{"id":94802,"date":"2025-03-24T03:00:39","date_gmt":"2025-03-24T07:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=94802"},"modified":"2025-03-23T21:58:13","modified_gmt":"2025-03-24T01:58:13","slug":"postcards-from-academias-zombie-apocalypse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2025\/03\/24\/postcards-from-academias-zombie-apocalypse\/","title":{"rendered":"Postcards from academia&#8217;s zombie apocalypse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.honest-broker.com\/p\/whats-happening-to-students\" target=\"_blank\">Ted Gioia<\/a> points out exactly why them there kids ain&#8217;t learnin&#8217; no more:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Ted-Gioia-The-Honest-Broker-banner.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Ted-Gioia-The-Honest-Broker-banner-480x160.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"160\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-84928\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Ted-Gioia-The-Honest-Broker-banner-480x160.png 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Ted-Gioia-The-Honest-Broker-banner-150x50.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Ted-Gioia-The-Honest-Broker-banner.png 728w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[High school students] just care about the next fix \u2014 because that&#8217;s how addicts operate. They have no long term plan, just short term needs.<\/p>\n<p>They can&#8217;t get back to their phones fast enough.<\/p>\n<p>How bad is it for educators right now?<\/p>\n<p>Check out this commentary from one experienced teacher, who finds more engaged students in prison than a college classroom.<\/p>\n<p>This comes from Corey McCall, a member of <em>The Honest Broker<\/em> community who recently <a href=\"https:\/\/www.honest-broker.com\/p\/the-decline-of-the-novel\/comment\/71518718\" target=\"_blank\">posted this comment<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>I saw this decline in both reading ability and interest occur firsthand between 2006 and 2021 &#8230; I had experience teaching undergrads who hadn&#8217;t comprehended the material before, but hadn&#8217;t faced the challenge of students who could read it but who simply didn&#8217;t care &#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Since 2021 I&#8217;ve been teaching part-time in prison, and incarcerated students really want to learn. They love to read and think along with authors such as Plato, Descartes, and Simone de Beauvoir. I am teaching <strong>Intro to Theater<\/strong> this semester (the story of how this happened is interesting, but is irrelevant here) and students have been poring over <strong>Oedipus the King<\/strong> and asking why this amazing play isn&#8217;t performed more regularly alongside plays like <strong>Hamilton<\/strong> and <strong>The Lion King<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I believe that there is hope for the humanities and perhaps for culture more generally, but it will be found in unusual places. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;ve made a similar claim <a href=\"https:\/\/www.honest-broker.com\/p\/the-real-crisis-in-humanities-isnt\" target=\"_blank\">in this article<\/a> \u2014 where I look outside of college for a rebirth of the humanities. It would be great if it happened in classrooms, too, but I fear that they are now the epicenter of the zombie wars. <\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Alas, I fear the number of zombie students is still growing \u2014 and at an accelerated pace.<\/p>\n<p>Jonathan Haidt, who has taken the lead in exposing this crisis \u2014 and thus gets attacked fiercely by zombie apologists \u2014 shares horrifying trendlines from <a href=\"https:\/\/monitoringthefuture.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Monitoring the Future<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This group at the University of Michigan has studied student behavior since 1975. But what&#8217;s happening now is unprecedented.<\/p>\n<p>Students are literally finding it <em>too hard to think<\/em>. So they can&#8217;t learn new things. <\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_94803\" style=\"width: 738px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Screenshot-2025-03-24-at-21-52-40-Whats-Happening-to-Students-by-Ted-Gioia.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-94803\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Screenshot-2025-03-24-at-21-52-40-Whats-Happening-to-Students-by-Ted-Gioia.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"728\" height=\"760\" class=\"size-full wp-image-94803\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Screenshot-2025-03-24-at-21-52-40-Whats-Happening-to-Students-by-Ted-Gioia.png 728w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Screenshot-2025-03-24-at-21-52-40-Whats-Happening-to-Students-by-Ted-Gioia-480x501.png 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Screenshot-2025-03-24-at-21-52-40-Whats-Happening-to-Students-by-Ted-Gioia-613x640.png 613w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Screenshot-2025-03-24-at-21-52-40-Whats-Happening-to-Students-by-Ted-Gioia-144x150.png 144w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 728px) 100vw, 728px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-94803\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/JonHaidt\/status\/1900546509516541975\" target=\"_blank\">Source<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<p>Below are more ugly numbers from another in-depth study \u2014 which looks at how children spend their day. It reveals that children <em>under the age of two<\/em> are already spending more than an hour per day on screens.<\/p>\n<p>YouTube usage for this group has more than doubled in just four years.<\/p>\n<p>Poor and marginalized communities are hurt the most. As your income drops, your children&#8217;s screen time more than doubles. <\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_94804\" style=\"width: 863px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Daily-screen-use-by-age-2024.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-94804\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Daily-screen-use-by-age-2024-853x466.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"853\" height=\"466\" class=\"size-large wp-image-94804\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Daily-screen-use-by-age-2024-853x466.jpg 853w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Daily-screen-use-by-age-2024-480x262.jpg 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Daily-screen-use-by-age-2024-150x82.jpg 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Daily-screen-use-by-age-2024-768x420.jpg 768w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Daily-screen-use-by-age-2024-1536x839.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Daily-screen-use-by-age-2024.jpg 1914w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 853px) 100vw, 853px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-94804\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commonsensemedia.org\/sites\/default\/files\/research\/report\/2025-common-sense-census-web-2.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">2025 study by Common Sense<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<p>In other words, these children are getting turned into screen addicts long before they enter the school system.<\/p>\n<p>This is why teachers are speaking out. They see the fallout every day in their classrooms. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ted Gioia points out exactly why them there kids ain&#8217;t learnin&#8217; no more: [High school students] just care about the next fix \u2014 because that&#8217;s how addicts operate. They have no long term plan, just short term needs. They can&#8217;t get back to their phones fast enough. How bad is it for educators right now? [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,28,15],"tags":[59,374,139,547,504],"class_list":["post-94802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-media","category-technology","tag-addiction","tag-children","tag-psychology","tag-smartphones","tag-teenagers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-oF4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94802"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94806,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94802\/revisions\/94806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}