Oddly, the study didn’t measure (or the article didn’t report) average scores. It only states that a certain, large percentage of students are failing at low levels of reading and math.
The difference matters, because it might simply imply that a class of people are entering universities that traditionally would not have been accepted. Think the stereotype of the scholarship jock in the USA.
The article implies that the role of AI tools in this is equalizing. Instead of making people dumb, it gives them a chance to seem smart. It doesn’t lift people up either, and without AI they are still incapable of tasks that a college student should be able to complete.
That’s the nirvana for AI companies: a whole class of people that can’t live without their tools and is going to be willing to pay no matter what to keep accessing them.
Not today’s 10 year olds.
The survey, first spotted by the Economist, tested around 160,000 people of all ages, across all 38 member states. It found that across all OECD member countries, a full 8 percent of college students are reading at the level of a ten-year-old…
Wait, that’s it? 8 percent?
I bet the number of foreign language students is greater than 8 percent. That’s why…
A big part of the problem is that teaching is treated as a second tier profession. A lot of people end up teaching after having failed at something else. I took some masters level education classes and these were some of the dumbest people I had ever met in a college environment.
The people that choose teaching as a first choice often leave because the pay and work environment is so poor for such an important job. They either burn out from stress or give up because they cannot properly do their job within the system.
I am a flight instructor. The funny thing about my profession is, it is NOT a middle age man’s game. It’s for young guns and retirees.
Say you’ve spent the tens of thousands of dollars it takes to earn a commercial pilot’s certificate. You’ve got a few hundred hours in the logbook, all of it training or pleasure flying, almost all in 2-4 seat trainers. You’re qualified to do…basically nothing. Mind you, a commercial pilot can’t work for an airline, you need an ATP certificate for that. A commercial pilot can do weird things like air taxi, some charter operations, air tours, banner towing, glider towing, aerial photography…and with an additional certificate, teach flight school.
The vast majority of (civilian) pilots including myself log their first revenue flight as Instruction Given. All of a sudden, some other rube is not only footing the bill for the plane, but paying YOU a wage. Your logbook starts filling up pretty quick, the second 250 hours happens a lot faster than the first 250 did, you can afford to get your multi-engine, etc. Then you get hired for a “real job” flying something turbine powered and spend your “actual” career flying Caravans for Fed-Ex.
Then, it’s time to retire, start living life as if you’re actually going to get the pension they promised you, and to get out of the house you start teaching lessons at your local municipal airport until you can’t pass a medical exam anymore.
I worked with several former teachers in my software career. They were all smart patient people. Software jobs making shit for rich people to get richer paid more than double for less work.
I knew another teacher who was on food stamps because her salary was so low.
Our society values stupid shit. It invests in stupid shit. We are lead by assholes and fools.
The only thing our society is interested in is extracting more value from people and funneling that value into the wealthiest hands
I don’t doubt that reading comprehension is down, but part of the article tries to coincide with chatgpt use and college students. Chatgpt is not old enough to impact a college level students reading level down to a 10 year old level.
These are also the kids who were entering their teens right as Covid hit. Chat GPT just happens to be the crutch some of these kids are leaning on.
Yeah I think covid might have had a much bigger impact on these students than AI.
Chatgpt is not old enough to impact a college level students reading level down to a 10 year old level.
All due respect, that’s wild conjecture without some sort of reference for the claim. 🙇🏼♂️ I mean, in the same vein, I’ve interacted with a number of college students in a classroom setting over the last decade+, and that experience’d imply that it’s quite the opposite.
Are you suggesting that collage-age people who had better than 10-year-old-level reading skills a few years ago before ChatGPT existed have since regressed?
That’s a stretch by any measure. Besides, how old is “collage-age”, anyhow?
p.s. Longtime fan, and I gotta say: your online persona’s living up to the legacy.
“Collage-age” is anything from toddler on up (basically, anybody with enough dexterity to glue macaroni to construction paper).
College-age, which is what I meant before I made that embarrassing typo 🤦, is generally 18 and up except for people in joint enrollment or who graduated high school early (which I would say implies that they’re high-achieving enough that their literacy shouldn’t be in question).
How is it “a stretch by any measure” to say that people who are at least 18 now, and who therefore were at least 15 when ChatGPT came out three years ago, should’ve already had a better than 10-year-old reading level by that age and would therefore have had to have regressed in order to have a 10-year-old reading level now?
Jokes aside, of I hadn’t experienced teaching that age group before said brainsuck, how would I have any semblance of a control group? 🤷🏼♂️ You’re arguing against tested anecdotal data? Hot take.
You haven’t made any claims at all, you’re just expressing that you think the other poster is wrong but not giving a reason. What have you observed?
The fact that I mentioned it was implying that the original notion was just as ridiculous. Does that clear things up?
You’re the one who interacted with college level students. Shouldn’t you know what’s the average college students’ age? This feels like you’re moving the goal posts.EDIT : I misunderstood their comment.
😶 fucksake
I was poking at a misspelling.
Breathe.
Aw man I misunderstood. My apologies.
I think the point is that 10 year olds using chatGPT are coming off as college students, no?
It would be interesting to quantify how fast a skill like reading can degrade (or can degrade at all).
In that sense, ChatGPT could effectively affect the reading comprehension if the users ask the LLM to dumb down the response for example.
This just in: what passes for journalists have just discovered the existence of Political Science majors.
The survey, first spotted by the Economist, tested around 160,000 people of all ages, across all 38 member states. It found that across all OECD member countries, a full 8 percent of college students are reading at the level of a ten-year-old, if not worse. While countries like Germany and France rang in at under 5 percent, countries like Poland, Israel, and the United States blew the curve at 21, 20, and 14 percent, respectively.
The numbers aren’t much better when it comes to math. Across OECD countries, 9 percent of college students do math at or below a ten-year-old level. In Italy, the US, and Slovakia, that figure jumps to over 15 percent — only outdone by Israel, where roughly 21 percent of college students were underachieving at the same low benchmark.
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Appreciated, thank you!
Didn’t read the whole PDF but it think it said age 12 in 1974 vs the current stated age 10.
My kids are doing work in 6th grade that I was doing in high school. The bar has shifted dramatically.
Although 10 years old reading ability is basically they can read anything, it the higher order thinking and critical media skill that develop afterwards. Went through graduate school before I really learned deep reading skills.
Okay, how does it compare to decades ago? Also, a lot of them could be athlete scholarships, since universities want those athletes regardless of their education.
The survey, first spotted by the Economist, tested around 160,000 people of all ages, across all 38 member states. It found that across all OECD member countries, a full 8 percent of college students are reading at the level of a ten-year-old, if not worse. While countries like Germany and France rang in at under 5 percent, countries like Poland, Israel, and the United States blew the curve at 21, 20, and 14 percent, respectively.
The numbers aren’t much better when it comes to math. Across OECD countries, 9 percent of college students do math at or below a ten-year-old level. In Italy, the US, and Slovakia, that figure jumps to over 15 percent — only outdone by Israel, where roughly 21 percent of college students were underachieving at the same low benchmark.
Yeah this whole article comes off as sensationalist garbage
It has been seen to have started around 2010 but gotten a lot worse due to COVID.
One of the triggers garnering coverage is the letter from many University of California professors to reinstitute standardized testing as a requirement for admission.
Wow, how did 10 year olds get so smart?
What are 10 year olds testing at, then?
Standardized testing isn’t actually a measure of intelligence, or of function.
Plenty of intelligent, accomplished people report having been horrible at school, or at doing tests. Sitting, working for the approval of an authority figure, or a series of questions on a sheet of paper just might not be a good way to figure out the smart people from the dumb people… It’s really a measure of searching for “good test takers” - a quality that you might not actually want in a society.
“Hey these people work really hard to get perfect theoretical score for the approval of a sheet of paper or a guy in a suit”. Uhuh, and the claim is that’s “smart”? Okay “boss”.
Sometimes we forget the kind of life the education system was built around. We mistake it for something objectively “good”. Hell, look at the brutality of the British school system in the colonial era. Education and testing has a Sociological context, and is a system built of the society’s purposes/ends.
“A good test taker” would be a vast upgrade over “dolts and dunces who can’t fucking read.”
So if you are dyslexic and/or dyscalculic, if you are simply not good at reading or math, or if you are a bad test taker and your unique skills/knowledge/understanding aren’t being reflected by some bullshit test: that means you have less value as a human being and/or value to society than someone who is good at performing in those standardized tests?
You did say “upgrade”, so you seem to be valuing the good test takers over those who don’t take tests well. Just making sure I understand!
If that’s your interpretation of what i said, then it’s safe to say that standardized tests aren’t the only things you’re shit at.
You were pretty clear, I was anticipating this response. Thanks for confirming your bad faith.
Somebody in good faith would be clarifying their intent.
Also, I never mentioned how I did - you assumed.
LOL sure buddy. Because you were obviously being fair minded and acting in good faith when you made up something I didn’t say and pretended that was what i said.
Not passing the OWLs this year, are ya?
I’m just going to add that I like cheddar more than you.
Let’s measure for “good test takers” who want to please paper authorities for a score card, and then call that intelligence.
it’s because 10 year olds are super smart righ now.
