Global education's leaning tower
December 5, 2023 11:10 PM Subscribe
Mathematics, reading skills in unprecedented decline in teenagers
OECD: PISA 2022 results overview
The Atlantic: Get Phones Out of Schools Now
Teenagers' mathematics and reading skills are in an unprecedented decline across dozens of countries and COVID school closures are only partly to be blamed, the OECD said on Tuesday in its latest survey of global learning standards. The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said it had seen some of the steepest drops in performance since 2000 when it began its usually triennial tests of 15-year-olds reading, maths and science skills. Nearly 700,000 youths took the two-hour test last year in the OECD's 38 mostly developed country members and 44-non members for the latest study, closely watched by policymakers as the largest international comparison of education performance. Compared to when the tests were last conducted in 2018, reading performance fell by 10 points on average in OECD countries, and by 15 points in mathematics, a loss equivalent to three-quarters of a year's worth of learning. [...] Countries that provided extra teacher support during COVID school closures scored better and results were generally better in places where easy teacher access for special help was high. Poorer results tended to be associated with higher rates of mobile phone use for leisure and where schools reported teacher shortages.
OECD: PISA 2022 results overview
Volume I: The State of Learning and Equity in EducationSurprisingly, the OECD found the unprecedented decline was only partially due to COVID closures:
Volume II: Learning During - and From - Disruption
Insights and Interpretations [PDF]
Infographics [PDF]
Analysing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, around half of the students across the OECD experienced closures for more than three months. But the results show no clear difference in performance trends between education systems with limited school closures such as Iceland, Sweden and Chinese Taipei and systems that experienced longer lasting school closures, such as Brazil, Ireland and Jamaica.The Guardian: School leaders in England feel lockdown ‘broke spell’ of bond with parents
The study also finds that the availability of teachers to help students in need had the strongest relationship to maths performance across the OECD. Maths scores were 15 points higher on average in places where students agreed they had good access to teachers’ support. These students were also more confident than their peers to learn autonomously and remotely. Despite this, only one in five students overall reported having received extra help from teachers in some lessons in 2022. Around eight percent never or almost never received additional support.
The survey also reveals the fast-changing impact of technology on children’s educational performance. PISA shows that moderate use of digital devices in school is associated with higher performance, but this depends on the technology being used to support rather than distract from learning.
On average across OECD countries, students who spent up to one hour a day on digital devices for leisure scored 49 points higher in maths than students who spent between five and seven hours per day, after taking into account students’ and schools’ socio-economic profile.
45% of students reported feeling nervous or anxious if their phones were not near them, on average across OECD countries, and 65% reported being distracted by using digital devices in at least some maths lessons. The proportion topped 80% in Argentina, Brazil, Canada*, Chile, Finland, Latvia*, Mongolia, New Zealand* and Uruguay.
Students who reported being distracted by other students using digital devices in some, most or every maths class scored 15 points lower in PISA maths tests than those who barely experienced this. This represents the equivalent of three-quarters of a year’s worth of education, even after accounting for students’ and schools’ socio-economic profile.
“The unquestionable belief that school must be attended was exploded. It’s predictable and expected to see that for some families, those have been hard habits to rebuild. And inevitably it’s the families who already struggle, who have struggled the hardest to build them,” Bennett said. But some headteachers painted an even darker picture of hostile parents who have become unresponsive to a school’s requests, with some using private social media forums to harangue individual teachers and school leaders over behaviour decisions or attendance policies. One school leader said he was shocked to see ringleaders orchestrate campaigns against attempts to tighten up behaviour policies and supporting pupils refusing to obey instructions or using social media during lessons.NYT: School Cellphone Bans Are Trending. Do They Work?
In early October, the British government issued new guidelines recommending that student cellphone use be prohibited in schools nationwide. That followed Italy, which last year banned cellphones during lessons, and China, which two years ago barred children from taking phones to school. A recent report from UNESCO, the United Nations’ educational and cultural agency, found that nearly one in four countries now has laws or policies banning or restricting student cellphone use in schools.The 74: Banning Smartphones at Schools: Research Points to Higher Test Scores, Less Anxiety, More Exercise
The Atlantic: Get Phones Out of Schools Now
To the teachers and administrators I spoke with, this wasn’t merely a coincidence. They saw clear links between rising phone addiction and declining mental health, to say nothing of declining academic performance. A common theme in my conversations with them was: We all hate the phones. Keeping students off of their devices during class was a constant struggle. Getting students’ attention was harder because they seemed permanently distracted and congenitally distractible. Drama, conflict, bullying, and scandal played out continually during the school day on platforms to which the staff had no access. I asked why they couldn’t just ban phones during school hours. They said too many parents would be upset if they could not reach their children during the school day.The Verge: Social media giants must face child safety lawsuits, judge rules
A lot has changed since 2019. The case for phone-free schools is much stronger now. As my research assistant, Zach Rausch, and I have documented at my Substack, After Babel, evidence of an international epidemic of mental illness, which started around 2012, has continued to accumulate. So, too, has evidence that it was caused in part by social media and the sudden move to smartphones in the early 2010s. Many parents now see the addiction and distraction these devices cause in their children; most of us have heard harrowing stories of self-harming behavior and suicide attempts among our friends’ children. Two weeks ago, the United States surgeon general issued an advisory warning that social media can carry “a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.”
Meta, ByteDance, Alphabet, and Snap must proceed with a lawsuit alleging their social platforms have adverse mental health effects on children, a federal court ruled on Tuesday. US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers rejected the social media giants’ motion to dismiss the dozens of lawsuits accusing the companies of running platforms “addictive” to kids. School districts across the US have filed suit [...] alleging the companies cause physical and emotional harm to children. Meanwhile, 42 states sued Meta last month over claims Facebook and Instagram “profoundly altered the psychological and social realities of a generation of young Americans.” [...] Tuesday’s ruling states that the First Amendment and Section 230, which says online platforms shouldn’t be treated as the publishers of third-party content, don’t shield Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat from all liability in this case.But as Al Jazeera points out, it's not just about technology -- or grades:
A key factor is “the level of support pupils received from teachers and school staff”, according to Irene Hu.
Charbonnier agreed that “countries have invested in education over the past 10 years, but maybe they didn’t invest efficiently, or sufficiently into the quality of teaching”.
[...]
For the first time, the survey also focused on the mental state of students, using nine aspects of their lives to measure their wellbeing, showing correlation between academic performance and anxiety.
In the high-performing countries “many students reported a high fear of failure and limited engagement in extracurricular activities such as sports”.
In lower-performing countries, students engaged more in physical and team activities, resulting in “lower levels of anxiety and a greater focus on sports”.
The indicators included engagement with school, material and cultural wellbeing, openness to diversity and psychological wellbeing.
> the details say that hollow circle datapoints are not statistically different than the global average
That's not what it says, though: "White dots indicate mean-performance estimates that are not statistically significantly above/below PISA 2022 estimates" - that is to say, they indicate which previous years' data points are not statistically different from this years data point for this particular subject and this particular country.
So you can look at a certain country's data and see at a glance which previous years are actually better or worse than the current year, and which are close enough that the difference isn't statistically significant.
> Should we be drawing policy conclusions from this data if it's this noisy?
By the look of it is not especially noisy. But, for example, the U.S. data is going to fluctuate about +/-3 or 4 points from year to year just due to normal random variation. So you need to be looking for longer term trends or moves larger than that if you are interested in the changes that are actually significant - both in the statistical sense and the ordinary sense of what is actually important.
There is definitely some signal there and there is no reason to disregard it just because the data has the same statistical characteristics that literally any real data set will have.
The really remarkable thing here - nothing new at all, unfortunately - is how truly far behind the U.S. is in math. Yikes!
posted by flug at 12:45 AM on December 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
That's not what it says, though: "White dots indicate mean-performance estimates that are not statistically significantly above/below PISA 2022 estimates" - that is to say, they indicate which previous years' data points are not statistically different from this years data point for this particular subject and this particular country.
So you can look at a certain country's data and see at a glance which previous years are actually better or worse than the current year, and which are close enough that the difference isn't statistically significant.
> Should we be drawing policy conclusions from this data if it's this noisy?
By the look of it is not especially noisy. But, for example, the U.S. data is going to fluctuate about +/-3 or 4 points from year to year just due to normal random variation. So you need to be looking for longer term trends or moves larger than that if you are interested in the changes that are actually significant - both in the statistical sense and the ordinary sense of what is actually important.
There is definitely some signal there and there is no reason to disregard it just because the data has the same statistical characteristics that literally any real data set will have.
The really remarkable thing here - nothing new at all, unfortunately - is how truly far behind the U.S. is in math. Yikes!
posted by flug at 12:45 AM on December 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
Here’s some ten year old criticism of the OECD education testing.
posted by The River Ivel at 1:17 AM on December 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by The River Ivel at 1:17 AM on December 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
Parent of children 19 to 32 years old.
I think there has been a decline in mathematical skills - some of that is due to the way that students are taught - my youngest boy has finished his second year in university engineering and when we discuss series and sequences there are gaps which I learned in high school.
But it is also how technology is used - we joke that if your phone doesn't work, grandmother is a better trouble-shooter than 19 year old as grandmother will check - is it charged 1. electrically 2.financially, etc
Technology use I think is probably the bigger culprit - confession time. I read "The Placeholder Girlfriend" and my reaction was that you don't use a spreadsheet, you use a structured heap database so that you can weight appropriately.
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 1:37 AM on December 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
I think there has been a decline in mathematical skills - some of that is due to the way that students are taught - my youngest boy has finished his second year in university engineering and when we discuss series and sequences there are gaps which I learned in high school.
But it is also how technology is used - we joke that if your phone doesn't work, grandmother is a better trouble-shooter than 19 year old as grandmother will check - is it charged 1. electrically 2.financially, etc
Technology use I think is probably the bigger culprit - confession time. I read "The Placeholder Girlfriend" and my reaction was that you don't use a spreadsheet, you use a structured heap database so that you can weight appropriately.
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 1:37 AM on December 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
I’m teaching the equivalent of 7-10th grade in Japan, and there’s been a noticeable change in the general level of students on several levels. Academically, they lack several key skills that students even a year ahead of this cohort had. Serious issues with critical reasoning, and almost no ability to make educated guesses about anything past what is explicitly spelled out on the page for them. Past that, there’s a pretty shocking shift in general behavior/attitude. Honestly, with some of the shit going on, I think what I’m seeing is kids left to fend for themselves and turning to YouTube to fill the void.
One of the few bright spots in this last term was that, as a result of students doing some pretty unforgivable shit leading to expulsions (which, as a rule, is incredibly rare in Japanese private schools), cell phones are banned in class now, and are collected by homeroom teachers in the morning and returned at the end of the day. For some of these kids, it’s the longest they’ve gone without phones in years.
posted by Ghidorah at 2:16 AM on December 6, 2023 [32 favorites]
One of the few bright spots in this last term was that, as a result of students doing some pretty unforgivable shit leading to expulsions (which, as a rule, is incredibly rare in Japanese private schools), cell phones are banned in class now, and are collected by homeroom teachers in the morning and returned at the end of the day. For some of these kids, it’s the longest they’ve gone without phones in years.
posted by Ghidorah at 2:16 AM on December 6, 2023 [32 favorites]
They said too many parents would be upset if they could not reach their children during the school day.
NSW introduced mandatory phone bans this very term, it's been a lot, and this was why some staff were very excited for this.
High school students do have laptops, I think this is a great opportunity to learn to check their emails, but I'm not sure that's the lesson most students are learning.
posted by Audreynachrome at 2:23 AM on December 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
NSW introduced mandatory phone bans this very term, it's been a lot, and this was why some staff were very excited for this.
High school students do have laptops, I think this is a great opportunity to learn to check their emails, but I'm not sure that's the lesson most students are learning.
posted by Audreynachrome at 2:23 AM on December 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
Should we be drawing policy conclusions from this data if it's this noisy?
How are you going from “these error bars are wide” (which is a function of the sample size) to “this data is too noisy”?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 4:10 AM on December 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
How are you going from “these error bars are wide” (which is a function of the sample size) to “this data is too noisy”?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 4:10 AM on December 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
Serious issues with critical reasoning, and almost no ability to make educated guesses about anything past what is explicitly spelled out on the page for them.
My sister is the mother of two teenagers and this is one of the things she complained about when I last saw her. Her feelings are, despite being a very patient and very good mom, is that her kids and their peer group are more emotionally volatile and easily influenced by what they experience online and bring it to their real lives.
Again, I am so so glad that my own teenage years did not include social media. I feel for these kids. It's almost like the online world is the real world for them, and everything else is a pale shadow.
posted by Kitteh at 5:03 AM on December 6, 2023 [15 favorites]
My sister is the mother of two teenagers and this is one of the things she complained about when I last saw her. Her feelings are, despite being a very patient and very good mom, is that her kids and their peer group are more emotionally volatile and easily influenced by what they experience online and bring it to their real lives.
Again, I am so so glad that my own teenage years did not include social media. I feel for these kids. It's almost like the online world is the real world for them, and everything else is a pale shadow.
posted by Kitteh at 5:03 AM on December 6, 2023 [15 favorites]
almost no ability to make educated guesses about anything past what is explicitly spelled out on the page for them.
Anecdotally: seeing this in my students, both undergrad and grad. It's frustrating. I'd been asking myself "have I suddenly lost the ability to write an intelligible assignment description?" but this has also been happening with assignments I've used successfully for yonks.
I'd come to the tentative conclusion that their prior educational experiences had been hella nitpicky, but... this explanation feels maybe a bit truer.
Question now is what the hell I can best do about it -- for the grad students especially, if they're gonna be professionals they cannot be going to their manager about every little thing the way they have been with me.
posted by humbug at 5:11 AM on December 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
Anecdotally: seeing this in my students, both undergrad and grad. It's frustrating. I'd been asking myself "have I suddenly lost the ability to write an intelligible assignment description?" but this has also been happening with assignments I've used successfully for yonks.
I'd come to the tentative conclusion that their prior educational experiences had been hella nitpicky, but... this explanation feels maybe a bit truer.
Question now is what the hell I can best do about it -- for the grad students especially, if they're gonna be professionals they cannot be going to their manager about every little thing the way they have been with me.
posted by humbug at 5:11 AM on December 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
I feel like I am a cliche, but the way math is taught “these days” seems far too invested in the cleverness of curriculum designers and reaching a very adult-led goal of “understanding the concept” as opposed to really learning math facts. Some of the conceptual/inquiry-led stuff might be ok, but the plain truth is that they do not give kids enough practice and repetition to learn the basics.
Case in point: dividing fractions. My son missed the lesson so I had to teach him. All of the emphasis was on using tape diagrams to visually show how to understand a fraction of a fraction. Honestly I did not understand at first and it WAS kind of fun to work my way through it and I actually did end up understanding the concept in a new way. But my kid did not exit that lesson with a firm grasp on dividing fractions using the “mathematical” approach (invert and multiply.) Because all the lesson time was spent on “tape diagrams” and none on the practice and repetition of the standard method - or even enough repetition to even get the tape diagrams down cold. And of course nobody is ever going to draw a tape diagram to divide fractions in the real world when they need to understand quantities.
Besides focusing on the wrong thing, I am also perplexed by how teaching methods & technology now fail to give kids enough self-directed practice to master concepts. Our school system seems to heavily discourage homework and of course has no textbooks. So there’s no nightly homework to practice dividing fractions, and there’s no textbook to refer back to later on if a student needs a refresher. All the work is done via powerpoints and packets that the child never sees again.
Lastly the system seems to heavily discourage high-stakes tests (except the annual state assessment that the school has to spend weeks on, ha ha). So kids get no regular quizzes, there is no “big test on dividing fractions” that kids need to study for. While I get that some kids struggle with timed tests, tests are (used to be?) one main structure for students to understand what they need to know and study to get to that point. Especially if there are practice tests.
posted by haptic_avenger at 5:38 AM on December 6, 2023 [21 favorites]
Case in point: dividing fractions. My son missed the lesson so I had to teach him. All of the emphasis was on using tape diagrams to visually show how to understand a fraction of a fraction. Honestly I did not understand at first and it WAS kind of fun to work my way through it and I actually did end up understanding the concept in a new way. But my kid did not exit that lesson with a firm grasp on dividing fractions using the “mathematical” approach (invert and multiply.) Because all the lesson time was spent on “tape diagrams” and none on the practice and repetition of the standard method - or even enough repetition to even get the tape diagrams down cold. And of course nobody is ever going to draw a tape diagram to divide fractions in the real world when they need to understand quantities.
Besides focusing on the wrong thing, I am also perplexed by how teaching methods & technology now fail to give kids enough self-directed practice to master concepts. Our school system seems to heavily discourage homework and of course has no textbooks. So there’s no nightly homework to practice dividing fractions, and there’s no textbook to refer back to later on if a student needs a refresher. All the work is done via powerpoints and packets that the child never sees again.
Lastly the system seems to heavily discourage high-stakes tests (except the annual state assessment that the school has to spend weeks on, ha ha). So kids get no regular quizzes, there is no “big test on dividing fractions” that kids need to study for. While I get that some kids struggle with timed tests, tests are (used to be?) one main structure for students to understand what they need to know and study to get to that point. Especially if there are practice tests.
posted by haptic_avenger at 5:38 AM on December 6, 2023 [21 favorites]
almost no ability to make educated guesses about anything past what is explicitly spelled out on the page for them
I wonder how much this has to do with the much-lamented loss of child independence and free time? I have to be pretty deliberate to give my 11 year old time to fend for himself. Right now that mainly means accepting that when I make him get his own lunch, he will go to the corner store and buy a can of Chef Boyardee …
posted by haptic_avenger at 5:43 AM on December 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
I wonder how much this has to do with the much-lamented loss of child independence and free time? I have to be pretty deliberate to give my 11 year old time to fend for himself. Right now that mainly means accepting that when I make him get his own lunch, he will go to the corner store and buy a can of Chef Boyardee …
posted by haptic_avenger at 5:43 AM on December 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
Parent of a teenager. They are in an advanced math class and routinely see kids cheating on tests with their phones. Their previous school tried a trial period of confiscating phones and the kids were so shitty about it due to psychological withdrawal the teachers ended up not enforcing the ban. Current school has no policy and the math teacher emphatically does not care - they told us in a meeting "If they want to cheat, they're only hurting themselves". OK but it's plainly telling my kid and others that the institution doesn't care and cheating is the way to get ahead.
posted by xthlc at 5:45 AM on December 6, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by xthlc at 5:45 AM on December 6, 2023 [13 favorites]
It would be nice to have the math data going back longer. Does it correlate to the use of calculators, or introduction of certain teaching methods, no child left behind, or something else?
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:47 AM on December 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:47 AM on December 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
I have teacher friends at every level of schooling from early childhood to university undergraduate, and all of them save those working with very young children tell me some sort of variation on the same thing; education has become a transaction, and in the minds of students, teachers and administrators it's the teacher's "job" to make sure every student walks away with a mark they're happy with, whether they actually learned anything or not.
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:06 AM on December 6, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:06 AM on December 6, 2023 [11 favorites]
Parent of a teenager. They are in an advanced math class and routinely see kids cheating on tests with their phones. Their previous school tried a trial period of confiscating phones and the kids were so shitty about it due to psychological withdrawal the teachers ended up not enforcing the ban. Current school has no policy and the math teacher emphatically does not care - they told us in a meeting "If they want to cheat, they're only hurting themselves". OK but it's plainly telling my kid and others that the institution doesn't care and cheating is the way to get ahead.
Those kids might have a great future as MBAs. When I was in grad school, I had to take a stats class; you could pick any stats class taught around the university since so many departments offered them. I randomly picked one that turned out to be the class that all the business students took, all of whom openly cheated during the final. There is no way the professor and the TAs weren't aware given how blatant it was, it seemed like just an expected thing with them.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:24 AM on December 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
Those kids might have a great future as MBAs. When I was in grad school, I had to take a stats class; you could pick any stats class taught around the university since so many departments offered them. I randomly picked one that turned out to be the class that all the business students took, all of whom openly cheated during the final. There is no way the professor and the TAs weren't aware given how blatant it was, it seemed like just an expected thing with them.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:24 AM on December 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
I think we’re seeing the first generation whose parents were phone-addicted. To be four years old and everyone around you is just looking into screens all day long … what does it do?
posted by argybarg at 6:34 AM on December 6, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by argybarg at 6:34 AM on December 6, 2023 [12 favorites]
Am university professor and parent of teenagers. So, lived experience, not research, here. Take it with a grain of salt.
The quality of college students has absolutely dropped like a rock over the last few years. It's really, really bad: inability to follow instructions; inability to meet deadlines; inability to figure things out on the fly or try anything new. Extreme risk-adversity. Complete and total inability to stay off their phones. Really lacking in basic academic skills. My gods, the cheating. Emotional oversharing. Cannot write complete sentences, let alone paragraphs. Every last one of them has been convinced by Tumblr and other social media that they are mentally dysfunctional.
With respect to my teens, they didn't learn a goddamn thing during virtual "school" in the quarantine days. My now-15yo went from perfect grades in virtual school to a 2.6 in the live eighth grade, because she'd both got used to not doing any work and also didn't have the background skills: she bombed algebra because she had no idea how to deal with exponents, multiplying/dividing fractions, and all the other basic skills she should have learned in 6th/7th grade. Teens also constantly on phones, constantly cheating, also unanimously convinced they are so mentally ill as in need of institutionalization, or what my daughter calls a "grippy sock vacation". I've had to be on her ass, to the extent of being called a "fascist", AND bribing her, and things have stabilized quite well and she's back to a 3.8 and is now taking some initiative on her own to do well, so fingers crossed that we're over that hump. But "I have to cheat in Spanish, because literally everyone else is running everything through Google Translate, so if I try to do it myself, I'll end up with the lowest grade."
Phones are a huge problem, but in no way the biggest problem. The real culprit is LACK OF CONSEQUENCES. Nobody is allowed to fail, to be held back, to have to repeat. No deadline can be enforced, because the teachers aren't allowed to have any reason for failing a kid. There's no accountability; if a teacher tries to enforce consequences, the parents will threaten lawsuits and/or the school administration will preëmpt it and let the kid pass anyway.
This is absolutely true at the university level, too. Our upper administration clearly states that everyone should graduate within five years and if they don't, it's the departments' or professors' fault. We're all tracked by a statistic called "DFW", D/Fail/Withdraw, and may the gods help you if you're in the top 20% of DFW rates, no matter how difficult your subject is or how shitty the students are. I'm a full professor, and tenured, and departmental leadership, and work in the college administration, so I have *some* privilege to enforce standards, but I've still been summoned to the provost's office to account for why I had a 15% DFW rate. That was pleasant. If you're a lecturer, not yet tenured, or gods forbid adjunct faculty, you're going to give everyone a passing grade, all so the university president can preen about our graduation statistics and rising numbers in those bullshit US News rankings.
TLDR: the entire system is corrupt from top to bottom. We're just credentialing people, not educating them at all.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 6:42 AM on December 6, 2023 [41 favorites]
The quality of college students has absolutely dropped like a rock over the last few years. It's really, really bad: inability to follow instructions; inability to meet deadlines; inability to figure things out on the fly or try anything new. Extreme risk-adversity. Complete and total inability to stay off their phones. Really lacking in basic academic skills. My gods, the cheating. Emotional oversharing. Cannot write complete sentences, let alone paragraphs. Every last one of them has been convinced by Tumblr and other social media that they are mentally dysfunctional.
With respect to my teens, they didn't learn a goddamn thing during virtual "school" in the quarantine days. My now-15yo went from perfect grades in virtual school to a 2.6 in the live eighth grade, because she'd both got used to not doing any work and also didn't have the background skills: she bombed algebra because she had no idea how to deal with exponents, multiplying/dividing fractions, and all the other basic skills she should have learned in 6th/7th grade. Teens also constantly on phones, constantly cheating, also unanimously convinced they are so mentally ill as in need of institutionalization, or what my daughter calls a "grippy sock vacation". I've had to be on her ass, to the extent of being called a "fascist", AND bribing her, and things have stabilized quite well and she's back to a 3.8 and is now taking some initiative on her own to do well, so fingers crossed that we're over that hump. But "I have to cheat in Spanish, because literally everyone else is running everything through Google Translate, so if I try to do it myself, I'll end up with the lowest grade."
Phones are a huge problem, but in no way the biggest problem. The real culprit is LACK OF CONSEQUENCES. Nobody is allowed to fail, to be held back, to have to repeat. No deadline can be enforced, because the teachers aren't allowed to have any reason for failing a kid. There's no accountability; if a teacher tries to enforce consequences, the parents will threaten lawsuits and/or the school administration will preëmpt it and let the kid pass anyway.
This is absolutely true at the university level, too. Our upper administration clearly states that everyone should graduate within five years and if they don't, it's the departments' or professors' fault. We're all tracked by a statistic called "DFW", D/Fail/Withdraw, and may the gods help you if you're in the top 20% of DFW rates, no matter how difficult your subject is or how shitty the students are. I'm a full professor, and tenured, and departmental leadership, and work in the college administration, so I have *some* privilege to enforce standards, but I've still been summoned to the provost's office to account for why I had a 15% DFW rate. That was pleasant. If you're a lecturer, not yet tenured, or gods forbid adjunct faculty, you're going to give everyone a passing grade, all so the university president can preen about our graduation statistics and rising numbers in those bullshit US News rankings.
TLDR: the entire system is corrupt from top to bottom. We're just credentialing people, not educating them at all.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 6:42 AM on December 6, 2023 [41 favorites]
The real culprit is LACK OF CONSEQUENCES. Nobody is allowed to fail, to be held back, to have to repeat. No deadline can be enforced, because the teachers aren't allowed to have any reason for failing a kid. There's no accountability; if a teacher tries to enforce consequences, the parents will threaten lawsuits and/or the school administration will preëmpt it and let the kid pass anyway.
outgrown_hobnail, this definitely nails what's been happening in my sister's kids lives. The eldest is in danger of flunking out of her freshman year in high school--haphazard with assignments, lax with attendance--and my sister went to bat for her, working alongside the school counselor, to ensure that she doesn't fail and can join her friends next year as a sophomore. (There were no threats of lawsuits, just a genuine concern that her daughter would feel the social sting of being a grade behind due to her own behaviour.) And guess what? Despite all the work her mom put in to help her get caught up, she's falling behind again and blames everyone else but herself for this situation. My sister is heartbroken but she's like, "Do I bother doing this again? Going to the school for help? Especially when she doesn't care?"
(note: the kid has a lot of advantages in her youth that I didn't when I was growing up in terms of her mom helping her navigate her mental health.)
posted by Kitteh at 7:09 AM on December 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
outgrown_hobnail, this definitely nails what's been happening in my sister's kids lives. The eldest is in danger of flunking out of her freshman year in high school--haphazard with assignments, lax with attendance--and my sister went to bat for her, working alongside the school counselor, to ensure that she doesn't fail and can join her friends next year as a sophomore. (There were no threats of lawsuits, just a genuine concern that her daughter would feel the social sting of being a grade behind due to her own behaviour.) And guess what? Despite all the work her mom put in to help her get caught up, she's falling behind again and blames everyone else but herself for this situation. My sister is heartbroken but she's like, "Do I bother doing this again? Going to the school for help? Especially when she doesn't care?"
(note: the kid has a lot of advantages in her youth that I didn't when I was growing up in terms of her mom helping her navigate her mental health.)
posted by Kitteh at 7:09 AM on December 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
The study also finds that the availability of teachers to help students in need had the strongest relationship to maths performance across the OECD. Maths scores were 15 points higher on average in places where students agreed they had good access to teachers’ support. These students were also more confident than their peers to learn autonomously and remotely. Despite this, only one in five students overall reported having received extra help from teachers in some lessons in 2022. Around eight percent never or almost never received additional support.
Y’all. Like everything else, advancing capitalism and decreasing resources for public goods such as adequate number of teachers and teacher aids, with educators being paid sufficiently that they can focus on doing a good job rather than merely babysitting kids during the day and getting further exhausted by working a second job after school hours, is more of a factor here that your personal moral panic hobby horse. Students’ lives and their families are also materially less secure, which has a well-studied negative impact on a variety of mental (as well as physical) health factors including anxiety, comfort with risk-taking, ability to concentrate, and even how and how well the brain forms connections and long-term memory. (There’s also strong research showing impact of social media environments on many of these factors as well; that it seems to be contributing to the lack of security or stability that students (and their parents) feel, for example.)
When I was in grad school, folks were generally pretty suspicious about conclusions from education research - largely because it wasn’t a hard science, and didn’t support their preconceptions based on their own educational experiences (we’re of course talking about the people who happened to excel under whatever system they grew up with). But the common observation that has also been born out by research (including a couple of the links cited in the fpp) was that any new educational innovation was successful in initial research merely because students were getting more attention.
Increased support and attention from educators has also been linked with less cheating by students. In addition to feeling better supported leading to students’ feeling less need to cheat, there’s also the social pressure of feeling like they would be disappointing a specific person who they have a relationship with rather than it being a bit more faceless/victimless-feeling activity for students. And educators who are familiar with individual students’ work and abilities will be better able to detect unusual, outlier test results that are indicative of student cheating (with students also aware of this increased risk to cheating).
posted by eviemath at 7:30 AM on December 6, 2023 [35 favorites]
Y’all. Like everything else, advancing capitalism and decreasing resources for public goods such as adequate number of teachers and teacher aids, with educators being paid sufficiently that they can focus on doing a good job rather than merely babysitting kids during the day and getting further exhausted by working a second job after school hours, is more of a factor here that your personal moral panic hobby horse. Students’ lives and their families are also materially less secure, which has a well-studied negative impact on a variety of mental (as well as physical) health factors including anxiety, comfort with risk-taking, ability to concentrate, and even how and how well the brain forms connections and long-term memory. (There’s also strong research showing impact of social media environments on many of these factors as well; that it seems to be contributing to the lack of security or stability that students (and their parents) feel, for example.)
When I was in grad school, folks were generally pretty suspicious about conclusions from education research - largely because it wasn’t a hard science, and didn’t support their preconceptions based on their own educational experiences (we’re of course talking about the people who happened to excel under whatever system they grew up with). But the common observation that has also been born out by research (including a couple of the links cited in the fpp) was that any new educational innovation was successful in initial research merely because students were getting more attention.
Increased support and attention from educators has also been linked with less cheating by students. In addition to feeling better supported leading to students’ feeling less need to cheat, there’s also the social pressure of feeling like they would be disappointing a specific person who they have a relationship with rather than it being a bit more faceless/victimless-feeling activity for students. And educators who are familiar with individual students’ work and abilities will be better able to detect unusual, outlier test results that are indicative of student cheating (with students also aware of this increased risk to cheating).
posted by eviemath at 7:30 AM on December 6, 2023 [35 favorites]
(And also, my personal opinion is that the grade school math curricula I’ve seen are over-packed, leaving insufficient time for students to both get sufficient practice and spend enough time to develop strong conceptual understanding. Parents, my fellow university instructors, employers, random internet commenters, etc. getting outraged that this or that specific thing they remember from their school is not being taught, but not looking at the curriculum as a whole and how everything fits together, is in my personal opinion one of the major reasons for this. But I haven’t seen any data on this issue that would either back up or disprove my personal impressions.)
posted by eviemath at 7:36 AM on December 6, 2023 [14 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 7:36 AM on December 6, 2023 [14 favorites]
It doesn't help, either, that COVID was misleadingly labeled as "harmless to children" for so long, even though it's been proven to damage the brain regardless of age, sometimes catastrophically and (even in the womb). Some of the most common long-lasting symptoms are brain fog and the inability to concentrate or problem-solve, which are crucial for school.
Here's a good introduction to the topic from 2022: How COVID 19 Can Affect Your Child's Brain.
posted by foxtongue at 7:36 AM on December 6, 2023 [15 favorites]
Here's a good introduction to the topic from 2022: How COVID 19 Can Affect Your Child's Brain.
posted by foxtongue at 7:36 AM on December 6, 2023 [15 favorites]
Anecdotally, teaching first-year college students this year doesn't feel any different than it ever has. In fact, their writing, and even more so, their ability to read carefully, is stronger than I had anticipated. That said, UW-Madison, where I teach, is a pretty selective instiitution and I am by no means seeing the academic median of the high school class of 2023 in my classroom.
posted by escabeche at 7:42 AM on December 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by escabeche at 7:42 AM on December 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
This paper has the lovely phrase that "PISA scores seem to function like a kind of IQ-test on school systems. A most complex issue is reduced to simple numbers that may be ranked with high accuracy"
posted by idb at 7:48 AM on December 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by idb at 7:48 AM on December 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
Anecdotally, teaching first-year college students this year doesn't feel any different than it ever has. In fact, their writing, and even more so, their ability to read carefully, is stronger than I had anticipated. That said, UW-Madison, where I teach, is a pretty selective instiitution and I am by no means seeing the academic median of the high school class of 2023 in my classroom.
I wonder: how much of what people are seeing is just "why bother working too hard all the time, there's no way I'm getting into a top school". Top schools haven't increased their enrollment size. If I was a youth I'd just be like, "I'm just gonna coast and go the the local state school, no need to bust my ass for something that's closed off to me"
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:55 AM on December 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
I wonder: how much of what people are seeing is just "why bother working too hard all the time, there's no way I'm getting into a top school". Top schools haven't increased their enrollment size. If I was a youth I'd just be like, "I'm just gonna coast and go the the local state school, no need to bust my ass for something that's closed off to me"
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:55 AM on December 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
In the meantime, the math and reading skills of generative pre-trained transformers keep increasing.
posted by The Half Language Plant at 8:05 AM on December 6, 2023
posted by The Half Language Plant at 8:05 AM on December 6, 2023
I feel like I am a cliche, but the way math is taught “these days” seems far too invested in the cleverness of curriculum designers and reaching a very adult-led goal of “understanding the concept” as opposed to really learning math facts.
This is completely true, as also a parent of kids in school. And I got in an argument with a guy about the pre-SAT - "people spend a lot of time thinking through these questions" when a preSAT formula only worked for a tiny subset of data and then went impossibly negative. My opinion: " no they did not spend a lot of time thinking about that question", and Google Classroom is even worse. Word problems are so terrible from a logic perspective. It's just people trying to be clever and tricky.
They also teach basic math in so many different ways to do the same thing, there's no time to 'soak' on a method and get kind of good at it. Today is number lines, tomorrow is blocks, next day is estimations for Singapore Math, next day is blah blah blah.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:16 AM on December 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
This is completely true, as also a parent of kids in school. And I got in an argument with a guy about the pre-SAT - "people spend a lot of time thinking through these questions" when a preSAT formula only worked for a tiny subset of data and then went impossibly negative. My opinion: " no they did not spend a lot of time thinking about that question", and Google Classroom is even worse. Word problems are so terrible from a logic perspective. It's just people trying to be clever and tricky.
They also teach basic math in so many different ways to do the same thing, there's no time to 'soak' on a method and get kind of good at it. Today is number lines, tomorrow is blocks, next day is estimations for Singapore Math, next day is blah blah blah.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:16 AM on December 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
We live in a time when succeeding in life usually involves gaming the system, so it’s not surprising to me that teens expect to know the rules of the game. Bellyaching from adults about how teens lack innovative thinking or curiosity falls flat with me for this reason. It feels like:
Adults: teens, jump
Teens: how high?
Adults: your inability to figure that out for yourself is incredibly disappointing
I have two teens in city public schools and overall I’m happy with their education. Is it perfect? No, but it seems roughly on par with my suburban 90’s high school education. Their school has turned out a lot of bright and thoughtful kids from different backgrounds and many of them are wiser than I or my peer group were as teens.
It’s fine to get doom and gloom if it spurs people into action, but it often seems to have the opposite result and foments hopeless inaction. If your opinion is basically, ‘everything if fucked,’ that’s fine, but then I also think you should step aside for others to make change.
Anyway, I believe the children are our future.
posted by scantee at 8:17 AM on December 6, 2023 [17 favorites]
Adults: teens, jump
Teens: how high?
Adults: your inability to figure that out for yourself is incredibly disappointing
I have two teens in city public schools and overall I’m happy with their education. Is it perfect? No, but it seems roughly on par with my suburban 90’s high school education. Their school has turned out a lot of bright and thoughtful kids from different backgrounds and many of them are wiser than I or my peer group were as teens.
It’s fine to get doom and gloom if it spurs people into action, but it often seems to have the opposite result and foments hopeless inaction. If your opinion is basically, ‘everything if fucked,’ that’s fine, but then I also think you should step aside for others to make change.
Anyway, I believe the children are our future.
posted by scantee at 8:17 AM on December 6, 2023 [17 favorites]
(And also, my personal opinion is that the grade school math curricula I’ve seen are over-packed, leaving insufficient time for students to both get sufficient practice and spend enough time to develop strong conceptual understanding.
I did ok in math in school, ending with passing (though definitely not excelling at) calculus in college. But yes, this is how it felt for me the entire way from middle school onwards, with really fast jumps from topic to topic rather than giving me the time to really understand and get familiar with a topic. And I was an advanced student who did ok grasping the stuff pretty quickly; I am sure many of my classmates were simply left behind on the first day.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:26 AM on December 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
I did ok in math in school, ending with passing (though definitely not excelling at) calculus in college. But yes, this is how it felt for me the entire way from middle school onwards, with really fast jumps from topic to topic rather than giving me the time to really understand and get familiar with a topic. And I was an advanced student who did ok grasping the stuff pretty quickly; I am sure many of my classmates were simply left behind on the first day.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:26 AM on December 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
I feel like I am a cliche, but the way math is taught “these days” seems far too invested in the cleverness of curriculum designers and reaching a very adult-led goal of “understanding the concept” as opposed to really learning math facts.
My teen is also working with fractions right now, and I have to add to this chorus. Having to multiply/divide and reduce/simplify them just reveals like nothing else my kid's struggle to remember the multiplications tables, which are the root of knowing common denominators and factors and multiples, yadda yadda. I think it's such idiocy to push on with the concept-driven math teaching and it makes me really angry as a parent who has to help with the homework and worry about grades ultimately for university admisison.
almost no ability to make educated guesses about anything past what is explicitly spelled out on the page for them
I see that my teen just isn't engaging with the world the way we used to. She's not nearby as we watch the news in the evening, spends most of her time in her room on her phone. She doesn't go out with her friends - they interact all the time, but it's via the phones. They trade memes. Their culture is so meme-based. It's something I think about a lot. Taking phones away more often isn't going to solve this - if it even needs to be solved honestly because who are we to say that our kids' culture and way of being in the world is wrong. It's their culture and everything is steeped in it. The actions of a parent on an individual basis aren't going to change it. Anyhow, I'm not surprised that with fewer experiences in the world that reasoning skills are affected.
posted by kitcat at 8:32 AM on December 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
My teen is also working with fractions right now, and I have to add to this chorus. Having to multiply/divide and reduce/simplify them just reveals like nothing else my kid's struggle to remember the multiplications tables, which are the root of knowing common denominators and factors and multiples, yadda yadda. I think it's such idiocy to push on with the concept-driven math teaching and it makes me really angry as a parent who has to help with the homework and worry about grades ultimately for university admisison.
almost no ability to make educated guesses about anything past what is explicitly spelled out on the page for them
I see that my teen just isn't engaging with the world the way we used to. She's not nearby as we watch the news in the evening, spends most of her time in her room on her phone. She doesn't go out with her friends - they interact all the time, but it's via the phones. They trade memes. Their culture is so meme-based. It's something I think about a lot. Taking phones away more often isn't going to solve this - if it even needs to be solved honestly because who are we to say that our kids' culture and way of being in the world is wrong. It's their culture and everything is steeped in it. The actions of a parent on an individual basis aren't going to change it. Anyhow, I'm not surprised that with fewer experiences in the world that reasoning skills are affected.
posted by kitcat at 8:32 AM on December 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
The quality of college students has absolutely dropped like a rock over the last few years.
...
If I was a youth I'd just be like, "I'm just gonna coast and go the the local state school, no need to bust my ass for something that's closed off to me"
I teach at one of the SUNY Buffaloses (UB, not Buff State) and while yeah, sure, UB is more selective than Buff State or Fredonia it's not like *selective* selective and I haven't seen much of this. Students are about the same as they were before, and I still don't have anything like that the long tail of students utterly unequipped to do college that I dealt with when I was at UNT. Praise NY K12 education! Praise be to high schools that are bigger than their football stadiums!
The little bit that I have seen I attribute to our intro to American politics going onto the menu of courses that satisfy SUNY gen-ed requirements, so I have a lot more students just checking off a box than I used to. Even that is also way the fuck better than it was in TX, where every student was required by law to take it.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:42 AM on December 6, 2023 [10 favorites]
...
If I was a youth I'd just be like, "I'm just gonna coast and go the the local state school, no need to bust my ass for something that's closed off to me"
I teach at one of the SUNY Buffaloses (UB, not Buff State) and while yeah, sure, UB is more selective than Buff State or Fredonia it's not like *selective* selective and I haven't seen much of this. Students are about the same as they were before, and I still don't have anything like that the long tail of students utterly unequipped to do college that I dealt with when I was at UNT. Praise NY K12 education! Praise be to high schools that are bigger than their football stadiums!
The little bit that I have seen I attribute to our intro to American politics going onto the menu of courses that satisfy SUNY gen-ed requirements, so I have a lot more students just checking off a box than I used to. Even that is also way the fuck better than it was in TX, where every student was required by law to take it.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:42 AM on December 6, 2023 [10 favorites]
On the topic of (college) kids these days, this NYTimes article yesterday about grade inflation at Yale seems relevant.
Grade point averages have been rising, too. Yale’s average G.P.A. was 3.7 last year, compared to 3.6 in 2013-14, the report found. In 1998-99, Yale’s average G.P.A. was 3.42, according to a 2013 report on grade inflation.
The sharp post-pandemic spike in grades is not unique to Yale. At Harvard, 79 percent of all grades given to undergraduates in the 2020-21 year were also A’s or A minuses. A decade earlier, that figure was 60 percent. In 2020-21, the average G.P.A. was 3.8, compared to 3.41 in 2002-3.
“Grades are like any currency,” said Stuart Rojstaczer, a retired Duke University professor who tracks grade inflation: They tend to increase over time.
It’s not just elite schools. G.P.A.s have been increasing at colleges nationwide by about 0.1 per decade since the early 1980s, he said.
Private colleges tend to have higher average G.P.A.s than public schools, Dr. Rojstaczer said. In 2013, the average public school G.P.A. was about 3.1, compared to 3.3 to 3.4 at private schools. Yale’s and Harvard’s averages are even higher.
“They are actively championing their students by giving them higher grades than the national average,” he said, of elite schools. “They want their students to have a competitive edge.”
posted by Dip Flash at 8:46 AM on December 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
Grade point averages have been rising, too. Yale’s average G.P.A. was 3.7 last year, compared to 3.6 in 2013-14, the report found. In 1998-99, Yale’s average G.P.A. was 3.42, according to a 2013 report on grade inflation.
The sharp post-pandemic spike in grades is not unique to Yale. At Harvard, 79 percent of all grades given to undergraduates in the 2020-21 year were also A’s or A minuses. A decade earlier, that figure was 60 percent. In 2020-21, the average G.P.A. was 3.8, compared to 3.41 in 2002-3.
“Grades are like any currency,” said Stuart Rojstaczer, a retired Duke University professor who tracks grade inflation: They tend to increase over time.
It’s not just elite schools. G.P.A.s have been increasing at colleges nationwide by about 0.1 per decade since the early 1980s, he said.
Private colleges tend to have higher average G.P.A.s than public schools, Dr. Rojstaczer said. In 2013, the average public school G.P.A. was about 3.1, compared to 3.3 to 3.4 at private schools. Yale’s and Harvard’s averages are even higher.
“They are actively championing their students by giving them higher grades than the national average,” he said, of elite schools. “They want their students to have a competitive edge.”
posted by Dip Flash at 8:46 AM on December 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
If your opinion is basically, ‘everything if fucked,’ that’s fine, but then I also think you should step aside for others to make change.
Duly noted. Personally, I'm going to stick with "using my position of comparative privilege to bring attention to the problem".
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 8:48 AM on December 6, 2023
Duly noted. Personally, I'm going to stick with "using my position of comparative privilege to bring attention to the problem".
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 8:48 AM on December 6, 2023
Anecdotally, the experience of teaching undergrads has changed dramatically in the past couple of years, including in ways that seem specifically to do with How The Students Are, but I'm hesitant to guess at causes because there are way too many variables. I will say that
almost no ability to make educated guesses about anything past what is explicitly spelled out on the page for them.
along with a previously unfamiliar attitude of aggressive pedantry (as a defence mechanism) does seem much more salient even compared to, say, two years ago. Defenses are activated by default and communication involves more static on average. I don't think that's incompatible with what seems like the important background:
advancing capitalism and decreasing resources for public goods such as adequate number of teachers and teacher aids, with educators being paid sufficiently that they can focus on doing a good job rather than merely babysitting kids during the day and getting further exhausted by working a second job after school hours, is more of a factor here that your personal moral panic hobby horse.
Covid surely plays a role, too, but part of that role may well be my own social skills atrophying in some subtle way that makes certain types of interactions with students more fraught, etc. In any event, the question is what got accelerated/amplified by covid; "covid caused the Thing With The Students" is too imprecise.
At my institution, there are too many systemic factors, mostly stemming from the UK's terrible experiment in marketised tertiary education, to make me feel comfortable speculating about why the 2019 cohort generally gave the vibe that the future is in excellent hands and the 2022 cohort largely make me want to hold office hours somewhere where my back isn't to the wall. But: whatever happened either happened fast or crossed the threshold of unmistakable perceptibility fast.
Anyway, good FPP, I'm just glad others have noticed something, too. Colleagues either don't want to talk about it, or they have ableist or old-man-yells-at-cloud explanations that seem off the mark. But something really unsettling happened.
posted by busted_crayons at 8:49 AM on December 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
almost no ability to make educated guesses about anything past what is explicitly spelled out on the page for them.
along with a previously unfamiliar attitude of aggressive pedantry (as a defence mechanism) does seem much more salient even compared to, say, two years ago. Defenses are activated by default and communication involves more static on average. I don't think that's incompatible with what seems like the important background:
advancing capitalism and decreasing resources for public goods such as adequate number of teachers and teacher aids, with educators being paid sufficiently that they can focus on doing a good job rather than merely babysitting kids during the day and getting further exhausted by working a second job after school hours, is more of a factor here that your personal moral panic hobby horse.
Covid surely plays a role, too, but part of that role may well be my own social skills atrophying in some subtle way that makes certain types of interactions with students more fraught, etc. In any event, the question is what got accelerated/amplified by covid; "covid caused the Thing With The Students" is too imprecise.
At my institution, there are too many systemic factors, mostly stemming from the UK's terrible experiment in marketised tertiary education, to make me feel comfortable speculating about why the 2019 cohort generally gave the vibe that the future is in excellent hands and the 2022 cohort largely make me want to hold office hours somewhere where my back isn't to the wall. But: whatever happened either happened fast or crossed the threshold of unmistakable perceptibility fast.
Anyway, good FPP, I'm just glad others have noticed something, too. Colleagues either don't want to talk about it, or they have ableist or old-man-yells-at-cloud explanations that seem off the mark. But something really unsettling happened.
posted by busted_crayons at 8:49 AM on December 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
I’m a middle-aged guy with a liberal arts bachelors from a highly selective institution currently taking undergrad math and science classes at a local state school.
The younger students who experienced COVID in high school and early college missed out on a lot of basic skills like how to ask questions during class or forming a study group. Every study group in my calculus classes has been formed by someone in their late 20s or older. But the younger students are also excellent at integrating digital tools like Wolfram Alpha into their math studying workflow.
Sure, there is apathy and credential-focused bad behavior, but no more than I saw 20 years ago among a more selective (I.e. richer, not smarter) cohort.
TL;DR everything eviemath said is correct.
posted by Headfullofair at 9:01 AM on December 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
The younger students who experienced COVID in high school and early college missed out on a lot of basic skills like how to ask questions during class or forming a study group. Every study group in my calculus classes has been formed by someone in their late 20s or older. But the younger students are also excellent at integrating digital tools like Wolfram Alpha into their math studying workflow.
Sure, there is apathy and credential-focused bad behavior, but no more than I saw 20 years ago among a more selective (I.e. richer, not smarter) cohort.
TL;DR everything eviemath said is correct.
posted by Headfullofair at 9:01 AM on December 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
> Taking phones away more often isn't going to solve this - if it even needs to be solved honestly because who are we to say that our kids' culture and way of being in the world is wrong. It's their culture and everything is steeped in it.
Sometimes I feel like the guy in I Am Legend.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:35 AM on December 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
Sometimes I feel like the guy in I Am Legend.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:35 AM on December 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
We live in a time when succeeding in life usually involves gaming the system
My college-student nieces live this out before my eyes. Actual learning might occur, but if so, it's kind of by accident. Their focus is on, "What do I need to do to get to the next level?" And as long as they get there by some means, they are satisfied. When exams come, they cram like crazy and try to hold it in their head long enough to pass. Graduation is just the final boss level. If a class requires them to really think, or build on what was taught in the past, they struggle mightily.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 9:59 AM on December 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
My college-student nieces live this out before my eyes. Actual learning might occur, but if so, it's kind of by accident. Their focus is on, "What do I need to do to get to the next level?" And as long as they get there by some means, they are satisfied. When exams come, they cram like crazy and try to hold it in their head long enough to pass. Graduation is just the final boss level. If a class requires them to really think, or build on what was taught in the past, they struggle mightily.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 9:59 AM on December 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
Mod note: One comment deleted. Calling other people stupid goes against our Content Policy as it is both ableist and name calling.
posted by loup (staff) at 10:39 AM on December 6, 2023
posted by loup (staff) at 10:39 AM on December 6, 2023
I work with children and teens in my job, and I've heard a number of complaints from middle and high-school students about having teachers who know nothing about the subjects they're teaching (e.g. a home ec teacher assigned to teach Spanish, a language arts teacher assigned to teach high school math), so they have to teach themselves. Rural districts are having a big problem recruiting and retaining teachers, and students are suffering the consequences even in core subjects. I'm sure students are reflecting the effects of COVID in their work habits and expectations, but I think it's also worth remembering that many educators quit/retired rather than continue dealing with the unreasonable expectations in education and COVID on top of it, and they haven't been replaced with experienced and skilled counterparts.
posted by epj at 10:42 AM on December 6, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by epj at 10:42 AM on December 6, 2023 [10 favorites]
Rhaomi, +1 on the post title!
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 10:47 AM on December 6, 2023
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 10:47 AM on December 6, 2023
That's not what it says, though: "White dots indicate mean-performance estimates that are not statistically significantly above/below PISA 2022 estimates" - that is to say, they indicate which previous years' data points are not statistically different from this years data point for this particular subject and this particular country.
Okay, that's a more understandable interpretation than my post-midnight read. I'd still enjoy seeing a standard deviation attached to those means.
How are you going from “these error bars are wide” (which is a function of the sample size) to “this data is too noisy”?
My mistaken interpretation above was interpreting the gap between US test scores and global averages as the error being measured when a circle is filled or not.
Side note: Standard error is a function of sample size and of the variance in the underlying population, right? Obviously I can't know how much each contributes. But by "data" I meant the aggregate datapoints shown, and don't have a better grasp of the precise language to use to distinguish what I think you mean.
Side side note: apparently half the schools they surveyed in the US did not participate, and the total US test taking population was 4,552 15 year old students. This doesn't match their criteria for paper or computer based testing, so I'm not sure why the US isn't called out with an asterisk, for not meeting sample size and quality benchmarks.
posted by pwnguin at 11:08 AM on December 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
Okay, that's a more understandable interpretation than my post-midnight read. I'd still enjoy seeing a standard deviation attached to those means.
How are you going from “these error bars are wide” (which is a function of the sample size) to “this data is too noisy”?
My mistaken interpretation above was interpreting the gap between US test scores and global averages as the error being measured when a circle is filled or not.
Side note: Standard error is a function of sample size and of the variance in the underlying population, right? Obviously I can't know how much each contributes. But by "data" I meant the aggregate datapoints shown, and don't have a better grasp of the precise language to use to distinguish what I think you mean.
Side side note: apparently half the schools they surveyed in the US did not participate, and the total US test taking population was 4,552 15 year old students. This doesn't match their criteria for paper or computer based testing, so I'm not sure why the US isn't called out with an asterisk, for not meeting sample size and quality benchmarks.
posted by pwnguin at 11:08 AM on December 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
The PISA results along with the recent meta-study on teen social media use paint a pretty convincing picture that we need to get kids off their phones as much as possible. Likely we need to get their parents off them too both for their own sake and for the sake of their kids.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:10 AM on December 6, 2023
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:10 AM on December 6, 2023
It's almost like the online world is the real world for them, and everything else is a pale shadow.
Hyperreality has fully arrived.
posted by LooseFilter at 11:20 AM on December 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
Hyperreality has fully arrived.
posted by LooseFilter at 11:20 AM on December 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
almost no ability to make educated guesses about anything past what is explicitly spelled out on the page for them
So, one of the features of math anxiety - that I assume extends to the interaction between anxiety and other academic areas - is that it causes people’s minds to go blank on approach to a problem. If they can get over the getting-started hump, they might be okay, but they don’t know how to get started. Unfortunately, anxiety is not compartmentalized, but anxiety in one area impacts anxiety in other areas - that is, other life stressors increase a student’s risk for or experience of math anxiety.
One of the reasons multiple reasoning approaches are now taught is to give students more options for getting started on a problem. If they only have one tool and it fails, they will demonstrate the described behavior. If they have multiple tools, they can problem solve (though choosing tools as part of the problem solving process is also a skill that needs to be taught and needs practice). The other reason is that students need to be more flexible with the different ways they think about basic math concepts in order to succeed at transition steps like the introduction of algebra, and then calculus - both of which study things that students learned about beforehand, but from a different enough viewpoint that these two courses have been significant hurdles for large numbers of students in the past.
Ideally students continue to practice their earlier skills too - the goal is the spiral model of learning. But that’s another area where over-full curricula can cause problems. Which, as noted above, is not helped by pressure from folks who don’t have the whole-curriculum overview.
posted by eviemath at 12:14 PM on December 6, 2023 [14 favorites]
So, one of the features of math anxiety - that I assume extends to the interaction between anxiety and other academic areas - is that it causes people’s minds to go blank on approach to a problem. If they can get over the getting-started hump, they might be okay, but they don’t know how to get started. Unfortunately, anxiety is not compartmentalized, but anxiety in one area impacts anxiety in other areas - that is, other life stressors increase a student’s risk for or experience of math anxiety.
One of the reasons multiple reasoning approaches are now taught is to give students more options for getting started on a problem. If they only have one tool and it fails, they will demonstrate the described behavior. If they have multiple tools, they can problem solve (though choosing tools as part of the problem solving process is also a skill that needs to be taught and needs practice). The other reason is that students need to be more flexible with the different ways they think about basic math concepts in order to succeed at transition steps like the introduction of algebra, and then calculus - both of which study things that students learned about beforehand, but from a different enough viewpoint that these two courses have been significant hurdles for large numbers of students in the past.
Ideally students continue to practice their earlier skills too - the goal is the spiral model of learning. But that’s another area where over-full curricula can cause problems. Which, as noted above, is not helped by pressure from folks who don’t have the whole-curriculum overview.
posted by eviemath at 12:14 PM on December 6, 2023 [14 favorites]
I feel like I am a cliche, but the way math is taught “these days” seems far too invested in the cleverness of curriculum designers and reaching a very adult-led goal of “understanding the concept” as opposed to really learning math facts. Some of the conceptual/inquiry-led stuff might be ok, but the plain truth is that they do not give kids enough practice and repetition to learn the basics.
I honestly think this is a chronic problem with elementary school math curricula. I remember being utterly baffled by the way arithmetic was taught to me in 2nd grade -- that would have been 1978-79. It was exactly as you described -- the creators of the curriculum seemed to think they were doing a good thing by trying to teach abstract concepts rather than simple, easy-to-understand, easy-to-perform processes that just work.
I'm all in favor of teaching high-level concepts to older kids, but younger kids need to be equipped with basic skills.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 2:51 PM on December 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
I honestly think this is a chronic problem with elementary school math curricula. I remember being utterly baffled by the way arithmetic was taught to me in 2nd grade -- that would have been 1978-79. It was exactly as you described -- the creators of the curriculum seemed to think they were doing a good thing by trying to teach abstract concepts rather than simple, easy-to-understand, easy-to-perform processes that just work.
I'm all in favor of teaching high-level concepts to older kids, but younger kids need to be equipped with basic skills.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 2:51 PM on December 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
My college-student nieces live this out before my eyes. Actual learning might occur, but if so, it's kind of by accident. Their focus is on, "What do I need to do to get to the next level?" And as long as they get there by some means, they are satisfied. When exams come, they cram like crazy and try to hold it in their head long enough to pass.
You're telling me you never did that in college? I sure did (back in the early '90s). Pretty sure that's been something college students have been doing since time immemorial.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 3:18 PM on December 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
You're telling me you never did that in college? I sure did (back in the early '90s). Pretty sure that's been something college students have been doing since time immemorial.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 3:18 PM on December 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
the creators of the curriculum seemed to think they were doing a good thing by trying to teach abstract concepts rather than simple, easy-to-understand, easy-to-perform processes that just work.
Algorithms. When I tell people who love math and who've gone on to have academic careers in math that using algorithms was the only way I could get through math, they seem almost sad. In high school I had a teacher who laid out the algorithms to solve all of the grade 11 and 12 math problems. They were presented as a numbered series of steps, and I memorized them. I had never been strong in math (I went on to study literature), but I did so well using this method that I took high school calculus with her just to see if I could do it (I could, using the algorithms).
Honestly there is a difference between understanding math and doing math. I believe the vast, vast majority of students will be made worse off with a curriculum that encourages them to understand something only a lucky subset of people can understand. They just need to learn to do it.
posted by kitcat at 3:41 PM on December 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
Algorithms. When I tell people who love math and who've gone on to have academic careers in math that using algorithms was the only way I could get through math, they seem almost sad. In high school I had a teacher who laid out the algorithms to solve all of the grade 11 and 12 math problems. They were presented as a numbered series of steps, and I memorized them. I had never been strong in math (I went on to study literature), but I did so well using this method that I took high school calculus with her just to see if I could do it (I could, using the algorithms).
Honestly there is a difference between understanding math and doing math. I believe the vast, vast majority of students will be made worse off with a curriculum that encourages them to understand something only a lucky subset of people can understand. They just need to learn to do it.
posted by kitcat at 3:41 PM on December 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
Regarding the cheating, one of the things our school did at the beginning of Covid was switch everything to Google Classrooms, which, fine. It did what we needed it to do, and has its uses. However, this year, I’ve had to go back to paper quizzes and exams because of the cheating going on in class. Other teachers doing writing courses have had to switch to in class paper based writing exams because students were just using translation programs or chat gpt to do their work for them.
posted by Ghidorah at 4:09 PM on December 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Ghidorah at 4:09 PM on December 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
Honestly there is a difference between understanding math and doing math.
That difference may be smaller than you assume: "Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them." -- von Neumann
posted by pwnguin at 4:29 PM on December 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
That difference may be smaller than you assume: "Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them." -- von Neumann
posted by pwnguin at 4:29 PM on December 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm all in favor of teaching high-level concepts to older kids, but younger kids need to be equipped with basic skills.
Not sure what you’re classifying as “high-level” concepts, but from my perspective, it’s not like elementary or middle school kids are getting taught arithmetic and fractions in the real, formal mathematical sense.
It’s really hard for most humans to memorize a completely random set of information - memorizing a poem in a language that we don’t speak, for example. Having some sort of understanding of what we are trying to memorize helps us create links between the different items to be memorized, and the more links, the better we are able to retrieve that information from our memory given different possible prompts. Students will form their own mental or conceptual models of what addition is or what multiplication is, etc., if they aren’t explicitly taught a model. But if they aren’t explicitly taught a model, they’ll end up with misconceptions or personal mental models that don’t work correctly when they try to extend them to the next thing they’re supposed to learn, impeding their learning.
Math also involves looking at things from multiple different perspectives. First you learn division; then you learn fractions, which are division but with a slightly different viewpoint; and ratios, which are fractions with a slightly different viewpoint; and proportions, which are ratios with a slightly different viewpoint; and percentages, which are proportions with yet another slightly different viewpoint. If students don’t have a habit of intellectual flexibility in looking at the basic arithmetic operations from different viewpoints, fractions, ratios, proportions, and percentages are going to be a confusing mess.
Under the old zero-concepts skill-and-drill math, fractions were a major hurdle for lots of people, even before algebra or calculus. Having no familiarity with basic math facts (using that in the education sense) is an impediment for students for continued learning. However, having some sort of conceptual model at each step is also necessary for students to be prepared to take the next step. You can’t entirely get rid of either component.
We may not directly focus on it at the time, but there is always a “why” behind every rule or algorithm or definition in math. I teach a pair of courses for students who want to enter an elementary education professional degree program (in Canada, you have to get an undergrad major in something else, then take an additional two-year education degree). The courses are for students who don’t have the prerequisites to take other university math courses to meet the math entrance requirements for the elementary education program. I also teach first-year calculus to math, science, and engineering majors. When they are focused on an immediate test or exam, the less confident students or those who are struggling more want to focus on memorizing a set of algorithms and facts. This is a quicker route to feeling like they at least know something. But generally when they have gaps or weaknesses in their background or prerequisite knowledge, it’s because they took this approach at an earlier stage and never developed a clear or perhaps accurate conceptual framework for what they memorized, so it didn’t stick and/or they can’t apply it outside of the very narrow context that they learned it in (eg. sometimes even if you just change the function or variables involved, even). That’s not useful for anything in the real world, or for furthering their education. When we work with students to help them learn stuff (going as far back as arithmetic with fractions or working with complex fractions - that’s a common area that students are weak in), we explain the why behind the algorithms, and students almost always say some variation of “oh, that’s simple, why wasn’t I taught that before?” And maybe they were, but weren’t quite ready for the concept, but it planted a seed that enabled them to understand at the later time. But students also still almost universally have some experience with a math teacher at some point who said “it just is, there is no why” when there was something they weren’t understanding back in elementary or middle school, which impeded their learning.
Further, although it’s still a problem when I see the students in university calculus, not understanding fractions (or, relatedly, ratios, proportions, or percentages) is a problem for students in algebra, and in one of the most common real-world applications of elementary mathematics. That’s the case for half the students in the courses for entry to the elementary education program, who are more typical of non-science or engineering majors. Unfortunately, such a widespread lack of solid mathematical understanding has real-world consequences in large numbers of people misunderstanding or not able to reason accurately about quantitative information such as climate change, pandemics and public health measures, network effects and emergent properties in social media, etc.
On top of the whole understanding fraction, ratios, proportions, and percentages issue, among the most useful real world applications of mathematics are the habits of logical reasoning and organized problem solving which even the most elementary mathematics is a natural and useful domain to use in teaching.
Not sure what you’re classifying as “high-level” concepts, but from my perspective, it’s not like elementary or middle school kids are getting taught arithmetic and fractions in the real, formal mathematical sense.
It’s really hard for most humans to memorize a completely random set of information - memorizing a poem in a language that we don’t speak, for example. Having some sort of understanding of what we are trying to memorize helps us create links between the different items to be memorized, and the more links, the better we are able to retrieve that information from our memory given different possible prompts. Students will form their own mental or conceptual models of what addition is or what multiplication is, etc., if they aren’t explicitly taught a model. But if they aren’t explicitly taught a model, they’ll end up with misconceptions or personal mental models that don’t work correctly when they try to extend them to the next thing they’re supposed to learn, impeding their learning.
Math also involves looking at things from multiple different perspectives. First you learn division; then you learn fractions, which are division but with a slightly different viewpoint; and ratios, which are fractions with a slightly different viewpoint; and proportions, which are ratios with a slightly different viewpoint; and percentages, which are proportions with yet another slightly different viewpoint. If students don’t have a habit of intellectual flexibility in looking at the basic arithmetic operations from different viewpoints, fractions, ratios, proportions, and percentages are going to be a confusing mess.
Under the old zero-concepts skill-and-drill math, fractions were a major hurdle for lots of people, even before algebra or calculus. Having no familiarity with basic math facts (using that in the education sense) is an impediment for students for continued learning. However, having some sort of conceptual model at each step is also necessary for students to be prepared to take the next step. You can’t entirely get rid of either component.
We may not directly focus on it at the time, but there is always a “why” behind every rule or algorithm or definition in math. I teach a pair of courses for students who want to enter an elementary education professional degree program (in Canada, you have to get an undergrad major in something else, then take an additional two-year education degree). The courses are for students who don’t have the prerequisites to take other university math courses to meet the math entrance requirements for the elementary education program. I also teach first-year calculus to math, science, and engineering majors. When they are focused on an immediate test or exam, the less confident students or those who are struggling more want to focus on memorizing a set of algorithms and facts. This is a quicker route to feeling like they at least know something. But generally when they have gaps or weaknesses in their background or prerequisite knowledge, it’s because they took this approach at an earlier stage and never developed a clear or perhaps accurate conceptual framework for what they memorized, so it didn’t stick and/or they can’t apply it outside of the very narrow context that they learned it in (eg. sometimes even if you just change the function or variables involved, even). That’s not useful for anything in the real world, or for furthering their education. When we work with students to help them learn stuff (going as far back as arithmetic with fractions or working with complex fractions - that’s a common area that students are weak in), we explain the why behind the algorithms, and students almost always say some variation of “oh, that’s simple, why wasn’t I taught that before?” And maybe they were, but weren’t quite ready for the concept, but it planted a seed that enabled them to understand at the later time. But students also still almost universally have some experience with a math teacher at some point who said “it just is, there is no why” when there was something they weren’t understanding back in elementary or middle school, which impeded their learning.
Further, although it’s still a problem when I see the students in university calculus, not understanding fractions (or, relatedly, ratios, proportions, or percentages) is a problem for students in algebra, and in one of the most common real-world applications of elementary mathematics. That’s the case for half the students in the courses for entry to the elementary education program, who are more typical of non-science or engineering majors. Unfortunately, such a widespread lack of solid mathematical understanding has real-world consequences in large numbers of people misunderstanding or not able to reason accurately about quantitative information such as climate change, pandemics and public health measures, network effects and emergent properties in social media, etc.
On top of the whole understanding fraction, ratios, proportions, and percentages issue, among the most useful real world applications of mathematics are the habits of logical reasoning and organized problem solving which even the most elementary mathematics is a natural and useful domain to use in teaching.
- Especially at this point with the ubiquity of calculators, simply being able to perform a calculation is essentially just a party trick. A fun party trick that I, personally, enjoy quite a lot. But the useful knowledge is knowing when to perform which calculations, and what the output is telling you. Yes, it’s really hard to learn that without having some familiarity with the process of the calculations. And the reason behind why the calculation steps are what they are relates to the when, what, and what does this tell me knowledge.
- Elementary students absolutely can, and should, understand some elementary reasoning such as “these couple examples I tried fit a pattern I’ve identified, but that doesn’t meant every example will necessarily fit the pattern unless I have a more general explanation”. They also can, and should, understand making a plan to solve a problem (as in Polya’s problem solving process), and the idea of using an alternate method to check their work. That means they need to know alternate solution methods, however.
- Mathematics, as a discipline, is about patterns: patterns in numbers, patterns in operations on numbers (i.e. algebra), patterns in geometric figures, patterns in problem-solving steps (i.e. algorithms), patterns in logical reasoning steps (i.e. mathematical proof).
- It’s a beautiful human endeavour and an art. And also the skills of pattern-finding and validation are broadly important and useful even beyond strictly mathematical domains. Familiarity with addition and multiplication tables is important and lack of familiarity can impede student learning, yes, but its importance is similar to learning the alphabet - if you are first taught that reading is about memorizing letter combinations without any meaning-formation, you’re missing the main point, and are unlikely to become an adept reader, nor to develop an appreciation for the beauty of language.
- Kids form opinions about academic subjects they see in school and learn habits of how to learn quite young. Correcting a misconception or re-training them if they develop less helpful habits (such as cramming for a test, or memorizing without understanding, or thinking they can learn a concept without reference to specific examples in the other extreme) is much harder than giving them a glimpse of the correct thing or teaching them more productive ways to learn initially. If you only focus on algorithms and memorization without understanding in the early years of math instruction, kids get the false idea that math isn’t creative, or isn’t fundamentally about reasoning and problem solving. Then they resist having those elements introduced later - or, as often happens, those elements are never actually formally introduced, just assumed at some point, which leaves students completely bewildered and struggling in their later math courses.
The River Ivel:
Here’s some ten year old criticism of the OECD education testing.
I wonder how this ten year old scored on their tests...
posted by shenkerism at 5:11 PM on December 6, 2023
Here’s some ten year old criticism of the OECD education testing.
I wonder how this ten year old scored on their tests...
posted by shenkerism at 5:11 PM on December 6, 2023
The last video on this page, “Progression of Addition and Subtraction”, gives a good explanation of some of the different conceptual models of addition and subtraction, so that we’re on the same page when we talk about concepts or conceptual models in elementary mathematics. It also shows a little bit about how they fit together, build on each other, and why having more than one conceptual model is important.
posted by eviemath at 5:12 PM on December 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 5:12 PM on December 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
“We will sleep through all the lectures
And cheat on the exams
And we’ll pass and be forgotten with the rest…”
-Tom Lehrer, circa 1950
Pretty Sure this has been going on for a while…
posted by tspae at 7:57 PM on December 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
And cheat on the exams
And we’ll pass and be forgotten with the rest…”
-Tom Lehrer, circa 1950
Pretty Sure this has been going on for a while…
posted by tspae at 7:57 PM on December 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
I feel like as a parent I would be more willing to support a cellphone ban if they created court like infrastructure like a cellphone locker at the front of school - you check your phone in at the beginning of day and can check it out at the end, rather than are required to leave the house without it.
posted by corb at 3:28 AM on December 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by corb at 3:28 AM on December 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
Here they're allowed to bring it with them, but basically if staff see it, it goes in a Yondr magnetically locked pouch until the end of the day. Staff never even touch the phone, in theory, because they're not excited to be held responsible for damages or privacy breaches.
That does vary though, implementation is up to individual schools.
posted by Audreynachrome at 4:15 AM on December 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
That does vary though, implementation is up to individual schools.
posted by Audreynachrome at 4:15 AM on December 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
corb, students at my school are allowed to have it with them until the beginning of homeroom, when they are collected by a teacher and placed in a locker in the classroom. They get it back at the end of the day homeroom session. Students who come to school late are supposed to give their phone to whichever teacher is in the class they arrive during.
Honestly, it's made things better, though students still have their laptops/tablets, which is its own challenge, but a lot more manageable.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:01 AM on December 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
Honestly, it's made things better, though students still have their laptops/tablets, which is its own challenge, but a lot more manageable.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:01 AM on December 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
This thread seems sorta surprisingly reactionary to me? "Kids these days are lazy. We should be more strict."
Context: I'm a PhD physicist (in industry) who sometimes moonlights as an adjunct professor. I hated math in elementary school, where I was very much taught by drilling on a specific algorithm for each type of problem, and tested with timed worksheets. I loved math in high school when we finally started to talk about why. My own kids are in elementary and middle school now getting a conceptual education that I envy.
Okay, and with that context, here are my unpopular opinions: Grades are dumb. They mostly measure tolerance for busywork. It's okay if they get inflated into meaninglessness because they were always kind of meaningless. Standardized tests are dumb too. They measure the ability to do well on standardized tests. No human will ever execute an algorithm as well as a computer, and the ability to understand how and why algorithms work is way more valuable than the ability to execute an algorithm with pen and paper. As for these OECD results... The kids will find ways to learn what they need to know, even if it's not exactly on the schedule adults planned. Lead them to water - don't try to make them drink. They'll take what they need if we offer it.
But also -- yeah, make them put away their cell phones as a part of their side of the bargain. Constant distraction is great if you are trapped in a miserable job, but not good for learning. And make them write their essays in class with pen and paper, because LLMs are just plagiarism machines. Flipped classrooms are great anyway - do the work when there's someone around to help in person, and listen to the lectures / read the textbook at home.
/hottakes
posted by OnceUponATime at 10:38 AM on December 7, 2023 [6 favorites]
Context: I'm a PhD physicist (in industry) who sometimes moonlights as an adjunct professor. I hated math in elementary school, where I was very much taught by drilling on a specific algorithm for each type of problem, and tested with timed worksheets. I loved math in high school when we finally started to talk about why. My own kids are in elementary and middle school now getting a conceptual education that I envy.
Okay, and with that context, here are my unpopular opinions: Grades are dumb. They mostly measure tolerance for busywork. It's okay if they get inflated into meaninglessness because they were always kind of meaningless. Standardized tests are dumb too. They measure the ability to do well on standardized tests. No human will ever execute an algorithm as well as a computer, and the ability to understand how and why algorithms work is way more valuable than the ability to execute an algorithm with pen and paper. As for these OECD results... The kids will find ways to learn what they need to know, even if it's not exactly on the schedule adults planned. Lead them to water - don't try to make them drink. They'll take what they need if we offer it.
But also -- yeah, make them put away their cell phones as a part of their side of the bargain. Constant distraction is great if you are trapped in a miserable job, but not good for learning. And make them write their essays in class with pen and paper, because LLMs are just plagiarism machines. Flipped classrooms are great anyway - do the work when there's someone around to help in person, and listen to the lectures / read the textbook at home.
/hottakes
posted by OnceUponATime at 10:38 AM on December 7, 2023 [6 favorites]
OnceUponATime, the thread also has a bunch of teachers talking about how they’re dealing with a cohort of students who, skill-wise, are literally years behind where students are generally expected to be at their age, and are lacking crucial skills that allow them to understand the world around them, let alone classwork. Inability to communicate, verbally or in writing, inability to organize thoughts, to extrapolate, to think critically.
In classes even three years ago, it wasn’t uncommon to have one or two students that far behind, but trying to help them catch up was usually a huge task requiring tremendous amounts of work (while also trying to teach the rest of the class). Now? It’s the whole class, with few if any exceptions, and they’re all so far behind where they should be that it’s going to affect them for years to come. This is not “the kids these days are lazy,” this is teachers trying to figure out how to deal with the aftermath of massive and prolonged disruptive event that affected an entire generation of students. You had years of students thrown into distance learning, taught by teachers trained to teach in the classroom, and given almost no chance to utterly rewrite everything they’d ever done while also needing to master technology that, in some school districts, there’d never been any kind of budget for. A lot of the kids were seeing aren’t just behind academically, their development is also stunted on emotional, social, and empathetic levels.
While this is a great chance to explore different styles of education, it’s also not something that can just be handwaved away. These kids are going to be carrying the aftermath of social isolation at a key developmental age with them for a very, very long time.
posted by Ghidorah at 3:45 PM on December 7, 2023 [7 favorites]
In classes even three years ago, it wasn’t uncommon to have one or two students that far behind, but trying to help them catch up was usually a huge task requiring tremendous amounts of work (while also trying to teach the rest of the class). Now? It’s the whole class, with few if any exceptions, and they’re all so far behind where they should be that it’s going to affect them for years to come. This is not “the kids these days are lazy,” this is teachers trying to figure out how to deal with the aftermath of massive and prolonged disruptive event that affected an entire generation of students. You had years of students thrown into distance learning, taught by teachers trained to teach in the classroom, and given almost no chance to utterly rewrite everything they’d ever done while also needing to master technology that, in some school districts, there’d never been any kind of budget for. A lot of the kids were seeing aren’t just behind academically, their development is also stunted on emotional, social, and empathetic levels.
While this is a great chance to explore different styles of education, it’s also not something that can just be handwaved away. These kids are going to be carrying the aftermath of social isolation at a key developmental age with them for a very, very long time.
posted by Ghidorah at 3:45 PM on December 7, 2023 [7 favorites]
Hey, my kids (and my students) were affected by the pandemic too. I just think there's a lot of victim blaming in this thread. And if you don't think that applies to you, it probably doesn't.
posted by OnceUponATime at 5:01 PM on December 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by OnceUponATime at 5:01 PM on December 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
Years behind?? I haven’t noticed that in my teaching.
I’ve noticed that students learned different things during the pandemic. So our historical expectations for them are now inaccurate and there’s greater variance in what they know about the academic subject I teach. Though not so much (so far at least) that we can’t, given a not unreasonable amount of extra resources, bridge that gap between what we would like to expect and what they know within their first year of university.
But the fpp link is about some longer-term trends, not (just) pandemic-related issues.
posted by eviemath at 6:13 PM on December 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
I’ve noticed that students learned different things during the pandemic. So our historical expectations for them are now inaccurate and there’s greater variance in what they know about the academic subject I teach. Though not so much (so far at least) that we can’t, given a not unreasonable amount of extra resources, bridge that gap between what we would like to expect and what they know within their first year of university.
But the fpp link is about some longer-term trends, not (just) pandemic-related issues.
posted by eviemath at 6:13 PM on December 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
I linked these in the homeschool thread from a few weeks ago, but perhaps they go better here.
“Are Students Getting Worse?”—Elliot Sang, 10 November 2023
“The Right-Wing War on Education”—Zoe Bee, 19 November 2023
“Are Students Getting Worse?”—Elliot Sang, 10 November 2023
“The Right-Wing War on Education”—Zoe Bee, 19 November 2023
Public education is under attack, and it feels like the attacks are coming from everywhere. In this video, we dive into the actual, literal conspiracy underneath the attacks on education. Along the way, I explore common ideas about education, debunk those ideas, and offer a hopeful conclusion defending public education.posted by ob1quixote at 7:23 PM on December 7, 2023
If you only focus on algorithms and memorization without understanding in the early years of math instruction, kids get the false idea that math isn’t creative, or isn’t fundamentally about reasoning and problem solving. Then they resist having those elements introduced later - or, as often happens, those elements are never actually formally introduced, just assumed at some point, which leaves students completely bewildered and struggling in their later math courses.
The most basic algorithms and memorization are a pretty essential foundation for the conceptual reasoning and problem-solving, not the other way around.
It's the same way with reading. Schools have wasted decades failing to teach kids good reading skills by not giving them a solid grounding in phonics at the start... because some educational theorists think that's too square, too dull, too rote. But you need to master the fundamental skills before you can unlock the advanced concepts.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 10:34 PM on December 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
The most basic algorithms and memorization are a pretty essential foundation for the conceptual reasoning and problem-solving, not the other way around.
It's the same way with reading. Schools have wasted decades failing to teach kids good reading skills by not giving them a solid grounding in phonics at the start... because some educational theorists think that's too square, too dull, too rote. But you need to master the fundamental skills before you can unlock the advanced concepts.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 10:34 PM on December 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
I teach in a pretty different context than a lot of other folks in the thread--I teach at an access university, meaning our admissions requirements are extremely limited, and most of our students live at home and commute to campus. Our students have always been on average underprepared for college, and that hasn't really changed. Many of them are not college-ready for math and writing and have to take an extra remedial course along with their first math and English classes. I also have always had some awesome students who are getting an inexpensive education that meets their needs, and that hasn't changed either.
In the past two years, I've taught several upper level classes full of students who took their intro classes online in 2020-21, and the gaps were obvious. Nobody could use a microscope or pipette, of course, and a lot of them had missed out on pretty basic biology content, so there was a lot of "just in time" teaching going on to get them to survive Ecology and Limnology. They also didn't take notes during class, and as seniors weren't inclined to start. I am hopeful that a lot of them were able to catch up on the skills and content they missed in their final few semesters, but it was definitely a challenge.
This semester I was teaching only intro biology for majors, so my classes were mostly students fairly new to college who had completed high school largely online. Overall, they've done okay. The main issues are standard ones we see every year of not being prepared for a college level workload or to have to use math in classes that aren't math. A few of them were very resistant to the idea that in person attendance of labs is required, but learning that you can't pass the class without it nipped that in the bud. To encourage note-taking, I allow paper notes to be used on exams, and the rate of paper note-taking has been much higher this semester than the past couple. A number of them have also required just a lot of hand-holding on completing major assignments and using rubrics as guidelines, which is not new, but is maybe more common than it was a few years ago. But overall, y'all, the kids in my context are alright. I'm definitely not seeing a new crisis.
posted by hydropsyche at 3:55 AM on December 8, 2023 [6 favorites]
In the past two years, I've taught several upper level classes full of students who took their intro classes online in 2020-21, and the gaps were obvious. Nobody could use a microscope or pipette, of course, and a lot of them had missed out on pretty basic biology content, so there was a lot of "just in time" teaching going on to get them to survive Ecology and Limnology. They also didn't take notes during class, and as seniors weren't inclined to start. I am hopeful that a lot of them were able to catch up on the skills and content they missed in their final few semesters, but it was definitely a challenge.
This semester I was teaching only intro biology for majors, so my classes were mostly students fairly new to college who had completed high school largely online. Overall, they've done okay. The main issues are standard ones we see every year of not being prepared for a college level workload or to have to use math in classes that aren't math. A few of them were very resistant to the idea that in person attendance of labs is required, but learning that you can't pass the class without it nipped that in the bud. To encourage note-taking, I allow paper notes to be used on exams, and the rate of paper note-taking has been much higher this semester than the past couple. A number of them have also required just a lot of hand-holding on completing major assignments and using rubrics as guidelines, which is not new, but is maybe more common than it was a few years ago. But overall, y'all, the kids in my context are alright. I'm definitely not seeing a new crisis.
posted by hydropsyche at 3:55 AM on December 8, 2023 [6 favorites]
The most basic algorithms and memorization are a pretty essential foundation for the conceptual reasoning and problem-solving, not the other way around.
And your source for this is what body of cognitive, child development, or education research?
It’s true that I only have a PhD in mathematics, around 25 years teaching experience, and that my reading in education has been mostly self-directed supplemented by ten or twelve short professional development workshops over the years, not a degree in mathematics education or cognitive science with a focus on how children learn. So while quantity-wise my background may add up to a fair amount, it’s entirely possible that topic-wise there are areas I’ve missed.
posted by eviemath at 5:43 AM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
And your source for this is what body of cognitive, child development, or education research?
It’s true that I only have a PhD in mathematics, around 25 years teaching experience, and that my reading in education has been mostly self-directed supplemented by ten or twelve short professional development workshops over the years, not a degree in mathematics education or cognitive science with a focus on how children learn. So while quantity-wise my background may add up to a fair amount, it’s entirely possible that topic-wise there are areas I’ve missed.
posted by eviemath at 5:43 AM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
(Note that personal experience is anecdote, not research data. In my anecdotal personal experience, for example, I found the opposite to be true when I was a young child. In my professional experience, by the point at which I see students there is a wide variety in what they find most useful as an entry point to new math topics. I don’t assume that either of those extrapolate to a universal conclusion.)
posted by eviemath at 5:46 AM on December 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 5:46 AM on December 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
“Editorial: High performance in OECD test not the goal for education in Japan,” The Mainichi, 08 December 2023
posted by ob1quixote at 7:54 AM on December 8, 2023
posted by ob1quixote at 7:54 AM on December 8, 2023
not a degree in mathematics education or cognitive science with a focus on how children learn
Well yes, that's a deficit. Those of us complaining about the current approach and watching our kids struggle are concerned with those two topics in K-12 education, not higher learning.
The linked article is about a decline in math ability. Where is the evidence that 'new math'/common core math has improved math scores for the average student?
posted by kitcat at 7:55 AM on December 8, 2023
Well yes, that's a deficit. Those of us complaining about the current approach and watching our kids struggle are concerned with those two topics in K-12 education, not higher learning.
The linked article is about a decline in math ability. Where is the evidence that 'new math'/common core math has improved math scores for the average student?
posted by kitcat at 7:55 AM on December 8, 2023
Where's the evidence that the current tests used to measure "math scores" actually measure useful mathematical ability?
We need people who can code, who can derive equations, who can figure out what to do with data... not people who can do what a calculator does, but slower and less accurately.
posted by OnceUponATime at 10:16 AM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
We need people who can code, who can derive equations, who can figure out what to do with data... not people who can do what a calculator does, but slower and less accurately.
posted by OnceUponATime at 10:16 AM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
Where is the evidence that 'new math'/common core math has improved math scores for the average student?
This is an international study. Has the whole world implemented new math/common core over the last 5 years?
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 10:53 AM on December 8, 2023 [5 favorites]
This is an international study. Has the whole world implemented new math/common core over the last 5 years?
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 10:53 AM on December 8, 2023 [5 favorites]
This thread seems sorta surprisingly reactionary to me? "Kids these days are lazy. We should be more strict."
It's more "we castrate, and bid the geldings be fruitful."
Kids these days are growing up in an environment that changed from our day, and changed for the worse, and we have to act. We're dealing with a generation that doesn't even know the meaning of the word "privacy" because they've never experienced it. Not their fault, but we have to do something.
posted by ocschwar at 7:40 PM on December 9, 2023
It's more "we castrate, and bid the geldings be fruitful."
Kids these days are growing up in an environment that changed from our day, and changed for the worse, and we have to act. We're dealing with a generation that doesn't even know the meaning of the word "privacy" because they've never experienced it. Not their fault, but we have to do something.
posted by ocschwar at 7:40 PM on December 9, 2023
“You Could Not Pay Me Enough to Be a College Administrator,” Daniel W. Drezner, Drezner’s World, 13 December 2023
A few thoughts on the utterly thankless task of running an institution of higher education in the 21st century.posted by ob1quixote at 6:57 AM on December 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
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Should we be drawing policy conclusions from this data if it's this noisy?
posted by pwnguin at 12:14 AM on December 6, 2023 [3 favorites]