>>11369847People are going to make a lot of excuses, but it's honestly -worse- than this. The average math or engineering student that I see struggles to write a sentence explaining why a given statement is wrong, or why one thing follows from another. Forget about being able to write an insightful essay about some piece of literature they read. If a set of directions has more than two sentences in it, they're almost guaranteed to get lost or give up.
A typical class of forty students seems to have about five to eight who really qualify as literate, and these are generally the students who actually know what they're doing. Another fifteen or so can memorize and carry out basic procedures. The rest don't seem to be capable of anything academically, whether it's basic mathematics or writing two coherent sentences. There's no reason for them to be wasting time in a classroom instead of heading to a factory or gin to work with what they've got.
