Originally Posted by Hydro Junkie

I would have to agree, STEM and reading are definitely lacking in the younger crowd these days. HELL, it's a crime how bad people coming out of school are when it comes to the basics. I see the math skills that I had to know in the third grade that people that graduated from high school can't do. Understanding high school level reading is sketchy at best. I wouldn't even let many of the people at work help me build a plastic model as they can't figure out the diagrams in the instructions. I think it's come down to "just get them through the system" more than it is teaching them how to do the basics. Even learning how to write in long hand has been dropped in many school districts. Many of the courses that had to be taken have been dropped in favor of teaching students to use computers while spelling has been changed to "text slang", maybe not in school but in life. I could see the problem starting back in 1989. I had just got out of the Navy and was working as a convenience store cashier. Had two girls(both seniors in the local high school) come in one night and asked how much it would cost to buy two candy bars and two cans of Coke. Back then, it was $.59 for a candy bar and $.89 for a can of soda, regardless of who made it. Anyway, I asked them why they couldn't figure that out and the answer I got was "I don't have my calculator with me". I then made them both look bad by going through the following formula:
two candy bars, rounded up to .60 makes $1.20
two Cokes, rounded up to .90 makes $1.80
add that together and you get $3.00
tax is 9 cents per dollar, times three for a total of .27. Subtract the four cents you rounded up for a total of .23
add the $3.00 and $.23 and you get $3.23. When I rang the purchase up, I was off by a whopping $.01.
When the total came up on the register, the girls looked at me, totally shocked, and asked "How did you do that?" My answer was "I just used my brain and basic math, something you should be able to do by the time you both graduate".
Needless to say, that totally upset them and they walked out, leaving the candy and Coke on the counter while being laughed at by other customers. Even in my own family, my youngest brother signed up for a math class during his senior year of high school. His class was told, by the instructor, that they had to have a list of items by the end of the first week or they would be dropped from the class. First thing on the list was a CASIO SCIENTIFIC CALCULATOR!!!!!!! Back in the late 1980s, that was a very expensive item and it got a very fast visit to the school by my mother. When asked why students had to have THAT SPECIFIC CALCULATOR, the teacher replied that it was needed for some of the math the students should either already know or didn't need to learn as it wasn't part of the curriculum. The instructor then repeated that everyone in the class had to have one or be dropped so, grudgingly, she went and bought the required calculator and sent off a letter to the school board complaining about it. Needless to say, she never got a response.