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I think you're misinterpreting what's being said. No one said COVID didn't cause problems. But jumping on it as THE cause let's us easily miss the more underlying issues. Ever try to diagnose a problem say with an an engine or maybe a house where one problem disguises a more underlying one? For example, the ceiling has a discolored spot. That's a problem. The solution is to paint it. But the real problem is the leaky pipe in in the second floor that continues to leak. Painting over the problem didn't solve it. That's what I'm saying about COVID -- it's allowing the problem to be painted over rather than solved.
Great example about the leaky pipe!
When my son began college back in 2014, many of his fellow students had remedial math and English classes.
If you aren't ready for college level work, then don't go! Don't make a four year degree into a five or six year degree with remedial courses!
If four years of college with student loans will bankrupt you, don't go for a five or six year degree program.
What's worse? Not grasping college level math? Not grasping how an extra year of remedial courses will bankrupt you? And, then forty percent of college students dropout every year with student loans and no college degree. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Yet, here we are!
I think you're misinterpreting what's being said. No one said COVID didn't cause problems. But jumping on it as THE cause let's us easily miss the more underlying issues. Ever try to diagnose a problem say with an an engine or maybe a house where one problem disguises a more underlying one? For example, the ceiling has a discolored spot. That's a problem. The solution is to paint it. But the real problem is the leaky pipe in in the second floor that continues to leak. Painting over the problem didn't solve it. That's what I'm saying about COVID -- it's allowing the problem to be painted over rather than solved.
Things weren't great before. But Covid made it abominably worse. It was a 2 year summer vacation for millions of students.
One thing that needs to happen is that more students need to take responsibility for their learning. Too many of them conflate grades with performance. That is one of the reasons why they can get to college with an A average and not realize that they don't know as much as the guy with a C from another school.
I'm a lifelong autodidact married to another lifelong autodidact. School was often a barrier to my learning, as I was seldom allowed to demonstrate mastery and then work on my own interests. Skipping first grade after a month was the only intervention to meet my needs. By high school, I had long since mastered most of the content except math, so I blew off school my senior year nearly every other day. This was before compulsory attendance was re-introduced. I still graduated near the top of my class with a great ACT score and the prize for top math student. I always wondered how I would have done if I had tried.
Throughout every level of my education, I had the habit of reading the entire book at the beginning of the course, except in math. That freed me up to read what I wanted the rest of the time, unless it was a class in which I needed to take notes. Rereading my notes was usually enough to prepare me for the tests, which I saw as the measure of what I knew. Until college, my goal was to make an A without studying, because that would mean that I really knew the subject, whereas studying would warp the outcome. If I didn't make an A, I would have studied, but that didn't happen. Despite my lack of study habits in high school, I adapted and learned strategies that were effective in college, assuaging my fears that I would crash and burn academically.
As a college student, I constantly had to wrestle with school staff who were more concerned with my meeting minimum standards and not with my concern of getting the best content mastery for my money that I could. I never got a penny in student loans, so I wanted my money's worth. In college, nothing would **** me off more than getting to class and having it dismissed due to a teacher's absence. Yet, only my honors professor understood my desire to have a broad education, while my other professors all wanted me to specialize in their fields.
Scholarship for its own sake doesn't get much in the way of props these days. Having a knowledge and skills base that is both wide and deep is relevant only valued for the monetary value that it gains in the judgment of most. Too bad most don't realize that aside from being its own reward, such an education allows one the flexibility and nimbleness to achieve in a much broader range of fields.
I pity the fools who are accepting what they are getting at school and calling it great. Their lunch will be eaten by those who take it upon themselves to go beyond what their teachers. It doesn't matter how hard parents, teachers, and school staff try to get students to want to learn, they have to have that desire for themselves. That's what is happening in other cultures that we seem to have lost here, a discussion for another post.
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