| July 14, Respond to the Editor's Note |
Editor's Note a postcard from los angeles: Would you have stuck with your education if your spouse had set fire to your textbooks and notes in a fit of jealousy, forcing you to leave home with your two children and move into a homeless shelter for a month? Or if you had been forced to photocopy your textbooks, chapter by chapter, because you couldn't afford to buy them? Would you have had the persistence to take every single class twice—just to pass—and still finish? According to a professor of nursing at an inner-city community college in Los Angeles, these are all true stories from this just-concluded school year. These students can help us better understand the complexities of the debate on affirmative action. This professor teaches in an associate degree nursing program that admits students by lottery, not on the basis of grades, test scores, or skin color. What makes success especially challenging for some of the students is the fact that their prior education left them shockingly short. According to this teacher, five of her students—all high school graduates—could read only at the fourth-grade level when they were admitted to the nursing department. The highest reading assessment score in this year's class was a 10th-grade reading level. For many, every paragraph, every writing assignment, every nursing care plan was an almost insurmountable struggle. Many of this professor's students had never left the inner city, even for a day. Some had never been to an airport, never driven along the Pacific Coast Highway, never seen the beach or the San Fernando Valley. When she offered to take them to visit the UCLA School of Nursing, many didn't even know where Westwood was, much less how to get there. Some of these students will end up passing boards and starting successful, meaningful nursing careers. And some will not. But as President Clinton, University of California Regent Ward Connerly, and the rest of us wrestle with the question of who should get coveted seats in schools of higher learning—and why—this professor's experience sheds some light. Many, many students are starting
college with significant deficits in writing, reading,
and Until we rectify these distressing problems, the education system cannot be fair. The inner- city nursing professor asked me, rhetorically, “What favor do you do when you admit people who will fail?” And I wonder, what will it take for us to prepare every student with the essential skills? Proponents of affirmative action often talk about creating a level playing field. But to take the analogy further, nobody starts college football without having played the game before. For example, it would be cruel to put me on a football field without the right training, practice, and equipment. The healthcare professions need diversity. We've got to find a way to get students what they need long before they start their first day of college. Barbara
Bronson Gray, MN, RN
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| Past Editor's
Notes
Too much money or too many misconceptions? One thing technology rarely does is answer society's questions about health care |
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| Illustration by Malcolm Garris/PhotoDisc | ||
computation skills,
problems that follow them through any professional school
they might enter. In some schools in the California
State University system, a majority of first-year
students must start college by taking remedial classes.
Even at the University of California, and even for
native speakers, English and math skills are frequently
so low that time and energy—and even precious
university resources—have to be spent helping
students learn the basics.