The question looks ridiculous, but mom went to class.
Need Extra Time? A Support Animal? A Private Room? Your Mom?
The Atlantic discusses the Accommodation Nation
Juan Collar, a physicist at the University of Chicago, told me that so many students now take their exams in the school’s low-distraction testing outposts that they have become more distracting than the main classrooms.
The increase is driven by more young people getting diagnosed with conditions such as ADHD, anxiety, and depression, and by universities making the process of getting accommodations easier. The change has occurred disproportionately at the most prestigious and expensive institutions. At Brown and Harvard, more than 20 percent of undergraduates are registered as disabled. At Amherst, that figure is 34 percent.
“You hear ‘students with disabilities’ and it’s not kids in wheelchairs,” one professor at a selective university, who requested anonymity because he doesn’t have tenure, told me. “It’s just not. It’s rich kids getting extra time on tests.” Even as poor students with disabilities still struggle to get necessary provisions, elite universities have entered an age of accommodation. Instead of leveling the playing field, the system has put the entire idea of fairness at risk.
Recently, mental-health issues have joined ADHD as a primary driver of the accommodations boom. Over the past decade, the number of young people diagnosed with depression or anxiety has exploded. L. Scott Lissner, the ADA coordinator at Ohio State University, told me that 36 percent of the students registered with OSU’s disability office have accommodations for mental-health issues, making them the largest group of students his office serves.
Students with social-anxiety disorder can get a note so the professor doesn’t call on them without warning. Some students get approved for housing accommodations, including single rooms and emotional-support animals.
One administrator told me that a student at a public college in California had permission to bring their mother to class. This became a problem, because the mom turned out to be an enthusiastic class participant.
Research confirms what intuition suggests: Extra time can confer an advantage to students who don’t have a disability. Some students are clearly taking advantage of an easily gamed system. The Varsity Blues college-admissions scandal showed that there are wealthy parents who are willing to pay unscrupulous doctors to provide disability diagnoses to their nondisabled children, securing them extra time on standardized tests. Studies have found that a significant share of students exaggerate symptoms or don’t put in enough effort to get valid results on diagnostic tests.
Soon, some schools may have more students receiving accommodations than not, a scenario that would have seemed absurd just a decade ago. Already, at one law school, 45 percent of students receive academic accommodations.
As more elite students get accommodations, the system worsens the problem it was designed to solve. The ADA was supposed to make college more equitable. Instead, accommodations have become another way for the most privileged students to press their advantage.
Frankly, this is ridiculous.
Colleges need to prepare students for the real world. And in the real world you cannot call on mom or get extra time.
Kids are over-diagnosed and over-pampered. If you have to bring mom to class, you don’t belong in college at all.
The need for mom is just one isolated case. But Brown and Harvard have more than 20 percent of undergraduates registered as disabled. At Amherst, that figure is 34 percent.
That’s not isolated. It’s rampant fraud.
It happens because universities allow it to happen. And doctors allow it to happen. But it starts with Woke administrators actively encouraged this behavior in the name of fairness.
The same group that coddles these kids also promotes non-binary madness and men in women’s sports.
Three More Replies
The Average College Student Is Illiterate
In a 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 32% of 12th graders scored below the “basic” reading level, meaning they likely can’t identify supporting details in a text for literal comprehension.
A Persuasion article make the case The Average College Student Is Illiterate
I’m Gen X. I was pretty young when I earned my PhD, so I’ve been a professor for a long time—over 30 years. If you’re not in academia, or it’s been a while since you were in college, you might not know this: the students are not what they used to be.
I teach at a regional public university in the United States. Our students are average on just about any dimension you care to name—aspirations, intellect, socio-economic status, physical fitness. They wear hoodies and yoga pants and like Buffalo wings. They listen to Zach Bryan and Taylor Swift. That’s in no way a put-down: I firmly believe that the average citizen deserves a shot at a good education and even more importantly a shot at a good life. All I mean is that our students are representative; they’re neither the bottom of the academic barrel nor the cream off the top.
Reading
Most of our students are functionally illiterate. This is not a joke. By “functionally illiterate” I mean “unable to read and comprehend adult novels by people like Barbara Kingsolver, Colson Whitehead, and Richard Powers.” I picked those three authors because they are all recent Pulitzer Prize winners, an objective standard of “serious adult novel.”
I’m not saying our students just prefer genre books or graphic novels or whatever. No, our average graduate literally could not read a serious adult novel cover-to-cover and understand what they read. They just couldn’t do it. They don’t have the desire to try, the vocabulary to grasp what they read, and most certainly not the attention span to finish. For them to sit down and try to read a book like The Overstory might as well be me attempting an Iron Man triathlon: much suffering with zero chance of success.
Students get exam questions wrong simply because they didn’t even take the time to read the question properly. Reading anything more than a menu is a chore and to be avoided.
They also lie about it. I wrote the textbook for a course I regularly teach. I did everything I could to make the writing lively and packed with my most engaging examples. The majority of students don’t read it. Oh, they will come to my office hours (occasionally) because they are bombing the course and tell me that they have been doing the reading, but it’s obvious they are lying. The most charitable interpretation is that they looked at some of the words, didn’t understand anything, pretended that counted as reading, and returned to looking at TikTok.
This study says that 65% of college students reported that they skipped buying or renting a textbook because of cost. I believe they didn’t buy the books, but I’m skeptical that cost is the true reason, as opposed to just the excuse they offer.
I’ve written about cheating in “Why AI is Destroying Academic Integrity,” so I won’t repeat it here, but the cheating tsunami has definitely changed what assignments I give. I can’t assign papers any more because I’ll just get AI back, and there’s nothing I can do to make it stop.
What’s Changed?
- Chronic absenteeism. As a friend in Sociology put it, “Attendance is a HUGE problem—many just treat class as optional.” Last semester across all sections, my average student missed two weeks of class.
- Disappearing students. Students routinely just vanish at some point during the semester. They don’t officially drop out or withdraw from the course, they simply quit coming. No email, no notification to anyone in authority about some problem. They just pull an Amelia Earhart. It’s gotten to the point that on the first day of class, especially in lower-division, I tell the students, “Look to your right. Now look to your left. One of you will be gone by the end of the semester. Don’t let it be you.”
- They can’t sit in a seat for 50 minutes. Students routinely get up during a 50 minute class, sometimes just 15 minutes in, and leave the classroom. I’m supposed to believe that they suddenly, urgently need the toilet, but the reality is that they are going to look at their phones.
- It’s the phones, stupid. They are absolutely addicted to their phones. When I go work out at the Campus Rec Center, easily half of the students there are just sitting on the machines scrolling on their phones.
What am I supposed to do? Keep standards high and fail them all? That’s not an option for untenured faculty who would like to keep their jobs. I’m a tenured full professor. I could probably get away with that for a while, but sooner or later the Dean’s going to bring me in for a sit-down.
All this might sound like an angry rant. I’m not angry, though, not at all. I’m just sad.
The above is from Hilarius Bookbinder, the pseudonym for a tenured professor with an Ivy League PhD who writes Scriptorium Philosophia.
I know what HB is talking about. I have seen young adults sending texts to each other despite standing 3 feet apart. The preferred, and sometimes mandatory tool of conversation is a text.
How many people actually use the phone for talking instead of texting?
I just asked Chrome. “While precise, up-to-date figures are hard to pinpoint, surveys suggest a majority of smartphone users text more than they talk, with some studies indicating only about 43% of smartphone owners make calls, while over 70% use texting.”
And here’s an interesting fact. The number of documented Emotional Support Animals (ESAs) has risen dramatically, from around 65,000 in 2015 to over 240,000 in 2024, according to the National Service Animal Registry.
It’s phone addiction. It’s game addiction. It’s TikTok addiction. And it’s ADHD that stems from all of the preceding.
Oh wait, those are disabilities. Better call mom, get a note from the doctor, and demand more time for tests.
And one more thing. Teachers need a raise, especially Chicago teachers.
I will offer some suggestions in a follow-up post.
Related Posts
School Choice Dies in Illinois, Congratulations Teachers as 35% Read at Grade Level
The teacher’s union and Gov. J.B. Pritzker kills scholarships for 9,600 poor children.
Ability to Read, Write, or Do Math Is No Longer Required to Teach in New Jersey
Teachers’ unions prevail in New Jersey. Kids will suffer.
In Chicago There’s Under a 50 Percent Chance Police Show Up If You are Shot
Good luck in Chicago getting the police to show up if you are shot, stabbed, a victim of domestic violence, or any number of other serious crimes.
Addendum
One reader, an educator, said the article was BS.
A long-term follower on X says this:
Paul: Teacher here; college STEM class 6 years. Quit for reasons listed in this article. Reading/math skills = bad. The disabled list was the “get out of jail free cards.”
One guy missed 11 of the first 20 classes and somehow it was my fault. He had nothing wrong other than lazy.
Mish: Can both be correct?
About their own experiences, yes, but not in general.
Other readers, not educators, have similar experiences with Paul. The overall story may or may not be a bit hyped up to make a point, but it sure rings true in general.
And it’s amplified by other comments to this post.
One reader said the article was BS.
A long-term follower on X says this:
Paul: Teacher here; college STEM class 6 years. Quit for reasons listed in this article. Reading/math skills = bad. The disabled list was the “get out of jail free cards.”
One guy missed 11 of the first 20 classes and somehow it was my fault. He had nothing wrong other than lazy.
https://x.com/POSeedum/status/1996618859693199438
Mish: Can both be correct?
About their own experiences, yes, but not in general.
Other readers here, not educators, have similar experiences with Paul. The overall story may be a bit hyped up to make a point but it sure rings true in general.
OT – Brought Up by Ben, But I don’t mind the discussion.
Did you see the unredacted video?
I did. I failed to take screen shots though. Two men were in the water hanging on to a tiny piece of floating debris from the boat.
There was literally nothing left to sink.
You can tell that even from the redacted video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bDR4fum73Q
1 minute mark.
What was left of that boat?
Judge Napolitano discussed it today. I think he saw the unredacted video of two people clinging to debris from his comments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT7XPXh6ras
First 4 minutes – excellent
It was clearly “Comin’ Right for Us!” in the South Park sense of the phrase.
Anecdotes are like assholes, everyone has one.
Good pot stirring though.
The discussion would have to be nuanced in a way this format doesn’t really promote (and it certainly wouldn’t drive eyeballs.)
Unfortunately, much of this is truth. Education has largely become a consumer good with butts in the seats as important as flyers are to airlines. Raise the tuition price and the student receives an inflated grade in exchange in too many cases today. The student is the biggest loser as he or she is unable to secure meaningful job OR keep one. Sign of the times.
Yes, you can bring your mom to class with you… if she’s hot. And bring a ‘cry tent’ with you so I can have some alone time with your hot mom.
You win Comment of the Day.
Trumps emotional support dawgs are his Jan 6th insurrection ~ turned ICE agents, Fox News journalists and his MAGA sycophants.
And his patsy son-in-law? He just negotiates private grain deals between Russia and the Saudis…
The American farmers must not have sent Trump any underage daughters in a while.
LOL >>>
It’s well known through the ag industry, that one must sacrifice a virgin to the Pig God for a bountiful harvest.
the farmers are full of shit. they created EBT program. the 2nd biggest welfare queens in all amerika, right behind the owners of the empire. the NYFED owners. i always tip my hat when i walk by maiden lane, and LOL at the scam. bombs away for bucks.
CORRECT!
I am a farmer now and I walk as invisibly as possible among them every day. The corporate farm side is a massive welfare program. Corporate farms thrive on undocumented labor/slavery. The hypocrisy is cultural.
The small farmers are getting squeezed between a rock and hard spot if they do not have the skills to navigate the subsidy world. Every aspect of conventional farming has gotten more expensive and margins are only maintained through bailouts and government programs.
Most difficult of all? The farm community is ultra conformist and any dissent from the MAGA cult is not tolerated. The soy/corn culture is intolerant of anything that does not improve corn/soy YIELD!
My approach to farming is radically different than my neighbors as I am focused on building soils and bio-diversity in order to produce higher margin products on formerly depleted land.
Curiosity, creativity and hard work are inherent in success!
I hope to leave my land healthy and thriving when I pass in a few decades.
The overheated servers at CME last Friday did not stop the grain deals.
democracy works. why plato and the boys warned against it in the republic. the greatest book on democracy. when the people are assholes you cannot let them elect themselves. amerikans are assholes the past 80 years. uniparty imperial warmongers killing innocent humans for BS from indochina and iraq to soon to be VZ.
been going to college since 1978. for fun. rich world usa i have more time than god. i detect no difference with the students today. only thing i notice is they are more accepting of old geezers like me, today than was the case 30 and 40 years ago. a big improvement. the kids are alright. the ancient greeks who were idiots complained about the younger generations. the word idiotes i learned in a political science class just 2 years ago. look it up and learn.
I’m only around a few younglings … they do seem much kinder than all of us that came before.
Shockingly bad at math though.
correct on the kindness. i guess you haven’t spent time in bay area. all MIT and stanford and caltech grads. they can do their times table faster than you can fart.
I get fantastically educated and motivated kids from our schools for internships. We tend to find what we look for?
I don’t hire them or anything… these are just random social contacts.
in the real world, your PEDOTUS, father in law let’s you grift from the saudis and israelis. amerikan empire is depressed for good reason. it’s a democratic war mongering empire of grifters. i’m just surprised more people don’t off themselves here.
“Most of our students are functionally illiterate.”
Indoctrination, over education.
ZH: “The National Education Association wants students to become social justice advocates instead of learning facts and skills, according to Defending Education.”
Math is not a social justice subject. Social justice is a Marxist term.
“One of the earliest known uses of “social justice” was in 1840 by Luigi Taparelli, an advisor to the Vatican.”
https://insights.taylorandfrancis.com/social-justice/what-is-social-justice/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20earliest%20known,same%20as%20others%20in%20society.
Private universities are profitable financial institutions. There job is to ring as much money out of the student as they can. Accommodating students increases profits. Competition leads to increased accommodations in order to increase high-income students. It’s the American way.
exactly correct. the university customer is the paying mommy and daddy. whether that is in peoria or peking.
The “disability” should be listed on the transcript of the student. That way future employers know that the student required more time than others to complete the academic requirements and will need more time to complete employer assignments.
My son has ADHD along with Autism Spectrum Disorder. I did get him a single room due to his documented disability (he has continuous documentation since third grade). No one would have wanted to be in the same room with him anyway. After picking him up after his first year away at college, he hadn’t washed his sheets once in a year. The second package of sheets was unopened in his dresser.
Ah!!! Now that the Admiral in charge of the strike is testifying in front of Congress behind closed doors, the Rest of the Story from Paul Harvey emerges:
In a devastating blow to Democrats and the media-manufactured “double-tap war crime” narrative, ABC News has now confirmed what the Pentagon already knew: the two alleged survivors of the cartel-linked cocaine boat were NOT surrendering, shipwrecked victims, they climbed back onto the vessel, attempted to recover narcotics, and maintained communication with other smuggling assets.
That makes them active combatants, not “victims.” And just like that, the Left’s latest hoax, the “double-tap strike” smear campaign, detonated on impact.
You are an idiot if you call them “active combatants”
Second, have you even seen what remained of the wreckage?
You are falling for total CYA bullshit because you have TWS.
Did you see the unredacted video?
I did. I failed to take screen shots though. Two men were in the water hanging on to a tiny piece of floating debris from the boat.
There was literally nothing left to sink.
You can tell that even from the redacted video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bDR4fum73Q
1 minute mark.
What was left of that boat?
Judge Napolitano discussed it yesterday. I think he saw the unredacted video of two people clinging to debris from his comments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT7XPXh6ras
First 4 minutes – excellent
i’m a non interventionist libertarian. but my good pal who was in caves with osama bin laden delivering them amerikan cash and RPGs to war with USSR told me a truth about war. to make believe there are rules in warfare is like handing out speeding tickets at INDY 500. it’s preposterous. we bomb the living hell out of innocent humans all over the globe for all our lifetimes. no threats at all. from rice farmers to rug traders……..
Yes I’ve seen the video. Here’s the corroboration from your favorite, left leaning propaganda organization. You and I aren’t military experts, & we certainly don’t have all of the data / video / intelligence that Admiral Bradley had. FAR FROM IT. This IS ALL FOR SHOW to try to make TACO & Hegseth look bad. Again, I’m fine with your calling it murder. Your opinion doesn’t matter. Neither does mine. Time will tell whether or not TACO’s expanded War on Drugs hurts or helps him. IMHO, I’m glad he’s closed MX border, is deporting millions or illegals & is fighting naro-terrorists.
Exclusive | Survivors of Boat Strike Were Actively Continuing Drug Mission, Admiral to Tell Lawmakers – WSJ
Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley plans to say he and his legal adviser concluded the two survivors were attempting to continue their drug run, making them and the already-damaged vessel legitimate targets for another attack, two defense officials said.
Bradley was watching the live feed as the operation unfolded, the Pentagon officials said, as was Hegseth for part of the attack. The first part of the strike set the boat on fire and killed nine people, the officials said. It took an hour before the survivors were visible on the live feed, a third defense official said.
Bradley, in making his decision, considered that other “enemy” vessels were nearby and that the survivors were believed to be communicating via radio with others in the drug-smuggling network, the officials said.
But if Bradley’s account is accurate, “it would appear to provide a legitimate explanation for the second strike,” said Geoffrey Corn, a former military lawyer who now directs the Center for Military Law and Policy at Texas Tech.
He seems more like a paid troll. Not sure if he is writing from Foggy Bottom or GCHQ in Cheltenham.
21 boats and 80 people killed so far in these strikes and not ONE photo or video showing drugs in the waters or any other proof of the alleged drug smuggling. That sends off alarm bells in my mind.
https://factually.co/fact-checks/justice/evidence-confirming-us-targeted-vessel-drug-smuggling-3b99f1
If you remember just after Israel invaded Gaza a couple years ago, Israel showed video of the Hamas tunnels to show the world (from their point of view) why they were doing what they were doing.
The one I saw was a sub. I don’t know of any other use for a private sub.
i’ve been on private submarine. tour to see sea life. it was wonderful.
Based on where it was, I don’t think that’s what they were up to.
What a strange imagination
A small open boat hit by a missile
Do you imagine it poked a little hole in the bottom, or do you think it would blow it to matchstick?
and do you think the survivors were swimming toward the US with bales on their head?
there used to be laws against public fellatio
I have no idea what type of kinetic weapon struck the boat. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a GBU-57 though. Adm Bradley will testify that after an hour, the two survivors were back on-board. So, the boat was not destroyed by the first strike, meaning it was a legitimate target for another strike or whatever to send it to the bottom of the sea.
OH. MY. GOD! They had sacks of dope! They could have flung them at those military vessels, possibly hit one, and caused a resounding THUMP, audible to our sailors!
They earned the 3 million worth of ordinance they received!
BTW a lot of schools are beginning to ban cell phones. Great idea
Crazy they were ever allowed. I know if I had the arcade in my pocket back in the day, I would NOT be paying attention anything else.
The Trump Administration needs a lot of help…
not with attacking Universities & their students…
but with addressing reality.
And perhaps help with what “total exoneration” actually means…
unless the plan is just to throw everyone under the school bus that disputes
“Nothing bad can happen, it can only good happen”
They don’t want the little people protesting in the streets over economic issues, so they divide them with controversial social issues.
Abortion used to be the go-to issue, but since that issue has been settled by the Supreme Court, they now have people fighting over trans women in sports and bathroom rights for ‘furries’ who demand litter boxes in all public bathrooms.
Thanks for proving the point about the stories for low IQ people in the other comment. It really is as easy as lying bold faced now.
Ubiquitous podcast guest Professor Dave Collum has been teaching Chemistry at Cornell U. for 45 years. He said that he noticed a stark difference each consecutive freshman class which he traced back from the free-range latch-key Gen-X self-starters who gave way to the minivan, playdate, car-seat, stranger-danger, day-care later generations when they were children.
ADHD is 98% bullshit. Watched this myself with my (now ex) wife and her little girl. Our divorce stemmed mainly from my insistence that she get WAY less screen time and more play time. My wife insisted it was “ADHD” (like 80% of all the other women in my small town). I said “why not try less sugar and less screen time before you pump this 8-year-old with Ritalin, and see if that helps.” Nope. Since I’m not the bio dad, I had no say. We divorced shortly thereafter, as she called me a “dinosaur” and we have “very different parenting styles.” Absolutely ridiculous.
“I suck as a parent, my wife left me, and my kids hate me. Clearly, the phones are the problem.” is a convincing argument with lots of facts and references. I feel smarter for reading this.
Here you go, dummy
https://x.com/zerohedge/status/1990936851490746820
it’s sad to see functionally retarded comments like this. Get help.
LOL – downvoted by other parents who can’t admit the truth and want to blame a phantom condition. You DO know the entire origin of ADHD is complete bullshit. Look up the UCF study and how the “experts” who were pushing this crap are NOW admitting it’s a lot of bunk. You’re welcome. Funny how all this stuff (including depression etc) exploded after 2010 – when social media and smart phones showed up.
https://www.reddit.com/r/StrangeEarth/comments/1cb5idj/this_study_led_by_university_of_central_florida/
Only if you bring a bag, a pooper-scooper and afterwards clean up everything.
Hey Mish,
I’d like to speak on this article because this is my exact field and I keep seeing it pass around. To be brief: it’s bullshit.
The author is writing from a blatantly biased viewpoint and has absolutely no credentials to back himself up. Two big red flags. He never mentions any specific circumstances surrounding accommodations or why they’re given, another red flag seeing as accommodations aren’t easy to go out and get. Students often fight for months trying to get anything approved and even with that approval, professors can be a pain.
It should seem to me that this “journalist” is writing a smear piece trying to create an absurd moral panic in the same vein as “they’re putting litterboxes in schools for kids!!!!” in an attempt to get clicks from the lower IQ crowd who takes such clickbait.
And as for our professor pal, him refusing to back himself up says a lot. My students are fresh out of highschool and I don’t seem to have that problem with them anywhere in the span of an hour and 15 minutes. Methinks someone just sucks at teaching and blames the students he can’t keep the attention of.
I’m qualified to speak on this because it’s my field of study, I’m actively researching it. And I’m a bit tired of people like this deciding they’re experts too. “It’s easy to get accommodations” said the man who’s never gotten one, has zero familiarity with the process of getting one, and feels inexplicably qualified to say shit like he does.
This is the real issue with phones and technology: they’ve entitled people to thinking they are much smarter than they are, telling people they are much smarter than they are, and shouting over those who are actually much smarter than they are.
“But why are rates of diagnosis soaring?”
Easy, people actually know what to look for. 30 years ago autism was a mystery syndrome no one could really define with very little research into it. Now we know more and can diagnose it well. Same story for many other illnesses.
It’s funny to me no one bitching and moaning about this can tell you what those studies were because +they do not know+. The same way someone will rattle on and on about gender while not being able to define the basic concept.
OK – But here is a comment I got from someone who has followed me for years with no-nonsense engagement. He is not a prolific poster, but active since 2014.
Paul: Teacher here; college STEM class 6 years. Quit for reasons listed in this article. Reading/math skills = bad. The disabled list was the “get out of jail free cards.”
One guy missed 11 of the first 20 classes and somehow it was my fault. He had nothing wrong other than lazy.
https://x.com/POSeedum/status/1996618859693199438
my pal a young newly minted phd in history, prof at the time, had a chinese student try and bribe him. ha ha ha. son of a billionaire chinese man. he LOL. asked me my opinon.
My wife taught high school in a very wealthy town in the 00’s and had kids ask her “do you know who my father is”? Parents would give envelopes stuffed with $100 bills to the sports coaches for “expenses.”
ha ha ha. that’s funny as hell. my pal coached lacrosse in laguna beach. his stories are legendary. blowjobs by mommies so junior starts………
I would argue Paul, like many other professors, doesn’t quite understand what he’s saying.
There are no disability accommodations I’ve ever seen in years of doing this (I also teach stem) that would allow for a student to miss classes. None. As a professor you control the class completely. If someone was missing classes in a mandatory attendance class on that level, I would simply remove them off the roster. Keep in mind, I’m not even tenured and I can and have done this before. This is not an “experience”, it is university policy.
The wording “reasonable accommodation” is constantly scrutinized by colleges themselves and a lot of these examples would not fit under the circumstances described. Either someone is leaving something out (most likely) or someone else doesn’t understand the law.
Keep in mind though: this burden is on schools too. Many professors don’t get told what they need to know about accomodations or how they work. Onboarding is a mess.
I’m just tired of hearing that it is easy to get these accommodations when that is a provably false assertion. Before I taught, I had to fight people like Paul who simply didn’t understand that my hands struggle to handwrite because I have serious arthritis. Implying that people can just decide to bring their mom to class is a literal lie that encourages hateful attitudes to people who need assistance.
If anyone wants to debate me on this, please explain to me how you think one gets an accomodation on campus. I will wait.
agree. as a lifelong student at college since 1978. lots of time on my hands as a simple stock trader for life. one of the worst pieces of rubbish i’ve seen mish post. fantasy stuff.
Obviously someone who follows you must be
1) honest
2) knowledgeable
3) unbiased
Right? Or not right?
Paul sounds like a crank, honestly.
Also, I have followed you for years (although not in the charnel house known as X), so I must also be all these things, and yet I disagree with Paul’s general premise.
This guy gets it. I understand the motivation to stir the pot to get views, but the real story is always going to be far more nuanced than the rage bait that draws ad revenue.
This does sound bad, to be sure, if this many kids/young adults are actually in this spot.
“But it starts with Woke administrators actively encouraged this behavior in the name of fairness.”
But I can’t understand where you came up with this, Mish. The ADA is a 35-year-old Congressional law. An administrator today at a college would be a fool (and quickly fired) if they opened up the school to federal lawsuits because they didn’t want to tolerate or encourage such student behavior.
It’s fairly black and white. If a student/family has a doctor’s prescription for a federally recognized ‘disability’, you’d better hop, skip and jump to make accommodations. Or good luck with your bottom line.
And it’s not just Woke administrators trying to find this line. Trump has made an almost daily hobby of suing universities (both ‘woke’ and not) for things he does not like. If there’s a law out there (not passed by university administrators BTW), you have to follow it – according to the current regulator – or you lose big bucks (which have to be recouped by increasing tuition rates for future students)
You’re entirely correct but have you considered that people whining don’t care? They’re the locust eating the nation by calling all of the pillars their childhood rested on “stupid and woke” while getting ready to be Walmart greeters in the American golden age. One where their retirement pension matching goes bye bye.
Online education is widely available, even at small colleges. If a student is too anxious to leave home, they can get an online degree at home. Or attend junior college by day, and complete the bachelor’s online.
That’s what we do here in the
Midwest.
Thanks for your own POV. But I’m not sure you actually read what I wrote.
A university cannot tell a student to go online or attend junior college because they are “too anxious”. It’s against federal ADA law, including in the Midwest.
If you don’t like that, you can always try to get elected to Congress on that political position and change the law.
In-person universities are basically on their way out, IMO.
The antics that you describe – they’re a last-gasp effort to maintain enrollment.
You say this as if scores didn’t drop like a rock during the pandemic due to shoddy distance learning.
True, but schools were learning how to do it on the fly – all did the best they could.
After the crisis passed, online modalities were perfected.
In person lectures are inefficient. A study done on medical students years ago showed that those who skipped the lectures and read the transcribed lecture notes performed better academically. The only thing requiring actual in person attendence is lab work. You could in theory have the best academics in the country teaching classed nationwide. I think Peter Thiel is working on a program like this.
Yes, better focus with less stress and distractions – especially with STEM learning, which doesn’t require interactions with others (as the Humanities often do).
And to think these kids at prestigious schools are the spawn of the most connected people on the planet. In an “I got mine, let the rest sort it out” society we live in that is administered by “connected people ” what can we expect. If one cannot run the country, how can they expect to run a family.
America is reaping what it sows. It has turned its back on the Devine and focused only on self. This is a spiritual problem, and an ensuing carnal affect. I would not want to be a young person growing up in the cretin world the boomers have left behind.
Most economists are Economically illiterate at best. It is a soft science, with selfish core principles.
I pretty much have to have my mom sit beside me whenever I address this forum because I am never certain how big the backlash will be.
ECONOMICS was properly in the philosophy departments of university for many centuries. the computer age spewing out reams of numbers made the economists jealous of the actual hard sciences and pivoted. it’s funny as hell, imho. of course econ is soft science.
Great article. It does raise an interesting question. The conditions that Mish describes have developed in a largely free society. Despite the destructiveness of cell phones and social media, can we justify imposing restrictions on their use even if the majority of people are opposed to restrictions? At some point, do we need an adult to step in to control the children if we want to produce literate, productive, independent individuals?
And to think there is a cohort of people in our government who want to go to war with Russia and China.
“Can I bring my mom to boot camp?”
i think all 16 to 65 year olds should be mandated into militias. bring mommy and daddy
This is deliberate, and it pervades society now. Without critical thinking, there’s no “if we do this, then what” understanding.
At my hospital, for instance, any animal can be an ESA (true), so that animal can go anywhere. That’s why you will see monkeys, hamsters, etc. in a patient’s hospital room. Staff is ordered not to question it, no matter how ridiculous, for fear of a lawsuit and/or bad PR.
Won’t be long till a patient brings in their pig, burro, or snake.
And what are the requirements for being a service animal?
Not just teens–extends to some adults too, there is the case of a cabinet sec bringing his wife to official meetings, sensitive meets w/foreign leaders at home in the Pentagon & abroad, joining supposedly secret chats where warfare info was discussed, which continued until public uproar got loud. And a Pres who cannot work unless he is surrounded by toadies who are appointed because of loyal support, not competence. Both could be considered almost illiterate & undereducated even with degrees & both have a huge need for emotional support.
Ooh, boy, does this topic hit me. I’ve griped about the minute attention span that our teen to 20something’s seem to lack. I worked hard to get my kids to enjoy reading, starting them before they could read, working to expand their little minds and attention spans. I had a lot of people tell me how better behaved they were compared to other kids PRE-HIGH SCHOOL. Both were excellent students till high school, when we (reluctantly) had to get them cell phones, because when 4 people are trying to do their own thing at the same time, ya have to have access to communication. Oldest is now in trade school, youngest a senior and they never read. Ever. I’m saddened and frustrated. Both easily slid into phone addiction, since their phones aren’t treated as a tool, but more as a dopamine hit and distraction from reality. The youngest worries me most. He has no tolerance for boring, daily grinds that make up the most of today’s workforce. He will spectacularly fail if he doesn’t unplug from tiktoc and the rest of that 10 second culture. I’ve tried to get him to turn off that garbage every so often, but all that netted me was resentment. I have tried every angle to get my son to put away that damned phone, and nothing short of simply cutting him off has worked. But, hey, what do I know? I’m only a 50 year old who saw it all happening and couldn’t stop the train wreck. Younger generation is so f**ked.
My (now ex) wife went behind my back and got our 9-year-old a smart phone after we agreed to only get a flip phone for emergencies. Immediate phone addiction. Plus the iPad and all the other garbage. We’re now divorced. Arguments over that was a main driver.
Is this supposed to help your point?
I’d sure say it supports the argument. I’m guessing you’re a mom with a kid “on the spectrum” right?? You probably are double vaxxed and wore a mask in 2021. Just a guess, since you don’t understand all the studies proving this is real.
LOL do you listen to yourself?
Sounds like you’re a crappy parent who blames literally everyone else for your inability to parent. Seeing how you talk about your kids here, I wouldn’t want you as a parent either.
It’s anecdotal. My pov that cell phones are problematic. You evidently do not understand this.
Do you troll people for a reaction or do you do it because you think it’s fun? You pop off a lot of negativity, but don’t really have anything useful to add.
I believe that it was Aristotle that said “The greatest crime is to try to make unequal things equal”.
I have two kids (12, 17) in the public school system in my town. Our experience with school has not been like this. They’re both performing well ahead of national averages on all metrics and school is mostly a no-nonsense but supportive environment. Cell phones are banned and academics are fairly rigorous although there is lots of support available as needed. Of course it should be pointed out that I live in an area which educationally and economically has a standard of living much different than other parts of the US. Education is highly valued where I live, and we pay for it with property taxes. Schools are organized at the town level and not the county, and our communities are small and tightly organized around the schools. In many ways we have more in common with Scandinavia than we do with say, Alabama or Texas.
To contrast, I attended primary school in Martin County, Florida in the early 80’s, where they would pull 7-year old kids out into the hallway to be struck with wooden paddles. For some reason I only remember them paddling the black kids. I still have a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when I catch a whiff of that “school smell” when I visit my kids’ schools, however, they will never have to worry about that because the idea of systemic violence in a children’s learning environment is considered absurd where I live now.
As for the odd behaviors pointing to a breakdown in IQ among my fellow Americans, including stuff like poor math and literacy skills, believing vaccines are dangerous, believing Trump cares for them, believing it’s OK to murder people if you just label them “narco-terrorists” etc- my kids are not growing up stupid like so many others seem to have, and they will do just fine competing against these morons’ children in the marketplace of ideas and careers. My older boy is headed for a career in medicine entirely of his own volition and I see no barrier to his further success unless the cretins ban medicine altogether. The younger boy is a creative math whiz and will have a lot of options when it’s time to think about a career.
People who worry too much about stupid stuff like other people’s kids, other people’s genitalia, whether the earth is flat etc, should focus on their home and family first.
Yeah, my 17 yr old HS sr drives herself everywhere and is basically self-reliant in the areas you would expect (i.e. not self-sufficient with money at this point, but is with most things). Your community sounds just like mine. My wife has taught gifted students for the last 12 years. The students in our schools are largely amazing, and YET we still shut the schools down last year for a bombing threat… one that was real and almost happened. So we need that community watch flavor to linger, to reassert itself. Take care of your family and your home, and if you can do more than that, please do. The neighbor whose walkway we just cleared of snow, the other neighbor who sees an ambulance pull up a couple times a year, they have us on speed dial.
Just had to get Trump in there, right buddy? I’d be careful bragging about your kids exceeding the “national averages” with those averages are set for certified morons.
I have a pretty accurate idea of just how well my kids are performing among kids in my town and state. I don’t worry much about the national average since it includes third world states like Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee etc, where there is remarkably low educational attainment, and oddly enough higher support for Trump.
But they won’t because this is their culture now. America has a parasite class consisting of the hyper wealthy and the people who want to be their serfs. They’ll gladly burn your crops even if you’re their neighbor because that’s getting ahead to them. Or better, because they think you’re a demon.
They lost in the marketplace of ideas so now they want it burned down. It’s better to have smoking rubble to live in if you get to be the king of it.
Well many of us are doing what we can to stop them. And I have to say, we keep ours in the northeast in check- the crazy MAGA people with the flags are few and far between, and they are generally social pariahs.
Oligarchs don’t need to educate the locals when they plan to drain foreign nations of their best or close to it. And more recently they decided they don’t need many foreigners either, because they’re investing in super intelligence.
…
Mish, it seems like you banned my Ed Hominem nick. Sorry for whatever I wrote that offended you. If you prefer I go away, please tell me so I know it’s not a platform issue.
Having voted blue in the biggest elections of my adulthood, I can confidently say this accommodation stuff is such bullshit. I don’t know many people on the left who support this nonsense at all. I was amazed reading those factoids about 20% and 34% of ALL students at those two schools being classified as disabled. When this Gen Xer was a kid, it was a badge of pride to be able to navigate the world without a whole raft of facilitations. Some of these kids will never grow up.
Sorry for the rant, but am motivated to share that whatever outrage many sensible people feel about this issue on the right, well you’ve got more sympathetic views on the left than any MSM outlet will ever suggest. After all, they are the political class’s bitches, so they need to protect the rich and powerful, so they keep us at each other’s throats. /rant mode
I had my own place and no parental support at 17. The young ones don’t believe me when I tell them that.
So true about the “divide and conquer” tactic. TPTB create a few wacko policies (like letting genetically male boxers beat up women in a women’s league or making insurance cover experimental dangerous surgeries) and then gaslight D’s into thinking “this is your thing, you gotta support it” and gaslight R’s into thinking that’s true.
You may not know people like this on the left, but somehow they have pushed things to this point. This insanity is largely how they/them lost the election. Whether you know the other inmates in the asylum is largely irrelevant.
Extremes beget extremes and the media plays on the extremes giving us (stuck in the middle) no representation.
Frosty capiches
Only if you consider politics to happen in a vacuum where people don’t force stories about fringe cases or bullshit. Haitians eating dogs, kids who identify as cats, transgender kids in sports- some completely false, some vanishingly small issues on a national scale, yet blown out of proportion because they touch on people’s bigotry and capture the imagination as a result… This is how stupid people decide elections, on issues like this and not on what matters day to day to the vast majority of the country.
Trump’s genius is that he recognizes stupid people will obsess over issues like these and ignore the fact that their local hospital is closing and their wife has to drive 4 hours to see a gynecologist. Making the connection between healthcare funding cuts and Republicans is too big a leap for the MAGA among us.
Phil gets it. Maybe Ryan can see this light too, I have faith
Actually, you guys don’t get it at all. Sure, Haitians eating cats was bullshit (but the Trump as savior-of-cats memes were funny). Haitians being dumped on a small town in Ohio was real. And – most importantly – transing kids (the left’s obsession, it seems) is very important to a lot of people. Tax rates rise and fall. Tariffs come and go. Auto CAFE rules rise and fall. But if a kid becomes sterile because his crazy teacher (and crazy mom) led him to go on puberty blockers, it’s the end of his line. More people would agree with the Left if they stuck to economics, ecology and access to healthcare – but they can’t help obsessing about “gender-affirming care” (sterilizing children). Leave the kids alone, FFS.
Hook line and sinker
Most school boards are controlled by Republicans.
They tried to ban so many books in our local school. That was the last straw with the electorate who voted nearly all the GOPers off the school board. Some of them were literally apprehended breaking into the school library to curate their book ban list.
You’re largely missing the point. We need to drive the bus that is the USA from the center, not from the extremes.
Bingo!
I am an optimist and tend to dismiss dystopian stories about the state of the culture, especially those that have as their central premise “kids today.”
The kids are fine. Teachers have been complaining about the intelligence and work habits of their students since, at least, Socrates.
That said, the persistence of public education as a valued institution in this country, despite its obscene costs and epic failures calls my optimism into question.
Public education is a failure. Home schooled kids, taught by uneducated religious zealots, wildly outperform. It’s long past time to dismantle the system and return the choices and the money to parents and teachers.
Unfortunately, the grifters and rent seekers have way too much at stake to ever let it happen.
The kids are not fine. But, like you, I have observed the minds of home-schooled children (even among non-zealots) wildly outpace their peers. I have favored stipends (not loans) and choice since forever.
I hated my public school. From like 6th grade onwards, it felt like daycare even though that wasn’t a thing at the time (because I grew up in neighborhood with mostly single-income families). Besides the bullying, I recall being taught a “refresher” at the beginning of a new school year that reintroduced a topic we learned 4 grades earlier. I didn’t learn to cuss until later but my reaction was “WTF is this? Do they think we’re that stupid?”. Well, looking at voting patterns, maybe we generally are.
Back when everybody thought public eduction was the bomb (1950s, 60s, and 70s), the state I grew up in had some of the highest ACT/SAT scores in the nation. That went on for decades. Everybody was proud of it. Until they found out the state was cheating. Now the all the kids in Lake Wobegon are barely average. That’s how it is with home schooling. And in some states, the legislatures have actually passed laws that protect the home school lying. In my neighborhood the vast majority of the kids attend very expensive private schools, but there are exceptions. A family in a mansion around the corner sent their kids to the neighborhood public high school. Now in college, brilliant students and good athletes. My state recently gave that high school an F. One interesting thing, a single mother graduate of that high school now roams the city making multiple TV series. He is very wealthy and sort of famous. He films just blocks away from the crappy public high school from which he graduated. Both of my kids attended public schools in Dallas and Houston. Widely bashed for their inferiority. One kid did a medical residency and fellowship at the number-one hospital for that specialty in the world:10 seats. He crushed every home-schooled kid who applied for that seat, and took the award for clinical excellence. The other got an art degree with honors, and is very successful business software consultant for large companies.
The cream always rises to the top.
You can learn anywhere.
Public education is great in my part of the country. I think a lot of it has more to do with variations in culture and economy across a huge nation. When I think about say, Arkansas or Alabama, it might as well be in the third world if we’re talking about educational attainment compared to where I am.
There is a great deal of state and local control over public education in the US. That leads to wild discrepancies in how kids turn out. The politics of changing that are complicated and don’t break down cleanly along blue/red lines. Even within a state the politics can be quite complicated (as they are in my state, where the poorest cities still struggle while suburbs thrive.)
The organized full-on assault of public education is nationwide. Their goal is to destroy it everywhere, and then to impose DEI for home/church-schooled nitwits. Pathetically bad essays with non-specific references to the bible.
Well, it’s meeting less success where I am simply because of how strong state and local support is for our schools. We do have some born agains across the street home schooling, which I find really sad because when you talk to the parents you can tell they’re not really bright.
Enjoy those highest taxes in the nation, chump. Then again, you probably work for the government.
That’s not the argument you think it is. Our taxes (not the highest in the nation) are what they are because we can afford it, because we have high paying jobs and a high standard of living. People here recognize the connection between strong schools and a high standard of living. It’s a chicken-egg type situation- we recognize the value of good education because we’re well educated. How can you explain this to Johnny Reb who graduated with a 3rd grade reading level and thinks that liberals will turn him gay somehow?
Ive got my emotional support thank you
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khYa7juoybs&t=33s
WoW! Does it have to be the real mom? May be not. I will develop an AI Agentic App, “Mom on Call” soon.
Reality is such better fiction than fiction these days, ain’t it?
The “ADA” allowed “Service Dogs” to be brought into school by the children, so why not “Service Parents” for kids that don’t like Dogs, and feel triggered by them.
I say allow “Service Friend’s” as well, for the Kids that don’t like their Parents. Hey, your kid can’t learn if they are being triggered by Joey picking his nose, and the color of Sally’s hair. If this will get them back on track and focused, then the SKY is the limit!!
“Service Goldfish”
“Service Sisters”
“Service Illegal Alien”
Who knows where this could take us…
Can guys bring service nurses to their desk jobs? Asking for a friend.
Of course mama’s gonna help build the wall …
Setting aside the state sponsored bioterrorism inflicted upon our already fragile youth during the event of so called “pandemic” repeated moronically in media and official circles. It was biowarfare directed within.
Are you insinuating a “Population Flush” was used? It’s been done before, by other Nations, but never here.
This seemed to decimate the elderly most of all, and there has been a lot of talk on S/S and eliminating it or reducing it. This attempt would certainly offered both in its headlights… I hope they don’t want to do away with Boomers, as discussion about them costing too much is ramping up. Perhaps a redux…
The world is criminally undersupplied with Soylent Green, it’s a known issue.