Warning: The next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots in U.S. history

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

ShyViolet --

I can't tell from your post whether the students you are describing are American students or British students.

You seem to be describing American students (what with references to NCLB), and given the subject of this thread I would expect these to be descriptions of American students. But given that your experience, recently at least, is in the UK and that you say you've noticed a decline in the three years you've been teaching the course you currently teach, are you describing the students you teach in Scotland?

Agreed - this seems like a very specific rant, with some passing effort to relate it to the subject of the thread? I don't know - anecdotal evidence just sits incredibly poorly with me in this particular arena, especially since there is absolutely no effort made toward finding causation or anything like that.

There are a couple of key issues here, mostly related to confirmation bias/selection bias, and the difficulty of using small-sample anecdotes where our own eyes likely lie to us. Without a systematic way to compare, it sounds like complaining about students' differing interest levels or unwillingness to conform to existing standards - both of which should indicate at least the potential for teachers or the educational system itself to be part of the problem. How are teachers changing their methods to cope with a generation that learns increasingly through visual media, and has a much wider array of existing knowledge (although without much in the way of depth in any particular area), etc etc etc?

In some ways, it suggests cognitive dissonance regarding the whole situation, which is where it becomes difficult for someone outside the situation to really know where to begin. Each one of these articles and posts just raises more questions for me, rather than defining the problem in any meaningful way.

As an aside, I wouldn't be shocked to find that Wikipedia becomes eligible for (near-)primary-source citation in the near future, if it isn't already - most of the articles, even on esoterica, are well cited, and while I'd guess the students should just go to the citations, as a reference material that kind of onus perhaps should go to the teachers as well.