
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, July 11, 1993                   TAG: 9307120234
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: D-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THERE'S NO GENERATION OF BONEHEADS

WITH ALL due respect to my recently retired colleague, John LeDoux, and his comments on the students we receive at Virginia Tech (July 3 letter, "Public schools need basic, not `outcome-based,' education"), I say "hogwash!" He would have us believe that students enrolled from public schools are ill-prepared and poorly motivated. He cites a student who did not know how many feet were in a yard, and another who, after flunking a course, was admonished that he would be likely to "design a bridge that would fail and kill hundreds of people." LeDoux's comments are particularly ironic since the College of Engineering enrolls some of the state's top students. If he is right, what about all those other students who must be in worse shape? Are we producing a generation of boneheads? Not likely.

There is little, if any, evidence that today's students are inferior to those of yesteryear. Hundreds of employers hire our students each year and praise their abilities, and I have not read of any bridges failing recently other than those not maintained due to a lack of state funding.

Today's student has a different learning style and is exposed to far more information than we ever were in our older generations. In fact, the student who does not remember the number of feet in a yard may have a ready knowledge of the metric system and be a computer genius. Knowing the number of feet in a yard is not a litmus test for the youngster of today. True, today's student may not have had the benefit of taking a motor or clock apart like us old-timers, but the new motors and clocks aren't simple like those we knew. We in the university need to recognize there is a new generation coming to us with a completely different background from those of 20 to 30 years ago.

This country is great in part because of its amazing diversity, and home schooling and private schools have an important place in our culture. However, only the United States still dares to believe it can educate its whole population, and herein lies its potential and hope. We need to improve education, including both the K-12 system and the university, but university faculty cannot cheat the average student of his or her birthright today because he or she is perceived as "inferior." Virginia's taxpayers, who are now shelling out the equivalent of a purchase price of a new house for their children's college education, deserve the effort from faculty to seek to find in all students a spark that will help them realize their talents. We must not lose a generation by arrogance or allegiance to some remembered past era when students were supposedly good-looking and above average. G. WAYNE CLOUGH Dean, College of Engineering Virginia Tech BLACKSBURG

by CNB