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Education

Gen Z Students Show Declining School Engagement, Survey Finds 188

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
A new national survey reveals a concerning trend in school engagement among Gen Z students aged 12-18. The joint Gallup and Walton Family Foundation study [PDF] found that middle and high school students find classes less interesting than last year, with only half feeling positively challenged. Student engagement has dropped significantly since 2023, with 10% fewer respondents saying they learned something interesting at school in the past week.

Non-college-bound students report feeling particularly disconnected, with only 41% saying schoolwork challenges them positively compared to 55% of college-bound peers. Despite only half of students planning to attend four-year colleges, schools heavily emphasize higher education. 68% of high schoolers report hearing "a lot" about college, while only 23% hear as much about vocational alternatives.
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Gen Z Students Show Declining School Engagement, Survey Finds More

Gen Z Students Show Declining School Engagement, Survey Finds

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  • Need more trades and less college or at least remo (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Thursday August 29, 2024 @02:09PM (#64746734)

    Need more trades and less college or at least remove the loans from college

    • They aren't even making it to college OR trade school. This is a front end problem, not a back end problem.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        That sounds pretty bad. Is it young people looking at the world and deciding it is not worth investing in?

        • I have a friend that is a few years out of high school and wants to go to college. He attended the most prestigious school in our area (county pop. 85k) for K-12 and ended up graduating from an online school with a great GPA his last few years in high school. He could easily get into college, but likely doesn't qualify for a scholarship (which are harder to get than you think, unless your lucky, or Indian).

          Family support, cost, and health issues are the main factors for him from what I have gathered. He w

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            That is a pretty bad situation. My first degree was free (CS Master of Science equivalent in Europe) and pretty good quality if you put in the work. Seems for-profit education still sucks and prevents people from getting the education they should get.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by keltor ( 99721 ) *
            Schools like MIT/Stanford/Harvard/etc all have guaranteed affordability to accepted students. They can do this because they have huge endowments. Some of the regents are even in favor of just removing tuition entirely.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Gilmoure ( 18428 )

          I know from my kid (graduated HS 2018), they did not want to go to 4 year college/uni and get saddled with $$$ debt. So many kids look around and see that wages have lagged behind productivity and corporate proffits and that they will never be able to afford stuff that previous generations had a chance at, like home ownership or individual rentals.

          Cool thing is, despite all the push from their high school teachers and counselors, they decided on the local trade/community college school. So far, an Associate

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            Sounds like college/uni is mostly dead due to idiotic business model (from the point of view of society). But good to know more classical paths still work. And if you are good and motivated, you can always add qualifications you like to have.

          • Why even do STEM?? Harder jobs, unstable jobs, and they don't pay over all much better than a trade job; plus it's way harder to train/educate for.

            The benefits of STEM go to the top.
            The movies? -- the STEM people are background victims blown away like nothing. The hero is the non-STEM meathead with a gun... maybe a high tech STEM provided weapons given to him before the nerd dies.

          • I hear this excuse about things being expensive and here's the thing; I live in fucking San Diego, make a lousy 60k but I still afford to live alone. In fact, since I don't have a car payment, I SAVE money every single month. It's part of the budget. That's not counting 10% to 401k either.

            If I had a roommate, life would financially even easier but I'd rather spend more on rent to live without dealing with a roommate. I don't get to eat out much. I cook most every meal from scratch and obviously I'm not goin

        • That sounds pretty bad. Is it young people looking at the world and deciding it is not worth investing in?

          That's probably part of it, but the bigger factor may be that the lenses through which they're looking at the world are those of social media, streaming services, influencers, and advertising.

          I think there's been a shift away from people knowing themselves and having confidence in their capabilities. The cause is a complex mix - it probably starts when kids are young and instead of walking to school and to other activities, they're consistently driven. They can't explore, can't gain self confidence, can't g

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            Interesting point. This seems to be far more pronounced in the US than in Europe, but yes, that would do it.

    • This is a story about 12-18 year olds.

      At this rate, theyâ(TM)re not heading towards a trade, college, university or a successful life!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rujiel ( 1632063 )
      There's a reason Bill Gates and other oligarchs are fans of trade schools (and charter school programs as well). Part of he point is to make sure workers are entirely replaceable.
  • Perhaps they realize that there's no point in trying to get a job from a capitalist entity when those entities are going to try to replace them with a machine at the very first opportunity. That's always been the case, of course, but now those companies are actually putting it in the brochure.
    • As opposed to a government entity, which cannot function without taxes from wealth creating business?

  • "Let me kick my tail at school to be a wage slave" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dmay34 ( 6770232 ) on Thursday August 29, 2024 @02:20PM (#64746778)

    Let's face it. School is a lie. It didn't used to be a lie. Once upon a time the promise that if you kicked your butt in school, and made good grades, then you would be able to get into a good college and live a better life then your parents did.

    Those days are over. Today, it's honestly difficult to justify the expense of the debt of college. Might as well just drop out and kick your butt actually building something meaningful without the debt hanging over your head.

    • What a "wage slave"? Isn't a slave, somebody who has to work for no pay, because they are the property of the master?

      Working for a wage is called employment. I know, I know, Gen Z doesn't think it's fair that they have to work to get money. From that perspective, I suppose it makes sense to think of employment as a kind of slavery.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dmay34 ( 6770232 )

        A "wage slave" is someone who has to work and can't risk changing their lives because they would starve without their paycheck. Their employer controls their life. If you can't leave someone then you aren't free. If you aren't free then you are a slave.

        • I make six figures. I would starve without my paycheck. Am I a wage slave?

          Money buys things. You get money by working. If that's slavery, then we're all slaves, aren't we.

          Employers only control your life if you let them. When unemployment is below 5%, there are other options. If you don't like your job, get a different one.

          Yes, there are exceptions, like undocumented workers who are abused by their employers. But this is not the norm. Most people do have the freedom to go work somewhere else if they hate th

    • Re:"Let me kick my tail at school to be a wage sla (Score:5, Interesting)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Thursday August 29, 2024 @05:02PM (#64747216)

      The number of people in the world who manage to build something meaningful without a highschool education is vanishingly small. The choice is educated wage slave, uneducated wage slave with poorer results, unemployed, or playing a game which is statically incredibly stacked against you.

      Those people who talk about being a "wage slave" are usually those who have never tried starting their own small business and the insane amount of shit that it entails.

      Fun little anecdote, my car broke down last year and the road side assistance guy couldn't get it going, so we called a towtruck. Along comes this posh looking woman to tow my broken arse home so we get to the obvious chat - what is a woman doing as a tow truck driver. Well it turns out she was a small business owner complete with 2 employees offering farrier services and other horse related wellness to right people. She then proceeded to tell me for the following hour how as a business owner you can never switch off, how it's an endless battle managing work work balance, no time for life, because the time normal wage slaves spend on life she's following up on reporting, tax, paperwork, chasing customers who haven't paid their bills, etc. That's why she's a tow truck driver. She wanted to become a wage slave, go to work, get paid dollars for hours present, and then go home.

      There are far worse things out there than having a 9-5 job. Even now it's one of the best reliable options for a comfortable life that doesn't involve fighting against some insane odds of success, even if you won't have the buying power your parents did.

  • Maybe we should stop defunding everything? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Austerity Empowers ( 669817 ) on Thursday August 29, 2024 @02:23PM (#64746788)

    We have teachers quitting left and right, most are phoning it in trying to minimize their workload. This year two new teachers quit within the first week of school, one was arrested for boinking a student, apparently it wasn't a surprise to anyone either, but he was one of the better teachers. There's another one my son expects will get caught, I have personally seen how popular he is with the girls and had already wondered.

    Districts are strictly spoon feeding curriculum and not letting teachers go beyond requirements. Students are bored as fuck. My son has a 5.8 GPA and I've never seen him do a drop of homework. He, none-the-less, has no faith that his grades or even a degree in a sought after field will get him anything other than a slightly above average job that pays peanuts, and I'm not even sure he's wrong. The normal extra-curriculars of sports, music and the arts are saturated with kids trying to build the perfect "well-rounded" college application, but who are mostly liabilities to their teams. I hear there's one girl who is in cheer, band, orchestra, year book, cross country and tennis. Any two of those are, schedule-wise, mutually exclusive. She is always in danger of being kicked out, but her parents have some kind of arrangement. All so she can apply to some "tier 1" college and have a shot against everyone else with very padded applications. Ultimately, her daddy isn't rich, so she's in the back of hte bus with the rest of us once she leaves the nest.

    There's a lot of bullshit going on. I don't blame kids for tuning out.

    • All the educated kids are going to need ditch-diggers to do the manual labor, so it works out.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        Nah, when Waymo flames out, the tech will be salvaged to run autonomous ditch diggers.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by sdinfoserv ( 1793266 )
      It's called "No child left behind". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] , NCLB requires schools graduate a percentage of students or lose funding. The net result was to lower test requirements to ensure even the lowest functioning pupils could pass.
      Add to that the fact that schools are not able to discipline students, nor can the kick out students for bad behavior or disrupting the class room. Then, have the rich scream about not wanting to pay taxes and having school budgets slashed... the mix is a p
    • Forget the extracurriculars, you don't need them and most schools don't care about them at all.

      Just get good grades (all colleges require GPAs be re-scaled to 4.0 scale, so don't worry about those "bonus" GPAs that go above 4.0), go to a good public school where you don't go into too much debt, then go to professional school in medicine (e.g., pharmacy, physician, nurse, radiology), again a public if you can get in, and you'll have a good salary and enough work and opportunities for a lifetime. It's not c
    • When I started to put my kid through college it became painfully obvious that unless you've got at least five or six extracurricular activities on your resume you're not going to get jack shit for scholarships except the Pell grants that don't even cover tuition thanks to 40 years of budget cuts.

      I mean we literally have Ronald Reagan's people on record saying they wanted to cut funding to college so the middle class couldn't go there because they thought that they couldn't control us if we had educations


      • And the best part was when my kid graduated they were still paid and treated as if they didn't know how to do the job even though they had just done 2 years of on-the-job training and were far more capable than any baby boomer they were working alongside.

        What was their field? I mean regardless, it seems unlikely that they were super knowledgeable. Don't get me wrong, it can be fun to work with fresh grads. They are full of energy and new ideas. And the good ones just absorb the training and new knowledge. B

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by smooth wombat ( 796938 )
      We have teachers quitting left and right,

      Not surprising when school budgets keep getting cut and teachers have to reach into their own pockets for school supplies. Or have their hands tied about what and how they can teach. Or they're told they have to teach classrooms of 30 kids. Or the kids can do almost whatever they want knowing the school won't do anything to them.

      Would you want to work in that environment?

  • Declining school engagement (Score:3)

    by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Thursday August 29, 2024 @02:30PM (#64746810)

    Youngsters aren't getting engaged these days
    maybe its due to the decline in teen pregnancy

  • It's been 30 odd years for me, but it sounds like modern schooling is now just 'do the assignment on your laptop'.

    I don't know what percentage is still allowing remote attendance, but that is in itself a failing to teach.

    You want engagement like in the past? Throw out the smartphones and keep the laptops at home for 'homework'. Ditch remote classes, and only use that for 'snow days'.

    Self teaching in college sure, but for basic schooling you have to force everyone to show the fuck up and remove the

    • As someone that's a returning student to the college fun, I'm pretty annoyed at how much is online and self taught. What the fuck am I paying for in tuition if the online platforms and digital books are doing all the heavy lifting? It's a joke compared to when I first attended classes in the early 00s.

      And yes, you have to pay for access to those digital platforms and books. It doesn't come with the tuition and other random fees they make you pay. Total hustle. About the only thing I can say is having due da

  • They have little hope (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Thursday August 29, 2024 @02:33PM (#64746822)

    Everything they imagine they might do is going to be done by computers, so how are they supposed to imagine a job worth studying for?

    They're less likely than ever to own a home.

    So we show these kids a future where they can struggle to maximize a rich owner's profits and we expect them to buckle down enthusiastically and prepare to do that?

    • Everything they imagine they might do is going to be done by computers

      So you're saying even prospective sex workers don't have career prospects?

    • Everything they imagine they might do is going to be done by computers, so how are they supposed to imagine a job worth studying for?

      They're less likely than ever to own a home.

      Own a home? Give me a break. These are 12-18 year olds. Even in the best economies no kid that age is even thinking about home ownership.

      So we show these kids a future where they can struggle to maximize a rich owner's profits and we expect them to buckle down enthusiastically and prepare to do that?

      Yes. That’s exactly what we should do. Because you just described every generations struggle. Only difference these days is kids don’t have the additional worry of graduating high school to get drafted into a fucking war.

      As far as school engagement is concerned, how about we stop Generation Junkie from mainlining tech every hour of every day. Seems like

    • Everything they imagine they might do is going to be done by computers

      Only in science fiction. If you actually use AI, you would know that AI is vastly over-hyped. Yes, it's useful, I use it every day, kind of like I use Google searches every day. The sky is not falling.

      • Hyperbole perhaps, but not science fiction. Jobs are falling to AI at a significant rate. It doesn't have to be as good as a human to replace one - anywhere AI can take over a task, that's a percentage of a job, and when it's a big enough percentage with a large enough workforce, jobs start disappearing.

        • Lots of companies are *talking* about replacing people with AI, but that's..*marketing*.

          For example, the recent announcement by Klarna that they will replace thousands of employees with AI https://slashdot.org/story/24/... [slashdot.org] This is all hype. The truth is, they need to cut jobs, they've already cut 25% of their workforce, and more layoffs are coming. They're just spinning this as "we're replacing humans with AI" to make themselves look like they're in less trouble than they are.

          If jobs are "falling to AI" so

      • AI just has to get "good enough" and don't think companies aren't keeping an eye out. The suits and bean counters are waiting for the day to come when they can lay off 10 code monkeys and be replaced with AI.

  • It's not just the high schoolers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Oh really now ( 5490472 ) on Thursday August 29, 2024 @02:36PM (#64746832)

    My youngest (10) has been complaining about school almost since he started. At first we chalked it up to new environment, added structure, etc. but when he became increasingly specific we couldn't keep explaining it away. His main points were boredom, repetition, constraints around learning beyond the curriculum, and being forced to sit ... and sit ... and sit ... So we finally made the decision to give it a try, pulled him and placed him into a home school program. He's a bright kid, we knew he'd finish in shorter time than in public school but we were not prepared for how much of a difference. We chose a fully accredited program, approved by the state to be equivalent (actually ahead of) their established grade level standards. Just in case he needed to go back. Cue surprised face when he trots out of the office after 45 minutes saying he's done for the day and asking if he can play on his VR. No way, 7 hours in school can't equal 45 minutes at home. Apparently it does, little squirt had everything right. 100%. Every day has been the same, and we've bought more materials to supplement. He is absolutely eating it up, and loves learning all these things beyond what they would ever cover in public school. The biggest thing he longed for was contact with kids, but we've already started figuring out where other homeschool kids go during the day and that too has been so much healthier.

    tl;dr; It's not Gen-Z, it's our schools.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ebunga ( 95613 )

      I can assure you it was like this in the 80s and 90s, but most of that was before the invention of fun so most never noticed. I usually finished going through the entirety of my textbooks in the first couple of weeks of the semester while sitting in class and would be bored the rest of the year.

      • I did this in college as well. For many classes, I could have read the text book and tested out. I did test out of quite a few but mostly via AP exams.

    • Get those homeschool kids some skates! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Seven Spirals ( 4924941 ) on Thursday August 29, 2024 @03:42PM (#64747022)
      I coach some roller skating and inline classes. I have a lot of home schooled kids in them and they get some great social interactions there. The build friendships, learn teamwork, get in shape (some really love skating and will be skaters for life, meaning their parents gave them the gift of lifelong fitness). I teach one of the classes (an inline class) in an outdoor skate park. So, those folks get some vitamin-D, as well.

      I also used to be a martial arts instructor (Kung Fu) in my 20's. I'd say it's slightly less accessible than skating and probably not as good for cardio fitness depending on how the classes are structured but they are still another great option. If you go this route try to commit to 2-3 classes a week so your kid can get close to an instructor rank in 5-6 years. I still have friends from that world, too 30 years later. Most martial artists are great people with good ethical codes and value systems. It really helps kids with low self-esteem, but so does skating.

  • Covid Era Hangover (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SmaryJerry ( 2759091 ) on Thursday August 29, 2024 @03:01PM (#64746904)
    Kids in grade schools during covid fell behind and also got to experience total freedom too early. In our district a passing grade was lowered to 40% just to allow kids more kids to pass their classes, can't have half the students flunking out. It's like work from home for adults, once you had it, going back is a pain. I think i saw another report that around 50% of that age group also exhibit signs of depression, up from around 20% pre-covid. Feels like the damage has been done, all we can do now is try our best to stress why these things are important to children.

  • Two things... (Score:3)

    by zkiwi34 ( 974563 ) on Thursday August 29, 2024 @03:48PM (#64747034)
    1. TikTok and the like. Basically addictive escapism 2. Loss of hope. Education isn't much help when there is a shrinking job pool, coupled with more and more families that are flat out broke, or heading there fast.

  • This survey is about feelings and perceptions about engagement. It doesn't seem to be about engagement itself. There is something to be said about feelings and perceptions, as they can influence decisions and actions, but surveys about feelings and perceptions are extremely fuzzy, being heavily affected by survey question construction, populations sampled, and fuzziness of being asked about feelings, i.e., the answers might be not replicable even for the same individual.

    • I don't know about this particular survey. But if you give the *same* survey over time, the absolute numbers might be meaningless but the delta is relatively accurate.

  • Teaching to the test is boring. Kids know this.

  • You mean decades of turning schools into day prisons for children where they're not allowed to grow and only learn things that can be boiled down to a multiple choice standardized test tend to piss people who just arrived in this reality off and make them not want to engage? Who could have possibly predicted this except everyone who isn't a Republican?
  • ...school pupils reports that kids these days just don't find school as much fun as they think it should be.

    Also, teens report that it "just sucks" & "Why can't we play more Fortnite instead?"

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