Where are all the men?

[00Syd]

How/where did you learn to write, pre-college?

High school. I went to an anti-testing public NYC high school (sort of like a magnet school) that valued academic skills beyond being able to choose the most likely answer on a multiple choice question.

 

[JMohegan]

High school. I went to an anti-testing public NYC high school (sort of like a magnet school) that valued academic skills beyond being able to choose the most likely answer on a multiple choice question.

So whatever testing regulations have been put in place may be overcome with competent teaching, yes?

 

[JMohegan]

Yes, of course the selectivity of the schools comes into play. In my experience and observation, though, even the most selective schools end up admitting a large amount of kids who do not have basic essay writing skills, because if they didn't, they pool of kids to choose from would be too small, and they would end up admitting many kids who are otherwise unqualified.

I go to a very small, very selective, very respected school (I was very close to not being admitted) and many kids who are admitted do not know how to write an essay and there is a required essay writing course. If my school only accepted kids who could prove they could write an essay, my school would be much, much smaller.

The only school I know of (and this is from a large pool of schools, many of them very good, that friends of mine attend) that does not have a required essay-writing class is Yale.

Also, besides the personal essay that every school requires, very few schools require an academic essay along with their application. Without that, there is really no way to know. The only way a school could completely make sure that they are accepting only kids with basic essay knowledge, besides requiring an essay to be submitted with their application, is to only accept from top private schools that are known to teach these skills. And if that was the case, I would probably not have been accepted into my school.

Does the new Writing component of the SAT call for an expository or creative piece?

When my niece (now a rising sophomore) applied to college, she listed her AP scores on the Common App. As far as I know, that disclosure was voluntary, but given the nature of the AP Lit or History tests, high scores would presumably signal a certain level of expository skill to prospective colleges.

 

[Netzach]

Does the new Writing component of the SAT call for an expository or creative piece?

When my niece (now a rising sophomore) applied to college, she listed her AP scores on the Common App. As far as I know, that disclosure was voluntary, but given the nature of the AP Lit or History tests, high scores would presumably signal a certain level of expository skill to prospective colleges.

From my limited recollection, AP english tests of 5 can't be done without the monster essay at the end being deemed good enough.

 

[Netzach]

So whatever testing regulations have been put in place may be overcome with competent teaching, yes?

in NYC public, to a point. You still have regents tests and NCLB nonsense and a battery of other standardized things I think.

Having benefitted from some very outside the box methodology, I think that standardized tests enforce C-grade mediocrity. Which is better than mass illiteracy, but not necessarily by much. Excellence tends to be specialized, by its nature. I find it totally cruel and un-needed to torture someone like one of my housemates, a very dyslexic Rhodes scholar, with foreign language requirements he's always going to wind up crying over. Or me, with calc. Or a music student with anthro they don't want to take. Well rounded is, in my opinion, the excuse for a lot of wasted time and frustrated intentions.

If the non-writer is an engineering student with good grades taking his/her mandatory writing class, I think trying to help him/her not be totally garbled and obtuse and leaving them alone after that is enough. Essays on Macbeth are not furthering this person's education that much.

It's good to be exposed to things, up to a point. However not every person is meant to do and be everything, and encouraging time and energy where it's actually best placed isn't necessarily a bad thing.

 

[Keroin]

in NYC public, to a point. You still have regents tests and NCLB nonsense and a battery of other standardized things I think.

Having benefitted from some very outside the box methodology, I think that standardized tests enforce C-grade mediocrity. Which is better than mass illiteracy, but not necessarily by much. Excellence tends to be specialized, by its nature. I find it totally cruel and un-needed to torture someone like one of my housemates, a very dyslexic Rhodes scholar, with foreign language requirements he's always going to wind up crying over. Or me, with calc. Or a music student with anthro they don't want to take. Well rounded is, in my opinion, the excuse for a lot of wasted time and frustrated intentions.

If the non-writer is an engineering student with good grades taking his/her mandatory writing class, I think trying to help him/her not be totally garbled and obtuse and leaving them alone after that is enough. Essays on Macbeth are not furthering this person's education that much.

It's good to be exposed to things, up to a point. However not every person is meant to do and be everything, and encouraging time and energy where it's actually best placed isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I'm with you, somewhat. I suffered through algebra. Suffered. Since graduation I have used my algebraic knowledge a grand total of zero times...as I predicted, at the age of sixteen. However, writing skills have very real benefit to everyone, even to the engineer. It doesn't have to be an essay on Macbeth, it could be an essay on the Golden Gate Bridge. Content is irrelevant, the skill is not. At some point, even the engineer will need to articulate their ideas in a written form.

 

[00Syd]

So whatever testing regulations have been put in place may be overcome with competent teaching, yes?

Yes, to a point. But even the most excellent teachers have to teach to the test for their students to pass.

Does the new Writing component of the SAT call for an expository or creative piece?

When my niece (now a rising sophomore) applied to college, she listed her AP scores on the Common App. As far as I know, that disclosure was voluntary, but given the nature of the AP Lit or History tests, high scores would presumably signal a certain level of expository skill to prospective colleges.

It calls for a short expository essay, but its possible to pass the writing component of the SAT, and pass it well, without doing very well on the writing part. Its also possible to write a mediocre essay and get a good grade, or write an excellent essay and get a mediocre grade, depending on which random person is grading the test.

I have many, many, many issues with the SAT.

Also, not everyone as access to AP classes. Like me, for example. I went to a small but very overcrowded NYC public school that was stuffed into one floor of a building that it shared with two other schools. There was literally no room for extra classes. Luckily, I had a few other options available to me. In place of AP classes, my school had a partnership with both NYU and a few CUNY schools and so if your grades were good enough, and you applied, you could take an introductory freshmen class at one of those institutions. I took an NYU class in my sophomore year of high school and got an -A. Unfortunately, due to the way college application requirements are scaled nowadays, a good score on an AP test would have done much, much more for me that that NYU grade.

My high school taught me well, but in doing so, it made it less likely for me to be accepted into the school of my choice. Funny how that works, eh?

 

[Keroin]

That's one of the things that makes me happy to be the age I am, and have graduated from high school in the mid-60s. The core curriculum of each course was geared to the B-, C, C- student... but the better teachers - and that was actually most of them - would tailor assignments to the students they had. It was not at all unusual for the majority of the class to be assigned a four- to five-page report as a midterm project, with perhaps a quarter to a third of the class being quietly told that *their* project was eight to ten pages, and in junior and senior English classes, *with* ALA-standard references, either end notes or footnotes.

Funny thing, no one thought the differing assignments were "unfair" or "too hard" or "expecting too much." It was just the way things were done.

Today that would be called discrimination.

In grade nine, I met with my English teacher after class and vented to him about my frustration with the lack of challenge and the fact that our school didn't offer an honours program until grade ten. He shared the same frustration but his hands were tied. Fortunately, he had taught honours courses at other schools and he gave me that curriculum to study independently - with the caveat that I still had to do the regular course as well.



Good teachers are gold.

 

[00Syd]

I'm with you, somewhat. I suffered through algebra. Suffered. Since graduation I have used my algebraic knowledge a grand total of zero times...as I predicted, at the age of sixteen. However, writing skills have very real benefit to everyone, even to the engineer. It doesn't have to be an essay on Macbeth, it could be an essay on the Golden Gate Bridge. Content is irrelevant, the skill is not. At some point, even the engineer will need to articulate their ideas in a written form.

I agree with this. I'm STILL suffering through math (taking my math class over the summer starting in July and fucking terrified that I won't pass and that I'll have to take it again, and then again, and never pass it and then never graduate college. *shudder*), math that I'll likely never use. But everybody needs to be able to have at least some small writing skill. Also, being able to articulate your thoughts in writing, I believe, helps you articulate your thoughts in speech.

 

[JMohegan]

in NYC public, to a point. You still have regents tests and NCLB nonsense and a battery of other standardized things I think.

Having benefitted from some very outside the box methodology, I think that standardized tests enforce C-grade mediocrity. Which is better than mass illiteracy, but not necessarily by much. Excellence tends to be specialized, by its nature. I find it totally cruel and un-needed to torture someone like one of my housemates, a very dyslexic Rhodes scholar, with foreign language requirements he's always going to wind up crying over. Or me, with calc. Or a music student with anthro they don't want to take. Well rounded is, in my opinion, the excuse for a lot of wasted time and frustrated intentions.

If the non-writer is an engineering student with good grades taking his/her mandatory writing class, I think trying to help him/her not be totally garbled and obtuse and leaving them alone after that is enough. Essays on Macbeth are not furthering this person's education that much.

It's good to be exposed to things, up to a point. However not every person is meant to do and be everything, and encouraging time and energy where it's actually best placed isn't necessarily a bad thing.

As someone who was routinely tortured in Lit classes, I agree with your conclusion, most definitely.

Like anything else, views on required testing depend on where one sits. My niece attended a large suburban high school in an affluent area. For her, state and federal mandatory testing was a nuisance but not much else. A bar that was ridiculously easy for her to clear, having no relevance to the content of her honors and AP courses.

I understand why teaching to the test would hold back students in certain environments, but my concern is that opposition to standardized testing is distracting us from the real problem.

I found this editorial on urban magnet schools quite compelling. Key excerpt copied below.


"When educational leaders decided to create magnet schools, they didn’t just get it wrong, they got it backwards. They pulled out the best and brightest from our communities and sent them away. The students who are part of the “great middle” now find themselves in an environment where the peers who have the greatest influence in their school are the least positive role models.

Schools adapted, and quickly. We tightened security, installed metal detectors, and adopted ideas like zero-tolerance. And neighborhood schools, without restrictive admission policies based on test scores, quickly spiraled downward — somewhat like an economy. Except in education, we can’t lay off students who have a negative impact on the school culture. That is why adopting such a business model for the educational system has been and always will be a recipe for failure.

What should have been done was to pull out the bottom ten percent. Educational leaders could have greatly expanded the alternative school model and sent struggling students to a place that had been designed to meet their educational needs. Now, hundreds of millions of dollars later, we are no closer to meeting the needs of the struggling student, but the system has created collateral damage, namely the great middle, who are forced everyday to go to class in a school that is more unchallenging, unwelcoming and dangerous than it has to be."

 

[Netzach]

I'm with you, somewhat. I suffered through algebra. Suffered. Since graduation I have used my algebraic knowledge a grand total of zero times...as I predicted, at the age of sixteen. However, writing skills have very real benefit to everyone, even to the engineer. It doesn't have to be an essay on Macbeth, it could be an essay on the Golden Gate Bridge. Content is irrelevant, the skill is not. At some point, even the engineer will need to articulate their ideas in a written form.

One of my first jobs ever was editing venture capital written by an engineer for the general reading of a non-engineer investor.

Epic battles were fought over readability. They killed most of my edits. Morons.

Anyhow, that's why you hire people if you're really brilliant. I believe in the importance of writing, I'm just saying that some people's writing is your and my algebra. Fight and scream and punish and hold 'em back and it's not going to help them.

I'm pretty certain I've got dyscalculia. No one was considering such a thing when I was in school.

 

[Keroin]

As someone who was routinely tortured in Lit classes, I agree with your conclusion, most definitely.

Like anything else, views on required testing depend on where one sits. My niece attended a large suburban high school in an affluent area. For her, state and federal mandatory testing was a nuisance but not much else. A bar that was ridiculously easy for her to clear, having no relevance to the content of her honors and AP courses.

I understand why teaching to the test would hold back students in certain environments, but my concern is that opposition to standardized testing is distracting us from the real problem.

I'm curious. You seem well-written. Your ideas are expressed well and you display excellent language comprehension. Where did this come from? I'd never peg you, from reading your posts, as someone who struggled with English.

And do you find these skills have benefited you?

 

[Netzach]

I agree with this. I'm STILL suffering through math (taking my math class over the summer starting in July and fucking terrified that I won't pass and that I'll have to take it again, and then again, and never pass it and then never graduate college. *shudder*), math that I'll likely never use. But everybody needs to be able to have at least some small writing skill. Also, being able to articulate your thoughts in writing, I believe, helps you articulate your thoughts in speech.

Don't they let you take some kind of history of science evasive maneuver? Or sciences in lieu of math?

 

[Netzach]

I also beg to differ on this "everyone must write and math is kind of nice" idea, even while I excel at one and suck at the other.

Sucking as bad as I do at simple computations, I can say definitely, that in running my own business, in doing processes that involve graphing and fractions, in even figuring out my own profit and loss it DOES matter that these things take me 3x as long as they would if my brain were normally firing, let alone as well as it does verbally.

Writing well is definitely USEFUL in life, it's simply not insurmountably important if you have some other things going strongly in your favor.

If you're just sucking equally across the board, then the liability is going to be bigger.

 

[00Syd]

Don't they let you take some kind of history of science evasive maneuver? Or sciences in lieu of math?

Nope. If you got a C average or higher in high school math you don't have to take math at my college, but otherwise, you have to take either Statistics or a class called "College Math." Unfortunately for me, I pretty much failed math every year of high school so I'm not exempt. I can't remember which class I'm taking, and I just picked one at random since they will both be equally incomprehensible.

 

[Netzach]

As someone who was routinely tortured in Lit classes, I agree with your conclusion, most definitely.

Like anything else, views on required testing depend on where one sits. My niece attended a large suburban high school in an affluent area. For her, state and federal mandatory testing was a nuisance but not much else. A bar that was ridiculously easy for her to clear, having no relevance to the content of her honors and AP courses.

I understand why teaching to the test would hold back students in certain environments, but my concern is that opposition to standardized testing is distracting us from the real problem.

I found this editorial on urban magnet schools quite compelling. Key excerpt copied below.


"When educational leaders decided to create magnet schools, they didn’t just get it wrong, they got it backwards. They pulled out the best and brightest from our communities and sent them away. The students who are part of the “great middle” now find themselves in an environment where the peers who have the greatest influence in their school are the least positive role models.

Schools adapted, and quickly. We tightened security, installed metal detectors, and adopted ideas like zero-tolerance. And neighborhood schools, without restrictive admission policies based on test scores, quickly spiraled downward — somewhat like an economy. Except in education, we can’t lay off students who have a negative impact on the school culture. That is why adopting such a business model for the educational system has been and always will be a recipe for failure.

What should have been done was to pull out the bottom ten percent. Educational leaders could have greatly expanded the alternative school model and sent struggling students to a place that had been designed to meet their educational needs. Now, hundreds of millions of dollars later, we are no closer to meeting the needs of the struggling student, but the system has created collateral damage, namely the great middle, who are forced everyday to go to class in a school that is more unchallenging, unwelcoming and dangerous than it has to be."

It's just so much easier to convince people to spend additional cash and resources on people they consider deserving (smart) versus not deserving (at risk.) Although in some cases, the accelerated student suffers because you're not supposed to be smart if you're from certain places and backgrounds and we have way too many problem clients we need to serve so forget you and your needs.

However, as I see it, you have special needs, not magnet-worthy and pull-em-out-of-class-they're-not-doing-well like this article says. Special meaning differing from the mainstream. Whether that means you're a calculus genius who is building a particle collider in his basement, or you're on the autistic spectrum, or you just got here a month ago from Somalia and have just been plunged into a culture you don't know and a language you don't speak. All of these competing issues equally important, not unequally so.

 

[Keroin]

One of my first jobs ever was editing venture capital written by an engineer for the general reading of a non-engineer investor.

Epic battles were fought over readability. They killed most of my edits. Morons.

Anyhow, that's why you hire people if you're really brilliant. I believe in the importance of writing, I'm just saying that some people's writing is your and my algebra. Fight and scream and punish and hold 'em back and it's not going to help them.

I'm pretty certain I've got dyscalculia. No one was considering such a thing when I was in school.

I get hit up all the time to help friends with editing - resumes, websites, business letters. But what about the people who don't have an English major in their list of contacts? I don't think everyone needs to be able to understand the proper usage of semi-colons, (though I wish they would - kidding, kidding), but basic spelling, basic grammar, basic formulation of ideas on the written page are worthwhile skills, however difficult they are to acquire.

How do you teach people these things without holding them back in what they do excel at? Good question.

Chuck is dyslexic. Fully. He mastered in English Lit at Uni.

 

[JMohegan]

I'm with you, somewhat. I suffered through algebra. Suffered. Since graduation I have used my algebraic knowledge a grand total of zero times...as I predicted, at the age of sixteen. However, writing skills have very real benefit to everyone, even to the engineer. It doesn't have to be an essay on Macbeth, it could be an essay on the Golden Gate Bridge. Content is irrelevant, the skill is not. At some point, even the engineer will need to articulate their ideas in a written form.

Even the Lit whiz will need to understand how to take out a mortgage. Or save for retirement. Or make sensible decisions in choosing auto, health, or life insurance. And so on.

The point is that the acquisition of basic life skills (how to express oneself with language, requisite facility with math) is necessary for everyone. Attempting to become a Renaissance Man is not.

 

[Netzach]

Nope. If you got a C average or higher in high school math you don't have to take math at my college, but otherwise, you have to take either Statistics or a class called "College Math." Unfortunately for me, I pretty much failed math every year of high school so I'm not exempt. I can't remember which class I'm taking, and I just picked one at random since they will both be equally incomprehensible.

Consider being tested for some kind of LD. I'm not sure what that will get you other than some directed help and maybe some untimed testing, but I know that none of the ways math is taught sunk in for me and it was definitely not for lack of trying and wanting to pass. Did geometry make more sense to you than other kinds of math?

 

[JMohegan]

I'm curious. You seem well-written. Your ideas are expressed well and you display excellent language comprehension. Where did this come from? I'd never peg you, from reading your posts, as someone who struggled with English.

And do you find these skills have benefited you?

I wrote killer expository essays in History class.

My problem was always with literary analysis, not writing itself.

 

[Netzach]

I get hit up all the time to help friends with editing - resumes, websites, business letters. But what about the people who don't have an English major in their list of contacts? I don't think everyone needs to be able to understand the proper usage of semi-colons, (though I wish they would - kidding, kidding), but basic spelling, basic grammar, basic formulation of ideas on the written page are worthwhile skills, however difficult they are to acquire.

How do you teach people these things without holding them back in what they do excel at? Good question.

Chuck is dyslexic. Fully. He mastered in English Lit at Uni.

According to my Astronomy prof, I'd be great at cosmology and certain kinds of geometric modeling - by the time she got to me though, the damage had been done.

 

[BiBunny]

AP classes? What are those? LOL, in my tiny high school, everybody took the SAME thing. That's a pretty common thing in rural communities, I'm sure. There were less than 800 people, K-12, in our public high school, so I'm guessing there just weren't the resources for anything like that.

Just to demonstrate how fucked up the Alabama public school system is, I offer this little anecdote.

The state requires everyone to pass a high school exit exam before he/she is allowed to graduated. When I started high school, the test was on an eighth-grade level. There was an enormous fail rate. Over half the people who took it failed it the first time they took it.

So the state, in its infinite wisdom, decided, rather than making the test more relevant, or improving teaching, or just doing away with the stupid test all together, to make it harder the year before I took it. They moved it up from an eighth-grade level test to an eleventh-grade level test.

Now, let's review. People are failing this thing left and right, and their solution is to make it harder?

I didn't have any problems passing it, but the truth is, high school (except for math) was so painfully easy to me that I mostly fucked around in class, never paying attention and writing short stories in my notebooks. But, dear God, there were so many people that failed that thing after it was made harder.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason Alabama is 49th in edumacation. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason the state motto is "Thank God for Mississippi."

 

[00Syd]

Consider being tested for some kind of LD. I'm not sure what that will get you other than some directed help and maybe some untimed testing, but I know that none of the ways math is taught sunk in for me and it was definitely not for lack of trying and wanting to pass. Did geometry make more sense to you than other kinds of math?

I have been tested for just about every LD out there, and the only one that would stick was ADD. All it gets me is extra time on tests, which is pretty unhelpful when I'll be done with the test in the first 5 minutes after reading through the questions and realizing that I won't be able to answer a single one. I'm going to try and get as much extra help and tutoring as possible, and Seb who's is all math-smart said he would help me, but I can't have other people take the tests for me, y'know? And yeah, no approach to math has sunk in for me, and I really did try and want to pass.

Geometry made more sense in that I can recognize shapes, but once it got more advanced than this is a square and this is a triangle, I was pretty lost.

The only time I did somewhat well in a math class was when in my sophomore year my teacher would give one logic problem a day as extra credit. I always managed to answer the logic problem quickly and correctly and my professor was completely dumbfounded and once told me that he couldn't understand why I was so good at logic problems and so awful at math, since math really is just logic. I don't understand it any better than he does, but as soon as numbers are put into equation form its like trying to read Egyptian hieroglyphs.

 

[JMohegan]

I get hit up all the time to help friends with editing - resumes, websites, business letters. But what about the people who don't have an English major in their list of contacts? I don't think everyone needs to be able to understand the proper usage of semi-colons, (though I wish they would - kidding, kidding), but basic spelling, basic grammar, basic formulation of ideas on the written page are worthwhile skills, however difficult they are to acquire.

How do you teach people these things without holding them back in what they do excel at? Good question.

Chuck is dyslexic. Fully. He mastered in English Lit at Uni.

I would never assume that an English major had expository writing skills superior to those of History, Political Science, or other writing-intensive majors.

I would assume that the English major had an interest in literature, creative writing, or both.

 

[00Syd]

I would never assume that an English major had expository writing skills superior to those of History, Political Science, or other writing-intensive majors.

I would assume that the English major had an interest in literature, creative writing, or both.

I usually expect all of those majors to have comparable expository writing skills since they all greatly require it. Writing an expository essay for a lit class is a little different than it is for a history class, but its no less important or necessary.