Alaska News

Poor reading, writing skills undermine our students

The report on college performance released by UAA recently is highly discouraging. Researchers Ted Kassier and Alexandra Hill found that 28 percent of full time freshmen at UAA don't return for their sophomore year. More disturbing, only 28 percent of degree-seeking students actually graduate; 56 percent make it nationally. Why does Alaska do so poorly?

The main reason for both sets of numbers seems to be that the students aren't prepared for college work. An earlier UAA study found that two-thirds of entering students are not ready in math and English. A full third of Alaska's high school students don't even graduate.

The UAA study is important; it addresses the question of what we're actually doing at the university. We're probably pretty good at certification, but less so at basic skills. The explanation is the same as elsewhere: poor preparation.

The June issue of Atlantic Magazine carried an article by a "Professor X," teaching English as an adjunct at a small liberal arts college and a community college. A good many of his students, he wrote, could not possibly pass the course they were enrolled in because they had no idea how to read or write, even though they were all high school graduates.

This is critical. Reading is necessary for gathering basic concepts, the ideas we use to prioritize and establish the meaning of information. Writing brings clarity and precision to thinking; it's an effective way of freezing thought long enough to examine its accuracy, quality and character. Numerous studies have concluded that the inability to write effectively denotes a diminished capacity to think well and clearly.

The problem is not that high school teachers don't teach reading and writing. I have participated in several programs with dedicated teachers in the Anchorage district who work very hard at trying to teach students to read and write. But in my experience at UAA, too many high school graduates have the potential to write, but haven't been required to master the skills.

In my classes at UAA, I ask students to undertake a short exercise at the beginning of the semester to test their reading and writing capability. I ask them to read and paraphrase in 15 words or less the following sentence:

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"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." Surprisingly, usually fewer than half can do so correctly on the first try.

The sentence is not complicated; its structure is simple: when A occurs, B is indicated. Nor is the content difficult: When a people decide to separate politically, respect for others mandates an explanation. But many students focus on or include qualifying or extraneous information, and few manage a straightforward, accurate translation. Some haven't a clue. And if they cannot read accurately the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence, they are probably going to have trouble with Washington's Farewell Address, Lincoln's Second Inaugural and Ronald Reagan's 1988 speech at Moscow University, all seminal documents for understanding the nature and history of American democracy.

Why can't students read this sentence correctly? Mostly, I think, it's because they have not mastered the parts of speech, and the relationship of ideas to each other. Instead, they've been pushed to "read" a great deal, and then to say something that's related to it, without being given much opportunity, first, to be sure they know exactly what they have read, and then, with guidance, to think through what it means, what it does not, and how it is related to other things they know. But they've been advanced nonetheless.

Remediation is embarrassing; it suggests someone's failure somewhere. But the consequences of not being able to read, write and think well are worse, and we surely owe it to our students at every level to put chagrin aside, and keep them at it until they get the fundamentals.

Steve Haycox is a professor of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

STEVE HAYCOX

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Steve Haycox

Steve Haycox is professor emeritus of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

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