Education: August 2008 Archives

There is an excellent article regarding the Beloit College Mindset List, which includes 60 cultural landmarks for incoming college freshmen.  (The entire article is here.)  It points out that the current incoming freshman class has lived in an all digital world and do not have the same points of reference as previous generations. 
While this should not come as a surprise to anyone, I do think that there are educators in this country who need to be reminded of this often.  For education to be really effective, the teachers need to have a similar point of reference as the students.  If they fail to do this, many of their lessons will be lost.  This is especially important in higher education where tenure (aka longevity) is rewarded so highly.  Our educators need to understand and even relate to their students and the experiences they have grown up with or they will have a very difficult time passing on the wisdom that has come with that longevity.

As news about the overall scores on the ACT college entrance exam are released, we can see that there is good news concerning the overall education that our recent high school graduates has received.  (See Yahoo News article  for the entire story.)  As more students are taking the ACT, a record 43% of last year's graduating class, the scores are dipping, but only slightly.  This is especially good news considering three states are requiring all students to take the exam.  (This number goes up to five states next year.)  This demonstrates that even those graduates who aren't planning on attending college are still receiving a well-round high school education.  This will be a trend that will be worth watching as more high schoolers take the ACT in the coming years.