> I wanted to address the first issue. I am all for NOT spoon feeding
> students. Developmental studies has it's place, but at the university
> level, students should be expected to perform at the university level.
> I was told once (though I don't know it for certain) that Georgia Tech
> offers Calculus 1 as their first available math class. If you can't
> pass Calc 1, you can go home. I'm not saying all colleges should
> abandon anything below Calculus (after all, GT is a fairly prestigious
> school), but I think College Algebra is a good cutoff point. The
> problem you might find is that if the developmental classes are
> dropped, then the developmental students will find themselves doing
> poorly in Algebra. Then pressure will be brought on by administrators
> to "dumb down" the course to get a better percentage of students
> passing. If you do this, then you have just made your Algebra course
> a developmental math course. This must not be allowed.
>
> Just my opinion, I could be wrong.
>
> Sam Evers
> University of Alabama
>
> ps. At the U of A we do have a developmental math course (no credit),
> but it has long been my opinion that it should be removed.
>
I don't think I could dissagree more strongly with Sam
Evers. At Wake Tech we try to get students to learn and apply
mathematics, not turn them away because they didn't learn it in the
past. What is the point of any course if you already know the material?
If students come to us unprepared, then we prepare them. That's our job
and that's what a teacher should do - not tell the students that if they
didn't learn it in high school we just aren't going to teach them!!!
I do agree that students should _not_ get college credit for non college
courses and we don't give credit for our developmental course. Neither
does NC State, just up the road, but they still teach the developmental
courses.
Reality dictates that we find some way of bringing large numbers of
Americans up to speed in mathematics if we wish to compete in the world
marketplace. We can decide to turn them away from our colleges for
having failed to succeed in high school or we can fix the problem by
remediating their weaknesses. I vote on the latter.
Cyrus McCarter
Wake Technical CC