/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11639040]

I'm teaching intro English at $LARGEUNIVERSITY.

It's becoming increasingly obvious that most of the class - a bit over two thirds, according to the pop quiz I administered - is simply intellectually incapable of the work. They don't know the basic words in the field, things like "genre", "metaphor", "paragraph", "comedy", or "literary". They're not capable of the readings - as in, if I get a student to read a paragraph aloud and then ask them to summarise it, they can't come even close. Their writing ability is basically nonexistent, to the extent of being incomprehensible in most cases. In short, they're about where I'd expect a student half their ages to be at.

I'm agnostic on why: maybe it's cultural isolation from academia, maybe it's a reflection of really dreadful schooling, maybe it's about just not caring at all. Most likely it's a combination of several factors. There is an ethnic component, as you can probably guess, but even among white students the average performance is pretty bad, if not the abyssal levels of $RACIALMINORITY students. By far the worst students are, of course, international students who barely speak English, but that's to be expected and actually not so much of a concern. In all honesty, "why" isn't really important at this stage.

More problematic, though, is the fact that it's basically impossible to teach people at this level. Short of scrapping the curriculum and teaching everyone to read from scratch, I don't know what to do: it's pitched wildly above their ability level, and frankly pitching at their ability level would be impossible in a university environment. I can't sit by them and sound out unfamiliar words, and I don't have the contact time to do anything more substantial. Quite frankly, I have no idea what to do. Of course, if I fail more than a few percent of students the wrath of senior management will descend, so I'm probably going to wind up passing a lot of people based on impossibly bad work, and teaching them nothing at all. University-as-signalling is all very well, but I never anticipated students being basically unteachable, and I'm worried that we're getting fully into "we pretend to teach, they pretend to learn, we give them a bit of paper that lies about their abilities" territory.

[Anonymous No.11639044]

Is this a problem other people have experienced? How do you deal with the overwhelming mediocrity of most students? Is there a way to reach these people, or am I just shouting into the void? Would it be best to give up, take a hardline position - something like "they're stupid, not worth teaching, focus on the three or four people who might be able to read the assigned texts" - or double down on trying to get something across the barrier?

Addendum: Something that I've noticed here is the absence of exceptional students. We're a small country, so they're not going to better universities, but I think perhaps there are so few exceptional students in English that by dumb luck my 180 student cohort doesn't have any.

Exceptional, for context, would mean getting more than one of "allusion", "allegory", "romanticism", "pastoral", or "lacuna" correct on the pop quiz. I don't think it's an especially impossible standard.

[Anonymous No.11639060]

I'm facing the same issue, but with philosophy of law. It's like the fuckers don't have brains or something.

[Anonymous No.11639081]

>>11639040
>>11639044
>>11639060
yeah I mean, it's almost like all the intelligent people go into STEM fields and leave the superfluous fairytale subjects for the mentally-petulant
our society is a technologically-based one and quite frankly, humanities are a thing of the past
welcome to reality

[Anonymous No.11639101]

>>11639044
The intensive standardised exam was fabricated to create docile bodies to reproduce tasks in factories and not rebel. In an ideal post homus economicus world, education would be more like D and G's A thousand plateaus, but there are time constraints for you. International students come for some prestige to put on the CV and that's it. I recommend just focusing on good students if you can find them and propagate their interests by recommending them extra curricular reading.

[Anonymous No.11639102]

>>11639040
So I'm assuming that the class is some sort of undergraduate general requirement everyone has to take? Even then sounds horrifying with the sheer lack of standards and ability.

[Anonymous No.11639111]

>>11639081
I dont know how true this is in the US, but it definitely isn't in other countries. Look at the academic backgrounds of senior civil servants, politicians, company MD's etc - most of them studied something like History at undergrad level.

[Anonymous No.11639112]

>>11639081
this. learning literature in uni for women and brainlets

[Anonymous No.11639115]

>>11639040
i thought season 4 of the wire was just 'inner city' schools, not universities

[Anonymous No.11639138]

>>11639040
Uni is meant to be mostly independent learning, so it's their own fault if they don't try to catch up to the level of the course.

[Anonymous No.11639142]

>>11639111
High-IQ humanities students will usually be weaponised in one way or another, but current market forces are drawing students to useless but economically worthwhile things like finance. Working class sprogs are the ones doing humanities stuff these days because middle class spawn have some cultural capital already. They get pushed into obvious high status or economic studies.

[Anonymous No.11639159]

>take class on early American literature up to 1865
>we don't read Moby-Dick
>we don't read The Scarlet Letter
>we don't read the full Leaves of Grass, only a couple of poems from it
>the only novel we read in full is Edgar Huntly and Benito Cereno
>we only read a couple of chapters from Uncle Tom's Cabin
>we only read a couple of chapters from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
>we only read a couple chapters from Walden
>we read a shitty journal from Christopher Columbus
>we read a shitty transcription of an Iroquois creation myth done by a white dude for "Native American representation" instead of Black Hawk's autobiography
>we read some poems from Anne Bradstreet
>we read A Model of Christian Charity
>we read a couple chapters from Ben Franklin's autobiography
>we read a couple of chapters from Olaudah Equiano's autobiography
>we read a couple of short stories from Edgar Allan Poe and Washington Irving

This was a 300 level class that was required for the English major.

[Anonymous No.11639160]

I remember almost the entire class had trouble reading out loud when I was in the 8th grade. They couldn't go more than a paragraph without stumbling or needing the teacher to tell them how to pronounce words. We never had to read out loud in high school so I can't imagine they got any better. If you check out some McGuffey’s Readers from even just a generation ago and compare them to some of the modern textbooks it's very clear that standards have drastically fallen.

Anyone who sends their kids to a public school is doing them a disservice.

[Anonymous No.11639194]

>>11639081
>The most succesful people go into STEM fields
Except for lawyers and businessmen who almost always focus on humanities, literature, and history as additional subjects which are important supplementary studies for their work?

[Anonymous No.11639202]

>>11639138
Yeah, I'm confused by these stories because my uni had the attitude of "didn't do the pre-reading is a fail".
We had some students in first year who were surprised that they were meant to have read the book list by day one, but they flunked. One who voiced her opinion that you shouldn't have to spend money on books and that it was hard to get all of them from the library in a lecture got told to review her choice of career since she was incapable of the work load.
The stories about unis now-- especially the American ones, because wtf is going on in those? -- just seem made up to me.

[Anonymous No.11639432]

they're like 18 years old lol relax.

[Anonymous No.11639446]

OP, fail everyone who deserves to fail and when the university gets on your ass for it, tell them why. And if they do anything bad to you, go on Fox News and Twitter and raise a shitstorm about it. Get Jordan Peterson involved. Burn it all down.

[Anonymous No.11639458]

>>11639040
Maybe check out some US Army techniques on teaching retarded people academic things? I believe they teach everything as if everyone had 85 iq. That's why military training is so fucking insufferably boring to the average person. I remember in USMC Boot Camp, they literally taught us how to brush our teeth properly.

[Anonymous No.11639469]

english 101 is about writing argumentative essays n shit, not literary theory, don't get ahead of yourself there adjunctfriend

[Anonymous No.11639473]

>>11639458
nah showing people slideshows is just how they create killers

[Anonymous No.11639503]

>>11639446
This. Be courageous.

[Anonymous No.11639505]

Social Darwinism doesn't exist anymore. It used to be that the wealthy and well educated families would send their kids to college. These kids were already well educated and well mannered by the time they got to college, the majority of them cared.

Now everyone and their moms go to college. College is no longer important. It's been over exposed. I noticed this as I looked around in my class and saw how nobody wanted to be there, nobody wanted to learn, it was a task they felt forced to complete by society. All I saw was stoners, people who couldn't sit through a hour and a half class unless high. People on facebook. People who would later in the semester come to me and pay me to write their essays.

English professors literally teach The Handmaid's Tale. Or they teach from their own book of essays they wrote that you of course have to buy. College is no longer stomping grounds for the best of society, it's public high school 2.0.

[Anonymous No.11639531]

>>11639040
Uni is such a joke these days. I feel like it's going to be replaced by technical programs.

[Anonymous No.11639553]

>>11639040
NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND

Just means every child at half the rate.

[Anonymous No.11639617]

>>11639040
>doesnt separate words in his variable names with underscores

[Anonymous No.11639726]

>>11639040
This makes me glad I didn't minor in English or lit. Most of the people in the intro classes were completely hopeless. I don't understand why people that don't give a shit think they can just go into programs like that and get by. If anything its a smart move on their part because so many of them have entered into that its to the point where actually holding high academic standards would fail a majority of the class.

[Anonymous No.11639742]

>>11639617
>disgusting_python_shit_for_plebs

camelCaseOrDeath(youFuckingInfidel)

[Anonymous No.11639778]

>>11639505
>English professors literally teach The Handmaid's Tale.
Kek, is it really how low we've fallen?

[Anonymous No.11639820]

>>11639040
>as in, if I get a student to read a paragraph aloud and then ask them to summarise it, they can't come even close
I have my own explanation for this. My mind would be completely focused on not fucking up the pronunciation if I had to read aloud for a class, so if the teacher asked for a summary I think I'd be screwed

[Anonymous No.11639978]

>>11639820
This. OP, you seem like a decent teacher, but you may be overreacting a bit. Give reading quizzes. People who fail those obviously don't give a fuck.

[Anonymous No.11640076]

>>11639194
Hey, if someone volunteers to do it just for fun, more power to them. My issue is that for the rest of them, secondary and supplementary courses are excuses for the university to take more of their money and give it to people who don't deserve it. The university doesn't give a shit how "well-rounded" their respective students are, and you can bet the number of people who are going to ask me my opinion on Two Gentlemen of Verona when I'm interviewing for a software engineering job is pretty goddamn low.

[Anonymous No.11640102]

>>11639081
>>11639112
??? I don't know what it was like at your university but I'm a student at Oxbridge and the smartest people in my year group do English, Classics, or Philosophy. The mathmos just smoke weed everyday because they're here for a job and aren't intellectually serious.

[Anonymous No.11640310]

>>11639473
>How to clean a portashitter
>in 45 slides, a two hour presentation in a room with malfunctioning a/c in the San Diego summer

Rah

[Anonymous No.11640324]

>>11640076
>Hey, if someone volunteers to do it just for fun, more power to them
No it's important supplementary courses that are required for someone to flourish in their field if you knew anything about the social status required with being a succesful businessman or lawyer, especially if you wish to become a politician or civil servant of some kind.

It's an introduction into the political realm via history, polysci, and literature. STEM fags can be as autistic as they want to be because they're essentially just glorified workers.

[Anonymous No.11640350]

>>11640324
I'm not sure how a couple 100-level courses are going to grant you a great dearth of knowledge on politics, economics, or culture. Especially enough that it will matter.
I think you're missing the point of my post, which is a little ironic, considering yours.

[Anonymous No.11640363]

>>11640350
>I'm not sure how a couple 100-level courses
Wasn't talking about a few 100 level courses my dude lel, you missed the point of my post.

[Anonymous No.11640395]

>>11639040
Obviously it shouldn't be your responsibility to teach them basic English, which they should have learned in school, or if they haven't, not entered your course. I would point them to basic online resources like dictionaries and thesauri, and tell them I expect them to upgrade their basic knowledge on their own.

[Anonymous No.11640506]

>>11639111
They probably didn't do it at a "$LARGEUNIVERSITY" though.

[Anonymous No.11640518]

>>11639040
lol, your university is basically farming retards who ought to work in a factory or plant or crew somewhere for money while your adjunct ass gets a sub-living wage and foodstamps.

[Anonymous No.11640537]

>>11639040
University = signaling explains all of it. At your level (nonselective state college, right?) it's literally just a rumspringa/indoctrination camp. Any semblance of rigor was deconstructed as racist before you were born, but don't worry, 10% of the effort that once went into rigorous teaching now goes into maintaining a veneer of respectability for 1000% of the cost.

Anyone with a glimmer of intelligence is in STEM gunning for a (futile, btw) pass to the Red Queen race that is a middle-class career in the 21st century.

[Anonymous No.11640566]

>>11639040
>I'm agnostic on why:
most people are ineducable

Here is Nock saying the same thing as you 100 years ago:
https://mises.org/library/theory-education-united-states#IV

And the average student was way better back then but he still felt that way

[Anonymous No.11640586]

>>11639778
I had a freshman English teacher with show 2 episodes of the handmaidens tale a semester after I had her.

[Anonymous No.11640594]

>>11639040
>pop quiz I administered .
You deserve to be shot.
These "gotchas" don't gauge educational abilities. They gauge preparedness which has nothing to do with the assessment of learning.

You know who they screw the most? People who commute who aren't sitting around campus all day. Not everyone has a life of ease like you obviously had. College was the worst period of my life financially and in terms of free time.

I stopped reading your post after that. I assume you have resentment for people who did well on actual tests despite them being less prepared. This is your way of sticking it to those like them.

[Anonymous No.11640596]

>>11639160
Private schools are just as bad where I’m from. There’s a Christian preparatory private school here that moves more drugs through it than any public school in a 300 mile radius. It’s also much harder drugs too. They perform kinda better though compared to the public schools but that could be all the cocaine and adderall

[Anonymous No.11640597]

>>11639040
You write like a fucking moron and you're probably baiting, 1/10 made me respond

[Anonymous No.11640606]

>>11640597
You can tell has a moron by the fact he thinks surprise quizzes are a way to measure performance.

[Anonymous No.11640610]

the vast majority of people do not profit from higher education because statistics say only like 10% of the population has an IQ capable of it.

welcome to the future, where everyone is overeducated and underqualified at anything that is actually relevant to maintaining society. you can't maintain a family at a human standard of living anymore without going to college- so everyone does. then, you can't maintain a family at a human standard of living with a college degree anymore because everyone has one but realistically their capabilities have stayed the same or even diminished because

1. they are not as young as they were
2. they have learned destructive, anti-life ideologies
3. they have grown bitter as they failed to attain "success" which only a small minority of people are even capable of attaining in this age.

tl;dr
machines squeeze men out of the workforce
women enter the workforce basically in their totality
everyone enters college
end effect:
1. massive amounts of people are college educated
2. it doesn't matter
3. everyone is indebted for life to the people causing the problems

this is the future, but in the future-future 90+% of the populace are going to be permanently unemployable. IQ curve is statistical, and statistically speaking only a small minority are capable of prospering in the modern economy.

[Anonymous No.11640611]

>>11640596
they perform better because the students have a higher average IQ, being more upper class. The drug pushing also comes with the more disposable income

[Anonymous No.11640612]

I hope for your sake you are using a VPN.

Having a post like this getting traced back to you would be your fucking end, lol.

I imagine most of us were born in late 80s and early 90s and grew up on message boards. I honestly think that is why I have a good knack for spelling n sheeit.

Also fuck you for making me feel like I had to write semi-intelligently on a Vietnamese grasshopper training website.

[Anonymous No.11640615]

>>11640596
I think homeschooling is a much better option than either one even if the parents don't have time or the knowledge to do it. There are plenty of underemployed teachers who can spend a few hours per week tutoring some kids at minimal pay. You would be a much better position to supervise and guide your kids.

[Anonymous No.11640660]

>>11640537
STEMtards are digging their own grave. The ""innovations"" that they have been concentrated on for the last decades are not really benefiting the masses. The market mechanisms are already in collapse and with them the STEM meme will die.

[Not OP No.11640663]

>>11640102
You have a substantially advantage by going to Oxbridge, which is that the vast majority of people come from upper middle class and upper class families, and most importantly go to well functioning public or independent schools, and not underfunded just state schools, meaning that even the greatest idiot, who only went to a public school because anything else would be family disgrace, gets a minimum grasp in philosophy, history and literature forced down their throat.
Combine this with the fact that all the people applying for subjects like Classics, History or English get interviewed and need to a show an at least basic, but serious understanding of the subject, cuts down the number of students applying and later studying it just to get a degree in something, like many of the middle class do, drastically.
Also, I think one important matter is that IQ is not really that big of a question whether you succeed at Oxbridge, but rather this basic understanding of stuff, meaning that even Evelyn with IQ of just 104 can succeed in studying classics or literature at Oxbridge or Harvard, because she was forced to learn a basic understanding of it in her private school.

[Anonymous No.11640666]

>>11640660
this is levels of cope that are causing an overflow in the metaphysical amounts of cope that can exist in one cope locus, spreading cope to nearby entities

[Anonymous No.11640674]

>>11639040
American education is fucking terrible. That's the long story short, and honestly, the best explanation one can get. It's not a secret; it's also the truth.
>maybe it's cultural isolation from academia,
No - it's what has been deemed as being "important for the youth to know" has been raped. That's why kids these days are fucking stupid, by anybody who is at least somewhat intelligent, know jack shit.
>More problematic, though, is the fact that it's basically impossible to teach people at this level
Correct - this is not entirely the fault of their own. Going off of the point above, as has often been said of the generation in question, children are no longer taught how to think, but rather what to think. Expanding on that, children of today are no longer taught how to learn, but what to learn.
TL;DR - read first sentence.

[Anonymous No.11640677]

>>11640674
americans have the best schools in the world actually. There is a reason american test scores are really low compared to other developed western nations but im not going to be the one to derail the thread.

[Anonymous No.11640690]

>>11640677
Just say it. Its niggers and spics right?

I'm not being racist. A huge amount of whites are trailer trash scum too.

[Anonymous No.11640708]

>>11640594
he's talking about basic vocabulary and reading comprehension. it's the bare minimum. College age people are supposed to have learned all this 10 years prior. Demonstrating this knowledge should be automatic, it's the sort of thing you shouldn't get wrong if you commuted from Zimbabwe.

[Anonymous No.11640713]

>>11640677
>americans have the best schools in the world actually
I'm referring to education on the elementary-high school level. Perhaps those universities that accept < 10% of applicants are among the greatest in the world, but the average public school in America does a piss-poor job in preparing any student for a future education at that level. Generally speaking though, your average first-year student these days doesn't go into college prepared for what could be considered as a standard rigorous college course - instead, they get something like >>11639159 and I would be surprised if they can manage through that.

[Anonymous No.11640719]

When I graduated high school I didn't know what nouns and verbs were. I didn't start my education until I was in my late 20's.

[Anonymous No.11640721]

>>11640713
they have the best elementary and high schools as well, it's just their average school scores are not good. They spend a shitload on education dude, and they have massive immigration from the upper tiers of other countries.

It is true that they don't pay their highschool teachers enough though, idk exactly what's up with that.

[Anonymous No.11640735]

>>11640721
>It is true that they don't pay their highschool teachers enough though, idk exactly what's up with that.

Considering they only work nine months a year, it's not bad.

[Anonymous No.11640740]

>>11640735
Compared to other western countries though the job is significantly less well paid and lower status. It doesn't make much sense to me since they idolize their university profs

It could just be that the private school profs get paid really well, and other countries have less of those. i have no stats on this so idk

[Anonymous No.11640750]

>>11640721
>They spend a shitload on education dude
How much money America spends and what America gets as a result of that expenditure don't exactly go hand-in-hand, especially nowadays.
t. a pissed-off American taxpayer
>It is true that they don't pay their highschool teachers enough though, idk exactly what's up with that.
Teachers in America have been complaining about """""low wages""""" for years. It's simply American greed. "I'm doing a thing, I should be paid more money for it." In complete honesty, I feel sorry for the teachers being forced by their department heads (who are [essentially] being forced by the Department of Education) to force onto kids what they see fit, but the teachers don't deserve a 6-figure salary to do it. Our youngest generation is comprised of a bunch of fucking idiots, save for a few outliers, and nothing is being done to solve the problem.

[Anonymous No.11640751]

>>11640363
How many supplementary courses do you have to take in your country?
Regardless of the program(as far as I know): In America, we only take a couple.
It's almost not a part of the curriculum. It's a way to keep the humanities afloat.

[Anonymous No.11640758]

>>11639040
Dear Opie,

University is a scam based on moving large quantities of money from the tax base via government into the pockets of university elites. Your task is not to educate a new generation in order to support a functioning society.Your task is to not get in the way of the continuation of the scam.

Sincerely,
Fleeced Sheep,

[Anonymous No.11640759]

>>11640750
>comprised of a bunch of fucking idiots, save for a few outliers,
I think is just every generation. There is a certain amount eugenic or dysgenic swing in different phases of civilization, but it is mostly just the bell curve of various abilities.

We are in a phase where each generation is being afforded more freedoms in a bunch of senses(though maybe fewer in other senses) and that allows the idiocy to more properly percolate, but it was always there.

[Anonymous No.11640776]

>>11640586
Why is that book so popular? It's crap.

[Anonymous No.11640786]

>>11640759
>I think is just every generation.
Sure, but the standard in America has been dropping from generation to generation for quite some time - it's not a new issue. This has been the case for decades, but as is implied by OP, it's getting ridiculous, and the working American is footing the bill for this ridiculousness, even at the highest level. That's really my whole point.

[Anonymous No.11640796]

America please explain

[Anonymous No.11640805]

>>11640786
the standard has been dropping because more and more people are let in. In 1850 a university would have like 4 undergraduates in a course, it was for the genuinely elite. the meaning has been massively diluted, through focus on technical training, and a bunch of bullshit courses that let anyone come through.

There were two main streams of education that actually mattered- the classical curriculum, which was latin and greek literature(in latin and greek), math, and metaphysics, and the specific natural sciences, physics, chemistry, biology, etc.

Since the academic revolution in the early 20th century it changed into something very different, right when universal public education was becoming a thing.

Some schools like Harvard still have the illusion of the genuinely earned prestige of the old academia, but it is increasingly just an enormous joke

[Anonymous No.11640810]

>>11639081
>humanities are a thing of the past
>Momma, can you tell me a story?
>Shut the fuck up Jimmy and get back to coding

[Anonymous No.11640815]

>>11640594
You are literally defending brainlets that don’t know what a “comedy” is

[Anonymous No.11640823]

>>11640805
actually the shift to stem happened when german universities were churning out chemists, physicists and engineers left and right, and the anglo world was shook that the prussians would whip all our asses, so we copied them and started emphasizing stem training, it was more paranoia at falling behind in military tech than economic pressure, and actually if you look at americas top universities they all became elite from having massive infusion of defense spending (mit, stanford, columbia, princeton, etc.)

[Anonymous No.11640830]

>>11640805
forgot to add my last point- the classical curriculum is obviously dead and decaying, nobody receives that anymore. The sciences still excel in some universities. MIT does amazing shit in a number of scientific and technological applications.

but the general current of universities is irretrievably degraded

[Anonymous No.11640836]

>>11640823
I'm not talking about STEM overcoming the humanities, that happened because the humanities became a shadow of themselves when the classical curriculum was replaced with the ever-shifting(read:degrading) by-committee curriculum that dominates schools now.

And both stem and the humanities were infected with quasi-Stalinist programming courses and elements of it in all other courses that make the emphasis not the content of the courses but adherence to the emerging state religion.

[Anonymous No.11640843]

>>11640805
>he standard has been dropping because more and more people are let in...that let anyone come through.
YES - because, in America, college has devolved into a money-making scheme/sham. There is nothing to be gained by going to college anymore save for the illusion that you are """""qualified for a career""""" by a potential employer, but regardless, unless it's a private school, I (as a taxpayer) am still paying for it to a certain extent.
>There were two main streams of education that actually mattered...
Also correct - the system has since devolved to learning of the plight of early African-Americans and the struggles of women in American culture. If you deem this as essential to the field in which you are pursuing, then by all means go ahead - essential for all fields? I'm not so sure.

[Anonymous No.11640845]

>>11640830
>MIT does amazing shit in a number of scientific and technological applications.
MIT accepts about ~5% of ALL students who apply, so...

[Anonymous No.11640848]

>>11640815
And you're victim-blaming

[Anonymous No.11640849]

>>11640843
you sound like a retard who never went to college
>durr my taxes pay for people's degrees
>lol degrees are debt slavery

what is it, is the nanny state giving people free degrees, or is getting a degree debt slavery, or are you just a stupid fuck looking for an excuse for never attending university

[Anonymous No.11640858]

>>11639040
Um, expecting university students to be literate is bigoted and toxic.

[Anonymous No.11640862]

>>11640848
victims deserve to be blamed

[Anonymous No.11640865]

>>11640849
He might be too dumb to articulate it, but he's not wrong. "My taxes" allow the federal government to guarantee (i.e. subsidize) educational debt.

[Anonymous No.11640869]

>>11640849
>I don't understand how paying for school works: the post
Pic related - you.
Degrees are debt slavery if you can't afford it, you retard. I went to college on scholarship, and have since decided to pursue occupation over career because I don't give a shit about chasing the dollar over being content with my standing in life. KYS.

[Anonymous No.11640872]

looks scary...

except indian schools are almost total corrupt shit, and chinese schools are just high pressure exam gauntlets, america's low engineer output is a concern but out schools are vastly superior to those in developing countries, even a state university is light years ahead of its equivalent in india

[Anonymous No.11640874]

>>11640594
>poorfag sucked at college
I'm just shocked

[Anonymous No.11640875]

>>11639040
Translation:
"I'm teaching an introductory course at a university for the first time. I wanted to get hired at a top-10 department or a top-20 department, but I couldn't, so I'm teaching at a university with a lot of students in a large city.
"The students are not as smart as the grad students that I have been associating with for the last 7 years. They're certainly not as smart as the profs. I don't know why I ever imagined they would be -- they're first year undergrads, for Christ's sake -- but I'm still disappointed. After the heady intellectual discussion of my grad student days, it's a letdown.
"I like to imagine that the friends that I had when I was an undergrad were extremely sharp and smart and witty. They probably were, relative to my own smartness and wittiness at the time, but on the other hand I never had to read their assignments. Maybe they misspelled and misused words all the time in their assignments.
"I am itching to fail 90% of these students and pass only the ones that I think might one day rise to my dizzying heights of eloquence and cranial brilliance. It doesn't matter to me that they're learning and that they will be better thinkers and writers at the end of the course than at the beginning. I'm never going to associate with most of them again, so they're dead to me.
"Oh, and after years of getting into whiter and whiter social circles through my academic studies, I'm now back facing the reality that a large percentage of the people in my country are not white, and it's triggering my latent racism."
That about do it?

[Anonymous No.11640877]

>>11640865
>the government uses tax money to promote an educated populace

wow what a shitty idea

[Anonymous No.11640882]

>>11640875
accurate

[Anonymous No.11640905]

>>11640877
Subsidized students loans are probably the #1 culprit for pic related.

[Anonymous No.11640907]

>>11640875
Not OP but this hits very close to home. Why isn't everyone a wasp with expertise in underwater basketweaving?

[Anonymous No.11640914]

>>11639044
ayy proffesa man, what the FUCK is a lacuna? (*class starts laughing in unison* *girl behind me blushes* *he cute* )

[Anonymous No.11640915]

>>11640719
interesting. please go on

[Anonymous No.11640917]

>>11640848
>>11640815
>>11640594
That simply most students never received a serious education is probably the biggest problem, cause I think that many of the many of the painfully average intelligent people I went to school with, would have easily passed substantially harder courses had they received a serious education and not the tragedy I received at my german grammar school, which consisted sadly of stuff like getting in sociology, which I had as a minor subject in year 11 and 12, a social milieu assigned and thinking of slogan to advertise a chocolate bar to this specific milieu and drawing a poster using the slogan and presenting it, which all happened of course over a two hour lesson and in groupwork with around five students per group.

[Anonymous No.11640927]

>>11640877
It really is a shitty idea when you actually think about the results instead of stopping at the intentions.

[Anonymous No.11640930]

>>11640905
put the homes prices for economically viable locations like sf bay area or seattle and check the chart, not saying tuition isn't rising too fast, but housing in the places were people can actually get jobs is going sky high too, but your chart probably includes declining home prices in dead factory and farm towns in the middle of nowhere

[Anonymous No.11640931]

>>11640917
Correction: It was a two period lesson (90 Minutes) and not a two hour lesson, which makes it only barely less awful.

[Anonymous No.11640935]

>>11640927
yeah having an uneducated populace is the key to a strong economy in the 21st century

[Anonymous No.11640936]

>>11639081
STEM Majors are required to take one or two english classes and a lot of them are the type of people described in OP

[Anonymous No.11640942]

>>11640935
This is the sort of sloppy thinking endemic to the left and it's making having conversations with people like you impossible. The absence of government funding for education does not mean there will be no education.

[Anonymous No.11640951]

>>11640942
yeah if the government didn't "fund education" people would have to like, idk, take out loans to pay for it! oh shit! you're obviously just some guy who was too stupid to make it in college and "it's a waste of money" it your cope, despite life time earnings for college grads of any major dwarfing those of poor knuckledraggers who couldn't make it

[Anonymous No.11640956]

>>11639081
cursed post

[Anonymous No.11640962]

>>11640596
If they have to do cocaine to deal with high school level work, I seriously doubt they're gonna make it

[Anonymous No.11640967]

>>11640917
This is what genuinely bothers me with (current/some) grammar schools. I expected more emphasis on trivium/quadrivium, but (aside from language and literature, history) I had one year of Latin, one year of psychology, two years of philosophy (granted, one year studying pure logic, and the other the history of philosophy), and 'world religion' and '''''democracy and human rights'''''
The professors were not interested in teaching us anything (spare his. of phil. — she was a saint, bless her), just going on and on about personal tirades and calling students out for not being in line. Most of the logic/Latin I learned had to be self-taught.
Why? Because teachers are there not through merit, but connections, and, in comparison with STEM, which actually was taught mostly to understand and think, the humanities are just remember this and that so you can get a good grade.

[Anonymous No.11641000]

>>11640930
Sure I agree but housing has absolutely nothing to do with the point he was making.

[Anonymous No.11641100]

>>11640967
Where are you from anon?

[Anonymous No.11641105]

>>11640875
this is next levels of cope

[Anonymous No.11641116]

>>11641000
well it does in the sense that the "cost of being middle class" which is to say college educated home owner, is going up, sure easy access to loans looks like the culprit but the real problem is that you can't not get an education and you cant not buy housing (if you want to be middle class) so, oh and let us not forget skyrocketing healthcare costs, singling out education is missing the overall trends

[Anonymous No.11641117]

>>11640935
>we need 500% more degrees in nigger studies to be competitive!

[Anonymous No.11641118]

>>11641100
Bosnia

[Anonymous No.11641136]

>>11639159
shit. I took the same course first at my homeuniversity in germany and now just recently during my stay abroad in belgium.
all three are exactly the same.

[Anonymous No.11641150]

>>11639159
Were you literally in the same class as me in community college? Jesus I'm getting flashbacks

[Anonymous No.11641172]

>>11640951
genuine lol if this is really you and not just a very convincing r*ddit impression

[Anonymous No.11641211]

Not gonna lie, the stuff I'm reading here is funny as shit.

I hope I could get into a university in a STEM field so I wouldn't have to deal with any of this, but it probably doesn't happen where I'm from anyways.

[Anonymous No.11641221]

>>11639446
This. It puts your career at risk DESU
but the only reason things have gotten this bad is because of all your cowardly peers and predecessors who let it degenerate to current year status

[Anonymous No.11641242]

>>11639159
literally what the fuck?

[Anonymous No.11641281]

>>11640848
kys

[Anonymous No.11641291]

>>11639159
>>11641150
you guys in SoCal area? my syllabus consisted of some of these but it was for a 200 level survey course

[Anonymous No.11641304]

>>11641150

This was at a four-year state college, but I'm assuming the class had you get the same Norton Anthology of Literature.

I did go to a community college though. I still had some general requirements left when I transferred, and I think it was actually better to take the bullshit classes at community college. The professors at community college seemed to care more about what they were doing, while in real college those classes are taught by graduate students with anywhere from 30 to 200 people in a class.

>>11641291

I'm in Kansas.

[Anonymous No.11641305]

>>11640612
It’s a copy of a post that was posted in r/slatestarcodex a week ago

Inb4 go back

[Anonymous No.11641317]

>>11640936
That's me for sure. Haven't read a book in 4 years. Work as a structural engineer.

I'm trying to start with Plato, but most the concepts go right over my head.

That, and I tend to waste all my time playing video games instead of try to read.

[Anonymous No.11641499]

>>11640875
Haha nailed it mate. Op on Suicide watch.

[Anonymous No.11641509]

>>11641317

>start with Plato

If you haven't read a book in 4 years, you really need to ignore that fucking meme and instead start with basic high school reads, usually from the 20th century, and work your way backwards. Also ignore /lit/ pseuds and have some fun reading genre fiction as you work your way through classics.

[Anonymous No.11641514]

>we're getting fully into "we pretend to teach, they pretend to learn, we give them a bit of paper that lies about their abilities" territory
We're already there. No single individual can do anything about it at the moment. As you say, if you start failing too many students you'll get action taken against you. The only solution is just to ride it out and wait for a broader social and cultural backlash.

[Anonymous No.11641525]

>>11639040
>then ask them to summarise it, they can't come even close.
the students are too smart for your pedant anglo ass

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2j578jTBCY

[Anonymous No.11641529]

>>11639081
I'm in stem and despise 99% of other stemfags, soulless, arrogant pricks that they are

[Anonymous No.11641535]

Western education stopped being about forming the most capable a long time ago.

Now its all about forming compliant consumers.

[Anonymous No.11641556]

I recently did a philosophy class where the young professor outright told us that only a small minority present would have the intellectual capacity to succeed.

Somehow I bet he posts here.

[Anonymous No.11641568]

>>11640708
>>11640815
Not his job.
His job is to teach and assess students on what is taught and surprise quizzes remains a lousy means of doing so. They test preparation. Most high IQ students can get away with skipping class and showing up only for tests. Whoops. Sorry smart kids. No makeup quizzes!
Surprise tests about simple concepts wastes valuable class time for high IQ whites. I'd rather take a class 5x more difficult than have to deal with surprise shit.

[Anonymous No.11642608]

>>11639742
op was using the $ convention for PHP or like environment variables. those are always underscored

[Anonymous No.11642616]

A lot of the problem is students picking subjects they have little to no interest in just because college is expected.

[Anonymous No.11642622]

>>11639040
So, your students are functionally illiterate. Zoomers don't care about learning and cruise through life without a care in the world. More news at eight.

[cautiously optimistic No.11642653]

>>11639044
>How do you deal with the overwhelming mediocrity of most students?
You haven't been mere mediocrity.

[Anonymous No.11642665]

>>11639040
This thread was made by the government of the US of A

[cautiously optimistic No.11642726]

>>11641529
It bugged the fuck outta me in classes when I'd read another student's paper and a humanities paper or a STEM paper were written like the other.

[cautiously optimistic No.11642757]

>>11639458
I thought we've been seeing too many volunteers and the armed forces have been turning people away, how are ~85ers getting in?

[cautiously optimistic No.11642891]

>>11640845
>1/20
I like those chances. Wish me luck, bruvs.

[cautiously optimistic No.11642916]

>>11641118
That's in like Herzegovina, right?

[Anonymous No.11642937]

>>11639060
In the 50s 5% of the population attended university. Now it's more like 30%. 40%+ in some EU countries. There has not been an increase in the number of smart people. Most are funneled into useless degrees, including a lot of things that didn't require degrees previously like nursing. Obviously there's spill over into the 'real' degrees, and English and other humanities are prime targets. Math requirements in Stem are proper barriers to entry that you can't bullshit through (although they're trying to lower the standards, of course).

[Anonymous No.11642948]

>>11642937
>Math requirements in Stem are proper barriers to entry that you can't bullshit through
the quality of math education has degraded a lot too

[cautiously optimistic No.11642956]

>>11641304
>The professors at community college seemed to care more about what they were doing, while in real college those classes are taught by graduate students with anywhere from 30 to 200 people in a class.
100%. God bless Dr. Reid, that Mt. Dew-loving Haitian.

[cautiously optimistic No.11642960]

>>11642622
Holy fuck, are Zoomers already in college?

[Anonymous No.11642983]

>>11639040
I feel modern day students are definitely reading and writing more. The problem is as always to engage them and let them show you what they got

[Anonymous No.11642998]

>>11639617
That's why he's in English, rather than STEM.

[Anonymous No.11643003]

>>11642937
>including a lot of things that didn't require degrees previously like nursing
At my CC nursing was its own thing that didn't require any classes but nursing classes, just like the welding and auto repair programs.
>Math requirements in Stem are proper barriers to entry that you can't bullshit through
You can get away with only a very basic understanding of calc, geometry, and algebra and no number theory, combinatorics, or logic. It's a fucking tragedy.

[Anonymous No.11643010]

Is this actually a prestigious institution though? Only those count.

No one cares about degree mills and know they're shit.

[Anonymous No.11643012]

>>11643010
>$LARGEUNIVERSITY
wtf do you think bruv

[Anonymous No.11643013]

>>11640872
Of course China and India will have more graduates. They have more people.

I'd like to see a chart that shows the number of STEM graduates as a percentage of all graduates.

[Anonymous No.11643024]

>>11641529
same, fuck those p-zombie niggers. So glad I changed fields to something slightly less soulless.

[Anonymous No.11643046]

>>11642948
That's why you should always read stem textbooks written before 1970. In almost every field besides CS the quality and level of detail is incomparable.

[Anonymous No.11643051]

>>11640875
>tfw got into a field of stem academia that is somehow 100% white
trust me, this level of euphoria should be illegal

[Anonymous No.11643120]

>>11641291
This was at Crafton Hills College in SoCal for me

[Anonymous No.11643128]

>>11643120
Holy shit, Valley here.
I fucking hate it in the IE so fucking much.

[Anonymous No.11643129]

>>11639040
>into class
>large university
You're teaching kids who don't give a shit about literature. Don't take your class so seriously

[Anonymous No.11643177]

If English students are so bad why don't more /lit/izens whizz their way through academia into a prominent position?

[Anonymous No.11643186]

>>11639553
I can't wait common core kiddies are about to come in. I hate narrow grad students almost as much as if not more than our failed high school system undergrads. The over specification of even humanities fields means that you have international relations MAs who can't map out Eastern Europe (I've had a conversation horrified with them, supposedly they were specialists about Russia.) "its not necessary to know about every single country there anon."

Linguists who know nothing about haplogroups, sociologists who become extremely confused and need an explination about Sykes-Picot when it's brought up. Fucking retarded whores and demoralized men.

[Anonymous No.11643217]

>>11639081
>STEM fields
>intelligent people
Jeez

[Anonymous No.11643239]

>>11640875
Not OP, but I'm really unsure how much is ever really "learned" by your average undergrad. Maybe a handful retain the information at all. Or improve at writing.

[Anonymous No.11644040]

>>11639742
constants should always be uppercase, pleb

[Anonymous No.11644077]

>>11642757
I went through boot in 2008 and nobody was joining at that time, so they were taking everybody. Regardless, the military still assumes everyone is dumb whether they are or not

[Anonymous No.11644100]

>>11644077
>2008
>no one joining
Is this before or after the crash made the armed forces more attractive?

[Anonymous No.11644190]

Education is a sick joke. I have the talent to be a scholar, but I received just enough "education" from my crappy state school to receive an intense desire for learning, without actually learning anything. Now I have useless scraps of half-remembered knowledge with a constant anxiety about not knowing enough, but with an arrogant know-it-all attitude. Thankfully, I've read enough Platonic, Taoist, and Catholic mystical literature to know that the highest form of knowledge is suprarational and non-discursive, so I'm currently trying to unlearn everything I was taught at school so I can embrace "learned ignorance". My ambition is to one day to be taken as a literal uneducated simpleton, where my contempt for education reaches such a point that I even forget to hate it. If I have children I wish to inculcate in them a love of simplicity and ignorance. I will only send them to school out of necessity and show no interest in their academic failure or success, encouraging them not to take it seriously and focus on more important things like running around on the grass.

[Anonymous No.11644216]

>>11644190
Said the frustrated fox.

[Anonymous No.11644223]

>>11644190
>Thankfully, I've read enough Platonic, Taoist, and Catholic mystical literature
> My ambition is to one day to be taken as a literal uneducated simpleton
You've already failed bruh.

[Anonymous No.11644235]

>>11644190
>f I have children I wish to inculcate in them a love of simplicity and ignorance. I will only send them to school out of necessity and show no interest in their academic failure or success, encouraging them not to take it seriously and focus on more important things like running around on the grass.

my parents did that and now im like the biggest pseud, also i tried to go full simpleton in my late teens but it turns out im too much of a pussy to pass as a proletarian, like when everyone is staring at chicks asses and shouting sexual harassment i'm just like "i totally support the patriarchy too guise! hey girl i find the intersectionality of your latina heritage and your proletarian economic situation totally stimulating!" then i just try to slink away from the loading dock hating my hippy parents

[Anonymous No.11644236]

>>11644223
Don't worry. The beautiful thing about that kind of literature is that it actively encourages you to forget about it, once you've understood its meaning:

>"The fish trap exists because of the fish; once you've gotten the fish, you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit; once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning; once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can have a word with him?"

[Anonymous No.11644237]

>>11641529
>people think like pic
Why try, my guy?

[Anonymous No.11644239]

>>11640537
Underrated post

[Anonymous No.11644242]

>>11644100
Before by several months. Crash happened towards the end of the year, right? I joined in Spring

[Anonymous No.11644248]

>>11644236
Bruh. Bruh. Do you realize what's happening.

[Anonymous No.11644250]

>>11639040
liberals need to be gassed

[Anonymous No.11644253]

>>11644235
Sounds like a problem of not finding the right, sensitive kind of people to be around. It's sad that these kinds of people fall so often into pseudery because of the modern addiction to education. I appreciate that having a certain education is good for getting a job suited to your talents and temperament . . . it's a sad world right now.

[Anonymous No.11644255]

>>11639040
tl;dr

[Anonymous No.11644260]

>>11639040
welcome to the future, a future ruled by zoomers. it won't be pretty

[Anonymous No.11644263]

>>11639040
Pretty much all university professors feel that way. First and second year courses are the worst for this, especially if you're teaching a "breadth" elective designed to attract students from other disciplines in order to fill enough seats to prove that your department deserves its current funding level. The main problem is that your average high school operates at an extremely low level. Students are showing up unprepared because secondary education for the average student is horrible. There are a bunch of reasons for this, one of which is that you need to dumb things down for minorities, another is that teachers are promoted based on seniority rather than merit, and yet another is that most intelligent people don't want to be teachers because the pay sucks and getting a Bachelors of Education is a pain in the neck. It's perfectly possible for a high school to churn out high-quality students fully capable of surviving in a rigorous university, but there's no incentive to do so.

[Anonymous No.11644268]

>>11641556
Phil freshman here. Two assistants professors have told us similar things. Another one who is way more polite told us that there used to be a professor at one of the first year courses that straight up used to tell to some students they were dumb all the time if they were not in the group of the ones that got perfect or almost perfect scores in the first test, or just based on their opinions and how articulate they were in class.
What they said is pretty much true, and I think I'm one of those people who is just not intelligent enough.
I could go on about how depressed I am and all that crap but I know there are students who have worse problems and they still do better than me. I also think I just don't care about philosophy as much as I belived I did. This last month I just feel burned out as hell. I can't remember anything of what I have 'learned' and I can barely speak my mind. This probably has to do with lack of sleep too.
I hate this crap, but I don't want to just drop out so fast. I like to think that if I work hard enough I will be able to catch up somehow, but it seems delusional right now.

[Anonymous No.11644282]

>>11644268
Depression is worse than poverty and abuse dude because it makes you squander your opportunity.

[Anonymous No.11644286]

>>11644268
The problem is that unless you get a PhD, you're not going to be "doing" philosophy. Even with a PhD, unless you're absolutely brilliant and very lucky you're probably never going to be a professor, and definitely not for a "good" school. There are simply too few positions. With just a BA in philosophy you'll be going nowhere fast unless you're rich and well-connected. I honestly suggest that you consider changing disciplines. Comp sci is in high demand these days, as are business degrees with a solid quantitative and programming background.

[Anonymous No.11644291]

>>11644268
It's not worth it mate. Just do a language or something instead.

[Anonymous No.11644303]

>>11644282
>Depression is worse than poverty
Poverty is worse than depression. In fact, it frequently induces it. It does the soul good. Everything else though, it deteriorates.

[Anonymous No.11644304]

>>11644286
The credentials for the most useful thing in the world is itself the most useless thing in the world.

[Anonymous No.11644346]

>>11639159
>Take a World Literature class
>70% of the material read has been written within the borders of the United States of America

We read several mediocre chicano poems/short stories, and a GRAND TOTAL of ONE South American author (Marquez).

[Anonymous No.11644367]

>>11644282
I 'know' that, but I feel it wouldnt be polite to say it. I'm diagnosed 'bipolar' (whatever that means) and I'm know my brain suffered heavy damage because of being depressed all the time in my teens, but I think poverty can cause the same.
I have not been suicidal for the last two years, but I have been apathetically contemplating suicide recently. The fact that some girl who was in her senior year and that I had talked to a few times killed herself recently doesnt help too much. I'm too much of a coward to kill myself anyways, if I could do it I would have already done it.
Still, there is nothing I can do about it right now, I'm on finals so I guess I will just have to suck it up. I could go on and try fake a suicide attempt so they don't kick me out if I fail all of them but thats just not right.
>>11644286
*sigh*
>>11644291
Latin is nice.

[Anonymous No.11644369]

>>11644346
i did a world literature class, all the literature was european except gilgamesh, i wasnt really mad tho since i got college credit for sitting around reading homer and shakespeare

[Anonymous No.11644382]

>>11640610
underrated post

[Anonymous No.11644462]

>>11639040
>international students who barely speak English, but that's to be expected and actually not so much of a concern
What the FUCK are they doing here if they can't speak english? vietnam fucking shits

[Anonymous No.11644493]

>be average intelligence
>actually give a shit and try
>people think I'm a genius

[Anonymous No.11644520]

>>11641568
>IT'S NOT HIS JOB TO FIND OUT WE'RE FUCKING RETARDED
absolutely SEETHING lmao

[Anonymous No.11644528]

>>11640606
>POP QUIZ BITCH
>INHALE AND THEN EXHALE
>COME ON YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS ONE
>I... I... is this an open book test?

[Anonymous No.11644546]

>>11640875
based leftypol poster

[Anonymous No.11644548]

>>11644190
To really come off as a simpleton, you're going to have to stop saying inculcate outside of your peer-reviewed queer Freudian economic dance journal.

[Anonymous No.11644552]

>>11640875
lmao faggot

[Anonymous No.11644610]

>>11644546
based birbposter

[Anonymous No.11644614]

>>11644528
>professor makes pop quiz
>notices no one knows shit
>leaves the classroom so everyone can cheat

[Anonymous No.11644647]

>>11644546
that's a sick dab

[Anonymous No.11644655]

>>11644614
>professor holds pop quiz
>no one knows basic shit like the meaning of "metaphor"
>leaves the classroom to have an existential crisis because he realizes he signed up to deal with these people as a career

[Anonymous No.11644665]

>>11644655
>professor holds pop quiz
>"do you actually want to be here
>everyone who answers no gets a c and doesn't have to come in anymore

[Anonymous No.11644669]

>>11644665
this might be crazy enough to work

[Anonymous No.11644676]

>>11639159
That sounds like my 10th grade american lit class.

[Anonymous No.11644688]

I teach secondary. I'm sorry but there's only so much I can do with the retarded admin.

We have a course named literary studies which involves more than "how did you feel about the book" and when I try to teach my children how to critically read a source their arguments from the text I get "you are hurting your students feelings and causing them to think too narrowly."

No. I just want fucking dipshit over there to actually establish an argument that's not pulled out of their ass. Sorry that there is not in fact infinite interpretations of the text. Sorry you don't understand what literary studies is Ms. Principal with a fucking Women's Studies degree who took online courses for her "Master's" with no thesis.

Don't even get me started on international education.

[Anonymous No.11644707]

>>11640875
While you do raise a fair point, I've talked to many of my profs during office hours and most of them agree that the younger generations are being dumbed down, to the point where they keep raising the curve every single year just to pass all of these dummies to keep the university mandated retention rates high.

[Anonymous No.11644715]

>>11644707
>immigration from third-world countries increasing
>quality of education and average intelligence falling at the same time
Don't worry, we'll find a way to blame White people for this.

[Anonymous No.11644720]

>>11644688
>think too narrowly
This whole "discovery learning" fad has got to stop. The idea that children should self-direct their own learning is absolutely retarded. Sure there were problems with old instruction methods, but we seem to have forgotten that the purpose of education is to provide students with a certain minimum quantity of knowledge and technical skill to be able to function in society.

[Anonymous No.11644731]

>>11639111
>mexican here
that's because there is a bias towards the people who are preselected for those positions. In other words, x doesn't cause y, x and y are caused by z, z being rich or middle class people who grow in cultivated "backgrounds" where you can study humanities because:
a) you never were taught that you occupy a place in society and basically you can do whatever the fuck you want
b) just by existing, you already made most of the connections you will need in order to success in life, since that is about 1/3 what you know and and 2/3 who you know.

[Anonymous No.11644736]

>>11640875
People not being smart and white enough is a legitimate complain though.

[Anonymous No.11644741]

>>11644715
>muh superior white intellugenz
>muh white genocide
isn't this website suppose to be 18+?

[Anonymous No.11644752]

>>11644741
This, fuck drumpf and FUCK WHITE POEOPLE!

[Anonymous No.11644770]

>>11639040
I find the opposite. I study economics at a top school and am vastly outperformed by some of my classmates. I dare say pure learning capabilities I'm above average in my class, but the hours some of them put in is insane, also they can sit for hours and be completely focused the entire time. I study for intense short periods of time about 5-6 times a day, totaling maybe 3h, but some of these kids are studying I swear to god 12h a day.

And it's not just that, they are genuinely intelligent interesting people that knows how to behave, and how to have a conversation. For someone that comes from a lower socioeconomic background the difference is huge.

[Anonymous No.11644775]

>>11644770
>my classmates have access to adderall and amphetamines and a reason to use them

[Anonymous No.11644857]

>>11641529
>implying that pic is wrong just because it's from le reddit
if you can make and support your point in less space it's generally better to do so
the whole "state your point twice" thing isn't necessary unless your reader is paying no attention and doesn't even care enough to look back to the beginning, the summary near the end shouldn't be needed unless your reader is an idiot or again just not paying attention, putting extra sentences in a paragraph just to make it big enough is incredibly dumb, and any sort of transitions should be for a story, not an essay

[Anonymous No.11645033]

>>11644857
This honestly all stems from the retarded notion that everyone should be literate. As soon as that floodgate was opened now you've got to teach absolute retards how to write too, and so you have to give them these faggot ass little form essays they fill out because they are LITERALLY incapable of learning to write by reading good writing. And honestly, they never even develop any reading comprehension, and it's reflected in the way they write. Just series of sentences, vaguely related, thought of one at a time while the author struggles to focus on one whole entire idea at a time, until he has completed filling out the form he's been instructed to copy.

Literacy was a fucking mistake.

[Anonymous No.11645041]

This is something I was passingly aware of since I was a kid. There was this student in my highschool AP english class who would read the same page of a book every day. I noticed the same page number every. single. fucking. day. Then finally, after about 3 months, he finally turned to the next page.

What fucking society do we live in where kids are so under educated that it takes them 3 months to fully comprehend the content of a single fucking page?

[Anonymous No.11645054]

>>11645041
He was obviously trying to reconstruct the author's life from that page.

[Anonymous No.11645059]

>>11639040
Imagine having to be a student in a class like this and learning nothing.

[Anonymous No.11645078]

>>11645033
I learned to write from what I read and now my essays all read like Huey Long speeches.

[Anonymous No.11645089]

>>11639081
>humanities are a thing of the past
I'm so glad that the expressive and meaningful parts of life have been replaced with battling pajeets for coding jobs. If only Tolstoy had stopped being a pussy anarchist novelist and did something great for the world like connecting drive through speakers to Myanmar.

[Anonymous No.11645099]

>>11645089
You want to enjoy industrial society? That's the cost of it.

[Anonymous No.11645119]

>>11645059
ha ha Imagine going through an entire undergrad and realizing that you've learned absolutely nothing the moment the president of the university hands you your degree. And imagine actually landing a desk job despite knowing absolutely nothing and realizing that all of your coworkers are the same braindead troglodytes that dragged their knuckles around campus for four years. ha ha imagine that, it would be like something out of a science fiction book ha ha.

[Anonymous No.11645124]

>>11645089
>not making friends with code monkeys, brainstorming some stupid app, then stabbing them in the back

[Anonymous No.11645126]

>>11645124
He's one of those jews who got so inbred that his lizard genes starting expressing.

[Anonymous No.11645146]

>>11645126

[Anonymous No.11645158]

>>11645146
>>11645126
He looked fine imo he probably just has some rejuvenation bullshit done to his skin every morning.

[Anonymous No.11645211]

>>11645041
Jesus fucking Christ i'am shitting myself from laughter

[Anonymous No.11645238]

>>11645119
haha!

[Anonymous No.11645255]

to be fair creative writing MFA programs actually produce published authors and MFA film programs actually get people into the film industry (but don't expect to be an academy award winning director/screenwriter anytime soon)

creative writing and film production should divorce themselves from four year universities to become trade schools, cutting out all the bullshit and massive cost that nobody interested in those fields wants to deal with

[Anonymous No.11645466]

>>11641568
>t. pop-quizzes are racist

[Anonymous No.11645519]

>>11643186
>I can't wait common core kiddies are about to come in.
Oh God, I've completely forgot about common core curriculum. We are so fucked when the first batch apply for and graduate from universities.

[Anonymous No.11645538]

>>11645519
What's so bad about apart from standardizing certain maths tricks leading to loss of understanding.

[Anonymous No.11645546]

>>11641529
Jesus. Engineers really are the worst of all classes.

[Anonymous No.11645690]

American school systems are horrendous. Designed for convienence of teachers, not students. Rote memorization. Almost all kids go to school by force, teachers are still confused why kids dont want to go to school.

So most kids “deal with it” and succumb to societical and cultural pressure to go to school, eventually uni

Sit their asses in an english class attempting to memorize some of this garbage to get the carrot.

Easy on the carrots

[Anonymous No.11645775]

>>11645690
>Rote memorization

It's the only way to properly learn something. The problem with schools is they don't do it properly. Teachers will cover something for a few weeks at most and then move onto something else never to touch it again so whatever is being taught to kids isn't entering their long term memories. I know my ABC's and always will because it was drilled into my head by repetition but without looking it up I couldn't tell you how to find the area of a circle because I only had to do it for a week and so I forgot about it.

[Anonymous No.11645786]

>>11645775
Just take the integral of its diameter dude.

[Anonymous No.11646006]

>>11640810
C R I M I N A L L Y underrated post.
but srsly tho, stories are a very important part of all society

[Anonymous No.11646134]

I was looking at a literature undergrad, it was bizarre. No specific majors, only "literary studies". Apparently you did "identity and genre" in the first year and worked your way up to "literature and trash" in the third year, in which you compare classical literature and modern trash. The example texts I got were the Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre, though that might be because they thought I was stupid.

[Anonymous No.11646145]

>>11645775
rote memorization is good for proficiency, but you can't ever master something without enjoying it and making it your life purpose.

[Anonymous No.11646257]

>>11639040
>I'm teaching
there's your problem

[Anonymous No.11646327]

>tfw the only people fighting for higher academic standards are autistic incel neo-Nazis when the issue of academic standards has absolutely nothing to do with race or feminism

[Anonymous No.11646347]

>>11639040
have a ma degree from KCL, currently doing a phd in a very low ranked state college in US of A.

On one hand yes, the low rank state college has worse students, you do have to dumb it down a little, but on the other hand the student body consists of people who have kids, who have to work 2 jobs, who are the first ones in their family to enter a college. It was a culture shock at start, where I was used to oxbridge rejects , upper-middle class britbongs and foreign rich oligarchs

[Anonymous No.11646418]

>>11639115
>prezbo
is this a columbia reference?

[Anonymous No.11646437]

>>11639040
I go to Penn State and the people constantly alternates between $LARGEUNIVERSITYcore to highly intelligent and competitive. I don’t understand.

[Anonymous No.11646457]

>>11640872
all of those Chinese graduates study in Australia

[Anonymous No.11646491]

>>11640875
This. Fuck white people.