From: mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Enforced Shakespeare?
Date: 8 Oct 92 14:49:20 GMT
Article-I.D.: cfdev1.9210081449.AA00454


 
cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
 
> Tell me, do you honestly not find something profoundly disturbing
> that three students out of 50 managed to advance to an upper division
> class in a university, without knowing that an assignment should be
> turned in with a mixture of upper and lower case letters?
 
Sure it is disturbing.  It would be nice if all students were well
prepared for every class.  But it doesn't happen.  As we saw in the
recent "Literature Students" discussion, there is a real difference in
the backgrounds of students in the sciences and in the arts.  It is
nearly impossible to take an upper division Physics class without
having the necessary prerequisites.  On the other hand, lots of people
take upper division classes in the liberal arts without being properly
prepared.  It could just be that these three students never had to
hand in a paper before.
 
As someone wisely pointed out, students are there to learn.  If they
knew everything going in, then they would not need to be there.
 
But there are a few other issues, here.  One issue involves who should
be allowed to go to college?  Some people are not well prepared for college.
Others can go in, and succeed immediately.  Do we want to make college
available only to the elite?  Or do we want to make college available
to everyone -- or nearly everyone.
 
Some might argue that colleges should only allow people in if they are well
prepared.  But I think that there are a lot of people who will do well in
a university atmosphere, who might not have done well before.  I think that
those people should be given a chance.  This means that some people are
going to be let in who do not belong.  It also means that some people
will fail.  In this light, 6% doesn't seem so bad.  If half of these
people learn from their mistakes -- as many people do, then we are down
to 3%.  I don't find this profoundly disturbing at all.
 
Sonoma State is a state university.  While I'm sure one can get a decent
education there, it isn't known as one of the more selective state
universities (like Virginia, William & Mary, Michigan or the public
half of Cornell).  This means that some students who might not otherwise
have a chance to go to college are going to be there.  Some of them might
not belong.  If this is a problem for Clayton, perhaps he ought to transfer
to Stanford, where he can study with his buddy John McCarthy.
 
> If some small number of students started showing up in classes
> with no awareness that it is considered inappropriate to take a
> leak in the middle of the lecture hall, in the middle of the
> lecture, would you gush, "Wow!  At least 94% of the students
> know better!"
 
If three students pissed in class, they would be doing something that
bothered all of the students.  If they fail to produce good work,
they are only hurting themselves.  I see a big difference here, and
suspect that Clayton also sees this difference.  His argument is
no less fatuous because it is written in a mix of upper and lower case.
 
Mark