While reading one of her posts, I picked up on a point that Heather is making:

Many students are not in school for the education part of it. They are in school, particularly community college, for the training and skills that will help them get a better job


I have wondered about the same question quite often, since I have the feeling that we have been continuously lowering the standards that we expect students to live up to. If certain topics are considered hard, we remove them from our educational programs, rather than paying more attention to them.

Make the distinction between `training' and `education' might just be why...