Once again the Saturday Q&A at EV.com has provided an interesting topic that I’m stealing. A reader wanted to know what skills their children should acquire before heading off to college. The question was answered by the two college profs and it basically came down to they should be capable of critical thinking. I’d be very interested in a followup question:

How many of their students actually have those desired skills?

I can recall how Elco High prepared us for college back in the 1960s, and I’d say that of the skills that the two college profs outline, very few of our teachers prepared us along those lines.

I wonder how schools are doing these days?

A.H. in Chevy Chase, MD, asks: I’m the parent of a 9th grader and a 6th grader. As college professors, what do you wish the parents of your students had made sure they learned/did in middle and high school?

(V) answers: I would like students to learn to think and not just plug numbers into formulas they don’t understand.

I would like them to question input data they get to see if it makes sense and see if the source of information is trustworthy. This is especially important when getting information from some AI bot, but even when getting information from teachers and parents.

I would like students to be able to reason logically.

I would like students to be able to clearly explain what they are doing and why they are doing it that way and make a cogent presentation of some project they have worked on, both in writing and orally.

Good math skills are important in computer science, but it is not important to know specific rules or formulas. Nowadays, understanding what an algorithm is, is important.

I care about students being able to plan ahead and use their time wisely when being given a project to do with a deadline.

I value students being able to tell the important stuff from the not-important stuff.

I don’t care much about their knowing specific facts; they can always look them up.

(Z) answers: I agree with what (V) said, with the obvious caveat that I would adapt it to the social sciences. For example, students have been aggressively trained to write down as much information as possible. It is a constant, and active struggle to try to persuade them to spend less time writing stuff down and more time listening and understanding. In almost every lecture, I will say: “Please put your pens/pencils/keyboards down, and just listen. You don’t need to take any notes for the next 10 minutes, until you hear me say, ‘The two takeaways here are…'”

I also wish parents would do more to persuade their kids that college is not so much an investment in making more money in their career, as it is an investment in themselves, and making themselves a well-rounded person AND worker capable of pursuing many different paths in life. Of course, often the parents themselves believe that the only purpose of college is to increase earning power. So, those folks certainly are not going to tell their kids something different.

There are several other interesting questions and answers covered as yesterday was a non-politics day, including a question about becoming a Jeopardy! contestant.

Meanwhile, G. Elliott Morris looks at a Texas state senate race:

Democratic candidate Taylor Rehmet has won a special election for Texas State Senate District 9 in Tarrant County — a seat Donald Trump carried by 17 points in November 2024, per The Downballot. As I’m writing this, approximately 99% of the vote has been counted, and Rehmet carried the seat 57.2% vs his Republican challenger, Leigh Wambsganss, at 42.8%. That’s a 14.4-point margin, and a 31.4-point swing vs Harris’s margin in 2024 (if you ignore votes for minor-party candidates, the swing rounds up to D+32).

This swing of 32 points from Trump’s 2024 performance is the largest Democratic overperformance in a competitive special election since Trump took office.