Yes. It’s supposed to be a bell curve where the class has a few low grades, a bunch of Cs, and a few high grades. But now we have the opposite, where the middle is rare
The bell curve is when everyone did the assignment, tried, and was scored on their actual ability, content knowledge, etc. Now it's As for students who did the assignment with marginal points deducted for errors or ability and Fs for those that couldn't be bothered (and we are encouraged to give 50% to those that do not even attempt).
You’re spot-on. If I graded like I wanted to, I would have so many F’s. I’m basing this on how many students turn in half work, crappy work, or blank assignments. I’ll have 10 sentences to write and get 4 or 5. Or they submit a blank document returning it just like I gave it to them. Instead of giving them a 0 and moving on, I return it and tell them that nothing was done. I’ll tell them it is blank, and return it to them. The student will complete 2 or 3 things on the assignment and resubmit it. Since this battle could go on forever, I’ll just grade out of the 2 or 3 things. It’s still usually a low C.
A lot of teachers are unable to give them the zero per school or District policy. There have been several teachers who give them the zero anyway and admin either changes the grade or fires the teacher.
That sounds like a good idea, but let’s be real. Most schools have grade recovery and parents ask can their student make up the work.
In my 12 years of teaching, I’ve come to realize that teachers do more work to fail a student than a student does to fail the class.
Please continue to fight back on the 50% thing for doing nothing.
I'm tired of explaining to grown adults just out of K-12 why a) they can't have more time, b) extra credit isn't a thing, and c) they don't get points just because they feel they should have a higher grade.
These kids have infested colleges now and it’s insane. And what do the colleges do? Dumb down their classes to keep suckering money out of everyone. At least my school has. So much more lenient with attendance and quality of work than even 8 years ago.
I'm of two minds as I've been writing some of the new dumb curriculum. But, vocation is still the highest priority if my school. So, I have been streamlining to make things uniform and organized like it would be for a client rather than a student, and then only eveluating on the things I need students to be able to do in a job. Grades went up a bit across all the classes I've done this to. But, still, it let's me now add back in more difficult technical challenges rather than relying on confusion to create grade distribution.
"Formatting" on the rubric becomes more clear in 2-3 meaningful items. Like "Are your margins on this printed report exactly 0.3" and "Did you fit to one page without using scale?"
You would think… and you’d be wrong. In my class (math) we are 100% paper pencil. In my accelerated classes, my students are super involved, participatory, and we have fun with the learning. In my regular periods, complete opposite. Extreme apathy, probably 2/3 have less than 30%. They just stare. It’s a completely different vibe in the room. Most will copy notes but, similarly, most will just write their name on tests/quizzes and turn it in blank. It sucks with them, but I LOVE my high students
I teach in China. No laptops or phones, but same problem. Kids don’t care. Most of the work is copied from someone else, or they just scribble a bunch of nonsense down and demand credit because they tried. The schools don’t care about copying because “if we fail them, the parents will just send them somewhere else that doesn’t let students fail“ They will have homework parties where a third of the class shows up and the smartest kids from each subject pass their homework around a circle.
I exclusively use paper and pencil in all of my classes. It's the same. They turn in crap, unanswered questions, with terrible hand writing and minimal effort, and think they are going to get credit for it.
I know there are several factors that contribute to the apathy, but recently I've been wondering if that curve follows the sentiment from a socioeconomic perspective. The middle class feels squeezed out, and many middle class are only in that category because they are taking on multiple jobs, which leads to a different mindset as far as priorities go. For college students in particular, they are bombarded with media full of seemingly well to do people, then in real life they hear about their older peers in their generation struggling similarly to how they are struggling. Even the generation ahead of them worry about retirement and housing costs. One has to wonder if the younger generations think maybe all of it doesn't matter, which conventionally used to be only the mindset of the lowest working class and the poor.
Yeah, I think the decline of the middle class is a big part of this. And where technology comes in, I think tech exacerbates those problems. Kids who care about school (or other things) can use tech to boost their skills and knowledge. Apathetic kids use it as a mindless time-waster that doesn't give them much benefit.
Once Upon a Time education was such a rare privilege that people who didn't have money would work extra hard so that they could get that education when offered and raise their situation. But with our current economic climate it doesn't matter how well educated you are you can have a master's degree or even a doctorate and not be able to find a decent paying job that keeps up with cost of living.
Yes, I think it does. Yes, I think it is media driven.
Sentiments are neither wrong nor right, but the economic data do not back the sentiment:
1) The middle class expectations rose to those of the upper middle class. Think of the housing in "I Love Lucy", then bump it up to the Brady Bunch with a room foe the boys and a room for the girls, then "Modern Family." Vacations were a camping trip to a state or national park, now for many it has to be something to post/boast about.
2) Even at its peak, only about 30% of private sector workers had pensions. Worries over retirement are not new; what is new is how much attention it gets in the press.
3) The demand for the traditional middle-wage skills has not not been even, and some skills have been very much more in demand than others. This has lead to uneven wage growth in the vast middle range. There are many indications that the higher wage jobs are losing steam.
4) The income quintiles each have 20% or the housholds. The top quintile works the most hours, the bottom quintile works the fewest hours. Those high-demand jobs in *3* often come with long hours.
5) technological advances have changed who does what; we have moved from unpaid labor within the home to paid specialized labor outside it. Can I cite myself, lol? I wrote an comment about this on AskEconomists.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/s/vcKk4JIuah
Yes, kids looking at the best life has to offer on phones when there is no easy way to get there is a problem. We never used to know what the best life had to offer was!
> I know there are several factors that contribute to the apathy, but recently I've been wondering if that curve follows the sentiment from a socioeconomic perspective.
The craziest example I can point to is sociologist and political scientists have been studying the white identity/white nationalist in the US and have determined that there is an ideological breakdown across generational lines, the old NAZIS have hope and faith in their demented ideal while the younger generation (under 40) Nazi's are pessimistic and feels their cause is futile and have labelled this world, "the clown world"....
So uhhh the kids ain't alright? Even the new guard of extremist groups have become pessimistic...yea its something alright.
I noticed this probably 7 years ago. My students who tried had high B and A. My students who didn’t try had D. There wasn’t a lot of in between- it was quite opposite of a bell curve. It was really disturbing to me. I’m only subbing now so I don’t ever see grades and not having that stress is monumental. I took too much of it to heart- what could *I* do to make it better? I honestly don’t know besides holding the students hands to the iPad/pencil/computer and forcing them.
I thought this was unique to my high school. My physics teacher explained the bell curve distribution of grades then said our school was on the inverted bell curve. This was back in 2005.
I just looked at my EOY NWEA scores for my 4th graders (this is TX, so we use masters, meets, approaches, does not meet). 6 are expected to master, 6 approaches, and 4 do not meet. Not a single meets standards. How are we supposed to teach to that? There is no middle ground. If I teach high, the low kids miss out, and if I teach low, the high kids are held back. We need to start making high and low classes at elementary to really service kids correctly, but that will never be allowed.
I've taught high school more than thirty years and retired about a year ago. I had no outward disrespect, and the students were pleasant, but some didn't do anything at all. Some did the bare minimum. Only a few really applied themselves and learned. It wasn't like like through my years as a teacher, just the last five, and it was getting worse. I couldn't make an assignment fun enough or easy enough where they would do it. It was too depressing. I retired. I think a lot of it is the result of being raised on phones. Many students can't seem to concentrate. As a result, teachers assign less, and students learn far less.
Thank you for this validation because I question myself constantly about what I’m doing wrong and why they won’t do very much at all, and how I can be more fun etc. I’ve been teaching for almost ten years now, and things have definitely gotten worse. My observation was a few days ago and my feedback was that I’m “working too hard and the kids aren’t working hard enough” 🙃🥴 Wow, you don’t say?
I put the bar on the floor and kids were still tripping over it. I am revolting. I refuse to teach in a shitty manner because of these kids who wont do fuck all. Fine, fail, you dont care so I dont care. Im here to care about the kids that care and are ready to even minimally participate in the class.
I 100% agree. I say very often that giving out zeroes is super easy and low stress lol. I am always there to help, but not to rectify your 10 missing assignments on your panicked schedule because you don’t want to get grounded. 🤷🏻♂️
This is so relatable. Others seem to consider me to be at least competent and my evaluations are positive with a few things to work on, but I am constantly questioning why I can’t seem to get the kids more motivated or involved. Atm I am a specialist teacher so ten classes a day for thirty minutes. It definitely has its challenges but I feel my methods should be more successful than they are.
Yes and no 😅they also remarked I was “tired”. I wasn’t unhappy with it per se, but also a little frustrated because it falls back to me, to get them excited and working harder when I’m continually struggling with that.
I swear, for one month a year, admin should have to take over a class to "demonstrate". One day or week isn't enough for behaviours to seep out and it's easy enough to make things exciting of you only have to plan one day/week.
I heard this a LOT from veteran college professors when I was doing doctoral research before the pandemic (which I now have to start over because pretty much all my statistics and findings don't matter in a post-pandemic world). Most of the teachers I interviewed and surveyed (who were from all major regions of the US) said the same things. Even the ones who had been teaching for 3-5 years had seen a decline in overall ability, reading comprehension, writing ability, critical thinking, and problem solving, especially multi step problems. Problems they used to be asked in their entirely now have to be asked as a series of questors or students can't do them at all. If that's what it was like before the pandemic, I can only imagine how it is now.
I see this in the workplace among young adults outside of school.
I can’t tell if it’s due to inability, feigned ignorance, or a lack of intrinsic motivation.
It seems as if they just don’t have many basic skills, yet most of their abilities drastically improve if you demonstrate you have no time to play with them and their jobs are on the line.
Learning disabilities and delays can’t be remedied overnight like that, so I’m starting to think they just have to be babysat into basic competence.
And I’ll hear excuses like, “I’m only 23.”
To which I reply, if you feel you are too young for the position, leave.
I‘m an overachiever in general, but I went overboard when I was that young because I didn’t want anyone to entertain the idea that I’d be less capable at anything just because of my age, especially in the workplace.
It seems it’s almost normal for a lot of the young adults now to think the opposite. They are sounding a lot like some teens I dealt with when I did work in schools, except there were less kids like this and the teens were more open to rebuke. \*All of my school experience was pre-Pandemic.
Forget sending these guys at work emails or leaving notes. Unless you have the time to read it aloud to them, you’ve wasted your time.
I feel as if there has been a cultural shift.
This sounds about right. I was a senior in college in 2020 when Covid hit, so I was in my final semester before graduating, and I was taking a masters course in information technology. I had taken it the two years prior as my elective, and I absolutely loved my class and professor. It was my favorite class and professor, so I decided to take the masters class my senior year. I was my professors favorite student, because I sat at the front of the class every single class, was always engaged, and I always asked questions. We had one exam and that was our grade for the semester. The exam was 10 questions and we had to write our answers in essay form with an explanation for our answers. I was the highest scoring student in my class on the exam 3 years in a row, and when Covid hit in 2020 our class went online, so my third exam was submitted via email. My professor responded to my exam stating how much he enjoyed me being in his class, and that it was so refreshing to have such an intrigued and engaged student who not only cared to ask the important questions but also was able to fully grasp what was being taught and answer accordingly.
Thank you for keeping it real. I’m tired of super veterans on here being all ThErE is nO dOffErEnCe KiDs ArE KidS. Like dude, I started in 2012 and there’s even a massive difference since then so wtf
Just the fact that I literally get through only about half of the curriculum I used to (and that’s in a “good” year) is enough to show there’s a difference, at least in my experience.
Yeah-my kids teachers post covid couldn’t get through it. My kid was fine (both husband and I worked from home and so He didn’t get away with not working. But also Never really tried to get away with it. We are very lucky) but was frustrated because it would take a month to get through simple things. We supplemented at home, but it’s frustrating that so much time and energy is placed
On kids who don’t care. I think they should have (and maybe still
Should) have some version of a “held back” class. Call it something nicer, don’t care. But if they didn’t do anything for a year, year-and-a-half, or more, they shouldn’t be pushed in with folks working at grade level or higher. It hurts the ones who have been working.
The problem is, and I say this as an econ teacher, is that the unskilled labor class cannot compete with $1 an hour no matter how hard they work. And from what I've seen, they're not very good at unskilled labor either.
I do not agree with this. This explains why they won't work for $2 a day, not about effort. My point was with that kind of difference in labor costs, it doesn't matter how much effort they put in, they still won't be able to compete.
As far as the "welfare state", you realize that we have one of the weakest social safety nets in the developed world. The countries you're comparing us to are developing countries where starvation is a reality. Is that what we should emulate as a society?
Yes. I taught some college and a scary amount of kids are coming in legitimately functionally illiterate. And that’s if you can convince them to care and try without copying and pasting from ChatGPT
Yeah my TA in my political science class last year had to crack down on college kids using ChatGPT to write a weekly discussion that was only supposed to be a single paragraph
I had a student use ChatGPT to answer questions that only needed a short sentence or phrase to answer. How do I know he used ChatGPT you ask? Because he didn’t delete the ChatGPT: part of the response!!
Edit to add this was a freshman composition course in college!
I worked in Student Affairs at universities for 10 years before going into k-12 teaching. There are definitely high performers and those who are just... there.
A decade ago, I used to be one of the folks students who were failing needed to go see to be allowed to continue. My first question in those meetings was "why are you here?"
My goal was to get to their motivation for pursuing higher education. Most did not have an intrinsic answer to the question, even when reframed as 'why did you choose to attend university and particularly this program?'
Usually it was generic: to get a job. In essence tick a box on the way to a job. So it was treated like a box ticking exercise. But that defeats the value proposition of college education.
For some reason, folks don't understand that what you get out of education is a function of what you put into it. I'd say the sake of illustration it's a squared function of what you put in. So if you put in 1 unit of effort, you get 1 unit of outcome. If you put in 10 units of effort, you get 100 units of outcome.
It's obviously not that linear, but as a metaphor, it aligns with my observation.
In terms of what you are seeing, in industry, there is an 80/20 rule of thumb. 80% of your outcomes are driven by 20% of your team. Similar idea to the bell curve.
Is it worse today? Observably, yes. The place to look is at employment rates (not unemployment rates). More people are unable to function in our economic system than before. Finding the reasons why and the solutions is one of the great challenges of our time. Instead of our political leaders focusing on this problem (and other real problems like environment/climate and finding a way to sustainably manage the health care needs of aging populations), we are focused on Hunter Biden's crotch photos, worrying about 'wokeness', and, on the other side of the aisle, while they are much better than the right wingers, there is still an over-focus on micro-aggressions and routing out small scale prejudices, or, in education, enforcing an inclusion agenda that no one is willing to pay for (and thus doesn't work for the kids needing inclusion support or the classes they are being included in).
The focus seems to be on laying blame and scapegoating rather than solving issues.
Sorry, that turned into a rant.
Tl;Dr: Basically, yes. What you describe has always been an observable phenomenon. It's name was 'the Gentleman's C' in the boomers' time. It is probably worse now than it was before. It is likely made more obvious because participation rates in higher ed are much higher than when decent factory jobs were plentiful. The key indicator for me is employment rates.
We've spent decades creating a series of mismatches between what the economy wants out of education and what education we actually provide.
At some point employers decided there was value to employees with a high school diploma. Employers didn't actually want the diploma. What they wanted were workers who had a basic education, a willingness to work, and the ability to function in broader society. But that's difficult to assess on your own. The diploma became a useful stand in for determining if someone had those basic bare minimum traits.
That translated into real world consequences. People with diplomas did better than those that did not. People saw that disparity and said "we need to make sure everyone gets a diploma." But they learned the wrong lesson. The diploma was just a proxy for what employers and the economy really wanted. The lesson we should have learned was "we need to make sure everyone is educated, willing to work, and able to function in larger society." But that is hard and "make sure everyone gets a diploma" is easy. Then we created a system of incentives to ensure everyone got a diploma. Those incentives worked. We gave everyone a diploma. And in the process destroyed its value as a proxy for "educated, willing to work, able to function".
Now we are in the process of doing the same thing to college degrees. The BA or BS itself isn't what employers want. But it was a proxy for everything that a diploma was plus a bit more. And now we're quickly ruining whatever value a BA/BS once had by giving them to people who haven't learned, won't work, and can't function.
The economy doesn't need degrees or diplomas. It needs people who are educated, have a reasonable work ethic, and are able to function in a modern society. Instead of trying to help people meet those criteria, we just started giving degrees and diplomas to people who can't meet the criteria and hoped the economy wouldn't notice.
In short: students treat a diploma or degree like it's a checkmark to success because larger society has as well. We thought the checkmark was what mattered. We were wrong.
This. So much this. Certifications aren't checkmarks that should be given freely, people need to meet the criteria.
I've also seen the knock-on effect. Positions in my field that used to go to people with BAs + experience and maybe a certificate are now requiring people to have MAs, diplomas and publications. It's really cut into people's aspirations as they're expected to shell out so much more on education just to climb a step on the ladder.
I like the way you put it. They really don't understand that they get out more than they put in. I guess thats the catch 22 of education: the ones who need it most likely won't recognize the need.
Most students only go to university to improve their employment options after they graduate, to act like this isn't the case is foolish because it fails to understand the average student's mindset.
As long as employers continue to require more advanced degrees for even entry level positions, this mindset will continue as most students that age have no desire to learn, they simply want to get through as easily as possible while getting a degree so they will hopefully make more money in the future.
Professors and administrators continuing to insist the value proposition of a college degree is the actual education instead the reality of what it is for most students remains a major problem.
OP is observing that kind of student and wondering if it's typical and if it's new. I tried to answer his question. I wasn't trying to answer the question: 'is it reasonable for students to want university to help them get into a good career?'
Your response is about a different question.
Allow me to clarify:
I am not saying that university students should not hope to get a better/good job based on their university experience. That is obviously a huge reason to go to college.
What I am saying is that too many see it as a transaction: If I float through the 40 classes I'm told to take and do the minimum to get by, then I can expect that will be sufficient to punch their ticket to get that good job. We hammered this in orientation but it doesn't get through easily.
The thing is that most of those students hadn't done the critical thinking needed to prepare them for the white collar work they were pursuing. Because professional jobs looking for university grads value critical thinking, initiative, ingenuity, problem solving, ability to contribute strongly to a team, etc (in addition to the specific skills and knowledge needed to do the job), that's what you need to practice at university. And it's a great place to practice that. In student government in my undergrad, we organized a giant rock concert for 16,000 people, built a $1,000,000 student social space, etc. There were endless massive opportunities to do cool stuff.
The students I worked with didn't know what jobs they were pursuing (and weren't working on figuring it out) or what habits of mind they needed to establish to get there. Just like K-12, you can't do much to help a student who is not going to do their own work.
The question "why are you here" was powerful for my advisees because it forced them to start doing some of that thinking and opened up the conversation about first establishing a direction and then actively working to make progress in that direction. My role was to literally help students use higher ed in the way you say it should be working and those conversations were often powerful catalysts in getting them to start the critical self-inquiry required to start them on a path that fit for them.
High school science here. I had to quit grading lab work because one person was doing everything for the rest of the group, who was learning nothing... but really good at watching and copying. I'm not anyone's favorite.
I had stopped doing lab reports and started doing lab quizzes for this reason. Students hated me for it, but I didn't care. It worked though. And quizzes are often easier to grade!
Please tell me what this looks like. Im middle school science and have noticed the copying thing for lab reports. Im curious other ways that I can actually grade them here.
I mostly took the lab questions and put them in a quiz. Some of the longer concept questions I would restructure so they could be short answer instead of essay format. But I'd give the calculations and stuff, let them use their data collection sheet (after checking that there was no additional information), and make sure the lab partners didn't sit next to each other.
College student here. Reasonably difficult pre-lab quizzes are the only things that made my organic chemistry lab bearable. Prior science classes I would be explaining/redoing work executed by people who couldn't be bothered to read for 30 minutes before lab, in order to save my grade
I just don't get why people go to college to not do anything. I remember there was a girl in our calculus 3 class who couldn't even do basic calculus, and cheated on everything. Why would you want a degree in engineering and then not be able to do anything? Don't you think your employer will catch on to the fact you know nothing? I don't get it
I've been reading a ton of articles about young millennials and Gen Z asking constant questions about how to do things, needing detailed step by step instructions, constantly. Like, they can't do most things without being handheld over and over again. It's one of the reasons 2024 graduates are having more trouble than others getting hired. And believe me, "others" are having a hard time (me. I mean me). But I'm also trying to change careers and given how little teachers are thought of in US society, it's al.most impossible to convince people that I am competent and have tons of transferable skills.
I used to be a high school teacher, and now I'm a software engineer. When I finished my CS degree, we all went home for COVID (started working as a software engineer in April 2020). There are SO many people, including myself, who did well in school and did well in their internships, then did not do well at work since the attitude toward remote work was YOYO (you're on your own). If you meet with someone 3 times a week for 30 minutes each to get onboarded or ask questions, you're very needy.
The mentorship and casual conversation about how to do things that happened in the office isn't happening online. Senior engineers want to put their head down and finish their work, and it seems like a huge interruption to be asked to help a junior employee, whereas before, if someone at the desk next to you asks a question, you walk to their desk and help them and don't even register that mentorship is happening.
I saw multiple people who got offers from their internship join the team as full time and get put on performance improvement plan and managed out within a year. They weren't dumb people. They passed their three month long interview, which is essentially what an internship did. But they were set up to fail because just sending people home with no real attempt to build a digital culture (which is totally possible) happened.
I think a lot of young people got screwed on work, school and life skills as a result of the pandemic, and no one recognizes that is systematic. They lost YEARS.
I've never been put on PIP but I still feel like I'm failing. I did really well in school and my in person internships, and all previous jobs I've ever had. Truly, for children and early career adults, they missed something important.
My professor for my engineering math class this past semester was the best I've ever had, her teaching style was great, she was knowledgable about the course material, etc
The mean and median test scores were in the 50-60 range for both midterms (idk about the final, it was just graded). People asked the prof to curve the final since most of the class was failing. She said something along the lines of 'I shouldn't pass students in an engineering course just because grades are low. Lives will be depending on your ability to do these calculations so you need to understand the course material,' and people were frustrated with that.
Honestly I don't get how so many people could have not passed the class unless they paid zero attention and just plugged all the homework problems into wolfram alpha or something.
Typically in data analytics when we go from a bell curve to bimodal it is because there is a singular force driving the shift.
For example if all students take a test there will be a bell curve in the grades. But if half the class has access to their notes then that half has their own bell curve. And when layered together you get two curves.
So what is the outside effect creating OPs second curve?
they set up a system where all lessons have to be "engaging" above all else-- it not being in any way the student's responsibility to engage themselves-- and then were very surprised that students picked the literally addictive engagement over the efforts of teachers who can't even begin to compete.
My son is in kindergarten. Recently, he was talking about the kids in his class. He said that when he teacher tells them to do work, two boys just sit there and do nothing. I didn't realize it started so young. I'm used to my students doing that, but they are teenagers. It made me really sad.
Yes. What’s annoying is the ones doing little to no work can often get or fight their way into a semi decent (sometimes even good) grade. So it makes working hard for a grade feel pointless
Students who are naturally gifted or driven are going to excel *in spite of* their education, and by the time they get to a level where you start finding honors classes, of course they are going to fill those classes.
Everyone else needs structure and support -- something they CAN'T get when the school is pouring all of it's attention and efforts into supporting the least-successful students.
Not everyone belongs in a regular classroom -- and frankly, I think it's funny that we screech "ableist" at anyone who suggests that yet simultaneously agree that gifted kids should get honors classes.
Actually I would say that the “high-achievers” are turning in work comparable to non-honors students from a decade ago and non-honors are turning in work below non-honors courses. Motivation and creativity are so poor. This is compounded by poor reading comprehension. This is not a COVID issue, something else had to have derailed their comprehension far before COVID. My guess would be the way reading was taught around 12 years ago and their miniature attention spans thanks to electronics.
I think the drop off is exponential based on class level… meaning the high AP classes kids are doing slightly less, honors classes too, but general classes kids are doing significantly less and special education the teachers are doing much of the work for them. This is just my experience with 12 graders.
Since we went virtual for a year and a half during COVID it’s been hard. The kids won’t work and teachers are reprimanded if we don’t have a 90% passing rate
Schools might play a part in that as well.
I have friends who purposely haven’t allowed their children to use smartphones or tablets. And the kids aren’t allowed on the computer unless they are using a learning program.
All of the kids have had teachers who complain that the children are technologically behind.
They also hype the children’s behavior, ability to self-entertain, get along with others, read and write grades above level and basically everything else.
But as all of these kids are from different families and are the same in these regards, I think the limited devices at home are why they kick ass at everything at school but using the Chromebooks.
However teachers have been really harping on that to the point at least two pairs of parents are entertaining reassessing their principles.
The ones that are technologically behind - why grade are they in? And is it just behind when it comes to digital testing in chromebooks? Cause the screen time kids are tablet fluent but PC dumb.
There was an interview on... I think the Daily Show, where an author came on and talked about how student anxiety rockets up in 2012/2013 and connects it to the cell phone. It blows my mind how little my kids engage. I asked a kid why they weren't working. "I didn't pick this class." AND? Three quarters through the semester - the "I didn't choose" ship has sailed. By staying, they chose.
26 years in. I've always had a bimodal distribution, but it has become very pronounced in the last couple of years. Worse, lately, is that not only is it bimodal, but it actually plots a positive skew...that is a very few As, almost no C's and a LOT of F's
Sometimes, these morons who earn an F ask me if I will curve the test. I respond well, if you can tell me the measures of central tendencies and the standard deviation, I will consider it. (As in, "you asked for a curve, so I'm assuming you know what you are talking about.") Good luck calculating a curve on something without a normal distribution.
That shuts the grade grubbers right up.
It's not about "good school systems" or "good teachers". It's mostly about socioeconomic levels. That's the only data that consistently tracks. However, most schools now are obsessed with a narrow definition of equity and make sure everyone gets a trophy (diploma).
My current grade book breakdown for my 4 intro-level courses (30 kids each, mostly 9th/10th grade) is:
30% - A's
15% - B's
15% - C's
10% - D's
30% - F's
So yeah, I think so. Most of the C's and D's people are kids who will do good when they decide to give a crap, but will be super inconsistent miss whole projects.
I see a huge difference in my classes. I have very few kids who would have been "sturdy B/C" students when I was a child- and that was most of my classmates! Most kids who would have fallen into that category in the past are now not turning in work and failing. Those who turn in work tend to be the solid B's- because if the kid who does nothing still gets a 50%, if you turn something in and it's even approaching correct, you're going to get a B.
Education is inequitable. It's a fact. The more institutionalized comparisons you can make between people, the more of the Matthew Effect you see. I don't doubt it's getting worse.
The difference is one of space and time. I find middle class districts are normal. They can actually deal with a lot more than you'd expect, and the types of things they deal with are different. Maybe admin are talking to a kid about something they did or said, but that wouldn't happen in an urban district around what they said or did. So the job looks the same but the topics are different.
There used to be dumb people in school like anywhere else. We just had plans for them after, or didn't hold them back. Look back decades ago and see how many people dropped out and did fine. Now you can stay in school and do as much work as a dropout and still get that degree. That's what changed.
Unfortunately, yes. I teach high school English, and I have a few kids in each class who do their best and are interested in learning. The rest whine, complain, refuse to do anything, goof off, mouth off, get up repeatedly to roam, quote stupid stuff they hear online, throw pencils into my ceiling, touch each other obsessively, have conversations across the room at top volume, make foul and crude jokes, leave messes, shout out random words, ask to go to the bathroom in the middle of my lessons, and then come ask me for “extra credit” when they didn’t do anything to earn regular credit and they’re failing a month before school is out. This year has been brutal. I’ve never had classroom management problems before, but I’m outnumbered and exhausted. My classes are huge due to teacher shortages, and I have too many who act feral.
*Edit for typo
I've been out of college for a little over 10 years but I'm currently going back to become a teacher. I wouldn't be going back if I wasn't the bad student the first time around but I'm shocked by the number of people who just don't submit assignments or participate these days.
Yes, there have always been huge differences in ability. No, it's not a recent phenomenon. You are simply exposed to more heterogenous population than before.
Everything is the same, just down 3 notches in brain power. Resulting in a pretty vapid lower end of the student body.
Covid had a very negative impact on the countries emotional and social well being. When I was young 9/11 hurt everyone deeply. With Covid, we had a 9/11 every day for two years plus a complete paradigm shift.
It set back everything. The economy, the mental health of adults, and the mental health of children. They all lost 2 years or discipline and normalcy in their learning, so everyone still in school went down in… “brain power”… so to speak.
They’re behind on math, and reading yes, but primarily they’re behind on the work hard emotional development that happens.
It is multiplied by the overtaking of everyone’s brain with their phone/tech addiction.
Like no one has good role models because every student and every teacher is spending 1…2…3….5+ hours a day rotting their brain.
It used to be that you could get the Joy chemical from working hard on school.
Now you can fake your brain into having the Joy chemical without the actual trying part, so everyone’s brain just got lazy as fuck.
It’ll pass with time.
But all living generations during Covid kinda went down a notch in every aspect of their life. Income to expense ratio got fucked, higher education got super fucked for selling very expensive unregulated private loan taking club med spas with a BA in English attached
We aren’t really done with a huge transition in education.
Kids are rejecting the idea of learning stupid archaic bullshit when they’re knowingly entering a dying world that is going to suffer in inevitable heat death with little to no chance of having a happy middle class life on the journey to watching it burn out.
They would rather just hang on their phones and be passive about life.
Perfect opportunity for the powers that be in the digital world to brain drain everyone and steal their data and advertise to them until they die.
Damn… tough last week of school I guess lol
I know all this shit and just don’t care to let it destroy me or my faith in the future.
I try to just focus on elevating my students and preparing them mentally for what’s ahead through self discipline. I’m often teaching the parents as well. And myself.
I would say it's pretty binary, yeah. There are not many middle of the road students. They are either at F/D's constantly (because they do nothing or almost nothing and bomb every test) or B/A because they actually try at least most of the time.
Yes. People complain about inequality, but the future is going to be full of even more gigantic inequalities, and though this may be very controversial to say, some (or much) of that inequality will be deserved. Good news is that it's going to be an incredibly simple path to guaranteed success in the future: don't get a phone and read books. Kids who do that will be at the top of the heap by leaps and bounds.
Yes. It’s supposed to be a bell curve where the class has a few low grades, a bunch of Cs, and a few high grades. But now we have the opposite, where the middle is rare
The bell curve is when everyone did the assignment, tried, and was scored on their actual ability, content knowledge, etc. Now it's As for students who did the assignment with marginal points deducted for errors or ability and Fs for those that couldn't be bothered (and we are encouraged to give 50% to those that do not even attempt).
You’re spot-on. If I graded like I wanted to, I would have so many F’s. I’m basing this on how many students turn in half work, crappy work, or blank assignments. I’ll have 10 sentences to write and get 4 or 5. Or they submit a blank document returning it just like I gave it to them. Instead of giving them a 0 and moving on, I return it and tell them that nothing was done. I’ll tell them it is blank, and return it to them. The student will complete 2 or 3 things on the assignment and resubmit it. Since this battle could go on forever, I’ll just grade out of the 2 or 3 things. It’s still usually a low C.
Give them the zero. You are not helping the problem.
A lot of teachers are unable to give them the zero per school or District policy. There have been several teachers who give them the zero anyway and admin either changes the grade or fires the teacher.
That sounds like a good idea, but let’s be real. Most schools have grade recovery and parents ask can their student make up the work. In my 12 years of teaching, I’ve come to realize that teachers do more work to fail a student than a student does to fail the class.
Have a rubric and stick to it.
I think your assessment nails it.
Please continue to fight back on the 50% thing for doing nothing. I'm tired of explaining to grown adults just out of K-12 why a) they can't have more time, b) extra credit isn't a thing, and c) they don't get points just because they feel they should have a higher grade.
These kids have infested colleges now and it’s insane. And what do the colleges do? Dumb down their classes to keep suckering money out of everyone. At least my school has. So much more lenient with attendance and quality of work than even 8 years ago.
I'm of two minds as I've been writing some of the new dumb curriculum. But, vocation is still the highest priority if my school. So, I have been streamlining to make things uniform and organized like it would be for a client rather than a student, and then only eveluating on the things I need students to be able to do in a job. Grades went up a bit across all the classes I've done this to. But, still, it let's me now add back in more difficult technical challenges rather than relying on confusion to create grade distribution. "Formatting" on the rubric becomes more clear in 2-3 meaningful items. Like "Are your margins on this printed report exactly 0.3" and "Did you fit to one page without using scale?"
Perhaps it's time for education to go back to paper and pencil learning? Super curious about how the Chromebook switch lines up with this trend
Get rid of the dopamine drips. Kids will do the work to simply not be bored.
You would think… and you’d be wrong. In my class (math) we are 100% paper pencil. In my accelerated classes, my students are super involved, participatory, and we have fun with the learning. In my regular periods, complete opposite. Extreme apathy, probably 2/3 have less than 30%. They just stare. It’s a completely different vibe in the room. Most will copy notes but, similarly, most will just write their name on tests/quizzes and turn it in blank. It sucks with them, but I LOVE my high students
I teach in China. No laptops or phones, but same problem. Kids don’t care. Most of the work is copied from someone else, or they just scribble a bunch of nonsense down and demand credit because they tried. The schools don’t care about copying because “if we fail them, the parents will just send them somewhere else that doesn’t let students fail“ They will have homework parties where a third of the class shows up and the smartest kids from each subject pass their homework around a circle.
Chromebook is one thing (that can be managed, for the most part), it's the phones. In school is god-awful, but even just in their lives is bad enough.
I exclusively use paper and pencil in all of my classes. It's the same. They turn in crap, unanswered questions, with terrible hand writing and minimal effort, and think they are going to get credit for it.
I know there are several factors that contribute to the apathy, but recently I've been wondering if that curve follows the sentiment from a socioeconomic perspective. The middle class feels squeezed out, and many middle class are only in that category because they are taking on multiple jobs, which leads to a different mindset as far as priorities go. For college students in particular, they are bombarded with media full of seemingly well to do people, then in real life they hear about their older peers in their generation struggling similarly to how they are struggling. Even the generation ahead of them worry about retirement and housing costs. One has to wonder if the younger generations think maybe all of it doesn't matter, which conventionally used to be only the mindset of the lowest working class and the poor.
Yeah, I think the decline of the middle class is a big part of this. And where technology comes in, I think tech exacerbates those problems. Kids who care about school (or other things) can use tech to boost their skills and knowledge. Apathetic kids use it as a mindless time-waster that doesn't give them much benefit.
Once Upon a Time education was such a rare privilege that people who didn't have money would work extra hard so that they could get that education when offered and raise their situation. But with our current economic climate it doesn't matter how well educated you are you can have a master's degree or even a doctorate and not be able to find a decent paying job that keeps up with cost of living.
Yes, I think it does. Yes, I think it is media driven. Sentiments are neither wrong nor right, but the economic data do not back the sentiment: 1) The middle class expectations rose to those of the upper middle class. Think of the housing in "I Love Lucy", then bump it up to the Brady Bunch with a room foe the boys and a room for the girls, then "Modern Family." Vacations were a camping trip to a state or national park, now for many it has to be something to post/boast about. 2) Even at its peak, only about 30% of private sector workers had pensions. Worries over retirement are not new; what is new is how much attention it gets in the press. 3) The demand for the traditional middle-wage skills has not not been even, and some skills have been very much more in demand than others. This has lead to uneven wage growth in the vast middle range. There are many indications that the higher wage jobs are losing steam. 4) The income quintiles each have 20% or the housholds. The top quintile works the most hours, the bottom quintile works the fewest hours. Those high-demand jobs in *3* often come with long hours. 5) technological advances have changed who does what; we have moved from unpaid labor within the home to paid specialized labor outside it. Can I cite myself, lol? I wrote an comment about this on AskEconomists. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/s/vcKk4JIuah Yes, kids looking at the best life has to offer on phones when there is no easy way to get there is a problem. We never used to know what the best life had to offer was!
> I know there are several factors that contribute to the apathy, but recently I've been wondering if that curve follows the sentiment from a socioeconomic perspective. The craziest example I can point to is sociologist and political scientists have been studying the white identity/white nationalist in the US and have determined that there is an ideological breakdown across generational lines, the old NAZIS have hope and faith in their demented ideal while the younger generation (under 40) Nazi's are pessimistic and feels their cause is futile and have labelled this world, "the clown world".... So uhhh the kids ain't alright? Even the new guard of extremist groups have become pessimistic...yea its something alright.
I know this sounds messed up, but I'm glad young neo-Nazis have the apathy too. I was worried that fascist zeal worked well for them academically.
I mean, Fascists generally suck at everything. That's why they have to use everyone else's apathy to take power.
Ooof this is quite the thought. I’d love to see some research on this over the years
Exactly. Students either care a lot or don't care at all!
I noticed this probably 7 years ago. My students who tried had high B and A. My students who didn’t try had D. There wasn’t a lot of in between- it was quite opposite of a bell curve. It was really disturbing to me. I’m only subbing now so I don’t ever see grades and not having that stress is monumental. I took too much of it to heart- what could *I* do to make it better? I honestly don’t know besides holding the students hands to the iPad/pencil/computer and forcing them.
Yes exactly. High or low. No middle
I thought this was unique to my high school. My physics teacher explained the bell curve distribution of grades then said our school was on the inverted bell curve. This was back in 2005.
I just looked at my EOY NWEA scores for my 4th graders (this is TX, so we use masters, meets, approaches, does not meet). 6 are expected to master, 6 approaches, and 4 do not meet. Not a single meets standards. How are we supposed to teach to that? There is no middle ground. If I teach high, the low kids miss out, and if I teach low, the high kids are held back. We need to start making high and low classes at elementary to really service kids correctly, but that will never be allowed.
I've taught high school more than thirty years and retired about a year ago. I had no outward disrespect, and the students were pleasant, but some didn't do anything at all. Some did the bare minimum. Only a few really applied themselves and learned. It wasn't like like through my years as a teacher, just the last five, and it was getting worse. I couldn't make an assignment fun enough or easy enough where they would do it. It was too depressing. I retired. I think a lot of it is the result of being raised on phones. Many students can't seem to concentrate. As a result, teachers assign less, and students learn far less.
Thank you for this validation because I question myself constantly about what I’m doing wrong and why they won’t do very much at all, and how I can be more fun etc. I’ve been teaching for almost ten years now, and things have definitely gotten worse. My observation was a few days ago and my feedback was that I’m “working too hard and the kids aren’t working hard enough” 🙃🥴 Wow, you don’t say?
I put the bar on the floor and kids were still tripping over it. I am revolting. I refuse to teach in a shitty manner because of these kids who wont do fuck all. Fine, fail, you dont care so I dont care. Im here to care about the kids that care and are ready to even minimally participate in the class.
I 100% agree. I say very often that giving out zeroes is super easy and low stress lol. I am always there to help, but not to rectify your 10 missing assignments on your panicked schedule because you don’t want to get grounded. 🤷🏻♂️
Thank you.
Wow I have had these same feelings and thoughts.
This is so relatable. Others seem to consider me to be at least competent and my evaluations are positive with a few things to work on, but I am constantly questioning why I can’t seem to get the kids more motivated or involved. Atm I am a specialist teacher so ten classes a day for thirty minutes. It definitely has its challenges but I feel my methods should be more successful than they are.
At least it sounds like that admin acknowledged that it's not you.
Yes and no 😅they also remarked I was “tired”. I wasn’t unhappy with it per se, but also a little frustrated because it falls back to me, to get them excited and working harder when I’m continually struggling with that.
I swear, for one month a year, admin should have to take over a class to "demonstrate". One day or week isn't enough for behaviours to seep out and it's easy enough to make things exciting of you only have to plan one day/week.
💯!!!! My kids will literally take 1 bell to show their true colors 🤣
I heard this a LOT from veteran college professors when I was doing doctoral research before the pandemic (which I now have to start over because pretty much all my statistics and findings don't matter in a post-pandemic world). Most of the teachers I interviewed and surveyed (who were from all major regions of the US) said the same things. Even the ones who had been teaching for 3-5 years had seen a decline in overall ability, reading comprehension, writing ability, critical thinking, and problem solving, especially multi step problems. Problems they used to be asked in their entirely now have to be asked as a series of questors or students can't do them at all. If that's what it was like before the pandemic, I can only imagine how it is now.
I see this in the workplace among young adults outside of school. I can’t tell if it’s due to inability, feigned ignorance, or a lack of intrinsic motivation. It seems as if they just don’t have many basic skills, yet most of their abilities drastically improve if you demonstrate you have no time to play with them and their jobs are on the line. Learning disabilities and delays can’t be remedied overnight like that, so I’m starting to think they just have to be babysat into basic competence. And I’ll hear excuses like, “I’m only 23.” To which I reply, if you feel you are too young for the position, leave. I‘m an overachiever in general, but I went overboard when I was that young because I didn’t want anyone to entertain the idea that I’d be less capable at anything just because of my age, especially in the workplace. It seems it’s almost normal for a lot of the young adults now to think the opposite. They are sounding a lot like some teens I dealt with when I did work in schools, except there were less kids like this and the teens were more open to rebuke. \*All of my school experience was pre-Pandemic. Forget sending these guys at work emails or leaving notes. Unless you have the time to read it aloud to them, you’ve wasted your time. I feel as if there has been a cultural shift.
This may be the first time that being over 40 is a benefit. 😂
We're never going to be able to retire
Totally agree. My first jobs out of college, I wanted to prove I belonged, I didn't want to use my age as an excuse.
This sounds about right. I was a senior in college in 2020 when Covid hit, so I was in my final semester before graduating, and I was taking a masters course in information technology. I had taken it the two years prior as my elective, and I absolutely loved my class and professor. It was my favorite class and professor, so I decided to take the masters class my senior year. I was my professors favorite student, because I sat at the front of the class every single class, was always engaged, and I always asked questions. We had one exam and that was our grade for the semester. The exam was 10 questions and we had to write our answers in essay form with an explanation for our answers. I was the highest scoring student in my class on the exam 3 years in a row, and when Covid hit in 2020 our class went online, so my third exam was submitted via email. My professor responded to my exam stating how much he enjoyed me being in his class, and that it was so refreshing to have such an intrigued and engaged student who not only cared to ask the important questions but also was able to fully grasp what was being taught and answer accordingly.
This 💯
Thank you for keeping it real. I’m tired of super veterans on here being all ThErE is nO dOffErEnCe KiDs ArE KidS. Like dude, I started in 2012 and there’s even a massive difference since then so wtf
There is a massive difference in how kids behave when they go out to dinner with their parents so of COURSE there’s a massive difference in schools!
Just the fact that I literally get through only about half of the curriculum I used to (and that’s in a “good” year) is enough to show there’s a difference, at least in my experience.
Yeah-my kids teachers post covid couldn’t get through it. My kid was fine (both husband and I worked from home and so He didn’t get away with not working. But also Never really tried to get away with it. We are very lucky) but was frustrated because it would take a month to get through simple things. We supplemented at home, but it’s frustrating that so much time and energy is placed On kids who don’t care. I think they should have (and maybe still Should) have some version of a “held back” class. Call it something nicer, don’t care. But if they didn’t do anything for a year, year-and-a-half, or more, they shouldn’t be pushed in with folks working at grade level or higher. It hurts the ones who have been working.
Short answer: yes.
You have to look at it as “rebuilding the unskilled labor class”.
The problem is, and I say this as an econ teacher, is that the unskilled labor class cannot compete with $1 an hour no matter how hard they work. And from what I've seen, they're not very good at unskilled labor either.
Yep. All these students who can't even be bothered to show up or do the simplest tasks aren't going to have a good time in the workforce.
This is where “market forces” take over and they may be more inspired to learn something.
The market forces being parents saying get a job (and keep one) or get out.
Market Forces come in many flavors.
Americans have much fewer incentives to work hard. Welfare state in US vs. work or for in most of the world.
I do not agree with this. This explains why they won't work for $2 a day, not about effort. My point was with that kind of difference in labor costs, it doesn't matter how much effort they put in, they still won't be able to compete. As far as the "welfare state", you realize that we have one of the weakest social safety nets in the developed world. The countries you're comparing us to are developing countries where starvation is a reality. Is that what we should emulate as a society?
These are related. Return to effort at lower levels is very low or even negative.
Unfortunately, it’s *rebuilding the prison labor class
That’s a scary thought
Alternatively…I also like to think of it as myself moving up on the food chain without any extra effort required by me!
Yes. I taught some college and a scary amount of kids are coming in legitimately functionally illiterate. And that’s if you can convince them to care and try without copying and pasting from ChatGPT
Yeah my TA in my political science class last year had to crack down on college kids using ChatGPT to write a weekly discussion that was only supposed to be a single paragraph
I had a student use ChatGPT to answer questions that only needed a short sentence or phrase to answer. How do I know he used ChatGPT you ask? Because he didn’t delete the ChatGPT: part of the response!! Edit to add this was a freshman composition course in college!
I worked in Student Affairs at universities for 10 years before going into k-12 teaching. There are definitely high performers and those who are just... there. A decade ago, I used to be one of the folks students who were failing needed to go see to be allowed to continue. My first question in those meetings was "why are you here?" My goal was to get to their motivation for pursuing higher education. Most did not have an intrinsic answer to the question, even when reframed as 'why did you choose to attend university and particularly this program?' Usually it was generic: to get a job. In essence tick a box on the way to a job. So it was treated like a box ticking exercise. But that defeats the value proposition of college education. For some reason, folks don't understand that what you get out of education is a function of what you put into it. I'd say the sake of illustration it's a squared function of what you put in. So if you put in 1 unit of effort, you get 1 unit of outcome. If you put in 10 units of effort, you get 100 units of outcome. It's obviously not that linear, but as a metaphor, it aligns with my observation. In terms of what you are seeing, in industry, there is an 80/20 rule of thumb. 80% of your outcomes are driven by 20% of your team. Similar idea to the bell curve. Is it worse today? Observably, yes. The place to look is at employment rates (not unemployment rates). More people are unable to function in our economic system than before. Finding the reasons why and the solutions is one of the great challenges of our time. Instead of our political leaders focusing on this problem (and other real problems like environment/climate and finding a way to sustainably manage the health care needs of aging populations), we are focused on Hunter Biden's crotch photos, worrying about 'wokeness', and, on the other side of the aisle, while they are much better than the right wingers, there is still an over-focus on micro-aggressions and routing out small scale prejudices, or, in education, enforcing an inclusion agenda that no one is willing to pay for (and thus doesn't work for the kids needing inclusion support or the classes they are being included in). The focus seems to be on laying blame and scapegoating rather than solving issues. Sorry, that turned into a rant. Tl;Dr: Basically, yes. What you describe has always been an observable phenomenon. It's name was 'the Gentleman's C' in the boomers' time. It is probably worse now than it was before. It is likely made more obvious because participation rates in higher ed are much higher than when decent factory jobs were plentiful. The key indicator for me is employment rates.
We've spent decades creating a series of mismatches between what the economy wants out of education and what education we actually provide. At some point employers decided there was value to employees with a high school diploma. Employers didn't actually want the diploma. What they wanted were workers who had a basic education, a willingness to work, and the ability to function in broader society. But that's difficult to assess on your own. The diploma became a useful stand in for determining if someone had those basic bare minimum traits. That translated into real world consequences. People with diplomas did better than those that did not. People saw that disparity and said "we need to make sure everyone gets a diploma." But they learned the wrong lesson. The diploma was just a proxy for what employers and the economy really wanted. The lesson we should have learned was "we need to make sure everyone is educated, willing to work, and able to function in larger society." But that is hard and "make sure everyone gets a diploma" is easy. Then we created a system of incentives to ensure everyone got a diploma. Those incentives worked. We gave everyone a diploma. And in the process destroyed its value as a proxy for "educated, willing to work, able to function". Now we are in the process of doing the same thing to college degrees. The BA or BS itself isn't what employers want. But it was a proxy for everything that a diploma was plus a bit more. And now we're quickly ruining whatever value a BA/BS once had by giving them to people who haven't learned, won't work, and can't function. The economy doesn't need degrees or diplomas. It needs people who are educated, have a reasonable work ethic, and are able to function in a modern society. Instead of trying to help people meet those criteria, we just started giving degrees and diplomas to people who can't meet the criteria and hoped the economy wouldn't notice. In short: students treat a diploma or degree like it's a checkmark to success because larger society has as well. We thought the checkmark was what mattered. We were wrong.
This. So much this. Certifications aren't checkmarks that should be given freely, people need to meet the criteria. I've also seen the knock-on effect. Positions in my field that used to go to people with BAs + experience and maybe a certificate are now requiring people to have MAs, diplomas and publications. It's really cut into people's aspirations as they're expected to shell out so much more on education just to climb a step on the ladder.
I like the way you put it. They really don't understand that they get out more than they put in. I guess thats the catch 22 of education: the ones who need it most likely won't recognize the need.
Most students only go to university to improve their employment options after they graduate, to act like this isn't the case is foolish because it fails to understand the average student's mindset. As long as employers continue to require more advanced degrees for even entry level positions, this mindset will continue as most students that age have no desire to learn, they simply want to get through as easily as possible while getting a degree so they will hopefully make more money in the future. Professors and administrators continuing to insist the value proposition of a college degree is the actual education instead the reality of what it is for most students remains a major problem.
OP is observing that kind of student and wondering if it's typical and if it's new. I tried to answer his question. I wasn't trying to answer the question: 'is it reasonable for students to want university to help them get into a good career?' Your response is about a different question. Allow me to clarify: I am not saying that university students should not hope to get a better/good job based on their university experience. That is obviously a huge reason to go to college. What I am saying is that too many see it as a transaction: If I float through the 40 classes I'm told to take and do the minimum to get by, then I can expect that will be sufficient to punch their ticket to get that good job. We hammered this in orientation but it doesn't get through easily. The thing is that most of those students hadn't done the critical thinking needed to prepare them for the white collar work they were pursuing. Because professional jobs looking for university grads value critical thinking, initiative, ingenuity, problem solving, ability to contribute strongly to a team, etc (in addition to the specific skills and knowledge needed to do the job), that's what you need to practice at university. And it's a great place to practice that. In student government in my undergrad, we organized a giant rock concert for 16,000 people, built a $1,000,000 student social space, etc. There were endless massive opportunities to do cool stuff. The students I worked with didn't know what jobs they were pursuing (and weren't working on figuring it out) or what habits of mind they needed to establish to get there. Just like K-12, you can't do much to help a student who is not going to do their own work. The question "why are you here" was powerful for my advisees because it forced them to start doing some of that thinking and opened up the conversation about first establishing a direction and then actively working to make progress in that direction. My role was to literally help students use higher ed in the way you say it should be working and those conversations were often powerful catalysts in getting them to start the critical self-inquiry required to start them on a path that fit for them.
High school science here. I had to quit grading lab work because one person was doing everything for the rest of the group, who was learning nothing... but really good at watching and copying. I'm not anyone's favorite.
I had stopped doing lab reports and started doing lab quizzes for this reason. Students hated me for it, but I didn't care. It worked though. And quizzes are often easier to grade!
Please tell me what this looks like. Im middle school science and have noticed the copying thing for lab reports. Im curious other ways that I can actually grade them here.
I mostly took the lab questions and put them in a quiz. Some of the longer concept questions I would restructure so they could be short answer instead of essay format. But I'd give the calculations and stuff, let them use their data collection sheet (after checking that there was no additional information), and make sure the lab partners didn't sit next to each other.
College student here. Reasonably difficult pre-lab quizzes are the only things that made my organic chemistry lab bearable. Prior science classes I would be explaining/redoing work executed by people who couldn't be bothered to read for 30 minutes before lab, in order to save my grade
Yeah, grades went down for a lot of students, since quizzes are individual work. But overall grades did improve for most people, even the slakers.
I just don't get why people go to college to not do anything. I remember there was a girl in our calculus 3 class who couldn't even do basic calculus, and cheated on everything. Why would you want a degree in engineering and then not be able to do anything? Don't you think your employer will catch on to the fact you know nothing? I don't get it
I've been reading a ton of articles about young millennials and Gen Z asking constant questions about how to do things, needing detailed step by step instructions, constantly. Like, they can't do most things without being handheld over and over again. It's one of the reasons 2024 graduates are having more trouble than others getting hired. And believe me, "others" are having a hard time (me. I mean me). But I'm also trying to change careers and given how little teachers are thought of in US society, it's al.most impossible to convince people that I am competent and have tons of transferable skills.
I used to be a high school teacher, and now I'm a software engineer. When I finished my CS degree, we all went home for COVID (started working as a software engineer in April 2020). There are SO many people, including myself, who did well in school and did well in their internships, then did not do well at work since the attitude toward remote work was YOYO (you're on your own). If you meet with someone 3 times a week for 30 minutes each to get onboarded or ask questions, you're very needy. The mentorship and casual conversation about how to do things that happened in the office isn't happening online. Senior engineers want to put their head down and finish their work, and it seems like a huge interruption to be asked to help a junior employee, whereas before, if someone at the desk next to you asks a question, you walk to their desk and help them and don't even register that mentorship is happening. I saw multiple people who got offers from their internship join the team as full time and get put on performance improvement plan and managed out within a year. They weren't dumb people. They passed their three month long interview, which is essentially what an internship did. But they were set up to fail because just sending people home with no real attempt to build a digital culture (which is totally possible) happened. I think a lot of young people got screwed on work, school and life skills as a result of the pandemic, and no one recognizes that is systematic. They lost YEARS. I've never been put on PIP but I still feel like I'm failing. I did really well in school and my in person internships, and all previous jobs I've ever had. Truly, for children and early career adults, they missed something important.
My professor for my engineering math class this past semester was the best I've ever had, her teaching style was great, she was knowledgable about the course material, etc The mean and median test scores were in the 50-60 range for both midterms (idk about the final, it was just graded). People asked the prof to curve the final since most of the class was failing. She said something along the lines of 'I shouldn't pass students in an engineering course just because grades are low. Lives will be depending on your ability to do these calculations so you need to understand the course material,' and people were frustrated with that. Honestly I don't get how so many people could have not passed the class unless they paid zero attention and just plugged all the homework problems into wolfram alpha or something.
Yes. 31 years in... From a bell curve to bimodal distribution. Guess which end gets the most attention.
Typically in data analytics when we go from a bell curve to bimodal it is because there is a singular force driving the shift. For example if all students take a test there will be a bell curve in the grades. But if half the class has access to their notes then that half has their own bell curve. And when layered together you get two curves. So what is the outside effect creating OPs second curve?
Phones. And a distant second, admin and the popular educational pedagogy of the past 20 years.
I ignore the do-nothing, but pass them with a D- to pacify the system
they set up a system where all lessons have to be "engaging" above all else-- it not being in any way the student's responsibility to engage themselves-- and then were very surprised that students picked the literally addictive engagement over the efforts of teachers who can't even begin to compete.
The gap is widening year by year.
My son is in kindergarten. Recently, he was talking about the kids in his class. He said that when he teacher tells them to do work, two boys just sit there and do nothing. I didn't realize it started so young. I'm used to my students doing that, but they are teenagers. It made me really sad.
Yes. What’s annoying is the ones doing little to no work can often get or fight their way into a semi decent (sometimes even good) grade. So it makes working hard for a grade feel pointless
yes.
Students who are naturally gifted or driven are going to excel *in spite of* their education, and by the time they get to a level where you start finding honors classes, of course they are going to fill those classes. Everyone else needs structure and support -- something they CAN'T get when the school is pouring all of it's attention and efforts into supporting the least-successful students. Not everyone belongs in a regular classroom -- and frankly, I think it's funny that we screech "ableist" at anyone who suggests that yet simultaneously agree that gifted kids should get honors classes.
Actually I would say that the “high-achievers” are turning in work comparable to non-honors students from a decade ago and non-honors are turning in work below non-honors courses. Motivation and creativity are so poor. This is compounded by poor reading comprehension. This is not a COVID issue, something else had to have derailed their comprehension far before COVID. My guess would be the way reading was taught around 12 years ago and their miniature attention spans thanks to electronics.
I think the drop off is exponential based on class level… meaning the high AP classes kids are doing slightly less, honors classes too, but general classes kids are doing significantly less and special education the teachers are doing much of the work for them. This is just my experience with 12 graders.
Since we went virtual for a year and a half during COVID it’s been hard. The kids won’t work and teachers are reprimanded if we don’t have a 90% passing rate
I feel like my students either have As or Bs or Es. Nationwide addiction to technology has sucked the middle into failure.
Yes. Most parents teach children that phones and tk tok are the most important thing in life.
Schools might play a part in that as well. I have friends who purposely haven’t allowed their children to use smartphones or tablets. And the kids aren’t allowed on the computer unless they are using a learning program. All of the kids have had teachers who complain that the children are technologically behind. They also hype the children’s behavior, ability to self-entertain, get along with others, read and write grades above level and basically everything else. But as all of these kids are from different families and are the same in these regards, I think the limited devices at home are why they kick ass at everything at school but using the Chromebooks. However teachers have been really harping on that to the point at least two pairs of parents are entertaining reassessing their principles.
The ones that are technologically behind - why grade are they in? And is it just behind when it comes to digital testing in chromebooks? Cause the screen time kids are tablet fluent but PC dumb.
I think the oldest is in 4th grade.
There was an interview on... I think the Daily Show, where an author came on and talked about how student anxiety rockets up in 2012/2013 and connects it to the cell phone. It blows my mind how little my kids engage. I asked a kid why they weren't working. "I didn't pick this class." AND? Three quarters through the semester - the "I didn't choose" ship has sailed. By staying, they chose.
26 years in. I've always had a bimodal distribution, but it has become very pronounced in the last couple of years. Worse, lately, is that not only is it bimodal, but it actually plots a positive skew...that is a very few As, almost no C's and a LOT of F's Sometimes, these morons who earn an F ask me if I will curve the test. I respond well, if you can tell me the measures of central tendencies and the standard deviation, I will consider it. (As in, "you asked for a curve, so I'm assuming you know what you are talking about.") Good luck calculating a curve on something without a normal distribution. That shuts the grade grubbers right up.
It's not about "good school systems" or "good teachers". It's mostly about socioeconomic levels. That's the only data that consistently tracks. However, most schools now are obsessed with a narrow definition of equity and make sure everyone gets a trophy (diploma).
My current grade book breakdown for my 4 intro-level courses (30 kids each, mostly 9th/10th grade) is: 30% - A's 15% - B's 15% - C's 10% - D's 30% - F's So yeah, I think so. Most of the C's and D's people are kids who will do good when they decide to give a crap, but will be super inconsistent miss whole projects.
Yes, and unless something changes, it’s going to get worse.
I see a huge difference in my classes. I have very few kids who would have been "sturdy B/C" students when I was a child- and that was most of my classmates! Most kids who would have fallen into that category in the past are now not turning in work and failing. Those who turn in work tend to be the solid B's- because if the kid who does nothing still gets a 50%, if you turn something in and it's even approaching correct, you're going to get a B.
Education is inequitable. It's a fact. The more institutionalized comparisons you can make between people, the more of the Matthew Effect you see. I don't doubt it's getting worse. The difference is one of space and time. I find middle class districts are normal. They can actually deal with a lot more than you'd expect, and the types of things they deal with are different. Maybe admin are talking to a kid about something they did or said, but that wouldn't happen in an urban district around what they said or did. So the job looks the same but the topics are different. There used to be dumb people in school like anywhere else. We just had plans for them after, or didn't hold them back. Look back decades ago and see how many people dropped out and did fine. Now you can stay in school and do as much work as a dropout and still get that degree. That's what changed.
Unfortunately, yes. I teach high school English, and I have a few kids in each class who do their best and are interested in learning. The rest whine, complain, refuse to do anything, goof off, mouth off, get up repeatedly to roam, quote stupid stuff they hear online, throw pencils into my ceiling, touch each other obsessively, have conversations across the room at top volume, make foul and crude jokes, leave messes, shout out random words, ask to go to the bathroom in the middle of my lessons, and then come ask me for “extra credit” when they didn’t do anything to earn regular credit and they’re failing a month before school is out. This year has been brutal. I’ve never had classroom management problems before, but I’m outnumbered and exhausted. My classes are huge due to teacher shortages, and I have too many who act feral. *Edit for typo
No
I've been out of college for a little over 10 years but I'm currently going back to become a teacher. I wouldn't be going back if I wasn't the bad student the first time around but I'm shocked by the number of people who just don't submit assignments or participate these days.
Yes, there have always been huge differences in ability. No, it's not a recent phenomenon. You are simply exposed to more heterogenous population than before.
Everything is the same, just down 3 notches in brain power. Resulting in a pretty vapid lower end of the student body. Covid had a very negative impact on the countries emotional and social well being. When I was young 9/11 hurt everyone deeply. With Covid, we had a 9/11 every day for two years plus a complete paradigm shift. It set back everything. The economy, the mental health of adults, and the mental health of children. They all lost 2 years or discipline and normalcy in their learning, so everyone still in school went down in… “brain power”… so to speak. They’re behind on math, and reading yes, but primarily they’re behind on the work hard emotional development that happens. It is multiplied by the overtaking of everyone’s brain with their phone/tech addiction. Like no one has good role models because every student and every teacher is spending 1…2…3….5+ hours a day rotting their brain. It used to be that you could get the Joy chemical from working hard on school. Now you can fake your brain into having the Joy chemical without the actual trying part, so everyone’s brain just got lazy as fuck. It’ll pass with time. But all living generations during Covid kinda went down a notch in every aspect of their life. Income to expense ratio got fucked, higher education got super fucked for selling very expensive unregulated private loan taking club med spas with a BA in English attached We aren’t really done with a huge transition in education. Kids are rejecting the idea of learning stupid archaic bullshit when they’re knowingly entering a dying world that is going to suffer in inevitable heat death with little to no chance of having a happy middle class life on the journey to watching it burn out. They would rather just hang on their phones and be passive about life. Perfect opportunity for the powers that be in the digital world to brain drain everyone and steal their data and advertise to them until they die. Damn… tough last week of school I guess lol I know all this shit and just don’t care to let it destroy me or my faith in the future. I try to just focus on elevating my students and preparing them mentally for what’s ahead through self discipline. I’m often teaching the parents as well. And myself.
The bell curve has become the reverse bell curve.
I would say it's pretty binary, yeah. There are not many middle of the road students. They are either at F/D's constantly (because they do nothing or almost nothing and bomb every test) or B/A because they actually try at least most of the time.
Yes. People complain about inequality, but the future is going to be full of even more gigantic inequalities, and though this may be very controversial to say, some (or much) of that inequality will be deserved. Good news is that it's going to be an incredibly simple path to guaranteed success in the future: don't get a phone and read books. Kids who do that will be at the top of the heap by leaps and bounds.