Reeling in our education

Truth be told writing is hard and they honestly don’t prepare you for what college is in the lower grades, what fish states is  true. I mean look at what I had to do, an entire paper on what a source is, I mean I feel as though that should be told to us before we hit college and the big pond. In the beginning of his article he presents a bulleted list and it states three major things, “: (1) isn’t the mastery of forms something that should be taught in high school or earlier? (2) Isn’t extensive reading the key to learning how to write? (3) What would a composition course based on the method I urge look like? Questions (1) and (2) can be answered briefly. Question (3) is, as they say, a work in progress. By all the evidence, high schools and middle schools are not teaching writing skills in an effective way, if they are teaching them at all. The exception seems to be Catholic schools.”
     
 The funny thing is I went to a catholic high school and the challenges I faced school wise and English wise where greater than the rewards reaped. I agree with fish when he says that the mastery of certain forms (aka the source and so on), should be taught earlier because it would definitely take the weight off of the college professors shoulders and help us as students’ progress even quicker and more efficiently in our education.

 As stated before I don’t agree with the fact that catholic schools prepare you more or what’s to come, they did prepare us extensively for things we needed in college and education, but to a certain extent and it did nothing to prepare us for what college was really going to be like or the extensive workload. They didn’t prepare me for things like what a source is and what it does, why it’s important, or what a source analysis is or why you need to back up the source of the source. They set you up extensively for the basics but not the more in depth things we actually need to know before entering into college and what it really is and what it really has to offer.
 
 Fish said this,” How does one teach such a course? What texts can one use? How does one affect the passage from sentences to larger prose units? “How do you determine whether and in what ways [this] approach improves . . . students’ writing,” asks James Gee. My answers to these questions are provisional. I’m still trying to work them out.” To every extent after reading this statement I believe that the professors and college teachers carry a heavy burden, I mean I didn’t even know what a source was (I had a general grasp but it was nowhere near as in depth as what I researched and found out), if only the curriculum was shifted a bit so it was better for us as students. 

 Professors and teachers are underpaid as it is and their schooling never stops, why not have them put in the extra effort and time to help set us up for the future and pay them what they deserve? It’s ridiculous, fish is right in order to be prepared we need to be prepared by those before we get into college. Fish states that the most important part of writing and what helps the student the most is sentence structure . This what needs to be emphasized and worked on the most with students and a heavy burden that teachers and college professors have to deal with. In order to be successful as a college student we need to know this, without structure we have no sentence and without no sentence we have nothing to base our source off of. And fish was right in saying we need to be prepared for such things.
 
The concept of the source ,is hard to grasp in of its self  so the fact that were not taught what it is before we reach the college level is crazy. Fish touches major points in his essay, he tells you the truth. It’s as though the education system leaves the weight of the world on the shoulders of the college professors in a field that gets paid the least. Like English, math, science, and so on. When it comes to college, fish, and the blog as a whole I would agree and say it’s left up to the higher education system to teach the basics in a new and more detailed way. The lower grades should have done it before, the weight would be less.

By: Shiesa Hill