February 9, 2003

BY DAVID MCGRATH

If you're the only lawyer in the family, guess who gets the late-night phone call when cousin Michael fails the Breathalyzer or after Uncle Nick receives a tax audit in the mail?

Similarly, if you're the English teacher of the clan, you're the one whom a frantic Aunt Muriel calls when the term paper her first-born needs to do for high school graduation is due tomorrow.

So as a writing instructor at College of DuPage, I wasn't surprised to receive a call from a relative whose child was having trouble with term papers for several of his classes. But when I learned that the student was my nephew who is a senior at DePaul University, I did a double take.

The first surprise was his getting D's on his writing drafts. Intelligent and articulate, my nephew reads two and sometimes three books a week. Immersed in texts and ideas, he was the last young person I figured would have difficulty in communicating.

The second shock was over the fact that he or any other student could advance to the threshold of graduation at a prestigious university like DePaul without an apparent writing disability being exposed until his fourth year.

As it turned out, though, DePaul was not negligent, for he spent the first two years at one of our south suburban community colleges, where he earned A's and B's for most of freshman and sophomoregeneral education courses, including two required writing classes, Composition 101 and 102.

Even better news was that he was not possessed of any writing dysfunction. Although his DePaul history professor bluntly told him that he ''couldn't write,'' my nephew had simply never developed an adequate sense of audience, nor the concomitant skill in using transitions to present his ideas clearly in an essay.

Therefore, it took us only several sit-downs over his papers to diagnose his writing problem and steer him to earning good grades on the remainder of his essays. Helping an accomplished, reading, thinking student like him was like tapping slightly on the accelerator of an expensive, finely tuned automobile.

How was it possible, then, that his first two years at the local community college from which he transferred did not prepare him sufficiently for the rigors of a four-year university? The blame was not neglect by his teachers, but an Illinois community college system that has failed to keep up with the times.

To explain: Twenty years ago, the typical junior college composition teacher in this state had four classes with 25 to 30 pupils each. Teaching more than 100 different students to write at college level was an ambitious mission, and teachers were up to the task. Students wrote and wrote, and teachers read and read, marking up papers, recommending revisions, and conferencing with individuals at all stages until they got it right.

But today, with students from homes that read less or not at all, and who enter college with SAT scores for verbal skills 40 points lower than in 1975 (according to the Center for Education Reform), community college composition teachers have the same number of students as they had two decades ago!

Even though the National Council of Teachers of English and the Conference on College Composition and Communication recommend a maximum of 15 students in a composition class, and no more than 60 students altogether per term, Illinois classes remain overloaded, with 25 per class at the College of DuPage, 32 at Moraine Valley and 33 at Joliet Junior College. These are nearly the same numbers as 20 years ago, but students require twice the amount of attention and clock hours to make the grade. The situation would be analogous to college trustees asking the track coach to repeat a championship season, but this year with a crop of runners whose times for the mile average 40 seconds slower!

Surely, my nephew's English teachers had possessed advanced degrees and a wealth of experience and skill in teaching the fine art of writing, for which a student needs intensive planning, practice, revision, feedback and expert guidance. But at the fairly typical Illinois community college he attended, his instructors have class loads of more than 120 students per term--more than twice what the NCTE recommends. Is it difficult to imagine how my nephew's individual learning needs were not met?

Teacher morale is sinking. Student writing is god-awful and getting worse. Band-Aids like writing centers and peer tutoring programs have been applied. But it will take a more significant commitment to literacy by community college trustees, and a redirection of funds to reduce class loads so that teachers can give their students the help they need to succeed.

Community colleges boast rightfully about maintaining currency in computer instruction and business-related education, in order to better serve the immediate community. How about getting into the 21st century for reading and writing?

David McGrath is a free-lance writer and teacher at College of DuPage.