scold the mold

We're having a minor crisis at work so I'm a little distracted. That's on top of my normal allergy-head fuzziness. Yesterday my ears were a bit stopped up and I kept having to ask people to repeat themselves.

I'm reading this book at work called College Knowledge. It's about making sure kids are prepared for college work, not just for getting admitted to college. I wanted to see how much the author stressed research skills (something we see lacking here in incoming freshman. Heck, in outgoing seniors!) and he does mention them in a few places but places little stress on them.

I have been asked by a few high school folks (teachers, librarians, etc.) to help them prepare their kids for university but it's tough. If you haven't noticed, schools are focused waaaaay too much on standardized testing and way too little on actual skills and knowledge acquisition. I blame those bottom line straight from the business world administrators and state politician types.

There are a bunch of good tutoring and mentoring programs out there, so if you're working in academia you might consider helping some high school students develop the smarts and the courage they'll need in college. For many, it's the first place they fail. I know it was for me (well, almost, if you don't count high school calculus that I barely passed).