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Many things are competing for people's attention combined with people's ability to stay focused[1] going down may contribute to this. This is probably to be ex

by mc32 4y ago

Many things are competing for people's attention combined with people's ability to stay focused[1] going down may contribute to this. This is probably to be expected as we take the discipline out of people. [1] Universities discussing whether classes should be delivered in 10 minute chunks because students can no longer stay focused for 50 mins to an hour any more.

yamtaddle 4y ago
I know a lot of teachers and have heard some pretty dire reports about trends in reading skills in students. Even the "advanced" kids are tripped up by sentences as complex as the sort that were common in juvenile literature of the postwar 20th century. This wasn't the case 15 years ago, but books that would have been unremarkable assignments back then are now very difficult for kids in the same grades. This isn't a problem with outdated vocabulary or anything like that—the trouble seems to be that they just can't follow sentences that have more than a couple simple clauses. I dunno if that's fallout from some of the terser Moderns and their effects on popular preferences for prose structure, finally hitting in full force. Maybe? Seems like a long delay, though. I do suspect (relevantly to TFA, kind of!) some of it comes from publishers realizing how much of an advantage it is to make books hyper-palatable to their target markets, cutting anything that might be difficult. Sustained over decades, I'd expect that to gradually reduce reading skill levels. Maybe some of it's because people read way, way more amateur and otherwise very poor writing than they did before the Web and before smartphones—that actually lines up fairly well with the observations, since having home Internet access didn't break the 50% mark in the US until after 2000.
- mc32 4y ago
  To my eyes schooling and academia have been trending toward "passing everyone" and not so much about educating and getting the kids to reach their academic potential. What we vulgarly call "dumbing down" of things. It looks like it dovetails with Bush's policies, or it could be part of a wider societal trend precipitated by mass/crass media, the emergence of texting as an acceptable mode of communication as well as terseness being seen as "alpha" (Jobs and Bezos being examples). Presumably society will adapt and us adapt back. On the other hand, I will look forward to the comfort of not having to hear adolescent takes on Nietzsche or Kant.
- onetokeoverthe 4y ago
CadmiumYellow 4y ago
"Universities discussing whether classes should be delivered in 10 minute chunks because students can no longer stay focused for 50 mins to an hour any more." Do you have a source for this? That's absolutely wild (though believable).
- mc32 4y ago
  Here is one example: https://nceo.umn.edu/docs/presentations/nceo-lep-iep-ascdhandoutchunking.pdf https://nceo.umn.edu/docs/presentations/nceo-lep-iep-ascdhan...
  - mitchdoogle 4y ago
    Did you link the correct document? This is about reading comprehension and the previous poster was asking for a source about class length (i.e. changing from the standard 50 minute class to classes of 10 minutes)

by mc32 4y ago

yamtaddle 4y ago

I know a lot of teachers and have heard some pretty dire reports about trends in reading skills in students. Even the "advanced" kids are tripped up by sentences as complex as the sort that were common in juvenile literature of the postwar 20th century. This wasn't the case 15 years ago, but books that would have been unremarkable assignments back then are now very difficult for kids in the same grades. This isn't a problem with outdated vocabulary or anything like that—the trouble seems to be that they just can't follow sentences that have more than a couple simple clauses. I dunno if that's fallout from some of the terser Moderns and their effects on popular preferences for prose structure, finally hitting in full force. Maybe? Seems like a long delay, though. I do suspect (relevantly to TFA, kind of!) some of it comes from publishers realizing how much of an advantage it is to make books hyper-palatable to their target markets, cutting anything that might be difficult. Sustained over decades, I'd expect that to gradually reduce reading skill levels. Maybe some of it's because people read way, way more amateur and otherwise very poor writing than they did before the Web and before smartphones—that actually lines up fairly well with the observations, since having home Internet access didn't break the 50% mark in the US until after 2000.

mc32 4y ago
To my eyes schooling and academia have been trending toward "passing everyone" and not so much about educating and getting the kids to reach their academic potential. What we vulgarly call "dumbing down" of things. It looks like it dovetails with Bush's policies, or it could be part of a wider societal trend precipitated by mass/crass media, the emergence of texting as an acceptable mode of communication as well as terseness being seen as "alpha" (Jobs and Bezos being examples). Presumably society will adapt and us adapt back. On the other hand, I will look forward to the comfort of not having to hear adolescent takes on Nietzsche or Kant.
onetokeoverthe 4y ago

CadmiumYellow 4y ago

"Universities discussing whether classes should be delivered in 10 minute chunks because students can no longer stay focused for 50 mins to an hour any more." Do you have a source for this? That's absolutely wild (though believable).

mc32 4y ago
Here is one example: https://nceo.umn.edu/docs/presentations/nceo-lep-iep-ascdhandoutchunking.pdf https://nceo.umn.edu/docs/presentations/nceo-lep-iep-ascdhan...
- mitchdoogle 4y ago
  Did you link the correct document? This is about reading comprehension and the previous poster was asking for a source about class length (i.e. changing from the standard 50 minute class to classes of 10 minutes)