As editor of a college guide which champions distinctly unfashionable ideas—for instance, that students should be required to take a “core curriculum” designed to impart basic knowledge across a variety of subjects—it’s always nice to find support from an unlikely quarter. In this case, it comes from ACT, the company which administers one of the two “make or break” standardized tests which high school students take while applying to college. The New York Times reported on August 17 that ACT had reported, based on the test scores of some 1.2 million high school grads who took the company’s test in 2004, that “fewer than one in four met the college-readiness benchmarks in all four subjects tested: reading comprehension, English, math and science.” Even more troublingly, “Only about half…have the reading skills they need to succeed in college, and even fewer are prepared for college-level science and math courses.”

This news should splash like a bucket of cold water over the heads of college administrators at most American schools, where freshmen face paltry “distributional requirements” (usually a “gut” introductory course or two), which do not even pretend to pass on the basics of mathematical, scientific, literary, or historical disciplines—much less the principles of the American founding, the distinctive features of Western civilization, or the history of the Christian faith which shaped them both. Instead, schools throughout the Ivy League and its imitators (with a few exceptions gratefully noted in Choosing the Right College) demand of students only that they expose themselves to the “approaches” of various disciplines, without having to master any knowledge in particular. Instead of traveling to the foreign country that is the past, the lovely but alien terrain of mathematics or physics or Greek philosophy, students are allowed to drop by an intellectual Epcot Center, pick up a few souvenirs, collect their (inevitable) B+ or A-, and forget about the whole thing. Given the specialization and careerism which guidance counselors and parents too often encourage among young students, this means that many students emerge from college ignorant of nearly everything outside their major. By contrast, secondary students from Europe and Japan enter college with strong basic knowledge of a wide variety of disciplines—or else they go to trade schools, where such mastery is not expected of them.

The ACT study shows that intellectual narrowness is no longer confined to the undergraduate experience—where it is lamentable enough—but has crept back into high school, to the point where students lack even the basic skills to begin to understand subject matters in which they do not already happen to excel. An ACT executive explained to the Times that “that too many students are not taking the kind of rigorous high school courses that will prepare them for college. In fact, only 56 percent of this year’s graduates who took the ACT had completed the recommended core curriculum for college-bound students: four years of English and three years each of social studies, science and math at the level of algebra or higher…. Those who do complete the core curriculum are far more likely to meet college readiness standards, Dr. Ferguson said, but the percentage who complete that core has been falling.”

I can testify to this from personal experience, having spent two years in the trenches teaching freshman composition at Louisiana State University, where I finished my Ph.D. The (mostly bright, and cooperative) recent high school graduates I encountered had received pitifully little preparation in basic writing, which meant that teaching assistants were expected to perform compositional triage—trying to make up for four years or more of neglect in a single semester. To this end, one of our mentors told us, “I don’t want you trying to turn this into a class on Western culture or literature or history. You can’t take for granted that students know about these things, and it’s not your job to try to introduce them. We just want you to teach the most basic writing skills.” We were not to assign remotely challenging readings (I was specifically rebuked for handing out a Chesterton essay, which contained too many unfamiliar words the students might have to…hold your breath…look up in the dictionary… and besides was riddled with “sexist language.” I told my tenured mentor to stuff it.) or assign writing topics that addressed philosophical issues. Instead, we should teach students how to write argumentative papers about subjects such as…on-campus parking. The food in the cafeteria. The price of football tickets.

The ACT report confirms that this is not a problem limited to Acadiana, or the South—it exists nationwide, and it threatens to strangle education in its cradle. The mediocrity of high school education is only fostered by the absence of serious core curricula in undergraduate schools; teachers who know that their students will be able to opt out of virtually any courses which don’t interest them, any subject matters in which they don’t naturally do well, will focus their energies elsewhere, or simply let themselves off the hook.

It is our duty as Americans who care about education in a free society to put them back on the hook—to support colleges which make real intellectual demands of and dispense core knowledge to their freshmen, to demand of high schools that they provide demanding core classes and stop treating colleges like ($25-40,000 per annum) remedial summer schools, and to judge universities more by the solid core of education they provide every single student who graduates than by the occasional achievements of highly paid tenured geniuses.

Phenomenal article! As a college planner I am constantly fighting high school counselors concerning the weak curriculums the students are permitted to take. As expensive as a college education is these days, it's amazing the amount of money that is wasted on remedial courses. Once again, great article.