IMPACT OF HIGH SCHOOL PREPARATION
381
relativism. Things like right and wrong, beautiful and·ugly, and good and
bad, noble and villainous may be murky distinctions to entering college
students, unless they happened to pick them up in church or perhaps from
their parents. They sure weren't likely to pick them up from TV.
Fifth, they enter without good study habits. They didn't need them to
make a go of high school. Often they could avoid homework, could cram
at the last minute for tests, could sit quietly instead of participating in class,
could borrow term papers from the Internet, could use plot summaries and
other short cuts rather than wrestling with the textbook, much less an
original text. If, like many schools, theirs emphasized group-work and
cooperative learning and minimized competition and individual attain–
ment, they're accustomed, upon entry to college, to sharing the work, not
doing it themselves, and not being held accountable by themselves.
Sixth, they've already dosed,
if
not overdosed, on poli tical correctness,
multiculturalism, etc. before they even reach the ivy-covered walls. They
learned to be nice, to be sensitive, to be inclusive, not to say anything offen–
sive or provocative. They didn't learn it only from high school, as Mark
Edmundson's brilliant
Harper's
essay pointed out. Much of that world view
comes from the TV set. But the schools contributed their part.
Seventh,
if
they went to a typical U.S. high school, they're used to a cur–
ricular smorgasbord and probably are unacquainted, or minimally acquainted,
with core subjects. They may have taken bachelor living instead of civics, con–
sumer math instead of geometry, multicultural history instead of ancient
history, psychology instead of physics. They very likely took some technical,
vocational, or "school to work" classes instead of liberal
arts.
Of course, they
had to satisfy certain graduation requirements, but
if
psychology counts as sci–
ence and journalism counts as English, why take the real stuff?
Eighth, they are accustomed to mediocre teaching. They may have had
a favori te teacher, maybe even a great teacher. There are a number of those
among the 2.7 million teachers in the K-12 system. But the odds are that
a lot of their teachers were the kinds Rita was talking about: time-servers,
not terribly sophisticated about their own fields, and more interested in
whether kids are properly entertained, happy, and feeling good rather than
in what they actually learn in class.
Ninth, they are not accustomed to consequences. They aren't used to
feeling that it matters whether they study hard, learn a lot, and get top
marks in hard subjects, because it's just as rewarding to coast along with so–
so grades in fluffy courses, They know that results count in some parts of
life, for example in sports, but they are not accustomed to thinking that
results in academics make a difference.
Tenth, and finally, our young people are thoroughly acquainted, long
before they reach the university, with the educational regimen E.
D.
Hirsch
