Homework was to write five sentences about "My pet." Five grammatically correct sentences. Those were the only reuqirements. The assignment was for a college class. "What?!" she said. "This is insane!" I had to agree.
The papers came in the next day and the teacher asked the class to redo the assignment. The level of English used was so bad that he stopped evaluating after the first four papers, he said. Poor guy.
Yes, it must be frustrating to be in a class filled with people whose level of English, or whatever the subject, is evidently below your own. It must be annoying to be forced to crawl in a class when you'd rather be racing.
But that got me thinking that if no one took the time to teach people whose educational level was substandard, how can we ever expect to make progress? We talk about education for everyone, equal opprtunities and other lofty ideas. When saying that, do we subconsciously mean teaching more to the ones that already know enough ? So the ones ahead of the race get further, creating a wider gap between the ones who are already struggling to get past the starting line?
Maybe education doesn't mean just multiple degrees and a great job. Maybe it doesn't just mean becoming class valedictorian. Maybe it means getting education to people who really need it. Maybe it means visualizing an equal world and then putting your money where your mouth is.
1 comment:
Could not agree more. And I'm glad we go to BU; the cosmopolitan student body there made me think about all this. I'm glad we have teachers who recognise that this could be a problem and find their own ways of dealing with it in class, when there are no official ways to do so through the university system.
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