Another "literacy crisis" story. I wonder why reporters, ostensibly inquisitive by nature, never think to ask the question of literacy crisis purveyors: If we're so woefully underprepared to survive in an info-rich world, how is it we keep surviving in an info-rich world? Each generation of students, horribly illiterate though they are, keep finding and succeeding at jobs in the modern work place. They get out of school unable to this or that or the other, but somehow they manage to do this, that, the other, and some new stuff besides.
Weird, huh?
Study: College students lack literacy for complex tasks
Friday, January 20, 2006; Posted: 4:29 p.m. EST (21:29 GMT)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than half of students at four-year colleges -- and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges -- lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks such as understanding credit card offers, a study found.
The literacy study funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the first to target the skills of graduating students, finds that students fail to lock in key skills -- no matter their field of study.
The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips.
Without "proficient" skills, or those needed to perform more complex tasks, students fall behind. They cannot interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.
"It is kind of disturbing that a lot of folks are graduating with a degree and they're not going to be able to do those things," said Stephane Baldi, the study's director at the American Institutes for Research, a behavioral and social science research organization.
Most students at community colleges and four-year schools showed intermediate skills. That means they can do moderately challenging tasks, such as identifying a location on a map.
There was brighter news.
Overall, the average literacy of college students is significantly higher than that of adults across the nation. Study leaders said that was encouraging but not surprising, given that the spectrum of adults includes those with much less education.
Also, compared with all adults with similar levels of education, college students had superior skills in searching and using information from texts and documents.
"But do they do well enough for a highly educated population? For a knowledge-based economy? The answer is no," said Joni Finney, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, an independent and nonpartisan group.
read more here
I think more reporters (and literacy researchers) ought to ponder the John Holt quote that frstbrn24 posted earlier today: "We can think of ourselves not as teachers but as gardeners. A gardener does not 'grow' flowers; he tries to give them what he thinks they need and they grow by themselves."
Our "flowers" are still growing when they've left our care. Some may have bloomed, some have not. Yet. But their time in our gardens has contributed to their intellectual health and habits, though the fruits of our labor may not appear until long after.
Some day a literacy study will take into account the complexity of literacy and its irregular unfolding over time. But I'm not holding my breath, because even if somebody does such a study, it probably won't merit any headlines because it won't be a harbinger of doom.