Comment by jrockway

We like to blame the students, but there is probably some adjustments that could be made to the system. I think people like to start with "college is a place where you become well-rounded", but nobody ever tells you the value of being well-rounded. Like, do you get money for that? Are there jobs where you have to be well-rounded? I am pretty students just want to have a future where they have a comfortable job and make "enough" money. So, is that what colleges actually provide? The answer seems like "no". We have always done it that way, so we're going to keep doing it that way, but ... why? If it's not working, you've gotta change something. What kinds of jobs do people want to have in the future, and what skills prepare them to be successful? (I'm guessing people that go into the general "college" track don't know yet, so why isn't the first year about trying to figure that out? There are probably hundreds of fulfilling and valuable careers that I have never even heard of!)

We act like there is a one size fits all solution to education, but there really isn't. Some of us had it very easy. When I was growing up, I liked science, so I read every kids science book I could get out of the library. That's how I learned reading comprehension; by reading things that would be interesting to comprehend. And having an interest lets it cascade; people pick up on your interest and customize the rest of your academic career for that specific interest. I went to a special math and science high school. We did research. We built things and learned the math behind engineering. I then went to college for engineering. Pretty easy to figure out "what actually matters" in that context. The question is... what do we do for everyone else? Sometimes people don't show a clear interest in something that early, and it's pretty important to be interested.

Also gotta say, if I was in the professor's class, I probably wouldn't have done the reading and would have turned in similarly shitty papers. (OK, OK, not as bad as the example provided, but probably just as careless and ... wrong.) I'm not illiterate, but sometimes a subject simply doesn't interest me, and I'm not going to spend times on things that aren't interesting or valuable. I wouldn't expect this professor to be particularly interested in reading or comprehending anything I wrote, for example. Write me a 500 word essay on why Nix is just a Jsonnet file with extra steps. He'd probably get an F and would tell me it doesn't matter, because you know what, it doesn't really! Different people like different things, and you can still be a valuable member of society while having near-zero interest in somebody else's field. (Having said that, I do read fiction occasionally. But ya know, if the book is boring, I just stop reading it and nobody gets in trouble.)

I do think that phones and short videos and all that is probably not great for society, but people are looking at something to keep their mind occupied, and that's the easiest thing. What are we doing to give people better things to be occupied by? Nothing? A 12 week course on existentialism? Hmm, maybe that's the problem.