The dumbing down has been working all too well

[Attilatheblond]

Daughter's friend works in a dept that accredits teachers at a Uni in TX. We hear horror stories, almost weekly, of how basically illiterate too many of these students are. So many can't follow even basic instructions on scheduling and taking of tests they need to pass to become teachers. More than a few come in to argue that they should be allowed to pass after missing testing appointments or even failing tests. Some bring their moms into the discussion to argue their case! These are not freshmen, but post grads for the most part. My daughter's friend fights the Uni and department heads to make the point that they really need to confront the problems and institute changes. She generally has suggestions they could implement. She is burned out for trying to make sure they actually turn out people who can teach the kids of Texas.

Oh, and the institution where she works is on probation, but they are supposed to tell anyone.


College students don’t know how to read anymore. We’re in denial over how bad it’s gotten.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2024/02/literacy-crisis-reading-comprehension-college.html?via=rss]

Defeating the open conspiracy to deprive students of physical access to books will do little to counteract the more diffuse confluence of forces that are depriving students of the skills needed to meaningfully engage with those books in the first place. As a college educator, I am confronted daily with the results of that conspiracy-without-conspirators. I have been teaching in small liberal arts colleges for over 15 years now, and in the past five years, it’s as though someone flipped a switch. For most of my career, I assigned around 30 pages of reading per class meeting as a baseline expectation—sometimes scaling up for purely expository readings or pulling back for more difficult texts. (No human being can read 30 pages of Hegel in one sitting, for example.) Now students are intimidated by anything over 10 pages and seem to walk away from readings of as little as 20 pages with no real understanding. Even smart and motivated students struggle to do more with written texts than extract decontextualized take-aways. Considerable class time is taken up simply establishing what happened in a story or the basic steps of an argument—skills I used to be able to take for granted.

It goes on with more specifics and exposing of problems. My daughter's pal might get whiplash nodding along as she reads this Slate article.