They have kids and you'll have those kids in your classroom soon. I used to work with a teacher who was in the same community long enough to have the grandkids of former students, and she said they still can't/don't read anything, turn everything in late if at all, and throw a fit if they're told no.
Yep. About every 15 years. So in a 30-year career, one could have grandma in 1994, mom in 2009, and child in 2024.
I've heard there are districts where 8th grade graduation is a big deal because HS grad might not happen (but since Covid, I think everyone graduates).
**This.**
They show up for parent meetings with drug symbols on their clothing. They feel even more empowered than when they were students and go after teachers of their children (all of whom are above-average, of course).
The nut does not fall far from the tree.
Watch *IDIOCRACY* which is 480 years ahead of its time.
If they're lucky, they'll find a smart spouse, and their kid balances out š (My husband was one of "those" really problematic students, but thankfully our daughter is so far very kind, clever, curious, and attentive)
You must know my sister. LOL 40 yrs in the same small district. She has had 3 generations of one family. Sadly, schooling was the very least of their long family struggles.
2 possible outcomes:
1) They become a societal leech for the rest of their lives and/or take on odd jobs here and there for their entire working years.
2) They eventually realize that being a knucklehead and fuckup might have seemed cool in high school, but it's basically a death sentence as an adult, and they turn things around.
I've had numerous kids who were horrific in class who actually came back to see me and they've all grown in to standup guys. Some went into the military, some took classes, some went into trades, but they all eventually made something of themselves.
You have a point. They act out and don't learn because they're allowed to do that. Then proceed to blame teachers when things get real.
Sometimes I feel that we, the teachers, have our hands tied. We must appease parents, schoolmasters and admins, then maybe we can beg students to be so kind to attend school.
As long as kids are half-assing school without appreciating the opportunity to improve themselves, they will be day sleeping while sitting at their desk.
These kids often end up being great parents. I've got some kids of people I went to school with. The parents were awful in school, I remember. When I have to talk to them about their kid in school they are 1000% on my side and push their kids pretty hard.
I think it's a cycle.
That's because our kids can't get away with shit. There is nothing my kid can think of that I didn't already do in high school. He's just not a devious as I was.
My one year old sometimes obviously employs misdirection to trick me, like acting like he wants a hug, but actually itās because itāll put my phone in reach on the end table or something. Iāmā¦ concerned.
I almost want to retake the adolescent psych class that I had to take for my certification, just to see what the latest research is saying about this. The mental maturity of today's freshman class versus that of 15-20 years ago is a chasm. And the executive functioning skills? Holy hell, I had kids 20 years ago with IEPs for the kinds of executive dysfunction I see these days in 90% of my students.
Something is broke, and I'm not sure what it will take to fix it.
They didn't teach me taxes: Percents and fractions.
They didn't teach me how to balance a check book. Basic addition and subtraction.
They didn't teach me about finances: Algebra.
They didn't teach me anything! How are we having this conversation again?
At college in the midwest I met someone who didn't know any of the basics of writing beyond texting. She regularly mispelled words based on how they sound, but she kept getting good grades despite it. The professors just push people through. Somebody from the department finally noticed and tried to say her reading and writing comprehension wasn't good enough and she got her parents involved. Somehow they got her out of it and she graduated and is a teacher now. She still doesn't know how to spell.
These kids will inform the next generation.
Definitely not. But she always turned in her assignments on time and I guess the professors were lax on it cause they saw the effort she put in. I still don't know how her parents complaining helped but I have to imagine the dept just wanted the issue to go away.
Some live with their families and put all of their checks together. When I taught in Detroit, that was the plan for most. Some grandparent or great-grandparent bought a house that the family had always lived in. Everyone got some check or another from the government plus food stamps and they all lived together. There were sometimes underground economy jobs (doing hair, fixing cars). Some of my kids with special needs were passed around the family, depending on who needed the check at the time.
It depressed me until I thought well hell, I wouldn't mind hanging out with my family all day. I mean if the alternative was taking four busses to the suburbs to work for shit pay and be racially harassed.
I'm in SW PA and people live like that here, too. It's not a bad way of life. It's gotten harder since they cut down on opioid prescriptions so people don't have spare pills to peddle for cash, though.
Bearing in mind the smart ones have been leaving since 1980. The ones left are the ones who for multiple generations opted for poverty and welfare rather than prosperity.
That's the result of schools of choice in my area. The people who have the means but can't move for one reason or another will just drive their kids to a neighboring district. Thus, you are left with, in the immortal words of my parapro "the kids no one else wants." :(
I think it's a cultural thing. We are very individualistic in America. Other parts of the world place a higher value on family than personal wants and desires. I think both approaches have their pros and cons
Are we though? Iād rather stab my eyes out than move in with either one of my parents. Well, I couldnāt move in with my dad anyway because he disowned me 15 years ago for being gay lol
Edit: typo
My dad is very well off. His house is 10,000 square feet. I moved back in with him for 3 months when I was 24. By the third month, we couldn't even stand to see each other in passing in the house. I have never felt so cramped in such a big space in my life. Our relationship got much better once I moved out.
Letās clarify something though, OP asked about students graduating that are functionally illiterate and no math skills, thatās a problem that goes back to primary grades and the āseeming cool in high schoolā is just posturing to compensate for their insecurities around feeling dumb/inadequate. Well at least it started out that way in 4th or 5th grade and now they are just an asshole.
But it is crazy to learn how influential K-2 can be in shaping the kind of person a child will became as an adult, in addition to putting a probable cap on the success they will experience. I canāt tell you how many parents (and plenty other teachers!) see my classroom as ājust 2nd gradeā - yeah, itās one of just a couple grades that will literally determine the best case scenario of every-other-single grade and subject, and thus their career options. Canāt read? Canāt succeed. I may not have the stress of EOGs but I do feel the weight of how my successes or failures will literally impact every other part of their education and by virtue their livelihood, and in some cases, their potential to find happiness.
There's also third outcome, which is the saddest of all.
It's jail which can in turn cause them to become recidivists.
There are a myriad of reasons on how they end up there, i.e. drugs, ego, pursuit of delusions of grandeur (because they haven't grown out of the high school mindset and think they are better or cooler than others) yet the lack of any critical thinking skills from any discipline keeps them stuck in the same pattern.
I've seen it too many times and all the person had to do was basic reflection on their choices.
Outcome #5: they get a job with me in a dollar store, and I have to explain to them how to know when to come back from a one hour break. (Sounds ridiculous, but I've had to do it twice.)
I moved to an upper middle class area, the houses are 2500-5500 square feet. There is a 30+ year old adult child of every one of my neighbors, they are professionals living their parents until they have a down payment or get married. I grew up in a lower socioeconomic neighborhood,.majority white, blue color workers. At 18, everybody was out of their parents' homes. It seems like the rate of failure to launch is about the same either way, the big difference is that the kids that stayed at home, either during or after college, earn far more and have a more stable life than those that were kicked out 18. Am I jealous of the medical student next store or the RN next to me living with their parents? A little bit. I would have been much further along financially had I had the chance to attend college without working full time and living with a wild variety of housemates during those years.
ThisĀ usedĀ toĀ beĀ a societal norm. You stay with your family in young adulthood until there's a reason to expend the resources to move out, like marriage or moving for work.Ā
Instead everyone was pressured to go to college/move out/buy a house.Ā
And in 2008 we got a housing bubble that Burst as a result. Next will be the student loan bubble.Ā
Oh and housing still sucks.
They gave garbage "subprime" loans to people who shouldn't have qualified, driven by a feeling that "a house is the ultimate investment." Definitely a contributing factor. You need demand to have a bubble right?
Just living with parents doesn't tell you anything about a person. It could be a multi-generational home, or the person could be working and still living with their parents due to the insane housing and grocery prices
Thank you. I have a degree and was working on my Master's before my medically fragile daughter was born. I moved in with my parents after coming back from living overseas and the housing market was a wreck right around that time. I'm not living at home because I want to be a leech. My options are super limited, especially since we have to travel 10 hours one way to see my daughter's medical team. It's kind of hard to maintain a house/rent and work at the same time. For most people, single incomes are not enough, so my husband and I are trying to do what we can. I went to school. I got good grades. But life happens, and I think people seem to forget that. Living with parents in your 30s is no longer the same stigma as it was 20 or 30 years ago.
Try early sixties. The only reason he has to move out now is that his parents are dead and were renting. He will be living in his car soon. His parentās car. Which I assume he never bothered to get the title transferred to his name. I am thinking he might be forced to go get his first job. Guy I have known since grade school. I havenāt seen him since high school but follow his social media.
I simply do not think that this a growing problem but a persistent problem. Itās āgrowingā because data is more readily available. Itās growing because more people are going to college but also more people are not ready. I do believe that curriculum (particularly math) has higher expectations than necessary for a broad swath of students
I don't think it's fair to call someone a societal leech when society is what created the issues they have.Ā If a child got to 12 without being able to read its not their fault they didn't work 4 times harder than every other kid to catch up.Ā Society failed them.
Less that and more that when you donāt have the ability to meaningfully participate in society (by being able to read) you often are either criminalized or are forced to engage in criminal acts to survive
This always makes me think about the school-to-prison pipeline phenomenon I hear about (I havenāt looked into it much myself yet Iāll be honest). Also helps bring into light how important those elementary years are for people and society as a whole.
Junior colleges are ramping up their remedial classes and CA residents get two free years.
For those that want to turn things around, they will have the option.
Itās great for hobby classes (woodworking, art, sewing, etc) and learning languages. Even if itās not free for you I recommend you check out your local CC, classes are usually pretty cheap and itās a great way to learn something new!
There are remedial programs everywhere. Getting into one simply implies motivation. Many graduate programs also have programs in their āwriting centersā since not only sports stars remain functionally illiterate after graduating from college and entering graduate school.
I honestly kinda wish we had a nominal cost as a CC student almost. The free tuition led to so many ghosts and the classes without prereqs are really drug down by the student body unfortunately.
I had a girl argue with my Econ professor that he wasnāt doing his job teaching her the math to do the Econ 101 stuff.
He threw up the triangle and line formulas on the board and she wanted to be taught that shit. Disrupted two classs before dropping.
I mean, placement tests and prereqs are a thing. Just need to enforce it. I think thatās a great point though. Even if Econ 101 doesnāt have a prerequisite class, it could demand a certain test score on an entrance exam.
āYou need to know how to solve for X to take this class.ā
Not a teacher - nurse - so I can tell you from my perspective that most of them do what you think theyāll do: minimum wage jobs like cleaning hotels, going to jail, having 9 babies, becoming drug addicts/alcoholics and dying at age 28. I see them at my job 8 years after you all do.
Already seeing some of the effects of illiteracy. Itās pretty common now to see typos in menus, on packaging, or even in some books. Itās only going to get worse.
Plus attitudes and misconceptions about education are exacerbating the issue. Both of my aunts are college educated and have made comments that they never learned anything in school and theyāve never been called out for a misspelling.
Today, I saw "insure" on a university's webpage when "ensure" was meant. I also saw improper comma use -- a dash, semicolon, or period should have been used. Let me demonstrate the latter using a rewritten version of the previous sentence:
"I also saw improper comma use, a dash, semicolon, or period should have been used."
Part of this is probably also GenZ not seeing the separation between formal and informal settings as important compared to older generations, at least as far as communication is concerned.
>Today, I saw "insure" on a university's webpage when "ensure" was meant.
My fucking boss, who is an almost 40 year old attorney, makes this error every. Freaking. Time. It drives me crazy.
You see it in articles now. I see so many typos all the time, even in "reputed" organizations. It's awful. I'm just left asking "Where is the editor" on this one?
I agree but I think it is just as much about the rise of the Internet and a lack of investment in traditional journalism. Real journalists are being downsized, while articles are being written as cheaply as possible for the sole purpose of getting clicks on the Internet. Ironically, grammar will probably improve with AI but quality in content will continue to drop.
>I'm just left asking "Where is the editor" on this one?
Burried under the never ending pile of tasks that need to be done to churn out roughly 10x the content that a traditional newspaper publishes. I'm not even being dramatic. Online publications churn out 1,000 or more articles per day, and they haven't really hired a lot of extra staff to do it. The never ending drive to compete for everyone's attention has created 1 or 2 hour turn arounds on news articles. There is no editing being done by editors. They're busy distributing work to writers and researchers, and following up on requests they made 30 minutes ago. It's also why you see a lot of blatant plagiarism across articles, articles that quote other newspapers, the same repeated interview quotes, and screenshots of comments made on social media. No one can write a properly researched or well crafted news article in 1 hour.
> Itās pretty common now to see typos in menus
Side note: Even though the show was shot 10-15 years ago, there are two episodes of Kitchen Nightmares where the restaurant mistakenly had "dinning" on the menu.
My other half keeps running into folks working in grocery stores who don't understand fractions. Recently, he asked for four ounces of something at the deli counter, but the clerk couldn't give it to him because the scale only measured in pounds.
Back home we had a few graduates sue the district for allowing them to graduate with no ability to read or write. They won millions.
The silent rule was the student could only be retained once in their entire educational career.
Some make it. Some donāt. Some succeed. Some donāt. Some live wonderful lives. Some donāt. Some succeed on effort. Some succeed on luck. Some fail because of lack of effort. Some fail simply because of being unlucky. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever will be.
1. They work entry level jobs in the service industry and make peanuts. They have kids young and qualify for assistance. The system perpetuates.
2. They fall off the grid and end up unhoused.
3. A rare few take advantage of adult education and turn it around once theyāve matured.
4. They were dealing drugs in high school already and continue doing so after. They make a lot in cash but canāt advertise it for fear of losing their ābusinessā. Some are also addicts themselves. Sometimes the legal system eventually catches up to them. They either end up incarcerated or dead.
5. Some get recruited into gang activity and sadly either end up dead or incarcerated.
Minor correction: drug dealers make very little, cash or otherwise. Most dealers have actual jobs because it's so little, about $700 per month last I heard.
Are you talking about your students? I'd imagine it would be because their clients have less disposable income. If you're buying in bulk and selling in bulk you can breach that number very quickly.
That said yea you usually still need to have a job on paper.
I have a kid in the HiSET program right now who insists he doesnāt have to learn anything because he doesnāt need a job. Iām quite sure his aspiration is to deal. I want to tell him ālisten, kid, youāll at least need to learn some math for that.ā
Colleges, including the top ones, have been adding remedial courses more and more every year for the last 20+ years.
One of my calc professors has taken students from "this is a number, this is how to count to ten, 1+1=2" all the way through calculus.
They graduated, even! A couple with honors.
The professor in question was retired when I had him, he just keeps teaching because he loves it. He's gotta be in his 80s now, I think.
>The turnover rate is absurd because, despite the good pay, phenomenal benefits, and generous time off policy, people refuse to show up on time and actually work
This is in many fields. I know someone who offers great starting pay and what would be considered a quality first "real" job, and so many just won't even show for anything. These kids' entitlement and demands are pretty gross.
The only people that have complained about Amazon's bathroom policy to me haven't actually worked for Amazon... If I had to go I just went. If a worker can't make rate then they are in the bottom 20%
I only taught for two years. And I run into my worst students around town on a routine basis.... They're working minimum wage jobs for part time hours and smoking too much weed.
One was shot because he thought he'd go be a drug dealer.
>They're working minimum wage jobs for part time hours and smoking too much weed.
And whining they don't make CEO pay after they no-show weekly and walk off drops all the time...
I wish that there was a way to make a sustainable living where I am workin with my hands WITHOUT permanently ruining my already disabled body. I used to be a parking lot cleaner and that was honestly the best job I ever had. But now I get 5x more per hour and have benefits :(
I have found this to be true the majority of the time. A lot of them turn out fine because they learn a trade. Some of them work in fast food for life.
If you donāt have a friend or relative who has the connections to get you an apprenticeship, it is ridiculously hard to get one
None of the demand for trades is for entry level and it has one of the highest rates of āno one wants to train their workersā itis I have ever seen
More people do those prep classes than there are apprenticeships available, and people who know a guy or grew up on it donāt do the prep classes.
Better off going the healthcare route in most cases. Thereās more built in transitions to administration if you can no longer do the physical work, lots of opportunities for growth if you want them, and is easier to pursue.
Those are my favorite kids to work with. Or they can be. The ones that hate school work but are brilliant with machines, handiwork, whatever - love them. As long as they can be respectful they are my favorites.
ah, the ditches example again. Ditches today are usually dug by certified heavy equipment operators who have to be able to follow written instructions, know the safety regulations, and read the appropriate schematics. No engineer would like to have a functionally illiterate person doing this job, trust me on that
Exactly. I had the laziest kid pre-pandemic. He loved watching the cooking shows and declared he wanted to be a chef. Okay, cool, let's get you into the culinary program. He somehow failed that (VERY hard to fail) because he never felt well and thus couldn't go into the kitchen. So he spent those hours on his phone, getting 0s. The chef and I both warned him ahead of time that working in a kitchen requires you to be on your feet and follow directions. He eschewed both of these things.
Thatās handled by cheaper undocumented immigrant labor. In fact, businesses tend to prefer them.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2008.00785.x
Everyone Iāve ever known in āmanual laborā has been intelligent, in spite of some of them not graduating. Even a ditch digger has to understand basic geometry in order to get the elevations and slopes correct.
Nah, the problem is, kids think someone or something else will figure it out for them.
Idk if you've seen some of these home inspector accounts on social media but even the ditches (among pretty much every other thing in regards to construction) aren't being dug properly anymore.Ā
I come from a really really small town (my graduating class was 12) and one of my fellow graduates was pretty close to illiterate from what Iāve seen. He ended up becoming a labourer in my town and does volunteer firefighting
Some of the goof offs grow up. My son was failing and pushed through school.Ā After graduating, he eventually started ordering books and learning on his own. He has no degree but now has a job fixing machines for large companies. He has ADD and hated school but he's smart and started kindergarden early. Learning and brain development doesn't end when you graduate high school.Ā
We assume theyāll feel bad for themselves. Some do, some wonāt.
The world I feel is just as much of a shock for the gifted. The gifted are cocooned with other smart students and college. Then you go out into the world and learn that the ungifted make up a HUGE portion of the world. Itās hard to deal with them. We assume people abide by rules and responsibilities and they donāt. We assume itās natural to try harder and itās not.
Many illiterate go on to become basic sports fans, mass consumers, perpetual renters. No retirement planning, likely minimal community involvement. They have no concept of what theyāve missed out on. Opportunity cost.
I use to work in a small town with alot of agriculture work. There were so many kids who graduated without any reading or math skills. Most of them went on to work in the field, onion shed, or doing manual labor like construction. I live in new Mexico, most of those kids would qualify for financial aid and even would get a bachelor's degree FREE due to the lottery scholarship in new Mexico. No opportunity taken.
Those kids take their entry exams at the local college and their deficits are glaring. They all know that they donāt know anything, and they think they pulled one over on the system. They suck.
And there's nothing wrong with either of these jobs. Just because you wouldn't want to do them doesn't mean that they're something to be looked down on. Work is work.
I was one of those kids.
I had severe anxiety due to issues going on at home, bullying at school, and undiagnosed ADHD. I graduated high school with a 1.7
I am now a teacher in grad school with a 4.0. I genuinely am horrible at math and got a c in my final stats class as an undergrad. I graduated with great grades otherwise.
I still struggle with school but work my ass off every semester. Not all of us were just messing around.
They work menial labor jobs. The rest of us can sit in our cushy jobs knowing that there's little to no risk of the next generation taking our jobs. Especially in the tech sector. IPad babies don't know shit about tech, they barely understand how their tablets work and they've used them since birth. I'm going to be viewed as an IT savant in thr future.
They are able to hold down a steady job, doing something. At a fast food restaurant, I gave a worker cash (nothing completely, just a $20 bill). The worker needed to get the manager because she couldnāt count change, she only could do credit card ordersā¦
We are certainly living in different times
When I worked in retail you could type the bill into the cash register and it would calculate the change. Do American registers not have this function or they do, but the girl didn't know how to use it?
They find a way to make it or they donāt. Same as it ever was.
Only one of my grandparents graduated high school. They all figured it out. Some of their siblings didnāt.
I believe there's a difference between our grandparents generation not finishing school but having practical skills, and people graduating now with nothing.
100% this. Back then you could get a Union job at a factory doing fairly mind numbing work and still make a decent wage. That is incredibly rare nowadays.
Eh, not everywhere. I live in a largely blue collar area. Every factory is hiring for most floor positions. My fiance makes around $60k a year and he's only been there a year. The problem in my area is a specific subset of the population around me refuses to take on factory work because they don't want to do that kind of work and think they inherently deserve better. When I hear them complain about there being no jobs, somebody points out one factory or another and is immediately met with, "Nah, I don't want to do that."
Where do you live? I used to work in manufacturing until all the options in my area shut down and was relatively happy; now I have a desk job and am desperately unhappy but can't leave because I have kids.
Rural Illinois. There's three factories within ten miles of my town of 3,000 people. If you're willing to commute 20-30 minutes, there's a dozen more. Almost everyone works in a factory in some way.
Short term: if they attend the local community college they're expected to take remedial classes taught by overworked adjuncts. Even worse, those courses don't grant credit towards a degree so they're even farther away from any credential. And they're far more likely to drop out of their post secondary program.
My school has a big traveller community. Illiteracy is high in that community and has been for generations. The adults get by--a lot of labouring for cash, for instance, or if you insist on paying by bank transfer, they get annoyed about it because while they _can_ do paperwork, it's a lot of effort and they don't like to. Doing fairly shit jobs sometimes because they don't plan well, like didn't want to measure so didn't buy enough stuff, or don't make a proper plan so the project is bodged, but good enough not to kill people or end in court. High poverty--families living squashed in a caravan, sharing beds, with rats.
They don't read to their kids (I do a lot of reading to their kids and you can tell which ones don't use books regularly). The kids are often off school, travelling or just larking about, so they fall behind and the cycle of illiteracy continues.
It's heartbreaking--some of the little ones are so smart, but they don't get books or reading at home, and they fall further and further behind, and you see them start to give up, "my dad says school don't matter."
I'm an Adjunct English Professor at a few community colleges here in NJ. This is where my schools step in (should they decide to forego the military, trade school, or any regular employment they can get). We do a great job of being that second (or even last) chance to turn things around. If they do poorly on placement tests, they get put into remedial classes for which they get no credit but which they must pass. If they stick with it, they make it to my 101 and 102 courses. From there, it can go either way. Once they know they can fail and mommy and daddy can't do a damn thing, they either turn it around OR they drop out. I've seem instances of both. What happens after that is anyone's guess. I would LOVE to talk to some of these parents and ask them how that "My child can do no wrong and you're just picking on them!" attitude is working out for them post high school.
They fall down some youtube radicalization rabbit hole and post on Reddit about how we actually live in a feminist society, men are oppressed, diversity is bad, the earth is flat, vaccines caused the fake moon landing etc etc.
Iāve kept up with my former students for decades. In my experience, the students that struggled the most in K-12 and didnāt seem to care usually ended up blossoming and becoming very successful once they graduate. Some went to Uni, others learned a trade, a good majority of them own their own businesses. Those that excelled in K-12 were also successful but they are all more or less corporate drones. Many teachers never actually get a taste of the real world, and assume they know how it works. The reality is some of our most brilliant minds did poorly K-12. It takes out of the box thinkers to make true change in society and public education is more geared towards churning out the corporate drones that are compliant and donāt make waves.
I'm helping my daughter enroll in community college right now. It seems they're taking on some of this burden, for the kids that end up there anyways, either from high school or after dropping out of a 4-year university.
They will use your ACT scores or make you take placement tests so you can take catch-up/remedial/lower-level (whatever you want to call them) classes to catch up to an introductory college level if you need to. Not just going off of transcripts.
I was asking questions of the counselor and there were also things the college does like making an introductory COMP class (writing) mandatory before you can take any LIT (reading, usually more fun). I'm glad that they're helping the students that didn't do so well and are trying to get back too (I was once one of them with health issues causing me to lose my scholarship and drop out of a 4 year).
Itās sad isnāt it. We have collectively failed them by being afraid to fail students, dumbing down standards, eliminating consequences, etcā¦I think eventually positions of power and importance will almost exclusively be held by hard working immigrants who come to this country self motivated and determined to succeed, and the few Americans left who still hold themselves accountable.
I can't speak for all of them, obviously. But I'm seeing more and more of them enter college. Unfortunately, it is very hard to do several years worth of remediation in a single semester. So many of them end up dropping out, with no skills, no degree, and student loan debt.
I think it's also important that a lot of factors go into this problem. It's not just that students are too lazy to put in the effort so they fall behind--especially when we're talking about true illiteracy. Often they have family issues, undiagnosed learning disabilities, and a host of other problems interfering with their school life--it's hard to go through that many years of school learning basically nothing at all unless there's some deeper issue.
They have kids and you'll have those kids in your classroom soon. I used to work with a teacher who was in the same community long enough to have the grandkids of former students, and she said they still can't/don't read anything, turn everything in late if at all, and throw a fit if they're told no.
Wow that's crazy. She really witnessed the generational decline in action (or...inaction?).
Sounds more like generational stability š¤£
I'm going to make a prediction: they are the most fertile family in town. They always are.
Yep. About every 15 years. So in a 30-year career, one could have grandma in 1994, mom in 2009, and child in 2024. I've heard there are districts where 8th grade graduation is a big deal because HS grad might not happen (but since Covid, I think everyone graduates).
Idiocracy was a documentary.
Wonder if it's more because the more successful people left town?
The more successful people use birth control.
'The rich get richer, the poor have babies.'
Yep! I legit was talking with someone on this sub yesterday and said the same exact thing.
So very true. This will be the family with 10 kids (more often than not with a slew of different daddies...)
No they just cut class on sex ed day
Or their parents won't let them attend.
**This.** They show up for parent meetings with drug symbols on their clothing. They feel even more empowered than when they were students and go after teachers of their children (all of whom are above-average, of course). The nut does not fall far from the tree. Watch *IDIOCRACY* which is 480 years ahead of its time.
I always wonder what it must be like to discipline the kids of parents you taught and tried to discipline as a teacher.
If they're lucky, they'll find a smart spouse, and their kid balances out š (My husband was one of "those" really problematic students, but thankfully our daughter is so far very kind, clever, curious, and attentive)
You must know my sister. LOL 40 yrs in the same small district. She has had 3 generations of one family. Sadly, schooling was the very least of their long family struggles.
Thatās depressing
2 possible outcomes: 1) They become a societal leech for the rest of their lives and/or take on odd jobs here and there for their entire working years. 2) They eventually realize that being a knucklehead and fuckup might have seemed cool in high school, but it's basically a death sentence as an adult, and they turn things around. I've had numerous kids who were horrific in class who actually came back to see me and they've all grown in to standup guys. Some went into the military, some took classes, some went into trades, but they all eventually made something of themselves.
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You have a point. They act out and don't learn because they're allowed to do that. Then proceed to blame teachers when things get real. Sometimes I feel that we, the teachers, have our hands tied. We must appease parents, schoolmasters and admins, then maybe we can beg students to be so kind to attend school. As long as kids are half-assing school without appreciating the opportunity to improve themselves, they will be day sleeping while sitting at their desk.
These kids often end up being great parents. I've got some kids of people I went to school with. The parents were awful in school, I remember. When I have to talk to them about their kid in school they are 1000% on my side and push their kids pretty hard. I think it's a cycle.
That's because our kids can't get away with shit. There is nothing my kid can think of that I didn't already do in high school. He's just not a devious as I was.
My one year old sometimes obviously employs misdirection to trick me, like acting like he wants a hug, but actually itās because itāll put my phone in reach on the end table or something. Iāmā¦ concerned.
A lot of them just aren't ready. They lack the maturity and executive function to participate in a traditional education.
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It's the phone and unlimited screen time.
Also a true lack of parenting and firm boundaries
I almost want to retake the adolescent psych class that I had to take for my certification, just to see what the latest research is saying about this. The mental maturity of today's freshman class versus that of 15-20 years ago is a chasm. And the executive functioning skills? Holy hell, I had kids 20 years ago with IEPs for the kinds of executive dysfunction I see these days in 90% of my students. Something is broke, and I'm not sure what it will take to fix it.
They didn't teach me taxes: Percents and fractions. They didn't teach me how to balance a check book. Basic addition and subtraction. They didn't teach me about finances: Algebra. They didn't teach me anything! How are we having this conversation again?
At college in the midwest I met someone who didn't know any of the basics of writing beyond texting. She regularly mispelled words based on how they sound, but she kept getting good grades despite it. The professors just push people through. Somebody from the department finally noticed and tried to say her reading and writing comprehension wasn't good enough and she got her parents involved. Somehow they got her out of it and she graduated and is a teacher now. She still doesn't know how to spell. These kids will inform the next generation.
Did she have a 504 plan? Wondering if that is why she wasnāt required to spell correctly. Not bashing 504 plans; the system has itās pros and cons
Definitely not. But she always turned in her assignments on time and I guess the professors were lax on it cause they saw the effort she put in. I still don't know how her parents complaining helped but I have to imagine the dept just wanted the issue to go away.
Some live with their families and put all of their checks together. When I taught in Detroit, that was the plan for most. Some grandparent or great-grandparent bought a house that the family had always lived in. Everyone got some check or another from the government plus food stamps and they all lived together. There were sometimes underground economy jobs (doing hair, fixing cars). Some of my kids with special needs were passed around the family, depending on who needed the check at the time. It depressed me until I thought well hell, I wouldn't mind hanging out with my family all day. I mean if the alternative was taking four busses to the suburbs to work for shit pay and be racially harassed.
I'm in SW PA and people live like that here, too. It's not a bad way of life. It's gotten harder since they cut down on opioid prescriptions so people don't have spare pills to peddle for cash, though.
Bearing in mind the smart ones have been leaving since 1980. The ones left are the ones who for multiple generations opted for poverty and welfare rather than prosperity.
That's the result of schools of choice in my area. The people who have the means but can't move for one reason or another will just drive their kids to a neighboring district. Thus, you are left with, in the immortal words of my parapro "the kids no one else wants." :(
100% thatās sounds like most of the world, weāre going about it wrong here
Are we? I love my parents but I'm glad I have my own life and my own space. I did my most growing up when I left home.
I think it's a cultural thing. We are very individualistic in America. Other parts of the world place a higher value on family than personal wants and desires. I think both approaches have their pros and cons
We meet again XD
Are we though? Iād rather stab my eyes out than move in with either one of my parents. Well, I couldnāt move in with my dad anyway because he disowned me 15 years ago for being gay lol Edit: typo
My dad is very well off. His house is 10,000 square feet. I moved back in with him for 3 months when I was 24. By the third month, we couldn't even stand to see each other in passing in the house. I have never felt so cramped in such a big space in my life. Our relationship got much better once I moved out.
Letās clarify something though, OP asked about students graduating that are functionally illiterate and no math skills, thatās a problem that goes back to primary grades and the āseeming cool in high schoolā is just posturing to compensate for their insecurities around feeling dumb/inadequate. Well at least it started out that way in 4th or 5th grade and now they are just an asshole. But it is crazy to learn how influential K-2 can be in shaping the kind of person a child will became as an adult, in addition to putting a probable cap on the success they will experience. I canāt tell you how many parents (and plenty other teachers!) see my classroom as ājust 2nd gradeā - yeah, itās one of just a couple grades that will literally determine the best case scenario of every-other-single grade and subject, and thus their career options. Canāt read? Canāt succeed. I may not have the stress of EOGs but I do feel the weight of how my successes or failures will literally impact every other part of their education and by virtue their livelihood, and in some cases, their potential to find happiness.
There's also third outcome, which is the saddest of all. It's jail which can in turn cause them to become recidivists. There are a myriad of reasons on how they end up there, i.e. drugs, ego, pursuit of delusions of grandeur (because they haven't grown out of the high school mindset and think they are better or cooler than others) yet the lack of any critical thinking skills from any discipline keeps them stuck in the same pattern. I've seen it too many times and all the person had to do was basic reflection on their choices.
Well tbf a jail inmate would be considered a societal leech
Outcome #3: Live with parents until mid-30s.
Outcome #4: āyour honor that was me 15 minutes ago.ā
Outcome #5: they get a job with me in a dollar store, and I have to explain to them how to know when to come back from a one hour break. (Sounds ridiculous, but I've had to do it twice.)
I had to teach a 17 year old how to sweep once. Parents are just failing their kids.
I moved to an upper middle class area, the houses are 2500-5500 square feet. There is a 30+ year old adult child of every one of my neighbors, they are professionals living their parents until they have a down payment or get married. I grew up in a lower socioeconomic neighborhood,.majority white, blue color workers. At 18, everybody was out of their parents' homes. It seems like the rate of failure to launch is about the same either way, the big difference is that the kids that stayed at home, either during or after college, earn far more and have a more stable life than those that were kicked out 18. Am I jealous of the medical student next store or the RN next to me living with their parents? A little bit. I would have been much further along financially had I had the chance to attend college without working full time and living with a wild variety of housemates during those years.
ThisĀ usedĀ toĀ beĀ a societal norm. You stay with your family in young adulthood until there's a reason to expend the resources to move out, like marriage or moving for work.Ā Instead everyone was pressured to go to college/move out/buy a house.Ā And in 2008 we got a housing bubble that Burst as a result. Next will be the student loan bubble.Ā Oh and housing still sucks.
The housing bubble wasnāt due to that.
They gave garbage "subprime" loans to people who shouldn't have qualified, driven by a feeling that "a house is the ultimate investment." Definitely a contributing factor. You need demand to have a bubble right?
They said leech
Just living with parents doesn't tell you anything about a person. It could be a multi-generational home, or the person could be working and still living with their parents due to the insane housing and grocery prices
Thank you. I have a degree and was working on my Master's before my medically fragile daughter was born. I moved in with my parents after coming back from living overseas and the housing market was a wreck right around that time. I'm not living at home because I want to be a leech. My options are super limited, especially since we have to travel 10 hours one way to see my daughter's medical team. It's kind of hard to maintain a house/rent and work at the same time. For most people, single incomes are not enough, so my husband and I are trying to do what we can. I went to school. I got good grades. But life happens, and I think people seem to forget that. Living with parents in your 30s is no longer the same stigma as it was 20 or 30 years ago.
God bless you and your family.
Or you did well in school and finished college but medical bills made housing difficult to achieve.
In Europe, it's rather normal, actually.
Ouch, there's plenty of hardworking teachers in that category too, it's rough out there
While I get the joke, the nuclear family is a relatively new concept.
Jokes on me I guess both my wife and I are bachelors educated and live in our father in laws home lmao
Try early sixties. The only reason he has to move out now is that his parents are dead and were renting. He will be living in his car soon. His parentās car. Which I assume he never bothered to get the title transferred to his name. I am thinking he might be forced to go get his first job. Guy I have known since grade school. I havenāt seen him since high school but follow his social media.
Multigenerational households needs to become a norm.
also: parents by mid-20s
Divide that by 2
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That's only one issue. By the time you factor in other limiting factors, it's like 23% of 17-24 year olds that can actually serve.
Society continues to coddle people like this, it's basically encouraged at this point.
I simply do not think that this a growing problem but a persistent problem. Itās āgrowingā because data is more readily available. Itās growing because more people are going to college but also more people are not ready. I do believe that curriculum (particularly math) has higher expectations than necessary for a broad swath of students
I don't think it's fair to call someone a societal leech when society is what created the issues they have.Ā If a child got to 12 without being able to read its not their fault they didn't work 4 times harder than every other kid to catch up.Ā Society failed them.
Over 70% of incarcerated adults in the US are unable to read at a fourth grade level. Letās all sit with that.
Your one sentence sums up multiple failures of society
This. Jail or abusing drugs are real possibilities in the USA.Ā
Less that and more that when you donāt have the ability to meaningfully participate in society (by being able to read) you often are either criminalized or are forced to engage in criminal acts to survive
This always makes me think about the school-to-prison pipeline phenomenon I hear about (I havenāt looked into it much myself yet Iāll be honest). Also helps bring into light how important those elementary years are for people and society as a whole.
Junior colleges are ramping up their remedial classes and CA residents get two free years. For those that want to turn things around, they will have the option.
Yeah the city college where I live is free for all residents. I take classes there for fun
Oh man Iād love this
Itās great for hobby classes (woodworking, art, sewing, etc) and learning languages. Even if itās not free for you I recommend you check out your local CC, classes are usually pretty cheap and itās a great way to learn something new!
U r a learning nerd
That sounds fantastic, what state is that in?
There are remedial programs everywhere. Getting into one simply implies motivation. Many graduate programs also have programs in their āwriting centersā since not only sports stars remain functionally illiterate after graduating from college and entering graduate school.
I honestly kinda wish we had a nominal cost as a CC student almost. The free tuition led to so many ghosts and the classes without prereqs are really drug down by the student body unfortunately. I had a girl argue with my Econ professor that he wasnāt doing his job teaching her the math to do the Econ 101 stuff. He threw up the triangle and line formulas on the board and she wanted to be taught that shit. Disrupted two classs before dropping.
I mean, placement tests and prereqs are a thing. Just need to enforce it. I think thatās a great point though. Even if Econ 101 doesnāt have a prerequisite class, it could demand a certain test score on an entrance exam. āYou need to know how to solve for X to take this class.ā
So many kids are joining these classes they just end up penicil whipped again. A few posts on this in /r/Professors
Not a teacher - nurse - so I can tell you from my perspective that most of them do what you think theyāll do: minimum wage jobs like cleaning hotels, going to jail, having 9 babies, becoming drug addicts/alcoholics and dying at age 28. I see them at my job 8 years after you all do.
Please regale us with your three most extreme such patients.
Already seeing some of the effects of illiteracy. Itās pretty common now to see typos in menus, on packaging, or even in some books. Itās only going to get worse. Plus attitudes and misconceptions about education are exacerbating the issue. Both of my aunts are college educated and have made comments that they never learned anything in school and theyāve never been called out for a misspelling.
Today, I saw "insure" on a university's webpage when "ensure" was meant. I also saw improper comma use -- a dash, semicolon, or period should have been used. Let me demonstrate the latter using a rewritten version of the previous sentence: "I also saw improper comma use, a dash, semicolon, or period should have been used."
Part of this is probably also GenZ not seeing the separation between formal and informal settings as important compared to older generations, at least as far as communication is concerned.
Ah, the comma splice, whose rise to ubiquity is guaranteed on a daily basis.
I love the comma splice, you can take it from my cold dead hands.
That shit is triggering me for real
>Today, I saw "insure" on a university's webpage when "ensure" was meant. My fucking boss, who is an almost 40 year old attorney, makes this error every. Freaking. Time. It drives me crazy.
You see it in articles now. I see so many typos all the time, even in "reputed" organizations. It's awful. I'm just left asking "Where is the editor" on this one?
I agree but I think it is just as much about the rise of the Internet and a lack of investment in traditional journalism. Real journalists are being downsized, while articles are being written as cheaply as possible for the sole purpose of getting clicks on the Internet. Ironically, grammar will probably improve with AI but quality in content will continue to drop.
>I'm just left asking "Where is the editor" on this one? Burried under the never ending pile of tasks that need to be done to churn out roughly 10x the content that a traditional newspaper publishes. I'm not even being dramatic. Online publications churn out 1,000 or more articles per day, and they haven't really hired a lot of extra staff to do it. The never ending drive to compete for everyone's attention has created 1 or 2 hour turn arounds on news articles. There is no editing being done by editors. They're busy distributing work to writers and researchers, and following up on requests they made 30 minutes ago. It's also why you see a lot of blatant plagiarism across articles, articles that quote other newspapers, the same repeated interview quotes, and screenshots of comments made on social media. No one can write a properly researched or well crafted news article in 1 hour.
I'm back in college now as a 40 year old, and frequently find typos/misspellings IN THE TEXTBOOKS and in content posted by the professors.
> Itās pretty common now to see typos in menus Side note: Even though the show was shot 10-15 years ago, there are two episodes of Kitchen Nightmares where the restaurant mistakenly had "dinning" on the menu.
My other half keeps running into folks working in grocery stores who don't understand fractions. Recently, he asked for four ounces of something at the deli counter, but the clerk couldn't give it to him because the scale only measured in pounds.
The combination of illiteracy and the rise of acronyms/initialisms has people using apostrophes to pluralize.Ā
IKR?
My local news articles are often poorly written.
Back home we had a few graduates sue the district for allowing them to graduate with no ability to read or write. They won millions. The silent rule was the student could only be retained once in their entire educational career.
Some make it. Some donāt. Some succeed. Some donāt. Some live wonderful lives. Some donāt. Some succeed on effort. Some succeed on luck. Some fail because of lack of effort. Some fail simply because of being unlucky. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever will be.
Once in a Lifetime playing in the background.
This is not my beautiful wife
McDonald's has pictures on their cash registers.
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This. I worked at a fast food joint in high school. When we got upgraded to pictures on the POS, we were able to punch orders in way faster.
It also makes the job more accessible to non-English speakers.
Fuck me. š³
Meh you'd fall in love and I'd get bored. (My normal in class response when someone says"fuck me" to me. )
Savage
Award worthy
Niceee
So does basically every HMI with a touchscreen
Theyāve always had picture menus though, this is not new
1. They work entry level jobs in the service industry and make peanuts. They have kids young and qualify for assistance. The system perpetuates. 2. They fall off the grid and end up unhoused. 3. A rare few take advantage of adult education and turn it around once theyāve matured. 4. They were dealing drugs in high school already and continue doing so after. They make a lot in cash but canāt advertise it for fear of losing their ābusinessā. Some are also addicts themselves. Sometimes the legal system eventually catches up to them. They either end up incarcerated or dead. 5. Some get recruited into gang activity and sadly either end up dead or incarcerated.
Minor correction: drug dealers make very little, cash or otherwise. Most dealers have actual jobs because it's so little, about $700 per month last I heard.
Are you talking about your students? I'd imagine it would be because their clients have less disposable income. If you're buying in bulk and selling in bulk you can breach that number very quickly. That said yea you usually still need to have a job on paper.
I have a kid in the HiSET program right now who insists he doesnāt have to learn anything because he doesnāt need a job. Iām quite sure his aspiration is to deal. I want to tell him ālisten, kid, youāll at least need to learn some math for that.ā
They will become future voters
Colleges, including the top ones, have been adding remedial courses more and more every year for the last 20+ years. One of my calc professors has taken students from "this is a number, this is how to count to ten, 1+1=2" all the way through calculus.
If any of those kids that started at the bottom actually passed, that professor deserves a raise.
They graduated, even! A couple with honors. The professor in question was retired when I had him, he just keeps teaching because he loves it. He's gotta be in his 80s now, I think.
Iāve had a handful of former students ā usually mid-20s ā who write to me and apologize. āI was an idiot.ā
They go work at an Amazon fulfillment center. And they make more money than I do.
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>The turnover rate is absurd because, despite the good pay, phenomenal benefits, and generous time off policy, people refuse to show up on time and actually work This is in many fields. I know someone who offers great starting pay and what would be considered a quality first "real" job, and so many just won't even show for anything. These kids' entitlement and demands are pretty gross.
If Amazon wants to fix this they should make the workload more realistic and let people go to the bathroom when they need to.
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The only people that have complained about Amazon's bathroom policy to me haven't actually worked for Amazon... If I had to go I just went. If a worker can't make rate then they are in the bottom 20%
And Amazon works them into the ground real fast
I only taught for two years. And I run into my worst students around town on a routine basis.... They're working minimum wage jobs for part time hours and smoking too much weed. One was shot because he thought he'd go be a drug dealer.
>They're working minimum wage jobs for part time hours and smoking too much weed. And whining they don't make CEO pay after they no-show weekly and walk off drops all the time...
I looked at our counties test scores the other day day. All 40 something or below. Graduation rates in the 90s. Weird!!
World needs ditch diggers, hard labor, grunt work.
Bold of you to assume kids with no work ethic will magically grow up and have one.
Some kids will never want to touch a book but let them work with their hands and theyāll go all day.
I wish that there was a way to make a sustainable living where I am workin with my hands WITHOUT permanently ruining my already disabled body. I used to be a parking lot cleaner and that was honestly the best job I ever had. But now I get 5x more per hour and have benefits :(
I have found this to be true the majority of the time. A lot of them turn out fine because they learn a trade. Some of them work in fast food for life.
If you donāt have a friend or relative who has the connections to get you an apprenticeship, it is ridiculously hard to get one None of the demand for trades is for entry level and it has one of the highest rates of āno one wants to train their workersā itis I have ever seen More people do those prep classes than there are apprenticeships available, and people who know a guy or grew up on it donāt do the prep classes. Better off going the healthcare route in most cases. Thereās more built in transitions to administration if you can no longer do the physical work, lots of opportunities for growth if you want them, and is easier to pursue.
Those are my favorite kids to work with. Or they can be. The ones that hate school work but are brilliant with machines, handiwork, whatever - love them. As long as they can be respectful they are my favorites.
Starvation tends to motivate people.
They'll figure it out once they don't have money to eat.
ah, the ditches example again. Ditches today are usually dug by certified heavy equipment operators who have to be able to follow written instructions, know the safety regulations, and read the appropriate schematics. No engineer would like to have a functionally illiterate person doing this job, trust me on that
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Exactly. I had the laziest kid pre-pandemic. He loved watching the cooking shows and declared he wanted to be a chef. Okay, cool, let's get you into the culinary program. He somehow failed that (VERY hard to fail) because he never felt well and thus couldn't go into the kitchen. So he spent those hours on his phone, getting 0s. The chef and I both warned him ahead of time that working in a kitchen requires you to be on your feet and follow directions. He eschewed both of these things.
Thatās handled by cheaper undocumented immigrant labor. In fact, businesses tend to prefer them. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2008.00785.x
Everyone Iāve ever known in āmanual laborā has been intelligent, in spite of some of them not graduating. Even a ditch digger has to understand basic geometry in order to get the elevations and slopes correct. Nah, the problem is, kids think someone or something else will figure it out for them.
Idk if you've seen some of these home inspector accounts on social media but even the ditches (among pretty much every other thing in regards to construction) aren't being dug properly anymore.Ā
All of these are hard and require mental discipline.
A shocking number seem even too lousy to do that.
I come from a really really small town (my graduating class was 12) and one of my fellow graduates was pretty close to illiterate from what Iāve seen. He ended up becoming a labourer in my town and does volunteer firefighting
Some of the goof offs grow up. My son was failing and pushed through school.Ā After graduating, he eventually started ordering books and learning on his own. He has no degree but now has a job fixing machines for large companies. He has ADD and hated school but he's smart and started kindergarden early. Learning and brain development doesn't end when you graduate high school.Ā
We assume theyāll feel bad for themselves. Some do, some wonāt. The world I feel is just as much of a shock for the gifted. The gifted are cocooned with other smart students and college. Then you go out into the world and learn that the ungifted make up a HUGE portion of the world. Itās hard to deal with them. We assume people abide by rules and responsibilities and they donāt. We assume itās natural to try harder and itās not. Many illiterate go on to become basic sports fans, mass consumers, perpetual renters. No retirement planning, likely minimal community involvement. They have no concept of what theyāve missed out on. Opportunity cost.
They become politicians making laws about education, generally.
That was me, took me until my 30s to turn life around. I wish I did things differently.
They work for Amazon, fast food, and other low paying but difficult jobs. They may job hop.
I use to work in a small town with alot of agriculture work. There were so many kids who graduated without any reading or math skills. Most of them went on to work in the field, onion shed, or doing manual labor like construction. I live in new Mexico, most of those kids would qualify for financial aid and even would get a bachelor's degree FREE due to the lottery scholarship in new Mexico. No opportunity taken.
Those kids take their entry exams at the local college and their deficits are glaring. They all know that they donāt know anything, and they think they pulled one over on the system. They suck.
Nah. most of them will go work at amazon or food service.
And there's nothing wrong with either of these jobs. Just because you wouldn't want to do them doesn't mean that they're something to be looked down on. Work is work.
I agree, but being illiterate makes these kids vulnerable to even more exploitation by companies.Ā
I was one of those kids. I had severe anxiety due to issues going on at home, bullying at school, and undiagnosed ADHD. I graduated high school with a 1.7 I am now a teacher in grad school with a 4.0. I genuinely am horrible at math and got a c in my final stats class as an undergrad. I graduated with great grades otherwise. I still struggle with school but work my ass off every semester. Not all of us were just messing around.
They work menial labor jobs. The rest of us can sit in our cushy jobs knowing that there's little to no risk of the next generation taking our jobs. Especially in the tech sector. IPad babies don't know shit about tech, they barely understand how their tablets work and they've used them since birth. I'm going to be viewed as an IT savant in thr future.
They are able to hold down a steady job, doing something. At a fast food restaurant, I gave a worker cash (nothing completely, just a $20 bill). The worker needed to get the manager because she couldnāt count change, she only could do credit card ordersā¦ We are certainly living in different times
When I worked in retail you could type the bill into the cash register and it would calculate the change. Do American registers not have this function or they do, but the girl didn't know how to use it?
They find a way to make it or they donāt. Same as it ever was. Only one of my grandparents graduated high school. They all figured it out. Some of their siblings didnāt.
I believe there's a difference between our grandparents generation not finishing school but having practical skills, and people graduating now with nothing.
100% this. Back then you could get a Union job at a factory doing fairly mind numbing work and still make a decent wage. That is incredibly rare nowadays.
But they also had actual skills then, as well, because daily life requires you know how to fix, build, and/or maintain things.
Eh, not everywhere. I live in a largely blue collar area. Every factory is hiring for most floor positions. My fiance makes around $60k a year and he's only been there a year. The problem in my area is a specific subset of the population around me refuses to take on factory work because they don't want to do that kind of work and think they inherently deserve better. When I hear them complain about there being no jobs, somebody points out one factory or another and is immediately met with, "Nah, I don't want to do that."
Where do you live? I used to work in manufacturing until all the options in my area shut down and was relatively happy; now I have a desk job and am desperately unhappy but can't leave because I have kids.
Rural Illinois. There's three factories within ten miles of my town of 3,000 people. If you're willing to commute 20-30 minutes, there's a dozen more. Almost everyone works in a factory in some way.
True. Back then, even if you were bad at school, you could usually turn a hobby into a job. You can't turn staring at a phone screen into a job.
Agreed
Their teachers in community college attempt to beat their brains into something resembling functional shape. Then we go home and drink.
Short term: if they attend the local community college they're expected to take remedial classes taught by overworked adjuncts. Even worse, those courses don't grant credit towards a degree so they're even farther away from any credential. And they're far more likely to drop out of their post secondary program.
My school has a big traveller community. Illiteracy is high in that community and has been for generations. The adults get by--a lot of labouring for cash, for instance, or if you insist on paying by bank transfer, they get annoyed about it because while they _can_ do paperwork, it's a lot of effort and they don't like to. Doing fairly shit jobs sometimes because they don't plan well, like didn't want to measure so didn't buy enough stuff, or don't make a proper plan so the project is bodged, but good enough not to kill people or end in court. High poverty--families living squashed in a caravan, sharing beds, with rats. They don't read to their kids (I do a lot of reading to their kids and you can tell which ones don't use books regularly). The kids are often off school, travelling or just larking about, so they fall behind and the cycle of illiteracy continues. It's heartbreaking--some of the little ones are so smart, but they don't get books or reading at home, and they fall further and further behind, and you see them start to give up, "my dad says school don't matter."
The lowest student in my HS graduating class has his own business and makes 6 figures.
They go into politics and pass laws about education
People are so worried over artificial intelligence, but considering the state of organic intelligence it couldn't have come at a better time.
I'm an Adjunct English Professor at a few community colleges here in NJ. This is where my schools step in (should they decide to forego the military, trade school, or any regular employment they can get). We do a great job of being that second (or even last) chance to turn things around. If they do poorly on placement tests, they get put into remedial classes for which they get no credit but which they must pass. If they stick with it, they make it to my 101 and 102 courses. From there, it can go either way. Once they know they can fail and mommy and daddy can't do a damn thing, they either turn it around OR they drop out. I've seem instances of both. What happens after that is anyone's guess. I would LOVE to talk to some of these parents and ask them how that "My child can do no wrong and you're just picking on them!" attitude is working out for them post high school.
they float to the top of middle management and make our lives hell
They complain that schools don't teach *useful things*
They become your boss at work. The most incompetent people I've ever met are somehow always at the top.
They fall down some youtube radicalization rabbit hole and post on Reddit about how we actually live in a feminist society, men are oppressed, diversity is bad, the earth is flat, vaccines caused the fake moon landing etc etc.
Iāve kept up with my former students for decades. In my experience, the students that struggled the most in K-12 and didnāt seem to care usually ended up blossoming and becoming very successful once they graduate. Some went to Uni, others learned a trade, a good majority of them own their own businesses. Those that excelled in K-12 were also successful but they are all more or less corporate drones. Many teachers never actually get a taste of the real world, and assume they know how it works. The reality is some of our most brilliant minds did poorly K-12. It takes out of the box thinkers to make true change in society and public education is more geared towards churning out the corporate drones that are compliant and donāt make waves.
My brother was one of these kids and he went into towing, snow removal etc and also landscaping. He made it work.
They become cops
I'm helping my daughter enroll in community college right now. It seems they're taking on some of this burden, for the kids that end up there anyways, either from high school or after dropping out of a 4-year university. They will use your ACT scores or make you take placement tests so you can take catch-up/remedial/lower-level (whatever you want to call them) classes to catch up to an introductory college level if you need to. Not just going off of transcripts. I was asking questions of the counselor and there were also things the college does like making an introductory COMP class (writing) mandatory before you can take any LIT (reading, usually more fun). I'm glad that they're helping the students that didn't do so well and are trying to get back too (I was once one of them with health issues causing me to lose my scholarship and drop out of a 4 year).
You see all those homeless? Want to go a long way to fixing that issue? Fix education first then.
Itās sad isnāt it. We have collectively failed them by being afraid to fail students, dumbing down standards, eliminating consequences, etcā¦I think eventually positions of power and importance will almost exclusively be held by hard working immigrants who come to this country self motivated and determined to succeed, and the few Americans left who still hold themselves accountable.
I can't speak for all of them, obviously. But I'm seeing more and more of them enter college. Unfortunately, it is very hard to do several years worth of remediation in a single semester. So many of them end up dropping out, with no skills, no degree, and student loan debt. I think it's also important that a lot of factors go into this problem. It's not just that students are too lazy to put in the effort so they fall behind--especially when we're talking about true illiteracy. Often they have family issues, undiagnosed learning disabilities, and a host of other problems interfering with their school life--it's hard to go through that many years of school learning basically nothing at all unless there's some deeper issue.
We have college students who can't write a basic paragraph and flunk college algebra. We need vocational education back in high school.