Does high school really prepare you for college?

For years, students have been taught that each level of education (preschool, elementary, middle, and high school) prepares you for the one after. Have we actually considered if that is true, though? I, for one, had not.

Due to this blindly assumed truth, I initially felt confident that high school prepared me for college. I had learned about college in my freshman mentoring class; I had taken an aptitude test to determine what career would be best for me. Surely, that was enough for college, right?

Perhaps, I thought, all my preparation would come next year (my senior year) when we learn about scholarships and what college would be most suitable? All of this seemed to be of assistance, but there was one evident pattern—they were preparing me for the transition, not actually during college.

I did not reach this realization until the start of this semester. In fact, my Dual Enrollment US History teacher Dr. Bourdon is the one who opened my eyes. Dr. B’s vigorous teaching style is seemingly unusual. He never uses a PowerPoint and never looks off anything. What is even more astounding is that he writes all the information onto the board while he teaches—meaning no guided notes (which is quite rare). Such a teaching style is intentional. For instance, he has specifically advised us on abbreviating long terms in notes because “that is how you have to take notes in college.” I have appreciated this preparation from the first day I was in his class, especially because it was preparation that I had not received before.

It is certainly understandable that teachers desire high retention rates and sometimes utilize simplicity to achieve it. However, it also needs to be understood that we, as students, are not truly progressing with this style. If we are acclimated to reading a teachers’ notes off a PowerPoint presentation, we may not be prepared for the next level of teaching. By the same token, if we are used to only taking guided notes, we will be unprepared for when we have to take our own notes.

Therefore, high school truly needs to be called into question. If grade school is truly about preparation for the upcoming level, we need to truly evaluate its success (or, failure) in that area.