Scampir

Scampir

@Scampir

Be the Choster you wanna read

  • He/Him + They/Them

One Canuck built the #ttrpg tag and the #mecha tag. And that was me.

Cohost Cultural Institution: @Making-up-Mech-Pilots
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Scampir
@Scampir
TalenLee
@TalenLee
margot
@margot

those articles i see floating around about how much worse students are at reading due to a fault curriculum are very compelling but the other day i kind of found myself wondering, like— is this how it happens? is this how every generation which seems cool at first becomes boomers talking about how young ppl can’t be trusted???

EDITORS NOTE: i have no reason to DISbelieve them either other than an inherent skepticism, im just thinking out loud as usual

DecayWTF
@DecayWTF

It's marketing. Every "generation" has different struggles and there's always someone looking to sell people on reactionary ideas who will use that in any way they like.

TalenLee
@TalenLee

its even wonkier than that: There's really only one meaningful generation demographic in the world, Boomers, because that's the one group with enough common experience and size. Every attempt to repreat the boomer's structure fails because no other cohort has that kind of compression

I'm a 'millenial' but it's not like it means shit beyond I'll probably never own a house

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in reply to @margot's post:

NireBryce
@NireBryce

education in general, especially computer education, has been systematically devalued in ways where it's not just reading that's doing it.

but yes, the way to treat it is to keep it in mind when writing and reacting, not to like, assume younger people don't know how to do everything imo

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margot
@margot

as someone in my comments pointed out, if it is a problem it’s at least 60 years old, which i think is part of my skepticism. i would certainly want to look into it if i was in education, but really i think i more just caution other laypeople like me from drawing by strong conclusions about this without looking into it more. there has to be SOME sort of societal push or broader propaganda that ends up repeating this pattern over the years, is my thinking, so it’s good to watch out for it

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sakiamu
@sakiamu

I know obe of my grandma's was taught three-cueing, so it's been around for a long time, it's not new.

People misunderstanding shit can happen for all sorts of reasons, education-based or not. Confirmation bias, brains being too in-crisis to consider outside points of view, good old neophobia.

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jcolag
@jcolag

As a data point to support skepticism, around the time that I learned to read in the mid-'70s, Why Johnny Can't Read had served as a long-standing cliché in newspaper headlines to decry the state of public education. "Generation theory" took hold soon after, letting people whine about millennials and beyond.

I suppose that it could be different, this time, but...

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margot
@margot

it’s been a bit since i read the reports but i DO believe this is cited— i think one of the weird things about seeing this passed around is that, given how long it’s been, it SHOULD include most of my generational cohort, but i’m not seeing that reflected in posts

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jcolag
@jcolag

That's the other issue, yeah. I've recently worked with people in their twenties who I'd call exceptional, and don't see any significant differences online - though I don't know most people's ages - so I don't see how the premise stacks up. But I've also only seen conversations about the studies, rather than the studies themselves, so I could be missing something critical.

I could spin up theories (motivation and/or trauma, for example), but I should probably read up on things myself before trying to disentangle a problem when I don't know the actual problem statement...

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hindsightee
@hindsightee

my around-thirty peers have definitely started lashing out at things they find unusual about younger generations. It's not quite "kids these days are amoral and violent" but i think it's gonna germinate into that. As we grow old, not falling into reflexive dislike of everything new is an active process.

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margot
@margot

totally! that’s a big part of why i want to interrogate my own reaction to these things. certainly there are times when something newer is objectively bad, but i at least want to come to that conclusion outside of what feels like broader societal pushes

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panicattheopticon
@panicattheopticon

wild how we treat anyone under or above the target demographic for culture as inhuman trash and people start feeling defensive. instead of catering to many niches we love a Unified Narrative that excludes pretty much everyone that realizes it isn’t for them or they double down that their little niche is the One True Niche

we age into “kids these days” because we’re taught that the world is tailored for us and we’re the main characters. the second that sales pitch collapses we feel like we got scammed, and then blame it on the closest shit to us

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in reply to @DecayWTF's post:

xkeeper
@xkeeper

normally i would agree but this is something i've heard coming from actual teachers, about how the newest generation just. doesn't read. and very specifically, the ways in which they are unable to read.

like it's not just "theyre using things differently and thats weird", it's "they are fundamentally incapable of reading text". it's actually pretty well documented. :(

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LemmaEOF
@LemmaEOF

Well the thing is that kids nowadays are reading more text than ever - it’s just all on social media instead of in assignments. It’s not surprising that students don’t have as much reading stamina for assignments if they’re spending all of it online

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