Washington Post Education Columnist Jay Mathews to Speak at WFU

Washington Post Education Columnist Jay Mathews to Speak at WFU

March 5, 2012 | Keri Brown

Colleges and universities across the country are encouraging prospective students to pursue advanced courses of study as early as they can. On Wednesday, Washington Post education columnist and author Jay Mathews will speak at Wake Forest University to talk about an academically challenging program known as the International Baccalaureate (IB) Programme.

The IB Programme uses writing intensive curriculum and combines critical thinking with problem solving skills. Students take essay-driven final examinations.

Longtime Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews has written several books and columns about IB and strengthening the American school system. He said colleges and universities need to back up efforts by high schools to raise their academic standards.

“The high schools have a system where only the A students and the strong B students are allowed to take IB and AP college level courses. That makes absolutely no sense, because the average students, the C and D students who are all going to try to go to college, really need that taste of college trauma. The colleges should be in those high schools, telling those high schools that they should not restrict access to their best courses,” said Mathews.

Mathews said over the past 30 years, there been no significant increase in reading or math achievement by 17-year-olds in the United States.

Mathews will also meet with local and state lawmakers and school administrators before the event to discuss pressing topics in education.

High school students and administrators of junior IB Diploma Programmes across North Carolina will also attend the event.

Micheal Greene, a freshman at Wake Forest University, graduated from Parkland High School in Winston-Salem, which is an IB school. Sometimes he hears other college students in the halls complaining about writing an 8- to 10- page paper. He says his experience with the IB Programme is helping make his own college career a little easier.

"I think one of the biggest things that helped prepare me for college in the IB Programme was the rigor of the work," say Greene. "As early as ninth or tenth grade, I learned how to properly use MLA format, how to properly cite and how to research. With that, I'm able not to dwell on the length and dwell the difficulty of the papers. I'm a more confident writer because of the IB Programm.”

Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews will speak at Wake Forest University in Wait Chapel on Wednesday, March 7th at 7 p.m.