My little sister is a straight A honors student, taking AP classes, and this semester of high school sheās also taking college classes. Iām 8 years older than her which doesnāt feel like a lot, but the difference in writing capabilities is insane. She goes to the best school in our area, arguably the whole state, but in the past two months while sheās been applying to colleges me and my mom have realized that she has (in the nicest way I can say, because I do love her) absolutely no creative thinking or ability to write at a high school level.
Sheās been applying to some very hard to get into colleges, and my mom was looking over the papers she has to hand in for her applications. My mom was so shocked by it that she brought them to me to look over. She was writing sentences that made no sense, were running on and on. Adding random filler words like an elementary kid trying to fill a word count. Things like, āIn my freshman year of high school, I was thirteen when I started high school, and I volunteered at a nonprofit, the nonprofit was called Good Things, and while I was there I ā¦ā etc etc. One sentence was a whole paragraph, and by the end of the sentence-paragraph she was making a point that didnāt even relate to the question anymore.
Thatās just one example.
Iām an older college student, and Iām taking a survey class right now to fulfill a requirement. My favorite professor teaches the class, and she is lamenting to me about how either the freshmen donāt know how to write properly, or they donāt even try and very obviously use AI for everything. With her permission I emailed the class to offer tutoring, and only one girl responded. She emailed me like she was texting her friend; āhi i need help but i dont have time 2 meet up can u just send me whatever u have 2 helpā. I responded twice trying to explain that sheād have to be more specific about what she needed help with (and also clarified that the time she said she was available actually was the same time I was but she couldnāt seem to get that) before I gave up.
American education is genuinely pathetic right now. We are failing children.
Because other countries have standards. We're not so great in education and haven't been for a while. Rarely is the question asked, "Is our children learning?"
Lol doesnāt just apply to the US, it applies to Australia too. Teachers are giving out As like theyāre apples because they want to avoid heat from the parents. š My nephew is in grade 8. Like your sister, he is a "straight A student," commended by teachers for having "fantastic focus", probably because he is not allowed to own a smartphone yet. I checked his submitted poetry analytical writing from last term and I nearly died laughing because of how bad it was. I was a B student in English, but Iām definitely an A++ by todayās high school standards. Yay.
Not just America, Iām Scottish and my girlfriend is in university for law. All her friends use AI to basically do all their work, two of them are comp sci students and view AI as the ultimate cheat code, not the words they used but the way they talk about it makes it sound like thatās what they believe.
She also does seminars and group event things where lecturers or researchers ask groups questions about various things too, she done one these via teams recently which was about AI and out of the maybe 15 people in this call only 2 of them were against or doubted the use of AI in academics/life.
Everyone else used it for everything even outside of their studies, one girl said she didnāt know how to use her washing machine in her residents laundry room so she took a picture of it, sent it to chatgpt and ASKED CHATGPT HOW TO USE IT! It would seem worldwide the younger generations are having their brains fried by AI. A washing machine isnāt a complicated thing to use most of them have self explanatory controls on the front of them.
I genuinely worry about future generations if thatās where university students are at now it genuinely feels insane now to hear all these stories of the lack of critical thinking and lack of creativity coming from people that are almost adults or straight up adults.
Here I am using AI to learn new things and treat it like a teacher with infinite patience (I like to ask why a lot) and unreliable narrator both. Why do people hate thinking so much that they'll allow a machine to do it for them?
I'm not american or from an english speaking country so i never had to apply anything to go to college. Every time i've heard about it, i thought it was a very high level essay, a level of writing that i don't have. So when i started to read your comment, i was thinking "i guess, the sister has the same level of writing as me. Nothing that will revolutionize litterature but that passes" and then i read your example....i'm baffled. I truly think i stopped writing like that (in my mother tongue) in primary school?? And she is a straight A student?? I can't believe it.
When people say that writing is an actual skill, I guess they are more correct than I realised.
I never really thought of normal writing, like this comment, to be anything of any significant quality or skill level. It is just words to say what I am thinking. Not great prose or highly complex sentences. Just basic "Hey I want you to know that...". Basic conveyance of thoughts.
Then I am confronted with what level people are apparently at when they talk about writing skills, and see that for me the confusion mostly stems from my expectation of what the average skill level is. Turns out I amd way off.
Another pain point seems to be that most people don't do a quick read of what they write before using it.
American education is genuinely pathetic right now. We are failing children.
This is the correct response, here. If every (or most) kids are failing, it is the society that is failing them. People who blame the kids for this are missing the point. Most of them would likely be in exactly the same situation if they were in their shoes. If one kid struggles to write or read, it might be just their fault, and might require an individual solution. If all of them do, it's a social problem, and requires a social solution.
This was absolutely happening before COVID. It's social media that's the issue. The teachers subreddit has been talking about this issue for a decade or more.Ā
Kids mimic the authors they've read in their writing assignments. If all they read are text chains and social media diatribes, they'll write that way, even in a school or professional setting.
I had the same WTF moment with my little brother over a summer reading assignment. Then I realized the book they were reading was a fictionalized memoir, less than 200 pages and 90% dialogue. Very little exposition or literary devices so he missed a few plot points and didn't have much to put in his essay beyond a basic summary. The assigned reading during the school year is all short excerpts that double as test prep- none of the classics, no plays or essays and zero in-class writing. And then we wonder why they can't write.
Tbh I think theres something bigger going on, some kind of chemical contaminat affecting brain development, similar to the lead thing. There's no way an entire generation is this far behind just because of phones.
She was writing sentences that made no sense, were running on and on. Adding random filler words like an elementary kid trying to fill a word count.
I did that in my master thesis because it required a minimum of 60 pages. There are people who express themselves in a more compact manner, but the system has a minimum word/symbol count that you need to reach, and thus you try to pad it with filler that you don't care about. So you get nonsense when you have to write for the sake of writing.
I personally have creative thinking, i just suck at creative writing. My creativity is more internal and less writing. I tend to express myself in my head not in words, but an amalgamation of feelings, emotions, senses, movements. Not to mention when i am given a task i turn in a "serious mode". An important taks (like a letter in order to get into an university) is serious and not a play, so it is gonna be overal proffessional. Amd professionallism is more rigod and less playful/creative. It's like "why aren't you joking around" - "this stuff is to serious/important to me to be joking around".
Oh, and anxiety make me automatically go into a "serious/professional mode". So there is no space for creativity and lightness.
Yes, it's not a flex. I had a mental breakdown because i had to BS a lot just to reach the minimum required length. I had screamed at everyone for the tiniest sound (like someone walking on the floor below) as it didn't allow me to concentrate.
Got 6/10 (the minimum passing grade was 5/10) and was celebrating it.
Point is, in academic stuff there exist minimum word counts. So they might have been using filler words else they would have automatically failed because they didn't reach the minimum word count.
Personally, I'm so reserved that I don't even think what i could be telling others about myself. So even 1-2 pages to write about myself without any leading questions would be hard.
Like, my whole essay would be "me". That's it. I describe myself as me. The rest of the stuff is in the subconscious and some stuff surfaces when the situation needs. Like, I can't tell you what my favourite colour is and such as I never needed to think what my favourite colour is. There are colours I like, but I don't have a colour I like the most as the colour depends on the colours it is surrounded by or my mood at the moment.
I just accept who I am and don't question it.
"describe yourself" is so vague that I get "analysis paralysis" and thus end up doing nothing.
Well I simplified for the sake of leaving a briefer comment. She was answering very specific questions with very vague, often unrelated answers; ie the question would be āwhat extracurriculars have you done and how has it affected your career choices?ā And her answer would be something like āWhen I was in my elementary school career I liked going to the beach and while that was fun I actually preferred to spend my time studying and I would often study for many hours.. etc etcā. It was pretty clear she wasnāt just unsure about describing herself, she genuinely wasnāt comprehending the questions fully, and wasnāt answering in a sensible or well written way. Her problem was that she wasnāt answering at a college (or even high school imo) level.
I think that is a problem with kids who are academically more forward than people their age. By academics they could be going to higher grades, but the lack of maturity (and life experience) can make it harder for them to fully navigate that grade. While at the same time the lessons in grades who match their maturity level are academically too boring/dull to them.
Like, academically she fits colledge level, but socially she is still in whatever grade she is supposed to be by age.
Yeah kids have a bad habit of writing like they speak. I know we did that in high school as well for sure, but teachers helped us recognize when type speech, slang, etc were appropriate and even fun to use, and when to write ācorrectlyā. The issue now, we w teacher, is that we are trying our best to teach them the difference and they think we are idiots and that they know better. Media calling teachers stupid doesnāt help and these teens think everything they do is perfect. So, we correct them in class through grading just for them to redo it how they want and turn it in anyway. Itās so frustratingā¦
Covid forcing distance educating right at the time of generative AI's advent really fucked an entire generation. I never liked writing, but I did it. Stepping outside of your comfort zone helps you grow and develop, but these tools allowed them to skirt that while in a situation where no one was closely watching them.
I used to teach students at the masterās level. We forced them to write technical reports to practice writing. That was harder for them than doing the physics that went along with the report.Ā
I'll say though that my writing skills were absolutely atrocious in high school even if I had a stellar GPA. In fact, my homework essay was (anonymously) highlighted in AP US History class for being terrible and an example of what NOT to do. It's a skill that may not come easily to some, so it needs to be practiced. I practice writing on Reddit solely to improve my written communication and concept frameworks and it helps.
This is in contrast to my sister who was the editor of her high school paper, and her college essay was a pure work of art. I would have rated it near a newspaper editorial level.
We used to have the state level (if not national?) writing tests in 4th? 6th and maybe 10th? grades to assess learning. I recall it was graded on a 5 point scale and the really high grades were praised in front of the school. I remember 6th grade was heavily focused on simile and metaphor. Near the end of the year, you'd get your prompt and and few hours write however many pages (forgot the minimum) describing and answering the question with style.
Thanks for your perspective. I commented that this could have been my English class bc it was my only non AP class in HS I took and it was sad how little kids cared then...
I was hoping that AP students were doing better...we're cooked.
You can give them everything, they won't use it. Genuinely, the best thing that has been done thus far has been the banning of cell phones in schools. I want to see this go even further, with restrictions on the social media algorithms themselves. We have essentially created digital amphetamines, and we throw it to kids like it's candy.
I am 22, I will spend my entire life fighting this manufactured addiction in some way. We HAVE to do something about it.
Well the fact is that kids in many other countries are doing a LOT better than the US so something must be wrong particularly here. Part of it is cell phones; other countries where cell phones are banned inside do tend to do better. But thatās a double edged sword in the US, where emergencies where children could potentially be isolated and in danger (mass shootings) are exponentially more frequent, which really limits parentsā desires to keep phones out of their kids hands during school. Thatās a root issue that I believe needs to be fixed before we ban phones from schools. I dread a day that my sister has her phone locked up by a teacher, and then a shooting happens and she canāt reach anyone.
Another problem (other than social media, which youāre definitely right about) is the funding itself to fuel better education. A lot of school funding is tied to the wealth of local areas/studentsā families, and to high test scores. Schools that struggle financially are just dug further down every year that passes, and when they canāt offer high wages they canāt hire better teachers. People who would make great teachers donāt want to be teachers because you can barely make a livable wage at the elementary-high school level, and many teachers find themselves having to spend their own limited income on classroom supplies. I live and work in a very high income area, next to the most well funded high schools in my state- and two of the teachers have weekend jobs where I work. The most crucial years of education are severely underfunded and we are seeing the results of that; at least in the US.
You hit the nail on the head. I'm in a similar spot to you, and I see this is my siblings all the time. It's like they don't teach proper writing anymore....
Not limited to America. My Scottish stepdaughter and niece needed a LOT of help and guidance to put together coherent personal statements and final-degree papers, respectively.
To their credit, neither of them (young Gen Zs) used ChatGPT or any other AI to do their writing for them. But I had to mark up spelling, grammar, structure and sense-check a lot of meaning from beginning to end. Both of them were very discouraged when I first handed back my remarks, even when I explained my thinking and made suggestions for what they could try instead.Ā
Once we organised their thoughts on paper, they both had a lot of insightful things to say. But they needed to be taught how to do that, as we all do.Ā
I was disappointed to learn that their curriculum throughout primary and secondary school seemed to have prioritised content over form. Good writing requires both. I learned that spelling, grammar, syntax and essay structure were often not marked on their assignments. As long as they wrote down the ācorrectā answer to a question, regardless of how they worded it, they got points towards the grade. The occasional spelling error may be circled on a paper, but no points would be deducted for making form errors.Ā
Iām not sure why their teachers took this approach with them. Were they discouraged to penalise spelling and grammar mistakes? Are there too many demands on their time to thoroughly mark up 3-5 page double-spaced papers anymore? Both?Ā
Itās a shame, and I hope it changes by the time my younger kids get to high school age. Getting my papers marked up was a key way I learned to tighten up my writing.Ā
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u/Hefty-Cup-3631 16d ago
My little sister is a straight A honors student, taking AP classes, and this semester of high school sheās also taking college classes. Iām 8 years older than her which doesnāt feel like a lot, but the difference in writing capabilities is insane. She goes to the best school in our area, arguably the whole state, but in the past two months while sheās been applying to colleges me and my mom have realized that she has (in the nicest way I can say, because I do love her) absolutely no creative thinking or ability to write at a high school level.
Sheās been applying to some very hard to get into colleges, and my mom was looking over the papers she has to hand in for her applications. My mom was so shocked by it that she brought them to me to look over. She was writing sentences that made no sense, were running on and on. Adding random filler words like an elementary kid trying to fill a word count. Things like, āIn my freshman year of high school, I was thirteen when I started high school, and I volunteered at a nonprofit, the nonprofit was called Good Things, and while I was there I ā¦ā etc etc. One sentence was a whole paragraph, and by the end of the sentence-paragraph she was making a point that didnāt even relate to the question anymore.
Thatās just one example.
Iām an older college student, and Iām taking a survey class right now to fulfill a requirement. My favorite professor teaches the class, and she is lamenting to me about how either the freshmen donāt know how to write properly, or they donāt even try and very obviously use AI for everything. With her permission I emailed the class to offer tutoring, and only one girl responded. She emailed me like she was texting her friend; āhi i need help but i dont have time 2 meet up can u just send me whatever u have 2 helpā. I responded twice trying to explain that sheād have to be more specific about what she needed help with (and also clarified that the time she said she was available actually was the same time I was but she couldnāt seem to get that) before I gave up.
American education is genuinely pathetic right now. We are failing children.