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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 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.

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.

Same article but 1974.

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.

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.

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..

Not today's 10 year olds.

This just in: what passes for journalists have just discovered the existence of Political Science majors.

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.

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.

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.

no u