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My Students Can't Read

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Re: My Students Can't Read

#121

Post by whimblepop »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #102
whimblepop wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14293%2FS... The average university attendee's IQ is virtually indistinguishable from the average person's IQ. People don't go to college because they're smart. They predominantly go so they can earn more money and/or work more enjoyable jobs when they graduate. Being smart isn't the main reason that adults encourage teenagers to pursue college either. It's mostly a…

It used to be 130, which is two standard deviations above the mean. I think this is the appropriate amount.

IQ is about aptitude and credentials on specific topics are about knowledge and skills. It's the wrong thing to optimize for.

Besides, high-IQ students can still underperform for many of the same reasons that average-IQ students often do (e.g., under-preparation, lack of discipline, disorganization, mental illness, financial distress, unstable living situation). We should be better addressing those things before students get to a university no matter what their IQ is.

Beyond that, if you have good competency tests on both ends (i.e., the credentials before a four-year degree are accurate signals, and university degrees effectively prove a high degree of competency), who cares if someone manages to get those credentials by working harder while being dumber? I like working with clever people. I also like working with people who know their shit because they take their time to study and consider things. (When I'm lucky, I get to work with people who are both!)

Re: My Students Can't Read

#122

Post by anubistheta »

KPGv2 wrote: post #72
pclowes wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally any college grad that: 1. Takes out six figures of loans for a degree in a field with no hope of commensurate income 2. Pays minimum payments below interest 3. Whines on social media that after X years of not even covering the interest payment they now owe more than ever Should: 1. Lose both their college and HS degrees. They clearly dont understand HS math. 2. Their college’s accreditation should be inv…

So your solution for the system failing a person is to punish the person but reward the powerful people engaged in the bad behavior. The ones who brainwashed the kids into thinking that this is what they're supposed to do.

People have agency. The system didn't fail a person. That framing completely ignores their actions. Especially for paying so little on their loans and complaining about it. 18 year olds can vote. If we trust them with that, surely they can be responsible for their own choices.

Moreover, they said the accreditation of both institutions should be investigated.

Re: My Students Can't Read

#123

Post by marcus_holmes »

ngriffiths wrote: post #20

> The students who cannot read a 20-page article today are the voters who will not be able to read a bill, or the jurors who cannot follow a closing argument, tomorrow. Obviously literacy is super important but these are examples of things where literacy plays very little role, because ~nobody can read a bill, or follow a written legal argument. I mean a very literate person can get something out of reading it, which…

> I feel like it matters more for the economy and the future of knowledge work which, uh, is a little uncertain these days.

I'm not sure it matters anyway.

I was talking to a VC the other day and they get an LLM to summarise all the pitches they see and spit out bullet points.

I have a cousin who's a highly-paid lawyer and they get an LLM to parse long documents and spit out bullet points.

I know many people who don't read their emails any more but get a summary from an LLM.

If I had to write an essay tomorrow, I'd get an LLM to do it based on bullet points that I prompt it with, and a style guide on "how to write an essay like me". And it would probably do a better job of it than I would, certainly with less typos.

The world is changing, and it's moving away from long-form reading and writing. The kids (as usual) are adapting faster than us oldies.

We may not like that. But every generation hates the change that the next generation brings.

Re: My Students Can't Read

#124

Post by GuB-42 »

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…

The problem is: what are you going to do with these 35%? where should the people who shouldn't be there be?

You need to give these people something to do. You say they just want to get the job, another way to say it is that if they don't graduate, they won't get the job, so what are they going to do instead? Some low skill jobs don't require much study, but there are only so many in modern society, and we don't really want more of these.

So, more apprenticeship? That's actually a really good solution, but an entire system needs to change as it shifts the burden of training to employers rather than schools. Whatever the solution is, it would have an impact on every aspect of society, maybe positive, maybe negative, my guess is on an overall negative as even if lowest common denominator education is not ideal, it is still better than no education at all for the masses. But it is debatable, and it is often debated.

Also there is a correlation between countries tertiary education rate and GDP and life expectancy. It does not imply causation, but it supports the idea that it may be a good thing.

Re: My Students Can't Read

#125

Post by raddan »

floxy wrote: post #66
jimbob45 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the problem participation? Or is it that entire years are devoted to reading ancient books with bad English and unrelatable themes simply because of tradition? Shakespeare wrote some neat plays but they’re not helping the reading epidemic. Math teachers had the balls to radically revamp their curriculums with Common Core and now their teachings are no longer formulaic but instead stimulate original thought and cre…

Citation needed for American public high schools that have a Shakespeare-heavy curriculum.

Obviously my experience is a little dated (graduated high school in 1997), but Shakespeare was a recurring theme throughout my high school English classes. We read The Tempest, Macbeth, Hamlet, and a number of poems, some of which we had to memorize and recite. I didn’t mind the poetry; I still remember bits of the Whitman, Coleridge, and Lewis Carroll poems I memorized. In addition, we read The Odyssey (which felt like torture to me), various Dickens novels, Jane Austin (also torture), etc.

Despite being an avid reader, I did not enjoy all of the above. However, now that I am middle aged, I count myself fortunate that my public school teachers forced me to do it.

Re: My Students Can't Read

#126

Post by JumpCrisscross »

sohrob wrote: post #88
baggy_trough wrote: post #59

Do we have the courage to do what's necessary to fix education in the United States? That is: - abolish teachers unions - fail / keep back students who don't meet standards, in a completely objective fashion with no regard for racial / ethnic / gender sensitivities

So eliminate their bargaining power and job and wage protections because parents aren't doing their part to ensure their kids are learning? Doesn't seem fair to me.

> because parents aren't doing their part to ensure their kids are learning?

Someone isn’t doing their job. And we can’t fire the parents. Tackling teachers’ unions seems like a necessary difficult step if we want to take this seriously. Alternatively: we keep letting public education deteriorate until so much of the population opts out of it that killing it outright becomes politically possible.

Re: My Students Can't Read

#127

Post by JumpCrisscross »

GuB-42 wrote: post #124
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…

The problem is: what are you going to do with these 35%? where should the people who shouldn't be there be? You need to give these people something to do. You say they just want to get the job, another way to say it is that if they don't graduate, they won't get the job, so what are they going to do instead? Some low skill jobs don't require much study, but there are only so many in modern society, and we don't reall…

> You need to give these people something to do

Yes. But not as a first-order priority. Fixing the incentives in the schooling system can take priority over figuring out what to do with every single person passing through it. (Also, a market where a third of students fail to graduate high school will find use for that labor.)

Re: My Students Can't Read

#128

Post by ipsento606 »

jhbadger wrote: post #47
ngriffiths wrote: post #20

> The students who cannot read a 20-page article today are the voters who will not be able to read a bill, or the jurors who cannot follow a closing argument, tomorrow. Obviously literacy is super important but these are examples of things where literacy plays very little role, because ~nobody can read a bill, or follow a written legal argument. I mean a very literate person can get something out of reading it, which…

Exactly. Legal language is basically a programming language for lawyers. It isn't reasonable to expect a non lawyer to understand it any more than to expect a non-coder to understand source code. Even most politicians keep staff to do the actual reading of bills.

> It isn't reasonable to expect a non lawyer to understand it

A closing argument - the specific example the parent comment used - is made to the jury. It is intended to persuade the jury. If the jury can't understand it, something has gone very wrong.

Re: My Students Can't Read

#129

Post by pclowes »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #113
pclowes wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Publicly funded colleges should not be able to loan 6 figures to people who don’t understand interest rates. I am happy to vote to take their funding away if they want to continue doing that.

First, colleges don't generally give loans. The lenders are not affiliated with the college. Second, as with anything it is more complex than you are making it. For example, I've known people who have: - Had a variable interest go up with little to no notice and no adjustment to the payments so if you're not paying attention month to month you end up underpaying. - Been put in deferment without notice (so their payme…

I am not saying it is simple. And yes technically the lenders are separate but the incentives align them so the effect is the same as if they weren’t.

As examples:

- loans are given equally for an English major and an electrical engineer. No market force at play here.

- Interest rates are the same as well even though the risk of default is not the same across majors

- Your interest rate remains the same for subsequent years even if you get a 2.0 your first year.

- College tuition rises in lockstep with additional Federal grants and loan programs

Also, I am not saying there isn’t bad or unscrupulous behavior by lenders but the default case is poor money management and a faulty understanding of interest. I think this fault lies with the student, but also the government allowing its lenders and institutions to prey upon their youth as well as allowing high schools to graduate students without this basic understanding.

Re: My Students Can't Read

#130

Post by [deleted] »

b65e8bee43c2ed0 wrote: post #93
KPGv2 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your solution for the system failing a person is to punish the person but reward the powerful people engaged in the bad behavior. The ones who brainwashed the kids into thinking that this is what they're supposed to do.

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