College Students Cannot Complete Complex Tasks

A new study has claimed that American college students cannot complete complex tasks such as determining how much to tip a waiter, and understanding the argument in newspaper articles. It is even worse in that the study found that some of the students could not even calculate if they had enough gas in their cars to get to the gas station. Even though the people who conducted the study said there was good news the good news turned out actually to be bad news. The good news is that even though many college students cannot complete complex tasks they seem to be smarter than the general adult population. In order to read the article about the study go to www.usatoday.com and then scroll to the bottom of the page.

A reasonable person who does not have the information needed goes to the next step of asking or looking up the information. These kids either don't know where to start, refuse to ask, or don't care about their functional incompetence.

But on the other hand, this means nothing if the person cannot UNDERSTAND what is said or what is read. There is NO THINKING (thought processing, categorization, deductive logic, argument), NO CURIOSITY, NO DOUBTING in these graduates' minds. That wastes the 16 years of education invested in them as they are now * automatrons who will hire secretaries to look up the driving directions to their next meeting, balance their checkbooks, write their reports/memos, etc.

This is scary, not pathetic.

I had one math teacher out of dozens, and not until junior high, who taught the class how to balance a checkbook and how to make change. Folks, those two simple things should be taught in grammar school as soon as the kid can add and subtract! This is nuts!

That they struggle with tipping is no mystery, nobody ever told me how much to tip, either, and that it depended on whether you were in a diner in Podunk or a posh restaurant in NYC and whether you thought the service was great, adequate, lousy, or downright hostile.

But yeah, high school grads are getting scarier every year. Schools can't teach them everything and if they don't want to learn (which covers slightly more than half of them), the problem is insurmountable. Perhaps it's time to go back to a two track system: academics for the academically talented, and trade education for those who are not, and testing to help us tell the difference. What we're doing now sure isn't working.

"Perhaps it's time to go back to a two track system..." Had this system been in place when I was growing up, I can guarentee that I would have been "tracked" into the "trade education" track. Intelligent people who have problem home lives do not necessarily apply themselves and would be tracked wrong. Then, just plain lazy kids with influential parents would be tracked wrong too.

I am not sure if you are aware of this, but there is "tracking" going on behind the scenes. It is extremely hard, without the right parents, to defeat this tracking system. I use myself in this case. Not being in a high enough reading group in 4th grade affected what courses I could take in high school. Same with math, English and science in the 6th grade--not being in a high enough group in 6th grade math nearly cost me the ability to learn enough math by the 12th grade to enter college. I was not stupid. I had been dealt a pretty crappy family life--my mother died when I was 8, my dad remarried, the two sides of my family put me in the middle of a psychological tug-of-war match to control my loyalties. My reaction to this was to withdraw, and to use TV, cassette recordings of old radio shows, and my own imagination as an escape. I got fat, I had no self esteem, and I did not care what I did or did not do. My family took this as laziness; the school took it as stupidity. I was neither; I was just in psycological turmoil. I am not writing this for sympathy. I am writing it as someone who was tracked instead of evaluated and treated for psychological problems. I know I am not the only one; most friends I had were in situations similar to my own. I finally had someone sort of "slap" me back into reality along about the 10th grade. Well, at least enough to realize what a mess I was. I came out of my shell enough to fight my way into college, where I could sort of start over again. I graduated college Magna Cum Laude, finished my MA, and am now working on my PhD. So...can you see why I think tracking is wrong?

I am glad I am in a field where critical thinking is the basis for the field. I teach a college intro class, and I find that only a fraction of my students are really able to think critically. I recieve papers with logic and conclusions that read like elementary school ruminations. I ask why this is, in dispair. I am told that many English teachers in both high school and college are more interested in having people "express their feelings" than to write thought-provoking, research driven papers. To be honest, had it not been for an English teacher I had in 12th grade, I would probably never have made it where I am. She told the class one day, "If you write one of those 5 paragraph essays (who came up with those?) in a college class, you are liable to get it back with an F on it."

Then there are teachers who just don't care what students know as long as they do not have to look at said students a second time. I know this to be true, from high school and before. The administration of the high school I went to was more concerned with seeing how many people could be punished than how people were learning. For instance, if you come in 2 seconds after the bell, you spend 15 minutes in the front office dealing with the paperwork. Classes were less than an hour long. This was intended to "prepare students for the real world." Having been part of this so-called "real world," I have found the school's concerns in this area to be somewhat misplaced.

I really think that schools need to get back into the business of teaching students to think critically. Its great to get in touch with your feelings. But there is a time and place for it. There is also a time and place outside of the science classroom to learn about religion. So take religion out of the science room. Maybe make sports and other extra-curricular activities secondary to proper classroom learning.

I work as a substitute teacher to make ends meet. I taught computer classes for grades 6 to 8 on Friday. One class was internet research wherein the students had to answer only five questions on a predetermined web address with respect to Leonardo da Vinci. About 85% of the class gave me inadequate answers for a question at best, insipid at worst. And yes, I told them that they didn't answer the question without mincing words. I sent them back to work until I could see that they were reading, comprehending, and responding appropriately. I didn't listen to the moans and the groans of "extra work". I told the class that guessing what they thought the "right" answer should be is not the goal when they were told that the answer was in the information provided and to provide that information. I cited Jayson Blair and the New York Times, and how he managed to discredit an institution by not doing his research, making up the answers, and making fabrications look true for people relying on his provision of so-called facts. (Well, in simpler language, but you get the idea). There were no short cuts, just the work expected.

The teachers have to have standards which they defend no matter what.

Could you doublecheck to see that it's still there?




Cher

:ROFL:

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2006-01-19-college-tasks_x.htm

"strong relationship between analytic coursework and literacy"

They should be fed analytical coursework at earlier ages than college.

2. There are no arguments in newspaper articles nowadays(just pure regurgitation of propaganda or sycophancy)

3. All new cars have how "many miles left" display on the dash.

No Problem!

Educated people generally don't say "no" (as in "none") or "all."




Cher

:rofl:

on edit: fixed bad grammar in subject line.

:shrug:

I can tell how much gas is in my car to the last mile, and I always tip 20% unless it was really terrrible service -- then it's 15%. :D

many of these were 8th grade skills.

Story problems in math, even analyzing news stories and other prose was an expected skill.

How long have they been teaching to the tests? Could that be it? The root of educate is to "draw out". Teachers are now pressured to cram in.

I don't think kids are not curious, I think our system squelches curiosity.

Several years ago I read a comparison of American and Japanese education. What sticks with me is the math part. Japanese texts were much smaller, much less memorization or learning by rote. They learned the basics and then the exercises were to apply them to a variety of problems, constructive thinking.

It's good that "college students had superior skills in searching and using information from texts and documents?" Crap, my kids (who were smart but not genius) scored 12.9+ in that category by the time they were 12. So glad that college students do as well as my preteens did 20 years ago.

WHAT IS GOING ON? This is disturbing, really disturbing. I'd be disturbed if they were talking about high school grads, but college grads?