Why are American youth performing so poorly on technical tests compared with other countries?

STEM Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics are no longer intensely taught in school.

I see this all the time in undergrad students. They have “access to technology”, but the technology they have access to demands no skill whatsoever to use. So, they don’t have any reason to develop tech skills. When I was in high school, if you wanted to use a computer, you had to know at least a little (and preferably a lot) about how one worked. The trend in smart phones and tablets is to hide all the inner workings; there’s a lifetime’s worth of entertainment, communication, and tools to be had just by pressing the pretty buttons. They’re like a McDonalds cash register; utterly idiot-proof. Of course, there’s also plenty for one to do if one knows how, but the knowing how is not required at all.

So, the skills don’t come automatically with having access. They need to be taught, which requires an investment. I’m guessing that’s where you’re falling short.

If you ask me, I say it is a combo of certain events,

• Everyone is OK in their mediocrity; everyone gets a trophy, even if they just show up.
• Because everyone gets a trophy for showing up and not performing, students feel entitled to a good grade, or at least passing.
• Because students feel entitled and don’t work to their full potential, teachers teach to the minimum, and the school doesn’t push them to do better, just make sure the kid passes the state mandated test (that means money)
• The students are more into socializing and hooking up than cracking the books.
• The media puts little or no emphasis on the value of higher education (aside of the Big Bang Theory).
• The money is attached to the district, poor community, poor school, no matter how bright several students might be.
Some of the reasons other nations, even those spending less per student are trouncing US students.

Don’t forget The V Word.

Makeover

Recently NPR reported that the average certified electrician was making more per year than the average 4 year degree graduate.

America lacks balance, at present.

This comment was so spot-on, I have to quote it:

“The “technology skills” of these “digital natives” have been over-hyped for some time. True, they can use technology to do the things that they like, posting selfies to Instagram, texting during class, etc. But their skills, on average, don’t run deep.

Imagining that growing up with a cell-phone makes a person tech-savvy is like praising previous generations for their abilities to program a VCR or tune a radio.”

People overrate the kind of skills access to technology gives you. Besides, looking at some of the sample questions, they seemed to almost be more practical-based and as we know, American schools suck at teaching anything practical.

See here to see a breakdown of the test: http://www.oecd.org/site/piaac/mainelementsofthesurveyofadultskills.htm

I don’t understand exactly what is being tested? You say technology, but it also talks about literacy and math skills. I wish I could see a sample of the test.

When I hear what kids do today in school my head spins. As far as math, I think most educators in America are not math people. Math teachers usually are, and probably the science teachers tend to be, but I have my doubts the curriculum decision makers are. It’s just a guess, I don’t know anything for sure about how decisions are made.

I have long been curious about how grades 9–12 differ between the countries. There is always a huge focus on 4 year olds, but I am much more interested in how secondary school is different, especially the last 4 years. Although, as I think about it, maybe even before 9th grade.

I have a girlfriend who taught 7th grade math for one year. She hated it. It was a large public school. All 7th graders learned the same math. ⅓ of her class the curriculum was too advanced for them so they were completely lost all the time. Another fraction of the class it was too simple and they easily could have been challenged to do more. It was completely idiotic. She taught about 5 years ago. Even in 5th grade I had the opportunity to excel in math at my school.

Also, it mentions testing people with diplomas and without. I’m just confused who exactly is being tested and what this test is examining.

Because our teaching is more about getting federal funding for the next school year than about educating our kids, or even treating the teachers fairly. As a result, our math and science education is… well, piss-poor.

I don’t see this getting better any time soon, and in fact, I see if getting far worse. We have a rising wave of anti-intellectualism in this country. I mean, one in eight US high school science teachers pushes Creationism. If you believe that the Earth is more than 6000 years old, almost half of all Americans will disagree with you. And since science says that parts of the Bible are wrong, science MUST be stupid and evil and wrong.

That seems to run along party lines, but I would really rather not turn this into a political discussion beyond saying that there is an inextricable link between politics, economics, religion, and education, and that is seems that the parts of the US with the lowest academic scores and highest poverty rates generally vote a different way from those that have higher education levels and lower unemployment.

Put another way, it’s a result of how our society fundamentally is. We have different values than other places. We generally value reward heredity, greed and adherence to dogma far more highly than anything like competence, academic knowledge, or scientific achievement. To do otherwise would make us like those Socialists in Europe and Asia.

@ibstubro Now you know why I don’t feel so bad about not continuing my education. Had I not already had a couple of years of vocational training as a CNC Machinist (not a mere Operator, but the guy who does the programming and setups), I probably would’ve stayed with Electrician (what the Navy had me doing) and still pulled in $50k or more a year without a degree.
Then again, if that article is correct, I already know more than most Americans with a Masters degree anyways,

@dappled_leaves What tech skills? Sure, kids may know smartphones, but that doesn’t mean they can use this, so yes, you are entirely correct.
As for the computer skills, I don’t know if this dates me, but when I went to school, they didn’t have mice or icons or anything until my high school years. As a result, there were those who had enough computer skills to program at least well enough to make their own AUTOEXEC.BAT files and those who didn’t use computers at all with no in-between. But it seems that being able to operate a cash register is almost enough for AP classes in high school these days.

Ten second… hey, look! shiny! ... attention span.

I blame cheese with everything, just gotta be.

I think this grim piece of news is perfectly consistent with the overall impression that our country is busy “dumbing down” its population. I can’t prove that that there is a grand plot to assure our future as a nation of dummies, but there are certain implications which accompany the adage that “knowledge is power”. Those implications shift into focus with the obverse question “if knowledge is power, then what is ignorance?”. Once that question is answered, proceed to “who benefits from ignorance?” More questions. Why aren’t sheep and cattle bred for intelligence?

@jerv “What tech skills?”

I’m talking about students not knowing how to use a USB stick (this is just before the cloud was a commonly used thing), not being able to find or save a file to a specific location on a desktop computer. Students who have apparently never seen a spreadsheet application before, or ever thought about file types. Every day was a surprise.

I don’t expect them to walk into the lab knowing the skills that we’re there to teach them, and I know there will always be translation and philosophy issues for Mac/PC users who are working on the opposite system for the first time. I just expect them to have basic computer literacy skills, so that I don’t have to devote time to those instead of the material or assignments. They should have seen all of this stuff in high school at some point, especially if they’re in STEM.

I had a huge problem asking for help all through out school. When everyone around you seems to understand, I’m not going to throwa wrench in the plans by asking questions all the time.

So I failed a lot of math and went to a class for all the problem children, and that actually did help because I got more attention. U finally started to get it all, and math started to seem easy.

But then I joined the working world after high school, forgot everything, and now when I enroll in community college again I’ll have to take all the precursor math courses just to take regular college level math.

The US educational system grades K-12 is geared toward getting students to pass Government mandated standardized tests. this system is not geared toward solving real problems in the real world.is this a intentional dumbing down of US students as @stanleybmanly seems to suggest? I think that he may be right.

Americans want ever so much for their children to succeed that they “dumb down” the tests to make it easy. Life is hard so other countries don’t “dumb down” for their kids, so their kids do better in life. Is that cheating?? Heck yes! But Americans would cheat the Grim Reaper if we could get away with it.

@dappled_leaves I was being facetious. It amazes me how many people, even kids, can only do basic operations in one OS, most commonly iOS or Android, and are utterly helpless on other systems. While I myself am not familiar with every OS in existence, I can at least extrapolate from similar experiences in the past to get by, but it seems that many lack even the reasoning skill to see how truly similar iOS is to Android, or how closely OS X resembles Win7 and Linux.

Not only do kids today often lack those reasoning skills, they often lack even the skills that it takes to get those skills.

@1TubeGuru I think it’s not so much an intentional dumbing down so much as it is us having different values than nations that educate their children. Look at our outrageously overpriced healthcare system; we pay far more per capita than even the second biggest spender for outcomes that are worse than some undeveloped nations. Or our income inequality; highest inequality of any nation that isn’t a Dictatorship. We refuse to use our taxpayer dollars to help people, but we will use them for wars, subsidizing corporations, attempts to circumvent separation of Church and State, and basically doing the opposite of what the rest of the industrialized world has done.

@stanleybmanly If we were still is a world that needed manual laborers then I might agree. Thing is, we aren’t just a bunch of farmers any more, and we are facing a shortage of workers that can fill even the positions our economy needs filled. The one exception is the service sector; cashiers, barristas, room service, etcetera. What manufacturing we have left is actually doing quite well despite the outsourcing of jobs, and is in fact having issues finding the skilled workers it needs.
Who in the US benefits from from a shift in the global balance of power that tilts away from the US? If it’s a conspiracy, it’s not one with American roots.

@kritiper If you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying.

@jerv So the concept of cheating is acceptable to you?

@jerv Doesn’t the shortage of technical expertise merely mirror the dismal lack of knowledge overall? It’s puzzling that in an age where the majority of us have the knowledge of the world virtually at our fingertips, and Americans take up post secondary debt laden education in record numbers, suspicion of “book learnin” and growing distrust of “pointy head intellectuals ” is all the rage. Climate change deniers gallop apace with movements to eliminate evolution from the science curriculum, while the unspoken consensus builds that only a lifetime of military service surpasses teaching as a career for losers.

@jerv “While I myself am not familiar with every OS in existence, I can at least extrapolate from similar experiences in the past to get by, but it seems that many lack even the reasoning skill to see how truly similar iOS is to Android, or how closely OS X resembles Win7 and Linux.”

Yes, that’s been my experience, too. The ability to transfer skills between environments is rarer than you’d think.

@ucme OMG! LMFAO!! There was an Episode of Too Gear where one of the guys made fun of how Americans put cheese on everything and my husband and I cracked up. The stereotype is there for a reason. True all too often.

@stanleybmanly Precisely so, my good man, precisely so.

@dappled_leaves I find it disheartening, if not outright disturbing.