The Uneducation of America: Facing the Facts

by
Ingrid Shafer
The following essay was written in the spring term of 1989, hence some of the references to "recent" Oklahoma history are dated. However, the issues I raise are still very much alive. And so is the frustration of those of us educators who look at this waste of human potential every day.

The student stopped me in the lounge. She was upset about her low C on a World Thought and Culture exam we had just returned, and simply couldn't understand how this could have happened. "I come to class all the time, and can't afford to end up with a C on my transcript." She appreciated the study questions, but couldn't we (the course is team-taught) give objective tests, so she wouldn't have to write essays? And could we please get textbooks which didn't use so many "big words"? To make sense of the study questions she had to use her daughter's "kiddie books with pictures." Also, it would sure be nice if the topics were passed out at the beginning of the term, so students wouldn't waste their time learning stuff that wasn't going to be on the exam. I asked her how much time she had spent preparing for that last test. "Honestly?" "Yep." "Oh, most of the day and night before." What about the previous five weeks? Well, she already said she generally came to class. And that in itself was tough, with fifteen hours at college and four daughters and four part-time jobs. "How many kids and jobs?" (Surely I had misunderstood!) "Four. I'm divorced; that's why I need this degree, I want to be a teacher, so I won't have to work so hard for minimum wage."

This was only her second term in college, she had been out of school for fifteen years, and she had never been required to write any essays in high school. Didn't I remember how much trouble she had last term, in the Ancient World course? I suddenly connected the face with one of a hundred students in the lecture hall the previous fall. Given her age, it had never occurred to me that she was a freshman, well, "fresh-person." "But these are junior level courses, how on earth did you get in? You should have taken at least twenty-six hours of required classes to prepare you for this -- Composition and Literature, Logic and Critical Thinking, Contemporary World Society, . . .. What about your adviser?" "Well, she made me take both courses because they are part of the core." "Did you tell her you could come only certain times because of your jobs?" "Yea. I was really hoping to come to school only Tuesdays and Thursdays, but that didn't work out." "Seems to me you didn't give her much choice!" She guessed I was right. And yes, she got eight hundred dollars child support a month, but it just wasn't enough. We talked for a while about the need to take courses in the proper sequence (which might require re-shuffling her priorities), the importance of taking advantage of "peer-tutoring" (a free service in which our top students help those in need, particularly those who can't write), the fact that grades must be earned, the possibility of taping lectures, so she could listen to them while commuting or doing housework, the value of taking notes as she was reading, and finally, the relevance of understanding other cultures, even, or maybe particularly if her major was education.

Later I pulled her final out of the file-folder and looked at the questions.

Discuss one topic in each group (please use the page provided for your response)
I. (a) Discuss the civilization of the Etruscans and their relationship to and influence on the later Romans.
(b) Discuss the origins and development of Roman law, and trace its continued influence to the present.
II.(a) Compare and contrast the origins and main ideas of Stoicism and Epicureanism, and show parallels to Buddhist, Taoist, and Christian thought when applicable. Be sure to include references to Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, and Lucretius.
(b) Discuss the way you feel three of the following --Cicero, Horace, Lucretius, and Marcus Aurelius--might have reacted to Christianity, and support your answer with specific references to their writings. What were some of the reasons for the Roman hostility toward the first Christians?
(c) Compare and contrast the practices and doctrines of Christianity with some of the religions, cults, and philosophies (including Judaism) which existed in the Roman Empire during the first three centuries of the Church. Be sure to make specific references to the Cult of Isis, Mithraism, Gnosticism, Neo-Platonism, Stoicism, etc.

This is some of what she wrote in response to IIc:

. . . When Jesus was born he also taugh of eturnal life, life after death. The Christians believe in being baptism to wash away your sins. Gnosticism believed life was a sepic pool and only the Miserer could bring you out. Stoicism believed that life was one big feast. Epicureanism -- pain was relieved life after dieth was unfound -- they believed in naturals, life was natural-unnatural, nessary or unnessary. Sex was natural and unessary. They believed that you did not over eat or drink and rest was the most important part. . . .

Part of a "C" answer? Yes indeed (albeit marginal), in comparison with others. We can only hope that with a great deal of remediation she will eventually learn to write her language correctly.

Unfortunately, this young woman is representative of far too many of our students, particularly in public colleges and univer- sities. Not all of them face her combination of problems, but most of them are burdened with at least some of the same difficulties and misconceptions. As for me, I had put a "C" on that grade sheet for her the previous December, a C I knew she didn't deserve in absolute terms, but one I had to assign if I didn't want more than half the class ending up with Ds and Fs. As it was (I later looked at the statistics), out of 101 students enrolled, there were twenty-three Fs, seventeen Ds, twenty-four Cs, thirty Bs, and seven As. I did what I considered right. Still, I cannot help shuddering at the thought that this woman might somehow make it through the system without drastic improvement in language skills, and that I might be among those responsible for allowing her to become a teacher.

"A" means attendance

Many students simply assume that all they have to do to receive an "A" or a "B" in a course is to show up for class. This attitude is often unconsciously fueled by faculty who place excessive weight on attendance. Physical presence (as opposed to mental attention) is used partly or totally in lieu of criteria dealing with comprehension of subject matter.

In addition, numerous students think of grades as something the instructor "gives," not as something the student earns. Grades are important not because they reflect levels of accomplishment but because they will end up on transcripts and might help graduates get a job or keep them from a desired position. Even good students fall into this trap. When people thank me for an A, they look puzzled when I insist that they shouldn't thank me for the grade. They earned it, they deserved it. I will happily accept gratitude for making material interesting, for challenging students to learn and think for themselves, for helping them understand the material. But not gratitude for grades!

Then there are those who expect to be graded for effort. This attitude is far more acceptable than that of the "give-me-an-A-for- attendance" types. Every instructor will occasionally be deeply troubled by having to assign a low grade to someone who has worked very hard without achieving much or any success in objective terms. Somehow it doesn't seem fair to the individual. On the other hand, is it fair to future employers or graduate schools to indicate that people are more qualified then they really are? If grades mean anything at all, there must be some standards. Any college with open admission which routinely produces large classes of almost exclusively top grades must by definition have substandard stan- dards. Even if admission is somewhat selective, it seems very unlikely that the "average" score in any but small courses for majors should turn out to be a "B" when we define "C" as "average grade"!

In addition to anxiety engendered by the high correlation between grades assigned and student assessment of faculty per- formance, a leading cause for grade-inflation is the desire of faculty not to make waves in the face of administrative pressure to retain students and/or keep athletes eligible for the team. This problem is not limited to public institutions. A colleague (and internationally respected scholar) at an East Coast private university recently commented to me in a letter:

I discovered that I was the department's hardest grader. I have decided to go with the flow and begin to dish out As and Bs like the rest of this gang. No wonder I had trouble filling my special courses! When I say easy grading I mean 75-85% A-B! (and NO failures!) One of my colleagues (I use the term with question) informed me that he NEVER had failed anyone. Now, given the fact that [name of school] is filled up with mediocre high-school kids from suburban New Jersey, I don't think he really meant to imply that they were all worth passing grades... no, what he really meant was that he didn't want to be troubled. Well, was it Epictetus who said, "If the wall is falling, help to push it over"? I've just decided, today, to join them.

Everyone has a right to a degree

There exists the prevalent tacit assumption that a degree, whether high school or college, is a right of every American. After all, isn't everyone equal? The focus, however, is on "degree" rather than the knowledge a degree should symbolize, and the effort of earning it. In 1987, the school superintendent at Bristow, Oklahoma introduced a policy of three high school diploma levels, academic, vocational, and general. If the community had been genuinely concerned with raising the quality of public education, this proposal should have been endorsed or at least precipitated serious discussion of the purposes of education. Instead, parents objected on the grounds that this type of distinction was a form of discrinimation that might keep graduates from getting into a college or being considered for a job later in life. Thee seemed quite unbconcerned about their children's lack of academic preparation; they worried about the fact that this lack would be a matter of public record.

Paradoxically, while in practice students tend to avoid academi- cally demanding courses and programs, they and their parents still consider an "academic" diploma more respectable than a "vocational" or "general" diploma. They want the prestige and advantages associated with academic achievement, but without paying the dues. This is the same kind of head-in-the-sand stance which insists on "social promotions," objects to minimum academic requirements for high school athletes, denounces across-the-board competency exami- nations, supports football teams rather than scholastic competitions and libraries, transforms colleges into "universities" by changing their names, plagiarizes term papers, cheats on examinations, inflates grades, harasses teachers who dare fail students, and in general seems to want a "paper education" acquired with a minimum of effort.

It seems somehow un-American to admit that while human beings are equal before the law, they differ widely in their interests and abilities. In our laudable effort to promote universal education, we have consciously or unconsciously created an entire educational system from kindergarten through the baccalaureate level and occasionally even beyond, which is designed to gloss over those uncomfortable differences and project the illusion that our supposedly democratic but actually "uniformitarian" model of human nature is an accurate reflection of the way things really are. In the process we have turned out generations of poorly educated parents and teachers who unintentionally perpetuate this tragic cycle of mediocrity.

By now it is generally accepted that many, if not most of this nation's beginning college students are culturally illiterate. Last year I administered a general knowledge test to a number of my large freshman sections. Three fourths of those students had never heard of Galileo, Luther, Calvin, and Auschwitz; four fifths were unable to place Cairo and Capetown, or identify Mohammed, the Buddha, Pablo Picasso, T.S. Eliot, and J.S. Bach; ninety-four percent had no idea who Marie Curie, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Claude Debussy were; ninety-seven percent did not recognize Charlemagne and Vergil. Only one in a hundred correctly identified Gregor Mendel and Euclid. In addition, far too many students come to college without the most rudimentary reading, writing, and thinking skills necessary for success.

The poignant message, "A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste," applies to countless proud high school graduates who cheerfully admit that they have never read a whole book or written an essay or had fun with calculus, young men and women who genuinely believe their diplomas mean that they are adequately prepared to compete with their peers from other cultures.

Their plight is not that different from that of high school or college athletes who emerge wholly or partly illiterate and without useful skills from years of bringing honor to team and school.

Academics take second place to extra-curricular activities and working for pay

It starts in high school. Kids working after school, often until two in the morning. With few skills, they do much of the dirty work adults wouldn't touch. Why do they work? To pay for a car or boom box or whatever else happens to be the material status symbol of their group. In addition to those who work for relative luxuries, there are others who need money to pay for food and necessities. For whatever reason, high school students rarely spend their evenings and weekends doing homework. Even if they are not employed, partying, band, cheer-leading, football or basketball, all sorts of non-academic activities (both legal and illegal, such as getting high) take precedence over studies. How can we expect teachers to teach and students to learn when young people are too tired or spaced out to listen in class, and too busy doing other things to hit the books after school?

This pattern continues on beyond high school. Few students from low to medium income backgrounds go to college without working part or full-time. This is true for students of traditional college age, and even more so for non-traditional students with family obligations. The young woman with the four daughters and four jobs is only one of countless single mothers who attend college to improve their economic situation. Theoretically, government grants and loans should help, but in practice, many students are excluded because their parents make too much money, even though they can't or won't finance their children's higher education. Adults who want to quit their jobs in order to go to school full time are certainly not encouraged. Again and again men and women from eighteen to fifty tell the same sad tale of full-time work in addition to full-time enrollment.

An inverted bell curve

I teach almost exclusively required courses, which means that my classes is populated by a lopsided spectrum of students ranging from superb to functionally illiterate; people with composite ACT scores of five or eight are sitting next to individuals with ACT scores of 27 or 30. While those scores certainly don't tell the whole story, they do tell a story, and it is a terrifying tale of apathy and burnout in many of our common schools, of awarding high school diplomas or GED certificates which are meaningless, of submitting to the tyranny of school boards and parents. Higher education is called upon to do the impossible, to compensate for the relative lack of serious attention to academics and disciplined thinking in the twelve years of pre-college work in many of our schools.

Paradoxically, at least in my experience, students seem to cluster at either extreme, with relatively large numbers of both the well-prepared and almost totally un-prepared. While I have no way of knowing for certain whether the difference is due to parents, schools attended, individual teachers, innate talent, and so forth, a pattern has emerged in the course of many conversations with students over the past twenty-three years. The best students generally come from homes where intellectual activities, curiosity, and creativity are respected and encouraged. In a sense they taught themselves despite the lack of challenge in the schools. While they are generally interested in a well-paying career down the road, they also love to learn for the sake of learning. One young lady commented angrily, "I thought things would be different in college. I expected there would be lots of competition and students would know the basics and wouldn't be afraid to think. But it's like a glorified high school. I am tired of being talked down to in classes because professors have to explain every other term or concept. It's all so elementary!"

It is impossible to teach complex ideas effectively if students come from backgrounds which are so diverse that inevitably one third of the class is asleep, either because we lecture over their heads or because we belabor the obvious. Personally, I don't want to lose the better students, and so I generally gear my presentation and discussion to the upper two thirds. But I never stop worrying about the others, the gallery of faces on the distant top-row of the lecture hall, looking blank and bored and resentful.

Members of this captive "audience" write essays such as the one cited below, which is the entire response sub- mitted by a junior to the same topic I mentioned earlier (spelling, punctuation, and capitalization are exactly as they appear on the page):

chirstianity is God's choosen people they would have mireacles that would come true, the chirstianity was just geting started and they were going around snoopping in towns and citys spreading there belifes to where the Cults wouldn't like this because it mite get there believer minds on christuanity Romans practicesd Judaism in the first 3 centuruse

I felt tears slipping down my cheek while I was struggling to decipher this almost illegible scrawl, the words of a young transfer student with the good looks of a Celtic god and a neglected brain bearing the stamp "Made in America."

He is only one of millions.

And he thinks we should give him a diploma. He will fail the English proficiency examination. He won't be able to write the senior thesis. And so, after all those years of "education" he will end up with nothing, simply because no one in his past had the guts to say, "This is it, kid. You won't get into junior high school unless and until you learn how to read and write. No social life, no basket ball, no job unless you improve and continue to improve. We'll help you and love you, but YOU will have to do the work."

No matter how many excellent, detailed, and perceptive essays I had read, this one, and all the others like it, hurt. As it turned out, the young man was subsequently suspended from college, but it's entirely possible that he'll get in somewhere else. After all, every student head counted and reported to the State brings in desperately needed funds.

In the sciences, the outlook is even bleaker.

At the beginning of this term the team of the required "Founda- tions of Life Sciences" course administered a 100 question pre-test of "basic biological literacy with some chemistry" to 76 students. The results were appalling. The average score on a scale of 100 was 33.4. Only one student scored above sixty--a measly 61. According to Professor Larry Magrath, the majority of students should have scored in the sixties and seventies, and those with a good background in the eighties and low nineties. He and his colleague had hoped than maybe a couple might even get a perfect score.

Put your x on the dotted line . . .

Objective examinations serve a limited beneficial purpose: they efficiently test factual knowledge. They do not teach students how to retrieve facts, put those facts into meaningful relationships, show the development and interplay of ideas, and express ideas using their own words. Multiple choice tests, no matter how well designed, discourage subtle, multivalent reflection. There is one correct response which is arrived at by thinking a certain pre-determined way. Everything is harshly split into the "true" and the "false." In the real world, on the other hand, "truth" is generally conditional, a matter of interpretation, and students should be encouraged to use language as a tool to communicate their thought processes and the reasons for their responses. In many ways the almost exclusive use of objective tests in our primary and secondary schools has produced a new breed of young men and women who are unable to write, people who once again rely on putting their mark on the dotted line, assenting to what someone else has put into words for them. Unfortunately, the very insistence on national testing has increased this reliance on objective examinations, as school districts scramble to find ways of improving test scores.

Thus, precisely at a time when the computer is beginning to free us from the need to memorize large volumes of data while it puts literally billions of facts at our disposal, schools do little or nothing to prepare students to take advantage of this "knowledge explosion."

I recently had a conversation with a German exchange student at an Oklahoma high school. He noted (in excellent English) that the objective American History tests he had taken here did not demand thinking, only memorization. "At home," he said, "we are given a page of text. First, we have to abstract the passage, and then we must write an extended essay explaining how the events discussed in that passage fit into the larger historical context. Finally, we are expected to reflect on the meaning of those events." Last year, a former student of mine who has used similar approaches for several years was informed by the high school principal that he would be fired unless he used only material from the approved text book and only the objective tests provided with that text. About twelve years ago, my son came home from a junior high history class bubbling over with enthusiasm. His new teacher had told them all kinds of exciting stories of Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh, and he wanted to read more about those people and times. This man was one of the few excellent teacher's in my son's twelve years in public school. He was not rehired the following term because his tennis team had a losing season.

Talk about priorities!

Daring to pursue excellence

If we are serious about reforming higher education we must first face the scandal in our elementary and high schools. We must then enforce tough admission and retention standards at four year colleges and universities, and leave remedial work to junior colleges, at least until high school diplomas can be trusted to mean that their holders are capable of doing legitimate college work. We should aim toward the goal of eventually admitting no one into a degree program who does not know how to program in Basic or use a word-processor; who cannot read with comprehension and abstract in correct English articles in publications such as Atlantic Monthly, Discover, or Psychology Today; who cannot demonstrate at least rudimentary knowledge of a foreign language; who is not familiar with the main epochs of world history and the major spacial patterns of world geography; who has not taken a laboratory science, or algebra, or trigo- nometry.

While higher education, as in past centuries, is still considered the proper preparation for the productive life and leadership in one's community, the definition of what constitutes a "productive life" has changed to reflect the context and priori- ties of a democratic, pluralistic, pragmatic and largely materi- alistic mass society. Simultaneously community leadership is more often than not understood in economic terms. The overwhelming majority of contemporary students (and their parents) expect the college degree to open doors to well paying careers, and resent anything which might stand in the way of acquiring that coveted diploma with minimal investment of time and energy. Non-traditional older students, while generally more mature and willing to work harder than their young colleagues, are frequently forced to attend college while holding full time jobs and taking care of families. More often than not, they resent any requirement which cannot be readily justified in terms of narrowly defined career objectives. Thus, at a time when it is desperately urgent that education propel people out of their routine ruts and introduce them to ways of being and thinking which may not appear to be of immediately practical benefit, the consumers of that education resist those attempts.

In a related development, the term "liberal" in "liberal arts" has come to be associated less with liberation for the reflective life than with liberation from social constraints. Particularly in the turbulent sixties, this meant freedom from the imperialism of canons, and, in the name of "relevance" opposed subject matter requirements and intellectual discipline in general. Thus the assault from the Left. In the conservative backlash, the humanities and life sciences have also come under attack, as religious fundamentalists suspiciously resist anything which might possibly be associated with secular humanism or the "ungodly" teachings of the evolutionists. This powerful critique is Janus-faced. On the one hand it has cleared the way for a long overdue revision of the educational enterprise. On the other hand it has tended to reduce expectations to the lowest possible and frequently blatantly pragmatic denominator. The current "back to basics" movement coupled with emphasis on career preparation reflects a pessimistic paradigm of cultural deficiency needs calling out to be met while it eclipses the equally powerful (but less visible) quest for fulfilling Maslow's higher needs of cognition, valuation, and transcendence.

It is imperative that higher education learn to chart a middle course between responding to the basic needs of society and continuing to inspire the pursuit of excellence. No matter how difficult and painful, quality must not be sacrificed to the idol of pseudo-democratic mediocrity. There is no freedom except through knowledge and the ability to reason, and no true democracy except in freedom.