Over past ten to fifteen years students in the US have built up a bad reputation for their poor academic achievements. Students in this time period have scored well below their parents and Grandparents on SATs and other standardized tests. Newspaper articles and TV commercials highlight the fact that American students today perform even lower than their contemporaries in less developed countries. Although these results do not look good for America’s students I do believe that these kids are smarter than the results of these tests would lead one to believe. America’s youth do have good skills and abilities that generations before them never had.

In Peter Sack’s book the 13th generation goes to college, Sacks talks about how the students in his journalism class were simply unprepared for college level work. Important skills such as critical thinking and English composition were way below the level necessary to complete the assignments. Being able to write is one of the fundamental cornerstones of any good education, and the inability to communicate a point on paper can hurt one’s credibility. The effects of not being able to write properly could even hurt the chances of getting the position they want.

A couple of things often said about today’s students are that they are unmotivated to do schoolwork. American kids don’t see the value of a good education. It seems students would rather sit in front of the TV or talk on the phone instead of studying. It seems as though if school conflicts with other things in student’s schedule then it may not get done or it is done as fast as possible with little thought put into it. I remember when I went to high school there was always something better to do than homework, even when there wasn’t. I would turn in half-assed assignments and hope the teacher would give me a passing grade, and if not then I would