[lbo-talk] literacy

[Jeffrey Fisher]

On Sunday, October 19, 2003, at 06:51 PM, Miles Jackson wrote:
>
> On Sun, 19 Oct 2003, Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>
>>
>> On Sunday, October 19, 2003, at 05:50 PM, Kelley wrote:
>>>
>>> IIRC, though, it doesn't seem like the National Literacy Survey stats
>>> bear this claim out.
>>>
>>
>> i'm seeing in my students that they can read the words in front of 
>> them
>> on a page, but often (a) it takes them a long time to do it, (b) their
>> vocabulary is limited (and they show no interest in expanding it), (c)
>> they haven't read much if anything, and (d) they write very poorly,
>> even to the point of understanding what a sentence is, but more often 
>> a
>> general inability to communicate ideas (which makes one wonder about
>> their ability to *think* and *understand* ideas). purely anecdotally,
>> then, i would guess that people are more functionally literate in the
>> sense that they can read and understand and write wrt forms, do 
>> grocery
>> shopping, buy tickets, whatever, but they can't and don't, say, read
>> even john grisham, much less capital.
>
> It cracks me up that you can read criticisms like this of "ignorant
> youth" that go all the way back to ancient Greece.  I'll say it
> again, because it does not seem to be well known: we have a well-
> studied, standardized measure of reading, math, and logical skills
> that has been around since 1916 (Stanford-Binet intelligence test).
> Terman wanted this to be a measure of generalized intelligence;
> I agree with critics of the IQ test that it is not.  However,
> it is a very effective and valid measure of academic skills, and
> it can be used to assess this idea of "declining" academic
> abilities and educational standards over time.
>
> James Flynn has discovered that raw performance on IQ tests is
> increasing about 4-6 pts per decade.  This may not seem like
> much, but appreciate the substantial long-term effects:
> (a) take a person who scored 100 (average) on an IQ test in
> 1920, put them in a time machine, and have them take the test
> today: They would score about 60-65 (borderline mentally retarded).
> (b) take a person who scores average on an IQ test today, put
> them in a time machine, and have them take the 1920 test: They
> would score about 135-140 (near genius level!).
>
> Exactly why academic skills are increasing so dramatically is
> being still being debated and studied; however, this increase
> is well documented.  It exasperates me that so many people
> pay attention to sloppy anecdotal reasoning
> about "students nowadays" and ignore the
> diligent scientific research on this topic.
>
> Miles
>

did i complain about "students nowadays"? i''m just telling you the 
skills i see and don't see in my students and trying to square that 
with what seems to be solid evidence that more people are more educated 
than ever before. i wasn't arguing that they aren't, really (indeed, 
you'll see quite the opposite, if you pay attention), and i certainly 
wasn't arguing that they're worse now than they used to be (although 
they seem to be genuinely worse at my institution than they used to be, 
but it's hard to know, since they won't give us average SAT scores over 
multiple years). i'm just trying to understand what i do and don't see 
in my students. that's one reason i was asking after more details on 
the national literacy survey.

the incoming freshman class where i am averaged 1030 on their SATs, 
just four points, i believe, above the national average. and most of my 
students are first-year students. maybe that explains to you what i'm 
seeing?

j