I kind of want to call bullshit on this analysis.
> Well, the night before, I studied probably pretty close to an hour." And with that the scales fell from my eyes.
> "An hour? Do you realize that when I was in college it was common to start studying for big exams a week or more before?"
I suspect the professor has forgotten just how much college students have on their plates at any given time. An Intro to Philosophy class may not be everyone's top priority.
[0] Starting in Louisiana and finishing in California.
Four decades ago, you really could pay for college with a minimum wage summer job. Now, it would require far more than a year's full time work.
https://newrepublic.com/article/122814/how-many-hours-would-...
With that said, there's certainly a disparity in education quality depending on where you live, and how affluent you are. In addition, for kids who attend college, there's a disparity across departments and majors based on the high school background of the students. It is possible that for whatever reason, the author of that article ended up assigned to teaching a "fluff" course at their college.
Your comment (and assumed mentality that comes with it) are what is wrong with our educational system. I went to school with people that could not add and were functionally illiterate - they graduated too so I can assure you this is not fake news.
Outside of your "Catholic college prep high school" is the world that the rest of us live in and in that world this is a reality. A reality that can not be addressed because the well off people like you say: This is fake news because my kids are fine. If you have not please educate yourself on things like: White Flight and the correlation between property taxes and education. I have posted one link below but you can google to learn more.
https://www.npr.org/2016/04/18/474256366/why-americas-school...
Note: My father is a social worker who deals with these uneducated people for a living. For the first 17 years of my life I heard story after story like this, I also have spent years tutoring kids and adults in prisons and jails so I do not consider my experience to be anecdotal.
However, this is not the normal educational experience of many in America. Outside of private and (good) public schools, what's described here is probably the rule, not the exception.
But that's not really the argument this little piece is making, because it's arguing that incoming college students are underprepared by high school, and demographically, college students as a cohort tend to come from the better high schools anyways.
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[0]: https://books.google.com/books?id=5D9AAQAAIAAJ&focus=searchw...
[1]: https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/franklin-and-marshall-c...
At lower-status colleges, the issues he describes are very real.
http://guide.berkeley.edu/undergraduate/colleges-schools/let...
The fact that a pretty decent school needs to provide and demand this of their incoming undergrads seems to suggest they (still) have no shortage students who come in without those skills. I don't think it warrants the kind of handwringing in the 'analysis' but it's probably not complete bullshit.
We wrote everything longhand. You were allowed 4 corrected errors per page; if you exceeded 4, you were required to rewrite the entire page. This sucked, but it definitely grinds grammar rules and spelling into you.
In my Freshman year of High School, the English teacher gave us a grammar test on the first day to see where we were. Two people passed [including me--I got one question wrong], but the bulk of the students failed.
I remember being surprised that so many of my long-time classmates could fail the test.
Consequently the teacher spent the first half of the year on grammar issues instead of other literary pursuits.