Getting Medieval

I am an adjunct college professor. It supplements my retirement, keeps me in touch with a wide variety of historical facts and keeps me young.

As other members of the professoriate know, grading papers is agony and ecstasy - unfortunately, mainly agony.

I bring this up because it seems to me to be primarily a function of student's secondary education. What I ask for is a relatively simple comparison of evidence between the pre-modern and modern eras (admittedly an an oversimplification) What is maddening is that so many students cannot deal with evidence - either analyzing it or effectively using it nor can they present a coherent answer to a (what is, at least in my mind) a fairly straight forward and unambiguous question. Finally, many of their language skills are very weak. How did we get into a state where most of a generation cannot analyze a question, clearly evaluate the available evidence, and order the evidence in a coherent, clearly argued paper.

I do not know what is taught in secondary schools (I live in Kentucky, where there is a requirement to submit a written 'portfolio'). What is in this portfolio is, based on my conversation with HS teachers whom I know, expressive prose. No analysis, no argument, no evidence.

I blame this on the collapse of the Trivium as a foundation of US education. Grammar - can you use the language correctly according to accepted norms (and I know that the idea of accepted norms is in peril); - logic: can you think clearly about a question on which evidence is either available or must be sought and the ability to weigh that evidence while acknowledging alternative arguments or evidence (and why you did not find it useful for your argument) and, finally, rhetoric. Can you use logic and evidence to present a convincing argument while being aware of the types of counter-argument that arrayed against it.

Maybe this is too much to ask. But a clear understanding of what secondary school should produce (leading to the curriculum that would produce it) seems to me best achieved by going back to basics.

ColonelJim