College Preparatory Course Research Articles

Abilities and Disabilities of College Students in Elementary Algebra

be based upon a careful analysis of the individual's needs, interests, activities, and abilities. To depend upon interest alone as a medium for the organization of courses or the counselling of individuals is to ignore other factors of equal or greater importance in the educational process. 4. The results of the Ohio State Psychological Test indicate that 26.1 percent of the graduates of the college preparatory course for adults would likely fail to profit by a college experience. There should be, therefore, a differentiated curriculum in evening schools that would per mit the careful and early selection of those who are preparing for college and, similarly, of those who are not interested in college but in a general high-school course with specialization in commerce and business, tech nology, or trade. 5. It is safe to say that approximately eighty-five percent of adult groups already registered for courses are capable of profiting by their new educational experience. It is doubtful if the other fifteen percent are worth expending time, energy, and money on. Adults are entitled to as much education of the kind they are able to assimilate as a community is able to provide. If continuing education means, however, that there must be stimulating agencies to awaken men from their own inertia, to awaken men from a contented day dream, then the process is fundamentally wrong and should be discouraged in every detail. Those who would stimulate artificially the entire community to improve itself by taking courses, are injuring not only the community but also the adult education movement. Interest in self improvement must be real and the urge must come first from within the individual. Too many of those who need sound instruction in some of the fundamen tals of life have been sold courses far beyond their comprehension, inter est, or assimilative ability. The interests of adults in continuing their education must be genuine and must develop as a result of a real need. The process, otherwise, becomes one of schooling, an expensive process and one in which public educational institutions cannot well afford to participate.