The average American youth who graduates from high school in 2024, may well have never read a complete text. That’s a fact. Think about that for a moment. They may have read a chapter, or perused an article or two, maybe a synopsis, or simply skimmed the text. Some will even have the temerity to simply ‘wing it’, stating and justifying their opinion, with belief, and nothing more. This isn’t just a passing observation, it’s based on statements by thousands of professors at universities all across America.
The Atlantic, November Issue by Rose Horowitch, “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books” speaks specifically to the problem, and yes, it is a huge problem. I first noticed it when teaching college just over ten years ago in Canada. In the first week of the semester of an ethics course, a student stated that “you can’t expect us to read 3-4 entire texts in a semester?” I was a bit stunned by that suggestion and question. That’s four texts in 16 weeks. My response was just as unequivocal, “Of course I can, assuming you wish to pass.” The facial expressions from these 19 and 20 year old students was one of horror. To me, it was, and remains incomprehensible that those who seek to aspire to and acquire an education be unwilling to do the necessary work in order to possess the knowledge that will provide them with an informed opinion.
The second problem was equally as much a shock. Some of these would be teachers, lawyers, engineers, and civil servant’s literary skills, were miserably poor. I awaited the submission of their first essay in order to be certain that what I was assuming to be a problem, was indeed true. There were a few individuals whose language skills were so poor as to be unworthy of any post-secondary educational institution. What I had no idea of, was that for many, college and its expectations was a shock. They seemed to believe that attendance granted one a passing grade, and they assumed leniency in the grading system would allow for their lack of effort. Unfortunately a couple of these students were wrong on both counts.
After the first semester, I subsequently spoke to the Dean and requested for the curriculum committee to consider having all future students entering into first year be required to take a literacy test, which if they failed would require a remedial English course be added to their first year requirement in order to ensure that they had at least the rudimentary knowledge to succeed. It was instituted the following year.
Another major factor was the student’s inability to focus. It looked like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder to me. Students would spend an inordinate amount of time looking at their phones, doodling or talking, rather than taking notes about critical areas of the information that I spent time emphasizing. It appeared to me that for many in first year, the failure to launch so-to-speak, led those in second year to buckle down and apply themselves.
Personally I think losing ten percent of students or more in the first year is a travesty. By the time a student enters college he or she should have the requisite skills for success. In any event, I attempted to influence the faculty in such a way that those without the necessary skills would be made aware of their failings and have the opportunity to acquire them prior to entry into the program in question. Standardized tests needed to be more stringent in order to provide the best opportunity for success.
However, it would seem that whatever the failings of the Canadian educational system, it pales in comparison to the challenges facing the United States. In her article Horowitch states that according to Daniel Shore, the chair of Georgetown’s English department, “that his students have trouble staying focused on even a sonnet…they fail to complete a 14-line poem without succumbing to distraction.”
The predicament of students having the inability to read substantial text has led “many college professors to feel they have no choice but to assign less reading and lower their expectations.” Victoria Kahn, who has taught at UC Berkeley since 1997, used to assign 200 pages of text per week. Now she assigns less than half that.
Statistics bare facts that speak to the unwillingness to read. Horowitch states that, “In 1976, about 40 percent of high school seniors said they had read at least six books for fun in the previous year, compared with 11.5 percent who hadn’t read any. By 2022, those percentages had flipped. In a recent EdWeek Research Center survey of about 300 third-to-eighth grade educators only 17 percent said they primarily teach whole texts. Over a quarter of these educators said that books are no longer the center of their curricula.
One of the most interesting observations comes from Maryanne Wolf, so-called deep reading—sustained immersion in a text—stimulates a number of valuable mental habits, including critical thinking and self-reflection.”
Of course the problem with low literacy and critical thinking is that it directly affects students when they move on to their life’s vocation or their ability and willingness to re-learn and re-train as technology and information management create evermore information to be learned.
Today, someone entering the workforce, irrespective of the vocation can be expected to change their job 12 times in their lifetime. As jobs become dependent on learning new skills and information with each successive change, it becomes incumbent on that person to have the learning, study skills and mental acuity to learn, change, adapt and apply what they have learned to the new task at hand, not just 7 times, as it was when I entered the job market in 1971, but many more.
Globalization and competition between nations combined with capitalism’s demand for ever cheaper labour costs; while improving both productivity and efficiency, means that employment is more competitive than ever. Corporations will and do move where the labour force has both the ability to perform the necessary skills, while at the same time minimizing costs, and maintaining productivity.
The ability to adapt, to learn and to change is an essential component of success in the 21st Century and beyond.
Therefore, based on what the voting public has read, researched, analyzed, synthesized and internalized as knowledge, one will either have reached a determination as to what is valuable and factual information, or make assumptions without any knowledge of the facts. If a society becomes sufficiently ignorant of facts, particularly those related to science and technology, they are prone to ‘belief’, which requires no facts, simply acceptance to the prevalent ‘think’ by those in power and the media who wish to misrepresent the facts. Worse, ignorance enables one to accept equivalencies that have no basis in fact.
Truth becomes nothing more than opinion.
Today in America, it is evident that a majority of voters are truly ignorant of the facts. They have no interest in acquiring knowledge, and they are satisfied in forming an opinion based on the persona, or cult of personality, that a populist displays. Style over substance, lies over facts. And when queried in an honest attempt at understanding how these individuals came to the conclusions they reached, anger often boils to the surface as they cannot rationally explain their choice.
The constant response by those who are truly ignorant, when confronted with facts is, ‘Fake News’. How did people come to be so ignorant yet prideful? I would be embarrassed in the extreme if I took a public position and I was not able to explain the rationale for or detail its value. Not today. Those who hold uneducated, ignorant, irrational opinions will often say, “I believe,” in relation to whatever the question posed may have been, followed by regurgitating whatever 30 second sound bite that they had received the most air time listening to. There is no shortage of those willing to listen or watch their favourite channel or station of disinformation in the United States.
Today, a gulf exists between those who choose facts, and those incapable of differentiating facts from lies. Ignorance has actually become prideful.
So here we are, in a place I thought could never exist. A place so surreal that a significant percentage of Americans are both unable and unwilling to test the veracity of the statements they attest to. And when anyone actually challenges their assertions, all that is heard is what might be heard in a kindergarten, “Fake News”.
Now members of Congress openly suggest that there is equivalency between the facts and their lies. Sadly, half of America thinks that has value. In your ignorance, they find their power.
Folks…we’re not in Kansas anymore.
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