I see this stratification in the classroom and on the page every week. My students from districts that protected sustained reading through small class sizes, strict phone policies, and faculty who refused to teach to the test all arrive with their attention relatively intact. My students from districts that surrendered to devices and standardized testing arrive cognitively winded. A democracy that requires a literate electorate is now training one fraction of that electorate out of literacy while marketing to the other a âdeep workâ lifestyle as a luxury good. The students who cannot read a 20-page article today are the voters who will not be able to read a bill, or the jurors who cannot follow a closing argument, tomorrow.
Tyler Jagt in The Chronicle of Higher Education. My Students Canât Read
A serious article which outlines the problem, points to sources of the declines, offers mitigation, and raises questions about the implications for higher education.
Shout out to @redshift-13 who pointed to the article and offers insights about the importance of language to human thought. It is behind a paywall, but I was able to read by signing up with an email.
The observation about class and literacy stuck out. It's probably safe to assume that students who arrived in Jagt's classes from school's with smaller class sized and old-school ideas about instruction came from schools which serve higher-income geographies. But it's also clear that literacy is based upon skills and experiences which are not inherently limited to any socioeconomic class.
It seems important to make ways to make literacy skills accessible to poor and working class folks. Many of those efforts will not happen in schools.