I read “The Average College Freshman Reads at 7th Grade Level.” I find this fascinating. No wonder folks are baffled when it comes to framing a query using Boolean logic. Little wonder that youthful search “experts” are clueless about the antics of search vendors from the 1980s. These folks cannot and will not become the type of readers I encountered when I was in college in 1962.
The write up says:
“We are spending billions of dollars trying to send students to college and maintain them there when, on average, they read at about the grade 6 or 7 level, according to Renaissance Learning’s latest report on what American students in grades 9-12 read, whether assigned or chosen,” said education expert Dr. Sandra Stotsky.
I can think of many possible consequences of poor education. Today I am thinking about the interest young folks show in video. Why read when one can sit down and let the content flow to you.
In a more practical vein, those who cannot read will not be too keen on using information access systems that require a user to read content to locate needed information.
Exciting if you are pumping out videos. Not so exciting if you write books.
Stephen E Arnold, January 8. 2015
Phi Beta Iota: Books are “push” centric information while video is “pull” centric information. Books are huge artifacts within which key paragraphs relevant to a specific query are not retrievable in 99% of the instances, i.e. where they are not in full text online. Videos are precision responses that include audio visual — how to clean a weapon, how to remove a tick from a dog, etecetera. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) are failing for the same reason books and universities at large are failing: there is no return on investment for sitting through the 99% of knowledge being “pushed” when you can generally get the 1% you want and need on demand in a form that is instantly applicable. What causes us real concern at Phi Beta Iota is not reading skill but rather the loss of the ability to think holistically, to respect the massive diversity of sources including multi-lingual and multi-cultural sources that should be consulted, and the loss of the ability to connect dots, think intuitively, and challenge authority when authority is clearly retarded — fifty years behind reality. We need all forms of knowledge — but more than anything else, we need what we do not have today — an Open Source Agency, a School for Future-Oriented Hybrid Governance, a World Brain Institute, and a complete reconstruction of education, decision-support, and research so as to nurture and expand the ability of all humans to do holistic analytics, true cost economics, and open source everything engineering.
See Also:
2014 Robert Steele – An Open Letter
Robert Steele: UNASUR – The Revolution Begins
