College Students Lack Literacy 687
Frr writes to tell us that CNN has a rather disturbing confirmation of what many of us have already seen in practice. In a recent literacy study it was found that "more than half of students at four-year colleges -- and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges -- lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks such as understanding credit card offers." The literacy study took a look at three different type of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents, and having basic math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips.
Complex? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Complex? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's standardized. (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite this, some people will briefly glance at the color glossy flyer, see "ZERO PERCENT (introductory) INTEREST!" and be shocked, yes, shocked, when the rates hop to twenty-seven percent or something ridiculous like that.
Re:It's standardized. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's standardized. (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a bigger problem than literacy if credit card interest is a problem for college kids. Someone ought to take them aside and tell them carrying a balance is always a bad thing, for emergencies only. If you find yourself carrying a balance more than a month, yo
Re:It's standardized. (Score:3, Insightful)
Deep in tiny print on the back of the offer letter there is a notice that if I cash the check, $89.95 will be charged to my credit card for 'account insurance'.
Credit card companies are ALL assholes. Be sure to pay off the outstanding balance without fail when the first bill for it comes (usually once a month) lest you regret ever associating with these creatures.
Re:Why would you carry a credit card balance? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just like closing your unused accounts lowers your score by increasing your balance/avail credit ratio.
I personally think any institution that uses a scoring system to rate you should be required to give you the exact details of how that system works. You should be able to take your credit report and generate your own score to verify the score they have generated. With as many erro
Re:It's standardized. (Score:3, Interesting)
But I needed a credit card to pay for it, because it
Re:Complex? (Score:5, Insightful)
Flip over, read chart... (Score:2)
-Rick
Re:Complex? (Score:5, Insightful)
I question that, actually. I've *never* seen APR stand for "Above Prime Rate." And if they use it to stand for that they're morons, as that would be insanely confusing.
Re:Complex? (Score:4, Interesting)
You can't tell me it doesn't exist. I've seen it too many times. Although the practice seems to have died down in the last few years, for a while that phrase was on every credit offer I received.
Re:Complex? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not saying it doesn't exist, just that it isn't accepted usage. The fact that it's only used by car salesman for confusion purposes would tend to support that, I think. It's a scam, period.
This is vary ture (Score:3, Funny)
Easy Solution (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Easy Solution (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Easy Solution (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Easy Solution (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Easy Solution (Score:3, Insightful)
So, in other words, it IS secured... by almost everything you own. But they still get to charge you the obscene interest rates for 'unsecured' debt. Brilliant move by the banks.
The Republicans utterly shafted the public with this one... jumping up and down pointing at 'people abusing the bankruptcy system'. They conveniently ignore the fact that the banks were allowed to charge high i
Re:Easy Solution (Score:3, Insightful)
But changing the rules halfway through just means that a lot of people will be financially destroyed who otherwise wouldn't have been. They took out the cards with one understanding of the rules, and then the Republicans changed i
Re:Easy Solution (Score:5, Funny)
Ever tried reading a Microsoft EULA? My God, it's heavy going. I normally think, "sod it, I don't use this nonsense anyway", but as per Internet slang, here's an attempt at translating the one for OEM XP.
The introduction:
and so-forth, meaning:
Leading on to:
or, rather:
Next:
[An] AOL [user] says:
You can tell why I'm not being very throrough here, but I think it gets the gist across.
or:
Now...
Something got lost in the translation of this one, but it ended with
Ahem!
That's more like it.
meaning
I could go on here, but I'm thoroughly bored. The rest is export restrictions ("dont give this 2 iranians or cubanz lollll") and so-forth. I think this could work out: Google language filter "EULA to AOLspeak", perhaps?
Re:Easy Solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would translating something that's almost gibberish into complete gibberish help?
Patience (Score:2, Informative)
God Bless College Life
Re: Patience (Score:5, Insightful)
And it may be the case that sometimes companies don't want you to understand an offer very well.
Re: Patience (Score:5, Interesting)
That's pretty sad when legal experts can't even agree on what they say.
Damn (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Damn (Score:4, Insightful)
When some of my friends say they will have "earned" their right to have a better job, I laugh at them. I laugh because they haven't earned anything. I tell them they haven't learned anything. They haven't even been to college. They simply bought a degree online. That is practically all it is. Buying a degree. No longer are you required to actually learn. It's similar to how high school has become daycare. "No need to learn anything in highschool, you can buy your education online later. Hope you can read tho. LMAO LOL!"
(Disclaimer: This specifically refers to the online courses in my area, and may not apply to whatever college you take online classes with.)
Re:Damn (Score:3, Funny)
Could of. 'I probably could of graduated there.'
</anti-grammar-nazi>
College Deters Reading (Score:5, Insightful)
Fewer books (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fewer books (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fewer books (Score:4, Insightful)
The most depressing change in post-secondary education is that it has moved from the liberal arts and sciences approach to the trade skill approach. The ideal of university used to be that the university was a resource of knowledge and wisdom to which students would come to drink, but were not forced to drink, and it was a given that they would already have the skills to digest what they imbibed. In places like Oxford and Cambridge, it was a given that many students simply did not bother to attend classes. They took advantage of the libraries, read widely, consulted with professors, and spent long hours in earnest conversation, learning as much in the cafes and taverns from professors and fellow students and as they would in a class. The discipline required to steer ones own studies is the mark of a good student; if the professor is required to take attendance and teach rudimentary skills, the battle is already lost. In the movie A Beautiful Mind John Nash originally shows a profound contempt for course lectures, both in giving them and taking them, because he is obsessed with his own direction of study. A mediocre student will note the professors position and parrot it. A good student will take this and others into account and play freely with the ideas and arrive at his own opinion. If he is a brilliant student, he will form an opinion which is a genuine advance upon existing ideas.
In connection with this, the current trend of questioning the political leanings of professors and insisting upon neutral or balanced opinions is in keeping with the expectation of mediocrity. You don't learn from people who agree with you. A student who emerges with the opinions of his professors is an ape: monkey see, monkey do, but the fear of professors with differing opinions indicates that those who hold this fear expect students to be apes. And a student who expects to go through university and come out with the same opinions he went in with is an arrogant git who intends to preserve his own ignorance. These people should be identified and failed at the earliest possible opportunity. At one time they would have been, but political correctness is the bulwark of mediocrity. You cannot challenge a student's beliefs, no matter how idiotic--just put them on the bell-curve and process them through like so much ground meat. In the place of sound and nuanced reasoning, graduates learn a few sophomoric post-modernist parlour tricks that can be used in the defense of whatever drivel is currently fashionable. And it does not help that the entry standards are so low that professors are expected to teach rudimentary skills that should have been learned five or ten years previously. In this atmosphere, an ape who can dress himself and use a toilet is regarded as an accomplishment.
Re:Fewer books (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:College Deters Reading (Score:4, Funny)
I haven't heard of War and Peace, though. Is that from EA? And is the peace part any good? That sounds lame.
Too True (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Too True (Score:2)
Re:Too True (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How? (Score:5, Funny)
I don't understand. How can you use a ruler improperly?
Just in case anyone doesn't know, here are instructions [sex-project.com] on how to use one properly.
Re:How? (Score:4, Informative)
Sounds complicated when you describe it like this, doesn't it? You probably learned it at such a young age that you don't remember a time when it didn't make sense or you had to think about it.
Another sign of this is a somewhat new breakdown in the clothing and fashion industry. It used to be that there were just Fashion Designers, who controlled the making of a garment from mental conception all the way to the fractions of an inch, stitches per inch, seam width, etc., that were given to the manufacturers of garments. Nowadays, there are Fashion Designers, and Tech Designers. The Fashion Designer has the "creative" part, and the Tech designer is the one who translates that into inches, stitches, fabrics and so forth! In other words, the ability to handle numbers, fractions, and measurements is now considered difficult enough to render a new job position. I know this because my mother has been in the garmento industry for 40+ years. She is now a tech designer, because nobody wants to do that icky math stuff; all the FIT graduates want to be "creative" designers. Not suprisingly, tech designers typically get paid about 2 to 3 times more than fashion designers.
Yay diversity! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure this thread will fill essentially instantly with anecdotal stories about how dumb everyone was at our colleges. Yes, great, whatever.
Frankly, I wish everyone could have seen the great 20/20 special on our school system last Friday. We're crippling our ability to compete internationally by focusing on the wrong things: we don't want kids to feel bad, so we've got helicopter parents; teachers don't want to worry about getting fired, so we've got horrible teachers' unions; we aren't willing to let some kids occasionally lose-out because a public school failed to compete with other nearby schools, so we don't have vouchers like most of the European nations; etc.
Now, someone will come complain about how vouchers are bad for schools (despite universally benefiting the quality of schools in Europe), how unions protect teachers (despite the fantastic proof of how bad such unions were by 20/20, including a 10 page diagram from the Unions showing how difficult it is to fire someone), etc.
Re:Yay diversity! (Score:3, Interesting)
Mark Sanford (running for Gov.) got permission to put the show on his site at mms://sql2.slicker.com:1890/sanfordforgovernor/20
Good luck watching it until the
Re:Yay diversity! (Score:2)
Thanks for the link.
Re:Helicopter parents... (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know about most people, but I intentionally ram cars that don't have babies in them.
Re:Helicopter parents... (Score:5, Informative)
They were original used for motor homes, so that in case of an accident, rescuers knew to look for a baby. Things got a little out of hand afterwards, though.
Re:2 year schools (Score:3, Funny)
-Rick
It is frustrating... (Score:2, Insightful)
Tip Calculator (Score:2)
http://www.onlineconversion.com/tip_calculator.ht
http://www.pocketgear.com/software_detail.asp?id=
What colleges? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What colleges? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: What colleges? (Score:5, Funny)
Harverd, Printstun, Cornale, and other I've e-leeg colejes.
Eduflation? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've always been tempted to dismiss that as just a "back in my day" story about walking to school in a snowstorm, but it's hard to dismiss certain facts. For example, Robert Graves tells us in his biography [wikipedia.org] that when he an ~8 year old, about 100 years ago, he was "doing ok with Latin, but having trouble with Greek".
And now people are having trouble with their own native language when they graduate from college...
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
What age adult? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, heres a partial explanation right here. People tend to develop skills as they need them. 50+ years ago in the US by the time a man was 17 going on 18 he was considered an adult who would be entering the career of his life. In a couple years, if not already so, he would also get married. These people needed to know basic finance but also worked manual labor jobs.
Now its a bit different. We don't really consider 18 year olds adult in the same sense. Adulthood starts after college graduation. Now we dont enter careers until age 22-25 and get married in mid to late twenties. College finances are not real world finances. You're living off loans, your parents help you out, the state helps you out with aid, etc. So its not surprising that people who we rarely treat as adults act like children. They have no incentive to act otherwise and have no need.
This is not common outside the US but more common in developed western nations where economies demand people with college and post-college educations for jobs that pay (checked for inflation) what old manufacturing jobs paid.
Extended childhood and a case of arrested development is part of the price of an educated society that has moved away from manufacturing and into a service based economy it seems.
I think its being very disingenious to cry "Everyone is stupid nowadays" without look at the radical cultural changes from 50-100 years ago. 200+ years ago people werent getting any education outside a few years of schooling and were getting married at around 15-17 years old and working the rest of their days on the farm. If progress means a longer childhood period then so be it unless you want to be a farmhand or working a lathe for 50 years until retirement somewhere (outside of the western world).
Re:Eduflation? (Score:4, Insightful)
first, I grew up under the watchful eye of a professor--my dad.
Second, I just finished my MS in Psychology--and am continuing on for a PhD. Education and IQ testing are hallmarks of the science.
Now for my real comments: dear old dad always stated that he failed about 50% of his incoming freshman students for the simple reason that were unable to properly read or write. Granted, this was not the most presitigious university, but it is still a very sad commentary on the state of affairs. For the record, he taught history--generally Middle Eastern, but frequently world history, or classes on economic history (his dissertaion
Next, I have heard similar comments, and have a few concerns. First, _never_ trust a single source. One data point is merely an anecdote, and is statistically useless. Second, when viewed from the outside, most experiences do not seem as difficult (or as easy) as they really are. It is difficult, if not impossible, to completely identify the complexities of someone else's experience.
That said, I suspect that getting a PhD is easier now than it used to be. I also suspect that some of this is strictly due to the level of knowledge and understanding that is required slipping. This is almost impossible to measure. After all, if you measure only the bare facts that are required to do a PhD, you will undoubtedly show that a modern PhD is much harder--there are, after all, many more areas of study available now than 50 years ago, and each area has expanded its body of knowledge--in most disciplines. This is why eventually there will be very few, if any, people who know enough about the entirety of a single subject like psychology or physics to integrate the complete body of knowledge into a reasonably coherent picture--there wil be too much information. There is now. Just as it has its rewards, specialization has its costs.
The place to begin education reform is not at the college level, however. Education reform does NOT start in the grade schools either. It starts, largely, at home. It is about becoming a society in which education and intelligence and knowledge about useful stuff is valued, instead knowledge about the latest celebrity marriage or affair. Where math trumps football, and physics trumps NASCAR. I've got no problem with a society that produces and enjoys entertainment--I am a geek that loves computer games after all--but when that begins to supplant a thirst for knowledge and fosters an attitude that smart people aren't cool, I get a little jittery.
If a kids parents don't value education, knowledge and understanding, then the child won't value these either. Too many kids don't learn to read until they are in school of some sort. Too many kids don't learn real math until high school (theory, not simple stuff). I don't remember hearing about certain theorems until high school, but I know that had these things been pushed a little more, I could have learned it. Instead I was stuck in a class with 35 other kids, and told to sit down, shut up and look attentive. School, until college, was infinitely boring for me because of that attitude from most of my teachers. I learned to value learning and knowledge in high school despite the stuff at school, not because of it. I didn't apply that until I got to college. I still pay for my wasted youth.
Finally, a comment about the renormalization of the "IQ" test scores that a sibling post mentions: this is to be expected. After all, the definition of the IQ score is a normalized score to begin with. It is mental age divided by chronological age, or in other words--how much do you understand compared to what the average person of your age group understands. How smart are you compared to your peers. A very useful concept, but it is NOT a measure of raw intelligence. It developed in France as a method of identifying those children who had special needs and could be helped to catch up
Evercrackheads. (Score:3, Funny)
Ah, so that's how we're spelling "playing Everquest" today.
They won't go without employment, though (Score:2)
How many students -read-??? (Score:4, Interesting)
I found that a great many folks (students, and in general) simply don't read anything that's outside of e/mail. That just means that, for the most part, they're -way- less `literate' than folks who do read books (for entertainment value).
And yes, `useless' novels do increase your literacy.
Re:How many students -read-??? (Score:3, Interesting)
Nowadays, I don't do a lot of reading. (Besides the Internet, but I don't think that increases literacy.) I find myself making lots of braindead mistakes these days. While no one (sane) re
I'm not surprised... (Score:3, Funny)
Here's another gem:
"The geology of Mesa, Arizona is significant because my family has lived there for several generations"
Complex Credit Agreements (Score:2)
As many people as possible should be literate. I will, however, point out that creditors are notorious for being misleading and complicated. It is small wonder they do all kinds of crazy things to attract your average, semi-literate 18 year old college kid.
The bad news is.... (Score:5, Interesting)
People, in general, are lazy, and learning to communicate is not a high priority for many. Learning to do many things is not a priority and until it is, they will not learn it. In all probability, some of those who can't make sense of credit card offers do know all the tricks for a dozen video games. I'm not saying that gamers are dumb, but that this demonstrates they are not stupid, just lazy.
The school system that my tax dollars help pay for should not cater to lazy students. They should be made to work hard, and learn as much as they can. So, with some trepidation that I've not considered every angle, I blame the school system(s) for the quality of graduates they produce. Yes, I believe that if a kid doesn't want to learn, let them languish behind the grill at a burger joint for a few years to get inspired to go back and learn something.
Re:The bad news is.... (Score:2, Funny)
Yes, but stupid Americans make fantastic Republicans.
"He wave flag, he say Jesus, me like Bush. Where my beer? Where my pikup truk?"
Re:The bad news is.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Though this topic isn't exactly germane to the thread...but your assertion was true about 20 years ago, but isn't so true today.
Poor minorities are the main poor group voting for the Democratic party, however the Republicans have swept the white poor and lower class groups and middle income groups (as indicated by the demographics of the states they are winning.) Democrats are taking the high income coastal types (and Republicans are taking the very high income corporate executives.)
Interestingly, the Economist noted that the Republican party has no interest in making changes to the tax code to relieve the AMT. The AMT tax is typically paid by people making over $100,000 per year (essentially, people who are in the upper income range, but not exactly rich.) The reason that the Republicans don't care for the AMT payers is because they tend to be Democrat voters. The Republican base is now the middle class with campaign funding from the very rich, and that's what they will continue to concentrate on.
As for the grandparent post, both parties are happy with dumb voters. Nothing's better than someone who will consistently vote for a particular name or issue for little reason at all.
Re:The bad news is.... (Score:3, Insightful)
What good education should be about, is teaching pupils about good common knowledge and deduction skills that make people to undestand how things connect to each other.
Intelligence itself is in fact much about how well one can handle wide wariety of things, it's mostly a
Re:The bad news is.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Grade Inflation... (Score:3, Funny)
I swear, for many instructors the "A" is the new "C." Moreover, the "C" is the new "D-;" however, it's a D- which allows you to attain a prerequisite and move on to the next class.
Additionally, the bachelor's degree is the new high school degree, and the master's degree is the new bachelor's deg
Re:The bad news is.... (Score:3, Insightful)
They (students) do work hard...doing a lot of meaningless and repetitive tasks. The educator Maria Montessorri believed that children are naturally curious creatures and will seek out learning. The purpose of the teacher is to setup the class environment to maximize the curiosity.
Our school system, has been carefully designed to beat out any creativity and curiosity that a child has. In this regard, the one thing asian schools do better is that
Try making change... (Score:4, Insightful)
Statistics (Score:2, Interesting)
I would question the benefits of education. The correlation between how much sex one and one's education is inversely proportional. Perhaps we should be celebrating how much more sex Americans are having thanks to the low-level of l
8th Grade Education (Score:4, Interesting)
but then, the purpose of educational theories since 1900 has not been to create a responsible independant thinking citizen. It has been to create whatever citizen was desirable at the time, be it a willing worker, or a willing consumer. The end result is that we are now reaching the end of the rope.
Teaching professionals advocate throwing Money at the problem, sort of like in the IBM commercials. When the problem is as ineffective technique. But the teachers are illiterate as well. No wonder some people throw their hands up and go for home schooling, or other solutions.
Re:8th Grade Education (Score:5, Interesting)
"Taking, as we hope we do, an extensive survey of social affairs, which we find all in a state of the frightfullest embroilment, and as it were, of inextricable final bankruptcy, just at present; and being desirous to adjust ourselves in that huge up-break, and unutterable welter of tumbling ruins, and to see well that our grand proposed Association of Associations, the Universal Abolition-of-Pain Association, which is meant to be the consummate golden flower and summary of modern philanthropisms all in one, do not issue as a universal "Sluggard-and-Scoundrel Protection Society"--we have judged that, before constituting ourselves, it would be proper to commune earnestly with one another and discourse together on the leading elements of our great Problem, which surely is one of the greatest."
Now, can anyone in the room tell me: What the hell is this guy saying? If I hadn't told you that this was a racist tract, would you have any idea what it was about? The prose of the 19th century is very similar to the way a 14 year old would write today: a jumble of half-connected thoughts strung together with memorized pleasantries. It is like a very stylized and carefully memorized dance. Is it more grammatically accurate than today's average prose? Yes. Does it communicate more accurately? More efficiently? With greater depth? I really don't think so.
(The same system that you praise was lambasted in its time for relying too heavily on memorization and arbitrary but standard rules. For a critical take on the Victorian school systems, take a peek at Dickens' Hard Times. A critique of a similar modern school system can also be found in Richard Feynman's book, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman.)
Private v. Public (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Fuh fuh fuh (Score:2)
Anyhow, how difficult is it to calculate tips? 20% is divide by five, or double and move the decimal point if that's easier. For 15%, just calculate 20% and 10% (you can calculate 10% while doing 20% if you're so inclined) then guess at--I mean, estimate an average. Who cares about hitting 15% on the cent?
My problem is remembering _who_ to tip and _how much!_
On an unrelated note, if there was just one skill that I wish I
Literacy or common sense? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why is this supposed to be a test of literacy? It sounds more like they don't have much 'common sense', which is surely a good sign in an academic ;)
Note that this research comes from the Pew Charitable Trust, the same institution which told us that the gender gap is alive and well online [bbc.co.uk], claiming that women use the Internet for socialising and that men use it for hunting down information. They are certainly making a lot of bold statements and getting themselves in the news.
Okay, a translation of the article for college kid (Score:2)
Translation: Your dumb as shit but it is okay since the adults are even dumber.
Hidden subtext: It don't matter since all the tech jobs are outsourced anyway but you can't outsource the burger key at the McD.
Then again is this really new? Society has always needed far fewer bright people then it needs dumb fucks to do the low end jobs. High tech jobs can be outsourced, the guy picking up the trash has to be local. Worse if we get people who can understand credit card offers how are credit card companies go
Ths artikle iz b0gus!!!!! (Score:2)
Many (most?) students don't take math (Score:2)
The positive side of things (Score:2, Insightful)
Not really surpriced.. follow the money... (Score:4, Interesting)
The pressure to get people's money and get graduates out the door really means that any college that causes someone to drop out looses thus money.
So ofcourse they try to make everyone pass.. nevermind the things they are supposed to be teaching.
ignore this (Score:2)
Simplicity (Score:2)
I've read every "agreement" related to money that I've ever made. Credit card agreements are long and complicated. Do I understand them? Yes. Do I remember all the details in the agreement rig
Heh! What about the Egyptians? (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe the Egyptians were onto something with hieroglyphics - we should have anything that looks remotely complex traslated into a series of small pictures and icons, or maybe even comics. Imagine that; a loan agreement graphic novel.
And as I type that, I'm looking at the giant icons Slashdot uses for its stories and thinking "hmmm... stick one of those at the top of each printed newspaper story and everyone'll figure out what it's about". For chequebooks and tips, well if you can't do that you either fail sociably or get stung badly. Maths, the choice is yours... probably.
I can never tell what to think. (Score:2)
S
I have been reading these responses, and (Score:5, Insightful)
No one ever ends a rant on education with IANATeacher. Why is that?
Re:I have been reading these responses, and (Score:5, Interesting)
I suppose this is "to be expected": it's an art school, after all. However, my students excel at the type problems listed in the article (interpreting, analyzing, comparing and contrasting) : not only can they interpret things like exercise and blood pressure tables, they continually shatter my expectations when assigned the task of redesigning the 1099 tax form or visualizing the supply chain from raw material to mass produced object.
My point is, I guess, that these kids are absolutely and systematically awful at "traditional" skills of reading, writing, and rhetoric. They seem to have compensated for these issues, however, by learning to visually unravel problems and to solve them through less traditional methods. I don't think this is taught in high school, and so I'm left wondering two things: where do they learn these "innovative" problem solving methods, and what the fuck ARE they learning in high school?
Bad Example (Score:2)
A lack of literacy is a problem, but this example is pretty bad. Most credit card offers today have "features" like multiple interest rates that are applicable based upon various contingencies and multiple-month rolling interest rates. Most attorneys lack the literacy to comprehend these offers, let along the average college student.
It's not just college students... (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, I think that quite a bit of that came from a certain physics professor that I had. He was the head of the department, and I ended up getting him for about 8 of the physics classes that I took. He expected you to understand every nuance of what you had studied, and to understand it *completely*. Often he would ask questions that were seemingly impossible to solve, but if you looked at what he gave you and gave it enough thought, you would find that in every case he had given you everything you needed to know - even if it wasn't obvious that he had.
steve
Re:It's not just college students... (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently including journalists. In a move that should surprise nobody, the reporter who wrote the article doesn't seem to have bothered to look at the data, and relied on the pre-digested summary instead. If you bother to look at the Appendix [air.org] to the report, which is just a few mouse clicks away for anyone who is interested, it turns out that the college students did substantially better than the population at large.
What's particularly interesting is that they also had a comparison of current college students with college graduates. The current students did better than graduates in all areas of the test. Their average scores were higher, a lower pecentage of them were in the lowest score categories, and a higher percentage were in the highest score categories, with the exception of one test where the 2 year college graduates managed a tie with the current 2 year students.
It would be at least as honest to report the results as saying that current college students are better equipped for daily life than the population at large. But that wouldn't be alarming enough. More importantly, it wouldn't play to the prejudices of the audience, who want to believe that things are going to hell.
And adults are? (Score:3, Interesting)
& science 'not for normal people'... --BBC art (Score:4, Interesting)
Around 70% of the 11-15 year olds questioned said they did not picture scientists as "normal young and attractive men and women". The research examined why numbers of science exam entries are declining. They found around 80% of pupils thought scientists did "very important work" and 70% thought they worked "creatively and imaginatively". Only 40% said they agreed that scientists did "boring and repetitive work". Over three quarters of the respondents thought scientists were "really brainy people". Among those who said they would not like to be scientists, reasons included: "Because you would constantly be depressed and tired and not have time for family", and "because they all wear big glasses and white coats and I am female".
The number taking A-level physics dropped by 34% between 1991 and 2004, with 28,698 taking the subject in that year. The decline in numbers taking chemistry over the same period was 16%, with 44,440 students sitting the subject in 1991, and 37,254 in 2004. The number of students taking maths also dropped by 22%...
Seen on Shacknews [shacknews.com]. I believe United States is also like this. Posted on AQFL [aqfl.net].
Who needs math? There are calculators (Score:4, Insightful)
Ever whipped out a calculator when trying to pay a tab at a restaurant? Who brings their dictionary with them to a place they need to spell correctly?
Maybe it's the poor examples they see... (Score:3, Insightful)
Students lack literate for complex tasks
Yes, that was the headline. If professional writers and editors blow something like this, what's a poor college student to do? I'd love to think this was done on purpose, some editor's attempt at humor, but mistakes like this are far too common, but usually not so ironic.
This is a cultural problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, I visit people living in McMansions in various parts of the US, and I find many of them have no library, even though there is far more room for one if they so chose. Not surprisingly, their kids have little interest in reading, because their parents don't read, yet are "successful" - i.e. they have the McMansion and stuff to fill it. What conclusion do you think most kids today will come to?
"Success" and education APPEAR more uncoupled in today's world than they used to be - and that is awfully hard for even the best teachers to overcome. The people who are drawn to knowledge for its own beauty have always been a very small minority; for the rest, education is interesting to the extent it is rewarding. If the rewards appear less, the education is less interesting and devolves into seeking the form (degrees) rather than the substance.
Btw, I used to tutor kids in their homes for many years, so I have some experience/bias when it comes to how kids are educated....
A real life example... (Score:3, Interesting)
"I hope to learn skill that will be detrimental to my life and job".
I am pretty sure that this wasn't a joke. This is scarey!
Doom (Score:3, Insightful)
Computers are at fault (Score:3, Interesting)
Switch off the computer, take out a book on elementary algebra and one piece of good English fiction.
Re:Computers are at fault (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, they were totally helpless 20 years ago when computers were uncommon. I grew up with kids who had to diagram sentences, do math by hand and read books. Let me assure you that many (most?) of them sucked at it. Most of this hand wringing and wishing for the good old days is a waste of time. There weren't any good old days.
Re:My response (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Not surprising... (Score:4, Insightful)