High School Doesn’t Always Prepare Students for College

High school doesn’t always prepare students for college. One of the concepts that most, but not all, of the teachers I had in high school tried to sell us was that if we worked hard, if we behaved and earned good grades, we would be prepared to deal with the challenges we’d face after commencement. I’m sure that this was – and still might be – true for students in advanced placement or “college bound” classes, but for those of us who attended regular courses in the core curriculum and then went to college – either at the two-year community college or four-year institutions, it was the educational equivalent of the snake oil and other fake remedies sold by “medicine peddlers” in the late 19th Century to cure almost any ailment known to man – but didn’t.

(One thing that our high school teachers did not tell us was that more than half of us "regular class" students would have to take remedial courses in math or English at the community college level, but that's another topic for another time.)

Sure, I did well in all three of my English composition and most of my mass communications/journalism courses thanks to my three years on the newspaper and/or yearbook staffs at South Miami, but when it came to many of the Core Curriculum classes at Miami-Dade Community College, I initially felt that I was way out of my league, especially in Prof. Jay Brown’s humanities class and Prof. Isabella Harty-Hugues’ social studies course.

Both of these instructors were very opinionated and academically challenging; Prof. Brown was a libertarian who assigned us to read Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and had no patience for students who simply thought showing up in class and took notes would suffice to earn a passing grade. He wasn’t shy about critiquing mainstream religion and explaining how the rise of Christianity had actually reversed the progress of European civilization during the Dark Ages, and many students hated him for it.

In a similar vein, Prof. Harty-Hugues (who died a few years ago in a tragic accident in front of her home) was a very left-leaning “progressive” who tried to convey, among other things, that President Lincoln’s goal during the Civil War wasn’t merely to restore the Union or free the slaves, but rather to protect the business interests of Northern financiers and industrialists. She was somewhat sympathetic toward the various Marxist-inspired Latin American revolutionary movements and very critical of the Reagan Administration, two stances which were not popular among my classmates.

In sharp contrast, I do not recall ever really knowing what political beliefs most of my high school teachers held dear. Sure, I knew that my 11th grade English teacher leaned toward the Democratic party and its policies, but that was because I was aware that she was dating an architect with political ambitions and some of us students were volunteers for his campaign to be mayor of Miami. To this day, however, when I think about my other instructors I remember them either for the subject they taught or by their personality traits (Ms. Brock, my 10th grade English teacher, was sarcastic and bubbly, while Mr. Bridge, my first journalism teacher, was calm and efficient as a lecturer and adviser), but not for their political views.

Another huge contrast I noticed was that both professors made us aware that while most of us were adept at taking notes and memorizing information by rote, hardly any of us had been taught the art of critical thinking. Again, this skill may have been taught in the AP or “college-bound” classes at South Miami, but not to us in “regular” classes. This was most obvious whenever “tough” profs tried to engage us in lively class discussions; most of my classmates would either sit at their desks with blank expressions on their young (and bored) faces or try to rely solely on their notes without any original viewpoints or insights. (It was during these classroom debates that Prof Brown would say exasperatedly, “Obviously you people weren’t taught how to think!” Of course, many students resented such comments, and quite a few of my HUM 1020 classmates dropped the class before “Drop Day” came and went in late March of 1985.)

As for me, I managed to adapt to college-level coursework by studying hard and trying to be as open-minded as possible without compromising my own core beliefs regarding politics and philosophical values. I think that being really curious about the world and having a passion for learning helped, but what I think really helped me survive the transition from public high school to the college level was the year and-a-half break that I took between graduation and my first semester in college. That 18-month gap gave me time to read a great deal, recharge my mental and physical batteries, and think about what I wanted to achieve in the future.