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My Students Can't Read

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Re: My Students Can't Read

#21

Post by jm4 »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #15
Avicebron wrote: post #11

Haven't we trained everyone to context switch between screens at all times? I suspect that has something to do with it.

I know formerly smart people, the same people are phone addicts. They’re not kids. It definitely has something to do with it. I’m not convinced the best way to discuss it is long form article. Nor do I know how to fix it, no majority group is going to give up their phones.

It's an attention issue. We have these phones with constant dopamine hits. We were getting it a little bit on the web before the rise of smartphones, but it's just out of control now. We have 100 apps constantly vying for our attention and giving us endless things to scroll through.

The only thing that fixes it is to put the phone down. Do something else. Play video games. Read books. Go outside. Anything to stay away from the phone (but not TV). These phones are as bad as drugs.

I've been pushing to read a lot more books this year and it helps a lot.

Re: My Students Can't Read

#22

Post by onemoresoop »

observationist wrote: post #9
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #3

[flagged]

If teachers could teach, students might be able to read. If students could read, maybe more of them would learn how to write. If more of them learned to write, maybe it'd be inspirational to their peers and future generations. It's too bad the teachers can't teach.

Its unfair to dump all the blame on teachers. Yes, some teachers could make a difference (and some do), inspire students but that’s also a match made in haven, students need be receptive to learning something that is arduous at first. Id blame most of it on how technology is weaponized/ financialized to steal attention and fill it with junk.

Re: My Students Can't Read

#23

Post by [deleted] »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #15
Avicebron wrote: post #11

Haven't we trained everyone to context switch between screens at all times? I suspect that has something to do with it.

I know formerly smart people, the same people are phone addicts. They’re not kids. It definitely has something to do with it. I’m not convinced the best way to discuss it is long form article. Nor do I know how to fix it, no majority group is going to give up their phones.

[deleted]

Re: My Students Can't Read

#24

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

Avicebron wrote: post #11

Haven't we trained everyone to context switch between screens at all times? I suspect that has something to do with it.

I'm refreshing a language on Duolingo and I'm careful not to blast through the exercises without actively processing them. You can treat it as mindless puzzle solving without internalizing anything. I suspect many reading averse digital natives do something similar when they can't consume video or audio.

Re: My Students Can't Read

#25

Post by nostrademons »

jemmyw wrote: post #6
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #3

[flagged]

I ran pre AI articles through pangram last week and it gave similar kind of numbers so I think it's pretty bad at distinguishing.

Someone ran the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution through an AI detector and apparently our country was founded by an AI.

Re: My Students Can't Read

#26

Post by AnimalMuppet »

jemmyw wrote: post #6
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #3

[flagged]

I ran pre AI articles through pangram last week and it gave similar kind of numbers so I think it's pretty bad at distinguishing.

To the degree that AIs are good at re-creating the style of the training data, you would expect there to be non-AI-generated text that would "look like" AI output.

Re: My Students Can't Read

#27

Post by altairprime »

I can confirm this from community colleges in both California and Oregon over the past two years; every non-science, non-math general education class (n=10+) has at least one student who cannot read or write at more than a couple sentences per minute. They’re perfectly able to keep up verbally but their education passed them through standardized tests without requiring reading and writing at a reasonable velocity.

Re: My Students Can't Read

#28

Post by pclowes »

We really need to make high school diplomas mean something again. However, this means something like a 35% fail rate.

Unfortunately, the populace would not accept that and so every credential gets inflated to worthlessness.

90%+ of all people in undergrad and 50% of grad school probably shouldn’t be there. They just want the credential, to get the job, to get the money. This is understandable but there is no interest to actually go deep or learn anything. Socratic style seminars are silent. Deep critique or wrestling with a topic only if pandering or grade related. Humanities watered down to irrelevance compared to STEM which has to keep some rigor or the bridges collapse and lights dont turn on. Academia is inflated by, wasted on, and ruined by them. They would be much better served by a high school diploma that wasn’t meaningless

Re: My Students Can't Read

#29

Post by jimbokun »

pclowes wrote: post #28

We really need to make high school diplomas mean something again. However, this means something like a 35% fail rate. Unfortunately, the populace would not accept that and so every credential gets inflated to worthlessness. 90%+ of all people in undergrad and 50% of grad school probably shouldn’t be there. They just want the credential, to get the job, to get the money. This is understandable but there is no interest…

Who the hell can go 10s of thousands of dollars in debt to have Socratic discussions without gaining a credential valued by employers at the end of it?
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