Writing Center: gaps in education

Hey Readers,

Working with students as a Writing Assistant, I'm lucky to learn different things.  This semester, I learned a bit about: Mill and Kant's philosophy in relation to 2 movies ( ex. You Don't Know Jack [Kevorkian] - Mill's utilitarianism and Kant's Good Will and Motives according to the student I tutored ); a documentary called Black Candle ( Kwanzaa ); Langston Hughes' novel Not Without Laughter; Sickle Cell Anemia; Civil Rights figure Angela Davis; author John Edgar Wideman's experimental form and point of view; various personal narratives and their cultural tid bits, and many more. 

Sometimes this information --novel to me at times-- makes me wonder about gaps in my education; but the great news is that I can follow along ( even with the vaguest hint of the event's place in history ).  This is a nice surprise in general.  But then I start to wonder: If I have gaps in my education and I already have a MA, then "What kind of educational gaps do other College students may have?"

I was tutoring a student, and to illustrate a point, I made an analogy to the Cold War.  I'm not an expert on this topic, but unlike this particular student, I at least have an inkling of the main ideas behind this event.  Another student needed help writing a literary analysis of Chaucer's Wife of Bath Prologue.  He made many spelling mistakes, and when he read excerpts from the text, he skipped words he couldn't read, or he changed the words to the closest word he knew.  This was especially dangerous in such an activity where misreading texts could mislead interpretation and analysis.  In addition to this obstacle, this student had to apply this in writing ( another skill level more complex than spelling and reading ). 

These two students are a few from the many students I've worked with.  Somewhere along these two students' educational journey, it seemed to me that an injustice was done to them.  They were struggling with some basic skills, yet their teachers ( et. al. ) still passed them off as "proficient" ( evading the problem in the hopes of having the next teacher resolve the issue ).  Wouldn't it be more just to hold back students ( giving them more time to practice ) than pass them off as proficient when they aren't?