For children who were raised with smartphones, by contrast, that foundation is missing. It is probably no coincidence that the iPhone itself, originally released in 2007, is approaching college age
So I went back to school in my 30s and this is my first semester, which means I'm in classes with a bunch of 18-year-old kids. I also have some older classmates that went back to school later in life, like I did.
So far the main difference I see is that the teenagers can't read. Not "can't understand complex texts" or "have no nuance" or "miss more subtle themes or rhetorical tricks." I really mean "can't effectively decode the words on the page." Even the ones that are super into the schoolwork and eagerly participating in class!
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English class, students confused about the linear chronology of the text. As in, thinking that things happened in a different order or inverting cause and effect. This is a very straightforward text, but the narrator does reflect on things after the fact sometimes. I'm thinking some of the students are identifying some of the words that describe the events and not the words that make it clear this is someone remembering it.
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Student reading a text out loud and skipping words or "reading" different words that the ones on the text, that start with the same letter and kind of make sense but not really. Think substituting "horse" for "house" in the sentence "I love my parents' house." Yeah, it makes sense but nobody mentioned a horse anywhere else in the text and the rest of the paragraph is describing a house.
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Online class, assignment is a written questionnaire that we had to post on our little forum. Half the students straight up answered different questions than the ones asked. Not even complicated, trick questions, I'm talking extremely straightforward. Like "How big is Lake Michigan?" "Lake Michigan is blue" kind of thing. Maybe they are identifying a couple of words and then guessing at what the question may be?
I was second-guessing myself, thinking that maybe I'm being a Cranky Old Lady and complaining about The Youths, but I showed the online assignment to some friends and they agreed the questions were clear and that the students were not actually answering them in a way that went beyond normal "students half-assing their homework."
This article kind of confirmed it's an actual trend and not me being an asshole. And then reading about the absolute dogshit reading pedagogy that doesn't actually teach kids to decode words and sound them out? Fuck, I also would stop reading every two paragraphs and go do something else if most of my reading was guessing at what's on the page.
For anyone wondering, this is a direct result of us not teaching phonics in the US for reading (resulting in kids "learning" by recognizing the shape of a word and not... reading the word out), combined with No Child Left Behind being implemented under Bush (who oddly enough was pro-phonics). Kids can't easily be held back for being illiterate anymore without a large amount of effort, and the arguments from parents (based on anecdotal evidence of teachers discussing this issue on social media) range from "They can read the menu at mcdonalds" to "My kid loves to learn, who cares if they're a little slow. They'll get there."
This has also been discussed on TikTok for about a year, and it's filled me with dread. I'd wondered why some younger employees at my last job literally were unable to read technical documentation or flat out refused to and suffered completing tasks that required reading. After I poked them a bit I found out they'd never learned to read correctly, some of them coming from areas where phonics had been phased out during the Bush years.
Now, in some places they're doing phonics again, but a large amount of the US does not have this at this time. I feel like we've left an entire generation in the dirt and Congress is too full of old corpses about to shuffle off this mortal coil, ne'er-do-wells who are fine with this happening, and too few young legislators to actually do anything about this.
God yes at this point even if (some?) schools are going back to phonics there's still an entire generation of people now entering adulthood that is functionally illiterate. Adult literacy in the US already wasn't great, but this is on another level
some universities have reading tutors and other help, but
a) not every student that needs help is going to seek it out, even if they know they need help and they know it's available. There is a stigma against illiteracy and it's embarrassing to admit you can't do something "basic" that "everyone can do." Teenagers and young adults tend to have a lower tolerance for embarrassment.
b) Not every school has these resources and the ones that do don't always make them easily available or push them to those that need them. (Maybe hiding this in the middle of along-ass welcome email is not going to reach the people that can't read the welcome email without a lot of difficulty?)
c) Not everyone goes to college and we all need to know how to read in order to survive, let alone thrive in our society. That's why we decided to teach all children how to read, even if we seem to be doing a shit job.
