Raising a generation of Really Bad Readers?

[jim mcnamara]

No, Four, you're wrong:
It's
1. phthphpthphthallates in soft plastics
2. flame retardants in sheets
3. fluoride in water
4. type II diabetes at age four
5. an alien conspiracy

David Hume is rolling in his grave right now, but it really doesn't matter what the cause may be. I'm not sure of the effect, even.

My take:
1. kids get into college now that could not have graduated from high back in the fifties

2. there are colleges that recruit on the bottom half of the bell curve of graduating seniors

3. there is zero investment by most folks in any internet endeavor, so you can't take any sample of 'skills' as meaningful. Or even representative.

4. there are tremendous anti-intellectual tendencies in our society. Hell, even my grown kids make fun of my choice of words - its 'da duh factor' in our culture. How many movies have you seen where the protagonist is a scientist or a mathematician? How many times were they bad guys instead?

5. thylocene anyone?

 

[ShawnD]

Nothing is as bad as reading the comments under any...just about any Youtube video. Very few posts on PF even approach that level.

Ha, that's half the reason for going to youtube in the first place!

Look at this vide: Jeff Indyke's good times bad times feel (it's about the drumming of a good zeppelin song)
"man he is annoying, great drummer but i wish he would shut up"
"he's so annoying.. so annoying that i keep watching... its so weird. i mean, he said Bonzo's name like bonHAM instead of bon-em and how the **** did he say genre? god, i just hate this guy. ack..."

Then there's a similar video with the same guy: Jeff Indyke - John Bonham Triplets
"stop playing drums you ****in suck and your drums make you sound worse if its even possible"
"um... yeah pretty dam sure bonham used a cowbell... and putting ur drink on top of the tom isn't bad for the tom at all is it"
"I played drums, this guy can play but perhaps he should look at some clothes at another flea market?..:) Bonzo never dressed in drag ! I'm offended...hahaha"
"yeah, this video made me feel like high off acid"There's nothing wrong with the education system. It's just a huge pain in the ass to use proper punctuation and grammar. Ironically, it's an even bigger pain to convert everything into 1337 before you post it on youtube, but people do that all the time.

Here's Ron Paul keeping it real
"holy @#$% Ron Paul took that guy to school! Pwned!"

Yes, he pwned that individual. It was exciting.

edit:

2. there are colleges that recruit on the bottom half of the bell curve of graduating seniors

That's only true in the US, and it's because private universities are everywhere. Private schools make their money through tuition, so they'll try to get as many people enrolled as possible. If the student capacity around a place like Seattle is 50k, schools will find a way to fill all of those spots, even if it means accepting people who are very likely to drop out.
This kind of thing is less likely to happen in places where universities are government owned, because government tends to ignore the rules of supply and demand, or at least lag behind it for a few years. The lack of university spots could be seen as a good thing because the degree itself is worth a lot more, or it could be seen as a bad thing because it means fewer people have the option of going.

 

[Integral]

I think that there is a positive in the web that has been missed it this thread. In spite of the fact that the level of English is not always the best. The web has resurrected written communications. My 14yr old daughter has EXECELLENT writing skills, while it appears that she has some natural talents, she has sharpened her skills on Internet forums. This is not the only place on the net that encourages proper English usage, if fact a forum that she posts to bans people who use poor English and will not spell correctly.

Prior to the web and post 1960 the telephone nearly exterminated letter writing, now we have a new outlet for using the written word.

 

[Chris Hillman]

Case in point

Someone here--- whom I won't name since my intention is not to point fingers but to illustrate the scope of the problem--- wrote in another thread:

The local NPR station here mentioned the Seattle School Board has banned WikiPedia use by students - largely, the NPR reporter maintains, because of doctoring of Wiki articles by special interests.

That didn't sound right, so I spent a few minutes with Google, and this is what I found:

• A story by a reporter named Lynn Olanoff, http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2004025648_wikipedia21.html , which was published in the Express-Times of Easton, PA, and reprinted (November 21, 2007) in the "Living" section of the Seattle Times, a paper which is indeed published in Seattle, WA. This story quotes comments critical of Wikipedia from a handful educators in some East Coast locations, and does not even mention Seattle.
• A post on a reader blog written by a parent and self-described "Wikipedia junkie" at the Seattle Times, a newspaper published in Seattle, who reacted with horror to these critical comments. Her post begins "My heart just about stopped when I saw the headline on today's Seattle Times site: 'School officials unite in banning Wikipedia' ", which could certainly be misread by a careless reader as referring to an (apparently nonexistent) ban by Seattle School officials. Readers of the blog then reacted with further comments; see this blog entry.
• At least one other blog cited the story reprinted in the Seattle Times, but actually headlined the blog entry "Wikipedia banned in Seattle schools"; see http://www.warboards.org/showthread.php?t=31848 .
• Plugging the search string "site:www.seattleschools.org[/url] Wikipedia" into Google and Yahoo produces some links to Wikipedia articles, but no mention of any ban by the Seattle School Board, whose website is [PLAIN]http://www.seattleschools.org/area/board/index.dxml .

It's like a game of rumor, isn't it? It would be funny except that in other stories I have seen reporters at "respectable" news organizations adopting the same poor reading habits as everyone else on-line, and thus reporting urban myths as fact. Particularly in broadcast journalism, corrections to even blatant errors are very rare.

BTW, re a widely reported school discrict ban (Warren Hills Regional School District in New Jersey) on using Wikipedia for school projects, see a story by Nate Anderson, Banning Wikipedia at school: good idea or missed opportunity?, Ars Technica, November 27, 2007.

FWIW, I favor banning the use WP by students as an information resource for school projects, but I also favor using it extensively (in civics course?) in order to teach high school students about such devious on-line behavior as wikishilling, defamation, meat puppetry, and various other "dirty tricks" which are so easy to find at WP using tools like Google, Yahoo, and http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/ . Lessons which IMO need to be hammered home in high school include:

• when surfing, always be on the lookout for a hidden agenda, shilling, etc.
• playing fast and loose with on-line identity is seductive but can be much more dangerous than most youngsters realize,
• no-one is truly anonymous on-line,
• stupid things-- or even apparently innocuous things-- you say or do on-line can follow you into the "real world" with any number of disastrous consequences,
• even if you are "not looking for trouble" on line, on the InterNet, trouble may very well be looking for you,
• zillions of disturbing lessons about the Death of Privacy in the Age of Acxiom (what you don't know about what ChoicePoint knows about you can harm you).

Some educators admit that they try to drive home the point that WP cannot be used as an information resource by having their students insert misinformation into random articles. I do not advocate that, although I can see that it is one way to make the point stick.

 

[Astronuc]

playing fast and loose with on-line identity is seductive but can be much more dangerous than most youngsters realize,

Someone related a rather disturbing story to me concering the internet. Two adults (parents) apparently masqueraded as a 16-yr old boy on some forum (e.g. myspace?). As this persona, they developed an on-line relationship with a 13-yr old girl. Subsequently, they broke of the relationship abruptly, and the 13-yr was so distraught that she committed suicide (of course there are other factors).

The motivation of the adults? To find out what the 13-yr girl was saying about their daughter. Such behavior leaves me dumbfounded.

A wrongful death suit is pending.

 

[ShawnD]

Someone related a rather disturbing story to me concering the internet. Two adults (parents) apparently masqueraded as a 16-yr old boy on some forum (e.g. myspace?). As this persona, they developed an on-line relationship with a 13-yr old girl. Subsequently, they broke of the relationship abruptly, and the 13-yr was so distraught that she committed suicide. The motivation of the adults? To find out what the 13-yr girl was saying about their daughter. Such behavior leaves me dumbfounded.

A wrongful death suit is pending.

I heard about that on the radio too. It sort of blows my mind how you would be able to sue/charge somebody over this. Now it's a crime to break up with people who are mentally unstable? What? Will it eventually be a crime to reject people from university on the grounds that they may or may not kill themselves upon receiving a rejection letter? Will it be illegal to turn people down for jobs? Will it be illegal to say "no" in general?

 

[SticksandStones]

I heard about that on the radio too. It sort of blows my mind how you would be able to sue/charge somebody over this. Now it's a crime to break up with people who are mentally unstable? What? Will it eventually be a crime to reject people from university on the grounds that they may or may not kill themselves upon receiving a rejection letter? Will it be illegal to turn people down for jobs? Will it be illegal to say "no" in general?

I think the point isn't that they broke up with her, but that they masqueraded as someone else with the specific intentions of causing her emotional distress.

 

[Chris Hillman]

Someone related a rather disturbing story to me concering the internet.

You probably are referring to a widely reported case which occurred last year in St. Louis. Adults pretending to be children on the InterNet is nothing new; there have been previous notorious cases.

And once again, case in point, Shawn, although in your case I guess it's a matter of half-hearing a radio story. Ditto sticks; if you read the news stories, you can see that the isse is that a mother, whose daughter had a falling out with the victim,

• allegedly masqueraded as a "teenaged boy" who "befriended" on-line and then brutally denounced the victim,
• allegedly masterminded other torments by other neighborhood children,

with the result that the victim, a teenaged girl, committed suicide.

If there's one thing I've learned on-line, it is that there is tremendous individual variation in what different people view as an "appropriate response".

 

[moe darklight]

Will it be illegal to say "no" in general?

ah! it's a trap! um... y-yes?

 

[Astronuc]

I heard about that on the radio too. It sort of blows my mind how you would be able to sue/charge somebody over this. Now it's a crime to break up with people who are mentally unstable? What? Will it eventually be a crime to reject people from university on the grounds that they may or may not kill themselves upon receiving a rejection letter? Will it be illegal to turn people down for jobs? Will it be illegal to say "no" in general?

The issue is that the alleged offenders were adults who preyed on a minor.

 

[ShawnD]

The issue is that the alleged offenders were adults who preyed on a minor.

The only thing they did different from anybody who posts on an internet forum is target somebody they knew as opposed to somebody they did not know. People come on forums all the time and call other people idiots, and nobody cares. Me and Economist seem to argue quite a bit, and Ivan and Russ argue a lot, but it's not a problem since none of us know each other in real life, nor do we care.

If Economist says my ideas are "not economically viable" and I killed myself because of it, would that make Economist guilty? What if I was 13 and he said my ideas were not viable, is he guilty yet? What if he lived right next door to me and made that statement, would he be guilty then? How close do me and Economist need to be before he is responsible for my suicide? Does he need to know me on a first name basis? Does he need to know my age and act under the assumption that I am that age, or is he responsible based on my age regardless of what I tell him? Does he need to seek me out before he's guilty, or can I push him into an argument and force him into being guilty? Where exactly is the line on this issue?

edit: If I declare right now that I'm 13, and you quote this post saying it's stupid, you could be held accountable if I kill myself since your intent was to cause emotional distress to a minor

 

[Integral]

How did the topic of this thread change from "poor readers" to internet scamming?

 

[Art]

The only thing they did different from anybody who posts on an internet forum is target somebody they knew as opposed to somebody they did not know. People come on forums all the time and call other people idiots, and nobody cares. Me and Economist seem to argue quite a bit, and Ivan and Russ argue a lot, but it's not a problem since none of us know each other in real life, nor do we care.

If Economist says my ideas are "not economically viable" and I killed myself because of it, would that make Economist guilty? What if I was 13 and he said my ideas were not viable, is he guilty yet? What if he lived right next door to me and made that statement, would he be guilty then? How close do me and Economist need to be before he is responsible for my suicide? Does he need to know me on a first name basis? Does he need to know my age and act under the assumption that I am that age, or is he responsible based on my age regardless of what I tell him? Does he need to seek me out before he's guilty, or can I push him into an argument and force him into being guilty? Where exactly is the line on this issue?

edit: If I declare right now that I'm 13, and you quote this post saying it's stupid, you could be held accountable if I kill myself since your intent was to cause emotional distress to a minor

Ah yes, typical of internet forum posters. It's all me, me, me whilst poor Economist is even now standing atop a very tall building contemplating a giant step for mankind. I hope you feel guilty

Seriously though the behaviour of these adults was utterly disgusting though I'm not sure which if any actual laws were broken. Even if this hadn't ended in suicide it was still a sick and twisted thing to do.

 

[ShawnD]

How did the topic of this thread change from "poor readers" to internet scamming?

I didn't read the OP. That's how.

 

[moe darklight]

I didn't read the OP. That's how.

uh O

 

[Chris Hillman]

The Semiotics of Shawn

How did the topic of this thread change from "poor readers" to internet scamming?

I didn't read the OP. That's how.

So in a sense, Shawn is still on-topic, he's simply illustrating the phenomenon we are discussing

 

[click]

I didn't read the OP. That's how.

So, Integral's post was nullified since they were still on topic, since Integral's statement was nullified so was the above post, but if the above post was nullified then Integral's post wouldn't be nullified, creating an endless cycle of nullifications... Yes, I make no sense...

 

[Chris Hillman]

That's because you are reading too carefully

 

[Integral]

I guess this is GD after all!

 

[Moonbear]

I didn't read the OP. That's how.

So in a sense, Shawn is still on-topic, he's simply illustrating the phenomenon we are discussing

I needed that laugh!

 

[lah214]

Posted in the Mathematics survival kit book review - this has got to be a wind-up!

My favorite part of this was when she said, "I'm a brighter student, but..." haha, maybe she should show that...

 

[Kurdt]

And I disagree with the assertion that "But the thing is, civilization tends to get smarter, every generation." We seem to have achieved a plateau at the moment, or perhaps if we consider the current president - we've taken a giant leap backward. Certainly there are the few percent of the population who might be considered smarter than those of the same age a few decades ago - but that is a small minority in the population.

Thats an interesting point which can probably be attributed to the increased standards in education during the last 200 years both in Europe and the US. This certainly gives the impression that every successive generation is getting cleverer, but in fact what is actually happening is that more people are exposed to a better quality of education. If you look at some of the great academics of the past such as Newton and Gauss, and perhaps the Greek philosophers, they certainly wouldn't be considered stupid when compared to modern counterparts.

I abhor text style writing. When I text someone I use full words and punctuation. The problem with text speak is that it may be quicker to type, but it certainly isn't quicker to read. Not to mention the fact it makes you look like an idiot.

 

[Evo]

I abhor text style writing. When I text someone I use full words and punctuation.

I was starting to think that I was the only one that did that. I get so frustrated with people that text me that I end up just calling them, in less than a minute we can solve what would take half an hour by text.

 

[Kurdt]

I was starting to think that I was the only one that did that. I get so frustrated with people that text me that I end up just calling them, in less than a minute we can solve what would take half an hour by text.

You're certainly not alone there.

 

[Vagrant]

I abhor text style writing. When I text someone I use full words and punctuation. The problem with text speak is that it may be quicker to type, but it certainly isn't quicker to read. Not to mention the fact it makes you look like an idiot.

I do that too, and people think that I'm stupid and couldn't figure out how to write in text style.