There's a lot of awful stuff that has been discussed already, but I feel like some of this is "catastrophized" because the researchers set up the subjects to fail by setting the standards in a way...
Exemplary
There's a lot of awful stuff that has been discussed already, but I feel like some of this is "catastrophized" because the researchers set up the subjects to fail by setting the standards in a way that you wouldn't expect the students to succeed.
ExampleThe three main reading tactics that problematic readers used were oversimplifying, guessing, and commenting. The most common was oversimplifying—that is, reducing the details of a complex sentence to a generic statement. In the first paragraphs of Bleak House, Dickens follows the fog on the river Thames as it moves from the center of London and winds down to the Essex marshes, 51 miles away from the city. He then centers on the shipyard in the Holborn District of London, the same district that included Lincoln’s Inn, the home of the Court of Chancery. Again, one subject’s response will stand for the others:
Original Text:
Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city.
Facilitator:
O.K.
Subject:
There’s just fog everywhere.
(A few minutes later in the taped session.)
Original Text:
Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats.
Facilitator:
O.K. So, what do you see in this sentence besides fog?
Subject:
I know there’s train, and there’s like, like the industrial part of the city?
Facilitator:
O.K. [End Page 8]
By reducing all these details in the passage to vague, generic language, the subject does not read closely enough to follow the fog as it moves throughout the shipyards. And, as she continues to skip over almost all the concrete details in the following sentences, she never recognizes that this literal fog, as it expands throughout London, becomes a symbol for the confusion, disarray, and blindness of the Court of Chancery.
Okay, so the student didn't notice that the fog eventually becomes a symbol. But the way that they ask her to describe what she's reading forces her to focus on what's literally there. The questions to me seem to be leading to the answers that she provides. They don't ask about symbolism. They ask her what the sentence says and then ask her to be even more specific about what is specifically in that sentence. I think it's complete bullshit to call this "oversimplification"; I think she is just answering the questions as posed, and I would posit that this could be (part of) the reason that the symbolism is missed. They are asking sentence-by-sentence what that sentence says.
Yes, the sentences are describing the setting in a flowery (but bleak) way and not just the fog. Yes, the sentences are setting the stage for a later metaphor. But, taken independently, the objective of the individual sentences when taken on their own is to describe that the setting is foggy and bleak. You can't ask someone what a sentence literally says and then cry about how terrible the students are because they answer this strange person's question in an accurate and concise way.
One subject disclosed that oversimplifying was her normal tactic, explaining, “I normally don’t try to analyze individual sentences as I’m reading something. I try to look at the overall bigger picture of what’s going on.”
How does this mean that oversimplifying is her normal tactic??? The authors talk shit about the students who describe the sentences individually, and now they talk shit about the students who try to examine what's actually being said as a whole. It seems like you can't win.
Another subject said that she separated reading from thinking: “I’m just reading it [the text]; I’m not thinking about it yet.”
Again, it seems the authors are oversimplifying:
"You asked me to read and tell you what I'm reading. You didn't ask me to think about what I'm doing. I'm doing what you asked."
"Okay, but you're not doing what I didn't ask."
Again, did the researchers even explain to the students what they wanted them to do?
Example 2
Finally, our subjects with the most challenges relied on commenting— that is, giving personal reactions to the text instead of trying to interpret it. Most of the time, they commented on the mood or difficulty of the passage, and sometimes they generalized so vaguely in a comment that it would be hard to know if they really understood what they had read:
Facilitator:
O.K. I’ll stop you there. Uh, what do you take from that passage?
Subject:
I think, uh, he’s trying to basically give the atmosphere of where things are at the time, trying to build the scene.
This subject’s comments would be fine were they to have moved from remarking on the scene to translating the specific language in the passage. The subject, however, along with other problematic readers, consistently turned to commentary to avoid translating Dickens’ language altogether. 92 percent of the problematic readers chose this tactic instead of translating at least one sentence in the passage, and 45 percent replaced interpretation with commentary in five or more sentences.
I'm confused by this one. They have discovered students not sticking to the proper task and they have called it a tactic? Did the researchers try reminding them to do what they were supposed to do? There are a bunch of sentences in this passage. Is it really that big of a deal that a student answered "what do you take from that?" with "I think the author is doing x" at some point? Did they really "turned to commentary to avoid translating Dickens’ language altogether," or did they just answer the question you asked in a way that felt appropriate?
Additionally, how are these subjects reading the text? They are being questioned sentence-by-sentence, which makes me think they are reading sentences with their contexts removed, and they are being distracted after every single sentence. How easy is it for people to make connections or to identify themes? Those seem like things that you may want to read several sentences in a row to properly describe. I could also see this making it easier to analyze text, so I won't claim it invalidates their research; but it does make it at least a little suspicious to me.
Example 3
One subject in this category demonstrated this higher level of comprehension:
Original Text:
Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas, in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.
Subject:
And he’s talking about foot traffic within the city. I said London first, I didn’t say that out loud, but it’s taking place in London and he’s talking about the foot traffic and how the weather is creating an ill temper between people and everybody’s [End Page 13] jostling and fighting with each other for a position on streets that are paved, it’s not a pavement, it’s a mess so it’s not perfectly smooth and level. And so people are “slipping and sliding” on cobblestone or whatever it happens to be and he’s connecting that with the past and saying how they’re just the latest generation of people to be walking and jostling in bad weather through these, through these stones that other people have gone before them and done these exact same things, uh, and it accumulates at “compound interest,” um, [Pause.] “adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement,” and “accumulating,” I’m assuming, “compound interest” means it’s interest on top of interest, so, it’s, the mud is growing exponentially if you will. And that’s one whole paragraph right there.
The difference in this reading test is immediately clear: instead of making a generalized statement to summarize the entire sentence, the subject carefully attempts to interpret each successive clause. He is interested in the details of the setting, stating that the setting is in London and then trying to find a reason why so many people would be “slipping and sliding” on the road. (Perhaps, he thinks, it is because the street is constructed of cobblestones instead of pavement.) He then finds a good way to explain Dickens’ clause, “where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke,” by stating that the people in this sentence are just the “latest generation” to be walking in the mud that day. This subject is also able to define what “compound interest” is and shows how this financial term is being used by Dickens to describe the layers of mud in the street. The subject’s ability to comprehend details and create meaning makes him a proficient reader.
I find it interesting how they handle this. Yes, this description is obviously more in-depth than the other examples. But why does this student get such a long sentence demonstrated in the publication? What did he say about the sentences about the fog? What did the other students say about this sentence?
Very notable to me is the fact that they say this:
He then finds a good way to explain Dickens’ clause, “where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke,” by stating that the people in this sentence are just the “latest generation” to be walking in the mud that day.
even though that is a patently incorrect explanation of the sentence. Why does the proficient reader get his failures described as "a good way to explain"? It's clearly talking about how tens of thousands of people have already been that day. Why is talking about them being "the latest generation" good when there is no indication that he is using the word "generation" metaphorically and not because he thinks it's talking about people walking those streets since time immemorial?
While I'm sure there are plenty of shitty readers at mediocre universities in Kansas, I don't see how this could be anything more than researchers fitting evidence to their already-finalized conclusions. Yes, literary skills are getting demonstrably worse. Yes, parents are fucking awful to deal with and are harming their children's educations. But this research comes across as pretty poorly-conducted—or at least poorly-written—and I don't believe this satisfactorily describes what they say it describes.
I had the same thoughts reading examples 1 & 3. Regarding the it's-real-foggy passage: The criticism about not understanding the symbolism of the fog doesn't make sense in context. Why would...
I had the same thoughts reading examples 1 & 3.
Regarding the it's-real-foggy passage: The criticism about not understanding the symbolism of the fog doesn't make sense in context. Why would anyone expect the student to interpret the fog as an analogy for "the confusion, disarray, and blindness of the Court of Chancery" when the Court of Chancery had, up to this point in the text, only been mentioned obliquely in the second sentence?
But I think you missed the most egregious exchange of them all.
Original Text:
On such an afternoon, if ever, the Lord High Chancellor ought to be sitting here—as here he is—with a foggy glory round his head, softly fenced in with crimson cloth and curtains, addressed by a large advocate with great whiskers, a little voice, and an interminable brief, and outwardly directing his contemplation to the lantern in the roof, where he can see nothing but fog.
Subject:
Describing him in a room with an animal I think? Great whiskers?
Facilitator:
[Laughs.]
Subject:
A cat?
No doubt that the student is struggling here, but unless the student is in on the joke, laughing at them is pretty disrespectful. I'm not sure how unbiased this assessment can be if the facilitator is nearly mocking them for incorrect readings.
Agreed. I actually had copied that one into my comment but I removed it for a couple reasons. One was that I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. The student clearly was expressing their...
Agreed. I actually had copied that one into my comment but I removed it for a couple reasons. One was that I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. The student clearly was expressing their ideas as questions, which means there's a great chance the laugh was from sharing in the student's bewilderment. The other reason was that I thought the paragraph describing what the student did wrong was weak, but I decided it was so weak that describing the problems was just kinda dumb.
You saved me SO much time by writing this up, updawg. Thank you. One of my bugbears as a teacher has been educational research. Partially how it’s done, but mostly how it’s applied. A study will...
You saved me SO much time by writing this up, updawg. Thank you.
One of my bugbears as a teacher has been educational research. Partially how it’s done, but mostly how it’s applied.
A study will be done with a small group of students in a single location. It will primarily contain non-quantitative data. The conclusion of that study will be sufficiently restrained, because the researchers know the limitations of their own methods.
Unfortunately, this gets filtered through a game of telephone and becomes an educational truism that gets massively generalized and overapplied. A study might be done showing that, say, 15 minutes of standardized homework each night is ineffective for raising standardized reading test scores in one kindergarten class. This then becomes “homework is ineffective” and gets applied to, say, 12th grade calculus students.
There’s a lot of doom and gloom in this topic on reading (and rightfully so), but this study isn’t necessarily the smoking gun for an entire society’s worth of literacy issues. Education is a very complex landscape that can’t be meaningfully be explained or navigated by simple, direct conclusions from one single data point.
Nail on the head, IMO. They don't even define a research question, so I'm assuming this is what they want to prove, damned be the evidence: If that's the case, they need to study students over...
But this research comes across as pretty poorly-conducted—or at least poorly-written—and I don't believe this satisfactorily describes what they say it describes.
Nail on the head, IMO. They don't even define a research question, so I'm assuming this is what they want to prove, damned be the evidence:
Dropping Literacy Skills in High-School Students and College Graduates
If that's the case, they need to study students over time. Not one cohort, with no described sampling process, or a well defined rubric for categorizing participants into the "problematic", "competent", or "proficient" groups.
If I may be pithy, I'd propose a follow-up entitled "They Don't Think Very Well: A Study of Critical Thinking and Research Design Skills of Professors at Pittsburg State University".
They've demonstrated that their students and researchers are bad. Now I know not to let anyone I know go there. although I guess they have to be literate enough to understand why...
"They Don't Think Very Well: A Study of Critical Thinking and Research Design Skills of Professors at Pittsburg State University".
They've demonstrated that their students and researchers are bad. Now I know not to let anyone I know go there.
although I guess they have to be literate enough to understand why...
I see what you mean that the student has added something to that last example, but even discounting for that, isn’t the overall impression quite different than the other examples? These examples...
I see what you mean that the student has added something to that last example, but even discounting for that, isn’t the overall impression quite different than the other examples?
These examples could all be cherry-picked, though. To some extent we are relying on trust, that the authors of the study are attempting to accurately describe their overall impressions of their students’ reading abilities in a somewhat more rigorous way. (Certainly, more rigorous than the usual articles I read about such things.)
If you decide to distrust them then you probably wouldn’t be satisfied without looking at the original data yourself, or comparing with other studies. Perhaps there are better studies out there?
I think it would have been more useful if the authors had released problematic/proficient/competent answers for the same question. As it is, the conclusions entirely depend on the authors'...
I think it would have been more useful if the authors had released problematic/proficient/competent answers for the same question. As it is, the conclusions entirely depend on the authors' assessment of the subject's reading comprehension, but there's little in here that lets us assess the authors' assessments.
Yes, the impression is obviously better, but it illustrates that the authors were willing to handwave something bad and pretend it was good if it suited their position. The problem is that I think...
Yes, the impression is obviously better, but it illustrates that the authors were willing to handwave something bad and pretend it was good if it suited their position.
If you decide to distrust them then you probably wouldn’t be satisfied without looking at the original data yourself, or comparing with other studies. Perhaps there are better studies out there?
The problem is that I think the gross findings (students are worse at reading than they used to be) are probably true, but the problems are with everything else they talked about, trying to explain that finding. You can't exactly study that.
Project Gutenberg link for those that want a go. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1023/pg1023-images.html I'm assuming it was the first 7 paragraphs of chapter 1. It's dense, it's been 30...
I'm assuming it was the first 7 paragraphs of chapter 1. It's dense, it's been 30 years since I read anything from Dickens and yeah, it's dense. I can read novels, technical papers, newspapers, etc easily, but this was a lot of work. It is English, but archaic. I felt like I had to translate it from Dickens English to modern American English before I could really start comprehending it. Hats off to anyone that can read that in 20 minutes and paraphrase is back.
My cursed childhood strikes again. I read a lot of fiction from that era. I do not find much in here that is problematic. Normally I might take more guesses and move on and just use context, but...
My cursed childhood strikes again.
I read a lot of fiction from that era. I do not find much in here that is problematic.
Normally I might take more guesses and move on and just use context, but given the study… I looked up "ait", for example. And it took my third reading of the passage to realize that "wonderful" did not mean that it would have been awesome to meet the animal in the streets; rather, that it would not have been out of place, i.e. an archaic meaning of "wonderful" like how "awesome" used to mean something that would literally fill one with awe.
Not to say that I didn't struggle a bit with some of it, but as the article mentioned about proficient readers perhaps having prior knowledge of things like solicitors=lawyers and they tend to wear wigs… I didn't know what chaucery was, but I caught it was a court.
And in fact, I've had to stop reading because I've gotten drawn into wanting to read more about this epic case that is going on for generations, and all the mire and muck and societal malaise implied. lol.
I'm always fascinated by reading some of the turns of phrases; which is a reason I love reading writing by folks who are ESL, as you get a sort of reflection sometimes of grammar or idioms from their primary language(s) that come through and are interesting and fascinating.
But this study also is extraordinarily depressing to see JUST how awful these COLLEGE STUDENTS who are even speficically ENGLISH MAJORS fared.
Look, IQ is a stupid measure for the most part, but I do have one. And I was a voracious reader - I always have been - and I realize that makes me an outlier, but good grief even still.
It does explain why I sometimes struggle on reddit. Sometimes I'm sure my ADHD means I don't explain myself well… but I think a lot of the time there are just so many people out there who can't think.
Tildes is definitely a bright and shining oasis on that front…
Do they not do the free pizza if you read enough books thing anymore? I would think a personal pan pizza would motivate at least, though I guess it would be trivially easy to cheat on those today.
Do they not do the free pizza if you read enough books thing anymore? I would think a personal pan pizza would motivate at least, though I guess it would be trivially easy to cheat on those today.
They do - but there is little to no validation on it. I am pretty sure mine could get just write down the titles of the first 10 books they saw in the house and the school would be like "close enough"
They do - but there is little to no validation on it. I am pretty sure mine could get just write down the titles of the first 10 books they saw in the house and the school would be like "close enough"
You already got an answer, but I'm just replying to confirm because I never ever was in a school that was involved in such programs, and screw this planet. ;-)
You already got an answer, but I'm just replying to confirm because I never ever was in a school that was involved in such programs, and screw this planet. ;-)
This is one of the reasons I love reading Joseph Conrad. English was his third(!) language, but his command of it is phenomenal, and Polish phrasing creeps in in the most intriguing ways.
I'm always fascinated by reading some of the turns of phrases; which is a reason I love reading writing by folks who are ESL, as you get a sort of reflection sometimes of grammar or idioms from their primary language(s) that come through and are interesting and fascinating.
This is one of the reasons I love reading Joseph Conrad. English was his third(!) language, but his command of it is phenomenal, and Polish phrasing creeps in in the most intriguing ways.
Do you have a suggestion that specifically indicates English isn't a primary/first/native/spoken in the home language? Because I get the goal, but while there's overlap, the two aren't the same
Do you have a suggestion that specifically indicates English isn't a primary/first/native/spoken in the home language? Because I get the goal, but while there's overlap, the two aren't the same
Multilinguals’ use of all their languages changes over time according to complex individual circumstances. What is being described above is an event in which a third party observed the influence...
Multilinguals’ use of all their languages changes over time according to complex individual circumstances. What is being described above is an event in which a third party observed the influence of one or more other languages on someone’s English output.
Referring to someone as ‘an ESL’ is an act of labeling and it’s best avoided because it prescribes a static identity instead of handling objective description of an event. In other words, to answer the question of ‘what would you call such a person?’ I would answer that I just wouldn’t.
Thinking about it from my own experiences, when I notice that my Japanese is influencing my English I simply think of it like that. When someone else notices that my English has influenced my Japanese they might say it was 「英語っぽい」or ‘English-sounding’.
Like I said I get what you're saying, but my gut tells me there's some usefulness to being able to describe people who bring those other languages' influences to English in a specific way,...
Like I said I get what you're saying, but my gut tells me there's some usefulness to being able to describe people who bring those other languages' influences to English in a specific way, particularly because English was not the/a language they started with. I appreciate the effort - I don't like using academic terms to refer to people; I also hate the frequency with which "SPED" gets used in teachers education programs, thankfully not typically at people but it's still got an ick to it. So I get not wanting to label people as "ESL" but I'm trying to find a way to articulate the same thought in a different way.
But perhaps the thought itself is the problem. I'm not sure. Thank you again
Someone who did not grow up with English idioms will have a fundamentally different relationship to them than someone who did grow up with them, even if they later went on to learn other languages.
Someone who did not grow up with English idioms will have a fundamentally different relationship to them than someone who did grow up with them, even if they later went on to learn other languages.
Absolutely true. It is also true that manner and extent to which one uses idiomatic language is a result of personal circumstances that are highly variable among individual speakers. We can find...
Absolutely true. It is also true that manner and extent to which one uses idiomatic language is a result of personal circumstances that are highly variable among individual speakers. We can find this variance acknowledged at least as far back as Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik’s absolutely massive 1985 ‘A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language’. Anyone who gets a chance should read through the introduction of that book. It is well worth it!
Anyhow, the point I intend to make is that description of a linguistic event, rather than labeling a person with an initialism originally used to describe a school subject in which pupils tend to feel ostracized from their peer group due to differences in their upbringing landing them there, is a more useful and accurate means by which to describe the circumstances behind an observation such as the one mentioned in the comment above.
Note: I would like to reassure anyone reading this that the strength of my convictions *is aimed squarely at the topic under discussion and absolutely not at any commenter.
I did no such thing. I specifically said: I used that phrasing intentionally and thoughtfully. I used to work with adults with developmental and cognitive disabilities. I am sensitive to the...
Referring to someone as ‘an ESL’ is an act of labeling
I did no such thing. I specifically said:
folks who are ESL
I used that phrasing intentionally and thoughtfully.
I used to work with adults with developmental and cognitive disabilities. I am sensitive to the difference between such constructs as "autistic people" and "people with autism".
I am willing to adapt and adjust to new ways of thinking, but I believe I am already being respectful.
to answer the question of ‘what would you call such a person?’ I would answer that I just wouldn’t.
So how would you make the point I was making; communicating the information I was attempting to communicate? Trying to convey my respect for those that are multilingual compared to my monolinguistical limitations; the joy I take in hearing such people express things, because I learn from them?
I wouldn't tend to use "multilingual" because a key point was that the people to whom I refer are not multilingual, but specifically have primary languages that are not English; in fact, English might be a third, fourth, fifth language. Far from being an insult, it is the precise reason I am celebrating these.
I would refer to them as multilingual. There is no hard and fast rule, but I would say that anyone with at least a CEFR B1~B2 command of more than one language could begin to refer to themselves...
I would refer to them as multilingual. There is no hard and fast rule, but I would say that anyone with at least a CEFR B1~B2 command of more than one language could begin to refer to themselves as multilingual. There is no equality across language domains inherent in the term multilingual. In fact, I'm happy to say that the very moments you are celebrating in your comment above underlie some of the core motivations behind the development of multilingual theory! I will include some open access links below. No offense or attack was meant by my above comment!!
Thanks. I agree that your version has better typesetting which makes it easier to read. I'm reading it again this morning, and with fresh eyes it's diversity easier to parse or maybe it's easier...
Thanks. I agree that your version has better typesetting which makes it easier to read. I'm reading it again this morning, and with fresh eyes it's diversity easier to parse or maybe it's easier since I'm more on my 8th read through. It's still dense Dickens prose. Reading it for fun would be fun, reading it for critical review would be more work, at least for me
Standard Ebooks alters and ‘modernizes’ texts, including changes to language and content, not just layout. I would be wary of recommending them in these sorts of situations where seeing the same...
Standard Ebooks alters and ‘modernizes’ texts, including changes to language and content, not just layout. They don’t appear to have damaged the particular paragraphs in question, but I would be wary of recommending them in these sorts of situations where seeing the same text that was used for the research matters. (I would also personally recommend against them generally, but I realize that some people do prefer these sorts of alterations. It would certainly be preferable, however, if they more prominently noted that they alter texts, so that people with my preferences could know to avoid them.)
Edit: here, for example, both SE and Project Gutenberg remove the capitalization from the first word of the chapter, while every printed/scanned copy I've checked capitalizes it, and the version quoted in the paper capitalizes it. This is potentially substantive for comprehension.
I’m biased because I love Standard Ebooks, but it’s worth mentioning that they keep a full changelog for each book. Here’s the one for Bleak House. Generally I find their changes welcome, as a lot...
I’m biased because I love Standard Ebooks, but it’s worth mentioning that they keep a full changelog for each book. Here’s the one for Bleak House.
Generally I find their changes welcome, as a lot of older public domain texts have issues that I find odd or distracting and that pull me out of the reading (certain ligatures, for example). At other times it’s clear that a text was OCR’d but not proofread, leading to certain swaps like h in place of b or vice versa, which results in something like, say: “Though sbe was a hundle of nerves…” (not an actual example, mind you, I just made that up)
If I were going to do actual critical study of an author’s work, then going to original or specifically endorsed editions would be my choice, but for lay reading, I find the work that Standard Ebooks does to be quite invaluable.
Also, I think your point stands that, in considering this study specifically, it’s important for our text to match theirs, so using a different one doesn’t serve that purpose.
Thank you for pointing out the changelog. Unfortunately, seeing a concrete example really strengthens my dislike of Standard Ebooks. Even on a text with relatively modern language compared to...
Thank you for pointing out the changelog. Unfortunately, seeing a concrete example really strengthens my dislike of Standard Ebooks. Even on a text with relatively modern language compared to earlier centuries, they have made several hundred, perhaps over a thousand, changes to the text they have labelled as being in their pursuit of modernization. These aren't corrections like those you point out; they are actual editorial alterations to the intended text. At times these changes don't even make sense from the perspective of modernization: they appear to have a general dislike of hyphenation, for example, and so have used "brickkiln" to replace the much clearer "brick-kiln". Yet "brickkiln" doesn't even appear in the modern OED (it instead has "brick kiln"), and N-grams suggests that this choice actually replaces the more modern term with a more antiquated one.
What feels particularly like a betrayal on the part of Standard Ebooks is that I feel they don't disclose that they alter content anywhere near prominently enough. Nothing on their front page suggests that they do; 'modernization' of language is never mentioned, and everything suggests they only proofread, correct, and typeset, eg,
Standard Ebooks takes ebooks from sources like Project Gutenberg, formats and typesets them using a carefully designed and professional-grade style manual, fully proofreads and corrects them, and then builds them to create a new edition that takes advantage of state-of-the-art ereader and browser technology.
Even a glance through their style manual would likely not suggest to a reader that they do anything other than proofreading and typesetting. And yet, looking through changelogs, they make hundreds of arbitrary alterations.
Yes, some people would prefer those sorts of changes, but some people, like me, see them as mutilations, and it would be nice to be able to make a more informed choice. I actually didn't realize SE had these policies, and used to recommend them, until a commenter on hackernews pointed it out; even in just pointing it out, the commenter had rather flippant and hostile responses from people who seemed to be SE leadership, and who didn't think that even noting that they made these changes was important, and seemed offended that some people would even take issue with them.
I don’t normally give novels this much scrutiny. I take the editing process on faith. I have noticed bad OCR in Kindle editions of older books, which suggests no proofreading at all, but wouldn’t...
I don’t normally give novels this much scrutiny. I take the editing process on faith. I have noticed bad OCR in Kindle editions of older books, which suggests no proofreading at all, but wouldn’t normally notice minor differences.
I wonder how good the alternatives are. What do the various print editions of public domain works do? It seems like their quality would be quite variable? Are Gutenberg editions consistently high quality?
Honestly I can see how/why someone would make that change, because I've seen so many books fully capitalize the first word of a new chapter. I genuinely just assume it's a stylistic choice when I...
Honestly I can see how/why someone would make that change, because I've seen so many books fully capitalize the first word of a new chapter. I genuinely just assume it's a stylistic choice when I encounter it, so this wouldn't really impact my own reading comprehension.
Yes, it turns out, I was a bit mistaken here: this is a rather confusing case, where what could have been semantically meaningful formatting is actually first-word capitalization. However, it is...
Yes, it turns out, I was a bit mistaken here: this is a rather confusing case, where what could have been semantically meaningful formatting is actually first-word capitalization. However, it is still something that could influence comprehension, especially with the examples of reader thought processes given in the paper.
I had a lot of trouble with this too. I consider myself above-average in language and grammar, but the sentence construction is really difficult. The sentences are fairly long, have turns of...
I had a lot of trouble with this too. I consider myself above-average in language and grammar, but the sentence construction is really difficult. The sentences are fairly long, have turns of phrase that aren't encountered regularly, and have many "mappings." Where does the clause branch from? I found that difficult to discern. I had to lean on aural understanding; the sentences are very difficult to interpret if you don't know how its meant to be read aloud.
I'll also admit that I don't really read books much anymore. So the art of reading has somewhat been lost to me too. I've never had much patience for having to read and imagine something, whereas I enjoy reading about ideas and concepts.
I guess an English major is meant to understand this stuff. Still, if I wrote sentences like this, I'd have expected to not have passed my assignments in high school. (Of course, I'm no Charles Dickens.)
I think Dickens was over 20 years ago for me. I'd give it like a... blue-black if it were a ski hill. A couple vocab words: had to check that blinkers are blinder, never head of an ait, and had to...
I think Dickens was over 20 years ago for me. I'd give it like a... blue-black if it were a ski hill. A couple vocab words: had to check that blinkers are blinder, never head of an ait, and had to look up collier-brigs. The sentence structure was kinda rough. Long with multiple clauses; locally coherent but feeling like I was carrying a lot of context line to line.
Really I don't think it is until around paragraph 5 that you know have the fog metaphor confirmed. Preceding sentences are shaping the analogy, this delivers it.
Never can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds this day in the sight of heaven and earth.
In my opinion this piece can't be tested via their protocol. Like the researchers don't get that not all work is suited to the style of interpretation necessitated by the study design.
I always have to stop and look up when Michaelmas is. (September) So is that the fall quarter/trimester/semester? I have no idea. (A quick search shows me it's the fall term but, not how long it...
I always have to stop and look up when Michaelmas is. (September) So is that the fall quarter/trimester/semester? I have no idea. (A quick search shows me it's the fall term but, not how long it is or when it ends)
That very first bit can stop you in your tracks if you don't refer to school in "terms", know when a British/Anglican* holiday is, and know what time of year that term ends. And then if you don't know that the court uses these same Cambridgian "terms" to divide their calendar you're thrown again!
I've read enough older literature to not be thrown by that sentence but that's what good annotations, professors, notes, etc are good for. Cliff/Spark Notes aren't just for not reading the paper but to actually have references explained to a world that's rather foreign to you at 18-22. Unless someone's degree is in British Literature I'm not sure I'd expect understanding of the nuances of Dickens without explicit instruction on it.
*Regardless of it's more religious history, post industrial revolution it seems like it's mostly about school term timing but idk maybe Brits go all out on Michaelmas.
I at least know it is pronounced Mick-el-mus (I assume there's a schwa in there, I don't want to type one) not Michael-mass
Anyone in the tertiary education sector knows that this is a problem and that the worst is probably yet to come. Some of these kids coming out of high school are just, plainly, not literate. Their...
Anyone in the tertiary education sector knows that this is a problem and that the worst is probably yet to come. Some of these kids coming out of high school are just, plainly, not literate. Their schools have failed them and I have no idea how society addresses this.
Lots of universities and schools in my area are going back to handwriting, which I think is the right thing to do, but it's going to be crushingly hard for these kids who aren't used to that.
It's tragic because it was oh so easily predictable. You need to write to form thoughts. You need to read small words to be able to read long words. You need to be proficient in novels before being able to analyse literature in any real way. None of these facts are new. Again, the schooling system has completely failed several years worth of students, and those kids are going to pay the price.
Honestly, it feels like we’re living through another version of the “lead generation” with how we’ve screwed up a whole generation of students. I don’t know that handwriting is even going to be a...
Honestly, it feels like we’re living through another version of the “lead generation” with how we’ve screwed up a whole generation of students.
I don’t know that handwriting is even going to be a long term solution with AI smart glasses coming down the pipe in the next 5-10 years. Education is probably going to have to become something completely different in this new world and I don’t think we’re ready for it in the slightest.
The handwriting is specifically to address the problem of cheating, particularly Law students (which is deeply ironic). As of now, it's quite difficult to cheat on a properly designed handwritten...
The handwriting is specifically to address the problem of cheating, particularly Law students (which is deeply ironic). As of now, it's quite difficult to cheat on a properly designed handwritten test in a controlled environment. The only problem so far is that if you're not used to writing on paper (because your school neglected to teach you), it's quite hard to start writing about case law and precedent all of a sudden. Hands get tired.
But a combination of reading material at home, class discussions at the classroom, and exams (either on university provided laptops or handwritten) in the classroom goes a long way in weeding out a lot of the cheating. It's just that not every lecturer wants to change they way they taught all of a sudden, plus they're overworked and don't have the mental capacity for the increased workload.
But things can be done, we're just not doing them.
I suppose you can be technically correct about "schools failing them," and of course there are always ways for schools to improve, but this is a societal issue. When students come into my...
I suppose you can be technically correct about "schools failing them," and of course there are always ways for schools to improve, but this is a societal issue. When students come into my classroom and do not care an ounce, there's nothing I or the school can do about it. If a kid does not want to learn and the people at home don't make them, that's the whole ball game. I get that schools are the last remaining public service in America, but we can't force anybody to learn anything.
To give kids graduating right now a bit of a break: they were in middle school when the pandemic hit. All the things associated with the pandemic really messed kids up, really badly. Most kids are...
To give kids graduating right now a bit of a break: they were in middle school when the pandemic hit. All the things associated with the pandemic really messed kids up, really badly. Most kids are pretty resilient, sure, but resilience is not a cure all nor is it instantaneous.
Someone posted more commentary on Tumblr (which is how I found the study): https://www.tumblr.com/prettyboysdontlookatexplosions/783379386552516608/i-appreciated-this-study-they-cant-read-very …
Someone posted more commentary on Tumblr (which is how I found the study):
[T]he idea that they had so many trouble with every small piece of a text that they could not connect ideas on a sentence by sentence basis is very familiar to me from teaching and tutoring, as was the habit of thought seen in the example of the student who gloms on to the word "whiskers" in a sea of confusion and guesses incorrectly that a cat is present - struggling readers, in my experience, seem to use familiar nouns as stepping stones in a flood of overwhelm, hopping as best they can from one seemingly familiar image to the next.
…
[I] would summarize the hypothesis i have forged over time as: struggling readers do not expect what they read to make sense. [M]y hypothesis for why this is the case is that their reading deficits were not attended to or remediated adequately early enough, and so, in their formative years - the early to mid elementary grades - they spent a lot of time "reading" things that did not make sense to them - in fact they spent much more time doing this than they ever did reading things that did make sense to them - and so they did not internalize a meaningful subjective sense of what it feels like to actually read things.
8th grade teacher here. Answer for Millenials and older Tyler learned to read through “whole word” reading methods instead of learning phonics. If you want to know why, you will need to realize...
Exemplary
8th grade teacher here.
Answer for Millenials and older
Tyler learned to read through “whole word” reading methods instead of learning phonics. If you want to know why, you will need to realize that education is money, politics, and shitty science thrown into a blender. Tyler’s overworked and underpaid parents threw him in front of an Ipad because parenting is exhausting and confusing – kids aren’t considered a resource anymore, but are instead a resource sink. Gone are the days when children were to be seen and not heard, sent to play outside or read a book when they weren’t providing valuable labor for your household. Parents have to kill themselves to provide enrichment and it's never enough to fill the gaping holes in our atomized society. Socializing is rarely in person outside of structured, pre-planned events. Reading is not fun, it's a chore that privileged parents have time and energy to provide.
Few, if any of Tyler’s friends play outside anymore and he spends much of his time watching videos or talking to his friends while playing Madden. Perhaps his parents divorce and the home becomes toxic. Perhaps his father goes down the Fox news rabbit hole and starts saying stupid shit nonstop which Tyler mistakes for critical thinking. Doesn’t really matter, pick your poison.
Tyler struggles with reading and behavior just like 60-70% of his classmates. To get by, he uses Google. Later, he will learn about Sparknotes. Later still, AI will become common and he will just start using that.
Tyler’s teachers, also underpaid and exhausted, deal with shitty behavior from children day in and day out. The kids are constantly “stimming” in class by repeating random brainrot phrases aloud, disrupting class and making it impossible for even the brightest students to learn. Whatever you're imagining, it's worse. I really promise. Teaching becomes 90% classroom management and 10% teaching. There are few consequences at home or at school for bad behavior. When Tyler does even the most basic of tasks, his teachers are beyond excited. They send a nice note home because he wrote a full paragraph by himself (in 8th grade). It might not seem like much, but for Tyler it’s pretty goddamn amazing. You should see how little he usually accomplishes, which is still more than most kids.
It doesn’t truly matter. The lowest grade Tyler can get is a 50%. That’s the new 0%. He can pretty much blow off everything and then stay after right before the quarter ends to get his grade up to a 65% (passing). Try being the teacher who doesn’t allow it. Tyler’s parents will make your life miserable and admin will give in to them. His parents aren’t bad people, but they’re not good parents. Maybe it’s their fault? Maybe it’s systemic? I don’t know, but the result is the same.
Tyler’s teachers are to blame too though, in some small way. Like his parents, they have way too much on their plates and are often trying to make it through the day. When they see Tyler struggling, they can give 1/25th of their attention to him. That is an average of 2 minutes per class period. Integrating special ed. in the classroom can work extremely well sometimes. Other times, it means you have people in the same room, learning the same text with IQ scores ranging from 70 to 140. Yes, there are children in the room with Tyler who are literally TWICE as bright as he is. Their behavior and attention spans are not twice as good though. When Tyler actually sits down and focuses for a whole period, our bleeding hearts give him bonus point to encourage this type of behavior in the future. He really tried today. I can’t give him the 57% this project deserves. He has to get a 65% on this at least. I’ve never seen him so invested. I would kill for a week to just sit down with him and teach him the stuff he needs to know, but I am already working at home to even do the bare minimum that my job requires. And honestly, the odds of him paying attention are miniscule. A week wouldn’t make a dent.
Tyler graduates, still thinking that “citing text evidence” literally means copy and pasting a full paragraph into an organizer. He was passing assignments because he actually fucking turned something in most of the time, which is genuinely more than I can say about most of his peers. Relative to his peers, that copy/pasted, AI generated garbage was an incredible level of effort and Tyler should be commended. Tyler’s attendance wasn’t great, his work completion was above average maybe, and he finished grade 12 having never once finished a full novel – I shit you not.
Maybe Tyler goes to college? Probably not. But the kid who was in most of his classes for those 12 years, Brandon, does go to college. Brandon had most of the same issues Tyler had, but was just brighter. He also suffered from shitty reading instruction, overworked teachers, overworked parents, absolute lack of accountability for behavior, social media addiction, and more. He also finished 12th grade without ever finishing a novel. It doesn’t even matter if Branden is a bright, hard-working student because he got a shitty education and barely did any of his work. When he did do his work, he found that even the smallest, most pathetic amount of effort you can fathom was enough to make his teachers gasp in complete awe at his brilliance (relative to their other students). Tyler and Brandon, their parents, and their teachers all get royally fucked in this system, and they’re all mad at each other. They’re failing and being failed at every turn. In Tyler and Branden's defense, they're still just as smart as their older counterparts. Their intelligence is just being directed at things which are wildly different, almost incomprehensible, to the folks who are reading Charles Dickens.
Answer translated for Gen Z and younger
yo chat we r cooked.
I'm sorry kids. You guys are actually hilarious - way funnier than any previous generation. You got handed a tough world but have embraced the absurdity and kept your senses of humor. You are intelligent in ways that don't match up with our current education system, which is amazing in some ways and horrifying in others. It's not your fault, but please try to be less apathetic. Please try to be more intellectually curious. We have failed you, and unfortunately it's up to you to correct the issues
oof no cap, we ain’t bussin fam - these words got me shook there giving tho, you ate that — periodt GYATT Answer translated for Millennials and older Ouch. Not gonna lie, as a fellow teacher, I...
oof
no cap, we ain’t bussin fam - these words got me shook
there giving tho, you ate that — periodt
GYATT
Answer translated for Millennials and older
Ouch.
Not gonna lie, as a fellow teacher, I can also say I’m feeling this. This was tough to read because it’s so resonant.
You’re right on the money though. This is a solid assessment of the problem, and you said everything you needed to say.
Also, nice ass!
In all seriousness, I’ll never not recommend the Sold a Story podcast for anyone interested in reading instruction in the US.
On God tho bruh.. Fr tho making us reed Charles Dick - no Diddy - prob isnt thee best way to test this jit. Shit mad old bruh. Nobody even talks that way. Y dont they ever give quizzes on normal...
On God tho bruh..
Fr tho making us reed Charles Dick - no Diddy - prob isnt thee best way to test this jit. Shit mad old bruh. Nobody even talks that way. Y dont they ever give quizzes on normal shit bruh. We wood b doing better if they talked normal in them old ass books.
Just so everyone else reading this who isn’t a teacher like Wolf and me gets the full picture: what we left out is that, during the above exchanges, ten different kids would have asked to go to...
Just so everyone else reading this who isn’t a teacher like Wolf and me gets the full picture: what we left out is that, during the above exchanges, ten different kids would have asked to go to the bathroom for the fourth time that day and gotten angry when we told them they had to wait for a few minutes. They also would completely check out of their learning until they get to go to the bathroom (which they are doing to check their phones, meet up with friends, and run out the clock on their work). They then take five-to-ten minutes to come back “online” mentally after they return, at which point the period is over and they’ll do the exact same thing in the next class.
You forgot to mention their need to vape. We had to remove the ceiling tiles from the bathrooms recently because kids were hiding vapes (weed and nicotine) in them. Lol. I still feel like we...
You forgot to mention their need to vape. We had to remove the ceiling tiles from the bathrooms recently because kids were hiding vapes (weed and nicotine) in them.
Lol. I still feel like we haven't begun to paint them the full picture. I don't even know how to quantify it. The best I can say is that it's like the background noise in a busy restaurant except you are supposed to hear all of what everyone is saying rather than drowning it out.
I get home from work and often tell my wife it feels like my brain has been plugged into an electrical socket all day. I literally can feel the tired in my brain and it feels like a buzzing noise.
Spot on with the checking out, bathrooms, and attitude. I had to remove four students from my classroom yesterday during a single class period. 2 of them swore at me. One got upset and begged me not to call his dad because his uncle just got killed - I decided to cut him some slack. Meanwhile I was supposed to be reading chapter 2 of the Giver to our students. But kicking kids out took up about 10 minutes of our 50 minute period. Other disruptions took up a solid 5-10 more. Later in the day, I had to talk to a parent about a kid who broke a desk in half while there was a sub in the room.
Lmao I actually just stopped typing because I feel like it's just rambling and redundant but I genuinely have so much more I could add to this. Holy shit our jobs are insane and we are just desensitized.
My favorite insults from this year:
"That's why you're a D1 Dicksucker."
"Fuck outta here with that McDonalds ass hairline."
"Stop throwing Mr. OfficerDougEiffel's pencils bro, them shits cost him like five paychecks."
"I was about to say something true, but it would probably hurt your feelings."
"Get [other student] away from me before he eats me for real. Fat fuck."
The vapes! How could I forget the vapes?! Oh, I know, because this job is, like you identified, everything everywhere all at once. All the time. My husband likes to keep the TV on for background...
The vapes! How could I forget the vapes?!
Oh, I know, because this job is, like you identified, everything everywhere all at once. All the time.
My husband likes to keep the TV on for background noise, in the same way that other people listen to music. I bought him Bluetooth headphones and sometimes have to ask him to put them in, because I’m often so overstimulated from my day that I need silence to recharge.
Yup! There’s definitely a demand for better schooling among parents. The problem with private schools in particular, and charter schools partially, is that they effectively are a selection filter...
Yup! There’s definitely a demand for better schooling among parents. The problem with private schools in particular, and charter schools partially, is that they effectively are a selection filter that works against the general population, separating out students and families with the most resources.
Thus, the most involved parents and families achieve a desired positive outcome for themselves without improving their local schools, which would benefit their whole community. In fact, the benefits they receive from screening their kids out is often contingent on community schools being worse, because that very disparity is what actually creates specific opportunities for their children.
If those students were in the same schools as everyone else there would likely be a lot more political will to improve them.
Sure, but that's also the trap! The people who don't want public school to exist take as much money away from it and make it as bad as possible, and then point to alternatives. I completely...
Sure, but that's also the trap! The people who don't want public school to exist take as much money away from it and make it as bad as possible, and then point to alternatives. I completely understand an individual parent putting their kid in a better school - I would do it myself if I needed to, and I'm a public school teacher. But it's infuriating that conservatives have so successfully executed their destruction of the public space.
I run a discord server of mostly Indian youths who are interested in History. They’re mostly college aged guys and I have to say my experience with them is wildly different. Obviously it’s a...
I run a discord server of mostly Indian youths who are interested in History. They’re mostly college aged guys and I have to say my experience with them is wildly different. Obviously it’s a biased sample, but these guys read voraciously, research with some intensity, and often seek out primary sources that they commit themselves to deciphering. I mostly just try to steer them towards not buying the perspective of whoever they’re reading up front and to constantly interrogate what mental models their sources are operating under and how that differs from ours.
I assume the fact that Indian parents will take the teachers’ side over their kids probably helps. I, personally, can’t imagine being mad at the school if my kid isn’t doing well. If anything I imagine myself demanding more rigor. He’s getting straight As? He’s clearly not being challenged enough. MOAR!
Yeah there are still good students out there, for sure. And it's not super surprising that the type of people who would self-sort into a discord about learning would be good students.
Yeah there are still good students out there, for sure. And it's not super surprising that the type of people who would self-sort into a discord about learning would be good students.
I fully appreciate any adult who works with kids and leans directly into the cringe. Bravo! Also I sort of hate that I didn’t need the subtitles to understand him. 😂
I fully appreciate any adult who works with kids and leans directly into the cringe. Bravo!
Also I sort of hate that I didn’t need the subtitles to understand him. 😂
Your post really helped contextualize why we keep hearing from my kid's teachers about how creative our kids are. Apparently the answer is "a little bit of neglect" and "let them be bored," which...
Your post really helped contextualize why we keep hearing from my kid's teachers about how creative our kids are. Apparently the answer is "a little bit of neglect" and "let them be bored," which best I can tell is a rarity.
Gone are the days when children were to be seen and not heard, sent to play outside when they weren’t providing valuable labor for your household.
I'm doing the best I can to keep these days alive. I do toss my young GenA kids outside with a snack and a water bottle and say "You can come inside at lunch."
Other common phrases we say:
"Being bored is good for you"
"I cannot make you unbored. That is something you've got to figure out for yourself."
"Help or get out of the way."
"My job is to keep you safe, keep you healthy, make sure you become a good grown-up, and to make you happy. In that order." (Edit: Come to think of it, "good grownup" should move to the front. Sometimes gotta let the kid put the fork in the electrical outlet)
Here are my rules for acceptable screen usage outside the house:
In the car/transit for more than 2 hours, after 1.5 hours
In a fancy restaurant, if you are not the only table and they ate their dinner and you don't want to rush out
Sitting in a room with no other entertainment for 30+ minutes.
Neither are you.
Not to fault said overwhelmed parents for not doing this, life is hard. But I will say that using screens to pacify children is a lot like taking a drink to cure the hangover.
fr fr. That said, I am curious about the general state of reading comprehension. Everything you said definitely explains today. But this study was conducted in 2015. So mid-to-youngest of...
fr fr.
That said, I am curious about the general state of reading comprehension. Everything you said definitely explains today. But this study was conducted in 2015. So mid-to-youngest of Millennials and the oldest of Gen Z. Zillennials, I guess. So the explanation has to be somewhat different. Though maybe not vastly so. For example, inattentive parents—either because too busy or just didn't care—aren't anything new, right? Maybe not sitting kids in front of an iPad, which obviously didn't exist back then, but sitting them in front of a TV for hours.
I guess I'd want to know if this is something that's been going on for awhile, but we just didn't know about it. Because reading comprehension studies on college students wasn't being looked at. If even Gen X and even Boomers and possibly beyond dealt with this. After all, we know functional illiteracy is pretty widespread and cuts across various demographic swaths, including all age groups.
If it's the case that this has been affecting multiple generations...I don't know if I should breath a sigh of relief ("Oh thank god; Millennials/GenZ aren't the reason everything has turned to shit, this time!") or be even more alarmed. That we've been graduating class after class of college grads, even English majors, who can't understand complex texts, even though the world has only gotten more and more complex.
I'll be honest, I do think you should be a little worried that we graduate class after class of functionally illiterate children. And I don't think much has changed in ten years other than it...
I'll be honest, I do think you should be a little worried that we graduate class after class of functionally illiterate children. And I don't think much has changed in ten years other than it getting worse - especially during COVID.
I'm there teaching them and it's shocking how many foundational skills most kids are missing.
That said, I do think Dickens isn't the best test for literacy anymore. Language has changed a lot and kids are better at reading non-fiction than prose when it comes to complex texts. I won't pretend to know why for a fact, but anecdotally I think that's where the focus has been in schools for a long time.
Did you know authors of fiction are told to write at the sixth grade reading level if they want their books to sell? Publishers make them dumb down their novels all the time.
I think a major part of the reason for choosing Dickens for this test is because the tested students are English and English Education majors. Majors which specialize in reading and writing prose....
I think a major part of the reason for choosing Dickens for this test is because the tested students are English and English Education majors. Majors which specialize in reading and writing prose. They should, theoretically, be more equipped to understand the text than the average person. They wanted to test their ability to understand and explain more complex texts that should, theoretically, still be comprehensible to modern audiences with a bit of thought.
Instead, there were students using context clues to get the wrong image entirely. There were students who couldn't tell apart literal and figurative language, which should be pretty basic for students who should specialize in prose. Reading it myself, the text is dense and uses a lot of figurative language, but most of the individual vocabulary is still used today. It comes down to interpreting it to figure out the actual meaning, like that one proficient student who explained the passage describing the busy, muddy street.
Also, the fact multiple students saw "Megalosaurus" and assumed there was an actual dinosaur walking around (and at least one didn't seem to know it was a dinosaur, which I'd thought would be an obvious assumption from the "saurus" part) is pretty concerning. I don't know if I've ever read a Dickens novel, but I still know he doesn't write the sort of genres with living dinosaurs walking around London.
If this is the level of people who are supposed to specialize in this subject, what does that say about the rest of the population?
There are reasons that 50% of teachers quit in the first five years these days. This is only one of them. I desperately wish every parent had to do a short stint as a classroom aide. Just one week...
There are reasons that 50% of teachers quit in the first five years these days. This is only one of them.
I desperately wish every parent had to do a short stint as a classroom aide. Just one week per year.
Go watch footage of Trump rallies, Q anon conventions, UFO conventions, etc. Those videos don't surprise me one bit.
There are plenty of brilliant kids doing brilliant things. But the overall average is terrifying.
It was the shift to Common Core standards that made nonfiction reading more of a priority:
Language has changed a lot and kids are better at reading non-fiction than prose when it comes to complex texts. I won't pretend to know why for a fact, but anecdotally I think that's where the focus has been in schools for a long time.
In grades 3‒5, literacy programs shift the balance of texts and instructional time to include equal measures of literary and informational texts. The standards call for elementary curriculum materials to be recalibrated to reflect a mix of 50 percent literary and 50 percent informational text, including reading in ELA, science, social studies, and the arts….
In grades 6‒12, ELA programs shift the balance of texts and instructional time towards reading substantially more literary nonfiction….including essays, speeches, opinion pieces, biographies, journalism, and historical, scientific, or other documents written for a broad audience….The standards emphasize arguments (such as those in the U. S. foundational documents) and other literary nonfiction that is built on informational text structures rather than literary nonfiction that is structured as stories (such as memoirs or biographies)….
Yes, I thought so. I remembered reading this but I was afraid of misremembering. I don't do curriculum writing. I use my summers to do literally anything but teach and deal with school.
Yes, I thought so. I remembered reading this but I was afraid of misremembering. I don't do curriculum writing. I use my summers to do literally anything but teach and deal with school.
Pressure to pass because of parents, admin, and state/federal funding. Something something metric, something something target, something something Goodhart’s Law.
Pressure to pass because of parents, admin, and state/federal funding.
Along with grade inflation and outside pressure from parents etc. Schooling has also just become ridiculously easy to game. I went through it all before AI and even back then it was shamefully...
Along with grade inflation and outside pressure from parents etc. Schooling has also just become ridiculously easy to game.
I went through it all before AI and even back then it was shamefully easy to get through English class with spark notes etc. Standardized tests are easy to cheat written essays are easy to write around what you don’t actually know. I also never experienced a teacher prior to a single professor in college caring enough (or being paid enough) to do the work to properly grade essays.
This will ring very true for anyone who's been tested on their reading comprehension in a second (or third) language that they don't know very well yet. But how devastatingly sad to realize that...
struggling readers, in my experience, seem to use familiar nouns as stepping stones in a flood of overwhelm, hopping as best they can from one seemingly familiar image to the next.
This will ring very true for anyone who's been tested on their reading comprehension in a second (or third) language that they don't know very well yet.
But how devastatingly sad to realize that this is true for some people in their native tongue :(
Want to hear something a teacher like myself should never say aloud? In CSE meetings, we regularly exempt kids from learning a world language in school. We look at a battery of tests performed by...
Want to hear something a teacher like myself should never say aloud?
In CSE meetings, we regularly exempt kids from learning a world language in school. We look at a battery of tests performed by a psychologist, we look at their grades, etc. and make a decision as a committee to allow them to graduate without a French or Spanish credit.
The truth is that it's a waste of time to look at that data. It's just providing evidence for what I could have told the committee in ten seconds: This kid barely speaks English and certainly can't read it. How are they supposed to learn Spanish?
Committee on special education. Just to be clear though, it isn't special education like it was 20 years ago or more. It encompasses a huge number of kids, including kids who would have just been...
Committee on special education. Just to be clear though, it isn't special education like it was 20 years ago or more. It encompasses a huge number of kids, including kids who would have just been low-performers back when I was in school and kids with shitty home lives. 15% of American students receive Sp.Ed. services, which may seem scary but ultimately I think it's indicative of the fact that we are doing more than ever before to try and prevent kids from just failing out/dropping out. That said, it's a patch on a sinking ship in my opinion. So many other things need to happen.
I know one of my weaknesses as a writer is symbolism and figurative language. My writing style is pretty direct, and I tend to focus on the blunter parts of fiction. Reading this paper though......
I know one of my weaknesses as a writer is symbolism and figurative language. My writing style is pretty direct, and I tend to focus on the blunter parts of fiction. Reading this paper though... Well, at least I know I can tell the difference between figurative and literal language.
Yeah, it scares me that these are English and English education majors. Fun fact: I was briefly an English education major, and dropped it after I signed up for a required English class that went over medieval literature. As in, we'd need a special dictionary to help literally translate the archaic language into something we could comprehend. Was already uncertain about my major, and seeing that made me drop that class day one.
In comparison, the Dickens passage used in the study is dense, but most of the words are still in use across modern fiction. I may not have realized Lord's Inn Hall was a courtroom at first, but later paragraphs clued me in due to the presence of the advocate and the list of legal jargon. If there were students struggling to properly envision the scene because the word "whiskers" made them imagine a cat, then uh... Yeah, no clue how they'd handle that medieval English class.
I think the scariest part though is that the study was in 2015. Those students wouldn't have been nearly as heavily addicted to social media and iPads as modern kids. And that's before accounting for how Covid screwed over so many kids.
Yeah... This paints a bleak picture of people's overall reading abilities.
This paper analyzes the results from a think-aloud reading study designed to test the reading comprehension skills of 85 English majors from two regional Kansas universities. From January to April of 2015, subjects participated in a recorded, twenty-minute reading session in which they were asked to read the first seven paragraphs of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House out loud to a facilitator and then translate each sentence into plain English. Before subjects started the reading tests, they were given access to online resources and dictionaries and advised that they could also use their own cell phones as a resource.
More:
the majority of this group did not enter college with the proficient-prose reading level necessary to read Bleak House or similar texts
…
Almost all the student participants were Caucasian, two-thirds were female, and almost all had graduated from Kansas public high schools. All except three self-reported “A’s” and “B’s” in their English courses. … 41 percent of our subjects were English Education majors, and the rest were English majors with a traditional emphasis like Literature or Creative Writing
…
The results from the questionnaire revealed that most of these subjects could not rely on previous knowledge to help them with Bleak House; in fact, they could not remember much of what they had studied in previous or current English classes. When we asked our subjects to name British and American authors and/or works of the nineteenth-century, 48 percent of those from KRU2 and 52 percent of those from KRU1 could recall at most only one author or title on their own.
…
58 percent (49 of 85 subjects) understood so little of the introduction to Bleak House that they would not be able to read the novel on their own. However, these same subjects (defined in the study as problematic readers) also believed they would have no problem reading the rest of the 900-page novel.
Problematic readers often described their reading process as skimming and/or relying on SparkNotes.
The majority of the 85 subjects used vague generalizations to summarize compound-complex sentences.
38 percent (or 32 of the 85 subjects) could understand more vocabulary and figures of speech than the problematic readers. These competent readers, however, could interpret only about half of the literal prose in the passage.
Only 5 percent (4 of the 85 subjects) had a detailed, literal understanding of the first paragraphs of Bleak House.
…
Although it was clear that these subjects did try to use various tactics while they read the passage, they were not able to use those tactics successfully. For example, 43 percent of the problematic readers tried to look up words they did not understand, but only five percent were able to look up the meaning of a word and place it back correctly into a sentence. The subjects frequently looked up a word they did not know, realized that they did not understand the sentence the word had come from, and skipped translating the sentence altogether.
…
Often, these readers were also too confused to recognize that Bleak House begins by focusing on a law court: 71 percent of the problematic readers (or 35 of the 49) had no idea that Dickens was focusing on a court of law, a judge, and lawyers.
…
Note that the subject, who is not accessing any of the concrete details in the passage, finds a subject (the Lord Chancellor) and one recognizable word, “whiskers,” and concludes that the character is in a room with a cat. At this point, she does not seem to understand what she is reading, and so she links a few words together to form some kind of response.
…
These subjects seemed to use outside sources as the main way to understand what they could not comprehend on their own. As one subject said, “If I was to read this [Bleak House] by itself and didn’t use anything like that [SparkNotes], I don’t think I would actually understand what’s going on 100% of the time.”
I sort of already expressed this in a reply or two, but… it warrants saying again: I find this so extremely depressing. I'm fine with some folks having less education and less reading, but the...
I sort of already expressed this in a reply or two, but… it warrants saying again: I find this so extremely depressing.
I'm fine with some folks having less education and less reading, but the problem is that these people vote. And voting requires nuanced understanding of complex issues. So less education leads to fascism. And all the people depending on the 'old people dying off' are going to be unpleasantly surprised when that doesn't resolve the issue. I mean,that's already apparent if you look at voters.
But anyway.
My own education journey is one I'm unhappy with. I shall briefly explain:
I did alright in kindergarten, but that's kindergarten. In first grade, I had trouble with my schoolwork. I was bored. I learned a lot, but a lot of it I had already learned, so I was bored. The school sent home resources - I remember big flip charts with educational stuff - for my parents to work with me.
I don't remember second grade. I didn't get much attention, but that doesn't mean it went well.
Third and fourth grade, however, I wasin the TAG program in Texas - the Talented and Gifted program.
I'd previously been administered an IQ test when I was in first grade and scored aruond 135.
But I was struggling in school. One day per week in TAG, the rest of the days with my regular class. Getting counseling for my schoolwork problems. In 4th grade, when others would copy the 20 vocabulary words down from the chalkboard and write them like 20 times each, I was tasked with writing each one once and drawing a picture of it. My counselor advised that I would never write better than a five year old.
I found out later that I failed fourth grade - my parents didn't tell me immediately. But after the school year, the administrators called them into a meeting and demanded they sign custody of me over to the state. Not just until I was 18, but until such time as the state released me.
Unsurprisingly, they said "hell no".
Couldn't get to a private school, so they homeschooled me.
We used creationist Christian materials. I was a fundamentalist Southern Baptist at the time.
We struggled, and after 8th grade, we heard of a private school that had opened in town, so for 9th grade, that's where I went.
For my class, it was almost 20 of us in 7th-9th grades all in one room, mostly self-directed. I shall summarize that shitty year by talking about the end-of-year ceremonies, where all the ribbons for things from that year were given out. I'd say >75% of the first and second place ribbons went to children of staff, and >75% of the third-fourth-"you tried" went to those of us who were not. I'll leave it there.
We started back in homeschooling for 10th grade, but by Christmas had stopped for "a break". My parents got a CAT test (standardized test from California) and I placed in mid-college level for everything except math at 11.5th grade.
So they said, "Congrats! You graduated!" and so for a while I chose January 1, 1991 for my graduation date, but in more recent years, went with December 31, 1990. lol. Either way, it was around mid January when we did the testing…
I tried to get into college a couple of times and struggled. I was finally doing better after having a GPA of 2.2 - in one semester I pulled that up above 3 (I'd had a lot of withdrawals in three previous semesters) and was on Dean's honor list. Semester after that, I had to make money to live, so I had to withdraw from college.
Then when I was 30, I got my ADHD diagnosis. Tried college one ore time but financial problems killed that (Wife inhereted stock from her father, bought over the years. Several years after, IRS said "we have no record of the inheritance, so we want to charge you anoher $14k in tax" and we couldn't get records to prove in time, so they garnished our wages for a couple of years and my college hopes were gone).
So I have incredibly mixed feelings about homeschooling for one. I hate the regressive religious who indoctrinate their children not with good education, but with bullshit "faith" crap. And yet, it saved me from being institutionalized by the state.
But as much as I struggled, I also read a lot. A lot. And we had a lot of classic sci fi and a lot of old British fiction in particular.
Amusingly, at a couple of points in my life, this caused me embarrassment. For example, the word "erection" has a very strong connotation today, but in times past, it was used more exclusively to refer to something that had been erected, like a building. Also, what I would now call an exlamaition ("Wow!") is technically an ejaculation. Again, I do not recommend either of these words be used in their original meanings in modern context. One will be misunderstood.
I still tend to use British spellings of words - inconsistently, mind.
But anyway.
I'm not, like, ultra-smart. But the level of reading comprehension I have compared to average depresses me. I think of myself as average, when I am very well above. And I wish I was average (that others were better educated, not that my knowledge was reduced!)
Ah yes, I had a similar experience in public school. My teachers pulled my parents aside and thought I was having absent seizures (this presents as staring off into space, not like a typical tonic...
Ah yes, I had a similar experience in public school.
My teachers pulled my parents aside and thought I was having absent seizures (this presents as staring off into space, not like a typical tonic clonic where you flop around). They sent me for a CT scan where they found nothing. Not knowing what was wrong, they put me in classes for the developmentally delayed.
Then came the standardized test that they do for every state in the US around the 3rd grade. Apparently I had tested to have the highest reading comprehension in the entire district.
They shifted me straight from the special needs classes to the gifted and talented program, where every single year without a doubt I would fail out of it and get put right back into regular classes. To which I could barely pass with Ds.
Turns out all along I just had ADHD and didn’t get diagnosed until I was an adult. I was at the top of all my classes for college, all I needed was to be properly medicated…
I try not to think about where I would be at today if I was actually treated for it as a child. It’s too painful..
Right there with you. And in fact, I can tell you what it's like to not get diagnosed until 30, not be able to afford meds that helped, and now to not be allowed stimulants. heh. The ADHD tax is...
I try not to think about where I would be at today if I was actually treated for it as a child. It’s too painful..
Right there with you. And in fact, I can tell you what it's like to not get diagnosed until 30, not be able to afford meds that helped, and now to not be allowed stimulants. heh.
The ADHD tax is real. It's the reason I had no insurance when I got my diabetes diagnosis, so a very key part of the reason I was unmanaged for a decade, leading to a likely shorter lifespan and all the health issues I have now. I am quite angry at the universe about that.
I never read much by Dickens, but I don't remember A Tale of Two Cities or A Christmas Carol being this difficult. Perhaps I've grown less tolerant of this covoluted style of writing. I was...
I never read much by Dickens, but I don't remember A Tale of Two Cities or A Christmas Carol being this difficult. Perhaps I've grown less tolerant of this covoluted style of writing. I was certainly tired of mud and fog in these passages.
I wonder if Dickens and many other 19th century writers will fade from general knowledge soon, and only be relevant to scholars of the period.
No, this is definitely an uncharacteristically challenging passage. Here's the beginning of great expectations, for instance (also Dickens).
No, this is definitely an uncharacteristically challenging passage. Here's the beginning of great expectations, for instance (also Dickens).
My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.
I give Pirrip as my father’s family name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister,—Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father’s, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, “Also Georgiana Wife of the Above,” I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine,—who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal struggle,—I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence. ...
My general impression is also that Dickens isn’t so hard. Surely A Christmas Carol is straightforward? But I’m wondering if I might have a mistaken impression from popular versions of it. Maybe I...
My general impression is also that Dickens isn’t so hard. Surely A Christmas Carol is straightforward? But I’m wondering if I might have a mistaken impression from popular versions of it. Maybe I read an abridged or children’s version? It was long ago and I don’t remember. Here are the opening paragraphs of A Christmas Carol:
MARLEY was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were
partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.
It seems like a terribly verbose way to begin, particular the bit about the door-nail. That paragraph could be cut with no harm. Also, “good upon ‘Change” is an obscure expression. Though, normally I’d just skim over that.
Slowing down and attempting to understand every phrase isn’t what I’d normally do, particularly if I had a lot of reading to do.
The story of A Christmas Carol has been told so many times that people are very familiar with it, less so with the original text. Muppet Christmas Carol was notable for having Gonzo as Dickens...
The story of A Christmas Carol has been told so many times that people are very familiar with it, less so with the original text. Muppet Christmas Carol was notable for having Gonzo as Dickens quote the original. (If you're a Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams fan you might see their writings as descendants of this offhanded aside about doornails.) But I think a lot of people have primarily engaged with Dickens through adaptations, or young reader versions.
I had these little illustrated classics of a number of books as a kid. So my brain tells me I've read Last of the Mohicans or Heidi, but I've only read the abridged youth version. (I might have read the full Heidi later or that might also have been abridged). I've not read Oliver Twist but I've read an abridged version, watched a movie of the musical, memorized the lyrics, and watched Oliver and Company.
I'm someone who thinks we put too much emphasis on reading classics over contemporary works that are more meaningful to modern students anyway, but I do think most people trick themselves into thinking they've read more than they have of widely adapted stories.
(I'm fairly sure I SparkNoted my way through Tale of Two Cities in Highschool because while I loved reading, I had undiagnosed ADHD. Personally I find reading things out loud, and being allowed to give inflection and humor to them, makes it a lot better but by college you're expected to have figured out your strategies already.)
This is awful but also... Funny? to me. Like I can't help but smile and laugh. Like, why be an English major? There's a ton of disciplines that don't involve reading and parsing large amounts of...
This is awful but also... Funny? to me. Like I can't help but smile and laugh. Like, why be an English major? There's a ton of disciplines that don't involve reading and parsing large amounts of literature and, as I tell people often enough, you know yourself academically.
The article reads like these people think they know how to read though so either everyone is lying to the researchers or they're all jointly delusional.
There's a lot of awful stuff that has been discussed already, but I feel like some of this is "catastrophized" because the researchers set up the subjects to fail by setting the standards in a way that you wouldn't expect the students to succeed.
Example
The three main reading tactics that problematic readers used were oversimplifying, guessing, and commenting. The most common was oversimplifying—that is, reducing the details of a complex sentence to a generic statement. In the first paragraphs of Bleak House, Dickens follows the fog on the river Thames as it moves from the center of London and winds down to the Essex marshes, 51 miles away from the city. He then centers on the shipyard in the Holborn District of London, the same district that included Lincoln’s Inn, the home of the Court of Chancery. Again, one subject’s response will stand for the others:Original Text:
Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city.
Facilitator:
O.K.
Subject:
There’s just fog everywhere.
(A few minutes later in the taped session.)
Original Text:
Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats.
Facilitator:
O.K. So, what do you see in this sentence besides fog?
Subject:
I know there’s train, and there’s like, like the industrial part of the city?
Facilitator:
O.K. [End Page 8]
By reducing all these details in the passage to vague, generic language, the subject does not read closely enough to follow the fog as it moves throughout the shipyards. And, as she continues to skip over almost all the concrete details in the following sentences, she never recognizes that this literal fog, as it expands throughout London, becomes a symbol for the confusion, disarray, and blindness of the Court of Chancery.
Okay, so the student didn't notice that the fog eventually becomes a symbol. But the way that they ask her to describe what she's reading forces her to focus on what's literally there. The questions to me seem to be leading to the answers that she provides. They don't ask about symbolism. They ask her what the sentence says and then ask her to be even more specific about what is specifically in that sentence. I think it's complete bullshit to call this "oversimplification"; I think she is just answering the questions as posed, and I would posit that this could be (part of) the reason that the symbolism is missed. They are asking sentence-by-sentence what that sentence says.
Yes, the sentences are describing the setting in a flowery (but bleak) way and not just the fog. Yes, the sentences are setting the stage for a later metaphor. But, taken independently, the objective of the individual sentences when taken on their own is to describe that the setting is foggy and bleak. You can't ask someone what a sentence literally says and then cry about how terrible the students are because they answer this strange person's question in an accurate and concise way.
How does this mean that oversimplifying is her normal tactic??? The authors talk shit about the students who describe the sentences individually, and now they talk shit about the students who try to examine what's actually being said as a whole. It seems like you can't win.
Again, it seems the authors are oversimplifying:
"You asked me to read and tell you what I'm reading. You didn't ask me to think about what I'm doing. I'm doing what you asked."
"Okay, but you're not doing what I didn't ask."
Again, did the researchers even explain to the students what they wanted them to do?
Example 2
Finally, our subjects with the most challenges relied on commenting— that is, giving personal reactions to the text instead of trying to interpret it. Most of the time, they commented on the mood or difficulty of the passage, and sometimes they generalized so vaguely in a comment that it would be hard to know if they really understood what they had read:Facilitator:
O.K. I’ll stop you there. Uh, what do you take from that passage?
Subject:
I think, uh, he’s trying to basically give the atmosphere of where things are at the time, trying to build the scene.
This subject’s comments would be fine were they to have moved from remarking on the scene to translating the specific language in the passage. The subject, however, along with other problematic readers, consistently turned to commentary to avoid translating Dickens’ language altogether. 92 percent of the problematic readers chose this tactic instead of translating at least one sentence in the passage, and 45 percent replaced interpretation with commentary in five or more sentences.
I'm confused by this one. They have discovered students not sticking to the proper task and they have called it a tactic? Did the researchers try reminding them to do what they were supposed to do? There are a bunch of sentences in this passage. Is it really that big of a deal that a student answered "what do you take from that?" with "I think the author is doing x" at some point? Did they really "turned to commentary to avoid translating Dickens’ language altogether," or did they just answer the question you asked in a way that felt appropriate?
Additionally, how are these subjects reading the text? They are being questioned sentence-by-sentence, which makes me think they are reading sentences with their contexts removed, and they are being distracted after every single sentence. How easy is it for people to make connections or to identify themes? Those seem like things that you may want to read several sentences in a row to properly describe. I could also see this making it easier to analyze text, so I won't claim it invalidates their research; but it does make it at least a little suspicious to me.
Example 3
One subject in this category demonstrated this higher level of comprehension:Original Text:
Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas, in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.
Subject:
And he’s talking about foot traffic within the city. I said London first, I didn’t say that out loud, but it’s taking place in London and he’s talking about the foot traffic and how the weather is creating an ill temper between people and everybody’s [End Page 13] jostling and fighting with each other for a position on streets that are paved, it’s not a pavement, it’s a mess so it’s not perfectly smooth and level. And so people are “slipping and sliding” on cobblestone or whatever it happens to be and he’s connecting that with the past and saying how they’re just the latest generation of people to be walking and jostling in bad weather through these, through these stones that other people have gone before them and done these exact same things, uh, and it accumulates at “compound interest,” um, [Pause.] “adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement,” and “accumulating,” I’m assuming, “compound interest” means it’s interest on top of interest, so, it’s, the mud is growing exponentially if you will. And that’s one whole paragraph right there.
The difference in this reading test is immediately clear: instead of making a generalized statement to summarize the entire sentence, the subject carefully attempts to interpret each successive clause. He is interested in the details of the setting, stating that the setting is in London and then trying to find a reason why so many people would be “slipping and sliding” on the road. (Perhaps, he thinks, it is because the street is constructed of cobblestones instead of pavement.) He then finds a good way to explain Dickens’ clause, “where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke,” by stating that the people in this sentence are just the “latest generation” to be walking in the mud that day. This subject is also able to define what “compound interest” is and shows how this financial term is being used by Dickens to describe the layers of mud in the street. The subject’s ability to comprehend details and create meaning makes him a proficient reader.
I find it interesting how they handle this. Yes, this description is obviously more in-depth than the other examples. But why does this student get such a long sentence demonstrated in the publication? What did he say about the sentences about the fog? What did the other students say about this sentence?
Very notable to me is the fact that they say this:
even though that is a patently incorrect explanation of the sentence. Why does the proficient reader get his failures described as "a good way to explain"? It's clearly talking about how tens of thousands of people have already been that day. Why is talking about them being "the latest generation" good when there is no indication that he is using the word "generation" metaphorically and not because he thinks it's talking about people walking those streets since time immemorial?
While I'm sure there are plenty of shitty readers at mediocre universities in Kansas, I don't see how this could be anything more than researchers fitting evidence to their already-finalized conclusions. Yes, literary skills are getting demonstrably worse. Yes, parents are fucking awful to deal with and are harming their children's educations. But this research comes across as pretty poorly-conducted—or at least poorly-written—and I don't believe this satisfactorily describes what they say it describes.
I had the same thoughts reading examples 1 & 3.
Regarding the it's-real-foggy passage: The criticism about not understanding the symbolism of the fog doesn't make sense in context. Why would anyone expect the student to interpret the fog as an analogy for "the confusion, disarray, and blindness of the Court of Chancery" when the Court of Chancery had, up to this point in the text, only been mentioned obliquely in the second sentence?
But I think you missed the most egregious exchange of them all.
No doubt that the student is struggling here, but unless the student is in on the joke, laughing at them is pretty disrespectful. I'm not sure how unbiased this assessment can be if the facilitator is nearly mocking them for incorrect readings.
Agreed. I actually had copied that one into my comment but I removed it for a couple reasons. One was that I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. The student clearly was expressing their ideas as questions, which means there's a great chance the laugh was from sharing in the student's bewilderment. The other reason was that I thought the paragraph describing what the student did wrong was weak, but I decided it was so weak that describing the problems was just kinda dumb.
You saved me SO much time by writing this up, updawg. Thank you.
One of my bugbears as a teacher has been educational research. Partially how it’s done, but mostly how it’s applied.
A study will be done with a small group of students in a single location. It will primarily contain non-quantitative data. The conclusion of that study will be sufficiently restrained, because the researchers know the limitations of their own methods.
Unfortunately, this gets filtered through a game of telephone and becomes an educational truism that gets massively generalized and overapplied. A study might be done showing that, say, 15 minutes of standardized homework each night is ineffective for raising standardized reading test scores in one kindergarten class. This then becomes “homework is ineffective” and gets applied to, say, 12th grade calculus students.
There’s a lot of doom and gloom in this topic on reading (and rightfully so), but this study isn’t necessarily the smoking gun for an entire society’s worth of literacy issues. Education is a very complex landscape that can’t be meaningfully be explained or navigated by simple, direct conclusions from one single data point.
Nail on the head, IMO. They don't even define a research question, so I'm assuming this is what they want to prove, damned be the evidence:
If that's the case, they need to study students over time. Not one cohort, with no described sampling process, or a well defined rubric for categorizing participants into the "problematic", "competent", or "proficient" groups.
If I may be pithy, I'd propose a follow-up entitled "They Don't Think Very Well: A Study of Critical Thinking and Research Design Skills of Professors at Pittsburg State University".
They've demonstrated that their students and researchers are bad. Now I know not to let anyone I know go there.
although I guess they have to be literate enough to understand why...
I see what you mean that the student has added something to that last example, but even discounting for that, isn’t the overall impression quite different than the other examples?
These examples could all be cherry-picked, though. To some extent we are relying on trust, that the authors of the study are attempting to accurately describe their overall impressions of their students’ reading abilities in a somewhat more rigorous way. (Certainly, more rigorous than the usual articles I read about such things.)
If you decide to distrust them then you probably wouldn’t be satisfied without looking at the original data yourself, or comparing with other studies. Perhaps there are better studies out there?
I think it would have been more useful if the authors had released problematic/proficient/competent answers for the same question. As it is, the conclusions entirely depend on the authors' assessment of the subject's reading comprehension, but there's little in here that lets us assess the authors' assessments.
Yes, the impression is obviously better, but it illustrates that the authors were willing to handwave something bad and pretend it was good if it suited their position.
The problem is that I think the gross findings (students are worse at reading than they used to be) are probably true, but the problems are with everything else they talked about, trying to explain that finding. You can't exactly study that.
Project Gutenberg link for those that want a go. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1023/pg1023-images.html
I'm assuming it was the first 7 paragraphs of chapter 1. It's dense, it's been 30 years since I read anything from Dickens and yeah, it's dense. I can read novels, technical papers, newspapers, etc easily, but this was a lot of work. It is English, but archaic. I felt like I had to translate it from Dickens English to modern American English before I could really start comprehending it. Hats off to anyone that can read that in 20 minutes and paraphrase is back.
My cursed childhood strikes again.
I read a lot of fiction from that era. I do not find much in here that is problematic.
Normally I might take more guesses and move on and just use context, but given the study… I looked up "ait", for example. And it took my third reading of the passage to realize that "wonderful" did not mean that it would have been awesome to meet the animal in the streets; rather, that it would not have been out of place, i.e. an archaic meaning of "wonderful" like how "awesome" used to mean something that would literally fill one with awe.
Not to say that I didn't struggle a bit with some of it, but as the article mentioned about proficient readers perhaps having prior knowledge of things like solicitors=lawyers and they tend to wear wigs… I didn't know what chaucery was, but I caught it was a court.
And in fact, I've had to stop reading because I've gotten drawn into wanting to read more about this epic case that is going on for generations, and all the mire and muck and societal malaise implied. lol.
I'm always fascinated by reading some of the turns of phrases; which is a reason I love reading writing by folks who are ESL, as you get a sort of reflection sometimes of grammar or idioms from their primary language(s) that come through and are interesting and fascinating.
But this study also is extraordinarily depressing to see JUST how awful these COLLEGE STUDENTS who are even speficically ENGLISH MAJORS fared.
Look, IQ is a stupid measure for the most part, but I do have one. And I was a voracious reader - I always have been - and I realize that makes me an outlier, but good grief even still.
It does explain why I sometimes struggle on reddit. Sometimes I'm sure my ADHD means I don't explain myself well… but I think a lot of the time there are just so many people out there who can't think.
Tildes is definitely a bright and shining oasis on that front…
Do they not do the free pizza if you read enough books thing anymore? I would think a personal pan pizza would motivate at least, though I guess it would be trivially easy to cheat on those today.
They do - but there is little to no validation on it. I am pretty sure mine could get just write down the titles of the first 10 books they saw in the house and the school would be like "close enough"
You already got an answer, but I'm just replying to confirm because I never ever was in a school that was involved in such programs, and screw this planet. ;-)
This is one of the reasons I love reading Joseph Conrad. English was his third(!) language, but his command of it is phenomenal, and Polish phrasing creeps in in the most intriguing ways.
I would like to suggest referring to such people as multilingual.
Do you have a suggestion that specifically indicates English isn't a primary/first/native/spoken in the home language? Because I get the goal, but while there's overlap, the two aren't the same
Multilinguals’ use of all their languages changes over time according to complex individual circumstances. What is being described above is an event in which a third party observed the influence of one or more other languages on someone’s English output.
Referring to someone as ‘
anESL’ is an act of labeling and it’s best avoided because it prescribes a static identity instead of handling objective description of an event. In other words, to answer the question of ‘what would you call such a person?’ I would answer that I just wouldn’t.Thinking about it from my own experiences, when I notice that my Japanese is influencing my English I simply think of it like that. When someone else notices that my English has influenced my Japanese they might say it was 「英語っぽい」or ‘English-sounding’.
Like I said I get what you're saying, but my gut tells me there's some usefulness to being able to describe people who bring those other languages' influences to English in a specific way, particularly because English was not the/a language they started with. I appreciate the effort - I don't like using academic terms to refer to people; I also hate the frequency with which "SPED" gets used in teachers education programs, thankfully not typically at people but it's still got an ick to it. So I get not wanting to label people as "ESL" but I'm trying to find a way to articulate the same thought in a different way.
But perhaps the thought itself is the problem. I'm not sure. Thank you again
Someone who did not grow up with English idioms will have a fundamentally different relationship to them than someone who did grow up with them, even if they later went on to learn other languages.
Absolutely true. It is also true that manner and extent to which one uses idiomatic language is a result of personal circumstances that are highly variable among individual speakers. We can find this variance acknowledged at least as far back as Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik’s absolutely massive 1985 ‘A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language’. Anyone who gets a chance should read through the introduction of that book. It is well worth it!
Anyhow, the point I intend to make is that description of a linguistic event, rather than labeling a person with an initialism originally used to describe a school subject in which pupils tend to feel ostracized from their peer group due to differences in their upbringing landing them there, is a more useful and accurate means by which to describe the circumstances behind an observation such as the one mentioned in the comment above.
Note: I would like to reassure anyone reading this that the strength of my convictions *is aimed squarely at the topic under discussion and absolutely not at any commenter.
I did no such thing. I specifically said:
I used that phrasing intentionally and thoughtfully.
I used to work with adults with developmental and cognitive disabilities. I am sensitive to the difference between such constructs as "autistic people" and "people with autism".
I am willing to adapt and adjust to new ways of thinking, but I believe I am already being respectful.
So how would you make the point I was making; communicating the information I was attempting to communicate? Trying to convey my respect for those that are multilingual compared to my monolinguistical limitations; the joy I take in hearing such people express things, because I learn from them?
I wouldn't tend to use "multilingual" because a key point was that the people to whom I refer are not multilingual, but specifically have primary languages that are not English; in fact, English might be a third, fourth, fifth language. Far from being an insult, it is the precise reason I am celebrating these.
I would refer to them as multilingual. There is no hard and fast rule, but I would say that anyone with at least a CEFR B1~B2 command of more than one language could begin to refer to themselves as multilingual. There is no equality across language domains inherent in the term multilingual. In fact, I'm happy to say that the very moments you are celebrating in your comment above underlie some of the core motivations behind the development of multilingual theory! I will include some open access links below. No offense or attack was meant by my above comment!!
May, S. (Ed.). (2013). The multilingual turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL, and bilingual education. Routledge.
https://www.academia.edu/download/71972752/Anastassia_Zabrodskaja.pdf
Meier, G. S. (2017). The multilingual turn as a critical movement in education: Assumptions, challenges and a need for reflection. Applied Linguistics Review, 8(1), 131-161.
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/applirev-2016-2010/pdf
Cenoz, J. (2019). Translanguaging pedagogies and English as a lingua franca. Language Teaching, 52(1), 71-85. https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/C684EE2F715747B35F9565761257CA74/S0261444817000246a.pdf/translanguaging_pedagogies_and_english_as_a_lingua_franca.pdf
Alternatively, you might prefer this version: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/charles-dickens/bleak-house
Thanks. I agree that your version has better typesetting which makes it easier to read. I'm reading it again this morning, and with fresh eyes it's diversity easier to parse or maybe it's easier since I'm more on my 8th read through. It's still dense Dickens prose. Reading it for fun would be fun, reading it for critical review would be more work, at least for me
Standard Ebooks alters and ‘modernizes’ texts, including changes to language and content, not just layout.
They don’t appear to have damaged the particular paragraphs in question, butI would be wary of recommending them in these sorts of situations where seeing the same text that was used for the research matters. (I would also personally recommend against them generally, but I realize that some people do prefer these sorts of alterations. It would certainly be preferable, however, if they more prominently noted that they alter texts, so that people with my preferences could know to avoid them.)Edit: here, for example, both SE and Project Gutenberg remove the capitalization from the first word of the chapter, while every printed/scanned copy I've checked capitalizes it, and the version quoted in the paper capitalizes it. This is potentially substantive for comprehension.
I’m biased because I love Standard Ebooks, but it’s worth mentioning that they keep a full changelog for each book. Here’s the one for Bleak House.
Generally I find their changes welcome, as a lot of older public domain texts have issues that I find odd or distracting and that pull me out of the reading (certain ligatures, for example). At other times it’s clear that a text was OCR’d but not proofread, leading to certain swaps like
hin place ofbor vice versa, which results in something like, say: “Though sbe was a hundle of nerves…” (not an actual example, mind you, I just made that up)If I were going to do actual critical study of an author’s work, then going to original or specifically endorsed editions would be my choice, but for lay reading, I find the work that Standard Ebooks does to be quite invaluable.
Also, I think your point stands that, in considering this study specifically, it’s important for our text to match theirs, so using a different one doesn’t serve that purpose.
Thank you for pointing out the changelog. Unfortunately, seeing a concrete example really strengthens my dislike of Standard Ebooks. Even on a text with relatively modern language compared to earlier centuries, they have made several hundred, perhaps over a thousand, changes to the text they have labelled as being in their pursuit of modernization. These aren't corrections like those you point out; they are actual editorial alterations to the intended text. At times these changes don't even make sense from the perspective of modernization: they appear to have a general dislike of hyphenation, for example, and so have used "brickkiln" to replace the much clearer "brick-kiln". Yet "brickkiln" doesn't even appear in the modern OED (it instead has "brick kiln"), and N-grams suggests that this choice actually replaces the more modern term with a more antiquated one.
What feels particularly like a betrayal on the part of Standard Ebooks is that I feel they don't disclose that they alter content anywhere near prominently enough. Nothing on their front page suggests that they do; 'modernization' of language is never mentioned, and everything suggests they only proofread, correct, and typeset, eg,
Even a glance through their style manual would likely not suggest to a reader that they do anything other than proofreading and typesetting. And yet, looking through changelogs, they make hundreds of arbitrary alterations.
Yes, some people would prefer those sorts of changes, but some people, like me, see them as mutilations, and it would be nice to be able to make a more informed choice. I actually didn't realize SE had these policies, and used to recommend them, until a commenter on hackernews pointed it out; even in just pointing it out, the commenter had rather flippant and hostile responses from people who seemed to be SE leadership, and who didn't think that even noting that they made these changes was important, and seemed offended that some people would even take issue with them.
I don’t normally give novels this much scrutiny. I take the editing process on faith. I have noticed bad OCR in Kindle editions of older books, which suggests no proofreading at all, but wouldn’t normally notice minor differences.
I wonder how good the alternatives are. What do the various print editions of public domain works do? It seems like their quality would be quite variable? Are Gutenberg editions consistently high quality?
Honestly I can see how/why someone would make that change, because I've seen so many books fully capitalize the first word of a new chapter. I genuinely just assume it's a stylistic choice when I encounter it, so this wouldn't really impact my own reading comprehension.
Yes, it turns out, I was a bit mistaken here: this is a rather confusing case, where what could have been semantically meaningful formatting is actually first-word capitalization. However, it is still something that could influence comprehension, especially with the examples of reader thought processes given in the paper.
I had a lot of trouble with this too. I consider myself above-average in language and grammar, but the sentence construction is really difficult. The sentences are fairly long, have turns of phrase that aren't encountered regularly, and have many "mappings." Where does the clause branch from? I found that difficult to discern. I had to lean on aural understanding; the sentences are very difficult to interpret if you don't know how its meant to be read aloud.
I'll also admit that I don't really read books much anymore. So the art of reading has somewhat been lost to me too. I've never had much patience for having to read and imagine something, whereas I enjoy reading about ideas and concepts.
I guess an English major is meant to understand this stuff. Still, if I wrote sentences like this, I'd have expected to not have passed my assignments in high school. (Of course, I'm no Charles Dickens.)
I think Dickens was over 20 years ago for me. I'd give it like a... blue-black if it were a ski hill. A couple vocab words: had to check that blinkers are blinder, never head of an ait, and had to look up collier-brigs. The sentence structure was kinda rough. Long with multiple clauses; locally coherent but feeling like I was carrying a lot of context line to line.
Really I don't think it is until around paragraph 5 that you know have the fog metaphor confirmed. Preceding sentences are shaping the analogy, this delivers it.
In my opinion this piece can't be tested via their protocol. Like the researchers don't get that not all work is suited to the style of interpretation necessitated by the study design.
I always have to stop and look up when Michaelmas is. (September) So is that the fall quarter/trimester/semester? I have no idea. (A quick search shows me it's the fall term but, not how long it is or when it ends)
That very first bit can stop you in your tracks if you don't refer to school in "terms", know when a British/Anglican* holiday is, and know what time of year that term ends. And then if you don't know that the court uses these same Cambridgian "terms" to divide their calendar you're thrown again!
I've read enough older literature to not be thrown by that sentence but that's what good annotations, professors, notes, etc are good for. Cliff/Spark Notes aren't just for not reading the paper but to actually have references explained to a world that's rather foreign to you at 18-22. Unless someone's degree is in British Literature I'm not sure I'd expect understanding of the nuances of Dickens without explicit instruction on it.
*Regardless of it's more religious history, post industrial revolution it seems like it's mostly about school term timing but idk maybe Brits go all out on Michaelmas.
I at least know it is pronounced Mick-el-mus (I assume there's a schwa in there, I don't want to type one) not Michael-mass
Oh haha , yeah I didn't know that word but I was like "proper noun don't care" and moved on lol
Haha fair, i can skim past stuff, especially if I'm reading for a test or quiz or something, but I can also fixate on things.
Anyone in the tertiary education sector knows that this is a problem and that the worst is probably yet to come. Some of these kids coming out of high school are just, plainly, not literate. Their schools have failed them and I have no idea how society addresses this.
Lots of universities and schools in my area are going back to handwriting, which I think is the right thing to do, but it's going to be crushingly hard for these kids who aren't used to that.
It's tragic because it was oh so easily predictable. You need to write to form thoughts. You need to read small words to be able to read long words. You need to be proficient in novels before being able to analyse literature in any real way. None of these facts are new. Again, the schooling system has completely failed several years worth of students, and those kids are going to pay the price.
Honestly, it feels like we’re living through another version of the “lead generation” with how we’ve screwed up a whole generation of students.
I don’t know that handwriting is even going to be a long term solution with AI smart glasses coming down the pipe in the next 5-10 years. Education is probably going to have to become something completely different in this new world and I don’t think we’re ready for it in the slightest.
The handwriting is specifically to address the problem of cheating, particularly Law students (which is deeply ironic). As of now, it's quite difficult to cheat on a properly designed handwritten test in a controlled environment. The only problem so far is that if you're not used to writing on paper (because your school neglected to teach you), it's quite hard to start writing about case law and precedent all of a sudden. Hands get tired.
But a combination of reading material at home, class discussions at the classroom, and exams (either on university provided laptops or handwritten) in the classroom goes a long way in weeding out a lot of the cheating. It's just that not every lecturer wants to change they way they taught all of a sudden, plus they're overworked and don't have the mental capacity for the increased workload.
But things can be done, we're just not doing them.
I suppose you can be technically correct about "schools failing them," and of course there are always ways for schools to improve, but this is a societal issue. When students come into my classroom and do not care an ounce, there's nothing I or the school can do about it. If a kid does not want to learn and the people at home don't make them, that's the whole ball game. I get that schools are the last remaining public service in America, but we can't force anybody to learn anything.
To give kids graduating right now a bit of a break: they were in middle school when the pandemic hit. All the things associated with the pandemic really messed kids up, really badly. Most kids are pretty resilient, sure, but resilience is not a cure all nor is it instantaneous.
Someone posted more commentary on Tumblr (which is how I found the study):
https://www.tumblr.com/prettyboysdontlookatexplosions/783379386552516608/i-appreciated-this-study-they-cant-read-very
…
How are they getting As and Bs if they are this bad!!??
8th grade teacher here.
Answer for Millenials and older
Tyler learned to read through “whole word” reading methods instead of learning phonics. If you want to know why, you will need to realize that education is money, politics, and shitty science thrown into a blender. Tyler’s overworked and underpaid parents threw him in front of an Ipad because parenting is exhausting and confusing – kids aren’t considered a resource anymore, but are instead a resource sink. Gone are the days when children were to be seen and not heard, sent to play outside or read a book when they weren’t providing valuable labor for your household. Parents have to kill themselves to provide enrichment and it's never enough to fill the gaping holes in our atomized society. Socializing is rarely in person outside of structured, pre-planned events. Reading is not fun, it's a chore that privileged parents have time and energy to provide.
Few, if any of Tyler’s friends play outside anymore and he spends much of his time watching videos or talking to his friends while playing Madden. Perhaps his parents divorce and the home becomes toxic. Perhaps his father goes down the Fox news rabbit hole and starts saying stupid shit nonstop which Tyler mistakes for critical thinking. Doesn’t really matter, pick your poison.
Tyler struggles with reading and behavior just like 60-70% of his classmates. To get by, he uses Google. Later, he will learn about Sparknotes. Later still, AI will become common and he will just start using that.
Tyler’s teachers, also underpaid and exhausted, deal with shitty behavior from children day in and day out. The kids are constantly “stimming” in class by repeating random brainrot phrases aloud, disrupting class and making it impossible for even the brightest students to learn. Whatever you're imagining, it's worse. I really promise. Teaching becomes 90% classroom management and 10% teaching. There are few consequences at home or at school for bad behavior. When Tyler does even the most basic of tasks, his teachers are beyond excited. They send a nice note home because he wrote a full paragraph by himself (in 8th grade). It might not seem like much, but for Tyler it’s pretty goddamn amazing. You should see how little he usually accomplishes, which is still more than most kids.
It doesn’t truly matter. The lowest grade Tyler can get is a 50%. That’s the new 0%. He can pretty much blow off everything and then stay after right before the quarter ends to get his grade up to a 65% (passing). Try being the teacher who doesn’t allow it. Tyler’s parents will make your life miserable and admin will give in to them. His parents aren’t bad people, but they’re not good parents. Maybe it’s their fault? Maybe it’s systemic? I don’t know, but the result is the same.
Tyler’s teachers are to blame too though, in some small way. Like his parents, they have way too much on their plates and are often trying to make it through the day. When they see Tyler struggling, they can give 1/25th of their attention to him. That is an average of 2 minutes per class period. Integrating special ed. in the classroom can work extremely well sometimes. Other times, it means you have people in the same room, learning the same text with IQ scores ranging from 70 to 140. Yes, there are children in the room with Tyler who are literally TWICE as bright as he is. Their behavior and attention spans are not twice as good though. When Tyler actually sits down and focuses for a whole period, our bleeding hearts give him bonus point to encourage this type of behavior in the future. He really tried today. I can’t give him the 57% this project deserves. He has to get a 65% on this at least. I’ve never seen him so invested. I would kill for a week to just sit down with him and teach him the stuff he needs to know, but I am already working at home to even do the bare minimum that my job requires. And honestly, the odds of him paying attention are miniscule. A week wouldn’t make a dent.
Tyler graduates, still thinking that “citing text evidence” literally means copy and pasting a full paragraph into an organizer. He was passing assignments because he actually fucking turned something in most of the time, which is genuinely more than I can say about most of his peers. Relative to his peers, that copy/pasted, AI generated garbage was an incredible level of effort and Tyler should be commended. Tyler’s attendance wasn’t great, his work completion was above average maybe, and he finished grade 12 having never once finished a full novel – I shit you not.
Maybe Tyler goes to college? Probably not. But the kid who was in most of his classes for those 12 years, Brandon, does go to college. Brandon had most of the same issues Tyler had, but was just brighter. He also suffered from shitty reading instruction, overworked teachers, overworked parents, absolute lack of accountability for behavior, social media addiction, and more. He also finished 12th grade without ever finishing a novel. It doesn’t even matter if Branden is a bright, hard-working student because he got a shitty education and barely did any of his work. When he did do his work, he found that even the smallest, most pathetic amount of effort you can fathom was enough to make his teachers gasp in complete awe at his brilliance (relative to their other students). Tyler and Brandon, their parents, and their teachers all get royally fucked in this system, and they’re all mad at each other. They’re failing and being failed at every turn. In Tyler and Branden's defense, they're still just as smart as their older counterparts. Their intelligence is just being directed at things which are wildly different, almost incomprehensible, to the folks who are reading Charles Dickens.
Answer translated for Gen Z and younger
yo chat we r cooked.
I'm sorry kids. You guys are actually hilarious - way funnier than any previous generation. You got handed a tough world but have embraced the absurdity and kept your senses of humor. You are intelligent in ways that don't match up with our current education system, which is amazing in some ways and horrifying in others. It's not your fault, but please try to be less apathetic. Please try to be more intellectually curious. We have failed you, and unfortunately it's up to you to correct the issues
oof
no cap, we ain’t bussin fam - these words got me shook
there giving tho, you ate that — periodt
GYATT
Answer translated for Millennials and older
Ouch.
Not gonna lie, as a fellow teacher, I can also say I’m feeling this. This was tough to read because it’s so resonant.
You’re right on the money though. This is a solid assessment of the problem, and you said everything you needed to say.
Also, nice ass!
In all seriousness, I’ll never not recommend the Sold a Story podcast for anyone interested in reading instruction in the US.
On God tho bruh..
Fr tho making us reed Charles Dick - no Diddy - prob isnt thee best way to test this jit. Shit mad old bruh. Nobody even talks that way. Y dont they ever give quizzes on normal shit bruh. We wood b doing better if they talked normal in them old ass books.
Just so everyone else reading this who isn’t a teacher like Wolf and me gets the full picture: what we left out is that, during the above exchanges, ten different kids would have asked to go to the bathroom for the fourth time that day and gotten angry when we told them they had to wait for a few minutes. They also would completely check out of their learning until they get to go to the bathroom (which they are doing to check their phones, meet up with friends, and run out the clock on their work). They then take five-to-ten minutes to come back “online” mentally after they return, at which point the period is over and they’ll do the exact same thing in the next class.
You forgot to mention their need to vape. We had to remove the ceiling tiles from the bathrooms recently because kids were hiding vapes (weed and nicotine) in them.
Lol. I still feel like we haven't begun to paint them the full picture. I don't even know how to quantify it. The best I can say is that it's like the background noise in a busy restaurant except you are supposed to hear all of what everyone is saying rather than drowning it out.
I get home from work and often tell my wife it feels like my brain has been plugged into an electrical socket all day. I literally can feel the tired in my brain and it feels like a buzzing noise.
Spot on with the checking out, bathrooms, and attitude. I had to remove four students from my classroom yesterday during a single class period. 2 of them swore at me. One got upset and begged me not to call his dad because his uncle just got killed - I decided to cut him some slack. Meanwhile I was supposed to be reading chapter 2 of the Giver to our students. But kicking kids out took up about 10 minutes of our 50 minute period. Other disruptions took up a solid 5-10 more. Later in the day, I had to talk to a parent about a kid who broke a desk in half while there was a sub in the room.
Lmao I actually just stopped typing because I feel like it's just rambling and redundant but I genuinely have so much more I could add to this. Holy shit our jobs are insane and we are just desensitized.
My favorite insults from this year:
"That's why you're a D1 Dicksucker."
"Fuck outta here with that McDonalds ass hairline."
"Stop throwing Mr. OfficerDougEiffel's pencils bro, them shits cost him like five paychecks."
"I was about to say something true, but it would probably hurt your feelings."
"Get [other student] away from me before he eats me for real. Fat fuck."
The vapes! How could I forget the vapes?!
Oh, I know, because this job is, like you identified, everything everywhere all at once. All the time.
My husband likes to keep the TV on for background noise, in the same way that other people listen to music. I bought him Bluetooth headphones and sometimes have to ask him to put them in, because I’m often so overstimulated from my day that I need silence to recharge.
If this is typical, is it any wonder that many parents prefer private or charter schools, or even home schooling? Not that they’re necessarily better.
Yup! There’s definitely a demand for better schooling among parents. The problem with private schools in particular, and charter schools partially, is that they effectively are a selection filter that works against the general population, separating out students and families with the most resources.
Thus, the most involved parents and families achieve a desired positive outcome for themselves without improving their local schools, which would benefit their whole community. In fact, the benefits they receive from screening their kids out is often contingent on community schools being worse, because that very disparity is what actually creates specific opportunities for their children.
If those students were in the same schools as everyone else there would likely be a lot more political will to improve them.
Sure, but that's also the trap! The people who don't want public school to exist take as much money away from it and make it as bad as possible, and then point to alternatives. I completely understand an individual parent putting their kid in a better school - I would do it myself if I needed to, and I'm a public school teacher. But it's infuriating that conservatives have so successfully executed their destruction of the public space.
I just want to express how much I hate all of you <3
I run a discord server of mostly Indian youths who are interested in History. They’re mostly college aged guys and I have to say my experience with them is wildly different. Obviously it’s a biased sample, but these guys read voraciously, research with some intensity, and often seek out primary sources that they commit themselves to deciphering. I mostly just try to steer them towards not buying the perspective of whoever they’re reading up front and to constantly interrogate what mental models their sources are operating under and how that differs from ours.
I assume the fact that Indian parents will take the teachers’ side over their kids probably helps. I, personally, can’t imagine being mad at the school if my kid isn’t doing well. If anything I imagine myself demanding more rigor. He’s getting straight As? He’s clearly not being challenged enough. MOAR!
Yeah there are still good students out there, for sure. And it's not super surprising that the type of people who would self-sort into a discord about learning would be good students.
You might enjoy this video of a linguist speaking Gen Alpha. (Start around 1:56 to skip the endorsement)
I fully appreciate any adult who works with kids and leans directly into the cringe. Bravo!
Also I sort of hate that I didn’t need the subtitles to understand him. 😂
Excuse me, stewardess, I speak jive!
Your post really helped contextualize why we keep hearing from my kid's teachers about how creative our kids are. Apparently the answer is "a little bit of neglect" and "let them be bored," which best I can tell is a rarity.
I'm doing the best I can to keep these days alive. I do toss my young GenA kids outside with a snack and a water bottle and say "You can come inside at lunch."
Other common phrases we say:
Here are my rules for acceptable screen usage outside the house:
Not to fault said overwhelmed parents for not doing this, life is hard. But I will say that using screens to pacify children is a lot like taking a drink to cure the hangover.
fr fr.
That said, I am curious about the general state of reading comprehension. Everything you said definitely explains today. But this study was conducted in 2015. So mid-to-youngest of Millennials and the oldest of Gen Z. Zillennials, I guess. So the explanation has to be somewhat different. Though maybe not vastly so. For example, inattentive parents—either because too busy or just didn't care—aren't anything new, right? Maybe not sitting kids in front of an iPad, which obviously didn't exist back then, but sitting them in front of a TV for hours.
I guess I'd want to know if this is something that's been going on for awhile, but we just didn't know about it. Because reading comprehension studies on college students wasn't being looked at. If even Gen X and even Boomers and possibly beyond dealt with this. After all, we know functional illiteracy is pretty widespread and cuts across various demographic swaths, including all age groups.
If it's the case that this has been affecting multiple generations...I don't know if I should breath a sigh of relief ("Oh thank god; Millennials/GenZ aren't the reason everything has turned to shit, this time!") or be even more alarmed. That we've been graduating class after class of college grads, even English majors, who can't understand complex texts, even though the world has only gotten more and more complex.
It seems rather odd that the study was done in 2015 and published in 2024, nine years later. Somehow I hadn’t noticed that!
Gives me hope for my master's degree capstone covering baseball statistics from 2021!
I'll be honest, I do think you should be a little worried that we graduate class after class of functionally illiterate children. And I don't think much has changed in ten years other than it getting worse - especially during COVID.
I'm there teaching them and it's shocking how many foundational skills most kids are missing.
That said, I do think Dickens isn't the best test for literacy anymore. Language has changed a lot and kids are better at reading non-fiction than prose when it comes to complex texts. I won't pretend to know why for a fact, but anecdotally I think that's where the focus has been in schools for a long time.
Did you know authors of fiction are told to write at the sixth grade reading level if they want their books to sell? Publishers make them dumb down their novels all the time.
I think a major part of the reason for choosing Dickens for this test is because the tested students are English and English Education majors. Majors which specialize in reading and writing prose. They should, theoretically, be more equipped to understand the text than the average person. They wanted to test their ability to understand and explain more complex texts that should, theoretically, still be comprehensible to modern audiences with a bit of thought.
Instead, there were students using context clues to get the wrong image entirely. There were students who couldn't tell apart literal and figurative language, which should be pretty basic for students who should specialize in prose. Reading it myself, the text is dense and uses a lot of figurative language, but most of the individual vocabulary is still used today. It comes down to interpreting it to figure out the actual meaning, like that one proficient student who explained the passage describing the busy, muddy street.
Also, the fact multiple students saw "Megalosaurus" and assumed there was an actual dinosaur walking around (and at least one didn't seem to know it was a dinosaur, which I'd thought would be an obvious assumption from the "saurus" part) is pretty concerning. I don't know if I've ever read a Dickens novel, but I still know he doesn't write the sort of genres with living dinosaurs walking around London.
If this is the level of people who are supposed to specialize in this subject, what does that say about the rest of the population?
There are reasons that 50% of teachers quit in the first five years these days. This is only one of them.
I desperately wish every parent had to do a short stint as a classroom aide. Just one week per year.
Go watch footage of Trump rallies, Q anon conventions, UFO conventions, etc. Those videos don't surprise me one bit.
There are plenty of brilliant kids doing brilliant things. But the overall average is terrifying.
It was the shift to Common Core standards that made nonfiction reading more of a priority:
Yes, I thought so. I remembered reading this but I was afraid of misremembering. I don't do curriculum writing. I use my summers to do literally anything but teach and deal with school.
Pressure to pass because of parents, admin, and state/federal funding.
Something something metric, something something target, something something Goodhart’s Law.
Along with grade inflation and outside pressure from parents etc. Schooling has also just become ridiculously easy to game.
I went through it all before AI and even back then it was shamefully easy to get through English class with spark notes etc. Standardized tests are easy to cheat written essays are easy to write around what you don’t actually know. I also never experienced a teacher prior to a single professor in college caring enough (or being paid enough) to do the work to properly grade essays.
This will ring very true for anyone who's been tested on their reading comprehension in a second (or third) language that they don't know very well yet.
But how devastatingly sad to realize that this is true for some people in their native tongue :(
Want to hear something a teacher like myself should never say aloud?
In CSE meetings, we regularly exempt kids from learning a world language in school. We look at a battery of tests performed by a psychologist, we look at their grades, etc. and make a decision as a committee to allow them to graduate without a French or Spanish credit.
The truth is that it's a waste of time to look at that data. It's just providing evidence for what I could have told the committee in ten seconds: This kid barely speaks English and certainly can't read it. How are they supposed to learn Spanish?
What are CSE meetings?
Committee on special education. Just to be clear though, it isn't special education like it was 20 years ago or more. It encompasses a huge number of kids, including kids who would have just been low-performers back when I was in school and kids with shitty home lives. 15% of American students receive Sp.Ed. services, which may seem scary but ultimately I think it's indicative of the fact that we are doing more than ever before to try and prevent kids from just failing out/dropping out. That said, it's a patch on a sinking ship in my opinion. So many other things need to happen.
I saw this tumblr post today (on reddit, I think) and almost posted it here. I’m glad you did, because I’m liking the discussion here on it.
I know one of my weaknesses as a writer is symbolism and figurative language. My writing style is pretty direct, and I tend to focus on the blunter parts of fiction. Reading this paper though... Well, at least I know I can tell the difference between figurative and literal language.
Yeah, it scares me that these are English and English education majors. Fun fact: I was briefly an English education major, and dropped it after I signed up for a required English class that went over medieval literature. As in, we'd need a special dictionary to help literally translate the archaic language into something we could comprehend. Was already uncertain about my major, and seeing that made me drop that class day one.
In comparison, the Dickens passage used in the study is dense, but most of the words are still in use across modern fiction. I may not have realized Lord's Inn Hall was a courtroom at first, but later paragraphs clued me in due to the presence of the advocate and the list of legal jargon. If there were students struggling to properly envision the scene because the word "whiskers" made them imagine a cat, then uh... Yeah, no clue how they'd handle that medieval English class.
I think the scariest part though is that the study was in 2015. Those students wouldn't have been nearly as heavily addicted to social media and iPads as modern kids. And that's before accounting for how Covid screwed over so many kids.
Yeah... This paints a bleak picture of people's overall reading abilities.
From the abstract:
More:
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Here arethe 9 paragraphs the subjects had to read.
I sort of already expressed this in a reply or two, but… it warrants saying again: I find this so extremely depressing.
I'm fine with some folks having less education and less reading, but the problem is that these people vote. And voting requires nuanced understanding of complex issues. So less education leads to fascism. And all the people depending on the 'old people dying off' are going to be unpleasantly surprised when that doesn't resolve the issue. I mean,that's already apparent if you look at voters.
But anyway.
My own education journey is one I'm unhappy with. I shall briefly explain:
I did alright in kindergarten, but that's kindergarten. In first grade, I had trouble with my schoolwork. I was bored. I learned a lot, but a lot of it I had already learned, so I was bored. The school sent home resources - I remember big flip charts with educational stuff - for my parents to work with me.
I don't remember second grade. I didn't get much attention, but that doesn't mean it went well.
Third and fourth grade, however, I wasin the TAG program in Texas - the Talented and Gifted program.
I'd previously been administered an IQ test when I was in first grade and scored aruond 135.
But I was struggling in school. One day per week in TAG, the rest of the days with my regular class. Getting counseling for my schoolwork problems. In 4th grade, when others would copy the 20 vocabulary words down from the chalkboard and write them like 20 times each, I was tasked with writing each one once and drawing a picture of it. My counselor advised that I would never write better than a five year old.
I found out later that I failed fourth grade - my parents didn't tell me immediately. But after the school year, the administrators called them into a meeting and demanded they sign custody of me over to the state. Not just until I was 18, but until such time as the state released me.
Unsurprisingly, they said "hell no".
Couldn't get to a private school, so they homeschooled me.
We used creationist Christian materials. I was a fundamentalist Southern Baptist at the time.
We struggled, and after 8th grade, we heard of a private school that had opened in town, so for 9th grade, that's where I went.
For my class, it was almost 20 of us in 7th-9th grades all in one room, mostly self-directed. I shall summarize that shitty year by talking about the end-of-year ceremonies, where all the ribbons for things from that year were given out. I'd say >75% of the first and second place ribbons went to children of staff, and >75% of the third-fourth-"you tried" went to those of us who were not. I'll leave it there.
We started back in homeschooling for 10th grade, but by Christmas had stopped for "a break". My parents got a CAT test (standardized test from California) and I placed in mid-college level for everything except math at 11.5th grade.
So they said, "Congrats! You graduated!" and so for a while I chose January 1, 1991 for my graduation date, but in more recent years, went with December 31, 1990. lol. Either way, it was around mid January when we did the testing…
I tried to get into college a couple of times and struggled. I was finally doing better after having a GPA of 2.2 - in one semester I pulled that up above 3 (I'd had a lot of withdrawals in three previous semesters) and was on Dean's honor list. Semester after that, I had to make money to live, so I had to withdraw from college.
Then when I was 30, I got my ADHD diagnosis. Tried college one ore time but financial problems killed that (Wife inhereted stock from her father, bought over the years. Several years after, IRS said "we have no record of the inheritance, so we want to charge you anoher $14k in tax" and we couldn't get records to prove in time, so they garnished our wages for a couple of years and my college hopes were gone).
So I have incredibly mixed feelings about homeschooling for one. I hate the regressive religious who indoctrinate their children not with good education, but with bullshit "faith" crap. And yet, it saved me from being institutionalized by the state.
But as much as I struggled, I also read a lot. A lot. And we had a lot of classic sci fi and a lot of old British fiction in particular.
Amusingly, at a couple of points in my life, this caused me embarrassment. For example, the word "erection" has a very strong connotation today, but in times past, it was used more exclusively to refer to something that had been erected, like a building. Also, what I would now call an exlamaition ("Wow!") is technically an ejaculation. Again, I do not recommend either of these words be used in their original meanings in modern context. One will be misunderstood.
I still tend to use British spellings of words - inconsistently, mind.
But anyway.
I'm not, like, ultra-smart. But the level of reading comprehension I have compared to average depresses me. I think of myself as average, when I am very well above. And I wish I was average (that others were better educated, not that my knowledge was reduced!)
Ah yes, I had a similar experience in public school.
My teachers pulled my parents aside and thought I was having absent seizures (this presents as staring off into space, not like a typical tonic clonic where you flop around). They sent me for a CT scan where they found nothing. Not knowing what was wrong, they put me in classes for the developmentally delayed.
Then came the standardized test that they do for every state in the US around the 3rd grade. Apparently I had tested to have the highest reading comprehension in the entire district.
They shifted me straight from the special needs classes to the gifted and talented program, where every single year without a doubt I would fail out of it and get put right back into regular classes. To which I could barely pass with Ds.
Turns out all along I just had ADHD and didn’t get diagnosed until I was an adult. I was at the top of all my classes for college, all I needed was to be properly medicated…
I try not to think about where I would be at today if I was actually treated for it as a child. It’s too painful..
Right there with you. And in fact, I can tell you what it's like to not get diagnosed until 30, not be able to afford meds that helped, and now to not be allowed stimulants. heh.
The ADHD tax is real. It's the reason I had no insurance when I got my diabetes diagnosis, so a very key part of the reason I was unmanaged for a decade, leading to a likely shorter lifespan and all the health issues I have now. I am quite angry at the universe about that.
I never read much by Dickens, but I don't remember A Tale of Two Cities or A Christmas Carol being this difficult. Perhaps I've grown less tolerant of this covoluted style of writing. I was certainly tired of mud and fog in these passages.
I wonder if Dickens and many other 19th century writers will fade from general knowledge soon, and only be relevant to scholars of the period.
No, this is definitely an uncharacteristically challenging passage. Here's the beginning of great expectations, for instance (also Dickens).
My general impression is also that Dickens isn’t so hard. Surely A Christmas Carol is straightforward? But I’m wondering if I might have a mistaken impression from popular versions of it. Maybe I read an abridged or children’s version? It was long ago and I don’t remember. Here are the opening paragraphs of A Christmas Carol:
It seems like a terribly verbose way to begin, particular the bit about the door-nail. That paragraph could be cut with no harm. Also, “good upon ‘Change” is an obscure expression. Though, normally I’d just skim over that.
Slowing down and attempting to understand every phrase isn’t what I’d normally do, particularly if I had a lot of reading to do.
The story of A Christmas Carol has been told so many times that people are very familiar with it, less so with the original text. Muppet Christmas Carol was notable for having Gonzo as Dickens quote the original. (If you're a Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams fan you might see their writings as descendants of this offhanded aside about doornails.) But I think a lot of people have primarily engaged with Dickens through adaptations, or young reader versions.
I had these little illustrated classics of a number of books as a kid. So my brain tells me I've read Last of the Mohicans or Heidi, but I've only read the abridged youth version. (I might have read the full Heidi later or that might also have been abridged). I've not read Oliver Twist but I've read an abridged version, watched a movie of the musical, memorized the lyrics, and watched Oliver and Company.
I'm someone who thinks we put too much emphasis on reading classics over contemporary works that are more meaningful to modern students anyway, but I do think most people trick themselves into thinking they've read more than they have of widely adapted stories.
(I'm fairly sure I SparkNoted my way through Tale of Two Cities in Highschool because while I loved reading, I had undiagnosed ADHD. Personally I find reading things out loud, and being allowed to give inflection and humor to them, makes it a lot better but by college you're expected to have figured out your strategies already.)
This is awful but also... Funny? to me. Like I can't help but smile and laugh. Like, why be an English major? There's a ton of disciplines that don't involve reading and parsing large amounts of literature and, as I tell people often enough, you know yourself academically.
The article reads like these people think they know how to read though so either everyone is lying to the researchers or they're all jointly delusional.
Is it something in the water on campus?