"When Was I Supposed to Learn To Write a 10-page Paper?"

[polly_mer]

CHE discusses academic preparation and social mobility as part of the higher ed landscape: https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-to-Make-College-a-Better/248128

[mamselle]

We did 2-pagers in elementary school.

5-pagers in what was then called "Junior Hi" (grades 7-8)

In 10th grade, in HS, we were taught the file-card/outline/bib card system and expected to write a minimum of 10 pages (mine, on ballet history, ran to, um, 20, I think...)  In 11th grade, ditto...(mine, on the history of the discovery of the chemical elements, ran to 15. If getting up to pull it weren't a bit exigent at the moment, I could confirm that.)

We had in-class writing assignments in 11th grade as well.

After spending the week on, say, how to construct a good thesis statement and lead up to it in an intro paragraph, we arrived on Friday to see a single sentence on the board: "Take out paper and pen, construct an intro para and thesis statement, then develop the topic as far as possible in the rest of the hour."

Next week, deductive arguments: Friday, same thing. The next week, inductive arguments.

Etc.

I thought we got a pretty thorough training by the end of high school.

M.

[Wahoo Redux]

I don't actually remember writing any "papers" as such in high school.  I'm sure I must have, but I can't recall them.  We did some in-class handwritten assignments in one English class and discussed these individually with the teacher----that I remember. 

On the other hand, I do remember getting to college and being very flummoxed by the processes of writing and studying.  They were new experiences for me; I did not do well at first (something I frequently tell my students now: I had to learn to be a student in college).

RE: the CHE link.

I understand and applaud the effort to increase "upward mobility" and recruitment of first-gen and lower-income students, but what always seems left out of these conversations is the home environment and culture of these students. 

I'm from one of those vaguely bifurcated towns in which the wealthier college-educated business owners, lawyers, and doctors lived on one side of town, and the skilled working-class plumbers, factory workers, and contractors lived on the other side of town.  Both high schools were a mix of blue and white collar children but we lived in different areas.  Parents on my side of town simply assumed their children were college-bound; parents on the working-class side of town simply assumed their children would go into a trade or work at one of the large factories in the area.  From what I know of my high school classmates, their home environment determined the career paths that they have traveled since we graduated. 

My non-college-educated classmates have not done badly either, at least in terms of economics.

Interestingly, this Business Insider piece includes some jobs which I thought were once college-degree-necessary jobs.  Didn't one need a BS in CS to design webpages or run aerospace technology?

[kiana]

I realize that this wasn't what the starter comment was about, but what jumped out at me was:

"What I see is that students who go 45 minutes away have a higher likelihood of success, of graduation within four years. The number exponentially increases if we send them more than 70 miles away. That's counter to what people have traditionally thought. They've thought, Leave students in their home communities. They'll save money. They'll be able to work. But suddenly they're working 40 hours a week and helping subsidize the household. It becomes, Well, I'll go back next semester, and I'll go back next semester. And it never actually happens."

I see my students missing class, homework, even tests, because they have to take grandma to the doctor, they have to help dad move, they have to do x, y, z for their families. And yes, supporting your family is important. But I can't help but think that if the kid weren't there, the family would have found some other way to get along without them.

[Wahoo Redux]

I realize that this wasn't what the starter comment was about, but what jumped out at me was:

"What I see is that students who go 45 minutes away have a higher likelihood of success, of graduation within four years. The number exponentially increases if we send them more than 70 miles away. That's counter to what people have traditionally thought. They've thought, Leave students in their home communities. They'll save money. They'll be able to work. But suddenly they're working 40 hours a week and helping subsidize the household. It becomes, Well, I'll go back next semester, and I'll go back next semester. And it never actually happens."

I see my students missing class, homework, even tests, because they have to take grandma to the doctor, they have to help dad move, they have to do x, y, z for their families. And yes, supporting your family is important. But I can't help but think that if the kid weren't there, the family would have found some other way to get along without them.

We teach at a 4-year commuter school with a very localized student body.  Our experiences have been exactly that.  Most of us have adjusted how we teach to accommodate the lifestyles of our home-bound students. 

At the same time, our campus has a lot less of the "animal house" mentality, and I see a lot fewer 'my-grandmother-just-died-right-before-spring-break' type excuses or obvious hangovers in class.

[spork]

I realize that this wasn't what the starter comment was about, but what jumped out at me was:

"What I see is that students who go 45 minutes away have a higher likelihood of success, of graduation within four years. The number exponentially increases if we send them more than 70 miles away. That's counter to what people have traditionally thought. They've thought, Leave students in their home communities. They'll save money. They'll be able to work. But suddenly they're working 40 hours a week and helping subsidize the household. It becomes, Well, I'll go back next semester, and I'll go back next semester. And it never actually happens."

I see my students missing class, homework, even tests, because they have to take grandma to the doctor, they have to help dad move, they have to do x, y, z for their families. And yes, supporting your family is important. But I can't help but think that if the kid weren't there, the family would have found some other way to get along without them.

I was about to post a remark about this part of the article too.

For me, the distance was 125 miles.

[polly_mer]

My K-12 was much as mamselle described, although we started on notecards and outlines during library in fifth grade.

The rise of developmental writing classes and the usually disheartening NSSE writing results indicate how underprepared many students are for college.  Add in the points that kiana made regarding divided effort by students supporting their families and it's easy to see room for improvement all around if the goal is providing a college education to those who will work for it.

As for wahoo's question regarding need for a college degree in some areas, automation has made some tasks much easier for normal people to do with minimal training.  For example, elementary schoolers can use the new tools to design and publish a webpage.  One doesn't even need to know html any more.

It's pretty astounding what one can learn in a week spent with internet access and a dedicated modern computer.

[spork]

Since I've been teaching here (ten years), undergraduates have never known what HTML is. But they aren't capable of creating a webpage with Adobe or Wordpress either.

In high school I was writing 10-page research essays and lab reports. Since I do not represent the norm, and less than a handful of my high school classmates went to college, I'll guess that the majority were at least capable of writing a reasonably-understandable 5-page document. I see much too high a percentage of undergraduates who are not capable of that.

[hmaria1609]

I remember learning about outlines in elementary school and writing short papers in junior high. (I attended a K-8 parish school) Besides the card catalog in our school library, I learned how to search OPAC at the main county public library.
In high school, one of my social studies teachers had us do research papers. Another teacher assigned us into small groups of 3-4 to do short presentations.  As a high school junior, I had timed essays in AP US History.  It was the '90s and early 2000s--computers were coming into classrooms for teachers only.
By the time I started college, I knew how to research and type up papers.

[mamselle]

As for wahoo's question regarding need for a college degree in some areas, automation has made some tasks much easier for normal people to do with minimal training.  For example, elementary schoolers can use the new tools to design and publish a webpage.  One doesn't even need to know html any more.

Since I've been teaching here (ten years), undergraduates have never known what HTML is. But they aren't capable of creating a webpage with Adobe or Wordpress either.

Digression to comment on the above:

I have to point out that--having used several, for several years, for various purposes--I do not find any of the current blog-like environments "user-friendly" at all.

They're clunky, idiotsyncratic (sic), and take forever to set up. The way the internal columns are organized and the rows are set up, you have to try a bazillion different combinations of color palettes, type fonts, and sizes to get what you want because they don't map into the space you want to put them without a fight.

Having regularly to wrangle them for Constant Contact, WordPress, and some other wacky setups, I'm totally out of patience by the time I'm done.

I can barely stand to do a Tweet with images because they never fit as expected (and I need to use pix from our publications, so they have to be right), and I mostly survive by re-re-re-using one formatted object in each case and just substituting the elements because it's too much hassle to do otherwise.

Sorry for the digression. Just venting.

Back to our regularly-scheduled planh's

M.

[Parasaurolophus]

I went to a fancy private high school, but it wasn't that much fancier than your average Canadian public school. We wrote more essays than my public colleagues, but everyone I know who's of my school generation learned to write 5-10 page essays in school (in cursive!). The standards may have been a bit higher in university, but it's not like the tasks being asked of us were completely foreign.

[mamselle]

Does Canada use "private" as the US does, or more like the UK?

M.

[marshwiggle]

Does Canada use "private" as the US does, or more like the UK?

M.

Like the U.S. "Public school" means free for everyone. Private means paid tuition, etc.

[mamselle]

Thanks.

M.

[apl68]

I went to a rural public school in the 1980s and still learned to write 10-page + papers.  I was, however, in some of our school's more advanced classes.  Many students got through our school with a good deal less writing.  Most of us college-bound students had that writing experience going into our freshman year.