I see no reason to outright dismiss Sokrates' analysis, nor the professor's, who is giving quantifyable data (deteriorating grades, grade inflation) and mentioning plausible issues (deteriorationg attention spans).

The world is constantly changing and influencing each upcoming generation, for the better or worse, and Sokrates considered this issue important enough to discuss.

I don't think that's what the professor is doing. From the article:

> specifically. Please note, I am not trying to “blame” students for their failing performance; rather, I am trying to understand it. Remedying the situation will require action by both students and faculty.

The author then goes on to blame students in 4 out 5 of the following points.

To his credit he does suggest several changes he and faculty could make by the end of the article.

But I think he's missing the most relevent point: with the vast number of online educational resources on the net, many students have been exposed to what great teaching looks like. Decades ago when this guy started teaching he did not have to survive that competition and comparison. He should stop entirely worrying about what students need to do and up his own game to at least match what anyone can find for free on video streaming platforms and elsewhere.

He is the paid professional here. When he has eliminated his own shortcomings then he can perhaps start to correctly identify things that aren't a result of those shortcomings.

They may have been exposed to great teaching, but do they recognize it? Asking people how they feel about the learning without an objective criteria to measure their performance could be a recipe for a local maximum.

> but do they recognize it?

They don't need to for it to affect attendance. You stick around when you find something captivating and skip that which you find dull. And something that was captivating twenty years ago compared to the other content that was available at that time might be dull compared to today's content. Teachers can't expect styles and material from decades ago to just work like it used to.

Yet the professor rejects out of hand that any changes need to happen with the course material, instead deciding the he needs to do a better job of "explaining how to succeed in the class" and "somehow making making office hours more welcoming.'

Very little to no time is spent looking at ways to do either of those. This the article really is just mostly the professor complaining about his students while doing no introspection on his own possible failures.

This is why going back to Math is always the way. Out of 100 students in Econ 101. How many can read a problem and setup then solve a simple linear system? Forget it how many can solve a linear system

Old professor I had in university would do a Math quiz in the first class, with disclaimer on the paper: If you find this hard save your money and drop out. Just some basic Algebra. Tenure and teaching for 30 years, he genuinely did not give a fuck. Of course lots of people would skip first class due to their O week..

Same epic prof would give exactly same tests year to year with 2-3 number changed around.. then fail everyone who provided answers from a wrong year. You would think people would learn or word would get passed down.. nope.

This is a quantified reduction in ability, not a subjective gripe and one that is very commonly observed. A lot of programs are admitting under prepared students.

> This is a quantified reduction in ability

How effectively is it controlling for factors?

> A lot of programs are admitting under prepared students.

Sure. But there remains the question of _what_ should the students be prepared for, and are educational institutions providing that substance? Meaning, are students under prepared because they don't know how to succeed in a college environment, or are students under prepared because colleges don't know how to teach in a modern environment?

They’re underprepared because they weren’t adequately prepared beforehand.

The only thing I noticed quantified in this paper was the number of students failing. Could just as easily be explained by a decline on the teacher's end.

Considering that the same system is producing both students and teachers it seems very likely that the quality of both could be declining in a feedback loop. Less prepared instructors produce lower quality students who are themselves poor instructors.

AUTHOR: Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

QUOTATION: 97% of quotes on the Internet are complete fabrications.

Funny enough, the source[0] that uses this formatting also points out the quote is a fabrication.

[0]: https://www.bartleby.com/73/195.html

To be fair, the ancient Greece did decline and "fall".

Probably, this what the Romans said towards the end of their run as well.

I see this quote or mentions along this line popping up every single time someone says there is a regression in a newer generation.

But some generations actually are worse than their predecessors (at least in certain aspects). There are universal complaints about teenagers: loud, rude, etc, and there are specifics I see for youth today: they are emotionally more fragile and underdeveloped, are more passive in general, understand complex situations less, and have a harder time in accepting reality.

I'm not blaming anyone (if I were it would be the boomers that ruined the youth today), but blanked dismissal of issues because "this is how things have always been" doesn't help. For most of human history we've been at war and at the brink of starvation, and all the while there was a concentrated effort to handle those issues.

What is this objective reality people struggle to accept?

If you don't pay your bills, people come and take your stuff. Then other people come and make you leave your residence.

Then you get to live in your car. Unless someone has come and taken that.

> If you don't pay your bills, people come and take your stuff.

What gave you the idea that younger generations aren't aware of this? About 17 out of 10,000 people in the US are homeless. The vast majority of people in the US are not experiencing what you are describing.

Hey, sorry, it looks like my comment was taken out of context. I was replying to mstipetic who said "what is this objective reality", which I read as saying there is no objective reality.

And I only wanted to point out that there is an objective reality.

I certainly did not mean to say anything negative about younger generations.

You can always choose not to play that game. The world is a big place.

In what way are we "struggling to accept" this reality? If you mean that we want to change this, that's an entirely different discussion and not necessarily an automatic point against us.

> some generations actually are worse than their predecessors

Sure. But the point is that the prior generation is too biased to correctly identify when this happens. And it's a solid point. The older generations are far more often wrong than they are right. Many of the kids I know who were supposed to do horribly in life due to their parents being too easy on them are now pretty damn successful adults.

> there are specifics I see for youth today: they are emotionally more fragile and underdeveloped, are more passive in general, understand complex situations less, and have a harder time in accepting reality

I haven't seen any of that in the kids I know. Perhaps it's the adults who are guilty of these things and can't handle the kids. Kids take a huge amount of work to be around. It's tiring. This is nothing new.

If you predict a storm tomorrow, you'll eventually be right. But that doesn't make you good at prediction.

My experience might be limited to my geography/culture (Eastern Europe).

While I agree that it's hard to have an assessment of new generations that isn't biased by your beliefs, I also think that simply giving up because everything is relative is not useful.

The questions becomes: how can we see the problems of a generation with which we don't share a history in way that's useful to them?

The original Socrates quote I was referring to is used to give up on doing anything, while my understanding of it was that we need to use more nuance and empathy to help guide the youth. Simply giving up on passing the lessons we learned from experience is a waste.

Can you actually back up any of that, or is this just your personal feeling about "the youth"? And have you considered that we're not more emotionally fragile and underdeveloped, but that we are instead more aware of our emotions and psychology and willing to engage with that and our own needs instead of just repressing everything and turning into a bitter, hateful old person with a lot of toxic shit shoved into the back of their mind? And I don't even know what you could possibly be referring to with "understand complex situations less, and have a harder time in accepting reality" unless you're going for some transphobia and/or capitalist realism lol

I can back it up, although only in a longer conversation, as it involves a lot of personal experiences.

You're right that past generations could be more bottled up because of social expectations, but I've seen also more flexibility in the past around various concepts.

I don't mean to make an argument, for which you seem to be positioning yourself, but rather just see that some things have regressed, and it's not all merely relative.

By the tone of your response, I'd imagine you had many contradictory conversations, possibly with close-minded individuals, so maybe that's why you're interpreting what I'm saying as if I'm a US right-winger.

I think we'd be more in agreement if we'd met in real-life, as you also seem to value growth. My argument is that for that growth and development to happen, weaknesses need to be stated more clearly and addressed.

Socrates didn't leave any writings

Yeah, but Plato, who knew him, did

I mean this quote isn't in Plato's writings either but still