Why Grades Decline in Colleges- Question of the Day

 Why Grades Decline in Colleges

Herbert E. Hawkes' well-known essay, "Why Boys Fail in Colleges" comprises some common causes of the failure of boys in colleges. One of them is the most significant cause of failure he mentions that a bright boy who has always done his schoolwork satisfactorily without effort, and who has never learned what the real worth of hard work is. He considers that he can float through easily college with as little effort as he did through school.  

It is surprising to note that how a bright student fails to improve his grades in college is always a question mark both for the institution and for the teachers. 

How a boy's all abilities go wasted unable to improve despite the fact that the college teachers are supposed to be more experienced than those of school. 

The institution tries to facilitate both the teachers and students with the best of equipment and study environment. 

For it is almost miserable to see all of this keenness and extra provisions go wasted when expected results do come and statistics get a drastic decline in grades.

The cause for this sort of thing is again not very easy, for it involves a total change of attitude and the forming of a completely new set of habits and attitudes. No one can do this but the boy himself; all that the rest of us can do is to point out what is the issue.

It is generally observed that most of the school systems follow a Pre-nine academic schedule, which provides maximum hours to the children to study literature and science subjects before the regular session actually commences. These schools generally focus on grammar learning with the help of English translation of Urdu sentences into English. Besides it, extra reading material is designed for the children at school, which is a great advantage over college students who try to learn by heart the answers to the questions of the exercises given at the end of each lesson. 

The paper patterns of inter and school levels are quite different from each other. Each question carries a different weig

htage. The passages for English translation and comprehensive passages at the matric level are selective and prescribed for the students, whereas at the F.Sc level this becomes an unseen category. Here the college teachers don't pay as much attention as it is required to this question owing to fewer studies hours.  Thus learning grammatical concepts, which is the core part of the matric syllabus, at once squeezes in one question carrying only 5 marks out of 100 marks in part I at the college level. 

At school level type of sentences regarding simple, complex & compound sentences. Students learn about clauses, phrases, including direct and indirect narration, active and passive voice, use of prepositions, pair of words and parsing of sentences. At the college level, vocabulary is superior to that of their matric level but still, it is confined to only 10 Marks in Part I & 10 Marks in Part II, which are more or less good enough to assess children's vocab. Reading of the Text at the school level is more or less practised whereas at college Level it is totally out of question just because of lack of time or teacher's own orientation in the class. Notes and grammar compositions are recommended to boost the business of the publishers with the help of the author's and compilers. Both at school and college level, only those students who have learnt and encouraged to do creative writing, otherwise, every letter, application and the moral story is mugged up/ learnt by heart at inter level. 

Lastly, apart from examiner's personal attitude, the question is why does he not award passing marks to the average student. The answer is that candidate has not written the right answer to the question. And why is the candidate not able to answer the question right because he has not learnt well. He has not learnt well because he is unable to read what he is going to learn, and finally he collapses. Answer sheets of the good students speak themselves. Apart from some extra-curricular activities, reading newspapers, magazines, storybooks is totally absent at the college level. Whereas the students have some attraction with these boosters at the school level. 

A future asset of the nation

Recommendations & Suggestions 

1. The teacher must realize the importance of the issue and pay full attention to get the desired results.

2. Reading must be imparted with internal exams. College Library should not remain deserted.

3. Presentations must be an essential component of college monthly exams. It must have 25% weightage in each assessment.

4. Shining 🌟 stars must be highlighted with their performance/output.

5. College magazine must be a part of the college prospectus.

6. Reading of I.com students must be promoted and assessed regularly.

7. A copy of solved up-to-date papers must be given to the average student.

8. Board Examiner's marking scheme must be available to every student. 

Finally, it is highlighted that nothing is impossible in the 🌎 world, especially in the academic world. It is just a matter of learning and learning, and one may have learned something new that nobody has learned so far.

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