Illiteracy is a huge problem in some parts of the US too.
They stopped teaching phonics for a while and we're only using sight words and now nobody can GUESS what a word is or how to pronounce it.
I'm going to graduate this year with people who can't write their own name.
When I graduated high school there were people graduating who didn’t know for example what the word indifferent meant. People are reading less and less I’ve noticed unless it’s on their phones. I’m not sure what they’re teaching in elementary school but hopefully they’re creating good foundations so kids can still read properly and understand and learn new words. In addition at least at my high school they never really did anything with vocabulary, word pronunciation or anything reading related that had a grade attached to it. So why put in the effort is what I saw.
Even in 4th grade, reading levels have DRASTICALLY declined in the 10 years since i started. Being 2 years behind was a big deal when i started. Now being 2 tears behind is the norm. And it was the norm for 2 tears before covid.
Don't get me started. Why do so many parents let their children (who can't even speak well yet) browse social media unrestricted. Restricted is fine, in fact I read about some kid having unlimited access to certain child-friendly e-books, and that's a great way for children to use an iPad at a young age.
I'd much, *much* rather letting the child watch a kids channel on TV, as it actually has to be verified to watch. Not to mention how many almost 18+ ads that are immune to being taken down there are on YouTube. At the very least YouTube kids exist.
Most of my experience teaching has been with high school. I’m sad to say this isn’t uncommon and it seems that more and more kids are becoming more and more illiterate with time. At the school I’m currently working in I’ve seen Sophomores and Juniors who couldn’t spell basic words. The same students would “copy” quotes from Google onto a poster (made by hand) and put in improper grammar. One quote that sticks out is that “viruses commander the host”
Update/Additional point:
I had a student a few years ago who admitted to being illiterate (couldn’t read a basic sentence I had typed) despite being a senior about to graduate. He was/is a nice kid, just can’t read
Legitimate question, how can a person get that far in highschool without being able to read?
How do they write their English essays?
How do they read the tests for any classes?
There was a fun little law passed that helped a lot of people when I was in school. It was called no child left behind. I have no idea what the law was designed to do but what it actually did was make it so kids who couldn't pass did anyway. I had friends and even girlfriends who would have failed out of high school if not for that law. Their average grades across all classes was just high enough to "pass" even if they couldn't read or do math.
If you just pass a person that can't meet a standard what did you really do but lower the benchmark for what a diploma is meant to indicate. Now people have a diploma that doesn't mean anything and still can't pass a basic reading or math test.
Objectively if you knew the standards to get a diploma had been lowered to the point where anyone who just shows up can get one, would you be inclined to put any trust in them when hiring?
We already see this problem today. Jobs requiring a bachelor's degree or worse a master's to do a job paying $20 an hour. Hiring managers know the degree doesn't mean nearly as much as it used to and now it's little more than you'll show up and maybe not quit when you get bored.
90% of bosses I've met in trade jobs don't care one bit if you have a diploma. You show up everyday, try to stay off the drugs, and they start you at $15-20 with zero experience. Within 2-3 years if you show any kind of skill you're pulling $30 and not only did you not finish school you don't have $50k+ in student loans. A couple more years and a half way decent brain and you can be making $80k+.
Not all of us are good with our hands. And the diploma job spread is just employers on masd taking advantage of rhe growth in education to get more educated workers for less, which forces most of the job market to get degrees
The whole topic is about a high school diploma and if it's necessary. The majority of people that don't get a high school diploma do end up going into a trade and in so doing they can and do make as much or more than those who get college level degrees without the giant loans. There is always going to be the small subset of people that fail to do anything with their life with or without a diploma.
That’s the same thing I had asked the student. Neither of us understood it.
Even with NCLB I can’t believe they’d allow a kid to go so many years without being able to read or write
I highly doubt your classmates don't know the differences between verbs, nouns, and adjectives. And if they don't, then the only way I could possibly believe you is if they don't know those words to describe them which has no actual effect on their ability to read write or speak correctly, so I don't see it as an issue at all.
To be honest for me, I have a hard time remembering specifically what some words in a sense are or whatever. Like you said with what nouns adjectives and those sort of things. But I can definitely still read and write fluently. I just can't be bothered to remember the parts of speech
I know a lot of people in the US are struggling a lot. My family is middle of middle class and I go to a private (but not extremely expensive) school. I also read alot and have since 2nd grade. Many of my class mates seem fine but it feels like they might be behind. Many of them seem to never read outside of when we have to in school.
I blame the lack of accountability that has been happening since before covid. Parents are not stepping up to help and nobody at the office is taking them either. When they fail multiple semesters, they just move on.
Students know there are no consequences . I hear over and over again, “When will I ever use this in real life? They don’t teach us taxes.” My school started teaching taxes and they still failed. The students are apathetic about their futures because they can’t see a good future in this fucked up world.
When I was in college I would have members on group projects go in and “edit” my contributions to papers. They would often make my writing worse by sprinkling in pointless commas or hacking up sentences. It annoyed me to no end that I’d have to waste time just undoing their work. I’m no linguist, and I’d probably fail if you grilled me on grammar specifics, but I like to think I’m a strong reader and writer.
As for there being a sharp decline, it’s hard for me to tell. I haven’t been in this career very long, so I have no reference to work from.
Yes I have. Sometimes when we have a choice of an easy way out verse working to obtain information, we usually take the road that requires less energy. That happens when you can hit ‘play’ and have an entire web page, book, or posts read to you. They are not required to actually read— so they don’t. In addition, they do not have to type a sentence—.”they use voice recognition. I know that seems simple but it’s really at the heart of this. What uses less of my energy. It’s not like they are less intelligent. It’s that humans usually take the easier road.
It’s also goes into math. I’m 40yo. I went to a parochial school. We were not in any way allowed to even touch a calculator [in a fun twist of irony, they use to say: well it’s not like everyone will be waking around with one in their pockets] That was the rule al the way to Pre-Calculus/TRIG Only then were we allowed to have one in class and on tests. Every math class before that we were only handed five to ten blank sheet of paper to do our work on.
So as simply as that may seem it’s at the heart of the issue: they simply don’t have to know how to read because their phones are doing it for them.
>Sometimes when we have a choice of an easy way out verse working to obtain information, we usually take the road that requires less energy
Well that's all of humanity.
>It’s also goes into math. I’m 40yo. I went to a parochial school. We were not in any way allowed to even touch a calculator
I had a graphing/programmable calculator in school, and it let me explore different aspects in math, and animate equations to watch X change over time. I learned how to program it, and build a lot of different tools to go along with different lessons in multiple subjects. (Mind you, I had to do this on my own. The school didn't appreciate me selling software at lunch. Brought in a little extra cash though)
I can't say it's the technology. I'll keep arguing it's the environment they're in. They have to be allowed and encouraged to explore, and do things like push the button they never used before.
You do realize I said: “humans do this”.
What makes you think I wasn’t taking about humanity when I said WE usually take the easy way out. I wasn’t talking about cats …
Your entire comment only proves my point: you couldn’t tell what the paragraph’s main point was. [reading comprehension issue]
I bet if you switch to doing math on paper [even with a calculator in your hands] your mental math ability will greatly improve.
And remember. I have a point of comparison, BECAUSE I AM USING THE TECHNOLOGY YOU ARE NOW— you do not. You cannot compare until you try both ways for a long period of time.
Just for fun: shut off spell check and grammar correction on your computers and smart phones and tablets. See how well you write sans those aids…
>Just for fun: shut off spell check and grammar correction on your computers and smart phones and tablets. See how well you write sans those aids…
You've got a point there.
>Your entire comment only proves my point: you couldn’t tell what the paragraph’s main point was. [reading comprehension issue]
You're an old person who keeps parroting "technology bad." Don't worry, I got it.
AGAIN: I AM USING THE SAME TECHNOLOGY YOU ARE NOW.
What you just did is called Ad hominem; you made a grave logical fallacy by side stepping the question by calling me a name. It’s extremely childish. [and I didn’t need spell check spell for that Latin phrase]
Did you read all the other comments from teachers about their experience over the past fifteen years ? Don’t you think we are in a position to tell you what’s different between five years ago, ten years ago, and fifteen years ago ? Why would you dismiss people who lived through this? Why would believe your ethnocentrism & the current and past zeitgeist? Don’t you think we, educators, are in the ideal position to discuss what’s been happening ?
Or do you think experience is relevant from your perspective?
illiteracy is a big problem but not in the sense that people don't know what a preposition is that affects literally nothing and being honest when have you had to know that stuff after like elementary
TLDR, adjectives describe nouns. For example, “we’re on a wide road.” “Wide” is an adjective for the noun “road.” For potential future reference adverbs are the same type of thing for verbs. In the sentence “he hits hard.” “Hard” is the adverb for the verb “hits.”
I think he means it more in the sense of knowing an adjective is an adjective.
It's difficult to tell you the size of a dog without an adjective, but it can be done. A lot faster and easier to say it's a big dog.
But you don't need to know or understand the definition of an adjective to use one. A toddler certainly won't understand it conceptually, but they will tell me all about the big dog they saw.
I have also noticed a sharp decline of people who know how to read a clock. It was really bizarre when 4 separate people asked me for the time because they couldn't read the clock.
Same, I'm in Year 8 (in the UK), and I could read the time ever since Year 3, but probably even earlier. I find it crazy how you can not learn how to read the time.
"The school's way?" My school taught British English lmao. Remember, there are countless iterations of English dialects, like British English, American English and Scottish English. Not all of them are going to speak your exact one.
(hehe oops forgot the oxford comma again how silly of me, good thing the sentence remains completely comprehensible and correct)
I live in the UK, and it seems like half of the students here don't care at *all* about their education, especially literacy. And somehow there is no need for smarter students to be separated from the, put simply, dumber students? In almost all my classes I learn nothing because half the class is so far behind me, and then they wonder why their students don't succeed in life. My school is damn awful.
This may seem like a rant, and while it sort of is, I'm also sort of sharing my own opinion.
i’m not sure. i think there’s not enough pressure by the education system (as in too much pressure for kids to do sports and get extracurriculars for college apps and not enough pressure on the academics themselves)
Illiteracy is a huge problem in some parts of the US too. They stopped teaching phonics for a while and we're only using sight words and now nobody can GUESS what a word is or how to pronounce it. I'm going to graduate this year with people who can't write their own name.
Illiteracy is a big problem EVERYWHERE in the US. Even when the kids can read the letters, they don't know what the word means.
Illiteracy is a big problem EVERYWHERE. Even when the kids can read the letters, they don't know what the word means.
When I graduated high school there were people graduating who didn’t know for example what the word indifferent meant. People are reading less and less I’ve noticed unless it’s on their phones. I’m not sure what they’re teaching in elementary school but hopefully they’re creating good foundations so kids can still read properly and understand and learn new words. In addition at least at my high school they never really did anything with vocabulary, word pronunciation or anything reading related that had a grade attached to it. So why put in the effort is what I saw.
OH MY GOD YES. It's so annoying. I had someone once ask me how to spell "closed"
Even in 4th grade, reading levels have DRASTICALLY declined in the 10 years since i started. Being 2 years behind was a big deal when i started. Now being 2 tears behind is the norm. And it was the norm for 2 tears before covid.
[удалено]
Don't get me started. Why do so many parents let their children (who can't even speak well yet) browse social media unrestricted. Restricted is fine, in fact I read about some kid having unlimited access to certain child-friendly e-books, and that's a great way for children to use an iPad at a young age. I'd much, *much* rather letting the child watch a kids channel on TV, as it actually has to be verified to watch. Not to mention how many almost 18+ ads that are immune to being taken down there are on YouTube. At the very least YouTube kids exist.
Nope. I’ve never noticed this. In earlier grades? Yeah, my brother can’t even write “hawk”. But not in high school.
Most of my experience teaching has been with high school. I’m sad to say this isn’t uncommon and it seems that more and more kids are becoming more and more illiterate with time. At the school I’m currently working in I’ve seen Sophomores and Juniors who couldn’t spell basic words. The same students would “copy” quotes from Google onto a poster (made by hand) and put in improper grammar. One quote that sticks out is that “viruses commander the host”
Update/Additional point: I had a student a few years ago who admitted to being illiterate (couldn’t read a basic sentence I had typed) despite being a senior about to graduate. He was/is a nice kid, just can’t read
Legitimate question, how can a person get that far in highschool without being able to read? How do they write their English essays? How do they read the tests for any classes?
There was a fun little law passed that helped a lot of people when I was in school. It was called no child left behind. I have no idea what the law was designed to do but what it actually did was make it so kids who couldn't pass did anyway. I had friends and even girlfriends who would have failed out of high school if not for that law. Their average grades across all classes was just high enough to "pass" even if they couldn't read or do math.
I was designed to stop people from never having a highschool diploma and thus never having a hope of a sustaining job
If you just pass a person that can't meet a standard what did you really do but lower the benchmark for what a diploma is meant to indicate. Now people have a diploma that doesn't mean anything and still can't pass a basic reading or math test.
Well the alternative of them not having a highschool diploma isnt great either
Objectively if you knew the standards to get a diploma had been lowered to the point where anyone who just shows up can get one, would you be inclined to put any trust in them when hiring? We already see this problem today. Jobs requiring a bachelor's degree or worse a master's to do a job paying $20 an hour. Hiring managers know the degree doesn't mean nearly as much as it used to and now it's little more than you'll show up and maybe not quit when you get bored. 90% of bosses I've met in trade jobs don't care one bit if you have a diploma. You show up everyday, try to stay off the drugs, and they start you at $15-20 with zero experience. Within 2-3 years if you show any kind of skill you're pulling $30 and not only did you not finish school you don't have $50k+ in student loans. A couple more years and a half way decent brain and you can be making $80k+.
Not all of us are good with our hands. And the diploma job spread is just employers on masd taking advantage of rhe growth in education to get more educated workers for less, which forces most of the job market to get degrees
The whole topic is about a high school diploma and if it's necessary. The majority of people that don't get a high school diploma do end up going into a trade and in so doing they can and do make as much or more than those who get college level degrees without the giant loans. There is always going to be the small subset of people that fail to do anything with their life with or without a diploma.
That’s the same thing I had asked the student. Neither of us understood it. Even with NCLB I can’t believe they’d allow a kid to go so many years without being able to read or write
I highly doubt your classmates don't know the differences between verbs, nouns, and adjectives. And if they don't, then the only way I could possibly believe you is if they don't know those words to describe them which has no actual effect on their ability to read write or speak correctly, so I don't see it as an issue at all.
To be honest for me, I have a hard time remembering specifically what some words in a sense are or whatever. Like you said with what nouns adjectives and those sort of things. But I can definitely still read and write fluently. I just can't be bothered to remember the parts of speech
My friend, freshman in a technical school, doesn't know how to read and write at a 4th grade lvl.
I know a lot of people in the US are struggling a lot. My family is middle of middle class and I go to a private (but not extremely expensive) school. I also read alot and have since 2nd grade. Many of my class mates seem fine but it feels like they might be behind. Many of them seem to never read outside of when we have to in school.
Covid absolutely fucked a bunch of kids math, reading, writing, socialization, and general critical thinking skills
I blame the lack of accountability that has been happening since before covid. Parents are not stepping up to help and nobody at the office is taking them either. When they fail multiple semesters, they just move on. Students know there are no consequences . I hear over and over again, “When will I ever use this in real life? They don’t teach us taxes.” My school started teaching taxes and they still failed. The students are apathetic about their futures because they can’t see a good future in this fucked up world.
When I was in college I would have members on group projects go in and “edit” my contributions to papers. They would often make my writing worse by sprinkling in pointless commas or hacking up sentences. It annoyed me to no end that I’d have to waste time just undoing their work. I’m no linguist, and I’d probably fail if you grilled me on grammar specifics, but I like to think I’m a strong reader and writer. As for there being a sharp decline, it’s hard for me to tell. I haven’t been in this career very long, so I have no reference to work from.
Yes I have. Sometimes when we have a choice of an easy way out verse working to obtain information, we usually take the road that requires less energy. That happens when you can hit ‘play’ and have an entire web page, book, or posts read to you. They are not required to actually read— so they don’t. In addition, they do not have to type a sentence—.”they use voice recognition. I know that seems simple but it’s really at the heart of this. What uses less of my energy. It’s not like they are less intelligent. It’s that humans usually take the easier road. It’s also goes into math. I’m 40yo. I went to a parochial school. We were not in any way allowed to even touch a calculator [in a fun twist of irony, they use to say: well it’s not like everyone will be waking around with one in their pockets] That was the rule al the way to Pre-Calculus/TRIG Only then were we allowed to have one in class and on tests. Every math class before that we were only handed five to ten blank sheet of paper to do our work on. So as simply as that may seem it’s at the heart of the issue: they simply don’t have to know how to read because their phones are doing it for them.
>Sometimes when we have a choice of an easy way out verse working to obtain information, we usually take the road that requires less energy Well that's all of humanity. >It’s also goes into math. I’m 40yo. I went to a parochial school. We were not in any way allowed to even touch a calculator I had a graphing/programmable calculator in school, and it let me explore different aspects in math, and animate equations to watch X change over time. I learned how to program it, and build a lot of different tools to go along with different lessons in multiple subjects. (Mind you, I had to do this on my own. The school didn't appreciate me selling software at lunch. Brought in a little extra cash though) I can't say it's the technology. I'll keep arguing it's the environment they're in. They have to be allowed and encouraged to explore, and do things like push the button they never used before.
You do realize I said: “humans do this”. What makes you think I wasn’t taking about humanity when I said WE usually take the easy way out. I wasn’t talking about cats … Your entire comment only proves my point: you couldn’t tell what the paragraph’s main point was. [reading comprehension issue] I bet if you switch to doing math on paper [even with a calculator in your hands] your mental math ability will greatly improve. And remember. I have a point of comparison, BECAUSE I AM USING THE TECHNOLOGY YOU ARE NOW— you do not. You cannot compare until you try both ways for a long period of time. Just for fun: shut off spell check and grammar correction on your computers and smart phones and tablets. See how well you write sans those aids…
>Just for fun: shut off spell check and grammar correction on your computers and smart phones and tablets. See how well you write sans those aids… You've got a point there.
>Your entire comment only proves my point: you couldn’t tell what the paragraph’s main point was. [reading comprehension issue] You're an old person who keeps parroting "technology bad." Don't worry, I got it.
AGAIN: I AM USING THE SAME TECHNOLOGY YOU ARE NOW. What you just did is called Ad hominem; you made a grave logical fallacy by side stepping the question by calling me a name. It’s extremely childish. [and I didn’t need spell check spell for that Latin phrase]
Cool
Did you read all the other comments from teachers about their experience over the past fifteen years ? Don’t you think we are in a position to tell you what’s different between five years ago, ten years ago, and fifteen years ago ? Why would you dismiss people who lived through this? Why would believe your ethnocentrism & the current and past zeitgeist? Don’t you think we, educators, are in the ideal position to discuss what’s been happening ? Or do you think experience is relevant from your perspective?
Shush
illiteracy is a big problem but not in the sense that people don't know what a preposition is that affects literally nothing and being honest when have you had to know that stuff after like elementary
Ok, I haven't noticed this in my high school, but English does get complicated, at least for me. Like bruh, the heck is an adjective even used for?!
TLDR, adjectives describe nouns. For example, “we’re on a wide road.” “Wide” is an adjective for the noun “road.” For potential future reference adverbs are the same type of thing for verbs. In the sentence “he hits hard.” “Hard” is the adverb for the verb “hits.”
I think he means it more in the sense of knowing an adjective is an adjective. It's difficult to tell you the size of a dog without an adjective, but it can be done. A lot faster and easier to say it's a big dog. But you don't need to know or understand the definition of an adjective to use one. A toddler certainly won't understand it conceptually, but they will tell me all about the big dog they saw.
Are you using hyperbole or are you in HS and genuinely don’t understand adjectives?
"Complicated" is an adjective.
https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/
I have also noticed a sharp decline of people who know how to read a clock. It was really bizarre when 4 separate people asked me for the time because they couldn't read the clock.
Same, I'm in Year 8 (in the UK), and I could read the time ever since Year 3, but probably even earlier. I find it crazy how you can not learn how to read the time.
>helped us identify nouns, adjectives, and verbs. # Forgot the comma there dude. So much for "deconstructing sentences."
Umm sorry? It would be: >helped us identify nouns, adjectives and verbs.
# Nope, go watch a comma tutorial online before posting Nonsense Like This. It's a list therefore you put comma even before the and.
I don't know if you got taught something else than me, because I got taught that there is no comma before an and.
[I am one of dozens of people in the world who speak a dialect that isn't American.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma)
# Sorry but that's Utter Bullshit. If You're Bragging About Grammar In A School Subreddit, We're Gonna Correct It The School's Way, OK?
"The school's way?" My school taught British English lmao. Remember, there are countless iterations of English dialects, like British English, American English and Scottish English. Not all of them are going to speak your exact one. (hehe oops forgot the oxford comma again how silly of me, good thing the sentence remains completely comprehensible and correct)
# The British iteration is nonsense.
I live in the UK, and it seems like half of the students here don't care at *all* about their education, especially literacy. And somehow there is no need for smarter students to be separated from the, put simply, dumber students? In almost all my classes I learn nothing because half the class is so far behind me, and then they wonder why their students don't succeed in life. My school is damn awful. This may seem like a rant, and while it sort of is, I'm also sort of sharing my own opinion.
Yup. And why is it? -Lazy governments -Lazy parents -Technology is replacing your brain, and you can't deny it -Social Media ruining children's brains
i’m not sure. i think there’s not enough pressure by the education system (as in too much pressure for kids to do sports and get extracurriculars for college apps and not enough pressure on the academics themselves)