College Illiterates [twitter]9/06/2013 19:33:13
College Illiterates In other news: "New College Students Can't Churn Butter" The teacher assigning 15 to 25% of questions from reading text alone is attempting to preserve a skill which society is largely showing doesn't need to exist. We are, however, in an interim period where that type of literacy is still "necessary", as full alternatives haven't completely filled that niche. Cursive was originally developed when we needed to write large quantities of text quickly and legibly on paper. Before books were readily available, a significant portion of classical schooling centered around the developing the ability to memorize massive oral selections. Wouldn't your life be better if you had all of Homer's Illiad memorized? Rolf Skyberg The ability to read with attention to details is essential to Science, and essential to modern Knowledge constructions. Try doing math without being able to write out the equations. Reading creates our ability to think in a linear fashion. Essential for logical thinking. Sure we need some of that other kind of thinking too, the non-linear meta-physical and emotional stuff. The natural and sweet part of being human animals. But to live in the modern world you need critical thinking skills. Both my kids were natural readers, love to read, were Valedictorians in high school, phi-beta-kappa, Honors College, Deans list, honors and kudos throughout their education, and are doing exceptionally well with their lives. Teaching your kids to love reading is the best thing you can do for them. It is the most important thing they learn in School, right next to critical thinking. All of these things are in short supply these days. If you polled all the college professors dealing with entering Freshmen, you would find out just how illiterate kids are today. It is a sad state of affairs. Think about it! Or did you need a video to put some spin on it, so you know how to think? The point is, that readers need to read at a speed of one page per minute in order for the info read to get to the 'critical' mass of becoming non boring. Anything slower than that is equivalent to starting a fire in a low oxygen environment. My brother got both of his sons to that speed. One by demanding that he read 30 pages every day during summer vacation (which he checked by reading it himself, to see that it was actually read). The other he paid $5.00/hr (with the same safe guard of checking the reading was done), which set him back $500.00 in total. The result was a vast improvement in grades, and a subsequent BA in English. The schools prior to this found both to read at a level that was deemed sufficient. The problem is, that the schools set the bar to close to the ground, and thus are failing to teach the students what they are being paid for.


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