Fixin

As an outsider ... it would be interesting to the research on WHY. It is simplistic to say that this was caused by STEM (the trend was clear long before STEM the acronym existed).  

Certainly, the struggle to survive in the real world, requires a job that pays money. Universities moving to more non-tenured profs (lectures, associates, adjuncts, what-nots) and building endowments instead of profs.

It would be very interesting to see, by department, money spent on full profs, other teachers, etc; versus the rest of spending and how this changed over the last 50-100 years.

But ... I would argue that the problem goes back to HS ... I went to a top tier magnet school, and had only ONE lit teacher worth anything. He was perfect for getting  otherwise disengaged students to be excited.  ONE teacher. Oh wait, my freshman Myths and Heroes teacher was awesome.

HOW many students are DESTROYED by the bad teachers? Hamlet? Took me 2 decades before I could recover from a HS teacher so bad at teaching, that he destroyed Hamlet??? HOW???

This problem didnt exist in history or social studies. Math was 50/50. Science was AMAZING.

So ... how does this get fixed??

Or do we just bury it?

I postulate, that without capturing ME in HS, you can never succeed. 

I would argue that part of the problem is the lack of "research" ... asking the students (current and past) ...  what worked, what didnt, what captured them, what lost them and WHY.

Instead I hear "BUT THE CLASSICS ARE GERAT". Yawn. So what. The problem is never the material, but the presentation. 

Everybody loved Chick Lorimer

Dammit ... had to look this up ... but it stuck with me for 40 years. Not the author, not the name of the poem, one line.  I would kill to have that classroom book again. For all the other random works.

HOW do you fix this?

Step 1 - hire me (or someone like me) an outsider to research this from the OUTSIDE.

Step 2 - grade school teachers!!! OMFG

Teachers started banning/forbidding their students from writing their book reports on Harry Potter. HINT: why the hell would stop a young child from writing about something that they are PASSIONATE about? How will they grow???