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"This is not an educational system problem, this is a societal problem. What am I supposed to do? Keep standards high and fail them all?"
(hilariusbookbinder.substack.com)
this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2025
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Interesting read. The author says its not a rant but it reads as a rant. However it also has a fairly clear and concerning message: attention spans of current students are dire and its down to smart phones.
Some elemenrs of the piece are off though. Laptops in class are essential -its a far better way to take notes than handwriting for many people. But you also have to treat students like adults and trust them - if they want to sit in a class and gamble then thats their problem. While there is some overlap with the phone issue it is different.
There is nothing much the author can do about the main issue than sound the alarm. Social media is designed to give people dopamine hits and be addictive, and were seeing the effects of that addiction permeate through society.
The response to anyone reading that article is to get off their phones. Lock it away when youre in the gym, lock it away when in school or work, leave it in another room when its time to go to bed. Break the addiction.
He sounds boring AF. Maybe attention spans are down. I don't know. I know I spent most of school daydreaming because some idiot droning through a bunch of slides is the worst way to teach and learn.
One thing I noticed as a student and then a brief stint as as TA for a few years is that the whole slide deck thing would be waaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy less boring if students did any amount of or effort.
Teachers always asked questions. Always tried to stoke conversations. Debate.
Students didn't answer. It was silence. They didn't do the pre-read. They didn't do any of the voluntary work. They showed up and expected to have knowledge transmitted into their brain in a way they get it.
It doesn't work like that.
If your teaching requires students to do a thing, and they're proving incapable of doing the thing, maybe pick a different thing.