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It's like saying calculators make you smarter. In reality people can't do simple math because of the reliance on calculators.

Much like people cannot spell "advice" or "friend" due to technology. Hell, I see at least 3 misspelled words in most news articles from major networks.

Access to information doesn't make you smarter or even know more (which are two different things). Using your actual brain makes you smarter.

You're advocating rote memorization, or am I over simplifying?

I 'm advocating problem solving over spoon-feeding.

I had a professor in college who knew the entire sine/cosine/tangent chart for most decimals. He was from Kenya and never had a calculator so he used his brain. HE was smart. Any monkey can look things up on Google.

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
It's like saying calculators make you smarter. In reality people can't do simple math because of the reliance on calculators.

That is a fair point. Ever since I got a TI-89 I don't think I've taken an integral or derivative by hand. I can believe that portion of your statement. I use my calculator (or MATLAB) as a crutch all the time, although when you're doing orbital mechanics and your formulas involve taking multiple cross products of position vectors I would like to think there are better ways to utilize your time than doing them by hand. That said, if I was asked to do them by hand I'm not entirely sure I'd know how at the drop of a hat. Heck, I did badly on a recent test because I forgot how to do matrix multiplication. I don't do that by hand anymore.

It's a question of whether you want to be efficient with your time or someone who is a complete expert in your field I suppose. I'd like to have both but that doesn't seem to happen anymore.

As a counterpoint, I can teach my dog tricks. He knows that if he does them, he gets a treat. He doesn't understand why I ask, and I can't teach him to improvise new tricks. I've tried.

I didn't actually learn the multiplication tables as a kid, to the chagrin of my teachers. I was home-schooled in third grade, and by the end of it, I could multiply numbers in my head because I was taught to factor them. 8x8 is more daunting than 16x2x2. They were confused and often irritated at my lack of showing work, because I didn't memorize a series of disparate facts that were useful in one situation each, I instead learned a process that is still far more useful to me now that achieved the same goal.

To a certain extent, you need innate skills. I agree. When those skills are a means to an end though and not the end, do you really need to be able to do every step by hand? At this point in the world, I don't need to know anything but how to get from step one to step two, and so on. I don't need to know how to do step one if it's something that's already been done, and if I understand and reason why I'm going from step one to step two, maybe I can understand how to get to step three regardless of knowing how to actually do step one. The kids don't need tables to memorize. They need critical thinking and the ability to make reasonable and intelligent conclusions from data provided.

Suppose I need to find the area of a triangle. Now suppose I can't multiply and just have a magic box to do it for me. Suppose I know what to put in to find the area of a square, and I know that the area of a right triangle (which is what I need) is half the area of a square. I can extrapolate that by finding the area of the square, and then dividing it in half, I can find the area of said triangle. That's understanding. Knowing multiplication tables and regurgitating them on command for a treat is not.


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Here's, I think, a better example:

You don't (or at least, I doubt you) understand the process by which your keyboard translates your keystrokes into scancodes and send them to your computer, or how TCP works to send the HTTP POST from your browser to the Dakka server, even as you offer a hypothetical rebuttal. Let alone how a CPU works.

By your logic, you can't be smart because you use tools you don't begin to comprehend, when in reality, they're an abstraction used to get something done for real, which is have this conversation. You don't NEED to know how to do all those things. All that matters is that someone or something else knows how to do them and has streamlined the process well enough such that you can get some real work done, which is hopefully, in some way, shape, and/or form, get us just a little bit further along than we were before you existed.

Smart is being able to adapt to do whatever needs to be done at the time, accurately and completely, not having a head full of factoids that were put there because someone decided it was what needs to be there.

I love how the people claiming the 90-00 generations are becoming less intelligent, but then go on to misspell words, use And at the beginning of sentences, and substitute one in for on.


Also, I love the whole Egyptian hieroglyphs argument; apparently, we have been becoming less intelligent since ancient times, so what does that say about the 70-80 generations?

 Slarg232 wrote:
I love how the people claiming the 90-00 generations are becoming less intelligent, but then go on to misspell words, use And at the beginning of sentences, and substitute one in for on.


Also, I love the whole Egyptian hieroglyphs argument; apparently, we have been becoming less intelligent since ancient times, so what does that say about the 70-80 generations?

The last one was really a genuine mistake. Mistakes happen, regardless of intelligence. We are all human, after all.

 daedalus wrote:

I was born in '84. I'm on the tail end of those on this pillar, if you can even count me there at all. I work with a guy six years younger than I who I have a harder time relating to than the people who are 20 years older than me. There's a definite generational gap there in such a short span of time, I won't try to argue with that, and the size of the gap is profound. I point at him and scoff sometimes, but at the same time, I LOATHE that the same people who are patting themselves on the back here for being so tough with this self-righteous "hoorah us" are also belittling the generations they fethed up for being so fethed up.

I was born in 86, and feel VERY much the same way... and you'd think that in the military this effect would be somewhat limited... nope, not one bit. and as a parent of two, with a wife who is about the same age as i am, and has the same views on how to raise kids (we both feel that, what worked on us, and turned us into upstanding citizens will work on our kids), obviously, we run into the bubblewrap generation all the time, and it pisses us off to no end. Now, im not saying that we belittle our kids or anything thats ACTUALLY harmful, but we'd rather our kids get a few bumps and bruises and learn something than to simply have "academic" knowledge of any given subject.


Also, IMO, the reason why having so much information at the fingertips makes people dumber is, as I said in a previous post, people no longer need to retain anything and actually learn something, they can simply google it.

 daedalus wrote:

 Slarg232 wrote:
I love how the people claiming the 90-00 generations are becoming less intelligent, but then go on to misspell words, use And at the beginning of sentences, and substitute one in for on.


Also, I love the whole Egyptian hieroglyphs argument; apparently, we have been becoming less intelligent since ancient times, so what does that say about the 70-80 generations?

The last one was really a genuine mistake. Mistakes happen, regardless of intelligence. We are all human, after all.

How does the old saying go?

He who lives in glass houses shouldn't complain about his neighbor with curtain-less windows?

Saying that the prior generation was smarter is pretty lulzy considering that:

A) Damn near half the country was illiterate when your generation was at its peak, and

B) Most of the World's problems of today are directly caused by the actions of those born in the prior generations.

Oh, American students are lagging behind the rest of the world in Educational milestones? Guess who the dumbasses in charge of our Education system are.

Every generation is the worst generation...

~Tim?

 Some_Call_Me_Tim? wrote:
Every generation is the worst generation...

~Tim?

"Except mine!" -Every Generation

Pretty much, yeah.

It's always the generation who are either in their mid-life crisis or just passing it who say that, though.

I think the worst thing to come out of a mass media environment is the self congratulatory navel gazing. I was hoping that it was just the children of the 60's who did this but lately I have been seeing more and more 70's and 80's related shows.It's sad to say the least, still at least there isn't some burnt out bald hippy in grandpa slippers saying "we changed the world man".

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:


The problem is the phenomena itself, not the presentation or even the media. A 'textwall' of several hundred words being too long to read ought to be a worrying phenomena allowing for how long books can be. It's direct evidence of a growing culture of gross impatience with literacy.

A Wall of Text isn't any long text, it's a long text without punctuation or spacing, the very thing you complain about in your own post.

Partly true. A wall of text can be one with no punctuation or spacing. But all too often large posts articles etc are waved off as textwalls even with punctuation and spacing because anything more than a few lines is too much bother to read.

Also remember that if you copy/paste pages from books often textwalls appear, because the amount of spacing in say a novel is often a lot less than a newspaper article or net post. Grammatic structure can lead to long paragraphs whileremaining good prose.


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 Cheesecat wrote:

This is because kids in Asia, Africa and India get an education now, which more than compensates for kids in Europe and America with the playstations and cellphones.
Lesson for you: If you settle to do do 'alright' in your study you can read a graph, if you educate yourself properly you might interpret the same graph.

To be fair you didn't specify what country or countries you're talking about.

We can let you get away with that to play nice. However you were looking at global literacy rates, so third world development over the last decades would be a natural counterbalancing feature.

 Cheesecat wrote:

They also use them inside classrooms, they also often don't know how to write a letter.

That's a bit assuming.

Sadly it is, and its based on anecdotal evidence. But as the anecdotes of ignorant generations which cant write properly often come from teachers, who also claim to have witnessed a marked decline then perhaps there is something to it.
Case in point, check out Mathieu Raymond's comments.

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for
authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place
of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their
households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They
contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties
at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

This has been going on longer then Feudalism.

Considering that the old era's tolerated strong and casual racism, freak shows of people with afflictions, and other such things such as minstrel shows and the like, don't forget the poor Medical Technology, the horrifying practices of psychiatry back then...

Of course they are going to gloss over the BAD parts of their generation, despite all that it's the best generation! I mean if you ignore all the problems anything can look good.

Look at today! Racism being reduced, technology at its peak, murder rates going down, and overall learning is at it's peak.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:

I too, will take some of these and comment wittily.

Witty, but also depressing. I thought I was jaded.

1- If only my students understood enough about what is being researched to even copy/paste, it'd be a start. They just tell me "It was too hard, so I gave up, give me the failing grade." Multiple times. Today. Affluent suburbs of Montreal.

Please tell me youre joking and these are ghetto kids. If this attitude is mainstream what is there left to be?

2- Again, back to comprehension issues addressed in #1. Context is wasted on my batch. Might as well give them soundbites from the Simpsons.

The Simpsons might teach them something. Lisa does ok.

4- Not even. I find you need to actually care about how you spell to even use or understand what spellcheckers are telling you. Not a given.

Never jaded enough to think of it this way, until now. Spell checkers are irrelevant.... thats depressing. I thought they were problematic as a crutch.

5- Yup, but it often comes down to personal discipline, which again can be instilled, but often isn't anymore. Why should we be harsh with them, it screwed us up, so we're not going to ever, ever let them feel like they can't have their heart's desire.

So the root causes are sense of entitlement and bad parenting?

7- I can only speak locally. 49% of Quebecers cannot read or understand simple sentences, let alone a string of them. The study projects that that number will increase by at least 10% over the course of the next 12 years, as the "reform" students hit the job market.

How much of an exagerration is this?

8- Someone earlier said that it was irrelevant. If it was an isolated complaint, I'd say yes, but unfortunately, students now write "like they speak." And our speech (locally) is anything but stellar. Students are shocked that I actually grade on grammar, spelling and syntax.

In fairness most internet posts are speech in text form as they are a conversation. When typing online diction is more important than syntax. You didn't comment that my list all began senstences with the word 'Because', that is acceptable diction, but appalling syntax.

10- Bigger fish to fry, but on the whole, there must be a good way to use communication techs. I strongly believe that.

You are right and Cheescat made a similar point. It appears that I am calling mobile phones bad because people use them. I should have been more clear, mobile phones can be bad if people use them so extensively they fail to develop face to face communication skills. Too much phoning, too much texting, not enough face to face conversation. Phones are great for long distance communication but are often used for same room or local communication which manes that the technology in a real way divides people. When the youth are concerned and the social skills are not developed as a result the consequences will be negative and long lasting. Teen pregnancies excepting, the first generations to have been linked to mobile phones from the cradle has yet to have reproduced in sufficient numbers to make up the majority of the adult breeding population , the real rot will be apparent over the next decade. When the generation gap turns and the pre-mobile phone generation begins to fade.

11- Boys will still kick a ball for hours on end rather than have to do arts, or write 5 sentences stringed together, or show me any kind of respect. The problem I see with this is that it stopped being a sport or a hobby, and has been fantasized by their community as the acceptable way to go through life. We have 200 boys in the "hockey track" at my school. From the coaches' briefings and reports (and our sad scores) I'd say none of them are particularly good at it. Yet they all believe they will end up in the NHL, so screw that high school diploma.

I don't think communications technologies are the problem here as much as the sense of entitlement. students are not expected to fail so they all believe they are winners. I can see why the idiots who instilled this dogma did so, it staves off feelings of inadequacy through failure, but it also staves off reality, and the pressure to actually achieve. I am not surprised that as a consequence too many believe they are destined to become pro-sports players, self delusion is powerful.

The proper way to handle this is to have acceptable failure. For example rather than have a sport non competitive it remains highly competetive but encouragement is given to those lagging behind. So instead of a foot race where all the kids get the same reward ribbon, you have winners and a winners trophy those who do not win do not get. But runners at the back of the pack gain buddies to jog along with them help them cross the finish line and cheer when they do. They receive no condemnation, only encouragement, but their bad race times are not papered over when the results are posted.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:



Look at today! Racism being reduced.....murder rates going down, and overall learning is at it's peak.

Racism is definitely not being reduced, it's merely taking different forms, and coming from different sources.

Murder rates may be going down as a whole, but you still have areas of the US where it's either level, or still increasing slightly (like Chicago, DC and other "anti-gun bastions", ironically)

Overall learning at its peak is also going to be a regional thing... Check the thread on the teacher using swear words in class who, from all appearances is working in an inner-city environment where learning could be said to be actually going down. There's also an article out there a while ago about the reading levels of NYC schools, and college applicants who could barely read at an 8th grade level (or less).

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:



Look at today! Racism being reduced.....murder rates going down, and overall learning is at it's peak.

Racism is definitely not being reduced, it's merely taking different forms, and coming from different sources.

Murder rates may be going down as a whole, but you still have areas of the US where it's either level, or still increasing slightly (like Chicago, DC and other "anti-gun bastions", ironically)

Overall learning at its peak is also going to be a regional thing... Check the thread on the teacher using swear words in class who, from all appearances is working in an inner-city environment where learning could be said to be actually going down. There's also an article out there a while ago about the reading levels of NYC schools, and college applicants who could barely read at an 8th grade level (or less).

Thank you for missing the point, you can make any generation look good if you cut out the bad parts, or the 'marginal' parts of the text that would go with it.

There is no best generation, only generations that try and learn from the previous and hope to do better.

Well this accelerated quickly didnt it?

I keep hearing this idea: that before TV and computer games, kids used to go outside, merrily frolicking though the countryside. Or something...

I grew up with television, but I still went outside plenty. While I did ride a bike, skateboard and kick a ball around sometimes; I also smoked cigarettes, started fires, climbed on things I wasn't supposed to, broke windows (usually by accident), and generally got up to mischief. I can't imagine previous generations were any different.

Furthermore, going outside isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Most of the good outdoor activities cost money. Either in admission, or travel, or equipment etc... About the only thing you can do for free is find a patch of grass, sit on it, and try not to get skin cancer... That's assuming it isn't winter where you just freezing your ass off outside.

I'm sure kids back in the day spent just as much time sitting indoors, turning pale, as they do now. Reading comic books, listening to records, hiding in bomb shelters... I'm not sure what kids did before those days. I guess worked in sweatshops, and died of the consumption.

Last year I recall going to the beach with some friends. We flew a kite, kicked a cheap plastic ball around (one of the ones that blows away) it was pretty fun. But by far the most fun was a game that involved sitting around and trying to throw pebbles in a bucket. I remember an old guy walking by, and he smiled and shouted "It beats watching the telly eh?". To which I thought, actually it's kind of the same... Sitting around wasting time on something pointless. People have been doing this activity, in one form or another, for about a million years. I don't think TV or computers have really changed anything, they just made it look more high-tech. People will always find stupid ways to waste time, be it playing flappy birds on their smart phone, or throwing pebbles at other pebbles.

Honestly, I blame Baby Boomers. When did the "bubble wrap" craze start? When baby boomers started running the show. Who had been running our country for the last 30-40 years? Baby Boomers. Now they are giving way to idiot X-genners.

"I want my kids to have it easier than I did." - This mindset had put us down a road of kids being raised softer and softer.

My kids will have it worse than I did. And they will be better than I for it.

PS.

Here is the other thing. The gap between the smart kids and the dumb kids is getting oceanic in size. The ratio of smart kids to dumb kids is getting scary. The few kids that do get raised by parents that actually give a crap are excelling but are also increasingly segregated from their peers. We start separating smart kids at very early ages. And they stay apart from the masses all the way through college.

We are manufacturing classes, and then teaching them to resent each other. The educated can't relate to the masses and vice versa.

 Smacks wrote:

I'm sure kids back in the day spent just as much time sitting indoors, turning pale, as they do now. Reading comic books, listening to records, hiding in bomb shelters... I'm not sure what kids did before those days. I guess worked in sweatshops, and died of the consumption.

I played outside a lot, but I also spent a lot of time inside reading books and doing badass things with my father, like learning to solder and building electronic projects from those old Radio Shack manuals..

 Smacks wrote:


Furthermore, going outside isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Most of the good outdoor activities cost money. Either in admission, or travel, or equipment etc... About the only thing you can do for free is find a patch of grass, sit on it, and try not to get skin cancer.

I think that this is why sports such as rugby, football, "futball" etc. are so popular. I mean, with American Football, and Rugby, all you legitimately need is a patch of open space, a ball and people. With soccer, you need the same, plus something to at least act as a goal.

We also saw with the urbanization of America, basketball became significantly more popular with the inner city types, because basketball requires fewer people, and a smaller playing surface than any other popular sport out there. Growing up, even the absolute poorest of friends/acquaintances were able to afford at some point, some sort of ball.

Of course, what constitutes a "good" outdoor activity is almost purely subjective, so YMMV.

My brother and I played "beat the gak out of each other with sticks" outside. It was a cheap game to play.

I remember the History department at my alma mater had a meeting where they determined they had to spend the first day or two of all the 100 level courses teaching how to take notes because they were running into to many students coming from High School that had never been taught and had no idea how to do so effectively.

I honestly do not know how to explain it, but:

There is long time-series data on large population cohorts that shows fitness of young people (school age) has declined.

There is long time-series data on large population cohorts that show that skill levels in maths and grammar of college entrants have declined.

Interestingly, the second data set also shows that self-assessed levels of competency have increased. In other words, young people today think of themselves better than earlier young people did, although their skills measured by objective standards have declined.

One can of course make the argument that physical fitness, maths and grammar are unimportant.

 Kilkrazy wrote:


One can of course make the argument that physical fitness, maths and grammar are unimportant.

But in reality, as we continue to learn more and more about various diseases and conditions, that physical fitness is absolutely huge in a persons life, especially at a young age. I would agree math and grammar potentially being unimportant, but that largely depends on a persons career or field once they are beyond the typical school period of their life.

I'd like to think that at the very least my grammar is on par with that of the previous generations'.

 Orlanth wrote:



3. Because 'textwalls' exist like its' a problem. If people cant be bothered to read textwalls what will they do when they come to read chapters.

I had solve some math problem. After reading walls of text from my calculus (I also tried different editions) I just gave up, typed a keyword in youtube search bar and watched a 5min video which explained everything I needed to know.

When I need to read chapters I just watch few 5 min youtube videos.