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American Millennials among world's least skilled

Making a comment yourself might be a good way to get a conversation going. Otherwise it's just a link (and thanks for that).

Also, it's difficult in general to draw people to this part of the forum. Some subjects take off, but a lot don't.
 
Well it was useful in the other thread where the defense against scoring so poorly in math, reading, writing, and science internationally was that (false dichotomy) improving there would require sacrificing our creativity and innovation.

The top Asian scorers were under attack for having students remember so much stuff. The article cited in that thread conflates drill and memorization in subjects that absolutely require them with "authoritarianism".

Memorizing the alphabet is not "authoritarianism". There is no creativity and innovation about it. The poster there claimed it was a myth that US educational performance has atrophied.
 
Well it was useful in the other thread where the defense against scoring so poorly in math, reading, writing, and science internationally was that (false dichotomy) improving there would require sacrificing our creativity and innovation.

The top Asian scorers were under attack for having students remember so much stuff. The article cited in that thread conflates drill and memorization in subjects that absolutely require them with "authoritarianism".

Memorizing the alphabet is not "authoritarianism". There is no creativity and innovation about it. The poster there claimed it was a myth that US educational performance has atrophied.
Having taught and being observant I do not at all think it is a myth - though I truly wish it was.....
An amazing number of Americans have managed to be successful by being good in one or more of those things and still managed to be quite creative and innovative. It's a skill....
 
Having taught and being observant I do not at all think it is a myth - though I truly wish it was.....
An amazing number of Americans have managed to be successful by being good in one or more of those things and still managed to be quite creative and innovative. It's a skill....

Yup.

It is a defense mechanism to lurch out with this sort of thing when underperformance in some area is pointed out: the false dichotomy.

I'm from a musical family, so the complementary nature of working memory and creative ability was evident to me early on. I just googled that and found some good articles, like this one:


https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201205/creativity-persistence-and-working-memory

Modified I take it as given that we are in an evolutionary competitive world where relative performance is more important than absolute.
 
I'm a 'Millennial'.

I can't speak to skill levels between various countries, but I do have experience regarding different aged workers within the US.

Like any group there are Millennials that are basically useless. They are barely able to read and write. Can only do the most basic math. Are able to use smartphones but can't troubleshoot anything when it goes wrong. Etc etc.

However, I constantly work with people who are twice my age but are worse at doing just about everything. I'm constantly fixing their mistakes. I have to remind them how to do things that they should know, especially considering they've worked there years if not decades more than I have. Many are also abysmal with technology and have no ability to figure things out on their own and can basically only do what they've been trained to do step by step.

I see this sort of thing about Millennials all the time. So while there is likely some truth to it, I wish everyday I could replace my co-workers with clones of my Millennial self so that work would be so much easier and less stressful.
 
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That is the value in testing representative samples as opposed to generalizing from our immediate contacts. The results, as they say, were quite a surprise to them because the meme is pretty well entrenched.

You would think that those old geezers who invented computers, wrote the programs, engineered the smart phones and stuff - they'd be pathetic when it comes to technology.

There is no doubt that the older people spend less time on facebook, twitter, or youtube - but if you ask what the young people are doing with their time on them maybe that explains why the older people did better on "problem solving" with technology.
 
The_Animus said:
However, I constantly work with people who are twice my age but are worse at doing just about everything. I'm constantly fixing their mistakes. I have to remind them how to do things that they should know, especially considering they've worked there years if not decades more than I have. Many are also abysmal with technology and have no ability to figure things out on their own and can basically only do what they've been trained to do step by step.
Exactly.

Millenials may have the least skill at tasks that previous generations had, but that's because they have the least need to use those skills. Millenials are coming of age in a world where contact is constant, where you can send an email and just assume the other person sees it in ten minutes. Where hand writing is irrelevant for 99% of jobs, but typing (once a fairly specialized skill) is required. Where you can work with someone for five years before you ever see their face. These require a unique set of skills we simply don't know how to test for at this point.

AlaskaBushPilot said:
There is no doubt that the older people spend less time on facebook, twitter, or youtube - but if you ask what the young people are doing with their time on them maybe that explains why the older people did better on "problem solving" with technology.
There's nothing new under the sun. Our generation is on Facebook--older generations played cards. Our generation is on Twitter--older generations were on CBs, or telegraphs (Thomas Edison springs to mind). Our generation has YouTube--older generations had TV and radio shows. They are functionally equivalent; they fill the same role as time-wasting irrelevancies. Sorry, but it's simply a myth that younger people waste more time or that older generations were more dilligent. It's particularly ironic that you say that in the same post where you dismiss the argument of another for not having sufficient research to support it.

The fact of the matter is, no generation has had as much information at their hands as the current one. Ever. But humans are humans; there is a lowest common denominator among human entertainment. Some people will use the internet to listen to philosophical lectures or read up on how to improve obscure skills for the sheer joy of it; others will use the internet to watch guys get nailed in the nuts by 2x4s. But the thing is, I've seen my grandfather's box of dirty business cards, and I've read a great deal about what kids did for entertainment in the past. The past generations were no different.
 
Our generation is on Facebook--older generations played cards. Our generation is on Twitter--older generations were on CBs, or telegraphs (Thomas Edison springs to mind). Our generation has YouTube--older generations had TV and radio shows. They are functionally equivalent; they fill the same role as time-wasting irrelevancies.

Not EVEN close!
 
Not EVEN close!

I may have the specifics wrong, but the general concept is pretty firmly established. I invite anyone who says otherwise to look at the debates about the decline in morals, industry, etc. in ANY time period. I've read Roman speaches about this very topis. Sorry, but every generation thinks the next is lazy, uninterested in developing useful skills, disrespectful, wastes time, and so on. It's cliche, and it's ALWAYS wrong.
 
I may have the specifics wrong, but the general concept is pretty firmly established. I invite anyone who says otherwise to look at the debates about the decline in morals, industry, etc. in ANY time period. I've read Roman speaches about this very topis. Sorry, but every generation thinks the next is lazy, uninterested in developing useful skills, disrespectful, wastes time, and so on. It's cliche, and it's ALWAYS wrong.
Yep, Socrates was waxing poetic about the decline of youth a couple millenium ago:

“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.”

I'm crossing that "youth to experience" threshold now (I'm 35), and there is just something that makes you a bit more resistant to change and youth as you age. It's weird. But as someone who went to school a majority of my time without the internet, I can unequivocally say we wasted our time with equally frivolous things-I spent hours upon hours organizing my football cards, for instance.
 
I may have the specifics wrong, but the general concept is pretty firmly established. I invite anyone who says otherwise to look at the debates about the decline in morals, industry, etc. in ANY time period. I've read Roman speaches about this very topis. Sorry, but every generation thinks the next is lazy, uninterested in developing useful skills, disrespectful, wastes time, and so on. It's cliche, and it's ALWAYS wrong.

I can only assume you did not read the linked article. While it did find that Millennials did poorly on job-related skills compared to us old farts, the major finding was that US Millennials did worse than their age-group cohort in other countries as well.
 
I can only assume you did not read the linked article. While it did find that Millennials did poorly on job-related skills compared to us old farts, the major finding was that US Millennials did worse than their age-group cohort in other countries as well.

It's possible to read and understand an article and only comment on one aspect of it while leaving another aspect, even it's "major finding", alone.

Perhaps, "While that's a valid point about the issue of Millenial's performance on job-related skills tests relative to older generations, the issue of American Millenial's performance relative to those in their age-group in other countries seems important." might have been more a appropriate comment.
 
I can only assume you did not read the linked article. While it did find that Millennials did poorly on job-related skills compared to us old farts, the major finding was that US Millennials did worse than their age-group cohort in other countries as well.

Nor did he even understand that the canard we are dealing with is how much better the younger generation is supposed to be on this technology.

It is fact. Data. The older people scored higher - on technology they did not grow up with. You can't increase the scores of the young with an argument. They are lower. There is a reason for that too. Maybe they would care to enlighten us as to what that reason is. :)

They can't even complete their own argument coherently. Because the argument they are trying to use is what excuses young people from not knowing the technology that has been outdated. He used telegraphs for example - which is outdated so of course Morse code isn't useful now and there is no reason for young people to know it.

What they need to be explaining is why the old people are better on the NEW technology the kids are supposed to be so much better at.
 
It is fact. Data. The older people scored higher - on technology they did not grow up with. You can't increase the scores of the young with an argument. They are lower. There is a reason for that too. Maybe they would care to enlighten us as to what that reason is. :)

. . .

What they need to be explaining is why the old people are better on the NEW technology the kids are supposed to be so much better at.

Well, I was born in 1970 which makes me a Gen. Xer. I grew up with computers; I'm pretty sure I was less than 10 years old when I encountered my first one.

My generation probably actually was better at using computer technology than the one that came before it, because they didn't grow up with it, but Millennials don't really have that same edge over Gen. Xers. And even my parents use computers every day now, so the situation is different than 20, 30 years ago, when very few people over a certain age had much familiarity with computers. Cell phones are also ubiquitous nowadays. Almost everyone has one. So no longer the case that mostly young people are familiar with the technology.
 
In a country in which half of the population thinks barney flintstone is a real historical figure this is not(if true) a shock.
 
Well, puppycow and Roborama took a stab at answering the question. The report says something important:

this report suggests that far too many are graduating high school and completing postsecondary educational programs without receiving adequate skills

They cited ACT scores and other evidence that confirms there is widespread failure of our school system. This is the generation with the most education ever, but literacy and other measures of actual learning are falling. Our diplomas don't mean much.


As a country, we need to confront not only how we can compete in a global economy, but also what kind of future we can construct when a sizable segment of our future workforce is not equipped with the skills necessary for higher-level employment and meaningful participation in our democratic institutions.
 
numeracy_zpshuo9twgo.png


Sometimes it helps to be confronted with it visually. So there it is: Dead last in the OECD for "numeracy", meaning the ability to work with numbers, from our future varsity team competing in a high tech world.

Speaking of which; next to last in the ability to problem-solve with technology. 18th out of 22 in literacy. Of course, we do well against third world countries like Afghanistan or Bhutan - countries that have incomes below our poverty level.

Failing to recognize/acknowledge a problem is nearly guaranteeing that it is going to get worse. Incredibly, this report demonstrates that literacy is declining as our educational levels have increased: that is a quantitative finding of the report, not something open to interpretation.

This can't be a surprise in a country that has negative stereotypes about intellectual achievement and where we insist a diploma is a birthright. So sure - we give them out regardless of performance.

We call brainy people by derogatory terms like nerds, geeks,or eggheads. There is no derogatory slang word for intelligent people in the top scoring Asian countries. In a place like Myanmar of course - they executed you. So I emphasize "top scoring" countries as measured on different international tests.

If you have children then you can't base your standard on our own culture. You not only have to be different - but radically different if you want to set your standard by what leading countries are doing. You have to be ready and able to take the derogatory terms - the shaming and guilt-tripping. Ignore the negative things people say about you and your children for making academic achievement a priority. Because in the long run "fitting in" is going to be less important than what they are capable of.
 
Well sure math nerds love to define "intelligence" or "skills" as number mastery because that is what they are good at. Of course I might be biased the other way because I struggled with math all through school while doing well in just about every other subject.
 
Perhaps the simple fact that older people have had more experience with the technology?

Also, older people learn how to use technology in the workplace because they have to. They probably need that job. Millennials (at least the ones I have to deal with every day) can just kip at mom and dad's house for a few more years.
 
[qimg]http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn180/lirajeanlogan/numeracy_zpshuo9twgo.png[/qimg]

Sometimes it helps to be confronted with it visually.

Yeah, but one of the things the test measured was the ability to interpret graphs. The millenials won't be able to read it.


In all seriousness, it's a sobering study. The numbers don't lie, and they do matter.
 
Well sure math nerds love to define "intelligence" or "skills" as number mastery because that is what they are good at. Of course I might be biased the other way because I struggled with math all through school while doing well in just about every other subject.

Did you read the article? It wasn't just math that US young people were bad at. They ranked very low in literacy, too.
 
Well, I was born in 1970 which makes me a Gen. Xer. I grew up with computers; I'm pretty sure I was less than 10 years old when I encountered my first one.

My generation probably actually was better at using computer technology than the one that came before it, because they didn't grow up with it, but Millennials don't really have that same edge over Gen. Xers. And even my parents use computers every day now, so the situation is different than 20, 30 years ago, when very few people over a certain age had much familiarity with computers. Cell phones are also ubiquitous nowadays. Almost everyone has one. So no longer the case that mostly young people are familiar with the technology.

Also, "being familiar with technology" means something a lot different today than it did 20, 30, or more years ago.

When computers first came out, the user interfaces were so bad that you really had to be able to understand a lot about the device to use it. As time went on, you had to know less and less. A person using Facebook, or this forum software, today isn't really using computer technology in any meaningful sense. You don't really have to know anything about your computer to sign on to Facebook, or even make a plane reservation on the internet.

When I first communicated via something vaguely like a forum, you had to know what a "modem" was, and how to put your phone line into it, and how to follow the instructions for editing "autoexec.bat", and probably win.ini. It's not the same today.
 
Exactly.

Millenials may have the least skill at tasks that previous generations had, but that's because they have the least need to use those skills. Millenials are coming of age in a world where contact is constant, where you can send an email and just assume the other person sees it in ten minutes. Where hand writing is irrelevant for 99% of jobs, but typing (once a fairly specialized skill) is required. Where you can work with someone for five years before you ever see their face. These require a unique set of skills we simply don't know how to test for at this point.

There's nothing new under the sun. Our generation is on Facebook--older generations played cards. Our generation is on Twitter--older generations were on CBs, or telegraphs (Thomas Edison springs to mind). Our generation has YouTube--older generations had TV and radio shows. They are functionally equivalent; they fill the same role as time-wasting irrelevancies. Sorry, but it's simply a myth that younger people waste more time or that older generations were more dilligent. It's particularly ironic that you say that in the same post where you dismiss the argument of another for not having sufficient research to support it.

The fact of the matter is, no generation has had as much information at their hands as the current one. Ever. But humans are humans; there is a lowest common denominator among human entertainment. Some people will use the internet to listen to philosophical lectures or read up on how to improve obscure skills for the sheer joy of it; others will use the internet to watch guys get nailed in the nuts by 2x4s. But the thing is, I've seen my grandfather's box of dirty business cards, and I've read a great deal about what kids did for entertainment in the past. The past generations were no different.

Actually, radio, film and television were rather more important than you think. Not to knock YouTube - I have transferred several hundred of those vids to my data storage systems - but the advent of full country media made a lot of inroads into lowering cultural differences and raising expectations throughout the US (and other countries). There is massively more but that alone makes the study/memory of same worth the effort. The reverse is occurring with the newer developments - most of them widely broaden the information but, since each individual receives only the much smaller part he/she wishes to concentrate on/work with the commonality of experience drains away. How this will work out culturally (and much more) remains to be seen - and I will continue documenting as best I can.......

Btb - thanks for your comments - I had not coalesced my thoughts on this in particular until I read your statements about current inputs.
 
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Also, "being familiar with technology" means something a lot different today than it did 20, 30, or more years ago.

When computers first came out, the user interfaces were so bad that you really had to be able to understand a lot about the device to use it. As time went on, you had to know less and less. A person using Facebook, or this forum software, today isn't really using computer technology in any meaningful sense. You don't really have to know anything about your computer to sign on to Facebook, or even make a plane reservation on the internet.

When I first communicated via something vaguely like a forum, you had to know what a "modem" was, and how to put your phone line into it, and how to follow the instructions for editing "autoexec.bat", and probably win.ini. It's not the same today.

And though I used such a modem in the past, I do not remotely miss it!!!!!
 
Did you read the article? It wasn't just math that US young people were bad at. They ranked very low in literacy, too.

Not only that, but this is just the OECD countries. We are being blown out of the water by a number of East Asia regions/countries (and others) that are not on this list, but take the PISA test.

fuelair - you made some reasonable suggestions, but the same internet innovations have occurred in the other OECD countries and those that are crushing us on the PISA tests - so there has to be something else important going on.

The discovery that literacy is declining as educational attainment has increased in the USA ought to be even more sobering than coming in dead last in using numbers.
 
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Literacy is where we did the least badly, but scores over time have declined in the USA. It is an interesting mix:

literacy%20scores_zpszx0w80w7.png


The literacy scores for everyone in the 50th percentile and above have declined significantly relative to 1994. These are statistically significant declines.

Only one group increased: the bottom 10%. Yet they are still tied for last place across all the countries.

Our last "Great Leap Forward" in education was No Child Left Behind - where our emphasis was on Teaching to the Bottom. Maybe this worked. They're still in last place, and most everyone else declined, but here is the one place where literacy scores have actually increased.

If you read this report it is alarming, not "alarmist". They report that this decline is being seen across the board in the various measures of educational performance in the USA. The vast majority of our students with high school diplomas are not proficient in the things they are supposedly being trained in:

In 2013, NAEP reported that 74 percent of the nation’s twelfth graders were below proficient in mathematics and 62 percent were below proficient in reading.

For people at the top levels in the US, it is sometimes thought that they are keeping pace with the rest of the world and it is primarily a problem with families at the bottom. But for the test as a whole this is the result:

across all levels of parental educational attainment, there was no country where millennials scored lower than those in the United States

We're number 1, sort of.
 
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It's due to the whole "teaching to the test" thing in my opinion. It's a lot more effective to educate people that WANT to be educated (meaning that getting them interested in the material is as important or more so than doing a lot of technical tasks). That tends to require a broader curriculum and actually less repetition as opposed to more.
 
Literacy is where we did the least badly, but scores over time have declined in the USA. . . . . . . They're still in last place, and most everyone else declined, but here is the one place where literacy scores have actually increased.

If you read this report it is alarming, not "alarmist". They report that this decline is being seen across the board in the various measures of educational performance in the USA. <snip>

You keep using the term 'decline' but I'm not sure it is that clear cut. The scores between 2003 and 2012 did not change, and that is in line with PISA which has not shown a decline in America's scores in the 12 years it has been used. Was 1994 the first use of the test? If so then a comparison should be made with other countries to see if they also experienced similar changes to the scores between 1994 and 2003 -- if there were it may indicate that the test was slightly different or there was a slight change to the calibration, not that the US specifically was in decline.

And I don't think you should use ranking when discussing these kinds of tests ("tied for last place"). Was there statistical significance in the difference between America's scores and the scores of countries near them on the list?
 
In a country in which half of the population thinks barney flintstone is a real historical figure this is not(if true) a shock.

Surely you mean Barney Rubble, or Fred Flintstone?

ETA: Corrected already, I see
 
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You keep using the term 'decline' but I'm not sure it is that clear cut. The scores between 2003 and 2012 did not change, and that is in line with PISA which has not shown a decline in America's scores in the 12 years it has been used. Was 1994 the first use of the test? If so then a comparison should be made with other countries to see if they also experienced similar changes to the scores between 1994 and 2003 -- if there were it may indicate that the test was slightly different or there was a slight change to the calibration, not that the US specifically was in decline.

And I don't think you should use ranking when discussing these kinds of tests ("tied for last place"). Was there statistical significance in the difference between America's scores and the scores of countries near them on the list?

In sincerity,

Why are all the would-be excuses in one direction, and why not just look at the report yourself? Why are you challenging the word "decline" as if I was making this up myself instead of relating what the report is saying itself?

What if the test is easier now? What if the questions are culturally biased towards the US experience? What if the normal distribution is incorrect for significance testing and we should use a tighter distribution instead? What if the U.S. kids were fresh and the foreign kids were tired? What if the US students cheated? I can rattle off endless reasons why it could be worse.

Why do you trust the scores being the same between 2003 and 2012, but have contempt for the decline relative to 1994?

I understand the defensiveness. But that's all it is. If people want to challenge the results of this very sobering report that is not only careful about statistical significance but in every aspect of test design in order to root out bias - then do your work.
 
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TriangleMan -

I see that in the other thread you asked for "someone else" with time and experience in statistics since you didn't like my statement about these results being appalling.

I have a graduate degree in applied statistics and taught statistics at both the undergraduate and graduate university levels for a couple of decades. You don't need statistical training to read this report and understand the very serious implications it has along with all of the other confirmatory results elsewhere.

The stated goal of the US, at least federally, is for the US to have the best educated workforce in the world. A place like Shanghai is almost four years ahead of us in terms of grade levels in math on the PISA.

Appalling is entirely arbitrary - if our goal is to beat Bhutan then these results are quite marvelous. But if we go by our stated national objectives (Obama's goal was to be at the top of the world by 2020) then we have to use very different adjectives - strong ones - to describe these results.
 
Why are all the would-be excuses in one direction, and why not just look at the report yourself? Why are you challenging the word "decline" as if I was making this up myself instead of relating what the report is saying itself?

Certainly, could you provide a link to the charts please? I can't see the link to the report, unless I've missed it somehow the only links in the thread are to the Fortune report in the OP and a Psychology Today article.

What if the test is easier now? What if the questions are culturally biased towards the US experience? What if the normal distribution is incorrect for significance testing and we should use a tighter distribution instead? What if the U.S. kids were fresh and the foreign kids were tired? What if the US students cheated? I can rattle off endless reasons why it could be worse.

That's an unusual interpretation of my post. I said this:
Was 1994 the first use of the test? If so then a comparison should be made with other countries to see if they also experienced similar changes to the scores between 1994 and 2003 -- if there were it may indicate that the test was slightly different or there was a slight change to the calibration, not that the US specifically was in decline.

There are reasons why I suggested that, it was not simply just coming up with excuses. For example:

Why do you trust the scores being the same between 2003 and 2012, but have contempt for the decline relative to 1994?

Because, as I stated previously, they show similar results to the PISA tests so you have another large-scale study that concurs with PIAAC results in that there were no significant declines between 2003 and 2012. It adds extra validity. But PISA started in 2000 so cannot be used to compare to the 1994 results. PISA also had slightly more volatility in results when it was first run in 2000 compared to the later tests (2003, 2006, 2009 and 2012), so is it unreasonable to assume that a similar thing may have occurred here?

Now here's an interesting question. Wasn't 2012 the first PIAAC? So where did the earlier data come from? Why is questioning something like that "contempt"?

Back to my hypothesis, bolding mine:
Was 1994 the first use of the test? If so then a comparison should be made with other countries to see if they also experienced similar changes to the scores between 1994 and 2003 -- if there were it may indicate that the test was slightly different or there was a slight change to the calibration,

I've now looked into this 1994 data and know the story. Since you've used the reports yourself ABP -- why don't you share with everyone where that data comes from.


Back to your posts:
I understand the defensiveness. But that's all it is.

Since you appear to understand why I'm apparently being defensive please enlighten me. What do you know, or have concluded, about my motives?

If people want to challenge the results of this very sobering report that is not only careful about statistical significance but in every aspect of test design in order to root out bias - then do your work.

I have, and I have not changed my opinion regarding being cautious about announcing shocking 'declines'.
 
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