Joanne Jacobs recently published an article titled, “Georgetown students ‘have trouble staying focused on even a sonnet.’ Jacobs mentions how an article from the Atlantic reported that:
“Many students no longer arrive at college — even at highly selective, elite colleges — prepared to read books,” writes Rose Horowitch in The Atlantic. Students tell professors they were assigned excerpts, news articles and poetry in high school, but rarely or never full-length novels.
Education researchers like myself are not surprised by this news at all. This was to be expected. Common Core experts warned about how the standards would become a problem for students. This is even true for high achievers:
High achievers know how to read, writes Horowitch. “But they struggle to muster the attention or ambition required to immerse themselves in a substantial text.” Like Melville’s Bartleby, they “prefer not to.”
But educators are blaming something else. They are blaming social media and smart phones:
Educators blame social media and smartphones for eroding students’ ability to focus, writes Stephen Sawchuk in Education Week. “With their beeps, badges, and buzzes, smartphones are engineered to maintain users’ attention — and to pull students’ focus away from focusing on print.”
In a survey, 83 percent of teachers in grades 3 to 8 said students’ reading stamina –the ability to read at length — had decreased since 2019. Only 17 percent said they primarily teach through whole books and essays.
They may have a point, but much of this can be placed in the lap of Common Core.
Dr. Sandra Stotsky served on the Common Core English Validation Committee but refused to sign off on the poor quality standards. She wrote many articles explaining why she refused to support the Common Core English Standards. She warned everyone what was coming.
In an article written by Stotsky in 2013, just three years after the release of the Common Core Standards, Stotsky wrote: Common Core Standards’ Devastating Impact on Literary Study and Analytical Thinking.
This misplaced stress on informational texts (no matter how much is literary nonfiction) reflects the limited expertise of Common Core’s architects and sponsoring organizations in curriculum and in teachers’ training. This division of reading standards was clearly not developed or approved by English teachers and humanities scholars, because it makes English teachers responsible for something they have not been trained to teach and will not be trained to teach unless the entire undergraduate English major and preparatory programs in English education are changed.
AND
A diminished emphasis on literature in the secondary grades makes it unlikely that American students will study a meaningful range of culturally and historically significant literary works before graduation. It also prevents students from acquiring a rich understanding and use of the English language. Perhaps of greatest concern, it may lead to a decreased capacity for analytical thinking.
There is no doubt that the overemphasis on technology doesn’t help students succeed. It’s a profit maker for the tech industry, and that’s about it. But what we are seeing at the college level shouldn’t surprise anyone.
That’s why it’s surprising The Federalist put out an article blaming technology for all of these problems. Joanne Jacobs brought up the problems with technology but also the criticisms of Common Core English.
Schools now hand kids Chrome books, and Ed Technology profits from it. So taking away phones will not work. Even if technology is removed or limited, these problems will persist, because both are contributing the decline in literacy.
