Kan't Righte a Centance to Sayve Themsellfs

Ann Barrett, managing director of the English language proficiency exam at Waterloo University has gone on record bemoaning the fact that, "Thirty per cent of students who are admitted are not able to pass at a minimum level."
She's referring to the exam testing English language sills that the university requires its incoming students to pass. One of the few post-secondary institutions in Canada to set this requirement, Waterloo is finding that its exam is providing proof that the profs are right when they say there is an increasingly high number of students who can not write coherent, grammatically correct sentences, let alone full-length papers. In fact, Barrett says the failure rate on the exam has risen from 25% to 30% in just the past few years.
I don't pretend to know all the factors involved, but I can speak with authority about some of them. Having worked as a teacher in Ontario for many a year, I have encountered so many who drew their pay cheques from the education system while directly contributing to the above problem.
There were those like the grade six teacher who had taught most of the grade seven students I taught at one school. One girl, in particular, comes to mind. This young lady could not string together a coherent sentence to save herself and yet she arrived in my classroom with a report card she was proud of for all the A's on it, including one for English. When I placed her at the "D" level where she belonged in the first term, her parents were dumbfounded. I had communicated with them previous to the reports about her lack of writing skill and what she could do to help ameliorate the situation. She didn't put in the necessary effort and her mark reflected that truth, but her parents still protested her mark. I had to wonder if they had ever read any of her homework assignments. I'm guessing perhaps they never did. There was no problem such as an ESL component to her English, or to theirs either. Neither was the girl in need of any special education assistance. After working with her for a term, I could say with confidence that what this student needed above all was a good reality check. In order to get it to her, I had to go one-on-one with the principal of that school, who said giving her the mark she actually had earned might "hurt her self-esteem". One sad part of that whole situation, for me, was that the principal was merely espousing an approach to marking that I heard over and over again, from other teachers and other principals, too.
I'm reminded of one year when I was at another school, teaching grade four and the grade three teacher sat down with me in June to discuss the students who would be coming to my classroom from hers. It's a common practice for teachers to have these chats and this one was moving along in fairly ordinary fashion until she arrived at one name on the list, a girl whom she labelled as "slow". This teacher actually advised me that the girl was well-behaved and would be no problem if I were to "give her some colouring and sit her in a corner". When the fall term brought this girl to my room, she and I began a year during which she came up two years in her reading and writing skills' levels. It did take extra work on her part and on mine, but obviously it was doable. What had stopped any of her previous teachers from doing the work with her?
I remember a year during which I taught grade eight and there were a couple of students in the group who specialized in doing as little as possible of anything that even vaguely resembled work. I was in contact throughout the term with the parents, making sure they were aware of how little their offspring were contributing to their own learning. When it came time to write the reports, I was unable to give them marks above 50% in more than one area, because they had done little to nothing all term to demonstrate whether or not they had even comprehended the subject matter. Once again, I found myself going one-on-one with the principal. The person was different; the ridiculous approach to the report card was the same. "Just give them at least 50%," I was told, "so that they won't feel bad about themselves." When I refused to lie, I was given to understand that I had made myself about as popular with the principal as a skunk at a garden party.
I taught for many years and I have a binder stuffed with letters written to me both by parents and by students; letters of which I am proud. They are letters that say thank you for my teaching and my caring about the students and their acquisition of the various skills they would need as they made their way through the school system. I would not change the way I taught, but if I could, I most certainly would change the prevailing attitude toward teaching and marking indulged in by far too many.
Putting one's nose to the grindstone in order to learn the rules of grammar needed to construct coherent communication may be a little less than fun, fun, fun. Working to get grammar basics across to students may also be a little less than fun, fun, fun. Certainly, putting the pedagogical foot firmly down and refusing to make meaningless gifts of unearned academic standings would not meet with too many people's definiton of jollity and joy, either. It needs to be done, however, and it needs to be done as soon as possible, probably in most schools in Ontario, and likely across Canada, too. For anyone who questions the veracity of that statement, s/he needs only read Ann Barrett's dismaying disclaimer about the supposed elite students being produced by our school system. Even students coming from grade 12 with good marks "still can't pass our simple test", says she. Isn't it time for some rethinking of the way our school system handles the teaching and marking of its students, in English and possibly in every subject area?