English 99: Literacy among ruins

The article by Frank Gannon is an amusing and interesting article. I found it funny and I like how Gannon uses a sense of humor in it. The article is a description of Gannon's experience teaching an English 99 class at a College. Gannon describes the class as a pre requisite class for kids who can't handle regular English, is a pass/fail grade and is basically meant to get money out of the kids before they drop out. A class like this shouldn't exist. I think its horrible that a University would even take advantage of kids like that. But not all of the blame can be placed on the University. A lot of it has to go to High School English. Three out of my four English classes in high school were simply a waste of time. My teachers were slack-off teachers and the curriculum jumped all over the place. We read stories which a tape
player read to us, our assignments consisted of picking a quote from the reading and explaining it. Basically as long as you wrote in complete sentences you got credit. I hardly wrote any essays and when I did they were on which book did you like best? And tell me about your summer vacation? These classes were just regular English classes one step down from AP, which by the way my only regret is not taking AP English classes. And now coming into collegewhere I felt overwhelmed in the beginning of my English class. I felt as if the English class didn't do anything at all to prepare me for college level english. Now after a couple of weeks into college im adjusting to it but overall High School English, at least through my experience, is failing to prepare kids for college.