[larrik]

It's worse than this.

I have kids in school. Our school system is one of the top in Connecticut, which is the quintessential "school" state (if any rich kid on TV goes away to school, it's probably to CT).

These kids (all of them, not mine) can't really read. Not like when I was young. (I'm not even old! I graduated in the 2000's!) They certainly can't write. They have no stamina to do an essay or a test like when I was a kid. They can't be bored or be creative.

We've talked to multiple teachers who just don't know what to do about it.

It was better before Covid (my oldest's grade isn't as bad), but those kids who were in early elementary or younger when covid hit? Completely incapable of what adults would consider basic school tasks. Even the smart ones who get good grades!

But it's not (just) smartphones and tablets, imo. It's chromebooks in the classroom. School is online now, even after covid, and it just doesn't work in my opinion.

Personally, I'd drop technology from the classroom entirely.

[helterskelter]

I read an Economist article a few years ago that mentioned a literature professor at Columbia who said that most his undergrad freshmen students have never read a book cover to cover. Of those that have, their favorites were young adult fiction. Most of his students couldn't even focus on a single sonnet.

Apparently kids nowadays are having difficulty focusing on individual sentences, and a lot of them are just effectively illiterate. This just blows me away. I'm roughly your age and sometimes as a kid, during the summer, I'd do nothing for days but read nonstop, sunrise to sunset if I liked the book, and I knew a bunch of kids who would do the same thing. They weren't even what you'd call huge readers. It's just what you did if you were bored, or had an okay book with nothing else to do.

[an0malous]

Devil’s advocate: what’s the point? Is it important to have reading and writing skills if everything can be transcribed through AI? Or maybe it’s not directly important, but the ability to hold your attention on something for 30-60 minutes is? Is reading the best medium for education, or something more like Kahn Academy videos?

I also wonder how the Montessori schools are doing, since I believe they focus less on rote skill acquisition and more on creativity.

[hgoel]

Reading/writing is a much more dense and navigable way of taking in and recording information than speech. Efficient use of AI requires being very good at reading quickly and having the comprehension skills to pick up on nuances that suggest a hole in the AI's work.

In a world where AI is empowering existing experts while risking junior hiring, the young should be aiming to be competitive with those experts, not aiming below even current juniors. If, as a human, you're just acting as a glorified harness around an LLM, you're more replaceable.

[AngryData]

In my opinion it is. Reading can convey information faster than even sped up videos, is easier to skim, and has high precision.

Im not saying it is the best for everyone, but it has been proven repeatedly to beat out any other method in the majority of the population. Plus its time stability and storage is much easier and reliable.

It also could have other side benefits like focus or perhaps something like visual acuity, much like how writing by hand can develop good hand-eye coordination. If someone struggled to write with a pencil for example I would be very wary about handing them sharp tools or knives.

[teeray]

My pen weighs in at 10g in my backpack and is capable of durably recording information for thousands of years. No battery to charge, cheap, and plentiful.

[eru]

I use my fingers to interact with computers, and they don't have any extra weight at all, as they are already attached to me. You need to also count the weight of the paper.

And, no, your pen and paper are not able to durably record information for thousands of years. Unless you have some really bespoke setup.

[larrik]

The point is that "doing hard things" is required to be a successful adult. Meanwhile, the bar for what constitutes a "hard thing" is dropping fast.

[seventytwo]

The bar isn’t dropping, it’s shifting.

[watwut]

When I used to read for pleasure, I did it because it was pleasurable. Not because it would be the hard thing. It was fun and easy.

What this particular chain of thoughts shows is that adults don't read for pleasure either, they associate it with an uncomfortable hard thing one should to do "build character".

[hgoel]

This is conflating hard with unpleasant. A child just learning to read is going to find it hard to do, yet through adults pushing them to do the hard thing, they learn to read and sometimes begin to find it to be pleasurable. Building most skills is hard, yet that doesn't exclude taking pleasure in it. Many of us taught ourselves to code, the fact that we enjoyed it doesn't mean it wasn't also hard.

We've all learned the lesson that sometimes you have to struggle through something hard, to be able to access better pleasure.

[ambicapter]

Everything is easy when you've done a lot of it, that's how the brain works.

[an0malous]

I mean it’s obviously not just that otherwise we’d make every kid play the original Donkey Kong and call that a success

[throwawayAAUGGH]

The original donkey kong is pretty difficult compared to some of the wide-audience games that have been coming out. As far as I can tell, if the audience of a particular franchise includes younger generations as a majority or near-majority, the difficulty plummets. I don't think "plummets" is even that sensational. See pokemon, kingdom hearts, mario games, final fantasy games. Some franchises and genres have survived but not all of them.

I might be missing some other reasons why this could be happening, like increases in game balance and coordination.

Play Mario Odyssey for an hour or two then play Super Mario Bros 1, 2, or 3 as one startling example.

[stogot]

This has been tested: human instructor vs video, and the human instruction provides measurably better outcomes by an order of magnitude

[seventytwo]

What an asinine take.