Most US students not literate enough for complex tasks

Daily Times ^ | 1/21/06 | AP

[voletti]

and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges - lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks such as understanding credit card offers, a study found.

AP exagerrating for efect as usual? Why not take the logical next step and lay blame where it is due, namely the lib-dominated school system?

[pissant]

That's why there are liberals in the world. Reason and logic are not taught anymore.

[baystaterebel]

Once again.............

A college diploma is not a certificate of higher intellegence. It is only proof of further education.

[DoughtyOne]

It becomes clear why the members of the media are less able to evaluate issues and what to print.

[thoughtomator]

and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges - lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks such as understanding credit card offers

Which is why one of the first things every college freshman sees when arriving on campus is a credit card company's pitchman.

[thoughtomator]

It's only proof of the equivalent of a 6th grade education from 1950.

[Knute]

From my own observations I concur. I think a college degree today is indicative of less acquisition of knowledge than a high school diploma 20 years ago.

Yes, we MUST blame it on the government schools which have allowed this decline.

[Wheee The People]

i kant uderstood a word off these article

[ElkGroveDan]

Most US students not literate enough for complex tasks

They got that right.

I'm a professional writer and as the years go by more and more people think I'm some kind of genius for being able to put words to paper, that evoke feelings and emotions or biting satire that makes people think. I suspect that in my parents' generation I would have been just an average writer.

Dumber and dumber...I fear for our nation's future.

[holymoly]

More than half of students at four-year colleges in the United States - and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges - lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks

Not to worry, they can always get a job as a "journalist" with the Associated Press.

[durasell]

And to think, all of those foreign students are wasting their money coming to the U.S. to get their degrees.

[CarrotAndStick]

This...like...article is like...umm, like...aahsumlee over-exaggerating, mannn!

[thoughtomator]

I would be willing to wager well that the number of foreign students coming here to study the kinds of things that US students prefer - political science, history, social "sciences", and all those other fields where there is no way to quantify how much someone has learned is quite small.

Foreign students come to study engineering, mathematics, hard sciences, medicine - the few exceptions to the higher-education scam.

I can't tell you how many people I know who have completely useless Political Science degrees.

[durasell]

Of course you're right. But college is like anything else, you pays your money and your chance.

College isn't a vocational school. They don't exist to insure employment. On the other hand, a college education is now the minimum for any kind of white collar, inside sitting down job.

[Ludicrous]

OK Pakistan. Keep telling yourselves that the US is a bunch of morons.
But at least US students can CHOOSE to seek higer education in much higher per capita numbers. While college-aged Pakistanis are illiterate due to social-class discrimination and gender discrimination.

[Rummyfan]

Poli Sci, Sociology, Womyn's Studies,African-American Studies etc etc etc. Useless fields of study in my opinion.....

[CarrotAndStick]

I think this is an AP article, not Pakistan's.

[durasell]

Poli Sci, Sociology, Womyn's Studies,African-American Studies etc etc etc. Useless fields of study in my opinion.....



For people who want to learn about those things, they're of value. Unfortunately, they are of little value in the workplace.

[Ludicrous]

It's on a Pakistani newspaper site.

[GSlob]

“Concerning the advancement of learning, I do subscribe to the opinion… that, for grammar schools, there are already too many… the great number of schools which are in your Highness’s realm doth cause a want, and likewise an overthrow [surfeit] – both of them inconvenient and one of them dangerous; for by means thereof they find want in the country and towns, both of servants for husbandry and of apprentices for trade; and on the other side there being more Scholars bred than the State can prefer and employ… it must needs fall out that many persons will be bred unfit for other vocations and unprofitable for that in which they were bred up, which will fill the realm full of indigent, idle and wanton people…”
Francis Bacon, 1611
I'd say he had a point, especially about educating the ineducable.