Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for July 06, 2020

How about preparatory courses? The students can come to class wearing LL Bean and feel good about themselves.

Do they still call it “Bonehead English”?

Just try ordering a “small” latté at Starbuck’s…

Why is the word course in bold?

This is real. A disturbing number of high school graduates can’t do basic Arithmetic or comprehend a paragraph at a 6th-grade reading level. About half need remedial courses in English, Math or both. At some 2-year colleges this figure is around 80%. It is a failure of the public school system, and a society that places more value on self-esteem than performance. The T-ball mentality goes right up through 12th grade; students aren’t prepared for a reality where there are few winners and many losers.

The beginnings of the nanny state and the nanny school?

Re~Fund Education.

I took a calculus course and the prof spent half of it teaching basic math. The only time I felt really smart in a math class as I knew all the basic stuff.

It’s bad enough that Regents colleges across the country had to have undergraduate text books dumbed down to the 10th grade reading level several years ago, but then still found they needed remedial reading classes and had to provide free tutors in order to help students get to graduation. Instead of working to raise the bar in K-12 people like DeVos prefer to concentrate efforts to finance private schools which are for-profit and shouldn’t need it and religious schools that are intended to be separate from state funding as intended by our founding fathers. We have really got to fix this in November 2020.

English 010?

This is Walden, why would they need remedial classes if everyone gets straight As?

when i was in college there was ‘bible 101’ in the religion dept. there were two sections ,each taught by a different professor. 1 section had 100+ kids every time and was called ‘football player 101.’

the other had maybe 20 kids, and looked at genisis as not religious text so much but an historical document and the professor put it into context of the ancient world-

The reason I had a double major that included religion, not something I’d planned at all.

People do that, and soon enough “101” will mean the same as remedial. However, if it guides humans to be wiser and smarter(not necessarily the same) then I am all for it. I’m sure the profit margins of the school will not be affected.

101 is a college freshman level course that we were taught in 10th grade high school. Several colleges teach remedial courses with an 80 in front of them.

This would be funny if it weren’t so true.

The Republican plan is to dumb down education as much as possible. The big goal is to end critical thinking because when critical thinking takes place, Republicans lose.

When I entered college, I had to take a reading comprehension test. I read the material very carefully. Even reread some parts to make sure I got it right. I ended up being sent to a remedial reading class for reading too slowly.

In my teaching experience, the public school system covers some topics so much better than it did in the ’50’s and ’60’s, mainly science, math, social studies, and some life skills. things that require memorization (such as the multiplication tables) or are seen as expendable (cursive writing) are dropped. But one are that has been dropped for decades, to great detriment IMHO, is English grammar. Even most 40-year-olds do not have a grounding in grammar, and veneration by generation, the ability to write clearly and effectively is slipping away.

How about 1A and 2A? 1000 and 2000?

Didn’t we already go through this with the ‘Grade Lawsuit’ thread???

Fact!

At freshman orientation in 1980 we took assessment tests for English composition and for math. Everyone was required to pass through certain gates in competency for writing before we could graduate and the test started us at the right level. The math tests established prerequisites before you could take certain math courses. If you rocked calculus in high school you could jump to calc 2 or differential equations. I was relegated to pre-calculus, which honestly helped me succeed later with calculus.

Love it, but sadly today, 26 years later, the little darlings are so sensitive you would not dare write this cartoon. Thank God college age darlings don’t read comics very often.

Maybe they could put up a couple f statues and call it history 101. :-)

Sad to say this conversation has been in many different Universities over the years

LOL, my college decided to lower admissions standards in order to gain paying students… but then had to add remedial courses. They used low numbers – as low as “Math 0” which was 8th grade story problems. Students who horribly flunked their math admission test got assigned to it, and did not get credits for it but were required to pass it to remain in school… they even gave those students three tries to pass it…

This strip is 25 years old. The problem is even worse today than it was then.

The kids are not all right.

English 099, not college level.