Remediation in High School English

By Scott Patrick

While in community college, I had a class that required I do 40 hours of observation in a high school classroom. It was my first time back in a high school classroom since I’d graduated. I sat in on a number of classes, but by far one of the most interesting experiences I had was observing a remedial English class for freshmen. It was called “English G,” the G standing for “general.” Looking back, the name of the class only reaffirms the idea that remediation is deficit-focused, because the non-remedial English class is called “English CP,” for “college prep.” The very fact that a student is separated from their peers because of some perceived deficiency in knowledge can cause a loss of self-esteem, and calling the course “general” instead of “college prep” clearly conveys the idea that the remedial students’ future is not as certain as the college prep students.

The 20 or so students in the class were, at least from my perspective, totally capable of doing the assignments offered to them, but their way of approaching an assignment might not have fit into the class’s rigid structure. The largest portion of writing in the class was answering questions at the end of a text in their textbook. I’ve despised those end-of-text questions my whole schooling career. I didn’t mind reading, but the way we were asked to prove our understanding of the text (through the dry, unprovocative questions in the back) wasn’t my style. There are better ways of demonstrating that a student read the text than drilling them on questions that have nothing to do with critical thinking or unpacking major ideas. I think that the strategy of “skills and drills” is far too common in remedial classrooms, as if those who create the curriculum think that the more boring and difficult something is, the more the student will be forced to learn. Drilling students on comprehension is painfully slow and boring, as well as causes students to associate reading with boring classroom exercises. It seems that remediation works against itself, the students leave it often less interested in the subject than they were when then began it. It’s almost analogous to our prison system, where we send many wayward youth with ignorant hopes of “reforming” them, when in practice people in the judicial system often leave prison no better than when they entered.