Report: First Two Years Of College Show Small Gains

[LaPetiteSoeur]

[quote name='CatherineM' timestamp='1295494667' post='2202044']
I don't think that the internet would have helped me memorize the Latin names of all the freaking trees.

[/quote]

In my art history class, we have to memorize hundreds of pieces of art, artists, and terms. The internet has never helped me, except to get pictures of the art/architecture to make study cards.

[quote]

Semper, I busted a kid once for trying to plagiarize a legal brief at my last school from Wikipedia word for word; what he was trying to plagiarize from wasn't even a legal brief, just an article.

[/quote]

We have to use Turnitin, a plagerizer catcher. It's just not worth it! Wikipedia is such a cruddy source...it's not even a source! I still go to the library for a lot of research, and use 'real' internet sources when doing research. But I do know some people who tried to plagerize...and were caught by turnitin.

Schools in general are dumbing down education. Only 33% of american fourth graders can read at grade level! That's ridiculous. What on earth are teachers going to do once those kids get to college? Are we going to have reading courses or just classes based entirely on TV? My senior year there were some students who had never heard of Joe Biden. And had no idea that Brave New World was about a society in England that manufactured people in test tubes. They thought it was about Pocahontas and John Smith.

Really. I'm glad I'm studying a language and the past. It's brighter than the academic future.

[Ice_nine]

You know, with my limited esperience and knowledge I find this disheartening, but not at all shocking.

I only survived one semester of college. The academics wasn't (lol oops grammar fail) the problem, it was (insert long cathartic story about my pitifully short college career) but it always agitated me that no matter how much smartz I had, or how intensely and honestly I engaged in the pursuit of knowledge, the way to get ahead is to manipulate the system to your advantage with the least effort possible. It's sad. I wanna go back to college but grrr even thinking about it makes me antsy and cynical

This culture is so freaking lazy. It's going to kill us.

[jegudiel]

In the first year or two at most four-year colleges, you have to take the 'core' classes. At my college, you couldn't even declare a major until the end of the first year. So it may just be the need to finish the general requirements that make it look like people don't really 'get in gear' until the last two years. People expect to get everything done in a hurry these days. There are such things as ridiculous courses, which people should avoid. There's also such a thing as making sure to take enough time. I tried to rush my way through graduate school, and boy, did that ever come back to hurt me.

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='LaPetiteSoeur' timestamp='1295568859' post='2202373']
In my art history class, we have to memorize hundreds of pieces of art, artists, and terms. The internet has never helped me, except to get pictures of the art/architecture to make study cards.



We have to use Turnitin, a plagerizer catcher. It's just not worth it! Wikipedia is such a cruddy source...it's not even a source! I still go to the library for a lot of research, and use 'real' internet sources when doing research. But I do know some people who tried to plagerize...and were caught by turnitin.

Schools in general are dumbing down education. [b]Only 33% of american fourth graders can read at grade level![/b] That's ridiculous. What on earth are teachers going to do once those kids get to college? Are we going to have reading courses or just classes based entirely on TV? My senior year there were some students who had never heard of Joe Biden. And had no idea that Brave New World was about a society in England that manufactured people in test tubes. They thought it was about Pocahontas and John Smith.

Really. I'm glad I'm studying a language and the past. It's brighter than the academic future.
[/quote]
Is that exactly at grade level, or at and above grade level? I've never read at my grade level. I've always been significantly ahead of whatever their arbitrary standards are.