For real. Words and concepts that I assume are incredibly basic just fly over most of their heads. One of my students didn't know what a secretary was.
God don't even get me started on trying to get them to use context clues. I don't know it's it's truly a comprehension issue or if it's just them not reading but they take everything so literally and at face value
I've had to take it back to basic parts of speech. We learn vocabulary words in context, and sometimes that involves me taking the word out of the sentence and leaving a blank when we practice.
I don't think they're messing with me, either. I think that they truly don't know/haven't retained the most basic elementary concepts.
An example of this might look like:
Me: Okay, our sentence is "The cow ___________ over the moon." Let's look at our vocabulary words. Which one makes the most sense here? Based on the sentence, which part of speech should we be looking for?
Students: [blank staring]
Me: Well, we have our predicate, so that means...
Students: [name literally everything except for verb]
Y E P you can spend a week straight telling them what a verb is, having them tell you, giving them examples but then on Friday when you say find the verb in this sentence, they will circle anything except the verb
OH it is BAD, I did a first year uni course at a place a while back, the tutor mentioned a particular part of speech, I think maybe adjective or verb - I can't remember. About thirty seconds in, a student corrects the tutor on which part of speech it is. And I sit there, immensely confused, as this tutor, AND the whole class, about twenty people in all, just go with it. For several minutes.
Like, this stuff is covered in early to mid primary school, and the knowledge is used frequently enough in high school. How they managed to get through the finals and into uni I have no idea
Genuinely curious...
* Do they capitalize personal "I"?
* Do they capitalize the first letter of the first word of a sentence?
* Do they use "u" or "you"?
* Do then end a sentence with punctuation?
Typically not. Man, Pelikan 4001 is sure one great red ink. I'm not teaching English but I do have a responsibility not to simply let this sort of bullshit go by and pretend it is somehow acceptable.
I am at a school that frowns upon red inks... But that just means that I can order an obscene amount of ink samples for my pens and they barely have time to settle before I break them open.
Also, hello from ELA land. We're trying our best, I swear.
Education is filled with talented, well-intentioned, good professional people doing their best, I swear i know.
In the United States, it's about five million of them, all sticking their thumbs to try to stop the leaks in a collapsing dam, with no organized effort to repair the dam as a whole This obviously does not work, and just wears down a lot of thumbs.
Never never yes never.
The weirdest thing is that I’ve taught them how to do all these things, as much as you can “teach” capitalizing I when all there is to it is just… doing it.
It’s just insane that they can be told something an honest to god 50 times and still not do it.
....and still not notice. I am going to have AI rewrite directions for an assignment in teenspeak: all lower-case, no punctuation, one giant run-on sentence. #GooseGander
> Words and concepts that I assume are incredibly basic just fly over most of their heads. One of my students didn't know what a secretary was.
Last year, I had a low-performing student who asked me why I kept using fancy words like _____ (I don't remember what the word was, but I can assure you that it was no fancier than "secretary").
At first, I thought he was messing with me, but he was 100% serious. I was stunned.
To be fair, if you're using secretary to describe a job it's now called a Personal or Executive Assistant. If you're using it to describe furniture it's called a writing desk. The only secretary still in use today is for political positions as in 'Secretary of Defense'.
It's like old-timers saying I can't believe kids today don't know what a surrey or switch-board operator are.
We literally have an attendance secretary in the school. I absolutely understand that you're saying, but they see her and her sign every single day because they have to walk by her in the morning.
I was helping my 9 yr old son with his grammar homework. He goes to a Catholic school. I took pics of the worksheets he was doing because they were above what my 11th grade ELA classes can do. I was going to show it to them and say "This is what my 9 year old is doing" but felt bad so didn't.
It's legit scary what is happening to education and to an entire generation, and perhaps even scarier that no one gives a shit.
Honestly...if it's the kids that don't take anything seriously or don't see the point in school, I wouldn't. But if it's the kid that thinks theyre the smartest in the room and they are being an ass to everyone about it....go for it
> I was going to show it to them and say "This is what my 9 year old is doing" but felt bad so didn't.
I do this from time to time, but I don't feel bad because a lot of my students are *ssholes.
Sentence starters for 10th graders. Complaints about a double-spaced 2 page response, and only one kid who knew what double-spacing was. Explanations of what a verb, noun, and adjective are.
That was my autumn. At one point I just stared at them and asked how they expected to get by in life having zero comprehension skills.
> Sentence starters for 10th graders. Complaints about a double-spaced 2 page response, and only one kid who knew what double-spacing was. Explanations of what a verb, noun, and adjective are.
I remember watching several students double-spacing their essays manually. I let it go on longer than I should have, but I was morbidly fascinated.
Finally, I stopped the class and showed them how to double-space text by selecting it and clicking double-space on Google Docs. One of the rare times that many of them went "Whoa!" Blew their minds!
I find this weirdly funny. I am 58. I was in college when I first learned to use a computer (late 80s - 90s).
At that time, when we had to have a required number of pages, we would manipulate the spacing or font to accommodate the requirement. That double space got a tweak up or down....
Ok the sentence starters I will defend but mostly because I teach a lot of ELL/EB kids and it helps as a starting point for the kids that know what they want to say but not how to say it.
But yeah after a while, I just started responding to base level questions with "Well, what do you think? Oh yeah? Why do you think that?" If there's one thing they hate it's when you ask them to share an opinion or thought
As far as double spacing goes, nobody’s gonna know if you don’t tell them. If a kid doesn’t have a computer literacy course and it isn’t explained to you, you’re probably not going to know what the line spacing tool in Word does just looking at the screen.
Plus, as far as I know, double-spacing in academia goes back to typing or printing out work so there is room to make corrections with a pen in between the lines. What’s the point in it if you’re just turning it in online?
I took computer applications in high school and most kids don’t get classes like that. The assumption is they no. I work at a university and let me tell you they don’t know. In 38 and these kids that grew up with phones and the internet in a way that I didn’t have no idea how to do basic computer tasks. I have no idea how they’re going to function in jobs.
Hijacking top comment, even though I posted this elsewhere, and it'll likely be buried, but:
It's important to note that *we know why this is happening!*
Check out Emily Hanford, and her work on [Sold a A Story](https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/) (if you like podcasts) or [this article](https://isps.yale.edu/news/blog/2023/05/how-teaching-kids-to-read-went-so-wrong-emily-hanford-visits-isps-to-discuss-the) if you prefer to read.
the TL;DR is that about 35-40 years ago, schools moved from phonics to teaching the "cueing method", where kids are read books multiple times, and then told to look at pictures, think about what the context of the sentence is, and make guesses- not actually read the word. So you get more and more kids who are learning to essentially memorize specific books and make a lot of guesses about what's on the page, giving the illusion of reading, but not actually reading.
Parents who have the time and resources are able to teach their kids to decode- look at the letter combinations, figure out what the sounds are, and connect them to extant vocab. But as more families need two parents to work, fewer people have the time to do that with their kids, and just as few have the resources to get tutors outside of school to teach their kids decoding.
Since this has been going on for almost 4 decades now, it's snowballing. If you don't have a parent who is able to teach you decoding, and schools aren't teaching it... what are you going to do?
I listened to this last fall, and all I could think was we should be suing them (the reading companies) for fraud! It’s appalling what they’ve done to generations of people!
That’s crazy. I’m 38 and had some issues with reading in first grade and they sent me to a class where we learned phonics because they weren’t doing it yet in the rest of the school and it helped me overcome whatever issue I had. It’s wild they stopped using that.
Caused by lack of conversation ~ everyone is on phones all the time. Also kids don’t use their imaginations and just play. Boredom is a good thing for kids and it has gone away.
Yeah, we had to problem solve a lot growing up and they don’t have to at all. Kids can’t tell time, don’t know basic math, can’t read a map without gps… the list goes on and on. God help us if the internet ever just goes away.
Every single time I redo seating charts, I put the “classroom” map on the front screen and set a timer. I tell them, “map reading day- everyone in their new spot when timer goes off gets a life saver. You never know when reading a static map will be the life saver you need!”
Start of year they hated me for it, about this time of year they ask me- are we changing seats any time soon?
If a kid can’t read a clock or do basic math, then a parent must be doing very little interaction with the child and I mean zero.
Thats what has changed.
Children used to be the most important thing in parents lives, and now they don’t give a shit about them.
They let them ditch school, they don’t check their grades, they don’t force them to have passing grades, they never punish them by taking away their cell phone.
I haven’t heard the word grounded since I was a kid.
I don't know about that necessarily. I have listened to teachers lament that they have taught clock reading again and again and the students still can't do it a few weeks later.
Certain functions which have been replaced or streamlined by ubiquitous technology might no longer be learnable by typical children unless they are intentionally placed in a living situation where that technology is unavailable.
In order to learn how to read a map, you are going to have to take away their GPS is what I am saying.
If you can learn all the moves in super smash brothers, you can learn to read a clock.
You just have to want to, or your parents have to make you want to.
Both just don’t apparently.
People learned how to read maps way before GPS was available. I get where you’re coming from, but analog clocks are still very much ubiquitous in a tech immersed world.
But digital clocks are easier to read than analog, and are even more ubiquitous.
GPS is much easier than a map, and thanks to smartphones it is now ubiquitous as well (moreso than maps).
Exactly. How can we expect kids to retain skills they never actually use? I saw someone complain that kids don't know what a "secretary" is. Almost no one has a secretary any more. They have personal assistants. Some of this stuff is just getting obselete.
I’ve noticed that lots of kids these days don’t even know the difference between North and South anymore. To make matters worse, there’s kids that grew up their entire lives in this town, and couldn’t tell you street names without using their GPS on their phones.
I didn’t have the luxury of GPS growing up, I spent lots of hours with a learner’s permit just aimlessly driving around town and orienting myself with street names, while I had a parent in the car that wouldn’t tell me how to get to a destination that they randomly picked.
Someone made the comment earlier that kids being bored is a good thing, and I think being “lost” while driving is also a good thing too. It fosters the learning of very basic problem solving skills.
I hate to even think how kids would perform today if they were introduced to Public Land Survey System (PLSS).
Children and their parents treat the idea of them being bored (without causing a disruption of some sort to not be bored) as a legitimate human rights violation.
It's ruining their attention spans, their brains, and honestly makes for people who no one wants to be around.
So sad to hear this, and it makes me happy that I am playing with my 3 year old everyday and we use our imagination about monsters, Elsa scenarios, family situations, etc.
I'm a tech teacher and I'm constantly having to teach my students new words all the time. I'm not just referring to the tech terms, either. 😂 When they ask what a word means, I'll write it on the board and tell them to utilize their resources to find it.
Not knowing what noon is, though...
Ya, well, I'm fat and have no idea what app you're talking about. I guess if we knew, we wouldn't still be fat.
I guess you were trying to be funny. You did not succeed.
>It’s Noom, not noon.
Exactly, LG. It was a (wildly unsuccessful) attempt to be funny, making fun of the kids while I was actually the one who was "ignorant". Oh well, everyone has a joke land flat sometimes.
I'm working with college students and they are missing:
Latin Etymology - mono, duo/di/trio/tri/quad
The Metric system runs on 10/100/1000
How to save a file to the local drive and attach it to an email
Ctrl-F to find in docs, PDFs, and web pages
Ctrl-P to print
Print to PDF to save a virtual copy
How to use a USB to move files (not entirely needed but if you need to print on a campus printer - you just plug it in)
Mentally parsing and scanning for data
Reading the syllabus
Accessing the Canva/Class site to find study materials
Taking phone pictures of documents or info to save them.
Some forms and documents need to be filled out on a computer and won't work on a phone.
Still think taxes need to be done by an expensive real person not online with 1040. What is the standard deduction? The students and family education credits. Why their parents can or can't claim them.
When to cut parents off - joint accounts, asking for money, asking you to take out loans, claiming you on EBT and taxes. I can't believe how financially incestous parents are!
People complain about wokeness - this generation is sleep walking through life. They need to wake.
Demand they know how their tech works and never assume then have a business level acumen with computers needed to succeed. Because the rich kids do.
I see most/all of these in HS, too.
On rare occasion, I need to see a screenshot of something (to be submitted). Many take an out-of-focus photo of their school device b/c they refuse to read the 2 steps to creating/saving an actual screenshot.
>People complain about wokeness - this generation is sleep walking through life. They need to wake.
Yes, we need #wakeness!
I firmly believe that we need to have computer classes in middle and high school again. I learned a majority of these things in those classes (I’m a millennial, for reference).
We are screwing kids over if they can't send an email by Junior high or do a basic presentation or write an outline online or do a 3 paragraph paper or write 1 paragraph event. We are screwing high school kids over if they can't create a pdf, a word doc, or a slide/pp presentation nonetheless access email.
(Sending SPORTS students into junior or university w/o these basic skills is just - messed up. They need a 2.5 GPA to transcend through the ranks to transfer. OR if they don't go pro in college, they need a fall back degree and the fall back skills to advocate for themselves past that sports career. Consider most of these kids are POC - its setting them up for MASSIVE life failure no matter how great of athletes they are. And if that was my kid - I'd be very very angry at a high school who produced a functionally illiterate athlete for the sake of winning high school sports - then dropping them like a hot rock off to some college/uni only to fail massively in academics)
To be fair, college students not reading the syllabus has been a problem for as long as there have been college students. Insane that they’re so technologically illiterate though
Keyboard shortcuts and saving files don't exist on the tablets they grew up playing with and might not on their school issued chromebooks either. Of course they don't know those.
Ctrl Shift T is my favorite. When I pick up kids’ chromebooks who I suspect have been playing games and reopen their last 5 tabs and they are so freaked and/or annoyed.
The three finger swipe up is also a good trick on chromebooks.
If I catch the kid playing games I write home and tell the *parents* about these shortcuts too. The kids hate me.
they taught us about learned helplessness in teacher's college, but it never felt like they believed it existed...
...now we know it does, because those same kids who can't log into a school platform sure as hell can recover the password to their TikTok account
My first degree was Psychology, and I was a para for a while. It was everywhere with my SPED kids and in a select few gen population, and I received great accolades for trying to help the kids break out of the rut. Then I was a student teacher when COVID hit, and now in my own class I am seeing learned helplessness at such a rate as I feel like I’m drowning.
Gave my juniors and seniors a compare & contrast project. They had to compare & contrast the US to another country of their choice, so swing by my desk when you’ve selected your country, and I’ll write it down. I got:
- Texas
- Chicago
- New York
- California
- the US (No, you’re already doing the US. You have to pick a country to compare and contrast it with.)
- Africa
- Europe
Well, as someone from Wyoming, when I talk to family from Fl, it does feel/sounds like a “foreign land,” with how, vastly, different our experiences are. However, I agree students should know better.
10 til. My middle school students will ask what time we go to lunch, it’s been the same time since August, and I say 10 til and they look at me like I’m speaking Klingon.
Yes!!!!! Everything related to time that is not the exact time. Even saying things like “in about 5 minutes…” or “it will take approximately 10 minutes.” Forget about “quarter after!”
And why are they so fucking obsessed with knowing what time it is? They check the time on their Chromebooks constantly, even though they don’t have a single way to use that information. They don’t know what time any of their classes start or end, so why do they need to know the time?
They don’t know what time class ends or when we eat lunch, but they have internalized the 4 minutes during passing period so they can stand around and shadowbox then run to their class a few seconds before the bell rings. Make it make sense
I set all the week’s assignments due at noon on Friday.
I have been telling them things like, “noon on Friday, also known as: high noon. 12 pm. Lunch time. When the sun hits its zenith!” (Cannot say “aka”…)
I shit you not after saying this list of times, I had a freshmen bold as brass, 3/4 the way through the year (same weekly due date/time all year), then interrupt me to ask, “what is ‘noon?’”
NOON: Time they wake up.
DOZEN: Big box of donuts at Dunkin'
DECADE: Ehhhh
**FunFact:** When we started using an LMS and set a deadline of 12am, many HS students didn't know if that was nighttime or daytime. I wonder if that applies to adults as well?
They were all taught in elementary school what these level 1 words mean, they weren’t paying attention and there’s no accountability to remember anything either.
Remember, it’s us ! We have let them down , it’s all our fault , the teachers’ I let them down by not making sure that they know all of this even if they should have learned it before . I must include this in my reflections 😂
There are some ed influencers who think vocabulary lists are bad. Combine that with a teacher who tells students, “you don’t need to know that,” and kids will take that as the gospel truth.
Were they, though? About 2010 I noticed everything went STEM or bust. Can't read? Can't write? No critical thinking? No awareness of history or culture? No problem.
Huge issue that doesn’t change once you get into college. They removed any sort of literature analysis and creative writing, and it’s all just technical writing. Rhetorical analysis, research paper, textual analysis. The issue being though as technical writing isn’t really ‘fun’, kids don’t ever develop the foundational reading and writing ability you get whenever you read a lot, or write for fun. So when they get to college and don’t know how to skim or really understand what they’re reading.
Every paper I’ve written in college I thought was horrible, then I read my classmates and realized I must be shitting gold to my professors because at least my papers were grammatically correct and had *some* substance. The papers I peer reviewed often times didn’t even have half of what the rubric mandated, were difficult to follow or even worse. I could tell they were ripped straight from Chat GPT.
Oh my god it drives me bananas I have to fight to assign LITERATURE in English class. STOP WITH THE NONFICTION PLEASE. They can read about climate change in science! They can read Scythe and other kids’ books on their own time! Let me assign some f-ing Hemingway and Hurston.
I don't know how to say this without coming off as blunt, but the technical writing is useful in careers, and the creative writing isn't. If I remember history correctly, since the industrial revolution school has existed to mold docile, compliant worker bees.
Being an elder millennial I guess I came up in a time where kids still learned to read and write. In my own personal experience in office work, all of the detailed, grammatically correct, 5 paragraph theme type emails I've typed up in response to complex issues that have arisen, have been met with disdain. I've been told in multiple review periods to quit with the detail, and distill everything down to bulleted lists because no one above me wants to read, and my manager doesn't want to do the distilling for me. These folks are all older than me!
Technical writing is invaluable don’t get me wrong, but creative writing and analysis of literature builds foundational skills and understanding that helps people be better technical writers. That was my ultimate point. Creative writing in of itself obviously won’t be useful on a job, but the skills it builds WILL be and are frankly indispensable.
It’s a skill that’s useful outside of the workforce too. You use it when trying to evaluate sources, being able to tell truth from fiction and generally engage in textual analysis. Which is necessary for a civically responsible citizen. Even if you favor technical writing in education over literary analysis and creative writing, eliminating it is plain stupid.
This is fair. And I am not advocating for it's elimination! I suppose I just struggle to see the through line from creative to the technical, beyond the common things like sentence structure.
Back in 2011 I had a student (sophomore or junior, can’t remember which) ask me out of the blue during some independent work time when afternoon was. I thought she was kidding at first, or thinking about what time it shifts into evening, so I answered that it starts immediately afternoon and goes until around dinner time. Then she asked when noon was, and I was just dumbfounded.
Later that year, a different student answered the question “What country does English come from” with “Africa. Because black people speak English and they’re from Africa.” I should note that we were in America and, while all the students in the room were black, I was white and very clearly also spoke English. Not to mention we had specifically been studying word origins and had just finished an activity on language family trees.
I keep a list of common words and phrases that got a 'Huh, what's that?' reaction when I used them. It includes words such as 'elsewhere', 'cough drop' and 'buying on credit'. (Well, the equivalent of those in our native language, but...yeah. They need to read more books.)
Same here. The vast majority of the people they put in front of me lack the basic vocabularies and cultural literacy to even begin the understand the material at the grade level, and they simply don't belong at ALL being expected to learn materials several grade levels above their current capabilities. It's pointless, can't be done, no good comes of it, and the students realize that better than the adults.
It's one the reasons they've retreated into this catatonic regressive apathy. Shit. We take people who don't understand basic arithmetic, stick them in a class about Algebra 2, and then wonder why we get blank stares or they just scroll on their phones???
I see this everyday. Give them alternate assignments, on their level, if at all possible. Get some related math into them, or there may be no hope left in the world.
I'm talking addition and subtraction on a number line worksheets where they have to show the jumps (because they do not understand negative numbers), basic graphing (like make a cute picture by plotting these points), multiply with arrays, and one step equations where you show all your work. I know it's way below standards for any algebra class, but they have to get these basic math skills or they will just flounder, and it's not their faults. It's not your fault either. It's a fault in the system, but we still have a chance to make some change for the better. Grade them on what they can do.
For computer based solutions I highly recommend MobyMax, IXL, and Delta math.
I profoundly disagree with this approach. In fact, this approach is the root of the problem. Putting people into an Algebra 2 class and teaching them basic arithmetic is pointless. They need to be in a class dedicated to basic arithmetic.
When a child has device access from the earliest of ages and realizes that anything they aren’t interested in can be swiped away, the desire for learning, curiosity, conversation, and human interaction dies. I believe this with all of my heart. So, they are in a constant state of repeating what they already know and are familiar with, so there is no new vocabulary or concepts that keep them firing new neurons.
Then, because we need them to listen and to learn for more than 30 seconds at a time, they tune us out.
The smartest of my friends’ kids don’t have unlimited device access. They also play sports or learn an instrument. They have to play without the television or tablet so they are creative and imaginative. They read for pleasure. They take trips to discover new things. They know how to have a conversation with an adult. They look people in the eye.
Want an illiterate electorate? Give the kids a phone when they’re two.
I've been doing roots prefixes and suffixes for warm ups with sophomores and they don't know shit. Didn't know how to add a prefix to logical to make it mean not logical.
I feel that. I have to teach probability (for genetics) and have tried to use pre-made lessons/problem sets. While I understand that many students wouldn’t know how many cards are in a standard deck, the sheer number of Juniors/Seniors that think a die has 4 sides boggles my mind. It’s like they just live in 2 dimensions.
I use HUGE foam dice for this lesson. I also run DnD club, so I have lots of other dice around my room all year long. They come to me not understanding dice, but by goodness, they know how many sides dice have by the time I get to genetics (looking at 2 weeks into March this year❤️).
I have a whole bucket of dice too. But sometimes they'll even tell me there's a 1/4 chance of rolling a 6, while the die is right in front of them. Fortunately those are not the majority though!
Owie. When I get kids like that in class, that’s when I pull out the d4, hand it to them and say- here is a 1/4 chance, look it over very close, and list ALL the numbers you see. If you find a 6 on it I will give you a candy. ;)
Here at the East Podunk Cosmodemonic Junior College, i'd estimate that about 1/4th of our entering freshman, high school graduates all, cannot tell time. These are almost always gone by about week 4 of the term. It's a pity; they NEED education and they know it, but they clearly need to be put to learning 4th or 5th grade material.
Beyond comprehension why an education system evidently cannot perform a task as simple as putting a person to learn material appropriate with respect to their current knowledge and abilities.
Analog clocks are still everywhere. Students have to write down the time when they sign out to leave the room. The only clocks in all of the classrooms are analog. Yes digital is easier but you get a better sense of time with analog because the hands are always moving, there’s also math skills being used like fractions, addition and subtraction. It’s better to be able to read both.
I recently reminded some juniors that a centimeter is one hundredth of a meter.
I started talking about the prefix "cent". I said, 100 years is a century. There are a hundred cents in a dollar.
One of my students audibly gasped and said oh my God I never knew that. She had a look of amazement on her face.
I teach 9th grade biology. This year, several kids didn’t know how many quarters are in a dollar and I had a group of girls have a lively discussion about whether or not we breathe while we sleep.
I think a lot of the issue is also due to the fact that kids are reading less vigorously than previous generations. A lot of my vocabulary came from reading outside of school time.
Middle school science here. I give vocab words based on our unit, and I try my best to break down the words for them down to the root word. I don't think they know what root word means. We do a lot of "di and bi mean two. Mono and uni mean one." Etc. I want them to be able to break down a word and get context clues from it without shutting down and giving up. I see a lot of giving up. I am now going to see if my students know what a decade and dozen are.
I teach 6th grade and very few kids understand that "twice as much" means times 2. Or "half as much" means divide by 2 or times 1/2.
And most of the kids struggle with difference between "one half" and "one and a half".
Get around photo math by using emojis instead of letters for variables. X = 😀 and Y = 😎
This is like level 1 vocab. Wtf I can’t believe they don’t know it.
Experiencing same issue. I don’t think it’s a vocab issue; feels like a life experience issue? I am also stumped as to home to overcome this obstacle, which is making the teaching of English and history more difficult.
If only the issue was only academics.
Every wednesday, I have lunch with a bunch of students.
Phone are forbidden at the table, so we chat.
And it is painful. I have to rephrase constantly because they look at me like I'm speaking a different language. And I am not known for my fancy vocabulary.
We can't get beyond surface level on any topics - including their passions - because they simply can't express what they think or feel. Or explain to me what anything I don't know is about.
A theater company came to the school and played Animal's farm. I missed it because I had an emergency. So I asked them how it was. If I had not read it, I wouldn't know what it was about. And I only know that it was "alright" because reasons.
And it is not that they were uninterested. It's just that I can't understand what they meant with that many "stuff" and "thing" in one sentence.
I teach Kindergarten and most of my students are second language learners. I had a moment last month when I realized more than one student didn’t know what a cat was. I had to show a picture of a cat. Their vocabulary is so low this year.
I teach world history to 11th graders and it’s so different because so many of them don’t have background knowledge in ANYTHING. I did a gallery walk about Renaissance art, but so many of the motifs mean absolutely nothing to them. (Such as Roman mythology, the Christian story of creation or even what a saint is)
lol I teach in a Catholic European country.
A lot of the seniors (mostly the 2nd gen immigrants) don’t know what Easter is, even though their spring break is officially called Easter break.
Shifu is simply trying to demonstrate the lack of students being able to logically process names of things pertinent to the students immediate existence. No need to be rude.
That their break is called “Easter break.” That is really all they need to know, because of naming conventions, and if they don’t even know that much then there is a problem with apathy in trying to figure out names of things.
If it's not their religion, I really don't see why it matters if they understand what the holiday is about. The complaint was that the students didn't know what Easter was not that they didn't know the name of the vacation.
I teach career and tech. So applied science. Simple concepts taught in elementary these hs kids don’t know. What temp water freezes at. 1/4in on a ruler. Wrapping a wire around a nail and putting a battery to it makes and electromagnet.
i’m 20 years old. I was never taught these terms in school, but i remember teachers using them and expecting us to know them already by our parents and if not, eventually figure out what they meant. i loved to read so i was aware of these terms and used them, as did many other bookworms in my classes, but a lot of the children with poor home lives or who didn’t read outside of the classroom did not know terms like this and often got confused
I think the federal government should take back regulating Education! Create national standards, control of Book content ( States writing their own content has become out of control), expand the curriculum to meet employers' needs, our students are lacking! and get rid of No Child Left Behind. Teaching to pass a national test does not benefit anyone. USA is 13th on the education index. I would also say teaching them to think, question and communicate opinions and be objective at a young age, is more important than test scores.
Exposure to content increases literacy and that requires focus. And to focus modern kids, you need to use extreme measures and work them up from 20 second attention spans to actual learning.
Everything must be interactive or challenging or they loose attention. Discussions must be relevant and among teacher/student/peers. Viewing videos do not work UNLESS the content is short or very interactive to the age group viewing.
Phones - I'm leaning toward - phones need to be at home or locked up on entry to school (not the teachers room - the front office.) School internet - wifi needs to be be filtered and gated. Teachers and staff - no phones either unless for emergencies. Its all about modeling attention as much as demanding it.
Same situation, different part of the world. Im working with Russian-speaking kids aged 9-15, trying to teach them coding.
Absolutely 0 problem-solving skills, 0 computer literacy, 0 math skills, poor basic knowledge
Each Python class I start with explaining how to divide, whats the reminder of division and how to divide without a reminder. Im not even talking about alg1, I have to skip a lot of simple(coding side) tasks due to low math knowledge.
Computer literacy is at the rock freaking bottom. Once i've had a full group of pre-teens(10-13) who werent able to install a software with installer. They dont know how folder system work, whats the different types of files, how to copy-paste(even with their mouse, ctrl+c/ctrl+v is impossible combination). During a course we are making a simple pygame game which requires downloading pictures from Internet and I regularly get kids who downloaded a link to a picture.
Problem-solving skills are somewhere even deeper than rock bottom. They arent able to do anything besides typing the tasks into google exactly as is. I need to explain basic "how to ask google a question" so they will find answers on their questions. If the task requires some thinking, they immediately give up. Not even trying, not even a simple input. They will just sit 20-30 minutes straight, on my questions "do you need help?" they will answer "no" and keep sitting with blank page.
Once i gave them homework that would be hard to them, so i just coded it on recording and sent them a link, expecting them to simply copy from a recording. None of them did it, they didnt even think thats its possible, when i clearly stated that tips to homework will be in recording.
And basic knowledge.... Eh, regularly i get kids who arent able to tell me what a square is, how many months in a year, how many days in a month, how many colors in rainbow.
And that fucking "when the class ends question". Im so fucking annoyed by it, so i usually answer like "class is an hour long and it started at . Calculate by yourself"
Vented out, got a bit easier. Till the next clueless kid.
I'm a freshman English teacher. Yeah. It's not good. I didn't think I'd have to use elementary vocab ladders with 14 yo.
For real. Words and concepts that I assume are incredibly basic just fly over most of their heads. One of my students didn't know what a secretary was.
God don't even get me started on trying to get them to use context clues. I don't know it's it's truly a comprehension issue or if it's just them not reading but they take everything so literally and at face value
I've had to take it back to basic parts of speech. We learn vocabulary words in context, and sometimes that involves me taking the word out of the sentence and leaving a blank when we practice. I don't think they're messing with me, either. I think that they truly don't know/haven't retained the most basic elementary concepts. An example of this might look like: Me: Okay, our sentence is "The cow ___________ over the moon." Let's look at our vocabulary words. Which one makes the most sense here? Based on the sentence, which part of speech should we be looking for? Students: [blank staring] Me: Well, we have our predicate, so that means... Students: [name literally everything except for verb]
Y E P you can spend a week straight telling them what a verb is, having them tell you, giving them examples but then on Friday when you say find the verb in this sentence, they will circle anything except the verb
OH it is BAD, I did a first year uni course at a place a while back, the tutor mentioned a particular part of speech, I think maybe adjective or verb - I can't remember. About thirty seconds in, a student corrects the tutor on which part of speech it is. And I sit there, immensely confused, as this tutor, AND the whole class, about twenty people in all, just go with it. For several minutes. Like, this stuff is covered in early to mid primary school, and the knowledge is used frequently enough in high school. How they managed to get through the finals and into uni I have no idea
Genuinely curious... * Do they capitalize personal "I"? * Do they capitalize the first letter of the first word of a sentence? * Do they use "u" or "you"? * Do then end a sentence with punctuation?
Rarely, sometimes, mostly "you" but there are some outliers, sometimes.
At least half of my 11th graders don't even capitalize their own names.
Or use last names. Which of the seven Jacksons in third period is this paper from?
But three of the seven are spelled with at least one X somewhere so that narrows it down a bit for you
Only if you can read their handwriting
k.d. lang
e. e. cummings
A colleague always told students they could break capitalization and other rules after they were published authurs. Until then, capitalize!!
can they at least spell them correctly?
Typically not. Man, Pelikan 4001 is sure one great red ink. I'm not teaching English but I do have a responsibility not to simply let this sort of bullshit go by and pretend it is somehow acceptable.
I am at a school that frowns upon red inks... But that just means that I can order an obscene amount of ink samples for my pens and they barely have time to settle before I break them open. Also, hello from ELA land. We're trying our best, I swear.
Education is filled with talented, well-intentioned, good professional people doing their best, I swear i know. In the United States, it's about five million of them, all sticking their thumbs to try to stop the leaks in a collapsing dam, with no organized effort to repair the dam as a whole This obviously does not work, and just wears down a lot of thumbs.
We are all excellent violin players. [Too bad we're all on the Titanic.](https://youtu.be/uffHb6JgoiQ?si=kmQC108PtiGcOj7W)
BINGO! I got BINGO!!!
wHY wON't aNYoNe hIRe mE?!
Never never yes never. The weirdest thing is that I’ve taught them how to do all these things, as much as you can “teach” capitalizing I when all there is to it is just… doing it. It’s just insane that they can be told something an honest to god 50 times and still not do it.
....and still not notice. I am going to have AI rewrite directions for an assignment in teenspeak: all lower-case, no punctuation, one giant run-on sentence. #GooseGander
-no -no -u -only if it's a question This is coming from on level freshmen in a title one school though so results will vary
they aren't reading (at all. but especially) fiction, so they don't get exposed to things like metaphor, analogy, implied meaning, symbolism, etc.
> Words and concepts that I assume are incredibly basic just fly over most of their heads. One of my students didn't know what a secretary was. Last year, I had a low-performing student who asked me why I kept using fancy words like _____ (I don't remember what the word was, but I can assure you that it was no fancier than "secretary"). At first, I thought he was messing with me, but he was 100% serious. I was stunned.
To be fair, if you're using secretary to describe a job it's now called a Personal or Executive Assistant. If you're using it to describe furniture it's called a writing desk. The only secretary still in use today is for political positions as in 'Secretary of Defense'. It's like old-timers saying I can't believe kids today don't know what a surrey or switch-board operator are.
We literally have an attendance secretary in the school. I absolutely understand that you're saying, but they see her and her sign every single day because they have to walk by her in the morning.
I was helping my 9 yr old son with his grammar homework. He goes to a Catholic school. I took pics of the worksheets he was doing because they were above what my 11th grade ELA classes can do. I was going to show it to them and say "This is what my 9 year old is doing" but felt bad so didn't. It's legit scary what is happening to education and to an entire generation, and perhaps even scarier that no one gives a shit.
Honestly...if it's the kids that don't take anything seriously or don't see the point in school, I wouldn't. But if it's the kid that thinks theyre the smartest in the room and they are being an ass to everyone about it....go for it
> I was going to show it to them and say "This is what my 9 year old is doing" but felt bad so didn't. I do this from time to time, but I don't feel bad because a lot of my students are *ssholes.
Sentence starters for 10th graders. Complaints about a double-spaced 2 page response, and only one kid who knew what double-spacing was. Explanations of what a verb, noun, and adjective are. That was my autumn. At one point I just stared at them and asked how they expected to get by in life having zero comprehension skills.
> Sentence starters for 10th graders. Complaints about a double-spaced 2 page response, and only one kid who knew what double-spacing was. Explanations of what a verb, noun, and adjective are. I remember watching several students double-spacing their essays manually. I let it go on longer than I should have, but I was morbidly fascinated. Finally, I stopped the class and showed them how to double-space text by selecting it and clicking double-space on Google Docs. One of the rare times that many of them went "Whoa!" Blew their minds!
I find this weirdly funny. I am 58. I was in college when I first learned to use a computer (late 80s - 90s). At that time, when we had to have a required number of pages, we would manipulate the spacing or font to accommodate the requirement. That double space got a tweak up or down....
Yeah an 1/8th of an inch here or there to the margins can make all the difference.
Hahahaha same. “Wait what!? THAT’S what that means?” “For how many years have you not sought clarification???”
Ok the sentence starters I will defend but mostly because I teach a lot of ELL/EB kids and it helps as a starting point for the kids that know what they want to say but not how to say it. But yeah after a while, I just started responding to base level questions with "Well, what do you think? Oh yeah? Why do you think that?" If there's one thing they hate it's when you ask them to share an opinion or thought
They plan to be football players, rap artists, or video game developers.
As far as double spacing goes, nobody’s gonna know if you don’t tell them. If a kid doesn’t have a computer literacy course and it isn’t explained to you, you’re probably not going to know what the line spacing tool in Word does just looking at the screen. Plus, as far as I know, double-spacing in academia goes back to typing or printing out work so there is room to make corrections with a pen in between the lines. What’s the point in it if you’re just turning it in online?
I took computer applications in high school and most kids don’t get classes like that. The assumption is they no. I work at a university and let me tell you they don’t know. In 38 and these kids that grew up with phones and the internet in a way that I didn’t have no idea how to do basic computer tasks. I have no idea how they’re going to function in jobs.
Hijacking top comment, even though I posted this elsewhere, and it'll likely be buried, but: It's important to note that *we know why this is happening!* Check out Emily Hanford, and her work on [Sold a A Story](https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/) (if you like podcasts) or [this article](https://isps.yale.edu/news/blog/2023/05/how-teaching-kids-to-read-went-so-wrong-emily-hanford-visits-isps-to-discuss-the) if you prefer to read. the TL;DR is that about 35-40 years ago, schools moved from phonics to teaching the "cueing method", where kids are read books multiple times, and then told to look at pictures, think about what the context of the sentence is, and make guesses- not actually read the word. So you get more and more kids who are learning to essentially memorize specific books and make a lot of guesses about what's on the page, giving the illusion of reading, but not actually reading. Parents who have the time and resources are able to teach their kids to decode- look at the letter combinations, figure out what the sounds are, and connect them to extant vocab. But as more families need two parents to work, fewer people have the time to do that with their kids, and just as few have the resources to get tutors outside of school to teach their kids decoding. Since this has been going on for almost 4 decades now, it's snowballing. If you don't have a parent who is able to teach you decoding, and schools aren't teaching it... what are you going to do?
I listened to this last fall, and all I could think was we should be suing them (the reading companies) for fraud! It’s appalling what they’ve done to generations of people!
That’s crazy. I’m 38 and had some issues with reading in first grade and they sent me to a class where we learned phonics because they weren’t doing it yet in the rest of the school and it helped me overcome whatever issue I had. It’s wild they stopped using that.
It's absolutely buck wild- the amount of money that got pushed, the cult of personality, the politicization of it, everything.
Caused by lack of conversation ~ everyone is on phones all the time. Also kids don’t use their imaginations and just play. Boredom is a good thing for kids and it has gone away.
Yeah, we had to problem solve a lot growing up and they don’t have to at all. Kids can’t tell time, don’t know basic math, can’t read a map without gps… the list goes on and on. God help us if the internet ever just goes away.
Every single time I redo seating charts, I put the “classroom” map on the front screen and set a timer. I tell them, “map reading day- everyone in their new spot when timer goes off gets a life saver. You never know when reading a static map will be the life saver you need!” Start of year they hated me for it, about this time of year they ask me- are we changing seats any time soon?
If a kid can’t read a clock or do basic math, then a parent must be doing very little interaction with the child and I mean zero. Thats what has changed. Children used to be the most important thing in parents lives, and now they don’t give a shit about them. They let them ditch school, they don’t check their grades, they don’t force them to have passing grades, they never punish them by taking away their cell phone. I haven’t heard the word grounded since I was a kid.
yes! a large part of the education crisis is because there’s also a parenting crisis.
I don't know about that necessarily. I have listened to teachers lament that they have taught clock reading again and again and the students still can't do it a few weeks later. Certain functions which have been replaced or streamlined by ubiquitous technology might no longer be learnable by typical children unless they are intentionally placed in a living situation where that technology is unavailable. In order to learn how to read a map, you are going to have to take away their GPS is what I am saying.
If you can learn all the moves in super smash brothers, you can learn to read a clock. You just have to want to, or your parents have to make you want to. Both just don’t apparently.
People learned how to read maps way before GPS was available. I get where you’re coming from, but analog clocks are still very much ubiquitous in a tech immersed world.
But digital clocks are easier to read than analog, and are even more ubiquitous. GPS is much easier than a map, and thanks to smartphones it is now ubiquitous as well (moreso than maps).
Exactly. How can we expect kids to retain skills they never actually use? I saw someone complain that kids don't know what a "secretary" is. Almost no one has a secretary any more. They have personal assistants. Some of this stuff is just getting obselete.
I’ve noticed that lots of kids these days don’t even know the difference between North and South anymore. To make matters worse, there’s kids that grew up their entire lives in this town, and couldn’t tell you street names without using their GPS on their phones. I didn’t have the luxury of GPS growing up, I spent lots of hours with a learner’s permit just aimlessly driving around town and orienting myself with street names, while I had a parent in the car that wouldn’t tell me how to get to a destination that they randomly picked. Someone made the comment earlier that kids being bored is a good thing, and I think being “lost” while driving is also a good thing too. It fosters the learning of very basic problem solving skills. I hate to even think how kids would perform today if they were introduced to Public Land Survey System (PLSS).
Kids don't see analog clocks anymore, why would they need to be able to tell time?
Understanding how a clock functions and how to tell time is a skill that helps them understand fractions and how time passes.
They’re still in the classroom.
Maybe, but they have a device in their pocket or on the desk in front of them at all times which includes a digital time display.
But do they know there are 60 minutes in an hour?
Children and their parents treat the idea of them being bored (without causing a disruption of some sort to not be bored) as a legitimate human rights violation. It's ruining their attention spans, their brains, and honestly makes for people who no one wants to be around.
So sad to hear this, and it makes me happy that I am playing with my 3 year old everyday and we use our imagination about monsters, Elsa scenarios, family situations, etc.
I'm a tech teacher and I'm constantly having to teach my students new words all the time. I'm not just referring to the tech terms, either. 😂 When they ask what a word means, I'll write it on the board and tell them to utilize their resources to find it. Not knowing what noon is, though...
>*Not knowing what noon is, though...* Exactly. So many kids are overweight these days, you'd figure they'd know the name of a popular dieting ap.
Isn’t it Noom?
Yes, I was just being silly. Downvotes are the price one can pay for shooting at humor and missing the backboard.
Ya, well, I'm fat and have no idea what app you're talking about. I guess if we knew, we wouldn't still be fat. I guess you were trying to be funny. You did not succeed.
>I guess you were trying to be funny. **You did not succeed**. # 💯. By the way, I'm both fat *and* know the app. Wasted six months on it.
Good lord, stop being such a loser.
It’s Noom, not noon. Why the hell would a high schooler know a dieting app??
>It’s Noom, not noon. Exactly, LG. It was a (wildly unsuccessful) attempt to be funny, making fun of the kids while I was actually the one who was "ignorant". Oh well, everyone has a joke land flat sometimes.
app*
Savage!
32 year 2nd grade teacher, now retired. I taught those vocabulary words every year.
For a minute, I was trying to figure out how you retired at 32 years old. My comprehension for this comment was almost as bad as our students’. 😂😂😂
Thank you for your service!
This isn't even Level 2 vocabulary. This is Level 1 vocabulary.
I'm working with college students and they are missing: Latin Etymology - mono, duo/di/trio/tri/quad The Metric system runs on 10/100/1000 How to save a file to the local drive and attach it to an email Ctrl-F to find in docs, PDFs, and web pages Ctrl-P to print Print to PDF to save a virtual copy How to use a USB to move files (not entirely needed but if you need to print on a campus printer - you just plug it in) Mentally parsing and scanning for data Reading the syllabus Accessing the Canva/Class site to find study materials Taking phone pictures of documents or info to save them. Some forms and documents need to be filled out on a computer and won't work on a phone. Still think taxes need to be done by an expensive real person not online with 1040. What is the standard deduction? The students and family education credits. Why their parents can or can't claim them. When to cut parents off - joint accounts, asking for money, asking you to take out loans, claiming you on EBT and taxes. I can't believe how financially incestous parents are! People complain about wokeness - this generation is sleep walking through life. They need to wake. Demand they know how their tech works and never assume then have a business level acumen with computers needed to succeed. Because the rich kids do.
I see most/all of these in HS, too. On rare occasion, I need to see a screenshot of something (to be submitted). Many take an out-of-focus photo of their school device b/c they refuse to read the 2 steps to creating/saving an actual screenshot. >People complain about wokeness - this generation is sleep walking through life. They need to wake. Yes, we need #wakeness!
#wakeup Life is calling!
I firmly believe that we need to have computer classes in middle and high school again. I learned a majority of these things in those classes (I’m a millennial, for reference).
We are screwing kids over if they can't send an email by Junior high or do a basic presentation or write an outline online or do a 3 paragraph paper or write 1 paragraph event. We are screwing high school kids over if they can't create a pdf, a word doc, or a slide/pp presentation nonetheless access email. (Sending SPORTS students into junior or university w/o these basic skills is just - messed up. They need a 2.5 GPA to transcend through the ranks to transfer. OR if they don't go pro in college, they need a fall back degree and the fall back skills to advocate for themselves past that sports career. Consider most of these kids are POC - its setting them up for MASSIVE life failure no matter how great of athletes they are. And if that was my kid - I'd be very very angry at a high school who produced a functionally illiterate athlete for the sake of winning high school sports - then dropping them like a hot rock off to some college/uni only to fail massively in academics)
To be fair, college students not reading the syllabus has been a problem for as long as there have been college students. Insane that they’re so technologically illiterate though
I blew a kid’s mind showing them ctrl+z the other day. I swear he looked at me like I was a god. 😂 kids these are basic functions.
Keyboard shortcuts and saving files don't exist on the tablets they grew up playing with and might not on their school issued chromebooks either. Of course they don't know those.
How have I been working in IT for 7 years and didn't know Ctrl P would print.... To be fair, I don't print things much
Ctrl - S saves Ctrl - x cut Ctrl -c copy Ctrl - V paste Ctrl Shift T opens your last closed tab Ctrl - Z undo function
Ctrl Shift T is my favorite. When I pick up kids’ chromebooks who I suspect have been playing games and reopen their last 5 tabs and they are so freaked and/or annoyed. The three finger swipe up is also a good trick on chromebooks. If I catch the kid playing games I write home and tell the *parents* about these shortcuts too. The kids hate me.
I showed a student how to do "control __" shortcuts in my class and it was like I was performing magic.
they taught us about learned helplessness in teacher's college, but it never felt like they believed it existed... ...now we know it does, because those same kids who can't log into a school platform sure as hell can recover the password to their TikTok account
Once I heard the term learned helplessness I see it everywhere.
My first degree was Psychology, and I was a para for a while. It was everywhere with my SPED kids and in a select few gen population, and I received great accolades for trying to help the kids break out of the rut. Then I was a student teacher when COVID hit, and now in my own class I am seeing learned helplessness at such a rate as I feel like I’m drowning.
Had a guest speaker the other day. Guest asked if anyone has been out of the country. A SENIOR said “yes, Florida.”
Gave my juniors and seniors a compare & contrast project. They had to compare & contrast the US to another country of their choice, so swing by my desk when you’ve selected your country, and I’ll write it down. I got: - Texas - Chicago - New York - California - the US (No, you’re already doing the US. You have to pick a country to compare and contrast it with.) - Africa - Europe
This is just sad.
Well, as someone from Wyoming, when I talk to family from Fl, it does feel/sounds like a “foreign land,” with how, vastly, different our experiences are. However, I agree students should know better.
😂 hahaha
10 til. My middle school students will ask what time we go to lunch, it’s been the same time since August, and I say 10 til and they look at me like I’m speaking Klingon.
Yes!!!!! Everything related to time that is not the exact time. Even saying things like “in about 5 minutes…” or “it will take approximately 10 minutes.” Forget about “quarter after!”
And why are they so fucking obsessed with knowing what time it is? They check the time on their Chromebooks constantly, even though they don’t have a single way to use that information. They don’t know what time any of their classes start or end, so why do they need to know the time?
They don’t know what time class ends or when we eat lunch, but they have internalized the 4 minutes during passing period so they can stand around and shadowbox then run to their class a few seconds before the bell rings. Make it make sense
Well, yeah, because they don't see analog clocks anymore and you don't need to be approximate with digital.
I set all the week’s assignments due at noon on Friday. I have been telling them things like, “noon on Friday, also known as: high noon. 12 pm. Lunch time. When the sun hits its zenith!” (Cannot say “aka”…) I shit you not after saying this list of times, I had a freshmen bold as brass, 3/4 the way through the year (same weekly due date/time all year), then interrupt me to ask, “what is ‘noon?’”
Used this # for number, got asked by my 8th grader what does the hashtag mean and I died a little
That symbol is a great generational divide. Is it a pound sign, a number sign, or a hashtag? The answer depends entirely on the age of the person.
It’s a sharp sign. Every musician knows that.
Octothorpe for the big nerds
Hahahah 😂
NOON: Time they wake up. DOZEN: Big box of donuts at Dunkin' DECADE: Ehhhh **FunFact:** When we started using an LMS and set a deadline of 12am, many HS students didn't know if that was nighttime or daytime. I wonder if that applies to adults as well?
There has been confusion about that for a long time. Some people choose to use 11:59 or 12:01 to avoid that issue.
They were all taught in elementary school what these level 1 words mean, they weren’t paying attention and there’s no accountability to remember anything either.
Remember, it’s us ! We have let them down , it’s all our fault , the teachers’ I let them down by not making sure that they know all of this even if they should have learned it before . I must include this in my reflections 😂
There are some ed influencers who think vocabulary lists are bad. Combine that with a teacher who tells students, “you don’t need to know that,” and kids will take that as the gospel truth.
But not all teachers are against lists, the students have to pick up basic vocabulary some where lol
Were they, though? About 2010 I noticed everything went STEM or bust. Can't read? Can't write? No critical thinking? No awareness of history or culture? No problem.
Huge issue that doesn’t change once you get into college. They removed any sort of literature analysis and creative writing, and it’s all just technical writing. Rhetorical analysis, research paper, textual analysis. The issue being though as technical writing isn’t really ‘fun’, kids don’t ever develop the foundational reading and writing ability you get whenever you read a lot, or write for fun. So when they get to college and don’t know how to skim or really understand what they’re reading. Every paper I’ve written in college I thought was horrible, then I read my classmates and realized I must be shitting gold to my professors because at least my papers were grammatically correct and had *some* substance. The papers I peer reviewed often times didn’t even have half of what the rubric mandated, were difficult to follow or even worse. I could tell they were ripped straight from Chat GPT.
Oh my god it drives me bananas I have to fight to assign LITERATURE in English class. STOP WITH THE NONFICTION PLEASE. They can read about climate change in science! They can read Scythe and other kids’ books on their own time! Let me assign some f-ing Hemingway and Hurston.
I don't know how to say this without coming off as blunt, but the technical writing is useful in careers, and the creative writing isn't. If I remember history correctly, since the industrial revolution school has existed to mold docile, compliant worker bees. Being an elder millennial I guess I came up in a time where kids still learned to read and write. In my own personal experience in office work, all of the detailed, grammatically correct, 5 paragraph theme type emails I've typed up in response to complex issues that have arisen, have been met with disdain. I've been told in multiple review periods to quit with the detail, and distill everything down to bulleted lists because no one above me wants to read, and my manager doesn't want to do the distilling for me. These folks are all older than me!
Technical writing is invaluable don’t get me wrong, but creative writing and analysis of literature builds foundational skills and understanding that helps people be better technical writers. That was my ultimate point. Creative writing in of itself obviously won’t be useful on a job, but the skills it builds WILL be and are frankly indispensable. It’s a skill that’s useful outside of the workforce too. You use it when trying to evaluate sources, being able to tell truth from fiction and generally engage in textual analysis. Which is necessary for a civically responsible citizen. Even if you favor technical writing in education over literary analysis and creative writing, eliminating it is plain stupid.
This is fair. And I am not advocating for it's elimination! I suppose I just struggle to see the through line from creative to the technical, beyond the common things like sentence structure.
Back in 2011 I had a student (sophomore or junior, can’t remember which) ask me out of the blue during some independent work time when afternoon was. I thought she was kidding at first, or thinking about what time it shifts into evening, so I answered that it starts immediately afternoon and goes until around dinner time. Then she asked when noon was, and I was just dumbfounded. Later that year, a different student answered the question “What country does English come from” with “Africa. Because black people speak English and they’re from Africa.” I should note that we were in America and, while all the students in the room were black, I was white and very clearly also spoke English. Not to mention we had specifically been studying word origins and had just finished an activity on language family trees.
I keep a list of common words and phrases that got a 'Huh, what's that?' reaction when I used them. It includes words such as 'elsewhere', 'cough drop' and 'buying on credit'. (Well, the equivalent of those in our native language, but...yeah. They need to read more books.)
Had to teach all 23 second graders the difference between “lending” and “borrowing”
Same here. The vast majority of the people they put in front of me lack the basic vocabularies and cultural literacy to even begin the understand the material at the grade level, and they simply don't belong at ALL being expected to learn materials several grade levels above their current capabilities. It's pointless, can't be done, no good comes of it, and the students realize that better than the adults. It's one the reasons they've retreated into this catatonic regressive apathy. Shit. We take people who don't understand basic arithmetic, stick them in a class about Algebra 2, and then wonder why we get blank stares or they just scroll on their phones???
I see this everyday. Give them alternate assignments, on their level, if at all possible. Get some related math into them, or there may be no hope left in the world. I'm talking addition and subtraction on a number line worksheets where they have to show the jumps (because they do not understand negative numbers), basic graphing (like make a cute picture by plotting these points), multiply with arrays, and one step equations where you show all your work. I know it's way below standards for any algebra class, but they have to get these basic math skills or they will just flounder, and it's not their faults. It's not your fault either. It's a fault in the system, but we still have a chance to make some change for the better. Grade them on what they can do. For computer based solutions I highly recommend MobyMax, IXL, and Delta math.
I profoundly disagree with this approach. In fact, this approach is the root of the problem. Putting people into an Algebra 2 class and teaching them basic arithmetic is pointless. They need to be in a class dedicated to basic arithmetic.
When a child has device access from the earliest of ages and realizes that anything they aren’t interested in can be swiped away, the desire for learning, curiosity, conversation, and human interaction dies. I believe this with all of my heart. So, they are in a constant state of repeating what they already know and are familiar with, so there is no new vocabulary or concepts that keep them firing new neurons. Then, because we need them to listen and to learn for more than 30 seconds at a time, they tune us out. The smartest of my friends’ kids don’t have unlimited device access. They also play sports or learn an instrument. They have to play without the television or tablet so they are creative and imaginative. They read for pleasure. They take trips to discover new things. They know how to have a conversation with an adult. They look people in the eye. Want an illiterate electorate? Give the kids a phone when they’re two.
I've been doing roots prefixes and suffixes for warm ups with sophomores and they don't know shit. Didn't know how to add a prefix to logical to make it mean not logical.
I feel that. I have to teach probability (for genetics) and have tried to use pre-made lessons/problem sets. While I understand that many students wouldn’t know how many cards are in a standard deck, the sheer number of Juniors/Seniors that think a die has 4 sides boggles my mind. It’s like they just live in 2 dimensions.
I use HUGE foam dice for this lesson. I also run DnD club, so I have lots of other dice around my room all year long. They come to me not understanding dice, but by goodness, they know how many sides dice have by the time I get to genetics (looking at 2 weeks into March this year❤️).
I have a whole bucket of dice too. But sometimes they'll even tell me there's a 1/4 chance of rolling a 6, while the die is right in front of them. Fortunately those are not the majority though!
Owie. When I get kids like that in class, that’s when I pull out the d4, hand it to them and say- here is a 1/4 chance, look it over very close, and list ALL the numbers you see. If you find a 6 on it I will give you a candy. ;)
It's the phone.
I have 5th graders asking me what time it is. I’ll say “quarter of 1” and they have no idea what I’m talking about.
Here at the East Podunk Cosmodemonic Junior College, i'd estimate that about 1/4th of our entering freshman, high school graduates all, cannot tell time. These are almost always gone by about week 4 of the term. It's a pity; they NEED education and they know it, but they clearly need to be put to learning 4th or 5th grade material. Beyond comprehension why an education system evidently cannot perform a task as simple as putting a person to learn material appropriate with respect to their current knowledge and abilities.
Why would anyone need to "tell time" in analog anymore?
Analog clocks are still everywhere. Students have to write down the time when they sign out to leave the room. The only clocks in all of the classrooms are analog. Yes digital is easier but you get a better sense of time with analog because the hands are always moving, there’s also math skills being used like fractions, addition and subtraction. It’s better to be able to read both.
Does that mean 12:15, 12:45 or 1:15? Always heard quarter till or past
It means 12:45.
I agree with the above poster. Quarter til or quarter past are usually used, I wouldn’t know what quarter of meant either.
I'd reply with 0.25.
It is very common where I am from. It may sound unusual, but in context I think it is fairly obvious.
We had a math question about time in fifth grade and one of my students answered 12:75 AM. She argued with me that she was correct.
I recently reminded some juniors that a centimeter is one hundredth of a meter. I started talking about the prefix "cent". I said, 100 years is a century. There are a hundred cents in a dollar. One of my students audibly gasped and said oh my God I never knew that. She had a look of amazement on her face.
Now tell them "per cent" *literally means* "out of 100"
I'm astonished at how much basic information kids don't know.
I teach 9th grade biology. This year, several kids didn’t know how many quarters are in a dollar and I had a group of girls have a lively discussion about whether or not we breathe while we sleep.
I think a lot of the issue is also due to the fact that kids are reading less vigorously than previous generations. A lot of my vocabulary came from reading outside of school time.
Middle school science here. I give vocab words based on our unit, and I try my best to break down the words for them down to the root word. I don't think they know what root word means. We do a lot of "di and bi mean two. Mono and uni mean one." Etc. I want them to be able to break down a word and get context clues from it without shutting down and giving up. I see a lot of giving up. I am now going to see if my students know what a decade and dozen are.
I teach 6th grade and very few kids understand that "twice as much" means times 2. Or "half as much" means divide by 2 or times 1/2. And most of the kids struggle with difference between "one half" and "one and a half".
They're lucky they didn't have my math teacher who wouldn't let you say "hundred AND whatever" because of this
They hate my “mental math “ do-nows haha they rely on calculators for everything
Get around photo math by using emojis instead of letters for variables. X = 😀 and Y = 😎 This is like level 1 vocab. Wtf I can’t believe they don’t know it.
My 9-12 Alg 2 students do not understand squared and cubed in graphing
90% of my science 8th graders can’t even make a simple a line graph with all the required information like labeled axes and units.
Experiencing same issue. I don’t think it’s a vocab issue; feels like a life experience issue? I am also stumped as to home to overcome this obstacle, which is making the teaching of English and history more difficult.
Throw them for a real loop - a baker’s dozen!
If only the issue was only academics. Every wednesday, I have lunch with a bunch of students. Phone are forbidden at the table, so we chat. And it is painful. I have to rephrase constantly because they look at me like I'm speaking a different language. And I am not known for my fancy vocabulary. We can't get beyond surface level on any topics - including their passions - because they simply can't express what they think or feel. Or explain to me what anything I don't know is about. A theater company came to the school and played Animal's farm. I missed it because I had an emergency. So I asked them how it was. If I had not read it, I wouldn't know what it was about. And I only know that it was "alright" because reasons. And it is not that they were uninterested. It's just that I can't understand what they meant with that many "stuff" and "thing" in one sentence.
I teach Kindergarten and most of my students are second language learners. I had a moment last month when I realized more than one student didn’t know what a cat was. I had to show a picture of a cat. Their vocabulary is so low this year.
Seems like a great opportunity to teach them
I teach world history to 11th graders and it’s so different because so many of them don’t have background knowledge in ANYTHING. I did a gallery walk about Renaissance art, but so many of the motifs mean absolutely nothing to them. (Such as Roman mythology, the Christian story of creation or even what a saint is)
It is because we have completely done away with wrote memorization!
“Rote”
Whatever
Parents are not talking with their children. These kids grew up looking at their mamas phone in the grocery store instead of being talked to.
lol I teach in a Catholic European country. A lot of the seniors (mostly the 2nd gen immigrants) don’t know what Easter is, even though their spring break is officially called Easter break.
whooooooooo cares?
I do, obviously
Why do you care if kids know about a religious holiday?
Because it a common thing to know.
If you are of that religion. If you're not, you don't need to know about it.
I was raised as atheist and knew all religions stuff as common knowledge.
I mean, that's great, but it shouldn't be expected.
Shifu is simply trying to demonstrate the lack of students being able to logically process names of things pertinent to the students immediate existence. No need to be rude.
Correct
What's pertinent to the students' immediate existence, as far as Easter goes?
That their break is called “Easter break.” That is really all they need to know, because of naming conventions, and if they don’t even know that much then there is a problem with apathy in trying to figure out names of things.
If it's not their religion, I really don't see why it matters if they understand what the holiday is about. The complaint was that the students didn't know what Easter was not that they didn't know the name of the vacation.
Relevant: https://youtube.com/shorts/IcCmUIcwg8o?feature=shared
I had a sophomore a few years ago who couldn’t believe leap year is a thing. Her parents pulled her out at the semester to homeschool.
I have dealt with too many teenagers who can't tell time by looking at a clock.
I teach career and tech. So applied science. Simple concepts taught in elementary these hs kids don’t know. What temp water freezes at. 1/4in on a ruler. Wrapping a wire around a nail and putting a battery to it makes and electromagnet.
i’m 20 years old. I was never taught these terms in school, but i remember teachers using them and expecting us to know them already by our parents and if not, eventually figure out what they meant. i loved to read so i was aware of these terms and used them, as did many other bookworms in my classes, but a lot of the children with poor home lives or who didn’t read outside of the classroom did not know terms like this and often got confused
I gotta say, your typing isn’t much to brag about. Maybe we’ve all got our own deficiencies.
I think the federal government should take back regulating Education! Create national standards, control of Book content ( States writing their own content has become out of control), expand the curriculum to meet employers' needs, our students are lacking! and get rid of No Child Left Behind. Teaching to pass a national test does not benefit anyone. USA is 13th on the education index. I would also say teaching them to think, question and communicate opinions and be objective at a young age, is more important than test scores.
I would say more than half of my 9-12 students cannot read an analog clock
This is an interesting discussion and disheartening, though I know it’s true. How do we go about fixing this?
Exposure to content increases literacy and that requires focus. And to focus modern kids, you need to use extreme measures and work them up from 20 second attention spans to actual learning. Everything must be interactive or challenging or they loose attention. Discussions must be relevant and among teacher/student/peers. Viewing videos do not work UNLESS the content is short or very interactive to the age group viewing. Phones - I'm leaning toward - phones need to be at home or locked up on entry to school (not the teachers room - the front office.) School internet - wifi needs to be be filtered and gated. Teachers and staff - no phones either unless for emergencies. Its all about modeling attention as much as demanding it.
This week I gave my freshmen French II students a quiz on the Eiffel Tower and at least 8 kids asked me what “summit” meant. I was flabbergasted.
Of course you are frustrated, and complaining. No worries. Both are justified. This country is hurting. 🥴😩
JUNIORS DONT KNOW ALEGRBA 2?!?
My cousin teaches college level English courses to native speakers. Writing their name is a struggle for some.
What kinda successful government experiment preschool did I go to then? They don’t know what noon is?
Same situation, different part of the world. Im working with Russian-speaking kids aged 9-15, trying to teach them coding. Absolutely 0 problem-solving skills, 0 computer literacy, 0 math skills, poor basic knowledge Each Python class I start with explaining how to divide, whats the reminder of division and how to divide without a reminder. Im not even talking about alg1, I have to skip a lot of simple(coding side) tasks due to low math knowledge. Computer literacy is at the rock freaking bottom. Once i've had a full group of pre-teens(10-13) who werent able to install a software with installer. They dont know how folder system work, whats the different types of files, how to copy-paste(even with their mouse, ctrl+c/ctrl+v is impossible combination). During a course we are making a simple pygame game which requires downloading pictures from Internet and I regularly get kids who downloaded a link to a picture. Problem-solving skills are somewhere even deeper than rock bottom. They arent able to do anything besides typing the tasks into google exactly as is. I need to explain basic "how to ask google a question" so they will find answers on their questions. If the task requires some thinking, they immediately give up. Not even trying, not even a simple input. They will just sit 20-30 minutes straight, on my questions "do you need help?" they will answer "no" and keep sitting with blank page. Once i gave them homework that would be hard to them, so i just coded it on recording and sent them a link, expecting them to simply copy from a recording. None of them did it, they didnt even think thats its possible, when i clearly stated that tips to homework will be in recording. And basic knowledge.... Eh, regularly i get kids who arent able to tell me what a square is, how many months in a year, how many days in a month, how many colors in rainbow. And that fucking "when the class ends question". Im so fucking annoyed by it, so i usually answer like "class is an hour long and it started at. Calculate by yourself"
Vented out, got a bit easier. Till the next clueless kid.
I help math on intervention days, I took away a high schoolers calculator she could not do 3+3 without it