A University Professor Writes: "There Is Something Wrong In American Secondary Education

April 8, 2008--See update--I owe an apology to the Angry Professor, who writes the blog A Gentleman's C.

The professor blogs at A Gentleman's C, and describes herself as follows:

I am a tenured faculty member at a large state university. My teaching efforts primarily consist of delivering statistics lectures to social science majors. These experiences have colored my perspective somewhat.

In the post that follows, the blogger is writing about her experiences grading essays written by high-school students for a competitive scholarship, which require high SAT/ACT scores for eligibility. This year, she was judging essays written in the history category. She found about only 2% to be thoughtful and well-written.

I should have made abundantly clear that the phrase "Something like, say, the wheel" was the professor's replacement phrase for the actual question. The replacement phrase was used to protect the anonymity of the students' responses.

I also should have made more clear that I found the value in the post to be in the comments.

The students were asked to describe what life would be like today if something critical to modern society had never been invented. Something like, say, the wheel. Here is a little sample of what the kids had to say:

• "History is a very valuable topic to today's society."
• "The wheel should never have been invented in order to benefit society."
  
• "Thousands of people would strew together creating uncertainty and disorder."
• "Without the wheel, all of mankind would have been and would be vastly effected."
• "The industrial revolution began with the invention of the wheel in 15th century Europe."

Go read the comments, as well.