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College Students Lack Literacy
Frr writes to tell us that CNN has a rather disturbing confirmation of what many of us have already seen in practice. In a recent literacy study it was found that "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." The literacy study took a look at three different type of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents, and having basic math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips.
Formal contracts & documents should be written in Internet slang. "If you fail to pay your credit card debt we will take your car lol"
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I should have went to a US college. I probably could have graduated there.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
I, for one, am not surprised. I never read __less__ books in my life than when I was in college. I was much too busy trying to get the course busy-work done to do any reading, or much learning for that matter.
So my boss was passing this article around a few days ago to make fun of one of our new hires. The new guy pointed out that all colleges are not equal. Strangely the study doesn't mention what schools were part of this survey. Does anyone know?
15-20 years ago a guy working on his PhD told me that that getting a PhD had become like getting a MA or MS had been a generation earlier, getting a MA/MS like getting a BA/BS had been, getting a BA/BS like graduating from high school had been, and so on down the chain.
I've always been tempted to dismiss that as just a "back in my day" story about walking to school in a snowstorm, but it's hard to dismiss certain facts. For example, Robert Graves tells us in his biography that when he an ~8 year old, about 100 years ago, he was "doing ok with Latin, but having trouble with Greek".
And now people are having trouble with their own native language when they graduate from college...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
___Fewer___ books, dammit.
The bad news is that its not just college students. By the time that a student graduates high school, they should be able to do the things being tested here, never mind college. If all college is going to teach you is to function as well as someone with an 8th grade education 100 years ago, we have a really *REALLY* bad problem.
People, in general, are lazy, and learning to communicate is not a high priority for many. Learning to do many things is not a priority and until it is, they will not learn it. In all probability, some of those who can't make sense of credit card offers do know all the tricks for a dozen video games. I'm not saying that gamers are dumb, but that this demonstrates they are not stupid, just lazy.
The school system that my tax dollars help pay for should not cater to lazy students. They should be made to work hard, and learn as much as they can. So, with some trepidation that I've not considered every angle, I blame the school system(s) for the quality of graduates they produce. Yes, I believe that if a kid doesn't want to learn, let them languish behind the grill at a burger joint for a few years to get inspired to go back and learn something.
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> Patience... Not Literacy... It takes too much time to read the fine print on those damn offers...
And it may be the case that sometimes companies don't want you to understand an offer very well.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
My wife is a graduate student at one of the local state schools here in Texas. And she tells me stories about students she has had that don't know how to use a ruler. A freaking ruler for crying out loud, I learned ruler 101 in 1st grade, after I stopped having to write with the giant pencils.
If you've gotten a credit card offer recently, there's a medium-sized standard box they include on the black-and-white legalese page which tells you the real (not introductory) interest rate, for instance.
Despite this, some people will briefly glance at the color glossy flyer, see "ZERO PERCENT (introductory) INTEREST!" and be shocked, yes, shocked, when the rates hop to twenty-seven percent or something ridiculous like that.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
No one ever ends a rant on education with IANATeacher. Why is that?
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
To be fair, I think that quite a bit of that came from a certain physics professor that I had. He was the head of the department, and I ended up getting him for about 8 of the physics classes that I took. He expected you to understand every nuance of what you had studied, and to understand it *completely*. Often he would ask questions that were seemingly impossible to solve, but if you looked at what he gave you and gave it enough thought, you would find that in every case he had given you everything you needed to know - even if it wasn't obvious that he had.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
"Baby on board" sticker prominently displayed (wtf are they *for*, anyway?)
I don't know about most people, but I intentionally ram cars that don't have babies in them.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I couldn't find it eaisly on google, but I remember a recent article about college law professors reading standard credit card offers/agreements. They all came up with different interpretations from the agreements.
That's pretty sad when legal experts can't even agree on what they say.
They were original used for motor homes, so that in case of an accident, rescuers knew to look for a baby. Things got a little out of hand afterwards, though.
I question that, actually. I've *never* seen APR stand for "Above Prime Rate." And if they use it to stand for that they're morons, as that would be insanely confusing.
Precisely; I was thinking that the really shocking way to have spun this story would have been: "Credit card offers are written in such complex English that they are unintelligible to 75% of college students".
When I was younger, I was raised in a household with a library. It wasn't a very big house, but the library room was important; this is where my dad would sit and read, and I could do so as well. It never had to be said directly to me (at least, not that I remember), I just understood that the books were important, they were there to be read, and that was an important way to learn about the world. The books were knowledge, and that knowledge was respected. Whenever we visited someone else's house, I would always look at their library, because my father said you can learn a lot about a person by seeing what kind of books they read. A house without books was not a home to me.
Now, I visit people living in McMansions in various parts of the US, and I find many of them have no library, even though there is far more room for one if they so chose. Not surprisingly, their kids have little interest in reading, because their parents don't read, yet are "successful" - i.e. they have the McMansion and stuff to fill it. What conclusion do you think most kids today will come to?
"Success" and education APPEAR more uncoupled in today's world than they used to be - and that is awfully hard for even the best teachers to overcome. The people who are drawn to knowledge for its own beauty have always been a very small minority; for the rest, education is interesting to the extent it is rewarding. If the rewards appear less, the education is less interesting and devolves into seeking the form (degrees) rather than the substance.
Btw, I used to tutor kids in their homes for many years, so I have some experience/bias when it comes to how kids are educated....
I don't understand. How can you use a ruler improperly?
Just in case anyone doesn't know, here are instructions on how to use one properly.
Having studied Victorian literature - the good and the nasty - I can tell you that being literate in that time did NOT necessarily convey the ability to communicate effectively. In fact, some of the worst examples we still keep from those days are almost completely unparseable. Take this sentence written by Thomas Carlyle in his most infamous racist diatribe, The Nigger Question. (I use this example because Carlyle was famous for the height of his literacy, and because this is considered the sloppiest of his works.)
"Taking, as we hope we do, an extensive survey of social affairs, which we find all in a state of the frightfullest embroilment, and as it were, of inextricable final bankruptcy, just at present; and being desirous to adjust ourselves in that huge up-break, and unutterable welter of tumbling ruins, and to see well that our grand proposed Association of Associations, the Universal Abolition-of-Pain Association, which is meant to be the consummate golden flower and summary of modern philanthropisms all in one, do not issue as a universal "Sluggard-and-Scoundrel Protection Society"--we have judged that, before constituting ourselves, it would be proper to commune earnestly with one another and discourse together on the leading elements of our great Problem, which surely is one of the greatest."
Now, can anyone in the room tell me: What the hell is this guy saying? If I hadn't told you that this was a racist tract, would you have any idea what it was about? The prose of the 19th century is very similar to the way a 14 year old would write today: a jumble of half-connected thoughts strung together with memorized pleasantries. It is like a very stylized and carefully memorized dance. Is it more grammatically accurate than today's average prose? Yes. Does it communicate more accurately? More efficiently? With greater depth? I really don't think so.
(The same system that you praise was lambasted in its time for relying too heavily on memorization and arbitrary but standard rules. For a critical take on the Victorian school systems, take a peek at Dickens' Hard Times. A critique of a similar modern school system can also be found in Richard Feynman's book, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman.)
A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.