Long papers in high school? Many college freshmen say they never had to do one.

Jay Matthews:

Kate Simpson is a full-time English professor at the Middletown, Va., campus of Lord Fairfax Community College. She saw my column about Prince George's County history teacher Doris Burton lamenting the decline of research skills in high school, as changing state and local course requirements and grading difficulties made required long essays a thing of the past.

So Simpson gave her freshman English students a writing assignment.

Simpson noted my complaint that few American high-schoolers, except those in International Baccalaureate programs, were ever asked to do a research project as long as 4,000 words. Was I right or wrong? Did her students feel prepared for college writing? The timing was good because her classes had just finished a three-week research writing project in which they had to cite sources, do outlines, write and revise drafts.

She said she discovered that 40 percent of her 115 students thought that their high schools had not prepared them for college-level writing. Only 23 percent thought they had those writing skills. Other responses were mixed.

Will Fitzhugh has been discussing this issue for decades....

Posted by Jim Zellmer at July 15, 2010 8:48 AM
Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom: Newsletter signup | Send us your ideas