To my dismay, most of the work submitted was riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, sentence fragments and run-ons, factual errors, and often all of these and more. In addition, a significant number of the essays lacked any references for the information presented. Here are some excerpts from my classmates' work. I have not altered any of these.
"They will have people all over the world and us as Americans will not know exactly what Muslims believes what and does the right things."
"Even though there is abuse in America. They have to follow the laws of man. It is really crazy."
"...there are so many Islam people that live all over the world."
"The women in Israel are very missed treated. When Saddam Hussein ran the country they barely even had the right to live."
"They had muslim scholars who made many contributions to the fields of History, mathmatics, Geography and Medicene. So it is how they also spread there faith."
"Africa also a major country..."
"North Africa found only limited trading opportunities with the native inhabitants, and instead turned into colonization."
"A genuine understanding of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, its Islamic heritage and its leading role in the Arab and Muslim worlds."
"Syria While much more progressive than Saudi Arabia, women are allowed to be educated and hold jobs outside the home, still presents many challenges for women."
I admit I had some good chuckles over these, but they were quickly followed by groans and grimaces. Is this what our schools are producing today? The ages and education levels of these students varied from teenage college freshmen to seniors in their 20s to middle-aged adults returning to school at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Perhaps I could overlook the occasional minor spelling error, but with the availability of spell check that shouldn't be necessary. Writing with correct spelling, proper grammar, and complete sentences should be second nature by now. In addition, the glaring factual errors in some of these "sentences" (I'm using the term loosely) are completely unacceptable.
Many of these students have fallen victim to educational experimentation in a broken system which equates "new" with "better" and automatically discards the tried and true educational methods of time past as obsolete. Parents, remember that you play a crucial role in your child's education, and you can and should step in and see to it that they are educated properly.
