The first is a National Public Radio article about a new study that indicates that for many (45%) students in their freshman and sophomore year of college, there is no measurable improvement in their critical thinking and writing skills from when they entered college.  Over a third of those surveyed showed no measurable improvement in their skills even after finishing four years of college.  

Part of the blame is being aimed at colleges and universities that don't seem to be challenging students very much.  Part of the blame seems to be the general level of unpreparedness of graduating high schoolers for what college should be providing them with and what college ought to require of them.  Rather than prepare them for life and college, high school seems to just be a time for killing time.  

As an adjunct faculty member, I can verify that the vast majority of the students I deal with these days seem completely unprepared to be made to think, analyze, critique, and write.  Many are unable (or unwilling) to write using proper grammar and syntax - preferring the easier IM-speak and text-ese that they utilize on their phones and in online chat forums.  Some protest that they already know how to write properly and therefore shouldn't be required to do so.  I'll let you evaluate the worthiness of that argument for yourselves.  

It's now not unusual to receive one or more e-mails at the end of the semester from a student in a class who did less than 25% of the required work, stating that they don't want to lose their scholarship and hope that I'll give them an A or allow them to magically make up all their work after the class ends.  The sense of entitlement from some of these students is stunning.  They're paying the tuition, and they ought to get to dictate the terms that I set out for my classes.  Deadlines ought to be negotiable or non-existent.  What appears to be a minimum of effort at best is expected to be treated as A-level work.  A student in one of my current classes had the audacity to state up front, in his introductory comments, that nothing in the class (Ethics) would affect how he feels and thinks about things.  He had no intention of budging from his preconceived ideas, and felt that was a healthy attitude to be bringing into the classroom.

The next article is somewhat related, but draws more of a faith perspective into things.  This article discusses the changes in how people think in this new digital age.  Namely, the idea that multitasking is now the rule rather than the exception.  Everyone prides themselves on multitasking well, even though few actually do it well.  People are unable to focus on any single thing for very long.  Attention spans have dwindled markedly.

Is this simply the evidence of natural change and progression in how people store and process information, similar to the changes that occurred (albeit probably at a slower pace) as reading gradually displaced oral tradition in cultures?  Or is this a worrisome trend that may critically damage our ability to think meaningfully or at any level of depth about any particular topic?  It's definitely an issue that strikes close to home for me as an educator, as a pastor, and as a parent.  How to best reach younger people who learn and focus radically different from their parents and grandparents?  

Interesting food for thought.  We live in a fascinating time with mind-numbing change an everyday expectation, it seems.  At what point do we intellectually hit the wall and crash, unable to keep up with the divergent streams of attention required in a media-saturated world?  Time will tell.  It just may start telling sooner than we'd prefer or expect.