What have these kids been doing for 12 years?

I could hardly believe my eyes when I read Richard Lake’s article about the new experience that freshmen and new transfers will have to endure at UNLV (Nov. 21 Review-Journal). They will now be required to take a First Year Experience Course and probably another one in their sophomore year, as well. They will learn how to get critical thinking skills, communication skills and multicultural or global awareness skills.

I began to wonder what these college students had been doing for the first 12 years of their academic lives. They traveled through 12 grades without acquiring any of these skills? Maybe future generations should skip the first 12 years and move directly on to college.

I went through my first 12 years of education and was prepared by my teachers for college. I didn’t need to learn how to think or communicate.

And why do students need multicultural or global awareness skills? Have they never read a newspaper, watched the news on TV or listened to the news on the radio? How can they live in this modern society and not know what is going on in the world around them?

UNLV should concentrate on teaching skills to the students so they can get a job and make a living. Somehow I doubt that the new “experience” courses will assist them in making a living.

Bob Dubin

Las Vegas

Budget problem

To the editor:

Did anyone truly believe the so-called congressional supercommittee would actually solve anything? It was doomed from the start.

The mere fact that the people who created America’s problems were called on to solve them is hypocrisy at its best. Congress should have appointed an outside source to solve this dilemma over America’s financial woes. The sharpest minds in the financial sector — led by the management team of Wal-mart — would have been more suited to the task.

The candidates for the next election are all preaching the same rhetoric, yet none of them has a definite plan to solve our financial problems. Because once they get into office, they all seem to forget who put them there and why.

Joe Schaerer

Las Vegas