This is, of course, concerning, but I seriously doubt the suggested enforced 3h of learning is going to change things one iota. IMHO, the biggest problem is not how schools are teaching core subjects, but how much learning is happening at home.
I say this with no judgement. Parents are, increasingly I feel, using a tablet to babysit their kids when they are younger, and not monitoring their social media use when they are older. I would also be interested to learn how much reading to your kids has declined. I could be wrong, but I suspect it has been slipping in line with the PISA results.
I don’t think mandatory 3 R’s will help, but I wouldn’t be so quick to push the blame home. Personally I don’t remember much parental involvement in my learning.
But what has happened with teachers the past 20 years? For one, I have worked with half a dozen ex-teachers that trained as teachers but didn’t find the role worthwhile. When leave teacher’s college and find you can get a contact centre job with no training and higher pay you have some choices to make.
Is it possible our teachers aren’t as good, or more likely, aren’t as well supported as they used to be?
In general I’d expect that the best teacher’s would also make the best candidates for other roles. Perhaps all the good teachers left for higher paying roles, leaving the teachers that can’t get other roles to continue teaching and leaving new teachers without great role models.
Irs likely all of the above: Teachers are under valued and over worked, poverty, bad housing and low pay for parents means less time their kids, 3 years of covid… it all adds up
I thonk you’re right.
Well I certainly agree teachers are undervalued, underpaid and overworked. I was a teacher once upon a time, and the workload has only increased. Couple that with dealing with increasingly difficult parents, students with increased needs while taking support away will naturally lead to things falling through the cracks. There have also been a number of changes to the ECE curriculum that were not entirely evidence based. Recently, our primary school has rolled out a brand new, evidence based, reading strategy which really appears to work well.
TBH I agree with @[email protected] below - it is a difficult problem with many causes, and any one “cure all” solution will ultimately fail.
Parental involvement goes beyond direct involvement in school learning. It also includes reading and fostering an environment where reading is viewed positively, general life learning for skills like adding and subtracting, and so-on. However, I fully acknowledge that I made somewhat of a blanket statement.
Time to make the tests easier? /s
It worked for water quality…
I’m actually most interested in if it bounces back or not. Kids lost a lot of schooling over COVID, will younger kids return to previous levels (noting the article also mentioned a downward trend).
And international as well. Vaguely reassuring to know we’re not alone…
Honestly though, I look at what my kids do (or don’t do) at school and the actual learning appears to be waaaay less than what it was when I was at school (admittedly we were still using slates and writing script by candlelight). Our usual “what did you do at school” conversation is typically at least 50% “non-learning” - videos, games etc. Yes, kids still learn through these (the Cahoot quizzes are great) but this shouldn’t be at the expense of the basics.
Interestingly, Kahoot is used at uni after lectures - its a good way to see how well you understood the content and generates a bit of health competition… and see who hasn’t grown up since high school and knows all the funny names (spoiler… every guy).
I do agree that there seems to be alot less learning at school compared to when we did - less spelling, writing.etc, but am also aware there is now much more content to get through in the same amount of time with tech changes. Reading seems to be still right up there though, and it shows in the results listed.
I’ve been at uni since '21 (returned student) and have definitely noticed a general lack of interest and care compared to the first time I was there a decade ago. How much is learning not happening, vs how much is students no longer seeing the point in trying to get ahead anymore?
My kids are all young. For under 7, I want (and found) a school where about half of the school day is structured or unstructured play (preferably not on screens). There is very little evidence that younger kids (on average) benefit from learning reading, maths, writing at younger ages, and very little correlation between early readers and reading ability say 10 years later. This is one reason many other countries start school later, at 6 or 7 as a default.
For 7 and up I don’t know too much. We can say it’s different than when we were young, but sometimes that’s good. Does the different ability represent a world where it doesn’t matter how bad your spelling is, so long as you have good MS Word skills that will get you the job? It doesn’t matter how bad your basic facts are because knowing Excel will get you the job (and solve your basic facts for you)?
It’s fun to theorise but really what this article needs is a link to a study that explains why ability is falling all around the world through some controlled study.
I agree - to a point. Unstructured play/learning is great - for certain kinds of kids. My personal theory is that those kinds of kids will do ‘well’ in life, no matter what. They love to learn, and they learn by observing, doing, playing, tinkering, testing, breaking etc. I have one kid like that.
I also have another one who, given the chance, would gladly spend the whole day watching other people playing Minecraft on YouTube. But, break through his protests, and hold his hand to get him started on something, and he’ll smash it out of the park. He’ll whine the whole way, but man he blows me away with what he’s capable of. Structured “traditional” learning works well for him, as it gives him the boundaries and targets he needs. But give him anything unstructured and he will goof off, every time.
One of the issues is that for kids that read early, they don’t actually end up better than other kids. For kids that read late, being in a class watching other kids learn easily and them not being able to because their brain development hasn’t reached that point yet, that can be detrimental to future learning. Kids lose confidence, and don’t think of themselves as someone who can learn. One of the biggest indicators of academic success is whether a kid sees themself as a learner.
However, one thing that kids pushed into early academic work often lack is social skills. This is what the unstructured play teaches, and is just as important as book skills.
Confidence is key, and a sense of entitlement (to what they are entitled to, not the negative kind). Part of that is the social culture at the school. I saw an interesting study by some linguists once who found that chanting “shame” at each other for achieving is not universal.
One of the issues is that for kids that read early, they don’t actually end up better than other kids.
Ah, that’s good to know. I got taught to read as a preschooler and did end up better at that kind of thing than other kids, so when friends and whanau didn’t teach before age 5, it always low-key gave me anxiety. Now the kids are older I’m chill but it’s good to know they weren’t being disadvantaged.
So in another reply I’ve caveat-ed what I said. Firstly, I read/heard it in a book/podcast, I didn’t see the study myself.
Second is that the did not relate early reading ability to late reading ability, they related it to ‘life success’ - which was judged based on whether they had a degree at age 35, which as someone who feels pretty successful, and didn’t have a degree at age 35 (and still don’t), isn’t necessarily a good way to judge, but it’s at least a clear yes/no which makes things easier.
A kid could be an early reader that grows up to be a fantastic reader, but doesn’t do well in society.
I saw an interesting study by some linguists once who found that chanting “shame” at each other for achieving is not universal.
I’m not sure if I just can’t remember but I don’t recall people chanting “shame” at people for achieving. It sounds like a high school thing, but definitely after the underachievers left school at 15 or 16 people were celebrated for achievement, mostly in sports but I don’t remember anyone being mocked for academic achievement. Our dux and runner up dux (can’t remember word) were both at least moderately popular.
One of the issues is that for kids that read early, they don’t actually end up better than other kids.
Thanks this is an interesting paper.
Some caveats to my claim. The thing (book? podcast? can’t remember, so take with a grain of salt) was saying kids that read early (ages 3-4) aren’t more likely to have a degree at age 35 when controlling for other factors.
The study you’ve linked is looking at reading ability at age 6, which may change things. I also couldn’t find anything in the paper stating they had controlled for other factors. If a child with a parent at home reads earlier, and one that doesn’t reads later, the difference in life success is unlikely to be related to the reading, but more likely to be related to them growing up in a household wealthy enough to have a stay at home parent. This wouldn’t be effective data for changing a school system to focus on reading earlier.
To put this in context with what I was saying, if reading is pushed hard from age 4 and some kids do well and for some who aren’t quite ready this causes a detrimental impact that causes them to be poor learners for life - well this would show in your study as reading ability at 6 years old being strongly predictive of reading ability at 42. Basically, I don’t believe the study you’ve linked helps us narrow down anything because they don’t seem to have controlled for anything.
I did try to find a study to back up my claims, or even disprove my claims, but I couldn’t find a study that looked further than 10 years or so, and even then they weren’t controlling for other factors.
Maybe our school system is failing because of a lack of data on how to do things better?
This is it right here. A lot of reaction to the changes in learning has not been evidence based. To be fair, many of the changes themselves were not evidence based either. It’s easy to sit and say something needs to change, but much harder to show that the changes being made are going to make any difference at all.
I’m not even sure that the research can keep up with the changing world, to be honest. I think the best we can do is teach kids how to learn, because the things they need to know for life probably aren’t even invented yet.
Well, there are two different things here. Some knowledge is well established and doesn’t change, or changes very slowly. Reading, writing and mathematics, for example. And later on the core sciences. None of this is affected by changes in technology.
How they interact with the world is changing rapidly, and I’m not entirely convinced our schooling system has this correct. I’m not sure what should change, but I feel like the school is simultaneously lagging behind and forging ahead of societal changes wrought by technology.
While reading, writing, maths doesn’t change, their need in an ever changing world does change.
As an example, people lament the inability of younger generations to read cursive. But in a world where almost everything was printed by (or viewed on) a computer, the ability to read cursive just isn’t that important.
I think currently basic facts are still important. But if the world doesn’t reenforce this (by requiring them to actually use them), then the knowledge won’t stay long term.
Perhaps the lagging skills of younger generations represent a world that no longer asks for them. But the younger generations are sure to have better skills in other ways, ways that this new world demands of them.
It doesn’t matter how bad your basic facts are because knowing Excel will get you the job (and solve your basic facts for you)?
The outsourcing of basic knowledge onto tech? I think we see the real-world effects of this already. A classic example is that building in London that has a concave mirrored surface on a side that faces the sun. Most people my age know the implications of concave mirror+sun.
The fact it went right through design, planning, and construction without anyone pointing out this simple fact, so they had to learn the hard way, speaks volumes.
I learnt that concave mirror + sun is a bad idea, but if I was signing off that building I never would have considered it unless it was on the checklist 😆
I mean I’m not even STEM background but at some point I would have said okay so this 38-storey concave mirror is ponting where?
Omg looking up how many storeys it is I discovered it isn’t even the only one of these things this architect perpetrated! He had another one in Vegas nicknamed the Death Ray. Both of them had to have remedial work done to protect people.
Did he look like a supervillain? Might be intentional 😆
While concerning, I think the “amid global decline” is the real headline here (and I’m glad they added it). My reading of this is that NZ almost exactly mirrored the average change across the OECD
