cause is the lack of responsibility - which likely is our fault for not teaching them that. There are too many things in our society that does not holding the responsibility at its highest standard. The resistant to a state wide comparable objective test is a good example - we are not setting examples for our kids that taken responsibility as due.

Of cause our kid is not lazy, they just not sure what is important. To them, the constant communication is so important to keep them informed of gossips. I wonder who is responsible in showing them that gossips is of limited value in fulfilling their current and future duties.

One more thing. When we cut too many slacks for them, we are not doing our jobs! Teachers
may not up to the multimedia, but if our kids become depend on multimedia to learn then they loss the ability of imagination even though that it's possible that this generation no longer rely on imagination to see 3D structures. There are differences between helping and spoiling.

Duncan