In a recent posting on the New York Review of Books blog, Charles Simic, Pulitzer-prize winning poet and professor emeritus of literature and creative writing, states that "Widespread ignorance bordering on idiocy is our new national goal". His evidence for the spreading of ignorance comes in part from polls showing that large numbers of Americans believe certain things that are known to be false about recent and current events, and also from his experience as a college professor:
But Simic also writes: "to have it [disinformation] believed requires a badly educated population unaccustomed to verifying things they are being told", which feeds back into his experience of teaching for 40 years. That's the part that interests me because, in my ~20 years of college teaching, I have not seen a shocking decline in how much students coming out of high school know, as he describes in the excerpt above. [I am also ignoring any discussion of college-educated vs. not college-educated people in the context of the current US election-year explosion of ignorance, and am focusing here only on Simic's personal observations of a decline in college student knowledge and intellectual abilities.]
Why haven't I seen this change in how much students know and can learn? Did the change happen >20 years ago, so the biggest decline precedes my teaching experience? I can't evaluate that from my own experience, but I admit to being skeptical that students in the good old days were more accustomed to "verifying" things that they were told. In fact, today I think that many students are deeply skeptical of what they are told, and we professors have to make a concerted effort to be convincing in our explanations.
Or is the difference not so much my relative youth as a professor but the fact that I teach Science and Simic teaches Literature? He writes about how students today don't have much context to understand literature because they don't read much (relevant) literature before college, and they don't know about history, even the history of places where they grew up (he gives the example of New England mill towns). It is therefore more difficult to teach these students.
In Science, we require less context of that sort (particularly of the historical variety), although we expect our students to know (some of) what they have learned in previous science and math classes. As long as they have learned something in their previous science/math classes, I can take it from there and teach them what I want them to know in my Science classes, whatever the level and format of the course.
But Simic doesn't just say that students haven't accumulated certain facts before arriving in college, but that they also ".. have no ability to grasp most of the material being taught". That's different, and, if true, should also apply as much to Science as to Literature, History etc.
I get as frustrated as any teacher does when some students do indeed fail to grasp a concept (or basic fact), despite being given ample opportunity and assistance. Even so, at every type of institution at which I have taught, I have found that every course contains students with a wide range of abilities. A challenge for me as a professor is to teach them all. This has not changed in my 20+ years of teaching experiences at different colleges and universities.
Another possible explanation for my failure to discern a decline in student abilities over the years is that I am oblivious. I am skeptical about this explanation, but I do not reject that possibility out of hand. I think when we are intensely focused on something for a long time, we can lose perspective. Perhaps I have been "dumbing down" my courses bit by bit over the years, progressively adapting to the declining abilities of my students, so any decline in student abilities was imperceptible to me (?). However, if I had taught the same course in 1992 and then not again until 2012 (assuming that my teaching abilities remained the same and it was a course that could be taught the same despite the passage of decades..), perhaps I would see a difference (?). Somehow, I don't think that is the explanation.
At the moment, I am intrigued by the Science vs. Not Science possibility. I wouldn't want to take this so far as to say that teaching (and learning) Science requires less of an intellectual engagement with, or curiosity about, the rest of the world, as compared to history, literature, and so on. I don't think that is the case. But perhaps some fundamental aspects of (college-level) Science can be "grasped" more easily (that is, with less background information) than, say, a 19th century novel? For example, in this context, is it easier to explain the second law of thermodynamics than the poems of John Greenleaf Whittier?
What do you think? Have any of you long-time teachers seen any change, for better or worse, in overall student ability to understand what you try to teach them? Please give the time-frame of your observations (in years), your academic discipline, and any ideas you have that might explain your observations.
Anyone who has taught college over the last forty years, as I have, can tell you how much less students coming out of high school know every year. At first it was shocking, but it no longer surprises any college instructor that the nice and eager young people enrolled in your classes have no ability to grasp most of the material being taught. Teaching American literature, as I have been doing, has become harder and harder in recent years, since the students read little literature before coming to college and often lack the most basic historical information about the period in which the novel or the poem was written, including what important ideas and issues occupied thinking people at the time.I will not discuss in detail his ideas about the role of the media in spreading propaganda and disinformation, or why so many Americans believe (or are willing to believe) obvious lies about our own recent history (not to mention the present), except to disagree with this point: "In the past, if someone knew nothing and talked nonsense, no one paid any attention to him. No more." There are many examples throughout history (in the US and beyond) in which much attention has been paid to those speaking nonsense from ignorance. Even so, I agree with Simic that current trends are disturbing.
But Simic also writes: "to have it [disinformation] believed requires a badly educated population unaccustomed to verifying things they are being told", which feeds back into his experience of teaching for 40 years. That's the part that interests me because, in my ~20 years of college teaching, I have not seen a shocking decline in how much students coming out of high school know, as he describes in the excerpt above. [I am also ignoring any discussion of college-educated vs. not college-educated people in the context of the current US election-year explosion of ignorance, and am focusing here only on Simic's personal observations of a decline in college student knowledge and intellectual abilities.]
Why haven't I seen this change in how much students know and can learn? Did the change happen >20 years ago, so the biggest decline precedes my teaching experience? I can't evaluate that from my own experience, but I admit to being skeptical that students in the good old days were more accustomed to "verifying" things that they were told. In fact, today I think that many students are deeply skeptical of what they are told, and we professors have to make a concerted effort to be convincing in our explanations.
Or is the difference not so much my relative youth as a professor but the fact that I teach Science and Simic teaches Literature? He writes about how students today don't have much context to understand literature because they don't read much (relevant) literature before college, and they don't know about history, even the history of places where they grew up (he gives the example of New England mill towns). It is therefore more difficult to teach these students.
In Science, we require less context of that sort (particularly of the historical variety), although we expect our students to know (some of) what they have learned in previous science and math classes. As long as they have learned something in their previous science/math classes, I can take it from there and teach them what I want them to know in my Science classes, whatever the level and format of the course.
But Simic doesn't just say that students haven't accumulated certain facts before arriving in college, but that they also ".. have no ability to grasp most of the material being taught". That's different, and, if true, should also apply as much to Science as to Literature, History etc.
I get as frustrated as any teacher does when some students do indeed fail to grasp a concept (or basic fact), despite being given ample opportunity and assistance. Even so, at every type of institution at which I have taught, I have found that every course contains students with a wide range of abilities. A challenge for me as a professor is to teach them all. This has not changed in my 20+ years of teaching experiences at different colleges and universities.
Another possible explanation for my failure to discern a decline in student abilities over the years is that I am oblivious. I am skeptical about this explanation, but I do not reject that possibility out of hand. I think when we are intensely focused on something for a long time, we can lose perspective. Perhaps I have been "dumbing down" my courses bit by bit over the years, progressively adapting to the declining abilities of my students, so any decline in student abilities was imperceptible to me (?). However, if I had taught the same course in 1992 and then not again until 2012 (assuming that my teaching abilities remained the same and it was a course that could be taught the same despite the passage of decades..), perhaps I would see a difference (?). Somehow, I don't think that is the explanation.
At the moment, I am intrigued by the Science vs. Not Science possibility. I wouldn't want to take this so far as to say that teaching (and learning) Science requires less of an intellectual engagement with, or curiosity about, the rest of the world, as compared to history, literature, and so on. I don't think that is the case. But perhaps some fundamental aspects of (college-level) Science can be "grasped" more easily (that is, with less background information) than, say, a 19th century novel? For example, in this context, is it easier to explain the second law of thermodynamics than the poems of John Greenleaf Whittier?
What do you think? Have any of you long-time teachers seen any change, for better or worse, in overall student ability to understand what you try to teach them? Please give the time-frame of your observations (in years), your academic discipline, and any ideas you have that might explain your observations.