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Coming US challenge: a less literate workforce

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by

mwkruse
in

Christian Science Monitor: Coming US challenge: a less literate workforce

A larger share of workers will have minimal reading skills in 2030 than today, according to a report released Monday.

US workers may be significantly less literate in 2030 than they are today.

The reason: Most baby boomers will be retiring and a large wave of less-educated immigrants will be moving into the workforce. This downward shift in reading and math skills suggests a huge challenge for educators and policymakers in the future, according to a new report from the Educational Testing Service (ETS).

If they can't reverse the trend, then it could spell trouble for a large swath of the labor force, widen an already large skill gap, and shrink the middle class.

"There is no time that I can tell you in the last hundred years" where literacy and numeracy have declined, says Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston and one of the report's authors. "But if you don't change outcomes for a wide variety of groups, this is the future we face." …

Comments

14 responses to “Coming US challenge: a less literate workforce”

  1. L.L. Barkat Avatar
    L.L. Barkat

    I used to be a public school teacher; now I homeschool (never thought I’d say that!)… here’s my take on things, based on the differences between the two:
    we can’t expect kids to be communicators and deeply literate if they spend all day being quiet and “receiving” information. Literacy and communication are rooted in engagement with language…TALKING, communicating for purposes (today, my eldest wants to make a book for her sister, and she plans to do it using Hebrew spellings of English words).
    For the first time, I understand that most children are capable of a very high level of literacy; I just feel sorry for how my teaching methods in the schools eclipsed their genius.

    Reply
  2. L.L. Barkat Avatar
    L.L. Barkat

    Literacy and communication ARE rooted, not IS… how’s that for an illiterate mistake on a literacy post?

    Reply
  3. Michael Kruse Avatar
    Michael Kruse

    LOL
    Oh, I am the last person to cast stones about literacy!
    Thanks for your comments here. Your observations as both a public school teacher and home schooler are very interesting. How do we effectively draw each child to the literacy potential they have given the diversity of personalities and ways of learning? That seems to be a huge challenge.

    Reply
  4. L.L. Barkat Avatar
    L.L. Barkat

    I think we have to get creative, and consider how childhood learning takes place (before one ever gets to school). In this case, we might organize classrooms K-5, with K-5 in each class rather than separated by age.
    A teacher and an aide in each class would help. Older kids teach the younger. They have to know their stuff to teach. This means research. If they don’t know their stuff, it doesn’t matter… this means exploring alongside the younger kids. I envision it like a family, with various ages and specialties. Someone will say that this is going to make somebody lose out. I don’t think so. I see the great potential of an alternate system, modeled so beautifully in many homeschool situations.

    Reply
  5. Michael Kruse Avatar
    Michael Kruse

    What you are describing is how some close friends of ours raised their kids up to sixth grade. It was a public charter school but, as I recall, the grades all met together with older kids helping younger ones.
    Personally, I can remember the more or less “factory model” I was educated in. I had a mild learning problem. I dreaded the reading tests. Each student started reading silently from booklets placed at your seat and started reading together. When you finished reading you took the book up front and placed it in a rack. Guess who was always last or next to last?
    I later got some help but considered the learning process anything but friendly or family. It wasn’t until my junior year of high school that I began to realize how much fun learning was.

    Reply
  6. ZZMike Avatar
    ZZMike

    The article focusses not so much on how we teach our kids, but on the “large wave of less-educated immigrants … moving into the workforce” … and … “The three factors identified are: a shifting labor market increasingly rewarding education and skills, a changing demographic that include a rapid-growing Hispanic population, and a yawning achievement gap, particularly along racial and socioeconomic lines, when it comes to reading and math.”
    There’s also the cultural effect, where in culture A, learning and achievement are high priorities, and in culture B, they are things to be avoided at all costs (and those that do achieve are brought down, one way or another. This isn’t just guessing, it’s in the news.)
    On the good side, it’s not a total disaster. There’s an NPR show on Sunday morning (here) that showcases young musicians. Boys and girls, 13 or so and up, are bright, talented, accomplished musicians. Then there are the young kids who excel at math competitions and the like.
    At first glance, it looks like it’s a “learning gap” (which left unchecked for a millennia or two, could result in H. G. Wells’ morlocks and eloi).
    But the overall problem is, how do we teach kids – all kids – or to put it another way, how do we make it so that all kids learn the things they need to know. It would be nice to throw in a love for learning that would continue life-long, but we’re not there yet. First steps first.

    Reply
  7. Michael Kruse Avatar
    Michael Kruse

    All good points, Mike. (I especially liked the morlocks and eloi.) I know the two biggest predictors of escaping poverty are A) the abilties to read, write, and do functional math at a high school senior level and B) stable family situation. Of course, the two are strongly related.

    Reply
  8. L.L. Barkat Avatar
    L.L. Barkat

    oh, good one! “read, right, and do…” Is this to make me feel better about my earlier illiterate moment?

    Reply
  9. Michael Kruse Avatar
    Michael Kruse

    ROTFL
    Was that Freudian or what? I was going to be funny in my post and chose not to, but that wasn’t it.
    Okay time for Mikey to go edit L.L.’s post and his own post.

    Reply
  10. Michael Kruse Avatar
    Michael Kruse

    There. Everything should now be write… I mean right.
    🙂

    Reply
  11. David M. Smith Avatar
    David M. Smith

    I suspect this article is mostly true, but I’m not sure it tells the whole story.
    My oldest daughter and most of her third grad class read all six of the Harry Potter books during their third grade school year. Now in the fourth grade, she is giving a once a week oral presentation on a current events to her class. She has been writing short stories since the second grade. She started algebra in the third grade. Her younger sister, now in the second grade, is also meeting the same standards.
    My daughters are advanced far beyond what I was at their age. There are probably thousands and thousands of other kids who are doing similar work in their primary schools.
    Therefore, there may be a larger, less literate group at one end, but also a larger, more literate group at the other end. The gap may be a problem, but it is not necessarily a problem. As we become more specialized, everyone will be free to do more of what they are good at.
    Very few jobs require perfect literacy. I work with computer programmers and system analysts who are very good at analyzing and writing computer programs, but often write and send e-mail that needs to be decoded.

    Reply
  12. Michael W. Kruse Avatar
    Michael W. Kruse

    “…but often write and send e-mail that needs to be decoded.”
    LOL
    Guess it all comes back to what is “functional literacy.” I am still inclined to think the greater your literacy the greater options and adaptability in a morphing economy.

    Reply
  13. ZZMike Avatar
    ZZMike

    “I am still inclined to think the greater your literacy the greater options and adaptability in a morphing economy.”
    It used to be “clothes make the man”. Well, we’ve certainly seen that one decline ….
    But today, I think it’s “speech makes the man”. The guy who can speak and write well is going to have a lot more opportunity than the guy who can’t.
    As far as programmers go – even though I’m one – the latest crop suffers, I think, not just because they’re programmers, but because like almost everyone else, they haven’t been taught to write, for one, and they’ve been spending a lot of time instant-messaging, for another. U no wht I m33n?
    The bookstores are still filled with books, and somebody seems to be buying them.

    Reply
  14. Michael W. Kruse Avatar
    Michael W. Kruse

    “The bookstores are still filled with books, and somebody seems to be buying them.”
    So much for the paperless society. All the technology did was expand the universe of people who had something to publish.
    🙂
    It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out over the coming years.

    Reply

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