It’s fucking terrifying. Imagine high schoolers struggling with writing their own name. The schools I worked with had very few “book kids” - maybe some read manga (any reading is great!)
School districts have cracked down on teacher autonomy and often force them to use poorly supported curriculum and instructional strategies. With reading, it’s been a movement away from phonics towards guess what words mean based on context clues. Teaching effectively takes time and small class sizes, which there is no money for, so the solution is buying a $500k+ program of scripted curriculum for teacher to read in front of their class of 35. Students aren’t allowed to be held back or failed, so they’ll keep getting promoted whether they can add single digit numbers or not - and there’s no indication to anyone that anything is wrong. When standardized test scores come back and it didn’t work, it’s because the teachers didn’t implement it with fidelity, and in a couple years there’ll be a new program that promises to fix everything.
And if you think illiteracy and innumeracy are scary, wait till you hear them talk about history and science…
When I went into college I thought everyone had just finished precalc and was going into Calc 1. Nope. Literally half the freshman went into algebra as their first college math class. I know it’s only gotten worse. A huge portion of high-school graduates not going to college can’t do trig, they can’t do long division, they can’t even multiply two 2 digit numbers. I just saw a tik tok about people trying to do 51*51 and the majority couldn’t.
Not gonna lie, as someone in their 30’s that just returned to higher education this kicked me right in the dick. I was a great student, and loved school until I was enrolled in a Christian middle school where my education tanked (especially math & science). Then in ended up in a good quality high school where my first science teacher had no consideration for the missed concepts that I had no way of knowing about, and so I barely passed his class. The same thing happened to me in math where I ended up in Algebra II, but had missed many of the ways the curriculum was taught in their school system so I struggled. This, along with the fact that I had serious life turmoil from 11-21 caused me to give up on education. (everyone in my family died, including two suicides, except my mom who was checked out at the time dealing with estate shit)
Anyway, feels really bad to be so far behind the curve on mathematics especially, but I have been soaking up the course work through Khan Academy like a sponge. I feel like I have learned more concepts more thoroughly through that free resource in the last 6 months that I did in the entire 12 years of school. I started at Algebra I, and am now moving on to Geometry. My goal is to make it through at least pre-calculus as my desired career field is technology. If you have any insight or resources on math education I am all ears.
I am very sorry for your losses. Nothing can bring people back.
Math especially requires learning from the bottom up. Most concepts require an understanding of one or more basic concepts, and as you say, just keeps building.
Khan academy is probably the best and least monetized site I know of. MIT Open Course Ware is also good.
First, thanks for sharing. That’s a bummer you got behind, but you’ll be able to learn anything you put yourself to.
I think the most valuable thing is to use the resources that help you the most. If that’s online videos, do that, if that’s in person tutoring do that. Obviously they teach how to do math a certain way but the doesn’t mean it’s the best for everyone. I think it’s so awesome that places like YouTube and khan academy are there so people can get what they need.
Get as much as you can with online resources. Try and learn as much as you can. When you come across problems you can’t do, put them some where to come back to. Move on and keep learning. Then come back to those. You might have just figured it out without realizing. And if you still can’t figure it out then that’s a great thing to take to a tutor to ask questions about. You’ll get your money’s worth from a tutor if you already have questions and problems you need help with.
I’ll admit I only graduated high school back in June and I already forgot how to do long division. I do know trig and the unit circle and whatnot pretty well though, and could do 51*51 in my head in about a minute.
That said, I don’t remember much from precalc, and barely passed it. At my school we had to write a full academic paper in our senior year and that took a lot of my energy. I also wasn’t allowed to drop any of the electives I took even though I didn’t need the credits, which meant I struggled a lot towards the end of senior year and many of my classes suffered. Somehow I still got a good GPA.
I’m curious, I often see it discussed now that slang and alternative interpretation must be accepted. In general, this is true, as languages change over time naturally.
But based on what you say, it seems like all pretense of language “standards” are deprioritized or discarded…
Imagine it is Friday night, and you are sitting down to grade a class of high school freshman’s essays. About half of them are less than two paragraphs long. Maybe a quarter of them are consistently capitalizing the first letter of a sentence. When you do see what resembles a normal English sentence, it is clearly AI generated or copied straight from the first google search result for the assigned essay topic. Lots of Wikipedia, with obvious artifacts [3]. Also, you have 100 of them to grade.
Seeing correctly spelled slang is a breath of fresh air.
Not just slang, but chosing to ignore (or not being aware of) grammar rules. Is it possible some are being discarded due to more purposeful disregard? Like, “no one cares to write that way any more”
It’s fucking terrifying. Imagine high schoolers struggling with writing their own name.
This made me skip everything that came after. Even illiterate kids can probably memorize their names, even if they can’t sound out words. Back up your claim and I’ll reconsider.
Elsewhere, in this thread, you’ll see me champion reading and learning. I’m horribly saddened that kids don’t learn to read well. But this statement seems hyperbolic.
If you don’t believe me, please volunteer in your nearest inner city school. There are lots of children who cannot form the shapes of letters. Fourteen, fifteen year olds writing backwards “R”’s and the like. I’m not going to share screenshots of students names with you, but I saw what I saw over multiple years of teaching. It predates COVID, but COVID has accelerated it.
It’s fucking terrifying. Imagine high schoolers struggling with writing their own name. The schools I worked with had very few “book kids” - maybe some read manga (any reading is great!)
School districts have cracked down on teacher autonomy and often force them to use poorly supported curriculum and instructional strategies. With reading, it’s been a movement away from phonics towards guess what words mean based on context clues. Teaching effectively takes time and small class sizes, which there is no money for, so the solution is buying a $500k+ program of scripted curriculum for teacher to read in front of their class of 35. Students aren’t allowed to be held back or failed, so they’ll keep getting promoted whether they can add single digit numbers or not - and there’s no indication to anyone that anything is wrong. When standardized test scores come back and it didn’t work, it’s because the teachers didn’t implement it with fidelity, and in a couple years there’ll be a new program that promises to fix everything.
And if you think illiteracy and innumeracy are scary, wait till you hear them talk about history and science…
When I went into college I thought everyone had just finished precalc and was going into Calc 1. Nope. Literally half the freshman went into algebra as their first college math class. I know it’s only gotten worse. A huge portion of high-school graduates not going to college can’t do trig, they can’t do long division, they can’t even multiply two 2 digit numbers. I just saw a tik tok about people trying to do 51*51 and the majority couldn’t.
Not gonna lie, as someone in their 30’s that just returned to higher education this kicked me right in the dick. I was a great student, and loved school until I was enrolled in a Christian middle school where my education tanked (especially math & science). Then in ended up in a good quality high school where my first science teacher had no consideration for the missed concepts that I had no way of knowing about, and so I barely passed his class. The same thing happened to me in math where I ended up in Algebra II, but had missed many of the ways the curriculum was taught in their school system so I struggled. This, along with the fact that I had serious life turmoil from 11-21 caused me to give up on education. (everyone in my family died, including two suicides, except my mom who was checked out at the time dealing with estate shit)
Anyway, feels really bad to be so far behind the curve on mathematics especially, but I have been soaking up the course work through Khan Academy like a sponge. I feel like I have learned more concepts more thoroughly through that free resource in the last 6 months that I did in the entire 12 years of school. I started at Algebra I, and am now moving on to Geometry. My goal is to make it through at least pre-calculus as my desired career field is technology. If you have any insight or resources on math education I am all ears.
I am very sorry for your losses. Nothing can bring people back.
Math especially requires learning from the bottom up. Most concepts require an understanding of one or more basic concepts, and as you say, just keeps building.
Khan academy is probably the best and least monetized site I know of. MIT Open Course Ware is also good.
There are no rules, go find yourself.
First, thanks for sharing. That’s a bummer you got behind, but you’ll be able to learn anything you put yourself to.
I think the most valuable thing is to use the resources that help you the most. If that’s online videos, do that, if that’s in person tutoring do that. Obviously they teach how to do math a certain way but the doesn’t mean it’s the best for everyone. I think it’s so awesome that places like YouTube and khan academy are there so people can get what they need.
Get as much as you can with online resources. Try and learn as much as you can. When you come across problems you can’t do, put them some where to come back to. Move on and keep learning. Then come back to those. You might have just figured it out without realizing. And if you still can’t figure it out then that’s a great thing to take to a tutor to ask questions about. You’ll get your money’s worth from a tutor if you already have questions and problems you need help with.
I’ll admit I only graduated high school back in June and I already forgot how to do long division. I do know trig and the unit circle and whatnot pretty well though, and could do 51*51 in my head in about a minute.
That said, I don’t remember much from precalc, and barely passed it. At my school we had to write a full academic paper in our senior year and that took a lot of my energy. I also wasn’t allowed to drop any of the electives I took even though I didn’t need the credits, which meant I struggled a lot towards the end of senior year and many of my classes suffered. Somehow I still got a good GPA.
I’m curious, I often see it discussed now that slang and alternative interpretation must be accepted. In general, this is true, as languages change over time naturally.
But based on what you say, it seems like all pretense of language “standards” are deprioritized or discarded…
Am I off base?
Imagine it is Friday night, and you are sitting down to grade a class of high school freshman’s essays. About half of them are less than two paragraphs long. Maybe a quarter of them are consistently capitalizing the first letter of a sentence. When you do see what resembles a normal English sentence, it is clearly AI generated or copied straight from the first google search result for the assigned essay topic. Lots of Wikipedia, with obvious artifacts [3]. Also, you have 100 of them to grade.
Seeing correctly spelled slang is a breath of fresh air.
To expand what I mean:
Not just slang, but chosing to ignore (or not being aware of) grammar rules. Is it possible some are being discarded due to more purposeful disregard? Like, “no one cares to write that way any more”
This made me skip everything that came after. Even illiterate kids can probably memorize their names, even if they can’t sound out words. Back up your claim and I’ll reconsider.
Elsewhere, in this thread, you’ll see me champion reading and learning. I’m horribly saddened that kids don’t learn to read well. But this statement seems hyperbolic.
If you don’t believe me, please volunteer in your nearest inner city school. There are lots of children who cannot form the shapes of letters. Fourteen, fifteen year olds writing backwards “R”’s and the like. I’m not going to share screenshots of students names with you, but I saw what I saw over multiple years of teaching. It predates COVID, but COVID has accelerated it.
Ok 😅