How about the quality of the education and curriculum itself?

The curriculum can be amazing, but it doesn't matter if the students don't care. And frankly, a lot of them don't.

Some of that is cultural, some of that is due to parenting. A lot of parents aren't involved in their kids education. Frankly, a lot of them are barely involved in parenting in general.

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pixl97 5 days ago | parent [-]

But I mean, I remember hearing this back in the 80s, so in itself is not a great indicator unless we can see something that would point at why parents stopped caring as much.

Now, if someone came with a headline that said "Parents not involved in childrens education because they've been ragebaited into spending all their time yelling on social media" my biases would tend to lend me to believe it's true, even without sufficient evidence. There are other correlations, like cellphone ownership in the population.

Just having social media itself doesn't seem to be an exact fit, but that tells us nothing about the algorithms that social media was using at the time.

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bluGill 5 days ago | parent [-]

It is just as true today as the 1980s - parents have long been the largest indicator of how well kids do in school.

What isn't known is how to get parents to do better. Or lacking that, how to get kids to do better anyway. (there have been some successes, but nothing seems to be repeatable)

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pixl97 5 days ago | parent [-]

But that's just punting the original question. Obviously parents aren't getting better, they are getting worse. Why is the question.

	▲	Night_Thastus 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		* Social media (Echo chambers, propaganda bots, algorithmic content designed to get attention and emotion) * Lowered attention spans * A general reduction in critical thinking - instead preferring headlines, summaries, and easy answers * Increased partisanship * Reduction in third spaces and community connections - people becoming more isolated * Financial stress I'd say those are the main points. They apply in almost all developed nations, to varying extents.