When a high school graduate enters college life, it can leave one quite lost. There really is no comparison when it comes to rigor, academic work and self determination. Everything is based off of you and what you are willing to do to improve your grade or learn more. For someone who isn’t prepared for this, it can be quite dramatic. This is where the question of, what are students really being taught in high school, comes into play.
This is interesting because one wonders, how is a student to be successful in college if they have no idea whats going on around them? Who is responsible for this unawareness? And, lastly, how is a student supposed to break free from the criteria of high school and move on to the higher level learning and working of college?
Take for example writing, how would one write in high school? According to some scholars, you have a basic format. You write your intro, have a body of three paragraphs, draw your conclusion and then you’re done! You have an amazing essay that will get you a good grade. But, this isn’t so. Next thing you know your teacher is giving you your paper with all these red marks on it and you are left baffled.
“But Mrs, I did exactly what you said, why are you crossing out a bunch of sentences and telling me to add stuff here and there? Why are you leaving me with all these unanswered questions that I don’t know how to solve?” This would be any students response when they think they have written a wonderful paper. They see all the red marks and think that its all negative feedback, they don’t realize that their teacher is giving them a form of Peer Review, only trying to help them improve their paper. As I myself have done, the student will look at all these marks and decide only to focus on fixing the grammatical errors they see. Then, the student, will think, “Now, I’m done.”
At this point the teacher should step in and explain that he/she isn’t trying to ruin this paper the student worked on so hard, but only trying to help. Many teachers in high school don’t do this though because they don’t know to do it, or so one would assume so. So they leave it alone and students are left thinking they did really well on their paper and so, they continue to write in this way.
I brought up this first example because it now leads me into my second example: research papers. In high school, basically, a research paper is a student reporting on various sources they read about off the Internet or, very rarely, in a book. What I’ve now learned is, a real research paper yes, does use sources, but the student must take authority! They can’t go based off what sources say, because not everything will coincide. When writing, you want to find the truth. Funny thing about the truth, its different to everyone that witnesses or hears something. So not only may sources differ, but you must take into consideration that the writer of whatever source you are using may be biased. Take for example softball. I adore the sport and my favorite team is the Texas Longhorns. If an umpire calls an out on MY team, I’ll scream and yell that I SAW her slide in safe! But, a fan of the opposing team will most definitely say that the umpire was correct. It has to do with perception and biasedness.
I’ve learned a student must decide what THEY want to believe and use the sources to BACK UP what they are writing about.
I really liked the soft ball example a lot because I am a wrestler and a country boy so I use examples in my writing a lot in my writing so I liked the way you used that. I also like the fact how you write that high school teachers are not preparing or doing anything for high school students that is useful so as the students go to college they go into shock. The strongest part of your essay the part of the soft ball because I felt that you put emotion into that part and I could see in my mind a girl screaming at a TV because of a officials call and someone else agreeing with the call. The part that finally caught me was the part where it said that when high school students see red marks on their paper they only think it either ruined or just grammar mistake and they keep going on but the problem is bigger than that and the teachers don’t realize that. The main point that I saw was how H.S. students are not getting prepared for college and how hard it really is.The big questions in my head is why are there no quotes from scholars in this essay because that would make the essay that much better. You also need to be clearer on how H.S. teachers do not prepare their students for college level. Also give more detail on H.S. point of view when they see red marks on their paper for example give your first thoughts when you would see red marks and also gives examples of how your ideas changed now when you see red marks on your paper. The essay needs quotes from Berthoff, Hass & Flower and Pierson & giesler
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