The writing is on the wall

Esther Cepeda has written a column bemoaning this fact: "Just 24 percent of students in the eighth and 12th grades performed at the proficient level in writing, meaning that they demonstrated a clear understanding of the writing task they'd been assigned, organized their thoughts effectively, and provided details and elaboration that supported and developed the main idea of their piece."
 
But I think it comes down to much the same reason we have a nation of poor readers, and underperforming math, science and history students: These subjects are hard and no one likes hard work anymore. Though we pay lip service to working hard, most students are subtlety taught to avoid it.

We drill kids with the idea that learning should be fun and show them videos so that they don't have to trudge through texts to understand meanings of challenging concepts. We teach them the language of inability by assuring them that if they are being challenged by a difficult reading passage, it must be because they are "visual learners," or if they don't like tackling tasks on their own they must be "social learners" -- and everyone knows that if we push kids, parents will have no qualms about pushing back.

Let's face it, education today is a perfect reflection of our modern lives, which are predicated on convenience and optimized for entertainment. Teacher preparation programs spend more time showing future teachers how to nurture and accommodate than how to make students into high performers."

Read more here:  http://www.indystar.com/article/20120919/OPINION12/209200320/Esther-Cepeda-writing-wall