Jillyanne Osborn English 111 Lucia Eden 1st Hour 11/7/13

College Readiness

Students ranging from elementary grades all the ways into college are not being understood the way they should be. They are pushed into learning things they will never use, misunderstood by their teachers and professors, told that they are doing things wrong when they are not doing anything wrong. This is something that is happening every day and there needs to be either changes in education or teachers, parents, and professors need to listen just a little more.

You will use this in your life, whether you think you will or not. This is something that is said by teachers and just about every student has heard this statement in their lifetime. For some of the things Students have learned, they do actually use them in everyday life like writing, typing, and figuring out how far away something is. Some of the things they have learned though, they will never use them. For example, having to learn Spanish is something that students should not be forced to learn. If a student wants to learn how to speak Spanish, then they should be able to take the class, but having to learn it in 7th grade is unnecessary. Language classes should be voluntary not mandatory. Being ready for college is something that students are being taught at a very young age that is not needed either. From Llosa talking about students being robbed of their childhood because of college preparing, to Rose talking about all of the struggles teachers and students face with one another. Mike Roses article The Politics of Remediation is an article that covers the topic of communication between professors and students in the college. This article is a very great article, and it explains this topic very well.

Students and teachers need to be ready for all of the ups, downs, struggles, issues, and factors that they will face throughout a college career or through teaching at a college. In Mike Roses article, The Politics of Remediation, Rose states, Error marks the place where education begins (17). There are always mistakes in the education system, and it is where learning can begin and start to flourish. Students

are always misunderstood in many ways. They are always criticized and told that they are doing things wrong when that is what they were taught. Some teachers tell students that they need to cite something a certain way or write a sentence a certain way. The teachers do this because, to them, it will be easier to grade because that might be the way they were taught how to write or cite. So the teacher will tell the students to do this making it harder on the students when this is not what they were taught. It will take the student some time to get used to having to do this because they are so set on doing things a certain way before college and then when they hit college it is like a brick wall in the path way. They will not know what to do at first, but then they will tear that wall down and get through everything and understand things better. What Rose states throughout his article is just that students need to be sat down sometimes and have things explained to them to help them throughout the journey of college. Eventually that student will no longer need to be sat down and everything will go a lot smoother for them. There are though, always the students that think they understand, but then need to be sat down for every assignment in every class just so they know what to do and those are the students that are not ready for college. W. J. Reeves would agree with this. In his article College Isnt For Everyone, he discusses the factors of communication as well as how there are many others out there that go to college, but have basically wasted their money because they will never use that degree or they will just drop out.

W.J. Reeves talks about how college may be for some, but is not for all; with the pressure they are given, the struggles they will face, and the chances they will take just going into the first few days of college, a huge majority of students will drop out. Reeves states Approximately 15,000,000 Americans are enrolled in college, although about half of them probably shouldnt be! (341). Reeves is stating this because it is true. There are always the students that believe that they are invincible and can take on any college class. The reason behind them thinking they are invincible is that they probably flew by in high school without having to worry because they knew if they got a D they would still pass the class. They get a big head and believe that nothing can stop them just because of what they did. They then enter the college and automatically become overwhelmed. They realize that what they did in high school will not work for them in college. They either drop out or fail out of college because they thought they could have done it but really could not have done it. They have wasted their time, money, and effort into something

that they never needed to ever go into. There are always those people that can defy the odds and do make it through college and become very successful. Yet there are the ones who will go to college, spend all of their hard earned money, spend every minute studying, and use every last ounce of effort they have just to get a degree. They then go on to sit around, be lazy, and never do anything with their life and they wasted all of that just for nothing. This is something that should be prevented. Students should want to go to college and be successful in life. Paulo Freire would agree with this factor of Reeves article and he talks about how students are pushed to not wanting to go to college because of just being like mockingbirds their whole life because lacks of teacher-student interaction in his article The Banking Concept of Education.

The teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable (240). This is something that Paulo Freire explains in his article The Banking Concept of Education. Freire talks about the teacher-student relationships; the repeating of words that some believe is learning, the knowledge that some believe is not there because of repetition, the students not listening to the teacher in lack of learning, the fact that information only stays in a student's mind for a short period of time because they know they will not need it again after a test. Repeating of words and students being like mockingbirds is a teaching technique that has been thought of to be great for many years. Freire disagrees with this with this quote: Four times four is sixteen; the capital of Para is Belem. The student records, memorizes, and repeats these phrases without perceiving what four times four really means, or realizing the true significance of capital affirmation. (240) Freire states with this quote that with repetition comes no learning. There are, however, the situations where repetition can be a good thing; when it comes to high school and college students, some repetition can be a bad thing. The reason for this is because a student will only keep information in their head for a certain amount of time until they know that they will no longer need that information and then throw it away, so to speak. Freire is an author that explains these types of things very well. The fact that he can understand how a child can get bored of their teacher or not learn anything because all a student does is repeat everything that they are told is fascinating. He explains how students can become very bored with

their teacher. A student may just not be interested in the subject, but it can also be the teachers fault. Some teachers can have boring teaching techniques that makes the students have a lack of interest in the subject when before the student loved the subject that now just seems boring because of their teacher. Knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other. (241) Freire states this at the end of The Banking Concept of Education. Luis Fernando Llosa is one that explains things that have to do with how kids learn and how they may be forced to learn, but with working together and not always pushing; things can always end up for the better.

Luis Fernando Llosa talks about how children are being forced to learn things they will not need in the future and how they are being prepared for college when they are in elementary school; Chinese that they will more than likely never need, being over coached to do things that they do not like, pushed into sports, and being told that if they get bad grades they will amount to nothing even though they are just in elementary school. This kind of pressure should never be put on a little child that has not even hit puberty yet. Americas children are being robbed of their childhood (38). Llosa explains how children really no longer have a childhood. Many children across the country have been pushed, poked, and prodded to do their best and make up their minds for the future when they do not even know what they want to do for their future let alone for the next year of school. Students should be pushed to do their best but when an elementary student is told that they need to do their best or they will amount to nothing is ridiculous. All students should be told that they can do whatever they want in the future when they are in elementary school and even up until middle school. A student always needs to have those encouraging words to fall back on when someone gets them down or tells them they will amount to nothing or wont be able to accomplish the goal they are trying to reach for. Llosa states: They must be given the opportunity to develop at a slower, more natural pace, shielded from cultural and technological pressures, and protected from the goal oriented, win-at-all-costs mindset which has infected so many success-crazed parents. most importantly, kids need to be left alone. (40)

What she means is that everyone deserves their space, especially when it is a little child that is trying to figure out what they want to do for the rest of their lives. Not everyone needs to be hounded and told what they should have to do with their life. It is their life and they need to do with it what they want.

At first you may notice these new and alien assumptions every time you put together a sentence, but with time and increased fluency you stop being aware of them at all (51). Perri Klass talks about how there is a language barrier when you enter college; your teachers expect you to know everything about all these books, you are to know how to write the perfect paper as a freshman, and know all the new terms that they are going to throw at you while you sit back and think about wishing you were back in high school where they told you every little detail about an assignment, book, and word. Students are taught in high school that they are to always prepare for college and when they finally get the chance to take those college classes they find them easy when in all actuality the college prep classes are not always what they should be. Many students are given the chance to take a college class or two in high school to help them prepare for their life outside of college. Sometimes these classes can be helpful in a way that they can get through their pre-requisites without any struggle, but there is always the side to where students think its easy when really it is a lot harder than what they experience in high school, even with it being a college class. In college you are to know how to do certain things, know about certain things, and sometimes even speak a certain way. The reason for this is because professors are always told that students have learned what they are supposed to know and are completely ready for college. This will never be true for the fact of not everyone in the country can be on the exact same page when it comes to a high schooler graduating. There will always be the students that are either behind the group or ahead of the group just because of the curriculum that they went through and sometimes with the fact of what school they went to. being one hundred percent prepared for college is close to impossible, but it is possible.

Having to be ready for college is something that is expected of a student. Some teachers know that not everyone can be one hundred percent ready for college, but there are always the teachers whom dont care and will do anything just to get the class over with. There will always be struggles with college that everyone will have to face no matter the student. Not everyone is cut out for college but the ones that

make it through will be the ones that students might call doctor, lawyer, or even professor one day, and with just the thought in their mind that they can make it through anything and always achieve their goals, with just a little help, anyone can make it through college and be just about completely prepared.