Scholastic Rigor: ALSO DOIN IT RONG
Today's paper also had a local article that annoyed me, for a completely different set of reasons.

It's a piece about Minnesota schools, and how they're getting harder. "Pressure from business for more skilled graduates to compete globally, from colleges that want better prepared freshmen, from other schools competing for students and from politicians is ratcheting up what kids are expected to learn and master. Rigor has become the new education buzzword."

So then they give a bunch of examples.

First example: "It means that eighth-grade students in Heather Good's 21st-century literacy class in Edina will have to work with another student to complete a project without ever meeting face-to-face. The Valley View Middle School students will use e-mail, Google, Skype (the Internet visual phone service) and other technologies used in real business situations, Good says."

BZZZT. Using e-mail, Google, and Skype is trend-chasing, not rigor. In fact, when parents say "we want more rigor in the schools," they typically mean, "we want our children to learn to write essays with correct grammar and coherent sentence structure, instead of wasting time on e-mail and GOD HELP US Skype, WTF?"

Second example: "It means Abby Boehm-Turner's seventh-grade English students at Murray Junior High in St. Paul will spend at least half their class time reading or writing, and they will read biographies such as "Bone Black" by bell hooks, not just to know her life story, but how she told it."

OK, I'll give you that one. This is an example of rigor.

Third example: "And it means that Nancy Berg's ninth-grade biomedical science students at East Ridge High School in Woodbury must learn to read an electrocardiograph (EKG) machine as well as a gel electrophoresis report (which identifies DNA)."

BZZZT. Not rigor. For ninth graders, this would actually be a great example of overspecialization. No one needs to learn to read an EKG in ninth grade; in fact, they really shouldn't be taking "biomedical science," they should be taking things like "biology" and learning what DNA is. If "biomedical science" is just a fancy way of presenting 9th grade Bio, and analyzing a gel electrophoresis report helps to bring the DNA lesson to life for them, or if studying EKGs helps them to learn how the heart works, that's great; it might be an example of inspired teaching, but it's not an example of rigor.

I don't teach at a college, but both my parents do, and a number of my friends, so I have a pretty good idea of what deficiencies college professors see in their incoming freshmen, and it's not their inability to read an EKG machine and it's sure as hell not their inability to use Skype and Google. Here is what colleges want that they are not getting:

1. Students who write well, or at least coherently -- who can write a paper that makes a proposition, supports it with something resembling an argument, wraps up with a conclusion, and cites sources.

2. Students who are at least not stunningly behind in math and science. Who can do basic algebra, at least, and understand fundamental concepts like atoms and gravity. I'd really like to include the Scientific Method on this list, but in fact I think most science professors are resigned to having to teach it.

3. Students who know how to do basic library research -- that is to say, they can go to a library catalog, search for a topic, find the relevant books in the stacks, evaluate them to pick one or more (and "ooh, this one looks short" counts as evaluation), and read or at least skim them to gather information.

4. Students who take responsibility for their work and learning -- who do not approach the college with the attitude of, "I am your customer; your job is to spoon-feed me."

5. An ability to follow simple directions is also a plus.

Molly is only in third grade, so my personal knowledge of exactly what happens in the upper grades is limited. But rigor, IMO, would include a lot of writing; there would be high expectations for coherency; there would be at least some papers that required outside reading. Of books, not EKGs. That may be happening, but that's sure not what they talked about.