Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The new generation of parent is not buying into the abusive acceleration rat race that has deprived a prior generation of childhoods. the kids are just as smart as ever, but they might just leave college courses for their college years.

Except today's college courses are at middle school level ten years ago in third world countries. A happy childhood (which is important) doesn't mean a wasted childhood.

Yes, that's very true if you live in the imaginary dark apocalypse that Trump talks about.

https://www.bobuttl.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/1309142_Manuscript-AsAccepted-PriorToCopyProofs.pdf

"Meta-analysis: On average,
undergraduate students' intelligence is
merely average
[...] Method. We conducted a meta-analysis of the mean IQ scores of college and university students samples tested with Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale between 1939 and 2022. Results. The results show that the average IQ of undergraduate students today is a mere 102 IQ points and declined by approximately 0.2 IQ points per year. "

Article that draws from the above paper: https://bigthink.com/thinking/iq-score-average-college-students/

That is, of course, overall and partially a consequence of a large expansion in the student population.

But how're things doing at highly selective colleges?

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/679945/

"THE ELITE COLLEGE STUDENTS WHO CAN’T READ BOOKS

" ... Twenty years ago, Dames’s classes [at Columbia] had no problem engaging in sophisticated discussions of Pride and Prejudice one week and Crime and Punishment the next. Now his students tell him up front that the reading load feels impossible. It’s not just the frenetic pace; they struggle to attend to small details while keeping track of the overall plot."

https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2024/03/university-people-the-undergraduate-balance

"AWOL from Academics

I RECENTLY STARTED using an application that tracks my work, producing weekly summaries of time spent on each activity, such as homework, socializing, or eating a meal. I was surprised to find I spend far, far less time on my classes than on my extracurricular activities—working as a research assistant, editing columns for the Crimson, or writing for Harvard Magazine. It turns out that I’m not alone in my meager coursework. Although the average college student spent around 25 hours a week studying in 1960, the average was closer to 15 hours in 2015.

I’ve come to believe that this decline represents a fundamental and under-discussed transformation in how students—especially Harvard students—view school. Many onlookers and alumni likely have a sense of this trend, but I doubt they realize the full extent of it. This fall, one of my friends did not attend a single lecture or class section until more than a month into the semester. Another spent 40 to 80 hours a week on her preprofessional club, leaving barely any time for school. A third launched a startup while enrolled, leaving studying by the wayside...."

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The new generation of parent is not buying into the abusive acceleration rat race that has deprived a prior generation of childhoods. the kids are just as smart as ever, but they might just leave college courses for their college years.

Except today's college courses are at middle school level ten years ago in third world countries. A happy childhood (which is important) doesn't mean a wasted childhood.

troll

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The new generation of parent is not buying into the abusive acceleration rat race that has deprived a prior generation of childhoods. the kids are just as smart as ever, but they might just leave college courses for their college years.

Except today's college courses are at middle school level ten years ago in third world countries. A happy childhood (which is important) doesn't mean a wasted childhood.

Yes, that's very true if you live in the imaginary dark apocalypse that Trump talks about.

Politicizing is unnecessary. It’s not always someone else’s fault.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The new generation of parent is not buying into the abusive acceleration rat race that has deprived a prior generation of childhoods. the kids are just as smart as ever, but they might just leave college courses for their college years.

Except today's college courses are at middle school level ten years ago in third world countries. A happy childhood (which is important) doesn't mean a wasted childhood.

Yes, that's very true if you live in the imaginary dark apocalypse that Trump talks about.

Anonymous wrote:The new generation of parent is not buying into the abusive acceleration rat race that has deprived a prior generation of childhoods. the kids are just as smart as ever, but they might just leave college courses for their college years.

Except today's college courses are at middle school level ten years ago in third world countries. A happy childhood (which is important) doesn't mean a wasted childhood.

The new generation of parent is not buying into the abusive acceleration rat race that has deprived a prior generation of childhoods. the kids are just as smart as ever, but they might just leave college courses for their college years.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Due to Covid and its effects, do we just have fewer kids who can do advanced work? Or is it something else?

Covid has its impact but the whole education system is failing. Looking at what and how teachers teach. YouTube videos during class( no real person teaches), so called projects (putting kids into group discussions then the teacher surf and chats with smart phone.), encouraging self study so teacher doesn’t comment on paper, give out solutions to homework questions so no need to grade, etc. Lazy, ignorant, Unknowledgeable teachers are everywhere.

+1 The quality of teaching has gone done. Too much reliance on videos, Lexia, Mathspace, death by Google slides, …

Weird my kids seem to be getting a much better education than I did at a top -rated FCPS school 20 years ago. Many people just like to pretend things were different in the past. They were worse.

DP

Wait, you had kids when you were 20? Not to judge too much but isn't that kinda young?

Teachers seem to think things are worse now than 5 years ago https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/04/04/teachers-views-on-the-state-of-public-k-12-education/

And politics in education seems to be the culprit.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our entire educational system has been dumbing things down over the past few decades. Lucy Calkins, an overreaction against homework (sure, extra work for it's own sake is not the same as rigor, but you can't have rigor without practice), and other pedagogical errors are showing their impacts at older grades.

In addition there are simply more kids with IEPs, 504s, behavioral issues, who are ESOL, and the like. This isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but all of it takes time from teachers that could otherwise be used on educating.

But overall - think back 70 years. No one, and I do mean no one, was taking Calculus in your average public high school. In FCPS it's quite normal for many kids to take college level calculus. For decades our bar for what advanced looks like has gone up. Maybe it was always just due for a little regression?

My children today are receiving a much higher quality education than I did from fcps back in the '80s. I think this faux nostalgia it's about a place that never existed.

Well mine are receiving a worse education than I did in the '90s and '00s.

I think the reason mine are doing so much is better is because we prioritize education.

And your parents didn't?

I think education is a mixed bag. We are definitely doing somethings better and some things worse.

In general I think where politics get involved we are doing things worse. It happens from both sides.

The left want to censor books like Huckleberry Finn
The right wants to ban books that have any gay stuff in it..
The left wants to reduce the emphasis on math.
The right wants to rewrite history.
The left wants to eliminate measures of merit so we can pretend everyone is about the same.
The right wants to ignore the reasons why differences may exist.

You may not agree with all of those but if you only agree with the criticisms of the left or only criticisms of the right then you're probably not very objective about the issue of how politics has infiltrated education.

False equivalence.

The left want to censor books like Huckleberry Finn
The right wants to ban books that have any gay stuff in it..
Censor is not the same as banning. Not making mandatory reading is not the same as removing a random book in the library.

The left wants to reduce the emphasis on math.
The right wants to rewrite history.
The left didn't want to rewrite the math to make 2+2=5, did they? What is "rewrite history"?

The left wants to eliminate measures of merit so we can pretend everyone is about the same.
The right wants to ignore the reasons why differences may exist.
Affirmative action is not elimination of merit. Please.

I said the elimination of the measures of merit. Like testing.
Eliminating testing is a thing that the left wants to do.
They want to eliminate the measures of merit because there are extremely large disparities in test scores between groups and rather than address the underlying reason for these disparities, they would rather ignore them and pretend we have lifted everyone to a level playing field.