Where are the Basics?

Yes, professor. What do they teach them at these schools? Tomorrow Tina must hand in her final research paper for her senior project. Her topic: why Christians should be more tolerant of New Age music.

She’s had this project since the beginning of the semester and, up until today, has not let me help her with her paper. Why? I have no idea. I taught 5 consecutive semesters of freshman college composition and yet she didn’t want my input until this evening. Unfortunately, it is now too late.

I read her paper this afternoon and noticed some egregious citation problems, as well as lack of credible sources in general. I eventually looked up from the paper to ask her, “Have they taught you how to research at your school?” I got the deer-in-headlights stare. Of course they haven’t taught her how to research. How silly of me to think that, before assigning them a research paper, they would instruct them on the fundamentals of research methods.

I began at the beginning – a very good place to start, says Julie Andrews. Keywords. I am astonished that this was a new concept to Tina. A simple Google search of key phrases and words produced over a million sites related to her topic.

Next came the issue of source credibility and substance. Oh my, how the young ones love Wikipedia and the dictionary. Her reluctance of revising her essay was based on the fear that new information would change her claims. That, I told her, was all part of the research process. If you find evidence to suggest your claims to be wrong, maybe you need to rewrite your claims. This was met with whines and groans.

This brought us back to the matter of showing me her essay so late in the game. With only tonight to make these major discoveries, there is no way she will get her paper to the level of where it needs to be. I’ve written comments in the margins, given her helpful research tools, steered her in the right direction, pointed out organization flaws, confusing and contradictory statements, even corrected all of her grammar. Now the crunch begins.

When, oh when, will they learn? But an even better question: Why aren’t the schools teaching them what they need to know in order to do the lessons that the school assigns in the first place? Where is the logic of the curriculum?