Now It's College Graduates That Can't Write

Here in the United States colleges have complained for years about students who need to take remedial courses before they can start their freshman classes. But in Britain, if that is possible, things are worse, according to Minette Marrin. In Britain

huge numbers of children arrive at secondary school unable to read properly for their age or for their studies. That is well known, despite new Labour’s empty claims of success in education. What is less well known is that most students arrive at university or at colleges of further education unable to write properly. Most of them have little or no idea of how to set out an essay or of how to express themselves in writing at all.

And it seems that a lot of them don’t even know how to think properly after they leave the university. So why bother to hire university graduates? Good point.

The director of the Heads, Teachers & Industry trust recently said “there is a growing sense in industry that [university] graduates are no more useful as employees than [high] school-leavers. Transferable and functional skills such as communication, writing and comprehension are lacking, and companies often find it more cost-effective to employ school-leavers and train them themselves.”

So what’s the point? What is the point of having government elementary schools that fail to teach students to read and write properly. What is the point of having government secondary schools that fail to deliver students to the university with the skills to write a term paper? The cost of primary and secondary education in Britain, as in the United States, is about 4.5 percent of GDP.

It’s hard to remember now but back in the day the argument that the government education activists made was that only the government could mobilize the children of the nation, educate them, and prepare them to contribute to society in the challenging modern world. But now the government education system clearly is not bothering to educate the children in its charge. And it sounds as though it doesn’t matter because employers will spend the money to train their employees instead.

So why spend the money on the government schools?