double magicNum = 0.41;
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Nov 21, 2024
There's a major concept called the "hidden curriculum" – the idea that education not only teaches you explicit facts, skills, and concepts, but forces you to learn skills without you even realizing it. The hidden curriculum includes things like not interrupting people/waiting your turn, conflict resolution, understanding and civilly backing up/debunking various opinions, social conditioning, etc.
Another item that once was a huge part of the hidden curriculum is penmanship. Many states still teach cursive, yet the requirement that you use it in *high school* has almost completely disappeared. In the early 2000s, a small minority of students had typing accommodations if they had psychological motor impairments that affected gripping and manipulating a pen, but not hammering out characters on a keyboard (such as autism). By the 2010s, these accommodations were pretty much rolled out to everyone. No one wrote their essays in cursive. In fact, they COULDN'T. The rule was "12 point font, double-spaced, in Times New Roman... and believe me, I can tell if you mess with the margins or kerning!"
This means that a lot of kids are getting into college without having legible, efficient cursive handwriting. Even if their teacher bans laptops (a ban they can't enforce on the kids who have accommodations), they might just write their notes in a shorthand instead.
And the classes might even post the PowerPoints online.
It's pretty much a rule now that larger lecture halls – the kind you would actually call a lecture hall and not a classroom – have PA systems. This, arguably, encourages people not to practice good listening skills, and for a lot of people, they'd be able to hear the teacher just fine if they exercised concentration AND the students around them didn't stim or type.
This also means that professors themselves are more likely to speak in a vernacular dialect – where "identity" is pronounced "idennidy" – where "gonna" is used heavily and "pants" rhymes with "dance". The concept of affected diction has pretty much fallen by the wayside, especially since speaking across a large hall without a microphone is less common.
College educated people nowadays might only use formal English in essays, and may actually view its use in day to day life as pointless, pretentious, and stunted.
It's also a lot easier to get through college without doing as much long-form reading. The schools have online libraries full of PDFs, and you are more than welcome to use CMD/CTRL-F and other search features instead of using the index and actually READING. If you're writing a brief essay, you might be able to cite even regular websites. You simply won't spend as much time, or any time, in the library. You might even BS your way through a book by just skimming it and including the citations as is, while reading Sparknotes, etc.
The attitude on Wikipedia is also a pretty big part of this. I remember, going into the 2010s, that the general attitude shifted from "Don't use, ever" to "Wikipedia is actually a great resource, and much of the information there is cited to reliable sources, and you should go ahead and use it as a "springboard" to find the information – but don't rely on it or cite it." But think about it – how is that different from using ChatGPT to get you the general information, and then finding the information elsewhere – instead of actually reading a book? It's arguably plagiarism.
But speaking of that – occasionally, you do have a brief response on Canvas these days where you aren't even asked for a source, or are even told by a professor that you don't have to cite your sources – literally reddit tier consensual plagiarism.
Circling back around to listening skills – spending less time in the library means less time in an environment where you're supposed to sit still and keep your voice down. You don't exercise that skill at home, nor in a loud urban starbucks. And much of the library might have actually done away with that rule as if it were sidewalk etiquette – the library has "quiet floors" now, and the rest is basically that urban starbucks.
Also, fewer people are staying in the dorms unless the school literally forces them too. Dorms arguably teach people to adjust their habits 24/7 for others around them, get used to having very little in life, and learn about living in general. It's a preparation for adult life, but one with actually less privacy than you may have in your parents' slab home where walking too quickly isn't obviously stomping.
And ZOOM means "going to college" is like "visiting our website" – you can do it from the same computer you use for masturbating and taxes.
Another item that once was a huge part of the hidden curriculum is penmanship. Many states still teach cursive, yet the requirement that you use it in *high school* has almost completely disappeared. In the early 2000s, a small minority of students had typing accommodations if they had psychological motor impairments that affected gripping and manipulating a pen, but not hammering out characters on a keyboard (such as autism). By the 2010s, these accommodations were pretty much rolled out to everyone. No one wrote their essays in cursive. In fact, they COULDN'T. The rule was "12 point font, double-spaced, in Times New Roman... and believe me, I can tell if you mess with the margins or kerning!"
This means that a lot of kids are getting into college without having legible, efficient cursive handwriting. Even if their teacher bans laptops (a ban they can't enforce on the kids who have accommodations), they might just write their notes in a shorthand instead.
And the classes might even post the PowerPoints online.
It's pretty much a rule now that larger lecture halls – the kind you would actually call a lecture hall and not a classroom – have PA systems. This, arguably, encourages people not to practice good listening skills, and for a lot of people, they'd be able to hear the teacher just fine if they exercised concentration AND the students around them didn't stim or type.
This also means that professors themselves are more likely to speak in a vernacular dialect – where "identity" is pronounced "idennidy" – where "gonna" is used heavily and "pants" rhymes with "dance". The concept of affected diction has pretty much fallen by the wayside, especially since speaking across a large hall without a microphone is less common.
College educated people nowadays might only use formal English in essays, and may actually view its use in day to day life as pointless, pretentious, and stunted.
It's also a lot easier to get through college without doing as much long-form reading. The schools have online libraries full of PDFs, and you are more than welcome to use CMD/CTRL-F and other search features instead of using the index and actually READING. If you're writing a brief essay, you might be able to cite even regular websites. You simply won't spend as much time, or any time, in the library. You might even BS your way through a book by just skimming it and including the citations as is, while reading Sparknotes, etc.
The attitude on Wikipedia is also a pretty big part of this. I remember, going into the 2010s, that the general attitude shifted from "Don't use, ever" to "Wikipedia is actually a great resource, and much of the information there is cited to reliable sources, and you should go ahead and use it as a "springboard" to find the information – but don't rely on it or cite it." But think about it – how is that different from using ChatGPT to get you the general information, and then finding the information elsewhere – instead of actually reading a book? It's arguably plagiarism.
But speaking of that – occasionally, you do have a brief response on Canvas these days where you aren't even asked for a source, or are even told by a professor that you don't have to cite your sources – literally reddit tier consensual plagiarism.
Circling back around to listening skills – spending less time in the library means less time in an environment where you're supposed to sit still and keep your voice down. You don't exercise that skill at home, nor in a loud urban starbucks. And much of the library might have actually done away with that rule as if it were sidewalk etiquette – the library has "quiet floors" now, and the rest is basically that urban starbucks.
Also, fewer people are staying in the dorms unless the school literally forces them too. Dorms arguably teach people to adjust their habits 24/7 for others around them, get used to having very little in life, and learn about living in general. It's a preparation for adult life, but one with actually less privacy than you may have in your parents' slab home where walking too quickly isn't obviously stomping.
And ZOOM means "going to college" is like "visiting our website" – you can do it from the same computer you use for masturbating and taxes.
