Yes yes it’s the children’s fault. We didn’t hold them to high standards. We didn’t… give me a break.
It’s declining because media is shifting. It’s declining because tools are replacing that need. Smartphones yes but more advanced computers as well. Communication has increased in speed and people have never had more access to speech platforms to spread whatever diatribe they wish. Test scores that test one’s general knowledge are going to show gaps as we specialize.
It’s weird, and a little unnerving, to have a line from Anathem by Neil Stephenson immediately come to mind:
“Can you read? And by that I don’t just mean interpreting Logotype…” “No one uses that any more,” said Quin. “You’re talking about the symbols on your underwear that tell you not to use bleach. That sort of thing.”
Between this, Chinas rise (the lights-out factories etc) and the gestures around general atmosphere here in the USA it really doesnt seem like we're in for a good 20-50 years.
Sliding? I'd say we're running toward it, what with all the anti-intellectualism and attacks on education. After all, can't have all those smarty-pants kids turning into bossy-pants adults, now can we?
Sure, that’s what republicans want and it serves them well. Dismantling, arms twisting, and attacks on universities - is all from their playbook. They’ve started saying universities are indoctrinating kids. If you don’t speak against these evil creatures now, there isn’t going to be another chance. They are just taliban in a suit!!
Purely anecdotal, but most of the kids in my son's cohort, early 20s, have received what would be considered by most to be a good education, but don't read for pleasure. I find that worrying.
> School spending did not decline from 2012 to 2022. In fact, it increased significantly, even after adjusting for inflation, from $14,000 a student to more than $16,000.
Is this average spending per student? If so, then that is just a cover for inequality. Spending a vast amount on educating elite students, and spending hardly enough on the majority.
Other countries with much better education than the US spend less than $16,000 per student, but I imagine they are spending much more equitably. They don’t have one school that is incredible and then another school so broke that teachers and parents have to foot the bill for supplies.
>I'm usually reluctant to make predictions about technology, but I feel fairly confident about this one: in a couple decades there won't be many people who can write.
>One of the strangest things you learn if you're a writer is how many people have trouble writing. Doctors know how many people have a mole they're worried about; people who are good at setting up computers know how many people aren't; writers know how many people need help writing.
>The reason so many people have trouble writing is that it's fundamentally difficult. To write well you have to think clearly, and thinking clearly is hard. ...
It has examples of states which are seeing some improvements. Those states seem to be addressing one of the main problems this article highlights: they hold students to expectations and prevent them from advancing grades if they don’t meet the bar.
It's declined because a generation of students was not taught to read because teachers decided that phonics was a conservative dog whistle. To not be associated with George w Bush, they failed our children.
There's really not much else to it. Laura Bush's push for literacy was well intentioned but she did not anticipate the anti phonics backlash that would ensue due to her husband's politics.
The is not some kook take, yet no one talks about it in general discourse, despite plenty of reporting on it. Teachers unions and public schools in general, which typically lean left, have been fighting a war on phonics for several decades. My mother, who was a teacher herself, noted this. She was not born in the US, so didn't understand why it was seen as political to teach children sounding out words.
We have this idea in America that conservatives are dumb and want lower standards for education. Of course, figures like Trump totally substantiate this idea, but in reality, both sides are invested in making America stupider. Yes, Democrats attract more educated voters, but often times these voters are exceptional and their kids wouldn't suffer the same fate as a typical child. Until at least one party takes education seriously, nothing will change
This is (anecdotally) not true for families in the highest income decile (in California). Kids are pushed harder to learn things earlier than when I was growing up. For example, nearly all of my kid's classmates could read before they started kindergarten. All could do basic arithmetic. Now that he's in first grade, most can read chapter books and have a grasp of multiplication. My mom pushed me hard to get me ahead of my peers, but I didn't hit those milestones until a year later. The standards and expectations are extremely high now because it's never been harder to get a spot at a top 20 university—perhaps because a top 20 school is the best chance you can get to maintain your living standards.
This was an intentional plan to keep the population stupid and fearful. It's been happening for the last 40 years or so. We've been systematically and intentionally dismantling and rendering ineffective, our education system.
> But the smartphone thesis has a few weak spots. It’s not just middle schoolers and high schoolers whose performance is declining; it’s also kids in elementary school. Phone use has certainly increased among young children, but not to the ubiquitous proportions of adolescents.
Easy. Parents of young children are on their phones more than ever before. That means less reading and more screen time.
One of the single largest determiners of schooling success is the number of books at home. Kids who are exposed to books and reading at home overwhelmingly out-achieve kids who are not. It starts earlier than people think and the effects are longer lived than people think. School standards have almost nothing to do with it.
It seems to be reversing, at least among affluent kids. "Sold a story" had a huge impact on the educational establishment. My local district reintroduced phonics for the 2023-2024 school year, and reintroduced it in kindergarten. By the end of kindergarten, every single one of my kid's classmates could read. This class is today's 2nd graders; they are avid readers today, I'll usually run into one of them walking with a book in front of their face at aftercare. They're too young to show up in the test scores, though, because these kids won't have their first round of standardized testing for another 2 years.
Schools and parents are also banning cell phones and cutting down on computer use, which should help with the distraction angle.
The socioeconomic divide mentioned in the article is still worrisome, though. I doubt that kids in the bottom 30% of America have the same experience. And simultaneously, the middle class has largely stopped having kids, which means there's a top 20% and a bottom 30% and pretty much nothing in between. If this continues for another couple generations, we're potentially faced with an America of an educated nobility and illiterate peasantry, and the future may look very Medieval indeed.
Perhaps the socioeconomic divide won't be as big of an issue as you think. If you haven't heard of the Mississippi Miracle [1], it's worth learning about.
The bigger issue is convincing education departments that phonics are the more successful way to learn reading.
I think the most important thing for literacy is a nationwide culture of reading.
That has stopped existing over the last decades. Parents do not read and so neither do their children.
Reading is now a niche hobby. If you visit a book store you will also find out that most "readers" are a very niche group, who mostly read genre fiction or crime slop.
The amount of people actually reading intellectually challenging literature is miniscule. Is it any surprise to have an illiteracy problem in a country where nobody reads?
I believe the issue is measures of 'achievement' and 'excellence' typically use the 20th and 50th percentiles, respectively. For example, most education studies focus on what improves graduation rates, passing rates, or the bottom 10–20% on standardized assessments. Most school districts' financial incentives rely on these metrics as well. Occasionally you'll get a study that looks at the median (and even more rare, the 90th percentile), but no standardized assessment even showcases the bellends of the distribution. This is why you get claims like this
> High-achieving kids are doing roughly as well as they always have, while those at the bottom are seeing rapid losses
in the article, when they're actually doing much worse as well, which can be seen from the median (or top) scores in STEM competitions. All the financial incentives are for schools and teachers to focus on their bottom 20% of students, and even if they cared about their top students (culturally, most education departments do not), it's not even feasible to collect that data, short of signing everyone up for the AMC 12. So, naturally, the percent of elementary schools offering gifted programs has declined by fifteen (twenty?) percent in the last twenty years, and the general standards and curricula have been lowered to teach to the 20th percentile. This also creates a cultural issue where many students recognize they're bored, and that schools are not trying to teach them, so they become disaffected and stop caring. My friends in high school joked that school was for socializing, and frankly, what other purpose does it serve anymore for most kids?
This article is a weird mix of things. Early on we see:
> States were given latitude to spend their funds as they saw fit, which, it seems, was a mistake. Instead of funding high-quality tutoring programs or other programs that benefited students, districts spent money for professional development or on capital expenditures such as replacing HVAC systems and obtaining electric buses.
And then later, discussing Mississippi:
> it began screening kids for reading deficiencies, training instructors in how to teach reading better (by, among other things, emphasizing phonics), and hiring literacy coaches to work in the lowest-performing schools.
Leaving aside the idea that capital expenditures on aging school buildings and busses is a mistake instead of an absolute requirement, the author criticizes states that spent money on professional development, and then later praised Mississippi for (among other things) training instructors—that's what professional development is.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 61.1 ms ] threadIt’s declining because media is shifting. It’s declining because tools are replacing that need. Smartphones yes but more advanced computers as well. Communication has increased in speed and people have never had more access to speech platforms to spread whatever diatribe they wish. Test scores that test one’s general knowledge are going to show gaps as we specialize.
“Can you read? And by that I don’t just mean interpreting Logotype…” “No one uses that any more,” said Quin. “You’re talking about the symbols on your underwear that tell you not to use bleach. That sort of thing.”
Sure, that’s what republicans want and it serves them well. Dismantling, arms twisting, and attacks on universities - is all from their playbook. They’ve started saying universities are indoctrinating kids. If you don’t speak against these evil creatures now, there isn’t going to be another chance. They are just taliban in a suit!!
Is this average spending per student? If so, then that is just a cover for inequality. Spending a vast amount on educating elite students, and spending hardly enough on the majority.
Other countries with much better education than the US spend less than $16,000 per student, but I imagine they are spending much more equitably. They don’t have one school that is incredible and then another school so broke that teachers and parents have to foot the bill for supplies.
Writes and Writes not (October 2024) https://www.paulgraham.com/writes.html
>I'm usually reluctant to make predictions about technology, but I feel fairly confident about this one: in a couple decades there won't be many people who can write.
>One of the strangest things you learn if you're a writer is how many people have trouble writing. Doctors know how many people have a mole they're worried about; people who are good at setting up computers know how many people aren't; writers know how many people need help writing.
>The reason so many people have trouble writing is that it's fundamentally difficult. To write well you have to think clearly, and thinking clearly is hard. ...
It has examples of states which are seeing some improvements. Those states seem to be addressing one of the main problems this article highlights: they hold students to expectations and prevent them from advancing grades if they don’t meet the bar.
There's really not much else to it. Laura Bush's push for literacy was well intentioned but she did not anticipate the anti phonics backlash that would ensue due to her husband's politics.
The is not some kook take, yet no one talks about it in general discourse, despite plenty of reporting on it. Teachers unions and public schools in general, which typically lean left, have been fighting a war on phonics for several decades. My mother, who was a teacher herself, noted this. She was not born in the US, so didn't understand why it was seen as political to teach children sounding out words.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nataliewexler/2022/04/12/lets-n...
We have this idea in America that conservatives are dumb and want lower standards for education. Of course, figures like Trump totally substantiate this idea, but in reality, both sides are invested in making America stupider. Yes, Democrats attract more educated voters, but often times these voters are exceptional and their kids wouldn't suffer the same fate as a typical child. Until at least one party takes education seriously, nothing will change
Easy. Parents of young children are on their phones more than ever before. That means less reading and more screen time.
One of the single largest determiners of schooling success is the number of books at home. Kids who are exposed to books and reading at home overwhelmingly out-achieve kids who are not. It starts earlier than people think and the effects are longer lived than people think. School standards have almost nothing to do with it.
Isn't there a video or a podcast of this?
/s
Schools and parents are also banning cell phones and cutting down on computer use, which should help with the distraction angle.
The socioeconomic divide mentioned in the article is still worrisome, though. I doubt that kids in the bottom 30% of America have the same experience. And simultaneously, the middle class has largely stopped having kids, which means there's a top 20% and a bottom 30% and pretty much nothing in between. If this continues for another couple generations, we're potentially faced with an America of an educated nobility and illiterate peasantry, and the future may look very Medieval indeed.
The bigger issue is convincing education departments that phonics are the more successful way to learn reading.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Miracle
That has stopped existing over the last decades. Parents do not read and so neither do their children.
Reading is now a niche hobby. If you visit a book store you will also find out that most "readers" are a very niche group, who mostly read genre fiction or crime slop.
The amount of people actually reading intellectually challenging literature is miniscule. Is it any surprise to have an illiteracy problem in a country where nobody reads?
America is Sliding Towards Autocracy - FTFY
> High-achieving kids are doing roughly as well as they always have, while those at the bottom are seeing rapid losses
in the article, when they're actually doing much worse as well, which can be seen from the median (or top) scores in STEM competitions. All the financial incentives are for schools and teachers to focus on their bottom 20% of students, and even if they cared about their top students (culturally, most education departments do not), it's not even feasible to collect that data, short of signing everyone up for the AMC 12. So, naturally, the percent of elementary schools offering gifted programs has declined by fifteen (twenty?) percent in the last twenty years, and the general standards and curricula have been lowered to teach to the 20th percentile. This also creates a cultural issue where many students recognize they're bored, and that schools are not trying to teach them, so they become disaffected and stop caring. My friends in high school joked that school was for socializing, and frankly, what other purpose does it serve anymore for most kids?
> States were given latitude to spend their funds as they saw fit, which, it seems, was a mistake. Instead of funding high-quality tutoring programs or other programs that benefited students, districts spent money for professional development or on capital expenditures such as replacing HVAC systems and obtaining electric buses.
And then later, discussing Mississippi:
> it began screening kids for reading deficiencies, training instructors in how to teach reading better (by, among other things, emphasizing phonics), and hiring literacy coaches to work in the lowest-performing schools.
Leaving aside the idea that capital expenditures on aging school buildings and busses is a mistake instead of an absolute requirement, the author criticizes states that spent money on professional development, and then later praised Mississippi for (among other things) training instructors—that's what professional development is.