This is a real shame!

[catesta]

I will be the first to say I was a terrible student. Even today I still have problems with proper grammar, among other things. (see what I mean)

BUT, I had and still have common sense. My map reading skills are outstanding. I can balance a checkbook ,and the only problem I've ever had in figuring out the amount to leave for a tip has been based solely on my recollection of the quality of service.

If true, this is just plain sad.

Study: Most College Students Not Literate Enough for Complex Tasks

By BEN FELLER AP Education Writer

WASHINGTON Jan 20, 2006 — 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, a study found.

The literacy study funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the first to target the skills of graduating students, finds that students fail to lock in key skills no matter their field of study.

The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips.

Without "proficient" skills, or those needed to perform more complex tasks, students fall behind. They cannot interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.

"It is kind of disturbing that a lot of folks are graduating with a degree and they're not going to be able to do those things," said Stephane Baldi, the study's director at the American Institutes for Research, a behavioral and social science research organization.

Most students at community colleges and four-year schools showed intermediate skills. That means they can do moderately challenging tasks, such as identifying a location on a map.

There was brighter news.

Overall, the average literacy of college students is significantly higher than that of adults across the nation. Study leaders said that was encouraging but not surprising, given that the spectrum of adults includes those with much less education.

Also, compared with all adults with similar levels of education, college students had superior skills in searching and using information from texts and documents.

"But do they do well enough for a highly educated population? For a knowledge-based economy? The answer is no," said Joni Finney, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, an independent and nonpartisan group.

[Brad]

Just a continuing indication of the decline of proper teaching.

[GA Russell]

I'm not sure that the number of illiterate people is growing. It looks to me like more illiterate people are attending college than in the past.

[JSngry]

"But do they do well enough for a highly educated population? For a knowledge-based economy? The answer is no," said Joni Finney, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, an independent and nonpartisan group.

Don't get me started on the lack of critical thinking ability (or the lack of desire to develop it or the recognition of its importance) across the board in America today. Of course, I could make the point in terms of politics, but that's subjective, and that's not what I mean.

Dig - I initiated a quality control measure at my straight job that requires people who are removing mortgage payments from envelopes to actually look at the checks (and payment coupons) and sort them according to whether or not the amounts of the check and coupon are identical or different. Simple, right?

Nooooo.........

America is a nation of self-satisfied slopeheads who know how to do nothing but gluttonously consume any kind of rancid intellectual putrification that is splattered on their plate. That and play with gadgets. We can work them gadgets, baby. Anything beyond that and it's a nuisance.

We're fucked, that's what we are.

[Noj]

I think it shows a failure to equip students with skills applicable to the world outside of school.

At one point I could name all the presidents, vice presidents, and the years they were in office. WTF good does that memorization exercise do for me in the world outside of school?

There should be classes on credit cards. There should be classes on paying taxes. There should be classes on knowing how to get around a megalopolis like Los Angeles...

Instead we force feed kids a bunch of uniformly useless information and waste their time.

Edited January 21, 2006 by Noj

[catesta]

[America is a nation of self-satisfied slopeheads who know how to do nothing but gluttonously consume any kind of rancid intellectual putrification that is splattered on their plate. That and play with gadgets. We can work them gadgets, baby. Anything beyond that and it's a nuisance.

We're fucked, that's what we are.

Tell me about it.

We've got a 14 year old "gadget operator" living with us.

I'm very afraid....

[Mr. Gone]

At one point I could name all the presidents, vice presidents, and the years they were in office. WTF good does that memorization exercise do for me in the world outside of school?

...

Instead we force feed kids a bunch of uniformly useless information and waste their time.

[JSngry]

At one point I could name all the presidents, vice presidents, and the years they were in office. WTF good does that memorization exercise do for me in the world outside of school?.

For one thing, it teaches you to memorize...

And it teaches the recognition of history, of sequences, of patterns, of cultural evolution. It teaches all sorts of things besides simple raw data.

The data itself may or may not be something you'll need for everyday life. But the processes involved in committing the data to memory can make the difference between being a creature who's actually able to reason and evaluate on the fly as they go through life and one who merely shows up and unquestioningly takes whatever comes along because they don't even realize that have the option to do otherwise.

[Mr. Gone]

Noj's post reminds me of something Feynman said (hope this qualifies as on-topic). Here's an excerpt:

...

Regarding this business about names and words, I would tell you another story. 'We used to go up to the Catskill Mountains for vacations. In New York, you go the Catskill Mountains for vacations. The poor husbands had to go to work during the week, but they would come rushing out for weekends and stay with their families. On the weekends, my father would take me for walks in the woods. He often took me for walks, and we learned all about nature, and so an, in the process. But the other children, friends of mine also wanted to go, and tried to get my father to take them. He didn't want to, because he said I was more advanced. I'm not trying to tell you how to teach, because what my father was doing was with a class of just one student; if he had a class of more than one, he was incapable of doing it.

So we went alone for our walk in the woods. But mothers were very powerful in those day's as they are now, and they convinced the other fathers that they had to take their own sons out for walks in the woods. So all fathers took all sons out for walks in the woods one Sunday afternoon. The next day, Monday, we were playing in the fields and this boy said to me, "See that bird standing on the stump there? What's the name of it?"

I said, "I haven't got the slightest idea."

He said, 'It’s a brown-throated thrush. Your father doesn't teach you much about science."

I smiled to myself, because my father had already taught me that [the name] doesn't tell me anything about the bird. He taught me "See that bird? It's a brown-throated thrush, but in Germany it's called a halsenflugel, and in Chinese they call it a chung ling and even if you know all those names for it, you still know nothing about the bird--you only know something about people; what they call that bird. Now that thrush sings, and teaches its young to fly, and flies so many miles away during the summer across the country, and nobody knows how it finds its way," and so forth. There is a difference between the name of the thing and what goes on.

...

http://www.fotuva.org/feynman/what_is_science.html

[JSngry]

Well, in order to know about the bird, you'd have to recognize that the bird even exists, as well as recognizing that not all birds are the same.

There are people today, plenty of them, who would find that to be too much of a challenge.

[Christiern]

Noj: "At one point I could name all the presidents, vice presidents, and the years they were in office. WTF good does that memorization exercise do for me in the world outside of school?"

Reminds me of a time when I was staying with my grandparents on a small island in the Baltic Sea, and attending the school there. One day, I came home with an assignment: to memorize the words to a Protestant hymn (the island's teacher was a Lutheran minister). My grandfather erupted and told me not to waste a moment on such nonsense. The following morning, he accompanied me to school and told the teacher that his grandson was not going to waste his time learning something as meaningless as a hymn, adding that I should be memorizing something that will be of use to me later in life. The poor pastor apologized, and I was never again asked to commit a hymn to memory.

The funny thing is that I still remember the opening words:

Den velsignede dag med fryd vi ser..

Translation:

With joy we see the blessed day...

[Big Wheel]

On the other hand, I think there's a case to be made that life is getting more complex, too. There are more situations to negotiate every single day, and American business has made it its job to make things as complicated as possible so as to confuse people and extract maximum profit from them. Here a case in point I experienced a few weeks ago at Best Buy while shopping for a camera:

I needed three things: a digital camera, a carrying case, and a memory card. Buying the case was fairly straightforward. The camera I ended up picking out was marked one price but there was an instant rebate marking it down to another. But the memory card, that's where things started getting weird. I needed at least a 256MB card. They were about $50. But the 512 MB cards were discounted from $65 to $35. So it was cheaper to buy 512 MB than 256 MB. I began to get suspicious of Best Buy's intentions. Was there a factory somewhere in Taiwan unloading shitty-ass, defective 512MB cards on the cheap? Did I mention that there were about 8 different kinds and 3 different brands of memory cards, not all of which were compatible with the model of camera I had bought?

Things got really fun when I realized I needed a warranty, since my last camera crapped out on me after only a month. One-year or two-year? Hmmmm. So the warranty, it covers pretty much any kind of damage you can imagine, as long as the damage wasn't clearly the result of your own stupidity. You take the camera back in, you say it was damaged, boom, you get 100% of the price back in store credit for a different camera. Now, say I don't like the camera. I take it back to Best Buy within 30 days, I get my refund but get whacked with a 15% restocking fee. So if I take the camera back after a week, I lose 15% of my money, but if I keep it for 11 months, get good use out of it, and then intentionally break it, I can bring it back in, pretend it's the manufacturer's fault, and lose no money (although I guess it's not liquid, since I can only spend it at Best Buy).

There's a mail-in rebate on the memory card, which I have to remember to send in if I want $10 back. And then, the piece de resistance: the rewards card! I pay $15 or whatever at the register, I get the Best Buy rewards card, which then takes more than $15 off my purchase. If I pay via cash, it's 10% off, but it's 12% off if I use the rewards card in conjunction with my credit card. So finally, I stagger home with my goods, plus a rebate form that I'll never remember to send in within the 30 days, plus another card to cram into my wallet and remember to use in a way that extracts maximum advantage of the terms and conditions. And that's just for one merchant. Is it really all that surprising that some people just give up on even the simpler tasks?

[Christiern]

Another thing is the fact that--in some areas--American kids know a lot more today than they did when I was a European boy. Kids know more about politics, the so-called "facts of life," etc., but they still think Danes come from Holland, Africa is a country, and algebra is something old-fashioned women wear.

There is something to be said for youthful innocence, even naïvité, but I recall a poll taken about 30 years ago where one of the questions was: "Who was the first to conquer space?"

Far too many kids answered" "Castro"*

*As in Castro Convertibles (fold-out sofas)

[catesta]

Another thing is the fact that--in some areas--American kids know a lot more today than they did when I was a European boy. Kids know more about politics, the so-called "facts of life," etc., but they still think Danes come from Holland, Africa is a country, and algebra is something old-fashioned women wear.

There is something to be said for youthful innocence, even naïvité, but I recall a poll taken about 30 years ago where one of the questions was: "Who was the first to conquer space?"

Far too many kids answered" "Castro"*

*As in Castro Convertibles (fold-out sofas)

I know what you mean about kids and politics, but do they really know more or are they just repeating maybe what the teacher said?

I know that surely seemed to be the case with my girlfriend's kids and their friends.

I was never really able to have a discussion with them.

The "facts of life" is another story though. I have no doubts kids today know much more than kids before them.

By the way, Castro is wrong?

[Christiern]

I just recalled a pertinent scrap from my memory.

Between 1941 and 44, I attended P.S. 101 in Forest Hills, NY. Since I knew only three words in English, I was placed in a class that was way below the one a 10- year-old should have found himself in. Well, it didn't take me long to learn the language, so I regularly skipped ahead and finally landed where my age bracket belonged. The problem was that we hardly learned anything meaningful. Much of our time was spent weaving patches that were to be assembled into a wool blanked, making paper maché heads for puppets, and rehearsing for a patriotic or safety play (BTW, I was a pencil before I became a marine).

In 1944, when I returned to Iceland and was placed in an age-appropriate class, I was so far behind that it became embarrassing. A year later, the war in Europe ended and my mother sent me on the first boat to newly liberated Denmark. Well, I had completely forgotten how to speak Danish, so there was a period when I again found myself the oldest in the class. My grandfather wisely sent me to private tutors in Danish and math. My Danish came back to me rather quickly, but I never got the hang of math. Failing several entrance exams in Denmark, was sent to school in Canterbury, UK. That improved my English and gave me a stronger incentive to fake it (knowledge, that is) until I no longer had to. Still, when I returned to Copenhagen, I was so far behind, academically, that they enrolled me in a school for commercial art--that was something I had shown a knack for.

All this to say that I was 14 or 15 when my formal education ended and I think that is largely due to the woefully inadequate schooling I received in the U.S.

BTW, the principal (Mrs. Gertrude Lutz) and all the teachers at P.S. 101 were women. I was told that this was so because the men were at war. I was also told that one could not expect female teachers to be as good as their male counterparts. So, in some ways, we live in more enlightened times.

[Christiern]

Catesta: "By the way, Castro is wrong? "

Sorry, but, yes.

To see how uninformed many Americans are today, one has only to watch Jay Leno's occasional street interviews--more sad than funny--truly pathetic. Makes me wonder if much has changed in public schools since 1941. If grandparents and parents didn't learn much, I guess we can expect the ignorance to be passed on to subsequent generations.

[catesta]

Catesta: "By the way, Castro is wrong? "

Sorry, but, yes.

To see how uninformed many Americans are today, one has only to watch Jay Leno's occasional street interviews--more sad than funny--truly pathetic. Makes me wonder if much has changed in public schools since 1941. If grandparents and parents didn't learn much, I guess we can expect the ignorance to be passed on to subsequent generations.

I hope you know I was just kidding.

I know what you mean about those street interviews. There are/were a couple of game shows based on how people on the street would answer basic questions.

I remember listening to Howard Stern ask a female model/actress one time what the capital of New York was...., her answer........., New Jersey.

I think it may have been Tori Spelling.

Funny, but sad.

[JSngry]

On the other hand, I think there's a case to be made that life is getting more complex, too. There are more situations to negotiate every single day, and American business has made it its job to make things as complicated as possible so as to confuse people and extract maximum profit from them. Here a case in point I experienced a few weeks ago at Best Buy while shopping for a camera:

I needed three things: a digital camera, a carrying case, and a memory card. Buying the case was fairly straightforward. The camera I ended up picking out was marked one price but there was an instant rebate marking it down to another. But the memory card, that's where things started getting weird. I needed at least a 256MB card. They were about $50. But the 512 MB cards were discounted from $65 to $35. So it was cheaper to buy 512 MB than 256 MB. I began to get suspicious of Best Buy's intentions. Was there a factory somewhere in Taiwan unloading shitty-ass, defective 512MB cards on the cheap? Did I mention that there were about 8 different kinds and 3 different brands of memory cards, not all of which were compatible with the model of camera I had bought?

Things got really fun when I realized I needed a warranty, since my last camera crapped out on me after only a month. One-year or two-year? Hmmmm. So the warranty, it covers pretty much any kind of damage you can imagine, as long as the damage wasn't clearly the result of your own stupidity. You take the camera back in, you say it was damaged, boom, you get 100% of the price back in store credit for a different camera. Now, say I don't like the camera. I take it back to Best Buy within 30 days, I get my refund but get whacked with a 15% restocking fee. So if I take the camera back after a week, I lose 15% of my money, but if I keep it for 11 months, get good use out of it, and then intentionally break it, I can bring it back in, pretend it's the manufacturer's fault, and lose no money (although I guess it's not liquid, since I can only spend it at Best Buy).

There's a mail-in rebate on the memory card, which I have to remember to send in if I want $10 back. And then, the piece de resistance: the rewards card! I pay $15 or whatever at the register, I get the Best Buy rewards card, which then takes more than $15 off my purchase. If I pay via cash, it's 10% off, but it's 12% off if I use the rewards card in conjunction with my credit card. So finally, I stagger home with my goods, plus a rebate form that I'll never remember to send in within the 30 days, plus another card to cram into my wallet and remember to use in a way that extracts maximum advantage of the terms and conditions. And that's just for one merchant. Is it really all that surprising that some people just give up on even the simpler tasks?

Well, there you have it right there. The people "running the show" have always been about using numbers to their advantage in some form or fashion. Simply as a matter of self-defense, the rest of us need to understand what their game is, if for no other reason than to keep from getting screwed. Never mind that the ability to recognize the fact that two "scenarios" which on the surface might not be dramatically different in fact actually have different "factors" at play, and that these differences are real and in fact translate in the need for different actions might just be a marketable job skill...

What we're talking about is the skill of discernment, not of the esthetic (although that comes into it eventually, but of the concrete. And discernment calls for engagement, actual personal engagement in the specifics of what you're doing. I'm seeing a staggering number of people who aren't engaged in anything other than showing up and executing a physical "task" without having any interest and/or ability to engage in anything resembling even mild discernment. Net result - people whose "skills" are roughly that of a semi-well-designed machine, sometimes not even that developed.

It's always been so, I know. There's always been a large number of people who either prefer or just don't have the capacity to do anything more than "execute". But I swear, I'm seeing more of them today than ever, and I know that a lot of them have more critical thinking abilty than they practice. But they come out of schools that don't develop it and then go right into business environments that discourage it in all but hte "chosen few", who get tapped for "management" (and even there, the game is to execute to the benefit of the immediate bottom line, and little else. Long-term benefit and "quality of life" impact are not to be considered).

It's depressing, man. As generally opposed to outsourcing as I am, I can definitely see where those in charge are coming from. If you're going to be satisfied with having a workforce that can only do one thing not particularly well (and the fact that a business can not only survive but thrive with such a workforce is a separate-yet-related issue), why would you not prefer to pay such a workforce $5 a day rather than $7 an hour?

Knowledge, as they say, is power. Without going off on a rant about the various institution ploys to distract and divert "most people" away from getting real knowlede/power, just let me say that once you enter into the workplace, if you display the abilities and skills of a mule, and if you don't show any interests and abilties beyond that of a mule, don't be surprised if you get treated like a mule. For damned sure don't go whining about it when you do.

Or would you like to swing on a star?

Edited January 21, 2006 by JSngry

[Big Wheel]

I guess what I'm saying is, even for those who have developed it, discernment gets exhausting in this day and age. If I had to make transactions like that every day, I'd lose my friggin' mind. So the question becomes, do most people never learn discernment, or are plenty of them learning it but they're just too damn tired to want to use it?

[Christiern]

Catesta: "I hope you know I was just kidding."

Of course! I was hoping you knew that I knew.

[JSngry]

Discouraging discernment is definitely a ploy, no doubt, but the question also becomes this - are people being "encouraged" to feel that the power of discernment in and of itself is more trouble than it's worth? And if that's the case (and I believe it is), does that then lead to the creation of a citizenry that doesn't even bother to exercise those powers (and eventually lose them altogether) in less "complicated" scenarios? Again, I believe that it does.

It's a given that the more open your eyes are, the more you see, and that the more you see the more you have to sort out. That can at times be overwhelming, sure, but a certain degree, that's just the cost of being a rational human being with the power to make informed choices in matters of everyday life (such as being able to tell if the amount of a check and that of a coupon are identical or not, or not having to ask somebody if they want fries with that when they've already said that they don't). When people feel overwhelmed and put upon to do simple, basic tasks such as that, something is horribly wrong.

[Son-of-a-Weizen]

There should be classes on credit cards.

Well it would be interesting to see the actual poll questions to see what it is that they define as the task that people can't perform. If it was something basic like the interest rate on your unpaid balance versus something like understanding the fine print (ie: their rights under the Truth in Lending Act). I'd probably flunk the latter.

[Big Wheel]

link to the full study

Sample questions are in Appendix A.

[Dave James]

My S.O.'s daughter is 15 years old, a sophomore at our local high school. The other night, she spent two hours making a model of the town from the book "Inherit the Wind" out of sugar cubes and graham crackers. I made the comment that this seemed like something that might have been appropriate in grade school, but in high school? WTF?

If you ever talk to your kids about what goes on in their schools, I'm sure you're as shocked and dismayed as I am. It's no wonder that the kind of basic life skills, the 3 R's if you will, most of us were exposed to in grade and high school and that have served us fairly well since, are not being learned by today's kids because they're not even being taught.

Up over and out.

Edited January 21, 2006 by Dave James

[Son-of-a-Weizen]

link to the full study

Sample questions are in Appendix A.

The document literacy question on page 60 is rather shocking. Only 74% of those who are about to graduate from a 4-year institution correctly answered it? .........and just 36% of all adults?