I do think it’s possible we will be the most educated generation that has or will ever be. I mean unless you’re going to tell me LLMs are going away and they’re not.
Gen Z already is in the midst of a literacy crisis. I work in a college and I can tell you right now, these kids who would've been born.... what, 2007? Tail end of Gen Z? Cannot read. They do not know the meaning of words. They cannot understand a sentence more than 10 words long. It's really dire and depressing.
I am in my mid thirties and I’m taking online college classes. I have to put disclaimers not to respond with “AI” which somehow works a lot of the time, it seems anyway.
I had to call the school and had a very uncharacteristic “meltdown” when it was obvious an instructor was using it to respond to me and other students. It felt like a punch in the face and a hand in my wallet, because I pay for this. The person I spoke to didn’t see a problem at all. I said I don’t want to be instructed by AI, I want a person. There’s no way to prove it and so I can do nothing but keep my ideals and get my degree.
I can’t imagine if I had children of my own. I have shed tears for the next generations. I wish I could hold out hope for it to die down, but I really don’t think it will.
The absolute audacity for collegiate officials to say reusing information from our own papers without citing ourselves is plagiarism, but AI use by professors is totally acceptable.
While the trend is there it's far from as dire as you describe. I know a lot of kids through a school setting as well, on top of my personal acquaintances, and I assure you the majority of them are able to read and comprehend just fine.
There are always exceptions and, unfortunately, they are becoming more common nowadays as to be called exceptions. But those won't be able to graduate college so I don't know what they are doing in your setting?
Also, you say they don't know the meaning of the words...ummm do you want to test other generations right now? You can see Millenials, GenX and Boomers struggle with word comprehension quite a lot around the internet.
Honestly, schools have always given the bare minimum. For further language enhancement you either do it yourself or you move on to get Bachelor's, Master's, PHDs and so on.
The more academia you handle the better your written language, reading comprehension and communication skills become. This is true for every generation.
You do realize that the majority of adults in this country cannot read above a sixth grade level? it's not dire? I don't think that's correct. Especially because Gen Z and Gen Alpha are facing a documented literacy crisis.
Believe it or not, illiterate kids do make it into college. Especially state schools and community colleges. I can pull papers I wrote in high school and compare them to the papers and essays I'm reading at both the undergrad and graduate level and what I wrote in high school is better than the work these kids are turning in at the upper levels of education.
Maybe you're lucky and live in an area where education is taken seriously. I live in a conservative hellhole of a state. When I say the situation is dire, I mean I literally tried to explain a situation in written form twice, and then busted out rubber ducks for a VISUAL AID for a LAW student (graduated undergrad last year, about 23 years old).
He still didn't understand.
It really is that dire.
And as for not graduating.... I don't think you realize how much parents still try (and sometimes successfully) bully collegiate administrators and faculty. Those angry "you need to make the material accessible to my student!" parents don't just stop sending emails, especially when they think they're entitled to some say because they're paying for their kid to get a degree. And I'm not talking about actual accomodations, I'm talking about demands to dumb down the material.
It’s not even due to anything we did or are doing. I’m not even saying we’re more intelligent by any means. We just lucked out by getting our education at its most advanced before AI.
They can make fun of me all they want. I just wonder if they’ll use ChatGPT or Gemini to look up their insults.
21
u/dblrb 6h ago
I do think it’s possible we will be the most educated generation that has or will ever be. I mean unless you’re going to tell me LLMs are going away and they’re not.