Comments on: More ‘gappers’ postpone college

By: Micha Elyi

Micha Elyi — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 07:03:24 +0000

Another alternative for the gap-year STEM student would be to brush up on the math skills by taking a pre-Calculus class in the first semester of college or by taking pre-Calculus at a junior college in the summer before heading off to Big School.

By: Right Wing Nation » Blog Archive » Presenting The Carnival Of Education

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 12:32:14 +0000

[...] Jacobs presents More ‘gappers’ postpone college posted at Joanne [...]

By: chris

chris — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 22:43:54 +0000

Superdestroyer … two alternatives would be
1) do something in the gap year which applies that math

2) figure out that if you’ve crammed the math, but haven’t grokked it, then there is a deeper problem.

By: pm

pm — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 19:43:23 +0000

I’ll have to make a new year’s resolution to start using “I” instead of that irritating phrase

By: pm

pm — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 19:39:55 +0000

If there’s any problem here its not with the people who take a ‘gap’ year its with the people who look on ‘gap’ years favorably without good reason. Personally I have no idea whether the results of gap years or good or not. But I do suspect if the results are not good then they’ll eventually fade away as they seem to cost a lot of money.

By: gbl3rd

gbl3rd — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 18:28:07 +0000

Darren,

Are they taking two year enlistments at this time?

By: Darren

Darren — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 01:42:37 +0000

Being ex-military myself, I wouldn’t have a problem with teenagers’ joining up for 2 years and then going to college. On my own blog I have several posts about the Troops To College program at Sacramento State. But the military shouldn’t be the only way to earn some maturity. I’ve heard snark about this “gap year”, but with the exception of forgetting math and science (a proposition I find dubious at best), I haven’t heard a good reason to be against it–except that maybe it’s elitist.

By: Darren

Darren — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 00:33:31 +0000

Being ex-military myself, I wouldn’t have a problem with teenagers’ joining up for 2 years and then going to college. On my own blog I have several posts about the Troops To College program at Sacramento State. I’ve heard snark about this “gap year”, but with the exception of forgetting math and science (a proposition I find dubious at best), I haven’t heard a good reason to be against it–except that maybe it’s elitist.

By: Tom West

Tom West — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 21:22:24 +0000

The hard working Asian kids go straight to college, do not seem to need to find themselves and go into the sciences and engineering.

Don’t worry, in a generation or two, if the economies don’t collapse, the next generation of Asian kids will be looking to find themselves too. After all, the long-term effects of wealth aren’t bound along ethnic lines. (Also, as I said, usually it’s not the math and science geeks of any color that are taking the gap year.)

Secondly, almost every 1st year math and science program that I remember started pretty much from zero. It went awfully fast, but it seemed almost designed for people who had learned something once but might need to be refreshed on it.

And, after all, the whole point of wealth is to allow our children opportunities that we could not have. Else why work so hard?

By: superdestroyer

superdestroyer — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 14:41:00 +0000

Math is like a foreign language. Would anyone recommend that a Russian major go a year without speaking or reading Russian in order to find themselves. Many college freshmen have enough problems with calcucus without having gone a year or more without a math class. My guess is that many of the gappers have to go back and take pre-calculus to catch up.

This is just another sign that colleges are beginning to break down on ethnic lines. The hard working Asian kids go straight to college, do not seem to need to find themselves and go into the sciences and engineering. The white kids get to live an extended adolescence, take time off to backpack around Eruope and spend years trying to get into a good enough law school or B-school to make the costs worth it.