It’s everywhere.
An anecdote, with no intention of singling out: I just saw a Lemmy comment than article was “a billion words” and probably AI written, implying it was too long to read.
It was 1500 words. And just in a journalistic, objective writing style, with no fluff.
I have older relatives who have stopped reading papers in lieu of YT Shorts. Another had a stint with AI psychosis, and so did a dev I used to follow. I’ve seen (likely) younger folks here on Lemmy that didn’t even understand the concept of a non-algorithmic feed, or the distinction between opinion pieces and news.
…Yeah. Engagement optimization has done incredible damage .
Attention spans are short now.
I don’t know what to do about it, either, as people have shown they will always vote for the instant gratification of it.
It’s a struggle for me, now. I can’t imagine being 14 right now.
This article is at a level of 10-year-olds. They are talking about The Survey of Adult Skills. OECD does it every year. It’s part of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_the_International_Assessment_of_Adult_Competencies
Latest results are here: https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2024/12/do-adults-have-the-skills-they-need-to-thrive-in-a-changing-world_4396f1f1/b263dc5d-en.pdf
I think the article is commenting on this part:
You can see a pattern where 55-64 has the lowest scores, then 45-54, then 35-44, than 25-34. Almost all countries are like that: younger generations have better skills than older ones.
And then we see a switch in many countries: 16-24 have lower scores than 25-34. There are some exceptions like Italy, Portugal or Ireland but in majority of countries young people are dumber than previous generation.
Interesting how the “age gap” in the US for numeracy and literacy is conspicuously small. But relatively large for problem solving.
In others, you can see recent history in really humongous gaps.
Also, I can’t help but wonder how much of that is a “normal” trend? I was stupider, and would have tested worse, at 16. Maybe at 20.
I was thinking the same thing. We would have to look at results from 2015 for example.
And I found this:
This is from 2012. 16-24 had lower results than 25-34 so maybe it is a normal situation?
BTW, there’s also PISA:
https://www.oecd.org/en/data/dashboards/pisa-education-and-skills/performance-trends.html
Oh. Right. People in the US can barely read and lack critical thinking skills… Fuck.
What kind of critical thinking skills do you really need to understand the phrase, “The President of the United States is a pedophile?” You don’t even need to read it, either, you can just hear someone say it.
You need critical thinking skills to care more about the president being a pedo than about pwning the other political side.
But it’s not that people lack critical thinking skills, it’s that they blithey bypass them for a whole host of reasons.
The problem on the left is they think rational arguments win fights. They don’t. Emotional arguments, world building, identity, etc, win fights.
The second problem left is that the best emotional argument we have–the rich want to eat us all–endangers the Democratic Party’s funding.
Education outcomes have tanked since we added tech to the classroom. Study after study finds that adding tech to the classroom reduces student performance. Standardized testing to determine funding also mismatches the incentives for educators. Most teachers are forced to teach to the test so students are taught to take tests. They aren’t taught how to apply knowledge or to think critically.
It’s hard to imagine any kid graduating today having been equipped with what they need for college and the world.
This predates the current flood of tech in the classroom. It is due to the low standards of the American education system.
There are loads of reason why US schools are a failure: funding, teachers pay, multiple choice testing, politically driven curriculum, home schooling, anti-science mentality, just to list the biggest problems.
Way back in the 80s when I was in highschool in my native Portugal, one of my school colleagues went to the US for a year in a student exchange program.
Now, this was a guy whose average grade in Portugal was 12 (in a scale of 1 - 20, were 10 was a pass mark).
When he came back from the US after a year he had got A grades at everything but one (were he got a B). By the way, he was no better student in the year afterwards in Portugal than before.
It always stuck with me since then the idea that highschool-level teaching standards even in quite a poor and peripheral European country were much more demanding than in the US.
The study was not just the US, they looked at 160,000 students in 38 countries. Their research looked at a period of 10 years to generate its results and students in most of north america and Europe all were down. The US didn’t even see the biggest decline, Israel did.
I’m not saying it’s just tech in the classroom, but it’s a major part.
Guy A: Hot-button opinion.
Guy B: Bunch of facts showing that hot button opinion is wrong.Equal number of upvotes.
Ah, yes, the very scientific reviewers of
RedditLemmy.Upvotes are supposed to be for fostering conversation, not grading accuracy. An equal number of upvotes makes it more likely that the US-centric assumption and the correction are both seen.
“Supposed to” does a lot of heavy lifting there.
it tanked during covid, because people were doing it from home. in college reviews , the people tht went through whole college online was very disasstified with thier education, they dint learn anything at all. so this caused a reduced enrollment in state unis all over the west. they got so desperate they were willing to accept hs students automatically if they complete certain courses instead of requiring the USUAL sat, and 3.0GPA, how long this bandaid will last is another thing.
some even said they transferred to a proper university to get a better opportunities for thier careers. not all universities are equal and then saw thier friends stayed in a state school and end up struggling to find a job after graduating. likely the more expensive school offered more volunteering, internship opportunities than a low-prestige schools which basically just pushes people as fast possible through the system, also giving bad advice through thier advisers.
I’d love seeing the same research made where I live. I mean, as you don’t specify it I guess you’re American?
I mean check the study from the article, it was gathered from 38 countries, you might get lucky.
Oh thanks!
I know this might be an unpopular opinion, but I think parents also carry a significant part of the responsibility.
This site is a privacy / tracking nightmare. Why does everyone still post this?
Also,
The survey, first spotted by the Economist
sus
Consequences of allowing Ghisline Maxwell’s dad to publish our textbooks and fill our heads with of propaganda
across all OECD member countries, a full 8 percent of college students are reading at the level of a ten-year-old, if not worse. While countries like Germany and France rang in at under 5 percent, countries like Poland, Israel, and the United States blew the curve at 21, 20, and 14 percent, respectively.
The numbers aren’t much better when it comes to math. Across OECD countries, 9 percent of college students do math at or below a ten-year-old level. In Italy, the US, and Slovakia, that figure jumps to over 15 percent — only outdone by Israel, where roughly 21 percent of college students were underachieving at the same low benchmark.
So just to be clear this happens everywhere in the world, just it’s higher in the US - for reading it’s 14% here vs 8% on average across the oecd and for math 15% here vs 9% average. So we’re bad, but not the worst.
Im Polish and what is this?
There’s also a major issue: we have a lot of low selectivity colleges, which includes scam diploma mills. Other countries have some low selectivity institutions, but I bet the leaders in this survey have a higher proportion of them. That means there’s inherent selection bias.
Should make sense; entry exams obviously filter out students with poor reading and math skills.
I went to a university without entry exams or numerus clausus. They instead used the first two semesters to filter out the unskilled (plus the general requirements for attending university in Germany).
Of course if first semesters are counted they’d show up in this statistic even if those students would be almost guaranteed to be gone a year later.
Though still easier to get into I imagine, this was still the case in US universities when I attended. A significant portion of students didn’t make it past the first year or so.
Yeah, most countries have something like that. And then you’ve got the US and their Trump University, a thing that actually existed.
But really, lots of pay-to-attend stuff.
The results also coincide with the explosion of large language models like ChatGPT, which by many accounts have carved out a new floor for academic failure in both K-12 and college-level education.
It’s not just that…
But chatbots was the equivalent of turning coke into crack. It made academic dishonesty very accessible, and overworked teachers weren’t equipped to deal with it.
The most shocking thing for me is that Israel is doing particularly bad, worse than the US even. I can imagine the systemic reasons are similar, but I would have also thought that being a much smaller country, there would be less kids falling through the cracks. But maybe they’re too busy genociding to care.
There’s religion based homeschooling in both countries, which might have something to do with it
israel likely depends on the US/EU for all its industries, they are completely reliant. many universities are a pipeline to multiple industries in israel hence why so many universities are funded by certain donors , yet not directly working or living in the country. that make sense.
How did they graduate high school then?
its simple, participation grades. they were already doing this int he early 2000s, it began with if you made slightly under a D- , or an F thats close to a D, or C you get a C. nowadays you have to pass people no matter what, because the schools dont get funding. the SIMPSON episode where lisa cheated on a test, and the principal begged her not to report it because it funds the school, since shes pratically the genius students that is raising her schools statistics up, they cant afford a fail/expel.
plus in HS they have all these useless class for struggling students that they shunt them to be babysat so the school doesnt lose funding if they fail the core classes.
when i was in CC, my math prof(terribl prof) said people were graduating HS with only 9th grade math, and this pretty generous to be honest, so many people were in arithemetic classes when i was in CC. and english only 10th grade comprehension, this includes writing.
Teacher: (looking at term paper which consists entirely of em dashes and explanations why it is a large language model) “Well, this student hasn’t paid any attention in class all year, has managed not to be automatically failed through skipping classes, but only just, shows no sign of actually wanting to learn anything, swears at me when I say they should be doing schoolwork in the classroom, lies to their parents that I’m failing them because I’m racist, and is supported in those lies by their friends and family. I could fail them, which will bring them back to this school, and probably my classroom, and probably with a grudge against me, and the admin will say I failed as a teacher by not getting them to learn enough to pass… or I could give them just enough credit to get a D-- and make them some other teacher’s problem so I can concentrate on the students I really feel like I can help next year.
…
Have fun in college, shithead.”In the United States, No Child Left Behind tied school funding to standardized test results, while also increasing the required number of standardized tests. These are already biased to favor white, middle and upper class boys, anyway. Teachers taught rote, that’s basically it, to improve test scores, not learning. Before that, you can look for Lee Atwater’s full interview about the Southern Strategy he did with The Nation. But in introduction to sociology, in college, it discusses how schools were designed to teach kids enough to understand and follow orders, not enough to question those orders. That makes for a hella compliant work force, military, police, FBI/NSA force. Other Western states followed suit, some got the privilege to pay for it, others the privilege of having it deducted from pay, through taxes, which is fine if it were to actually…educate.
I think graded levels are a terrible idea and that all schools should follow the Montessori model.
too many college educated is a problem for low wage, and military recruitment. thats why they worked in cahoots with job industries(employers avoid hiring people who are fresh out college by sourcing already experienced people in the field to avoid paying over the longterm, it is a law of diminishing returns in the end) to limit/make it hard to hire people. so they end up going for these low wage jobs.
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Yes. Yes… Great. More we can distract and not be bothered by while we own the world.
/S
That’s not even a conspiracy theory. There’s sects like Opus Dei with their private schools pushing for defending of public education. Catholic institutional memory still has that medieval control of knowledge baked in.
