Comments on: Johnny Can’t Fail Policy: Why University students are becoming stupider by the minute

By: VTAMethodman

VTAMethodman — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 14:38:11 +0000

@ Ralph

Unfortunately Ralph it seems iterations of this policy will always plague high school students until educators and policy makers realize that not all students are pre-disposed to success.

By: Ralph

Ralph — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:23:47 +0000

We had the “I” system when I was in high school about 12 years ago. If you did not pass the first time or missed an important assignment, (plagiarizing wasn’t a big issue then) you would get an “I” for incomplete and you would have until the end of the semester to make it up. All this did for me-as a student who liked the pressure of deadlines-was enable my procrastination.

The program was canceled after my senior year. I am sadden to hear of its return by another name.

By: admin

admin — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:24:08 +0000

TA, thank you for your response. Let me first say I understand where you are coming from as many students look for a quick fix which is one of the top reasons why I titled my book ’study 30 minutes a day and get a 4.0 gpa.’ However, as you would know if you had read my book, I actually teach ‘learning’ techniques rather than studying techniques but in a subversive way as to give the student both short term study tricks wrapped in long term learning strategies that allow them to study smarter and faster in conjunction with learning. Secondly, if I wanted to be a millionaire I probably wouldn’t be in education. Money is not the primary objective of this blog or the vtamethod (as you can see I don’t even have any adsense). The goal of this blog is to spread valuable learning techniques, help students achieve academic success and keep my employees (who are also my close friends working through grad school) gainfully employed. I would encourage you to read the remainder of my posts and get yourself a trial copy of my program to see the advantages of the program before making such accusations.

Have a wonderful day!

By: TA

TA — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:52:33 +0000

Dear VTAMB, since May 27th you have a total of 7 comments on your posts. This for me indicates that the educational system worldwide works just fine and your spreading of FUD will have no effect. Students are more than happy to become stupid in the globe’s universities and they will certainly welcome any policies that will allow them to become even more stupid every day while retaining the same or worse academic achievement. I am sure that a study will eventually emerge that students without any tutoring at all (virtual or real) perform better in an enterprise environment.

Finally, I suspect that this blog and your product are incompatible: If you keep the blog and abandon the product, the blog will become very successful (and your income will rise). If you choose to abandon the blog and keep the product, the latter will flourish: students love studying aids but hate the cognitive theories/opinions/political or pragmatic views behind them because they simply like to remain as stupid as possible (getting from 0 to 1 is much easier than getting from 9 to 10).