Posted on 12/26/2005 7:41:42 AM PST by Semper Paratus
Literacy specialists and educators say they are stunned by the results of a recent adult literacy assessment, which shows that the reading proficiency of college graduates has declined in the past decade, with no obvious explanation.
''It's appalling -- it's really astounding," said Michael Gorman, president of the American Library Association and a librarian at California State University at Fresno. ''Only 31 percent of college graduates can read a complex book and extrapolate from it. That's not saying much for the remainder."
While more Americans are graduating from college, and more than ever are applying for admission, far fewer are leaving higher education with the skills needed to comprehend routine data, such as reading a table about the relationship between blood pressure and physical activity, according to the federal study conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics.
Specialists could not definitively explain the drop.
''The declining impact of education on our adult population was the biggest surprise for us, and we just don't have a good explanation," said Mark S. Schneider, commissioner of education statistics. ''It may be that institutions have not yet figured out how to teach a whole generation of students who learned to read on the computer and who watch more TV. It's a different kind of literacy."
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
My hand shoots up!
"ASK ME, ASK ME, I KNOW WHY, I KNOW WHY!"
No, No, No, ... Me, Me, Me, Ooooh, Ooooh, Ooooh!
Duplicate already posted:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1547115/posts
31%? That's over half the graduates! This is series!
Do the possibilities of tenured politically correct idiot professors and hordes of not college ready students cross your mind? High school graduates 50 years ago were more advanced than most of todays college grads.
Considering that class disruption in the publik skools is the only sport going (partially due to "main-streaming"), the answer is a no-brainer.
These literary specialists and teachers should find out who is responsible for these students not learning and punish them, huh? Wonder where they'll find the culprits? (First hint: Try a mirror.)
Someone is showing off.
there was a recent survey, reported here on FP, that something like 55% of college students were women....!
IS NOT!!! It's less than a quarter of them. You bleepin' moron!
Can anyone say "Whole Language" method of teaching reading for the past 20-plus years??? In "whole language," the students are taught "sound spelling" (spell it like it sounds and that's OK), "look-at-the-pictures-and-guess" and substitute one word for another ("pony" for "horse") as long as the meaning of the sentence/story stays the same.
We moved our children from public-to-private school after second grade because the nonsensical "whole language" teaching of reading in the public school was destroying one child's ability to read and enjoyment of reading. (It was a "good" school district-Rockwood School District in St. Louis County-not inner-city or poor or any other excuse for poor performance.) The private school taught reading by 100% systematic phonics and both kids now read fine. (The one child still doesn't like to read, but she can.)
By fourth or fifth grade, textbooks stop having as many pictures, which makes whole language guessing more difficult. A seventh-grade social studies teacher (different public school district) told me that they didn't even use the textbooks "because the students can't read them."
So why is anyone surprised that college students and young adults are illiterate? They were never TAUGHT to read in the first place!
(PS: my poor-reading student is now a junior in college with a 3.8 GPA.)
An extra polate is one polate more than you need.
Meanwhile there are courses like this:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1547161/posts?page=1
" It's a different kind of literacy.""
Uh, no it isn't.
"That's over half the graduates!
IS NOT!!! It's less than a quarter of them. You bleepin' moron!"
Both are too funny.
But you both know that some college grads won't get it. Not only can't they read they can't cipher. Naught divided by naught equals perplexity.
"31%? That's over half the graduates! This is series!"
Wow, no wunder i had problum with math in collage; this is the new math.
High school graduates 50 years ago were more advanced than most of todays college grads.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I am beginning to think exactly that. I see jobs advertised now with a requirement for at minimum a BA degree and the job often sounds like something that was done by high school graduates or even dropouts in the sixties. I work with one young man who surprised me by revealing that he is a college graduate, he does a job which my father could easily have handled with his eigth grade education.
Like...what? Like...no way...like. I mean....like. Now way....I know my rights thought...like.
If you want a depressing exercise, make a comparative study of American textbooks from the nineteenth century up to the present. I kid you not, THIRD grade readers in the 1880's were more complex than some high school textbooks today, even though the level of knowledge has increased 100-fold.
The system is broken.
A couple of years ago I taught high school history at a NJ public school and I was shocked at the new trend to start a sentence with "And" and other basic grammar rules that were thrown out the window by the english teachere there. I marked grammatical errors wrong and the kids would whine that it was acceptable writing in their english classes. Of course, those teachers had master's degrees!
I forgot to add they also had a club for political activism with a bulletin board in the hallway that displayed a "Free Mumia" display. The school didn't want a conservative club, too "controversial"
Three kinds of people in the world: those who can count and those who can't!
There's also no explanation of the exponential increase in college tuition and the over inflated salaries of these over inflated, blow hard "tenured" professors in the last decade, to justify it either.
The "Ward Churchill's" are getting richer, and the students are getting more illiterate...and paying more for it too.
I have been worried for some time that our civilization could tip over into another dark age. My dear Freeper friends, please make sure your children and grandchildren learn to read, at all costs. If you don't have the knowledge or ability to teach them yourself, hire a tutor. Or email me and I will help you. (I'm an abecedarian.)
Reading is the key to all other subjects. An individual who can read can easily become self-educated (like Lincoln) and need not depend on our broken educational system.
If you want a depressing exercise, make a comparative study of American textbooks from the nineteenth century up to the present. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I am afraid it would be too depressing, my mother graduated High School when it only went through eleventh grade and I studied from her old textbooks, she studied things that I was not taught and I studied things which most young people have never heard of. She was educated in a way that most college graduates I meet today don't comprehend. I remember sitting in the barber shop as a boy in the fifties and listening to farmers who still plowed with mules discussing world events of the day. They might not have known all that much but they were interested, most people now have nothing interesting to say about much of anything other than maybe sports and they seem to consider sports more important than what form of government we are supposed to have.
Back in the late 70s / early 80s, I subscribed to a Time/Life ancient civilizations book series. The books weren't written at a complex level, being aimed at the interested layman audience. I subscribed to a different Time/Life series on the same general topic ten years later and was amazed at the difference in the level of writing. The more recent series had been dumbed down substantially. I assume that the Time/Life editors had found that the customers just couldn't hack a higher reading level.
As near as I can tell, Time/Life no longer publishes books and is solely audio/video these days.
Your tagline says it all.
Yes, it is still possible to find many elderly people who advanced no farther than junior high and yet have an astonishing knowledge base. And they're far more humble than younger people.
I am certain, that you missed import of my posting...
It's actually not surprising it all when you read some of the crap college kids "learn".
America’s Most Bizarre and Politically Correct College Courses
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1547896/posts?page=1
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