Here is an excellent article from the Washington Post on the weak vocabularies of students these days — even those with high GPAs from “good” schools and universities.
We keep hearing from the education establishment how they’re so committed to excellence, but there is evidence all around that schooling is mostly a matter of being rewarded for sitting around. This article makes the point that many students today just don’t like to read and do little of it. They aren’t required to do much reading in their K-12 years and when they get to college, professors who try to make them do any serious reading (and writing) encounter resistance. For many students, “education” just isn’t about hard work and many educators have been content to adjust their expectations downward.
We know from the National Assessment of Adult Literacy that most college graduates are not proficient readers, a problem I’ve written about here. Employers often complain that college graduates they hire are weak in rudimentary skills. I suggest that American educators get over the fixation with “diversity” and instead become fixated on literacy.
