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Originally Posted by KSig RC
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?
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.
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There's no doubt in my mind that the educational system is most of the problem. In most cases, we've done it to ourselves in the name of "improvement."
But I need to ask: before you speculate too much about what are teachers doing to change to appeal to the kids, don't you kind of need to stop and ask if the world is really any more visual than it used to be? There maybe more ways of displaying text or images, but are there really more ways to make a living if you can't read and understand basic text or can't perform systematic problem solving in a traditional form like math equations? Changing educational method to appeal to kids' interests or already acquired strengths may actually do some harm if it doesn't match what skills they need for their eventual employment.
As far as the downward trend, I do have one somewhat objective thing anyone could do if you knew someone who had been teaching in a district any length of time: review the textbooks that have been used for any particular high school course over the last ten to fifteen years. I think the dumbing down will pretty much be immediately apparent.
I've got no problem with Wikipedia for refreshing your memory about something that you kind of know, in which case you'll recognize some wild inaccuracy, or for really basic information that you expand on or verify with other sources. Or for looking up random junk to further a GreekChat discussion.
I like to waste time drifting from one interesting Wikipedia article to another, and I'm sure some of my nerdier students do too. I don't think the problem is that the teachers are too lazy to verify the wikipedia information; the main problem is that the kids will look like idiots citing it in college. You kind of have to learn to use the sources appropriate for the field you are writing about and I don't think wikipedia is going to be the go to source is any field.
But for fifth grade? Sure.
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