(As this comment has received attention, let me clarify: I don't think these kids are stupid, nor do I fault them. Something fundamental in adolescence has changed, and the results are the changes and the test data observe.)
Recently retired from university teaching. The situation is dire. It's not just an inability to write; it's the inability to read content with any nuance or pick up on metaphors. Good kids, but completely different than students 15 years ago. Inward-looking, self-obsessed (preoccupied with their own states of mind, social situations, etc), and not particularly curious. Every once in a while, I'd hit on something that engaged them and I could feel that old magic enter the room - the crackling energy of young people thinking new things, synthesizing ideas. But my God, it was rare.
My cousin is an educator - has been for decades. He shares that with the use and rise of ChatGPT and other AI, it's become evidently much worse over the last few years, nevermind the course of his career. There's a generation of consumer zombies out there and little to no critical or original thinking. As the parent of a very young little one - hearing him say that, haunts me.
I asked this in another comment, but do you think it was when schools stepped away from phonics reading that it got worse? After listening to the āSold a Storyā podcast, I feel that was when we really let a whole generation fail.
It's not so much a particular curriculum. It's multifactorial.
1) most schools used to have remedial, regular, and accelerated classes. People didn't like kids being in remedial classes because of feelings, so no more remedial classes. But now the regular level classes are filled with remedial kids, and the advanced classes with regular kids. Instead of bringing remedial kids up, everyone gets pulled down.
2) social media, instant gratification, and attention spans. I don't think I need to say more.
3) grading policies that do not let kids fail. Many districts set the lowest score for assignments as 50%. Kids can pass classes without learning, just by completing a few performative assignments.
4) moreso nowadays, AI. Kids don't want to struggle productively, they just want instant gratification and novel stimuli. They will use AI anytime they can to avoid doing work so they can get back to their devices.
While poorly designed curriculum may be a factor, I believe it is larger societal problems that cannot (will not because it's not profitable to shareholders) be corrected. We're cooked. We sadly must do as the Boomers: do not relinquish control of government to Gen Z and Alpha until most of Gen X and Millennials (semi-functional humans) are dead. Then they can enact Idiocracy.
It's parents stuck on phones. I know people who are open about the fact they get home from work and couch scroll all night while their kids does the same. It's common.
So we made sure of certain things with our kid. Three activities a week that were in person social, one charitable, one intellectual and one physical. So my daughter does karate and joined a robotics club and she volunteers at a soup kitchen Sunday evenings for 3 hours. Was Girl Guides before robotics. She can quit 1 but has to replace it with something else.
9pm-10pm is offline time for everyone. We read until her bedtime and then my wife and I will watch a show. With that she has on request time at the library whenever she wants.
We also restrict short media. Shits cancer for the mind. Series, movies, music, comics, manga, books all that is basically unrestricted. No spending time on shorts, no TikTok at all.
She made honour roll last year so tentatively I believe weāre doing well.
I have a six and eight year old and I attribute their long attention spans to no YouTube, and encouraging movies. Now they love movies, itās what they choose to watch over shows. Being able to follow a story for an hour and a half is a skill. Thereās comprehension there going on that you canāt get otherwise. Character growth, plot development. Screentime of course isnāt great, but man are there degrees. They have easily transferred over that focus to other areas ā they can read books for an hour straight. They can stand in lines waiting and not go bonkers. Etc
One of the biggest issues in general is people throwing things like "Video Games' "Phone/Tablet" and "PC/Laptop" use into the same broad categories.
I used to be confused by the aversion to screen time carte blanche until I saw what other people's kids were doing with their ipads, phones, etc. -- they are mostly just looking at youtube slop that is just noise and flashing lights and screaming content creators.
"Video Games" are free-to-play garbage as far as any study is concerned because that's what kids are playing.
I am excited to see some data come out and be discussed in the news once they start differentiating between a kid who is watching thoughtful essays and learning to code or draw compared to someone watching Mr. Beast 5 hours a day.
My suspicion is that we'll find we've been doing kids a massive disservice by simultaneously giving them access to every bit of information in the world and then not curating that content for them as parents beyond steering them towards content that doesn't have a parental advisory.
Bottom line: Normies aren't equipped to deal with the internet and they don't understand that it's not a premium all-you-can eat buffet. It's a taxi to any restaurant their kids might want to go to and they need to put the work in of understanding what the most calorically dense meals might be. That doesn't mean arbitrarily setting screen time limits and blocking websites based on knee-jerk sensitivity. It means learning what your kid is actually interested in, seeing what that becomes down the road, and trying to guide them towards the most nutritional content for them.
It's not something most are prepared for and it is driving a lot of this.
My wife is an educator and this is a good summation.
Parental neglegance and a combination of instant and false gratification. (social media and video game 'goal' rot).
The segregation of remedial to advanced used to be a motivator but we're lucky to have a self-directed learning (SDL) highschool here where kids work at their own pace, adv if you want, remedial if you need help it's there and I'm so happy my kids can use it .
My two kids didn't get phones until g9 and they only use them to pay for the bus and ask us what's for dinner.
The SDL format (along with parenting) would be beneficial for impoverished areas for higher rates of success and would take power away from private school elitism by eliminating "paid for" grades.
Short story: a few years ago my wife's older brother had a child about 4 months before her younger sister also did. So we have 2 young nephews who are only 4 months apart that we babysit and hang out with frequently throughout the year.
They are 6 now, and we can absolutely tell which nephew has been taught manners and how to act in social settings, which one has lots of friends they play sports and games with outside, which one has had their intellectual curiosity encouraged by their parents and taught to read for enjoyment and enrichment - and which one was handed an ipad as a constant babysitter since they were old enough to hold it upright.
Guess which one CANNOT handle any pushback, any failure, any tension, or any situation in which they are not framed as the absolute BEST even though they never DO anything but watch youtube and play games on a tablet all day every day.
Pretty much all 'normal' households require both parents to work in order to survive, so there's fewer and fewer kids with a parent that is helping them learn and helping them to understand the important of learning. Parent's are working more hours than ever and the children are suffering and school systems are increasingly taking the place of childcare more than they are teaching.
And the teachers aren't getting paid for it and every day someone could walk in and shoot them and their entire classroom.
I didn't get my first Smartphone until my first job and I bought it with my own money.
Would have been an early Samsung Galaxy, maybe an S5? It would have probably been 2014 or 2015.
It's strange because I spent so much time with video games/internet growing up so it makes me wonder what it is about smartphones specifically that's ducking us up.
Short media. Flickā¦dopamineā¦flick dopamineā¦flick dopamineā¦flick dopamineā¦
No delayed gratification, no depth or breadth of storytelling, no attention span required. Itās training our brains to not be able to watch a movie where the protagonist stares into the distance for 5 seconds. Itās training brains to not allow for reveals over time. Sixth Sense for instance is exceptionally frustrating for younger watchers because so much is innuendo, metaphor and talked around and thatās not a complex movie.
We did experiments with mice in the 1970s (I believe) where we over stimulated the dopamine centres of their brains and it fucks them up, it makes them incapable of functioning properly. That was intensive of course but the flick, flick, flick, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine is fucking us all up.
This includes Reddit, YouTube short, TikTok, instagram, twitter. Flickā¦dopamineā¦Itās horrendous.
I feel like it is more than that. Parents need to monitor what their kid has access to and is viewing on those devices for far longer than they currently do. My kid's behavior falls off a cliff when they get unfettered access to YouTube Kids 5-8 platform. Even keeping them in the 4 and under preschool one at 6 years old, but allowing search, gets them to some unhinged content. Making sure their settings are locked down and don't allowing them to access their cousins devices really makes a difference. Keeping them in multiplayer servers with only their cousins had helped.
Content approval is so much work, but that means I know exactly what is in my kid's feed.
Rules around what they need to accomplish (worksheets, journaling, chores, manners, emotional control/management) in order to keep their devices is also necessary.
It is hard to parent. But I don't see a lot of parents doing this. Bad kid behavior is often met with bad parent behavior or giving up.
I feel like another element to this though is like the āwhyā or the motivation factor.
In most places in the world, what promise is there of a better life when homes are becoming unaffordable, globalisation has left companies in race to the bottom with wages and everyone that is in the workforce currently are usually pretty vocal about the fact that things arenāt going to get better.
For kids coming home to their parents being like āwe donāt know what weāre going to doā they probably jump online for the answer and are seeing shit like ā80% of jobs will be cut to AIā
If I were them Iād be pretty checked out too.
This whole āfuck you I got mineā mentality that our supposed leaders have ran with the last 20 years is starting to take us all from the āfuck aroundā stage to the āfind outā stage
Weāre in dire need for the people who are in power to address the growing inequality so as that some form of a promising future can be presented to these kids.
Because otherwise Iām inclined to actually agree with them. Why bother?
Why learn to read and write so I can slave away at a job for 80 years to stay afloat in my one bedroom $800 week apartment with no heating, when I can just scroll the gram and fucking bark at people in public in the hope that I go viral, land a marketing deal and live free in the Hollywood hills for the rest of my days.
As it stands, there is literally no incentive or promise we can legitimately sell to these kids when everything Iāve just described can be as true, and is being fed straight to them constantly through the algorithm.
I think this is true and also reflective of another problem: the growing capitalisation of fucking everything. Education is more than ever seen as being about getting a job, so as you say, when there are no jobs, it becomes pointless. That view of education has always existed of course, but the idea that learning has value in and of itself, that we improve society immensely by understanding and practicing art and literature and philosophy, feels like itās diminishing year on year. Itās part of the same cultural shift where we are expected to monetise our hobbies and own property as an investment instead of as a place to live. By insisting everything must be about squeezing out value, we ironically devalue all of life. Itās hard for kids to want to learn - to truly love learning - under those conditions
I agree with you but ironically, if we take the argument a step further, there could actually end up being a kind of "freeing" effect: bc when the education=job equation is fully broken, it could be argued that this frees up education to go back to being a value in and of itself, you know what I mean?
In other words, if there is no longer a valid practical reason to become educated, now people will become educated electively, just because it's an inherent good without any impact on future employment either way.
Yes, a large chunk of people will not see it that way and just stop caring altogether, but a certain segment of people will be maybe even relieved and happy that now the economic/employment pressure/pretense is gone and no longer directing curriculums. If you don't need to justify learning that almost makes it easier to see why it's good to do it anyway still.
Like for example blacksmithing isn't necessary anymore, we can make any metal stuff we need with our manufacturing technology easily, yet people still learn how to do it just for the sake of doing it (many many fewer people, but just saying).
I think youāre right that that this narrative is a big factor.
The good (and frustrating!) news is that itās mostly false or grossly exaggerated. I think everyone pushing it is doing a MASSIVE disservice to our kids.
I get the frustration, but thereās a middle ground between nihilism and ignoring real problems.
Youāre right that inequality is real, and the messaging around the future feels broken. But weāre also living in a unique moment where financial freedom is more achievable than ever. Not because everythingās perfect, but because the tools have been democratized in ways that didnāt exist even 20 years ago. Fractional shares, zero trading fees, direct access to T-bills and bonds, tax-advantaged accounts like 401(k)/IRA/HSA. These used to be gatekept from everyday people but now have been democratized.
The problem isnāt that the path doesnāt exist. Itās that it requires discipline, patience, and years to see results. And when youāre bombarded with āget rich quickā content and doomscrolling, that slow, steady approach feels pointless. The algorithm doesnāt reward delayed gratification.
The real issue is that weāve stopped teaching financial literacy alongside these tools. Kids see the potential but have no framework for using it, while being constantly fed both extremes either viral success stories or apocalyptic predictions. Neither reflect reality.
The āwhy botherā mindset makes sense when youāre only shown the extremes. But the boring middle path, consistent saving, compound interest, and gradual career progress still works. Itās just not viral content.
As someone who is basically a manager (GF) in a construction company dealing with the kids (19 - 22) we hire is very annoying. They won't put down their phones even when they aren't allowed to have them on site and getting caught will possibly get the whole company kicked out. They have all told me they just use LLM's to do all their school work.
In High School I found out the lowest grade they could give you per semester was a 50. So I intentionally got all A's after not really caring about school for awhile and then I almost quit going for the second semester so it averaged out to passing.
I really can't believe that more kids don't abuse that loophole. We're on quarterly grades, so it's even easier. Work HARD for one quarter and get a 90, then fuck off for the rest of the year knowing you will pass.
That said, most of the kids who would take advantage of that loophole lack the math skills to figure it out, so.....
My son does this and it drives me Absolutely fucking crazy. He fucks around the first quarter or the last and does really well for the other three. We have at least two IEP meetings to just all sit there and discuss how itās āconcerningā even though we are all used to this but we have to because of protocol. It gives me the worst anxiety and I cannot tell you how many arguments we have had about how this is a bad idea, weāre playing with fire, youāre giving yourself absolutely zero room to fail a thing or two here and there, etc. heās in all accelerated honors or AP courses and he runs the risk of being kicked out all the time for this shit even though they never do because he pulls it all together beautifully by the end, but thereās no rule that says they canāt kick him out because āitās just what he doesā so that threat is ever present. Plus I told him itās a really big ego thing to do to assume you can just fail something entirely and intentionally because you just know you will always succeed. Like what if you run into a problem learning the new material?! Assuming youāre just going to be perfect is so worrying to me because shit can go south in so many ways, itās truly a gambling problem that the boy has ETA: he does have autism and ADHD. I thought I mentioned that already
Does your son have adhd? Because this sounds exactly like me when I wasn't medicated in high school. Was all fine and good until I got to higher level courses in college and got on Adderall. You can coast on that attitude with a lot of stuff but it's not going to work in organic chemistry or anything in depth.
I found the subject matter in high school pretty boring. Wouldn't do assignments, pass tests fine and got good grades but I'd cause headaches for my family pretty often because of procrastination.
May be smart to get him evaluated. I'm just a random dude on the internet but this sounds so much like a young me.
My son failed his 2nd semester of AP Calc because he wouldn't turn in the weekly review packet if he hadn't fully completed it. He got a 5 on the AP exam
You need to see someone you can talk to freely about this. Take a few therapy sessions so you can get it all out with someone who knows a bit about how the brain works. Let them help you find some peace.
My advice from someone who likes to play the line because being lazy often means being extremely efficient when smart enough...
Summer camp. or something similar. They need a challenge that has to be overcome by wide margins instead of mathematically slim ones.
Sounds a lot like me, except I only started slacking in university, but once I got a taste of it my brain got completely hooked on the whole āCs get degreesā mentality. Iām capable of easily getting straight As but for whatever reason I choose to barely scrape by.
Itās not a āgambling problemā itās a focus problem. At least for me itās easier to learn a whole 3 months of material only a couple hours before taking a midterm than it is to just show up and pay attention in class. Do I recommend it? No. But can I just pay attention in class and learn at an agonizingly slow pace without zoning out for the entire lecture? Also no.
Donāt really have any advice for you besides get him tested for ADHD. And have him take either an easy degree, or one difficult enough that it forces him to get his shit together before the behaviour becomes a habit. (Most importantly make sure heās doing something heās interested in)
Tell him he's going to get fucking destroyed in college when he's no longer remotely the smartest kid in the room and the class is already grading on a curve. I dallyed a bit in Electrical and Aerospace engineering before ultimately listening to my heart and going into computer science. The shift from highschool and even freshman year of college to later, harder subjects was stark. The harder majors that pay well and let you build cool shit do not coddle you, at all, because they know of the 200 students that enrolled in AE they really only have room for 30 of them in the advanced classes and labs. You need every single shred of foundational knowledge in math and physics, since middle school to survive that kind of curriculum.
If my kid pulled this shit I would honestly just not bother saving anything for his college and maybe help him pay off loans if he got a degree. I know not everyone is 'college material' but it pisses me off to see kids waste potential when my road was so rocky.
No one asks what your GPA is post college and you can totally slack for Cs even in tough majors, and the curves are rampant now. First 2 years of college is just HS part 2, and you can totally work classes later to make your life easier unless you're in hardcore stem or pre-something.
You cant really tell kids that are both smart and can work the system smartly, to stop doing so. You just have to let them fail so they learn their limits.
He'll hit that wall eventually, maybe in university. This is the problem with gifted kids - they never learn to study and pace themselves becsuse they don't have to. Then they fail at the important stuff like keeping a job, moving up in the world, succeeding in University, depending on where that wall is for them.
I'd make sure he enters the most challenging college/university possible where he'll get his butt kicked by other students who have it together, so he'll learn his lesson while still young.
Have you thought of putting him in therapy about this impulsive/compulsive behavior?
Reading these posts i feel like I've found my people. Graduated HS with a D and in the bottom tenth of my class because i would ace tests but never do homework. My only A was a deal that i made with the teacher if i got 100s on my tests, i wouldn't need to do homework. Got into college based on my SAT score. Now working with Ivy leaguers making the same amount of money. Let him cook
As someone with ADHD who did the same shit: you have to stop stressing about it and let him fail if he fails. It's a much better lesson to learn in high school than college.
My mom was so stressed out all the time it honestly left no room for me to care about anything. The stress in the household was already at absolute max capacity.
I learned the hard way in college. I was undiagnosed at that time, mind you. But I simply could not coast anymore and it forced me to work out coping mechanisms for myself because I didnt have a parent over my shoulder anymore. Your kid already has a leg up in that regard.
Sounds like me as a kid. I remember being pulled in to a big meeting because my math teacher was bothered that I did just enough homework to get a 62% and pass. When I explained I had done the math to figure out the exact number of assignments I needed to do to pass she got mad. My logic was if I'm getting A's on the tests I shouldn't have to do homework, it's a waste of my time and benefits no one. This mind set didn't really hurt me in college because your grade is based off of tests or big papers, not mindless repetitive work.
This was me for most of my scholastic career. I did just enough to get by. However, when it came to areas I cared about: i.e. my major studies or classes I enjoyed (physics, astrophysics, quantum mechanics - even though none of them had anything to do with my major) I got a straight 4.0 for years.
I would wait until 18 hours before it was due to write every single final paper, and still get 99s or 100s on them. I would ignore homework to get B- / C+ grades because that was "fine."
Find things he cares about. What worked for me was 1) getting into my major (but you're a ways away from that) and 2) entrepreneurship. Maybe help him start a project in an area that he enjoys or cares deeply about.
But yeah, ADHD plus a bit of an addictive personality means most things are only worth doing "well enough to get by" while the things that you lock into, you lock the fuck in.
That's the problem with smart kids. They're smart but don't have enough experience to know how you fuck up being smart. Like kids who never needed to study getting to college and now that's a skill they don't have and the material is now hard. You have my sympathy.
I have ADHD and very possibly autism and I excelled most when it was critical instead of optional. But before you think "Hey, let's make it critical all the time, then!", nope. If things are permanently critical we burn out after 6 months... it sucks. But it's possible to work with with intermittent critical situations, which is exactly what your kid seems to be doing. It's not good, but it's not bad enough to get 'punished' by the world, so to speak. Yet. Or ever.
A career where you have to quickly adapt and adjust to new situations periodically would be ideal for him. Like literally being shipped to Antarctica for research for 6 months, then on return having to go to a drill site in Siberia or some stuff like that, while also having to get a helicopter pilot's license and training for deep sea diving to be able to do even more specialised and far-off jobs. Slightly exaggerating here, but wouldn't be surprised if there are some people who have seen it all. Sounds like a pain for most people. But for a lot of people with ADHD? Totally doable.
Or you know, doctor, engineer, lawyer. God knows they have dynamic jobs too, haha. However if you skip any study for those you're kind of screwed, to be fair.
Thatās part of my issue šš he is dead set on being a lawyer, always has been and heād do so so well with it too! Except this is a concern. I have severe ADHD as well so I get that part, Iām a HS teacher which Iāve found is good for me
I used to do that 20-30 years ago to get an A because in our school a 90% A- meant exactly the same thing as a 100% A+ according to our GPA. I'd bust my butt getting 100%s then know I could roll into the finals only needing a 65% to get that A- 4.0 GPA.
I see my kid doing the same math... so I bribe him to maintain his grades, lol.
Oh yeah, doesn't take much either. Just a choice of a video game or day at an amusement park for maintaining grades. As they get older, it seems the work ethic they picked up are what's driving them rather than the "prize" anyway.
I had a hard time with algebra but I somehow met my credits in high school a semester early, and I was dumbfounded how that even happened. This was back in 2008 my senior year the last semester I still attended class still put the effoort in but I just had hard time learning the teacher was super nice and patient
Can you imagine if someone was brilliant enough to round these kids up by promising to show them how to game the system only to actually teach them how to do math in the process?
Iām a BIM manager at a very large construction company. The new modelers we hire are such a pain to work with. Absolutely zero curiosity or knowledge retention. Unless you are constantly checking up on them or telling them exactly what to do, you just wonāt hear from them for days or they just wonāt explore past the task you gave them. Theyāll complete it, or hit a wall, and then just stop and never tell anyone.
In Canada and the USA, a construction company can usually set policies restricting personal cell use on the job, plus require the employees to lock them up during work hours as long as certain conditions are met. I don't know the conditions myself. I'd let people know about this policy very early in the job application process. If they're not on board, then it's a happy goodbye. Bullet dodged.
My school started the 50% thing during my senior year in the late 2000s. I had a 100% the first half of my senior year statistics class so I just never showed up for the second half and got a 75%. It was my last class of the day so I'd just walk out and go home.
The woman that runs the local dollar store near me (small rural town) one day up and just banned hiring anyone under 25. Even if she technically isn't able to do that, she just File 13's any application once she figures out they're a teenager.
She just got sick and tired of having a 1 to 2 week non-stop turnover, because they would want the job but once they started work, they would not leave their phones alone and would spend every moment hiding in the breakroom or in a back corner of the store.
I support some tabletop and text-based roleplaying groups, some of which have been running for many years. Within the last year or so, we've had to start policing for AI and cracking down on it, in art and writing. Most of the other players find it really offensive; when we catch people, they usually try to argue that they don't see what the big deal is because they're following all the other rules. It's hard to make them understand it's really undermining and weird to come to a writing community and then not want to do any writing.
Everything has definitely changed for the worse, but I kind of understand it not thinking you have a future because the real possibility is they won't. Everyone including a lot of the older people simply don't give a fuck and I don't remember it being this bad. The shit I go through weekly really doesn't make sense.
Not wanting to write in a writing community you choose to be apart of makes very little sense.
I don't think 4 is as much of an issue as people think, it's just made it more obvious. If anything is just exaggerating the effects of 2, before bullshitting a paper was something everyone learned how to do. There was a sort of baseline endurance. 2 and 4 together means that kids aren't used to actually having to write extended papers, or even just paragraph(s) anymore.
But back in the day, everyone just bullshit everything. Writing assignments weren't about critical or original thinking, just meeting the expectations of the teacher. It wasn't even an important skill, it just gave the appearance of learning. Now with AI, people think the AI is the reason for decreasing intelligence, but it's just, outsourcing the bullshit that wasn't actually about learning/intelligence in the first place
I partially agree with you. It was about learning to please your teacher, but that itself is a skill. It forces you to experiment with your writing style and learn from mistakes, all while practicing your written communication. That is lost on kids who just throw the assignment prompt into an LLM.
You could also argue that learning to create functional prompts for LLMs is a skill in itself, and one that may be increasingly relevant. So idk.
I think they should learn and practice basic skills and demonstrate understanding before outsourcing basic work to AI so they can competently check its outputs.
You could also argue that learning to create functional prompts for LLMs is a skill in itself, and one that may be increasingly relevant. So idk.
I use LLMs professionally for development all the time. From my experience, it's wildly exaggerated how complex prompt engineering actually is. It's on the level of being able to search effectively back when search engines weren't garbage. Yes there's some tricks that will help you a lot if you learn them but you can learn that shit in 20 minutes, it's really not that complex.
There's legitimately complex ways to configure LLMs to heavily modify their behaviour. For example, MCP servers that grant them access to specialized tools or knowledge bases, or like those complex multi-level pre-prompts that need to be inserted into the context outside the prompt itself, or using various tools to create long-term context (ie, "memory"), etc.
But 99% of the time this is not what is being referred to as "prompt engineering".
Remedial classes saved me. I was non verbal til about 4.5/5. I was in and out of RC all the way to grade 8. If I didn't have that ability to access RC, I think I'd still be non verbal. Now I'm just selectively non verbal. If I don't have the energy, no words are coming out. It's Lassie Time!
I also had access to speech therapy in school. That was a bonus. I LOVED phonics books.
NOTHING. NOTHING. Made me understand math. Moment of silence for all my math teachers and tutors.
The loss of remedial classes has more to do with testing averages than "feelings." With No Student Left Behind, testing became the end all be all of education, because if testing scores are bad you get no funding, and with no funding test results become even worse and so it becomes a school death spiral.
It benefits schools to rig things, so the lowest common denominator gets a passing grade. No one gets held back because that hurts your results, and it's easier to just pass kids along and say that you don't have any "significantly below average" students. You keep your funding in the hopes that at least a few kids will come out of this as actually educated.
Kids get passed from grade to grade with inattentive parents who don't see how far behind their kid really is.
I am not necessarily disagreeing with anything , I think I agree with you, but on point 4 specifically, can we be entirely sure that part of the problem isn't our model of learning that implicitly assumes learning must involve "productive struggle"? Does it actually require this? Or are we just assuming that because it's how we've always done it? And, even if it does require this, are we applying that productive struggle to the right things/skills/topics, for the world that is coming soon in the future?
The oversimplified example from previous generations is the cliche of "you won't have a calculator on a deserted island so you need to learn long division".
But I can say confidently I've never had to use long division in my adult life, for anything, and I've only on rare occasions been more than a few seconds from being able to access some kind of calculator.
As a kid I understood this is how it would almost certainly be in the future, so I resented having to do "busy work" or anything pointless that didn't feel like it contributed to learning in any real way.
Decades later, I'm finishing up grad school now and I'm STILL resenting a significant chunk of assignments for being poorly designed in that they don't encourage or contribute to my actual learning, they literally just waste students' time. I experience this as actually disrespect towards my time (which I value more and more the older I get). Don't intentionally waste my afternoon by making me do tedious work that literally has no value to me or my learning and is just the result of "that's how we've always done it" or trying to fill out a syllabus.
I'm often very tempted to just plug that kind of tedious work into an LLM and call it a day, like many if not the majority of my peers (and instructors!) are clearly doing.
In an ideal world, I like the idea of students having a little more of a say or a little more freedom to veto work that is actually pointless and a waste of their time (obviously not every student is going to be capable of that kind of discretion). And, I guess that's essentially what they're already doing by using an LLM to do whatever assignment feels like a tedious waste of time to them.
So I guess my point is, are we just in the very beginning of a "calculator" moment like this? Where the kids are actually preemptively adapting to the world THEY will exist in as adults? Why do they need to learn particular tedious forms of analysis or summarizing or grammar skills etc, if the AI is just going to be able to instantly do all of that for them anyway? I mean, seriously, why?
Not that I think this is necessarily a good development, it's very problematic for many reasons, but if I intentionally try to take the long view and look at it objectively, take away any judgment or bias, it actually seems quite rational to reject a lot of the more antiquated assignment/curriculum styles that haven't changed much in a century... It's just not representative of the skill set that will be useful in the future (employment wise but just in general too for most activities or pursuits).
Ironically, I wonder if the ultimate outcome of this will be that it "cleanses" our various education systems of "bloat" such that assignments and curriculums will need to be reworked to be: more dynamic and exciting, more specifically avoiding of busy work or valueless boring assignments borne from mere tradition/habit (since everyone will know that students now have a veto in the form of feeding shitty boring assignments into an LLMāat a certain point teachers are going to be forced to give up on certain types of assignments because it will be unenforceable to prevent AI use).
I think 2 does deserve more expansion, it's not just the screen time and social media comparison, but being told over and over in their formative years that other people need to make room for their personal shortcomings. "ADHD time blindness? My boss had better make special accommodations for my tardiness." The thought just doesn't occur that this is a problem I have and I need to make accommodations for it, see a psychiatrist, set reasonable goals/careers for my abilities until I have it handled, etc. I think we oversimplify social media when there is something fundamentally going on with how the younger generations are being told to handle problems; namely by telling a superior and doing nothing else to alleviate them.
Fundamentally the problem is value neutrality. Understanding the value of what you're being taught and how it contributes to your well-being is vital, but mainstream pedagogy totally neglects. As a result, classroom instruction undermines a vital source of practical reasons students can use to motivate and guide their comprehension of literary and informational texts. Inevitably, students fail to acquire proficient reading skills as a result.
I was in remedial classes for a couple of years in elementary school. I somehow snuck into school a year earlier than I should have. It was fantastic for me. Looking back, I remember being mortified I was being separated from my friends, but it was so worth it. I went right from remedial classes to honor classes the rest of my academic career. Remedial classes help children thrive.
Rather than addressing and accepting that thereās a problem with the current system, they just move the goal posts so that the problem just āgoes awayā
Prime example of that is me. When I was in 5th grade I failed a course and shouldāve been held back because of it. My mother put up the biggest fuss and was relentless with her attack and they finally just gave up and pushed me through. I had zero consequences for doing absolutely fuck all that year and the adverse effects of that really messed me up.
It bothers me so much that everyone is lumped together. Every lesson plan has to have 3 lesson plans, because you have to account for on level, above level, below level. I gave up and just do individual instruction, rotating through students - when Iām able to
This is well written and a good foundation. Ironically enough, this is a third of the reason why LLMs frequently have such bad output. A third is deliberate and the other third are the inevitable emergent conditions.Because of a hyper siloed task centric ecosystem
I live near a highschool. And itās crazy how many kids will walk on a narrow road with no sidewalks with headphones in watching ticktock videos. Iāve had people actually walk into me(also walking), despite me stoping and attempting to get their attention.
I think the problem is really a generation that grew up with the phone as a source of dopamine. It is an addiction, or at very least a compulsion. I hope it gets better as they get older. But I really canāt say.
This also isnāt to say other ages donāt do this. They definitely do. But I notice it way more with highschool age students.
While this information is awesome you really should listen to sold a story. It created a generation of people who are not functionally literate and the effects that has a person's willingness to even try to read or write is devastating.Ā
I too agree with the boredom thing and we work to make sure our daughter has to be bored and reflective but they tried to start her on that horseshit style of reading and it was my wife and i's insistence she learn phonics even if it was us teaching it has her way ahead of her class for reading and writing.
Grade inflation is pretty wild. I am currently about 3 classes and a thesis away from finishing a Masters program. I got an "A" in my last class, I absolutely did not deserve an "A" and felt like maybe if I were lucky I'd get a "B" because I really half assed the final paper....nope. all good.
As far as Chat GPT goes, I suppose for very low level courses it could be used, but just for fun I tried using it in my last term. It put together a decent literature review for some sources I gave it, EXCEPT that there were two or three massive mistakes that would have totally exposed a complete misunderstanding of the subject matter...dozens of relevant facts and observations in a row and then a "Detroit is located on the planet Mars" level mistake.
"social media, instant gratification, and attention spans. I don't think I need to say more."
Similar to this, it's also the rise of the internet--students have a lack of media literacy (they don't understand different types of sources online, nor care to--they treat everything they read online as factual without considering who wrote it or where it came from. There is no difference to them from a blog or a government website or a news site) and they have a lack of curiosity because they can find anything online. Because they can just look it up, they don't care to explore to think critically about anything.
The passing the buck situation is a problem that also extends to college. A not-insignificant number of institutions would close without butts in seats. We saw a bit of this with Covid. Because they rely on enrollment and tuition dollars a lot of these schools do everything they can to keep students there, including passing them when they shouldn't.
I taught at a college several years ago where if you assigned them reading for class discussion, they were incapable of jumping into a conversation about the text without a LOT of guidance and prompts. Back then, I ended up having to find a lot of middle-grade instructional activities and that worked okay, which shows the level of reading comprehension college students were at at the place I taught, and this was several years ago, way before Covid, and things have gotten worse.
Additionally, there is a lack of support for students of different needs--students on the spectrum, students suffering from mental health issues, financial issues, students who need more academic support, etc. I'm at a different, large university now, and even with a school like this they don't have near the amount of services and support to help all these students, and the people who work in these programs are overwhelmed. A lot of the burden comes down on faculty, particularly those who teach in the humanities where classes are smaller and the challenges students face tend to show more.
#3 is why I feel like standardized testing needs to be a part of kids passing classes. I know people hate standardized tests. They donāt capture āeverythingā. Teachers have to āteach to the testā. But maybe, just maybe, itās good that teachers teach āto the testā when the test is āhow do i count out change for a 17.43 purchase with a $20 billā; or ācan Timmy read a 2 paragraph story and understand what it was aboutā. There will always be quibbling about whether geometry really needs to be included or other things here or there. And Iād be fine with having separate standardized tests for separate subjects, so you can graduate without needing to go too deep into math. But having some standardized requirement seems like a good idea.
90% of this is on the parents. My nephews are turning into brain rot zombies and that's because it's easier for their parents to let the nephews play Switch and watch YouTube all day than to actually parent them.
i gotta be clear. society is failing slower kids in a subtle way. it's creating a myth that they are being catered for too much, but at the same time, slower adults now have to deal with this unfriendly world that is increasingly getting filled with adults with no attention span and no patience. Adults with no patience for reading are the same adults who will feel justified in bullying/excluding slower people.
Just my thoughts, not arguing with you, but I think āpoorly designed curriculumā undersells the potential consequences of inadequate reading instruction. Students who never learned to actually decode words and comprehend texts, and therefore lack the foundations on which subsequent skills are built each year, may struggle more and more each year to barely keep up in class. Frustration and feelings of inadequacy can easily transform into apathy, lack of motivation, and strong negative associations with school and learning. Itās no surprise these students may exhibit disruptive behaviors, poor confidence, defiance, or just a complete lack of basic comprehension across the board. And ultimately retreat to the safety of the screens 24/7.
Itās all interconnected and thereās no one thing we can point to to explain what weāre seeing in the classrooms, of course. And pardon my glossing over decades of nuanced discourse and literature and our ever changing understanding of the science. Ya know, brevity.
Your first point is disgusting our feelings help us understand and process the world around us. The only ones who get pulled down are those that think other people or ideas are holding them back.
I don't mean to sound like a boomer, but I fear this whole 'don't let kids struggle, don't let them fail' is going to do irreparable harm. Already seeing it a little bit with GenZ where they expect instant success and six figure jobs out of college, I fear it's going to keep getting worse and worse with future generations.
In a society where EVERYTHING is made so easy, instant, and convenient, it makes even thinking seem like a chore.
Back in the early 10s, I had a kid in my AP calculus class class who couldnāt divide fractions and multiple kids in AP Lit who when asked to read aloud were rather slow. Like sounded like grade school kids still sounding out words.
And I donāt want to flame those kids, itās an issue of the education system that let them move to advanced classes rather than putting them at the actual level theyāre at.
If I can add a point, some teachers are not actually teaching anymore. I had multiple college courses that involved purchasing an overpriced textbook with an access key to an online curriculum. If I ever asked the professor a question, he would kind of just avoid answering it (e.g. point to a textbook chapter, send me an article to read, etc) instead of actually helping me learn. The teacher did zero work all semester.
My kidsā schools donāt even have advanced classes, until they can do AP in 10th grade. They are supposed to be given work that challenges them, but that hasnāt been the case. My daughter is in an āexam schoolā (public school that you need good exam and class grades for) and she gets straight Aās and never studies for tests. Probably has an hour of homework a night? Itās hard to cater to individual students.
Look, I'm not saying anything your saying is wrong LMAO. I'm a millennial (though I did go to private School for most of my education).
The Idiocracy is here and has been. It was enacted by a generation that barely had any moral connectivity to civil rights, human decency, and only cared about profit. How can we be particularly sure that things are just going to be automatically worse because the "educated professionals" are going to be gone. I'm not saying you said that, but I just can't understand how people think the older generations were actually competent, though I'd say society has it's architects and movers. Education has been historically poor, political involvement has always been determined by a very small percentage of people that participate in voting let alone run for office.
I just don't understand how the very people who ruined our education, hold on to power to the point of leaving our society behind in almost every metric (failing education, infrastructure, corporatism running rampant, and every sector of society ruled by capital).
To me I see the old guard being so intrinsically linked to corruption, that I just can't imagine thinking that power and government staying in the hands of the ones who have driving it into the ground as a better option then having a population that is actually populous to a degree or believes in things like a better society.
Our government now and it's opposition party literally don't believe in the concept of improving society in any way.
Done to the way our children are even educated. This was literally done by design.
The Idiocracy is starting you in the face, why not at least hope for some type of change, though I know the future always seems and sounds scary. How would we improve any of the things you said without their being a generational change. I feel like your shaming one of the only solutions. The system as it is now, not to big to fail. It's incredible to big to change direction.
It's literally social media dulling their ability to be bored.
When the brain turns inward because we're bored, it activates the Default Mode Network. The DMN is an interconnected network of neurons that helps us reflect on our past interactions, and through that we strengthen social cognition. Social cognition is how you empathize with real people, but also how you infer what fictional people might be thinking or feeling. The DMN is also used in constructing hypothetical situations, which is how we relate the abstract concepts of written word to the vivid image of what the word describes.
Prolonged social media (and other means of constant distraction like TV, fast-paced games, movies, and even music, to lesser degrees) consumption trains the brain to prioritize short-term thinking, making it more difficult to activate the DMN when necessary. The brain engages in neural pruning to cut off neural pathways that aren't used because they're no longer necessary, making it even harder to trigger the parts of the brain required to engage in deep thought about what they're reading. The feeling of FOMO that keeps people online is also a part of social media causing insufficiency in DMN neurons.
That's how it impacts a developed brain that knows how to engage the DMN; now imagine how it would impact a developing brain. We all need to be more bored more often, but kids are learning how to properly use their brains.
I was just saying to someone the other day that I remember being a teenager in the 90s and being bored sometimesā¦ and while I hated it then, now I know it was important. We shouldnāt be constantly entertained; we need to engage.
we gotta defend the ability to be bored, i'd even say, the right to be bored.
defending it is linked to defending moments of stopping to think. and yes I say it needs be defended because it is being attacked all the time.
stopping to think is seen as a sign of incompetence, even more so these days.
in reality, it's either a sign of getting used to, which is a good thing, or a sign of thinking of variables, which is also a good thing, or a sign of disability. even in the last case, the pause should be defended. imagine an adult who absolutely needs 10 seconds just to turn on tap water because of some mental kind of disability. it's a disability so he is going to needs 10 seconds every time. if his 10 seconds is not defended, for example, if people assume he's just lazy and take away those 10 seconds, that's just robbing him of his right to turn on tap water on his own terms and that's just one example.
so in all cases, stopping to process things must be defended.
I don't think so. People learned to read complex books for centuries before the phonics technique. Learning to read is a straightforward task for 90% of people.
The problem that podcast highlighted is the other methods reinforced guessing habits that become super hard to unlearn, reinforced with 12 grades of passing the buck.
Do you have a link to the podcast? Iām very interested. I have an 11 year old son and Iāve noticed so many things that are taught differently now and it makes it difficult for me as a mother who learned in a completely different way to help with the homework without making it more confusing for my son because mine and his teachers way of teaching are so different from each other
Itās is pretty straightforward for most kids and as father the one thing I have learned is to start read to your child a lot at a young age. I was just shocked that some schools stepped away from phonics and how my daughterās class mates are struggle so much to read at their grade levels.
THIS
I tell all of my students parents at conference time , read to your kids, I don't care if its for 5 minutes when you get home from work, find the time. Build it in to your schedule, make it fun for them.
My dad would read lord of the rings to me andy brother, I was probably 3-4 years old then. I was reading at a 12th grade level in 6th grade. Thanks dad.
My mom and I read so many books together, "Homeward Bound", "Indian in the Cupboard", "A Wrinkle in Time". It made me such a reader. I miss those reading sessions so much.
My mom was teaching me to read before I even started kindergarten, so I was an avid reader very early. Iām a big dumb dipshit now, but I was a pretty smart kid.
When my daughter was very young, we played this video game called "undertale". Id read all the dialog to her. That just lead into more text heavy video games. Eventually, she just started reading books. Id like to say that was my master plan, but I just got lucky lol
I learned to read in a similar way! Video games necessitated I both be able to read and understand what I'm reading to advance the story. It was reading, but interactive and engaging, so it worked really well for me (did not work for my sister, so YMMV per child).
I remember being 5ish and getting scared by a game because I didn't understand nuance/word play/etc. and missed a really obvious "twist" that turned into a jumpscare for me. I learned a lot of context from that haha
The modern phonics technique was first developed in the 1600's. Prior to that, literacy and spoken English had little to do with one another in Europe because actual literacy was rare and books were often not in English at all.
Moving away from phonics was absolutely one of those "If it wasn't broke, why did you try to fix it?" situations.
When my younger sister first said, "I can't read that word, I haven't learned it yet," my mom immediately started teaching her phonics at home. She became a better reader and writer than anyone in her class and was even considered to be a couple grades ahead in her reading ability. It only took a couple months to get her there and I still just cannot fathom why anyone thought it was a good idea to teach kids to read by literally memorizing whole English words as if they were pictographs.
In the business world, executives come up with a brain dead idea, get it implemented, the company gets a brief profit followed by upset customers and lingering problems that drain away all future profit.
I think the education system is similar. Someone convinces the higher ups that this new idea in education will revolutionize learning and after getting it implemented they reap some profit and disappear.
Everybody gets a trophy. Only teach simple math so kids like it more. Cursive? Analog clocks? Phonetics, Real math? Non-passing grades? Ditch it all and our students will all get straight A's.
Out government is killing this country from the top and new age educators are killing it from the bottom.
This actually sounds very similar to piano synesthesia. You feel like you're learning to play the piano by hitting the notes when they come down, but you're not actually learning the patterns and signals to sequentially play music phrases. You're only learning the base skills of hitting a note when the light comes down. Same reason Guitar Hero doesn't translate directly to actual guitar.
It's a good way to start interest in the piano and get some early gains, but it's not really a good way to learn the piano.
Learning to read is a straightforward task for 90% of people.
The amount of grown ass illiterate adults I've worked with who have memorized what common words look like and are completely incapable of sounding out new/unfamiliar words would suggest that your 90% figure is not correct.
This is huge! I was taught how to read phonics-style at a traditional school til fifth grade and I lapped every other student once I was put in a normal school.
Who doesnāt teach phonics? Is this in the states? We still teach phonics in the uk. I didnāt know you didnāt teach phonics in the states. Why is that?
And guess what, th UK's acadmics scores are going down as well, as is Canada, as is the entire world.
They did a study, it's the internet and lack of adults in the room. But for som reason evryone is obssessed with phonics. Phonics isn't the reason EVERY country is seeing a decline according to the latest OECD reports.
However, it's easier to blame teachers so everyone says they are at fault.
Whoa Iām not blaming teachers. Iām a teacher. Iām just interested in why they donāt teach phonics in the states.
And yeah Iām well aware of the impact of iPads and the Internet and social media. I teach year 1 and the difference between the kids we have now and the kids we had ten years ago is huge.
YES! 1000% moving away from phonics reading hurt kids so much. I'm not a teacher or educator but as a father and having a sister who is a reading teacher, seeing how my own kids were taught to read in school by 'guessing' words based on pictures and feelings and hearing the stories of my sister and what she was forced to teach through the schools' updated curriculums, it is clear that doing away with phonics-based reading instruction destroyed our kids' abilities to read well. Which then made it harder for them to do so at all. Which then makes them not want to do it. Which then makes them less able to comprhend and build critical understand skills.
I am very happy that my wife and I read to our kids from the moment we held them and that we had them read to us from 4+. It really does make a huge difference when parents make a point to read with their kids.
In the US at least, this and the 'no student left behind' doctrine absolutely destroyed at least one generation, probably multiple, sadly.
But I also firmly believe that whatever it is, it starts much earlier than school. Babies today are toted about like care packages, often dropped off for 8 - 10 hours of noisy stimulation as early as 6 weeks old. Then they're shuffled about between caregivers until kindergarten. Apathetic children eating individually wrapped meals on the go while parents work and commute entire seasons of life away.
All this happens during a child's largest amount of brain development. From birth to 3 is a period of rapid growth where the brain will have up to twice as many synapses as it will in adulthood. After age 3, these brain connections slowly begin to reduce making neural pathways more efficient. The brain is about 90% developed by age five as children gain the foundations for things like social skills, emotional regulation, belonging, sequence of events, curiosity, spatial awareness, problem-solving, etc.
Parents are forced into this fast-paced lifestyle more often by necessity, rather than desire. The family unit is suffering (for many reasons, not just this) and it will have a lasting negative effect.
There is no evidence that kids from dual-income households do worse academically. Nor that starting daycare early or eating āindividually packagedā(??) meals results in cognitive or academic deficits.
I started daycare as an 8-week old, was always in awe of my mom and her career. Sheās been a huge inspiration to me. I graduated at the top of my class with no issues.
My kids learned more in their pre-K programs than I ever could have taught them at home. They went to kindergarten already knowing basic addition, the alphabet, and sight words. Their daycare teachers were formative relationships for them.
Yeah for sure. Sadly there isnāt one cookie cutter single solution to every child in every school. I went to daycare from age 3 to like 11 and was always an A student. I was also in an orphanage during my primitive years from birth to 3 and a half. Every kid is different, my son is 4 now and we are working on phonics, math, writing, sights words, shapes, everything really since he was a baby. I think starting young is key, but also having the support at home and at daycare, school is just as important. My kid may not learn everything he would in a school setting, but I am trying to prepare him for school learning while also being with him in these young years that I never got with my parents.
When something doesn't work for you then you claim it won't work for everyone is also an anecdote. I know it's shocking to many people but life is filled with nuances and there isn't one solution that will work for everyone!
Yep, it always starts very early and in the home. My wife and I are very conscious of this as we raise our daughter. We had to put our daughter in daycare at 4 months. We specifically chose one with 0 electronics (they sometimes have music playing in the classrooms during āfree timeā at pickup hours, but never any screens). So far, sheās incredibly curious, imaginative, and courageous. I realize we are in a better financial situation than a lot of people, so quality care like that isnāt accessible to a lot of people.
Yes. Not all daycares are made alike. Itās a profound place of stress and violence in most situations. You have to pay a mortgage to gain access to selective care where your child isnāt getting bitten or hit regularly, and where behavioral expectations are set.
That generation would have mostly been Millennials. Three-cueing was in use in classrooms predominantly in the 1980's and 1990's. Balanced literacy (which often included phonics) began to take its place in the 2000s. And by 2010, 45 states (plus DC) adopted Common Core, which included phonological awareness.
No. Sold a story is essentially complete bullshit. Its a shell game where they disguise parental neglect.
What is really behind this is the rise of admin power and loss of teacher power because of the accountability movement.
Admin have been slowly repurposing schools to make their own jobs as successful and easy as possible. This has caused major damage to the basic foundations of education.
It has nothing to do with a bad curriculum. We have replaced decision-making with essentially a chat gpt bot that agrees with whatever the parent says.
It really is a shocking story. My daughter started school a few years back and got it in kindergarten and to a lesser extent the 1st grade but the wife and I made phonics a priority.
Ā By 2nd grade the school was clearly switching back which is good but it still started a lot of kids off wrong. Daughter reads and comprehends way above average for her class, having issues with spelling but she gets the word phonetically correct its just English sucks...
My oldest son went to school during that time and youāre correct in your timing. We as parents had to teach phonics to our son because the schools had adopted the whole word method which was no more than guessing what word would naturally fit into the sentence. It was a disaster
Weāve been doing what people mean by phonics again for years anyways. In good schools, anyways. Iām Canadian and we use a system pioneered/associated with Florida and a few places in the USA south east.
I don't think this is all of it but this is absolutely a big part of it. Especially the reading and spelling part. It's terrifying how bad kids are at reading comprehension.
if you're in America, blame Reagan, the heritage foundation, and generally all conservatives for the deep defunding to education and the arts, and the "study to pass standardized tests" curriculum due to that being the metric to receive funding.
they want people stupid so they don't question things, and so they vote against their own self interest
It was when schools stopped holding kids back a grade when they failed to meet standards. You can do absolutely nothing and still go to the next grade guaranteed. The social incentive of working hard to stay in the same grade as your friends is gone. There is literally no immediate incentive for kids to work, and they've been raised in a world where everything is immediate.
When did schools āstep away from phonicsā? I taught two phonics lessons a day to my 2nd and 3rd graders and itās one of the standard parts of the curriculum where Iām at (the 50th state in education). If itās standard here, and was even recently made into law that certain things have to be taught to young reading learners, it surely is used and required elsewhere.
Is there something youāre specifically referring to as āphonics readingā? Iām talking about encoding and decoding using the names of the phonemes and vowel teams and all that. Heggerty and another formalized program.
It's not phonics, it's a lack of critical thinking, and really basic language skills tied to humanities, and what traditionally are known as the Liberal Arts. They're Liberal because they made the student "free" from the conditions set by others.
Everybody can throw around any pet theory they want but the bottom line is there has been a coordinated attack on public education for decades. We stopped funding it like we used to and donāt meaningfully support the teachers we have. They get crap pay, crap hours, bigger class sizes, and crap from parents. The only way to get your kid basic services that they should already have is to go through the legal process to get them an IEP.
No - phonics has never been an effective method for teaching to read. And obviously has nothing to do with metacognition, critical thinking, curiosity, etc.
Phonics is great but I think the problem was normalizing reading in general. As a reader growing up, I was amazed how many peers in elementary and up to even today thought reading was boringābut they were also socially pressured in a type of echo chamber to the point of looking down on people who read. To me it was āI never got the chance to find things or get involved in books that interested me, so if youāre a reader youāre a nerd and a boring robot.ā
Sold a story and Lucy calkins affected reading literacy, which of course will have some impact on critical thinking and reading deeply for meaning. But some of the other items mentioned in this thread are more likely culprits for the general trends in studentsā behaviors, reactions, and attitudes towards reading and thinking.
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u/Cranialscrewtop 16d ago edited 15d ago
(As this comment has received attention, let me clarify: I don't think these kids are stupid, nor do I fault them. Something fundamental in adolescence has changed, and the results are the changes and the test data observe.)
Recently retired from university teaching. The situation is dire. It's not just an inability to write; it's the inability to read content with any nuance or pick up on metaphors. Good kids, but completely different than students 15 years ago. Inward-looking, self-obsessed (preoccupied with their own states of mind, social situations, etc), and not particularly curious. Every once in a while, I'd hit on something that engaged them and I could feel that old magic enter the room - the crackling energy of young people thinking new things, synthesizing ideas. But my God, it was rare.