Gen Z 'Can’t Read' And Millennials Won’t Let It Go

[@tthewizard7667]

This is the fault of the parents not caring about the education of their kids. Not showing up to parent teacher conferences, not helping the child with their homework, not caring about academic success…. the kids are NOT alright. Some parents really expect their child’s teacher to do everything for their kids, but it’s a TEAM effort between the parent and the child. These problems have been here but it’s been exacerbated by Covid.

[@mynameisreallycool1]

I feel a lot of the media in the 2000s and onward made it seem like doing basic things like going to parent teacher conference meetings, signing their kids up for extracurricular activities, and helping kids with homework was like this HUGE sacrifice for the parents, even if the parents aren't that busy. It was this weird attitude of "Ugh, I have to help my kid with their math homework. I'm doing TOO much. I'm like a super mom! This is the worst!" I've heard stand up comedians complain about their children's teachers telling them to help their kids with their homework, and their punchline is just, "Uh hurr durr. I shouldn't be doing YOUR job! 😅" We hold the standards for parents really low.

[@ViesFreequencies]

On the flip side; it takes a certain privilege to be able to understand the content and have time to basically go over the school work with fresh eyes to understand it as an adult. Plenty of people are dual income families from generational wealth problems and will literally not get to see or even spend time with their kids because of this fundamental issue. Notice the kids with parents who have enough money for either a more flexible work schedule or simply a stay-at-home parent probably do better, not just because of those two things listed above but also because they feel confident in the education THEY were given, to be able to help out their children with confidence & inspiration. Now imagine if you will, several generations of people that society had basically given up on and abused, called horrible nasty things to get it ingrained in their brain that those things were true instead of just blatant discrimination. Segregation was less than a century ago, we need to make sure we're offering supportive resources across the board, teachers & parents alike; this is why I'm so pressed for a universal base income program that would assure basic needs are met for everyone so there is time and resources for parents to take time for themselves and with their kids

[@anonloki3]

I get that but as another comment said here kids who have their parents who speak the language and understand the content and help their kids with their HW, take time out of work to go to conferences, etc have a privilege that not every student has. Some parents barely have a primary or secondary education. Some don't even speak English. It's easier to put blame on one another but I feel it is a system as a whole that has failed alot of kids.

[@carolitoffana]

talking to the younger generation, I noticed they seemed kinda scared, like the world was a lot to them after so much happened, I can understand why they are not succeeding in school, their mental health is usually not taken as serious as adults, but I can not imagine the way that a pandemic affected their teenager minds, I think it is a deeper issue than just "gen z can't read", plus social media makes everything seem way worse than actually is, and it's making them scared of everything. Parents who don't know how to parent, teachers who have too many students, and the kids are just running wild with no one to help/listen to them. The world seems to always have some kind of a "bigger problem" to deal than actually helping people. But one thing is for sure, dumber people makes better workers, they don't know their rights so they don't question anything 💀💀

[@t_ylr]

I agree. My parents really instilled a love of reading in me. I have all these beautifully illustrated children's books from when I was a kid. Do the kids have that now or do they just have ipads lol? Speaking of that I have no proof of this, but I think there's something about reading a physical book as opposed to a screen. I feel like I comprehend and retain more with a physical page. I think it's affecting all these kids who were learning on a screen during covid .

[@karlajaeger2082]

Half the problem is anti intellectualism and parents not being involved in their child's schooling. When a large segment of the population is not only uninformed or uninvolved but actively shuns things like critical thinking and facts, this is the result. The other half is the education system teaching to tests without ensuring comprehension. So, the kids puke out the stuff onto the tests and promptly forget it. The class passes and the school gets more funding while the students literally "fail upward".

[@dakrishur2009]

Is the're a way we can solve this kids?? (Im 14 y.o. 💀💀)

[@whknws9595]

@@dakrishur2009 there absolutely is !!! there are so many educational resources online, college websites have a lot of free information. Also, don't forget about your public libraries, books are free and librarians are easily the most knowledgeable people I've ever met. You're already more educated than many people by just wanting to learn more.

[@dakrishur2009]

@@whknws9595 thanks for that. I'm not a perfect kid, but, by just seeing my grades, i think i can go far...

[@CorinthianIvory]

Can't wait to see where this leads...

[@von1glik]

That is kind of not true. Gen X& boomers was not overly present but their kids can read.

[@ieat247]

I recently transferred from a prestigious private school to an average public school, and my perspective is vastly different from my peers. During a recent lecture, a group of students were discussing their missing assignments. One student had 15 missing assignments, another had 20, and a third had a staggering 80. It was unbelievable to me. Some students still struggle with basic multiplication and long division, while others struggle with spelling and reading. In fact, some students are completely illiterate.

[@angelmendez2211]

No one want to pay teacher proper wages so they all go to private schools which means more one and one time with students there than compared to public school.

[@itachimistress]

​@@angelmendez2211not only that, but many of those private school parents can afford tutors

[@lindalawson4296]

I don't know if you know that private school teachers are not well compensated relative to public systems. Many educators choose to work in independent or parochial schools because the conditions are different and instruction is different. Those educators aren't dealing with the woes of our society.

[@Fruitsnack828]

And also its not that they cant understand it or are illiterate, they just dont do there work. Put yourself in their shoes

[@theinvisiblewoman5709]

The classroom sizes in public schools are larger. So lots of kids who miss assignments also will get passed over in follow up by teachers due to teachers dealing with soooo many other issues. You have to have noticed the difference in other places that have contributed to this.

[@bethannybiscuits]

I am actually watching you. I was born in 1984 and a technical writer. I have so many concerns about my children in school. As a writer, who feels a spark of joy every time I sit down in front of my computer to work, it is very disturbing that my children struggle so hard with simple essays. I'm involved in their education and I support their teachers - but I'm told a lot of parents don't.

[@ChrisBrooks34]

I think a lot of people conflated media savviness with media literacy. And we found out that just because you can use social media doesn't mean you comprehend the things that you saw on social media.

[@thiccynikky3805]

Exactly, I saw so much memes about people saying toddlers are super smart because they can always find what they wanna watch on KZbin. When I work with toddlers and they just click around and use muscle memory to watch any random video that peaks their interest.

[@whoome1638]

Absolutely

[@evasdorling7555]

Exactly. I do think it brings a lot of misunderstanding and "opposing" arguments when, a lot of times, both "parties" or people actually agree. When I had tiktok, I swear, I was agreeing with the person/creator, and somehow, a lot of them took it as me attacking them 🙃 I gave up in explaining myself.

[@baby.nay.]

I think you mean confound not conflate

[@elokin300]

⁠​⁠@@evasdorling7555 Yeah I’ve had a similar experience on TikTok. I’m gen Z, but I was always an avid reader and was lucky enough to go to a really nice school that encouraged critical thinking skills and reading comprehension. Looking at the audience on TikTok, who are mostly people around my age, and having them either accept misinformation at face value or misunderstand a comment so badly that they interpreted it as having the opposite meaning made me a bit nervous. They’re gonna be manipulated by politicians, other people, and miss out on so many other things that come with those skills because they were neglected by the adults in their lives.

[@sinnamonroll2780]

This is honestly why I go out of my way as a pediatric therapist to get kids super into learning and reading, especially considering how the current education just pushes kids to pass tests and not actually retain anything. Fun trips to the libraries and childhood learning are such a lost art. I hope we can reform this system so that kids aren't actually left behind and it isn't just a slogan for once.

[@inactive.5680]

THANK YOU, KEEP DOING WHAT YOU DO EVEN IF YOU MAY THINK ITS LITTLE YOU'RE DOING BIG!!

[@whiterabbit75]

It doesn't help that intelligence and smart people are derided as "uncool".

[@cooperminion825]

Doesn't help that conservatives are actively trying to make books inaccessible to everyone. They don't want to take America back to the 50s, they want to go back to the height of the Robber Barons. When women couldn't vote, black people had minimal rights, and education was almost solely reserved for the rich

[@inactive.5680]

@@whiterabbit75 yeah, especially on the internet they get bullied with silly memes like this emoji "🤓" like being a nerd is something bad.

[@whiterabbit75]

@@inactive.5680 Personally, I think it comes from jealousy.

[@EmmyK5]

I’m a millennial who struggled in school (adhd) and remember feeling insecure for a long time. I CANNOT imagine what it feels like to the kids/teens struggling now especially those with learning disabilities. I empathize with y’all, greatly. So many of y’all have been failed and it’s heartbreaking to see it play out. Y’all do not deserve any of that. I don’t understand how anyone could blame the kids, like what??? blame the horrible american public school system AND parents for this mess. I honestly can’t blame teachers for feeling frustrated or leaving the education industry…because there is only so much they can do on top of not getting paid enough to deal with it. It’s crazy how many parents want to point the finger at the teachers and not at themselves!!! Like I can imagine being a parent must be hard now a days so I also empathize…to a certain extent. because not knowing your kid can’t read or comprehend anything in HIGH SCHOOL??? is wild. It’s literal proof that they’ve neglected their child.

[@SammyLammy1D]

Not just the American school system. This problem exists in most of Europe too.

[@SammyLammy1D]

Otherwise I agree with everything you said!

[@teresitaperegrina3741]

It’s neither the parents or teachers fault, but the pandemic and governments lack of preparation to deal with the shut down of society for as long as we were. Of course middle schoolers will be having a 4th grade reading level, because they were in 4th grade when the pandemic hit. Schools were shut down for at least a full year, with hybrid classes for the remaining years and by the time they were able to go back in person they were severely behind. How are teachers expected to teach kids on a personal level through a screen? Sit down with them individually when they are struggling during class time and group assignments? And how are parents supposed to help when they have to work to provide for their families, or heck maybe they lost their jobs! Now parents are expected to become home school teachers while on the clock for their full time jobs? There was no help for parents and no help for teachers, no help for the students, everyone was expected to just figure it out and now everyone’s shocked that kids are 2-3 years behind in school. It’s really really sad, and kids are addicted to social media, don’t know how to socialize, and are more depressed than ever. I don’t think people realize the communal trauma we all experienced, we as a society went through something really traumatic with no help or time to grieve- we just had to keep going. ☹️

[@abigailcampbell7600]

As a teenager in generation Z, I completely agree. I also have ADHD but I surprisingly find myself able to learn and process things faster than most kids in my school. But I do see at least from my perspective a lot of kids, struggling to learn, and comprehend the curriculum and information that the teacher has provided us as students. A lot of teachers in my perspective have been slacking off a lot lately and they don’t really teach us and really clarify or explain things very well to those that cannot learn as fast. I actually had an experience from someone else today. A girl was absent from school for around a week and when she came back, there is a test and my chemistry teacher didn’t teach her and told her to do the test even though if she doesn’t know and just do what she knows and try her best. He asked me to help teach her or other students that know how to do it to try to teach her and she got frustrated and asked why because he is a teacher and why he can’t teach her. And he said because we have so many resources we have access to technology and chat, GPT and AI and that there’s way more things that you can learn from . but that’s his job as a teacher to help assist those who need to understand. Otherwise they’re not learning and every time we take exams and test we usually forget what we learned after a couple months. And I see a lot of teachers never clarify anything and a lot of them don’t have a clue ! They slack off and they don’t really try to teach the kids. It’s really frustrating seeing a lot of kids in my school struggle to comprehend the information all because of the teacher not clarifying or actually doing their job.

[@ThatGirlJD]

​@@teresitaperegrina3741The other problem is parents are not teachers. They can try and do their best, but they are not professionally trained educators. Unfortunately some of this actually started way before the pandemic. A lot of this started when they started focusing on state mandated standardized test. Teaching to the test started in the 90s when I was in school. I just was lucky enough to be in smaller classes for gifted students. We had less busy work and more individualized instruction. We were also taught how to learn on our own. This is an old crisis that has been plaguing mainstream education in the US for decades. It's just now catching up to society on a massive scale. The millennials that were taught the old school way and the new way are now teaching Gen Z and Gen A. It didn't work for us, but they refuse to admit the experiment failed.

[@prihaps]

A huge part is on the parents. I taught my stepson how to read at the age of 6 almost 7 (two months away from his 7th bday). He was reading literal baby books and reading them poorly. We spent that summer crying together bc he was so frustrated. But let me tell you by month two be was amazed and thanking me for how serious I was about it. He was going into the first grade and by the time summer ended, he was reading at a third grade level. It broke my fuqing heart

[@CordeliaWagner]

You are stunning and brave!

[@prihaps]

@@CordeliaWagner you are so cute ty ❤️

[@sbostic08]

​@@prihapsIt " broke your heart" that he was reading at a 3rd grade level by the summer. That's a weird statement. Wouldn't you be proud? Is that what you meant?

[@prihaps]

@@sbostic08 no it broke my heart he couldnt read. It was summarizing my overall emotion.

[@sbostic08]

@prihaps Oh I see. Thank goodness he had you to teach him! 🙌🏽

[@SetsunaMeiou-SailorPluto]

Unfortunately my husband teaches middle school English. Things aren't okay. You have no idea how badly they're treating the teachers because of the massive fall in literacy. The last staff meeting ended with full on screaming arguments, people walking out/quitting and two of my husband's 3 other colleagues in his school who teach English literally in tears in hysterics. They are putting them through a lot and not paying them nearly enough. This has been a problem long before covid. But it has gotten worse faster since. They parents wouldn't hold themselves or their kids accountable and make sure they were actually doing their work. And the schools wouldn't let the teachers offer any kind of punishment for not doing their work because how could they? They couldn't exactly give them detention? Parents were even doing their kids work for them because everything is on the stupid iPad with no real monitoring to make sure they're actually learning. Multiple choice answers they can just keep clicking until they get it right. Not even that but things also got worse once they started giving all these kids iPads. Everything is so hands off now. It's no wonder kids aren't learning and aren't prepared for the real world when they graduate. I have helped my husband grade papers. Things are way worse that people understand outside of being an educator unless you're married to one. You wouldn't believe some the the stories he comes home with. He's so stressed out he's lost a lot of weight and barely eats and is talking about therapy. Because on top of all this child abuse and neglect is on the rise. He has had to report a lot of things just this last month. And it's tearing him apart. There is also less and less support for children with special needs with so many teachers quitting so they're getting put in standard classes sometimes without even an aid and they're obviously failing because they can't understand or do the work and parents and the county don't care. They literally told my husband who has been fighting for this specific child he teaches to get assistance and providing evidence of how much he is struggling in his class and they said he "wasn't disabled enough". Because of some new fucking laws that got put in place or something after covid. The child is severely autistic on top of some other issues. And they let him go to other classes without an adult. He's gotten lost and wandered the school. It's only a matter of time before he figures out how to leave the building. They don't care. Neither does his mom who refuses to believe her child is that disabled. They do not pay teachers enough or offer them enough support for what they have to deal with. There is a reason teachers are quitting all over. And it's not just a problem in the US. Social media and smart technology is a disease. My SIL is pregnant and my soon-to-be nephew will be home schooled. Being born into a family of teachers has its benefits. We still have all the material from his mother and grandmother who retired recently going to my husband who will be giving a lot of it to my SIL to teach her child.

[@rhearoo3081]

I am so glad you took the time to write this. I feel like a lot of people are sensitive to this topic because they think people just want to bash on kids who are struggling in school. Many aren't in the education field and don't see what is going on and it shows. It is beyond alarming. Education was bad when I was in school and even worse now. It did not help that my school district was notorious for being underfunded and overcrowded. Talk to the educators, and they will tell you this is no exaggeration. Many are leaving the field all together and I do not blame them. It is so hard out here. There are problems on so many levels, and the kids will suffer the most in the future.

[@jamieh8836]

realest comment here

[@selenasimmons6653]

Thank you for telling the truth...I hope your husband can get some help for himself even if it means leaving K-12 education

[@foxinthesnow1917]

I'll take their job.

[@hermengild3776]

This is the planned dumbing down of America, Look Up Charlotte Iserbyt a whistleblower from the Department Of Education appointed under Reagan, They don’t want the population to read ☕️🥓🍳🥞☕️

[@laurenpunch1053]

How messed up. I blame the parents and of course, common core. I’m 25 and I had problems reading as a child. My mom put me in tutoring to help - which it DID. I now am a great reader, and can read faster than the majority. It’s a shame parents don’t know how to parent.

[@pisceanbeauty2503]

What’s most frightening is that there are many people using these clear failures in our educational system as justification for privatizing education, rather than attempting to fix the problems.

[@vikkidonn]

Most of these problems were deliberately done by the same people fighting against privatized education and even school choice.

[@spacedinosaur8733]

That's part of the problem, the system won't let the problem be fixed, if it's considered a problem at all. And what the current solution seems to be is just call is systemic racism and drop standards so that everyone auto-passes to the next grade. Money continues to flow to School Administrivia, they win. Problem solved. Who cares if students can't read or math as long as they 'vote blue no matter who' everything is going to work out fine. Schools should be managed at the local level, with minimum state and hopefully no federal involvement.

[@ChineduOpara]

As long as someone can PROFIT from this problem, it will never get fixed. NEVER.

[@pisceanbeauty2503]

@@spacedinosaur8733 This has nothing to do with whether kids will eventually vote Democrat or Republican. Go to red rural America and you see similar issues regarding educational attainment. The problem is we don’t care enough about poverty and what happens outside of the classroom that makes it difficult to focus on what is inside the classroom.

[@desuretard8654]

​@@pisceanbeauty2503 did you stop reading when he said "systemic racism" and "vote blue no matter who"? The problem is just as bad in blue cities. Look at Baltimore. Or look at Baton Rouge, I have personal experience there that the kids in Baton Rouge don't want to learn compared to the next town over in Livingston Parish where it gets rural quick and that it's not as bad. But as far as the whole of Louisiana is concerned, it doesn't matter since we're so poor the school system is dead bottom in the country despite our rich resources.

[@kindiekoach]

This started in the early 2000's with the NO Child Left Behind Act. since then the domino effect is that there are so many children that can't meet the requirements for their grade level. I'm a millennial and graduated before it went into full effect, so I saw the transition. But it was pretty insane how far behind some people were within my class. They broke up the classes into three factions Regular, Honors, and AP classes in high school. The Honors classes were the standards that we were all to meet, regular classes were for students that were behind, and of course AP class were above level or college courses. I took a mix of Honors and AP classes, so had to spend much time using critical thinking skills. It is really frustrating watching so many people not checking themselves or looking for better sources for news. Ground News is a great app that will give the news indicating whether is more left, right, or neutral based in its arguments. It took research to look for this kind of thing.

[@cardsfan5100]

I’m an educator and it’s horrible. Teachers are caught between shitty administrators and shitty parents. Unless English isn’t your native language, how do you not know your child can’t read.

[@beterybunny234]

I was born on the line between Genz and Millennial, and if it wasn't for my mother's college education as a reading specialist I may have not been able to comprehend written words at all! I could read them just fine but connecting the words I was speaking to the text I was reading was practically impossible. I mostly blame my teachers for letting me fall through the cracks but it really DOES make a difference when parents pay attention. I'm very lucky my mom caught it early.This is why I find it so important to say aware of literacy (and also why I sat in front of my laptop keeping my full attention on the video). Thanks so much for talking about this!! Illiteracy is nothing new, the USA has been struggling with it for decades; but COVID has poked at a blister that's been ready to pop.

[@TiaNichole17]

Let me just educate you for a minute because I’m sick of teachers getting the blame when they are administrators senators that put teachers in your predicament. Imagine having a class of 30 students just to one adult when stats tells us that 1:18 is what’s recommended to give quality education. I’m at a private school it’s a 1:15 ratio and the teacher has an assistant as soon as they get 16 children. And middle school has it worst because they can get up to 35 kids in one class and that’s usually 5x. Teachers have been saying for decades I need smaller class sizes. And what do they get more kids and no support. But we sure can get all the blame. I promise you if the classes were smaller you would get a different result. EDIT: I’m not saying this to attack you, but it’s always teachers fault but yet they don’t control there roster or what goes into curriculum.

[@theinvisiblewoman5709]

Why blame the teacher? The blame lies with the government. Constantly defunding public school programs, under paying teachers, over crowded classrooms, income based funding for public schools, and unfortunately inaccurate and inconsistent curriculums across districts, states, and the country as a whole.

[@beterybunny234]

I'm allowed to be angry at someone for harming my education and teaching me bad reading and comprehension habits. Is that completely fair? Maybe not. It means I want a system where kids don't need parents with specialized education to supplement their learning.

[@TiaNichole17]

@@beterybunny234 I’m not saying no one should be held responsible. But I’m saying between the other shit you teacher has to deal with knowing she had to many kids in their class to give you a quality education, Im saying they were trying to do the best with what they had which is little to nothing. If it’s a issue please go to your local school district. My thing is it’s easy for everyone to point the finger at their teachers but not one person is ask well what are parents not doing or enabling? What is administration enabling. My college Stats professor was going to be a teacher for high school and he told me his student teaching class, none of those students were ready to go to the next section of math because there didn’t know fundamentals. He was going to fail all of them and you know what his principal said. You have to pass them or we don’t get money. Hence why a lot of teachers are leaving the profession.

[@beterybunny234]

@TiaNichole17 The system cares more for money than for the child's well-being, and that's something we can both agree on. That doesn't mean my feelings towards my teacher will change given my personal experience. It makes my objectivity impossible. It's horrible what children have to suffer for the system's faults, and with persistence, I hope my story serves as another push in the right direction.

[@JRay.R]

I started kindergarten at a 4th grade reading level, (I’m 31 now, I consider myself a millennial). My sister is 4 years younger than me, and she got the short end of the stick due to *my* lack of a need for help with reaching milestones such as reading and writing. Our parents kind of assumed she was picking everything up with as little effort as I had, but she wasn’t. She struggled and barely made it through high school. It didn’t help that she always felt like she was in my shadow (or felt “dumb”, compared to me) and I was a little brat and was always like, “it’s easy! You just do this…blah blah blah” and she would be like “oh ok great! Now I get it!” But she didn’t, and was too self conscious to admit it. Now that you have my life story (my bad) …all this was to say that i wish I could go back and give her the time and attention she needed to grasp the basics before we pushed her to try to build on them. We really did her a disservice and I have a feeling this didn’t just happen to us.

[@quckeyalt]

I’m a younger gen Z. I’m in 9th grade now. I have always done what I could to be at and sometimes above grade level. This is cause my mom pushed me to be better. 90% of the time the parents aren’t helping their kid understand these things.

[@ctrlrust]

Speaking as a gen z kid myself I can vouch for lots of other gen z kids when I say most of us can read. A lot of these comments are calling out how we weren’t taught phonics in elementary school or preschool and we definitely were. The changes to reading and writing were changes made post us leaving the lower grades, so by the time we had reached middle schools, we knew how to read and we still do 😭😭

[@chrisd5722]

Fr they talking about generation alpha or like 2-3 years of gen Z at most

[@hexapon133]

​@@chrisd5722they are 100%talking about gen alpha the last GenZ kids in school rn are freshmen

[@sawa1067]

there is a difference between reading and comprehending. i had a really traumatic childhood. i felt the most alone while i was reading so i never wanted to read. i can read but comprehending and paraphrasing is really hard for me. i have to keep reading over and over. thats what i mean when i say "i cant read" (elevated literature).

[@vladimirofsvalbard9477]

@@hexapon133 Well, to be precise the youngest are 7th/8th grade.

[@mochaismilk]

​@@sawa1067 Yeah, I was confused reading this title. Isn't the latest gen z in 8th or 9th grade? 😭

[@HeyoitsJay]

“they can’t read” is an important conversation to have. Literature is the key to understanding the world. We’re experiencing heights in book bans, misinformation and other forms literature suppression from religious institutions, legislators and ignorant parents. This is a great video encapsulating those topics

[@RememberHisLove]

If Gen Z seem like a bunch of dumb activists it's because activist teachers are teaching them everything else but what the kids need to know for school and life. Budget, all that, no argument when kids in the sticks can test on grade. Parents do have a right to keep sexual material from being presented to their child without their permission. It is a sad state of things the latter is even a matter of discourse now, but that is where the teacher activists have put it. Parents also have a right to keep their child away from castration propaganda from a genital mutilation cult. This is why we are now in a student loan debt crisis because activist degrees don't result in paying jobs. Except as more "teachers".

[@122ifydarkace]

Not to mention cultural suppression alot of poc books have been banned the narrative of slavery is all most blk folk know and then wonder why it all they talk about

[@w1975b]

People who can't read are easier to control.

[@samwich9498]

As an older gen z (24) who was placed in special ed due to ADHD, I did not learn how to write essays until I went to community college. It wasn't that I was raised wrong or didn't try. My teachers babied me and didn't think I, a student with a disability, was capable of writing an essay. My IEP case worker told me I could never go to college because I was "not intelligent enough". If I hadn't switched to a better high school for my senior year, I would not have gone to college. I have received the president's list several times in college. Sometimes, it is not the parents' fault. Sometimes, it is ableism in the special education system in certain counties or districts.

[@cristenkray5192]

I’ve been WAITING FOR THIS ONE!! As someone who basically lives in the library and wants to be a librarian & educator, this has been so heartbreaking to see in real time. I think Teachers are being put in a position that is so unbalanced and unsustainable, and then given so much shit for the fact that they’re not able to do everything (especially when many of those things aren’t even part of the job they’re paid to do). Parents don’t want to do the work for their children, and expect others, especially teachers, to do their jobs for them. These adults fr think putting a screen in front of a child is a good solution for hyperactive and special needs children. The education system itself is shit, and that’s literally the first thing ppl need to understand. It’s not built to last, and it’s not actually built to set students up for success. Obviously the pandemic definitely didn’t help anyone’s education at all, and it’s awful how the government and these lawmakers won’t even do the bare minimum to make sure people had the tools they needed to manage. Children are literally being failed by everyone around them, and they’re the ones being blamed for it.

[@Madamchief]

Haha the Oxford comma

[@barry_crxnch]

The system is working as intended. It's hard to hire certain positions when most people know how to think for themselves. It's sad, but they can't make a School to Prison pipeline if all the kids are intelligent.

[@cristenkray5192]

@@barry_crxnch THIS!!

[@heaterdawg]

“I don’t want my doctor asking me what’s wrong.” - This is scarily accurate and already happening. I went to a doctor about an enormous blister from a bug bite that could have been infected. He kept asking ME what I wanted him to do!

[@JW-vi2nh]

Dude! I was hit by a car and ended up with two broken legs. The right leg had a compound fracture with the bones sticking out. The morning of my surgery, the surgeon came in to see me while the nurse anesthetist was getting me drugged up. He walked in and said "So, what are we doing this morning?" I was like "Uhhh... your residents told me last night that YOU were planning my surgery, deciding what needed to be done." Dead serious, he made me lay there and tell HIM what surgery/surgeries to do. And this guy graduated valedictorian of his medical school class.

[@GrzegorzDurda]

You’re supposed to answer, "make me as I was". It's a deep legal liability insurance issue, and the jargon used to insulate from liability.

[@ahoyforsenchou7288]

They're probably terrified of getting sued, what with all these "body positive" 600-pounders rolling around and these gender-confused weirdos getting offended at every possible opportunity.

[@siobhane5196]

​@JW-vi2nh they should explain this to patients but it's common practice for every new doctor/surgeon to ask the patient what surgery they're getting today just in case through some clerical error people get mixed up.

[@JW-vi2nh]

@@siobhane5196 I understand not wanting to make clerical errors but this was definitely not just that. He literally made me decide whether he was going to operate on one leg or just both. I had to lie there, half drugged out of my mind, and ask him to explain the pros and cons of each option and then decide for myself. This wasn't just simply verifying that I was the correct patient and that I knew I was having my leg(s) operated on.

[@richardlanier2113]

Millenial here. I have two younger gen z siblings. They can't go more than 5 minutes without looking at their phones. They know nothing outside of their little electronic crack boxes. I have watched people their age walk into parked vehicles because they are so addicted it's wild. Tik tok, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and any other b.s. like it should be banned. I watched you the whole time.

[@danielir3788]

Im in 7th grade and i go to extra english lessons (since 2016), i got assigned to B1+ level but could be at B2+ if the 11th grade who comes to the extra lessons in that building had enough people. The ones im going to (B1+) have the intellect of a 3rd grader who miss the lessons half the time. Jesus christ my ears are bleeding from the amount of "uhhhh" they do or ask how to spell things like "is, introduce" and etc. i literally shared my extremely negative opinion to my parents with who am i going to the lessons. TL;DR people in my extra english lessons have the intellect of a 3rd grader while in the 7th class

[@hendrikascholtmeijer5635]

It is gen Alfa that is mostly illiterate. They are the first gen to get an iPad pushed in their face when the parents couldn't deal. They are also the ones that have the parents that don't like it when a teacher says anything negative about their child. Most genz grew up before ipads and smartphones were given to children. You could argue that the youngest of genz might fall into this, but I don't agree with how genz and gen Alfa are split. The electronic boom has too much of an influence on the difference between the generation's and should be divided according to the rise of the internet and then the rise of smartphones.

[@colinguo5855]

As a Gen Z who entered high school when the Pandemic hit, I am really lucky. I was a special education student at the time and I had a tutoring service paid by my parents.

[@reviewswithtamia]

As a person who is consider a super late millennial/early gen z I can comprehend and read very well. All thanks to my mom who made sure my brother and I read, even taking us to the Library on the weekends to get books. I am music teacher and have noticed that even teaching music reading is taking a toll especially on students who are not receiving the fundamentals.

[@scythxr25]

As someone who is literally the last of gen z and currently freshman in hs, It does feel like we've been done wrong. I remember in elementary school (Covid happened right as I started middle school) we would get books from the library/media center and have to read them, then we would take a short quiz on them for a grade. Then once I got into middle school this completely died out. I'm in an ELA honors class for my grade and some people don't even know how to use context clues because they would mainly just give us the definition of a word

[@scythxr25]

Also, The school system is just really pushing people along and doesn't care for where they are actually at academically. I'm in geometry honors (10th grade class) as a freshman and sometimes I'm teaching the sophomores how to do the work and they can't even do 12/6 or -2 - 2 or they just hear it and default to using a calculator. The school system never really taught people that using a calculator/just looking the answer up is harmful for learning. I should also mention that I also had a mom who focused on my education and learning skills from a young age. I was exposed to technology very young but she kept it strictly educational like learning games and stuff like that. Even now that I've been exposed to the internet unsupervised for like half my life, I still mainly consume educational content and it has helped me a lot.

[@perfesser944]

One of the earliest memories I have of my father is his reading to me, and pointing out the text so I would understand reading.

[@thebalancedvirgin4893]

It's scary and horrifying and infuriating that, as a nation, we've let our education system get to this place. However, times change. We're in a new paradigm where kids spend more time online than in books and class, so it will be interesting (to say the least) to see where this lack of fundamentals takes society. I really appreciate you touching on this topic. Got a new sub here!

[@assassin8636]

But is that society thing always it

[@magistrumartium]

0:26 Not only can they not summarize a paragraph, they don't even know how to write one! As a college professor I am disgusted by the school system. When I got my job I was so happy, looking forward to teaching smart young people--and I have some of those, but the majority should have been held back in elementary school or high school. The process of grading essays is grueling and depressing to me, except once in a while when I get a well-written essay.

[@regina107]

I remember listening to a NYT podcast about this. Somewhere along the line in the education system, they switched from a phonetic reading system to this new program developed by a teacher that was supposed to be more supportive and encouraging for kids to learn how to read. However, that system involved learning to read using picture books and allowing the kid to guess what the words were saying based on what the picture was 🤦🏽‍♀️, so they never really learned how to read. Edit: apparently that system was called “Three Cueing”. They have since switched back to a phonics based system from what I understand after a lot of outcry from parents

[@user-vx8mj3ne5r]

I struggled to learn how to read because of this. My brother eventually covered the pictures with copy paper, and it helped a lot.

[@zs9269]

I think it was called Sold a Story and it was a huge money thing too

[@jessicapeyton5444]

That's crazy. Idk why they started messing around with the education standards. I was homeschooled so my story is a little different. But I can tell you that I spent 4 years studying English phonetics, and all 12 years studying English grammar. I always think about this when I'm having trouble learning different languages because it's not easy to just magically learn how to read or write or speak English through osmosis, you have to actually be taught properly!

[@kirstenbass1968]

I just want to say, all these new teaching methods sound like things I naturally did (how I naturally learned?) as a child. I was gifted and well above the reading level for my age. Same with the “new math” or “core” or whatever. That’s how I understood things, internally, but they weren’t objectively taught to me. A lot of kids in my age demographic were similar. If this method comes from those observations, then they seemed to forget the obvious: we still had phonetic reading and sight words as a foundation. They should have NEVER replaced the curriculum entirely, but offered this as a way to reframe things for kids that might need the help. They built a house without a foundation because they thought it would be faster and wonder why it falls down.

[@katalystkatapatheticalyssa5987]

I'd forgotten about that. What if they come across a word they haven't seen before?

[@mickygarcia4251]

14:00 Former educator, turned economist, now working in IT. I bailed out of education because of this. Phones in the classroom, individualized education plans, treating teacher as education managers, common core curriculum, the lack of support, blaming teachers for societal ills... just to name a few reasons why it's over in the U.S.

[@coolnoob5508]

Shocked that people who have grown up with internet since birth can't read, how will they post questions on Chatgpt then

[@KKingOfFools]

For me, going to online classes in my sophomore year of high school was horrid. I already had difficulties in school because of mental health issues and a complete lack of a work ethic, but this then came to a head when I couldn’t even physically see anyone. Being able to ask questions and learn things more in depth from my teachers was the only way for me to actually care about school, not even to mention how I was feeling on any given day. I can only hope that other people had a better go of it than me.

[@golgo1364]

The overlapping factor was the switch to common core curriculum. While things were not perfect prior to, somehow most children could and did get past the lack of supplies , undereducated parents, being first generation citizens etc. Most children would actually learn to grade level at minimum. Teachers had more liberty in how they approached lessons. I'm pretty sure the timing lines up with the decline.

[@Zullala]

I'm a millennial but it literally took me until my mid 20's to be able to read well. I couldn't read out loud in a smooth way until I was around 28. Granted, I'm pretty sure I have some sort of learning disability, but still, maybe not all hope is lost for Gen Z

[@makeupcatwalk55]

14:11 I am legit sitting down and just watching your video. I just got done with a hard exam so I’m chilling. I also showed one of your videos in my presentation for my senior seminar class. Fellow media studies major here.

[@margaretgreenwood4243]

Im an 81 year old UK woman. A ‘War Baby’ - ‘Baby Boomer’. My generation here were given a really good basic education with excellent opportunities for higher education. We were well fed and healthy as we had a National Health system. Why? Our Rulers dont give a 💩 about us, but they needed an educated and healthy workforce to rebuild the country. Now they need slaves, so ……. No education, etc. love from the UK 💋

[@Roshsugar]

That's crazy that people in 6 Grade like me can't even read at our own grade level. I'm even working up to a 7th Grade reading level in 6th Grade.

[@octavius3800]

This stuff has been scary to see as a gen Z who still reads for fun, I thought everything was going downhill when I left high school, but dear Lord I did not expect it to go on this long or be this bad. This whole situation reminds me of a George Carlin bit where he goes on about how the owners of this country don't want intelligent citizens who can deduce how hard they're being fucked, they want obedient workers that are basically zombies

[@pysq8]

Workers... people willing to die for their country, and people ending up in prison. Capitalism gonna win either way. But God!

[@pichanao1069]

Except these kids can't even take order or be obedient 😂 It's worthless

[@DieFlabbergast]

You, yourself, are an example of how this is not as bad as it sounds. There are plenty of people like you, people who got themselves an education despite a lousy school system. Carlin may have been right about how the "elite" want to reduce the hoi polloi to zombies, but the elite are not as smart as they would like to think, because the ordinary man and woman can see through this stuff, and many of them will work to remain fully human and free.

[@stephenpercy4643]

@@pichanao1069 Except, like, there are no owners of the country!

[@Cortalpsychmajor]

Vanguard might disagree with that, not openly of course, but you may want to examine them to fully understand just how much of your life that one corporation controls. I'll give you a hint, they own about half of the world's companies.@@stephenpercy4643

[@GraceW-vy7nm]

I’m a younger Gen Z. I have ADHD, autism, and dyscalculia. My attention has always been better when I’m multitasking. I was watching this video while sewing. The school system was never that great for me. Focusing has always been hard for me unless it’s on something. I’m really interested in so all this new AI stuff is really just giving us a way (however shady) to do homework we otherwise wouldn’t have done. Tbh, millennials are just using the same old insults on us that Gen X and Boomers used on them. “Those darn kids with their smartphones and their instagrams, they can’t do anything nowadays.” Millennials have just figured out how to read because they’ve been around longer. I’m still learning, but I’ll get there. Society has a lot of problems when it comes to education, but it’s nothing that can’t be fixed.

[@Samurai_64]

14:06 I made it while listening, but I'll admit: there are a number of times where I'd watch a video on my laptop, scroll on my phone then be like "Oh shoot, I wasn't paying attention lemme rewind" XD

[@scarlett8782]

younger Gen Z and Gen Alpha have been raised by strangers on social media and mindless random internet garbage due to terrible Gen x and Millennial parents. I'm a younger Millennial myself, and my younger sister and I weren't even allowed by my grandparents to watch tv most of the time growing up, and only allowed to watch one dvd of a classic movie, or a kids movie, at night before bed, but we were allowed to read or play as much as we wanted. we were mostly raised by my grandparents, who are/were the most wonderful and kind people I've ever known, but my actual Gen x parents were mentally ill, irresponsible, abusive and awful, and sometimes they would force us to come home instead of staying with our grandparents because they wanted to us work like slaves - clean, do the washing, take care of neglected and scared foster animals who would often bite us or hurt us out of fear, or just because my mom wanted to "feel like" she was parenting us. I remember my mom took a full litter of 6 infant puppies home from a shelter to foster, which she had no business doing with her mental state and responsibility level (she acts like a toddler with zero emotion or impulse control), and if I hadn't gotten up every hour to bottle feed them all night long as an 11 year old on a school night, all of them would have died overnight. I did everything I could, but one of them stopped breathing in the night and I couldn't save him. they were way too young to have been separated from their mother in the first place, but I guess some monster just dropped them off in the parking lot of a store, and someone else took them to a shelter. I cried for days when I lost that puppy. I even tried doing CPR on him, but it wasn't enough. I still remember his little face. my sister, age 6 at the time, woke up when she heard me quietly crying in the hallway. she tried to comfort me, but I was just too exhausted and grief stricken to feel much better. my sister and I buried him in the back yard the next morning, making a headstone for him out of rocks and wild flowers, before our grandparents picked us up to take us to school. we didn't tell anyone about him, because it was just too devastating. on top of terrible incidents like that, we were taken by CPS multiple times due to calls being made to CPS by concerned relatives, teachers and neighbors, even being placed into foster care for 6 months after a social worker came to our parents house and found us home completely alone for the millionth time, before thankfully being remanded into the care of our grandparents once again. Gen x parents have a lot to answer for, having raised Millennials in often abusive and terrible ways, myself included. but for us Millennials, many were raised by boomer grandparents or boomer relatives/parents of friends. boomers can be problematic in their own right, with overly harsh discipline/rules, but they are often responsible, grounded when it comes to parenting, and demand respect in ways that Gen x parents do not, and as a result, Millennial parents tend to take a hands off approach to parenting since they themselves were raised by mentally ill, oppressive and terrible Gen x parents, which leads to Gen Z children raised by internet. In an effort to not repeat the mistakes of their own parents, Millennials try to let their children lead, which is a mistake. they try to make their children feel more special than they are, which is also a mistake. they teach them to rebuke authority, which can sometimes be a mistake. and Millennial parents tend to reject traditional values and traditional education systems. I turned out much better because I was raised by my grandparents mostly. by the age of 11, I had read every single book in my school library, which had over 500 books. my grandma started teaching me piano at the age of 3 using an ingenious color matching method that she developed. my grandma always told me "manners are your friend makers" and "if you behave and present yourself like a lady with class, people will treat you like a lady with class - like you're somebody". my grandpa worked 18 hour days in a factory to raise us, and he never complained once. he still came home, played with us, made dinner for us, and he always used to tell me "babe you're as pretty as a movie star" or "you look like a million dollars" when I dressed up or made myself look nice. but they had expectations for me. my grandparents always told me "you have the ability to be the best at everything you do if you try" and just knew that I would make good grades and do well. I wanted to work hard and make them proud to repay them for saving our lives, because I saw how hard they had to work to take care of us. I went through a period of turmoil as an adult due to a mental health crisis from the trauma of my parents, but after a few years, I came through it and went on to get a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering with a minor in Physics. my grandparents gave me the will, and the ability, to use my natural gifts to the fullest and excel at reading, writing, math, science, music and art, while giving me the confidence to turn heads in a room full of people and the sense to present myself to others in a way that encourages mutual respect. they taught me tolerance without saying a word, just with their kindness toward others. they taught me to love and respect my teachers, who would then often go above and beyond for me as a student due to my love and respect for them, boosting my ability to learn from them. my grandparents also paid for me to go to private school. thanks to my teachers, I got the highest SAT and ACT scores in the history of my high school, and a full scholarship to college. I was accepted at Brown and Stanford, but couldn't afford the tuition. I ended up going to the private college that gave me the full scholarship. it's now my dream to get my Masters at MIT, and I know that if I work hard, I can manage. Millennial parents are not instilling those same values in their kids, and their hands off parenting style is affecting a generation. my sister ended up being a teacher herself (early childhood education), and her own Gen Alpha daughter, now 5, is way ahead of grade level. my sister reads with her every night, and I teach her geometry and math using blocks and engineering tools for kids when I babysit. she's doing great. she can solve a 100 piece puzzle by herself in under an hour. she's not allowed to play with a phone or tablet, unless it's her learning tablet which is made for kids, and even then, only an hour after dinner. my sister always says "my daughter is my best friend, but she's also my responsibility, and my reason to sacrifice". it all comes down to parenting. Gen Z and Gen Alpha kids are being failed by their hands off Millennial (and sometimes mentally unstable Gen x) parents. I hope that somehow society can course correct, because if not, my niece is going to be one of the lucky few who rise above the rest all her life. I'm scared for the future of most of these kids.

[@tailspun]

my mom is an elementary school reading interventionist. if the kid is behind, special needs, or is still learning english as a second language, she can usually get them back on track, or at least give them a giant boost. what she cannot fix is parents that do not speak with or read to their kids, or, even more, parents that don't bring their kids to school. we can have broader discussions about why parents aren't doing this, but we aren't! we're just yelling out the very first thoughts that enter our heads. and it definitely isn't helping.

[@steventechno]

The education system was never great. I'm a 90s baby and school was always excruciatingly boring. As for reading, we need a new Pokemon boom with games that force kids to learn to read. 😂 Bring back the days of highly popular JRPGs without voice acting! Also for kids, remove Snapchat and TikTok. Replace those with SMS and better video games. Id never consciously let my gen A nephew or niece touch tiktok...

[@TheBuilderPro2024]

Games that force people to read with no voice acting? Well, there are recent games out there that don't have voice acting, like Doki Doki Literature Club. It's a shame that it's too scary for kids though.. at first it isn't but it goes mental after a bit of progression into the next acts.

[@steventechno]

I believe Modern Pokemon still lacks VA, but I noticed Gen A kids just don't care for Pokemon much at all outside of PKMN GO and the show. Gen A needs to have a game that encourages reading to absolutely go viral right about now. Something that makes them feel left out if they don't play. lmao @@TheBuilderPro2024

[@shadowm2k7]

im a 29yo millennial and when i left high school in 2011 i could barely read as well. I learned a lot slower than everyone else around me but i never got any extra support because my reading level wasn't so bad that i had to go to support classes, i was on the cusp of it though but my teachers mostly focused on the kids who could do well and i just fell behind. ((I could read, i knew what most of the words were and how to say them but i struggled TERRIBLY with similes/metaphors and read everything extremely literally so books never made any sense to me and i always ended up with a warped version of the story compared to everyone else 😅 my spelling was also horrendous)) After I got out of school and got the internet, that really helped my English a ton! ((Becoz no1 in cht rooms tuk me serizly becoz i typed lyke dis!!! 😂😂😂 2000's text speech was wild and that was how i normally wrote lol))

[@teecakes]

41yo millennial here, and I had almost the exact opposite problem. When I got into Twitter (now X) and other social media where you can DM people, I was almost too well-read for social media and texting. I took AP English in high school, went to a university and majored in English Lit, had dreams of being a screenwriter after college (spoiler: I'm not) But I refused to use l33t speak on social media. People not 'ppl'. Hahaha, not 'lol', and etc. everyone always thought I was an old man, and I guess now that's not so inaccurate. But I doubt anyone in Gen Z or Gen A has taken English lit as seriously as someone like me from our Gen, it's just not something kids are as interested in these days post-social media being a thing.

[@shadowm2k7]

@@teecakes wow! Its so funny how language changes like that 'cause growing up text speech was ALL THE RAGE!!! 😂😂😂 I am sad you didn't get to be a screenwriter!!! Felt though!! I have a degree in ACTING and haven't been in 1 thing lol 😂

[@chrystallee806]

I'm a generation Jones (between Boomers and X) and I have the same experience while reading the younger generations commentary on line. It's like a different language to me and totally illiterate as I see it. Akin to Spanglish or Ebonics. If necessary, I can interpret these languages as well. Does this make me multilingual?🤔 Don't laugh at me. I love emoji's.

[@Lexbut]

HE CAUGHT ME I deadass was watching shorts while watching this.

[@joeme]

My parents did their job and had my siblings and I reading, writing and arithmetic BEFORE we got to Kindergarten. What happen to family being the #1 source of nurturing?

[@briannamcfarland5974]

Great video, I agree with all of it. I'm a Millennial and I think the same problems (especially media literacy and attention spans) are plaguing older gens too. It just doesn't effect us quite as badly because our brains were fully developed before the internet could warp us in this way. Like yeah I was on the internet as far back as age 9ish but it was a completely different environment than it is now.

[@glitt.r]

I was homeschooled my entire childhood before I got into a public high school and I didn’t realize just how dumb people my age are 😭

[@rhondawasson9601]

Also, teachers can’t fail students because the parents will come unglued and, of course, it would be “offensive” to the child. We’re moving way too fast. It’s about getting it done, not getting it done well. I work with Gen Z at McDonald’s and it’s exactly the same problem.

[@kekeliamekudzi4948]

14:08 I don’t usually comment but I feel that the reason I’m able to consume long-form media is that I’ve allotted the time I usually have for reading to this. The semester always makes me feel bad when I read for pleasure so this is my alternative 😭

[@DraconicFeathers]

BTW, presently watching this at 14 minutes, all the way through - but I'm a millennial who grew up both without and with the internet. I know how to read long books, and just read a 300 page book in a month for a class. Fun fact - most teachers these days are Gen X and Millenials. Maybe that's why they're saying Gen Z can't read...because they actually know.

[@jaheimgilbert4017]

I'm really starting to think there was a reason why I was always a couple of grade levels behind in reading. I always did have trouble in Language Arts.

[@khutchinsoncpa1]

I loved the explanation of the attention economy. Thank you. My three kids (college age, high school, elementary school) all responded to the lockdown differently, based on their need for social interaction and learning styles. In my area, kids of single parents with no extended family who could help were the ones who had fewest resources, and suffered terribly. It was heartbreaking.

[@whoome1638]

As a millennial, there was a lot of kids in school who couldn’t read either. I think many Millennials are teachers now (many are leaving too) and they care more then gen X and boomers so they discuss it more because they know what it’s feels like to be let down.

[@foxinthesnow1917]

They missed like one or two school years during the pandemic.

[@jaws2003]

My son is Gen Alpha, and it's crazy with how they do things in schools. As a parent, I try to do my best to make sure he learns and works with the teachers. My parents did the same with me.

[@twingbranches]

You're not talking about Gen Z, you're talking about Gen Alpha, Gen Z is well out of elementary. The youngest Gen Z kid is like 12.

[@achmedaan]

There was some real irony in you referencing "Google" as the source of your definition for media literacy

[@TheSutanian]

Hillary Clinton Reform

[@geekgirl616]

Bro’s talking about gen alpha and calling it gen z, many gen z people are old enough to drive, vote, drink, and pay taxes.

[@alephnot000]

Technology should not be in the classroom. Kids have their entire life to fuck around on the computer and their phone. Let school be the one place where kids learn THE BASICS. Also, Can we please get rid of all this "standards based learning?" Let's just have the math department approve an algebra book, and we just teach the chapters from the book. It's that simple.

[@galenmoore-ly6in]

School systems across America are just pushing kid's through no matter how students are doing just passed along to the next class sick of dealing with them. Very sad

[@stevenscoggin7441]

I appreciate this video. Thank you for sharing it. I genuinely feel that education is evolving to fit what social media pushes in regards to length of time which doesn't help attention spans. I personally begin to lose focus after 60 minutes so plan meetings to not go beyond that. Thank you again and I hope you have a great day!

[@assassin8636]

It's not the social media excuse

[@donaldmaxie5264]

No chid left behind could only be done by holding the entire class back to whatever the laziest, dumbest individual would do. I can remember some that wouldn't do a darn thing. Based on that standard the rest of us in the class would have been taught 3rd grade English in the eighth grade for the fifth year in a row.

[@royepicness3509]

Gen ALPHA can’t read most Gen Z are heading to college or just getting through highschool

[@ericahertzberg9390]

Thank you for this video and creating the space to actually discuss the effects of the pandemic on learning and the light it shone on the education system. I also was in my junior year of college when the lockdown was put into place and let me tell you, I completely blanked out and do not remember any of what I learned. Remote zoom classes didn't feel real, I had to write a senior thesis as well and I completely dissociated while writing it and I read some parts of it recently and I just straight up don't remember even writing it? It feels like someone else wrote it, and even though college was objectively WAY better than my previous experiences in public school, I feel like it failed in preparing me for surviving and living in the real world. No genuine support from admin, no day to day practical skills taught to just help survive and I feel lied to and betrayed by the education system as a whole. I'd known it within my bones since elementary school that this would happen but it still sucks and I am completely careerless, do not know what to do with my degree and I feel like a complete imposter.

[@BerusJ001]

is this not the ADULTS faults? Like, a lot of this is the "No Child Left Behind" and then there's also the fact that so many parents just gave their kids a tablet to get that child out of their faces, and you don't need to be able to spell to find games and videos. Younger Gen Z and Gen Alpha are being failed, it's wild

[@CutiePatutie_SmookiePookieBear]

The adults are definitely at fault for this one

[@mynameisreallycool1]

Fr. Wouldn't this make the older generations the dumb ones? They're the ones who thought that ruining our education like this would be beneficial, and you'd have to be pretty fucking stupid to not realize the consequences as a fully grown adult. Either that, or they are sociopaths who wanted to ruin our futures on purpose. It's either one or the other.

[@Animefreak242]

It's everyone's fault

[@clartblart3266]

Yeah, I mean, if there's truly a big problem with Gen Z not being able to read, then it's kinda hard to blame them. The American U.S Education is at fault, if anything.

[@lenan5913]

Yeah it sucks when kids get blamed for the shortcomings of adults. When I was young if my Mom wanted me outta her face I had a Leap Frog tablet that was educational. And she made me do hooked on phonics for years before I could go play. I'm pre video game until about 10 years old so I had a strong foundation before I just started playing Mario Cart on Wii for 2 hours straight. Early education has to happen in the home and at school. It's really sad how hands off so many parents are.

[@cosmonaut6810]

As a 27 year old secondary English teacher, I’ve noticed that for sure, kids attention spans have changed, but every generation is different, it’s okay to adapt teaching for our learners. My main worry is it’s now incredibly clear whose parents buy their kids books to read for pleasure and encourage them to work hard at school and who has parents who don’t care, dislike school as an institution, don’t monitor the media their kids consume and just give them access to phones and games all day. The first group are on track to achieve with mid-high GCSE’s (English high school qualification) regardless of being high ability or having difficulties with dyslexia or educational needs. The bottom unlikely will, and if they do , will be by the skin of their teeth. In England you NEED an English GSCE for any job. There’s also other huge factors like social classes gap growing, poverty increasing, schools having too many students, overworked parents and teachers. But if anyone is a parent reading this - you can survive and your kids can achieve even though the system is against us - you just need to care, take a hands on approach, educate yourself to know what your kids are learning, and don’t be afraid to set real boundaries / penalties in your household for not doing homework/behavioural issues in class etc! ♥️

[@EPICDANNY-k6w]

You’re Gen Z

[@cosmonaut6810]

@@EPICDANNY-k6w Shit! Should I hand in my notice at work?

[@brettknoss486]

So, how do we ensure children are given evidence based reading instruction. Should effects be made to reduce mass incarceration, so that more parents aren't separated from their families?

[@cosmonaut6810]

@@brettknoss486 there’s a lot of reasons why so many children have a lack of literacy in their homes. incarceration likely is one of them but in my country it’s not the same as the situation in the US, so I couldn’t comment on that.

[@jarbincks6715]

My sister is 13 years old and I've been trying to get her to read FOREVER. Well, she finally picked up a book from one of my all-time favorite series from when I was in middle school Diary of a wimpy kid (which I still devour to this day, btw!!) and she told me it was too hard for her. TOO HARD. Diary of a wimpy kid is supposed to be BELOW her reading grade level and honestly I'm so so concerned

[@chocfortress]

My older sister felt the same way towards me when we were young. She always wanted me to read more and hitched a plan. She kept trying to get me to pick up her favourite series. (Deltora Quest). But I wasn't interested. One day, she found me daydreaming on the couch and started reading it aloud to me. She stopped halfway through the first book, handed it to me, then walked away. I ended up reading the rest of the books, and we read two more series together. I love reading! edit: wording

[@DaACTUALLYREALReddie]

As a 13 year old, currently Homeschooled, i apologize to y'all that my peers are always like that, please know that every 13 year old is not like that, like, i remember reading ATLEAST some book from when i was younger, from about 4-8 years old, like Storytime books, some Lego City books, a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse book, Five Find-Outers, and others, even though i am not interested in reading the Five Find-Outers book at the start, eventually, i kinda began to get a little hooked on it.

[@luvkayakn]

I’m curious if vocabulary is still taught as a list of new words to learn each week. An alternative to help your sister is check out a few library books of classic literature, and get the cliff notes or spark notes for the books. It’s seriously OK to not read every book word by word. Let her scan the cliff notes and skim the full book. Tell her she can slow and read paragraphs or pages in depth as she finds them interesting. Another suggestion is to have a dictionary at hand and a notebook to look up and write down words that are unfamiliar. I believe real books are better than ebooks for this purpose. I just have a feeling reading is frustrating if vocabulary is weak, and the student hasn’t grown beyond early reading where each word is slowly read. As we progress in reading skills, we actually skip a lot of filler words. Another suggestion is to listen to the audio book version of the selected books while relaxing. I’ve listened to books every night for over 20 years before drifting to sleep. Most libraries have free online audiobooks.

[@amethyst1062]

I could read DOAWK in second grade It was fourth grade level

[@Brainjoy01]

you need to sit down and go word by word. cut words down into latin or french roots. "alphabet" -- "alpha" + "bet" . "restaurant" -- "restaur" -- "ant"

[@kawehionalani]

As a GenX parent to 2 GenZ children, we must do our part in encouraging reading to our children as soon as they’re born! It’s never too early to teach them even if they’re infants. My kids are now 19 and 21, and they tell me one of their highlights as a child was when I’d read to them at bedtime or just read to them for fun.

[@LunarEleven]

I'm with you. I'm an old millennial, almost Gen X, and it makes me so sad that I am sitting here thinking "I'm so grateful my son is literate." But it isn't just luck. He was exposed to books before he could do anything but chew them up, because I wanted him to be curious about them. His first word was "book" (he identified every small rectangular object as "book" 😅) and grew up to be a book worm. But I don't think that would have happened without two parents strongly encouraging it. If there's one truly great thing JK Rowling did for my generation, it was prove you can get any kid to read. Parents are too freaking lazy to care about their kid's interests because the Internet can entertain them now.

[@EavenStarchilde]

@@LunarEleven millennial are not old. Don't even label yourself like that....

[@manictiger]

Should also teach them gun safety and handling early on, so when the increasingly large pool of low IQ types show up, they can handle them. The old world is gone and the WEF won.

[@ronfriedman8740]

Absolutely! There's a old saying among teachers: "the first three years you're learning to read, after that you're reading to learn".

[@spottedtime]

Actually you can start reading to your child, as soon as their ears develop at roughly 6-7 months. As for being called “old” is based on your opinion because age is just a number, especially after a person is over 18. I’ve seen grandparents act like they are still in their prime and kids acting mature for their age

[@niyadanielle5638]

I feel like EVERYONE severely underestimated the effects of online learning for such critical ages of development. We are just now grasping the effects of 2020 months away from 2024, the kids have BEEN doomed. I struggled as a college sophomore going into my major when the pandemic happened. I can only imagine what its like for kids who NEED in person social, reading, learning development for k-12

[@lw1717]

Yes! It was my first year of my master‘s degree and I hated it and struggled and now looking back I remember nothing I learned that year, even though it was interesting, I remember more from the years before

[@allurajane4979]

i think that we should have just not had school and then continued later on

[@3mi3mi]

I disagree. I was homeschooled for most of my life. I had online classes in middle and high school. I never had any of these problems. I was reading Plato on my own in high school. The issue comes down to the US’s broken education system and absent parenting (not saying the parents are negligent, but they’re simply too busy trying to make end’s meet to prioritize their kid’s academic needs). The problem with COVID was the uncertainty of it and how anxious we all were because of that, so it was hard to focus and also, some of my professors just weren’t used to teaching online courses so it was a mess. But that’s not because of online learning or homeschooling in itself. Edit: I admit, social media has a lot to do with it especially short form content. I got my first phone at 13. I had Facebook and I used to do a lot of writing and post it there. IG was very different 10 years ago, I used to just post photography and follow art pages. Now, with TikTok and reels I feel like I have brain fog and don’t read as much as I used to.

[@Cowmuncher]

I’m currently in 7th and when I was in third my school just sent packets of work and that’s it so the end of 3rd was bad and 4th I went to a new school with laptops and so I was like what is this thing and so I was struggling but now I think most kids especially at my school caught up but I can’t speak for everyone

[@kennedyhogan9484]

yep, I was a junior in college when everything went online and I dropped out. I just couldn't handle it. my depression was out of control and my ability to focus seemed to be completely gone. I can't imagine being in high school or middle school for that. after a few years of getting my life back together, I'm about to go back to college to finish my bachelors and can't wait to be in a classroom again!

[@Icezoot]

Gen Z? 🤨 The oldest Gen Z’ers are turning 30. 1995-2012. More than over half of us have long since graduated highschool. If you’re 14 or below you’re gen alpha. These teachers are saying middle schoolers can’t read.

[@sonpanchan]

I'm a Millenial and I remember the education system was horrible even back in the 00's. The "No child left behind" Act pretty much screwed us over. And yeah short attention spans isn't just a Gen Z problem. My Grandma before she died, she was addicted to watching short Tiktok and Facebook videos and anything over a minute would make her lose interest. She was from the Silent Generation.

[@darkshadowrule2952]

​@@tinabean713for real, I have attention issues, but it seems like shortform content just makes it worse, kinda like how my spelling gets worse the more I use autocorrect, the tech is changing our brains

[@SheWhoRemainz]

@@darkshadowrule2952oh yes! Me too. I turned mine off. I didn’t realize how bad I’ve gotten until I tried to write a letter..

[@ak5659]

My parents were Silent Generation. Forbes magazine has a great article on them. They were a small generation so there were never enough of them for the jobs available. So the chronic labor shortage meant a better job was always available. They spent most of their working life in a good economy. Yes, they led a charmed life!

[@Cynnas]

If your parent doesn't read to you as a child, teach you the letters and teach you to read basic words (like "cat") and encourage you to read, it is your parents' fault not the teacher's.

[@paladinkraus]

93' baby here, it must be a state-by-state thing, because as a Floridian, also a high dose ADHD person, I learned Spanish & excelled in my academics. I speak Spanish fluently to this day. You can't put the entire blame on the school system... if the child & parents are unwilling to also play a part in the child's educational success... this is what happens: illiterate children.

[@queenofhearts2141]

As a Gen Z who’s out of high school, I can say that one of the main reasons I was an advanced reader is due to a single teacher being an overachiever in elementary school. He was my English teacher, and he would spend his own money to take decently performing students out for brunch and then buy them books, about every two weeks. Because my school was low-income and understaffed, he was maybe one of two English teachers for elementary kids. He inspired a lifelong interest in reading and writing for me. Plus, my mother used the early internet to her advantage; she was a single mother, so she wasn’t always able to keep an eye on me, but she put me on a variety of K-12 learning programs/websites like Rosetta Stone and PBS Kids. Without those early things that kept me a little ahead of the curve throughout school, I might have ended up failing/dropping out due to undiagnosed ADHD.

[@sophisitcated1194]

👏 way to go you and your mom.

[@RuachelRuiz]

Dude I loved PBS Kids, I would watch it everyday after school in the antena TV.

[@solsoldier3029]

K12 I currently still in, but it good learning program

[@perryjohnson7529]

I hope you were correctly diagnosed at some point. I wasn't until I was 40 and I believe that it would have made a world of difference for me. Fortunately, finding out about myself prompted my nephew, who was just starting high school, to get diagnosed and treated. He graduated from college this year. Maybe last year, my memory isn't the greatest. I guess I'm just trying to say that it can be important to know these things about yourself.

[@Em22-wtf]

I'm a Gen Xer and if it wasn't for my mom reading to me every night, using different voices and such to bring the stories alive.... But then, I had a 3rd grade teacher that would, every Friday sit us in a circle on the floor around her chair and turn the lights out and tell us stories, using different voices etc... I mean, other teachers would stand in the hallway and peek in through the sliver of glass window to see us all captivated and eagerly listening... 3rd grade.... You ever try wrangle up a class room of 3rd graders and have them sit quietly and captivated for a whole story? Lol, she did it and I've had a love for stories ever since. There's something to be said for passionate teachers from 3rd grade all the way up to some great college professors I had that had that same passion.... I think a lot of that passion isn't seen today, not in teachers OR parents. Probably high burn out too on both sides unfortunately

[@SavannahBurris]

I’m 23 and a freshman in college. These 18 year olds in my classes just… don’t participate. There’s a night and day difference in the way we act in class. Something about finishing high school online during the pandemic permanently set these kids back and I feel so bad for them. I’m SO glad I graduated in 2018 and not later on.

[@samanthacallaway2276]

I’m 25 and while my academic career has been a very long journey- it’s not due to anything but crippling ADHD. All my professors acknowledge I have a great understanding and drive for the work. My classmates? Some of them…I worry about. They don’t pay attention, they don’t participate, etc. thankfully the group I’ve carved out to work with is the opposite. But I’ve definitely run across some who are just very behind.

[@ytgytgy]

I'm a bit older, 36 and been doing my education on and off all my life kind of due to my parents disallowing my sister or I to have any interests which affected my ability as an adult to trust myself or seek interests (abuse/religion). I've been used to Gen Z being my main peers since 2020 when I went back to college. I can't judge because some of the larger classes that don't take attendance only have half the class ever present and sometimes I'm one of the many who doesn't show up ☺ One of my classmates in my group is a fratboi that never shows up and doesn't participate in our group projects, too busy taking shirtless pics on insta 😂 so I know he's failing that class but that's kind of just the age where some people don't give a fuck no matter what gen they're from so that's my thoughts. I do worry for gen A especially those who were K-3 during pandemic, lots of lost educational development and none of it was their fault and now they're being held to a standard they weren't prepared for.

[@agme8045]

lol I just turned 19, I’m in college, and everything seems normal to me, idk what you are talking about. There’s the people who actively participate in class, answer questions and make questions too, and then there’s the more quiet people who are either shy or aren’t really understanding much of the class. But it’s been like that all my life, in both primary and secondary school. The pandemic only lasted a year, the strict quarantine anyways. I honestly don’t understand in what way you think that may have affected most people in their engagement with the class. In my personal experience it didn’t.

[@Suited_Nat]

Tbh, being 19, we don’t need the pity. Like yes, the pandemic wasn’t fun, but there’s a complete and utter difference between social media comprehension compared to reading comp. I swear, I hope I don’t end up pulling this type of stuff to the younger gens.

[@SavannahBurris]

@@agme8045 I’m only in three classes, so of course my example is a bit on the small side. But 2 of my classes are just a pain to get through. I feel like I’m learning less because no one is participating. My one classroom is so much fun, though. We all adore our teacher and we’ve formed a pretty good rapport. These classes are probably just incredibly boring to most kids that have been in school non stop for 12 years. I took a long break and after busting my ass doing nothing but work to keep a roof over my head, this is such an amazing opportunity for me, and I’m enjoying the challenge. My perspective and attitude coming into the classroom is definitely much different and I was just as unimpressed/uninterested in participating, at 18, so I know that most likely has something to do with it. But it’s still a markedly different experience from my pre-Covid school days.

[@Axolotl263]

Kids, this is why you read fanfiction, get passed that 5th grade reading level and learn to hate all those horrible Y/N tropes 😃👍

[@taylay7164]

Omg wattpad and romance books are the BEST

[@GayforShiver]

Best option

[@caramelcopcat]

this is the only reason i can read/write 💀

[@BishopShotgun]

@@caramelcopcatI skipped seven grades with my writing skills solely just to write a good fanfiction for my rarepair at the time 😭

[@caramelcopcat]

@@BishopShotgun you get me

[@amandaodom5732]

My mom was a 2nd grade teacher for 29 years. The older I got, the more she and her other teachers would ask my opinion on the assignments and assessments they had to give the kids. A huge problem is departments for education in states keep cramming more lessons into the same length school year expecting kids to learn more, but all it does is take away the time kids previously used to master those skills. So instead of having 3 weeks to learn and master one skill, now they have to learn a skill in 1 week before moving on to the next thing, and they immediately forget what they just learned.

[@fidgetykoala]

true but if I have to be honest once you get in the real world things work in the exact same way. I had to take a break from everything and I kind of put aside things I was learning about digital marketing, now I feel like I wasted 200 years... I don't think this system is sustainable anymore...people who are doing well usually get burnt out in a couple years... it's just mental.

[@bunny_0288]

​@@fidgetykoala But by the time things work that way you have a solid foundation and have mastered the basic skills we all need in life. Kids are not adults. Their brains aren't fully developed. It is obvious to me that the new way isn't working. I see it with my niece and nephews who are in high school right now. They are smart kids, but they read at at elementary school level. When I was their age I was reading and understanding college-level books. They struggle to understand Harry Potter. It's really sad to see, but I saw how their education was. There was zero emphasis on mastery because Common Core is the Spiral method of learning which is utter garbage. I grew up with the Mastery Method and it is superior in every way. There is a reason homeschoolers out perform kids in public school by huge margins. The typical homeschool family works on mastery and focuses on the basics and going at the kid's pace. And those kids score far better on standardized testing.

[@fidgetykoala]

@@bunny_0288 The skills I used to master seem to have become quite outdated as we speak. I used to read academic books even during my middle-school years, however just now I feel I'm struggling. I'm bilingual so I found myself getting confused in between Italian and English, my Italian has gotten worst and my ENG is less advanced than up to some years ago, since I'm back in Italy currently. I don't know what this Common Core and Spiral Method is, but kids-wise a lot of them are neglected by their own parents, who are too busy being on socials. The state of the current public education is ridiculous even here in Italy, as I have some former friends teaching in high school and being completely ignorant themselves.

[@bunny_0288]

@@fidgetykoala I agree that in some cases parenting is to blame, but my sister is a stay at home mom and is actively involved in her kid's education. She always helps with homework, emails with their teachers, etc. In their case it is 100% the school and the curriculum. And I have helped them with their homework many times over the years and it is horrible. And they live in a wealthy area with some of the highest rates schools and they are being given a crappy education. My sister said it was already going downhill, but it got really bad after Covid. If her kids weren't already in high school she would homeschool, and she is a former teacher. I know TONS of former public school teachers who homeschool their own kids or put them in private school.

[@ibeom_u]

That’s true

[@tcrijwanachoudhury]

As an older gen z who was privileged enough to have an okay education, i say the kids wont raise themselves. The system is learning the hard way, and as far as im concerned is getting what they deserve 🤷‍♀️

[@Weeniehutnurse]

Exactly. We didn’t teach ourselves. We were taught somehow, so why are the older generations blaming us for something we have zero control over. They created the policies that hold us back. They refused to teach us certain things. So why are they angry now? This is the result of their teachings.

[@joshuab3918]

Maybe the system deserves it, but the rising generation doesn't.

[@NiaLaLa_V]

@@joshuab3918 But this is what makes the pendulum swing. The younger humans have to get fed up with the older ones, and make changes.

[@sofiabravo1994]

Too concerned with gender unicorn 🦄

[@vianjelos]

The system is getting exactly what it wants. They want kids too dumb to think on thier own..its easier to controll them that way.

[@carlbowles1808]

Don't feel bad. I'm a late baby boomer who tutored in high school. I encountered 15 year old gangsters reading at the third grade level or less. They could fight but couldn't read.

[@Window4503]

This is a bit different though. That was a group of kids. We’re talking about rising percentages.

[@Reymundo65]

That was me and pretty much my entire generation and well all doing pretty good now

[@Jewel_Screaming_Chango8387]

Thats soo 90s and 2000s

[@jg3000]

No student gets left behind from the GW days.

[@cooperminion825]

One of the reasons why kids are having trouble reading these days is bc they're being taught a more picture based version of reading instead of a phonics based version. Add to that the fact that parents are using the tablets as babysitters almost 24/7 and it's a perfect storm. I remember my parents would bring activity books and actual books for me whenever we went anywhere. Always stuff that would allow my brain to grow

[@Mokiefraggle]

Also, I feel like there's less emphasis out there to instill enjoyment or pleasure in learning, or curiosity about the world. I grew up on PBS shows like Reading Rainbow, 3-2-1 Contact!, and Square One, which were all about getting kids interested in books as a form of entertainment and joy, making science cool, or making math fun. Or Mr. Wizard! Cool science experiments that you can often do with a few household items, and here's why this happens, and isn't it cool? Even if we're sticking kids in front of the TV or the tablet, there used to be such an emphasis on love of learning and growth of curiosity in kids' programming...now, it's just a steady stream of cartoons.

[@cooperminion825]

@@Mokiefraggle I remember watching shows like Wishbone, Reading Rainbow, Between the Lions, Cyberchase, and Arthur all the time as a kid. They were fun edu-tainment shows that expanded my brain

[@Mokiefraggle]

@@cooperminion825 Edu-tainment. Yes. Very much so. There were so many shows that were all educational, but also fun to watch. I was in high school when Wishbone came out, but I absolutely adored the idea of a show teaching kids classic literature via a cute dog and the adventures of him and his humans! Things like this feel like they're gone from the lexicon of children's programming now, and I can't even begin to picture some kids even taking to being introduced to them. Like, I remember this sort of thing being just as much a part of my childhood television viewing as Voltron and She-Ra, just as loved as those shows, but I also can't picture the youngest generation of my family watching LeVar Burton park a camel outside a museum to go learn about mummies and introduce a cool book about how and why they were made, or finding Ms. Frizzle turning her class into desert animals to learn about the adaptations that allow them to live there to be anything but pointless. They literally were wanting to make TikTok challenge videos at last year's Thanksgiving gathering, and are like 1st graders!

[@kerrypoppins5388]

Yes I've noticed this shift working in customer service. Buttons that were once words being replaced with pictures. Sad really.

[@cooperminion825]

@@kerrypoppins5388 the picture stuff is a good start when they're in preschool but they need to grow from there. I remember we used to have activity sheets where we would match the picture to the word but that was only when I was 4. First common core now this? I think they're trying to dumb the masses

[@alyssumowo]

I finished high school over a year ago, and you would not believe how adverse my peers were to reading. In my senior year, we had to do weekly reading logs. They weren't at all difficult, we just had to read a certain amount of pages (that were individually tailored by how fast we read) out of literally any book we wanted to (including things like comics, manga, and graphic novels), and it was all self reported (so you could literally just lie about how much you read). Despite this, I was the only person in my class that would actually do them. They didn't bother lying, they'd tell the teacher they didn't even try without a care in the world! She had been giving her students reading logs for years and we were the first class to ever have an issue with completing them. At some point she just stopped assigning reading logs to us altogether, since there was no point in assigning something that only one person would actually do.

[@Adulterate]

This is something I’ve noticed in school as well. Although the education system is poor, and COVID adversely affected and stunted learning progress; some people simply do not help themselves. After a certain point we must ask ourselves, “What am I doing (or not doing) that’s making my situation more difficult than what it already is?”.

[@nitebreak]

during covid i was pretty depressed but i spark noted for books i didn’t want to read atleast and i did the related assignments. I got good grades anyways cuz i got the books enough from reading multiple sites chapter summaries. I like reading and read quite a bit but school reading i just can’t stand it.

[@4nastajia]

⁠@@Adulterateyea but i must admit the homework is INSANE like,,, there’s truly no reason for half of what we get especially when they know people don’t do it because that just harms the grades even if everything else is perfect A+ because outside factors can play into not being able to do hw yet it’s for some reason, atleast where i am, one of the biggest things you’re graded on

[@Adulterate]

@@4nastajia Yes the work is hard, but so is life. The problem is the quitter mentality when it comes to working and being a student. We as people almost always play a part in our own failure. Just because something is “hard” or not “worth it” doesn’t mean you just don’t do it, that’s a problem I have with a lot of people my age; not everything is going to workout for you - learn to do things you don’t want to, or don’t like to when there are somewhat minimal repercussions. My problem is with people who choose not to help themselves, not with people who literally cannot.

[@BagerGman]

It is not just your school, or even the US. I have been teaching for a company in China, both in country and out. Our school was actually boosting academics from 2017 to early 2020, one of the top schools to attend in Beijing, then it started to tank. What used to be a 95% return rate on essays in early 2020 moved to 70% in late 2020, and moving forward, maybe 25% at best now. I have a few of my 8 classes turning in no essays at all.

[@cariwaldick4898]

Gen X here, and I watched the whole video with no distractions. I totally agree with everything you said. I had some points I almost interjected before I finished watching and you hit them, (pandemic, teacher pay, AI.) If kids can't read, no one should be letting this go! We need to stop polarizing: Politics, generation, age, gender, race, economics, rural, urban, etc. It's not a gen Z problem; it's an EVERYONE problem! We love to say "It takes a village," then we point at someone to blame, and walk away. "Not my circus, not my monkeys." The disconnections are killing us. Parents are overworked, with student loan debt higher than auto loans, and second only to home loans. Many see home ownership as unattainable. Wages are stagnant, homelessness is up, people are living in their cars and vans, childcare is unaffordable, and too many are living one paycheck away from losing it all. Teachers are getting shafted, and have been for decades. They don't have any more they can give, and they're already being held hostage by their compassion, and responsibility. They're being told they must do it ALL, and they can't. The government isn't going to save us. Half of them want to privatize education, and let those on the bottom fend for themselves. I blame the .1%ers and corporate ownership. They're the reason wages are stagnant, and parents don't have time to parent their kids--between their full time jobs and side-hustles. The top tier is turning the rest of us into serfs, and serfs don't need to read. The elites don't care about public education--their kids are in private schools. They don't want their taxes to go up to improve schools and pay teachers more. They're the reason college is so expensive. Corporate culture is responsible for the gatekeeping that demands a degree for entry level work. They own our healthcare, they're buying up homes for profit, they maintain investing as a rich man's game, they buy politicians and write their own legislation, they don't pay their share of taxes, and they squash competition and innovation. It sounds like this is my pet peeve, and it is. But if parents had more time, more financial security, and the ability to educate their kids--rather than treating schools like a daycare, then teachers could TEACH. Parents are living in survival mode, and abdicating raising the kids to the teachers. No one gets to call these kids stupid, because everyone is letting them down!

[@maltesess]

Brilliantly put. Parents are failing their children because society is failing parents, working class parents especially, both working and even taking second jobs and are just too tired to spend time with their kids when they get home.

[@naturegirl2110]

Everything you said is correct

[@Vermonster23]

Fellow Gen X are here, I couldn’t have said it better myself.

[@gravdigr27]

Just a point I want to make, college tuition got as expensive as it is today thanks to the governments guaranteed student loans to any 18 year old college graduate regardless of their ability to pay it back. In essence giving colleges a blank check so they could charge whatever they want. So colleges got rich and ignorant teenagers thqt didnt know better or were fed lies about what their future job prospects and earnings would be went into crushing debt. There are 4 year degrees out there where the only job requiring it is teaching the class.

[@cariwaldick4898]

@@gravdigr27 Agreed. But....without the greed of the colleges cashing those blank checks, and spending the money on extravagance rather than education, (private water parks, sports coaches, performing arts centers,) we wouldn't be in this mess. Many of those loans also went to unaccredited, private colleges that prey on working adults. When these students can't finish--due to work demands, family, moving, or too much debt, they discover they can't transfer those credits to another college. Or they graduate, and discover no one will accept their degree. They're on their own, with debt that comes due the day they turn the tassel. Fixing this would mean an initiative to only allow federal money to go to accredited schools, those with reasonable graduation rates, and lower percentages of non-academic spending. Oversight and accountability. They can still build a water park, but they can't pass those costs on to students through tuition hikes. I believe all high school graduates, and even adults, deserve to go to college--if that's what they want, and they take it seriously. An educated population benefits us all. I also believe we need more trade schools, to teach welding, carpentry, plumbing, childcare, sewing, and other trades you learn best by hands-on training. If I had my way, EVERYONE would get two years free at a community college, or trade school, followed by two more years, prorated by income, at a 4 year school if they meet the GPA, attendance, and involvement requirements. We're in a global economy, and the U.S. is falling behind other developed countries. We're going to see more and more of our economy offshored to India, and other places where education is a priority but costs are lower. That's a concern for everyone--not just students and their parents.

[@kyawatson2224]

I’ve never been so grateful for my mom forcing me to read books as a kid.

[@YukiLeiu]

I’m gen z and it’s baffling to me to hear that others are struggling. Like it’s not news that we still have so much gaps in education that we have working adults who can’t read but it was usually parenting a fault or that they couldn’t finish or go to school. I still had to learn cursive and there’s whole schools operating with kids 3+ grades lower than they’re in?? What has the americas come to.

[@puro9284]

I believe it’s states putting there academic score over true learning. It’s how our stuff works sadly

[@whknws9595]

@@puro9284 it absolutely is. It's also related to phonics being mostly replaced by sight reading, so many kids don't know how to sound words out.

[@WonderingWildWanderingRose]

It's also a brain development issue. Medical studies have now proven that Gen Z& Alpha brains have far fewer folds (the nooks and crannies that provide brain real estate for processing/functional power). This is an EARLY infantcy/childhood brain development issue. There has been a shift in parenting/toys/play since Gen X/Millennials were raised that puts more focus on passive type play/toys (even books) that leads to the brain not being stimulated enough to build the brain to it's fullest potential before the first round of brain pruning that naturally occurs through the stages of childhood. It's massively important to max out the development of those folds when the brain is in full building mode.

[@Eking-su3tr]

The Americas….would be referencing both continents. America or US is for the country. There’s always a constant, y’all don’t know shit about geography. The illiteracy shit is just a cherry on top

[@FoxGameCZ]

School should be the one teaching you stuff like cursive. Are they abanddoning teachinf it where you live cause I am sure that's what most kids are required to write everything at lower schools like elementary school in my country.

[@hakunamatata7981]

It’s a mix of the pandemic, no child left behind, and parents not having the capacity to help outside of school. Some parents do think it’s all on the teachers and some genuinely cannot help because they’re exhausted.

[@Hi-jw7oq]

Parents are exhausted as well. We have to work all the time in order to make ends meet

[@simonebethune4848]

What???! The parents had a whole LOCKDOWN to read books to their kids while they were at home! The jokes write themselves!

[@ANME1rocker]

​@@simonebethune4848they were also trying to figure out how to provide for their family, as many businesses shut down or cut hours. It's hard to take care of others when you're in survival mode.

[@ChaosTheoriesLuxe]

​@simonebethune4848 Yea, there was a lockdown, but it didn't only affect the education system. A lot of those parents lost their jobs, trying not to lose their homes, and were fist fighting for toilet paper at Walmart. Food and shelter do Trump education when it comes to survival. It was a rough and scary time for everyone. I am a parent who did homeschooling during the pandemic. My kid could read at 3yrs old. Started kindergarten in 2020. However at the age of 6yrs old, he forgot. He started using the internet more and using voice to text. So instead of practicing reading and spelling, tech did it for him. I'm trying to figure out how to undo that now.

[@polly5770]

I am a teacher and recently my government has been cramming ~40 kids into each class. They’re not building infrastructure at a fast enough rate. I try my best but it’s impossible to check on each individual student during the limited class time. Also, I can’t just ignore the kids who actively ask for help, leaving some kids who don’t get the material at all or are too shy to ask with even less time with me. I always make myself available before school, at lunch, and after school, but the kids actually have to show up to those tutorial sessions to receive extra help from me. Most of the time these kids don’t.

[@jules9669]

When half the country is consistently voting against education for kids, yeah let's point the finger at the children 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

[@dinkyboss]

It’s not a finger pointing situation. I’ve noticed more and more people resort to emotional responses like trying to appoint blame instead of grasping this is a multifaceted issue.

[@Skapo]

Man it's wild. I live in Houston which was largely blue and had been working on our educational systems to the point where we have been performing well despite the state CONSTANTLY trying to defund public schools. Was it perfect? Nope. But we were better off than much of Texas since Houston in general leans just blue enough to fund public stuff. So what did the Republicans decide to do? They forcibly (also illegally) removed all of the publicly elected officials and put in hand picked Extreme Christian Nationalists who have been cutting resources at every twist and turn. They fired most of our librarians & converted tons of school libraries into detention centers before reducing funds to the point where some schools were having to ask for volunteer janitors. The new Superintendant Mike Miles literally had students perform a musical about him (and featuring him). I wish I was being hyperbolic, but Republicans are dead set on destroying anything that isn't privately funded Christian institutions. Even if there is hell to pay for everyone else.

[@terrorists-are-among-us]

The teachers are idiotic themselves. Then people get on KZbin and think they're being "educated" BY CLOWNS 😂

[@vaderladyl]

@@dinkyboss Exactly. What is the point of looking for fault when it is a situation that requires everybody working together to fix it.

[@kirstenbass1968]

If our children can’t read, that is our own fault. We have worked so hard toward literacy and forgot how much work it took to be as literate as we are today (we being American society as I view it). We can’t let up, because our kids will be let down.

[@Blobert143]

I’m a gen z and I’ve seen this issue everywhere. I’m currently a 6th grader, and it astounds me how many children are still at elementary school levels. My stepbrother (7th grade) still performs at a 3rd or 4th grade level in reading, and it’s kind of sad to be honest. Our schools aren’t giving us the actual knowledge we need to be successful, they’re just making us memorize things for tests and giving us busywork. I’m extremely lucky to have grown up in a household that valued learning and wanting to learn.

[@Jaelynne17]

The fact that you used the word “astound” as a 6th grader, is beautiful! I can tell that you are a voracious reader! Keep it up! :)

[@304kaya]

Well said! I've hardly learned anything in school these past years, so in my free time I try to read, write and expand my vocabulary as much as possible, haha. I also noticed it seems like other kids pick on you for participating in class and being serious about learning now more than ever before. (Coming from a kid who used to get bullied for being a nerd)

[@hatheos]

If you're currently in 6th grade, wouldn't that make you Gen Alpha?

[@johnnydjiurkopff]

​@@hatheosI thought alpha didn't start until 2016

[@hatheos]

@@johnnydjiurkopff Gen Z is 1997-2012.

[@steadyboost7]

Former education specialist here! I worked in-class at elementary schools from 2011 to 2017, both in Title 1 and very, VERY affluent schools. What did the kids at both of these schools have in common? They really couldn't read, write, do basic math, or comprehend what they were consuming. I remember looking over some language arts prompts I had kids at the Title 1 school work on (1st through 5th grade), and they were full of spelling and grammatical errors on top of being completely off topic. Almost as if the kids didn't read the short passage before they responded. I tried this assignment again the next day, but I went around the room asking the kids to read a sentence out loud to help reinforce what we were reading. The results were the same. I brought this up with my principal and told her what was happening and she told me that most of the school is at least a year behind on language arts benchmarks. With the exception of the GATE kids, the school was pretty far behind (lack of resources and support from the families at home), so we both were playing catch-up at this new-to-us school. After 5 years at the Title 1 school, I was transferred to a school right outside of a million dollar gated neighborhood with plenty of stay-at-home moms. The results were the same; excluding the GATE kids, none of them could comprehend what was happening in stories. But what made it worse at this school was that these kids couldn't tell you what was real and what wasn't on the internet. I say all of that to say this; COVID played a big part, but I'd argue that the degradation of their education and intellect is due to neglect from their parents. I grew up in a fairly lower middle class family, but my parents made sure they sat down and went over my homework with me every night. They made sure I read for an hour every day outside of what school required. They read with and to me to promote reading. They let me play crazy video games and watch violent movies as a kid with almost no supervision, but they made sure I could tell the difference between what I saw on the TV and what was real life before they'd let me engage with them. Teachers only have your kids for 6 hours a day. What are you as a parent doing with them the remaining 18 hours? All the kids who grew up with an iPad are in middle and high school now and that neglect is what we're seeing now.

[@JessTheAwe]

I really got depressed reading this, it's so true

[@sofiabravo1994]

Children in public school spend more time at school then at home.

[@Ouchthathurt843]

Most parents I’ve seen are similarly behind both in education and maturity. That or they are tired and overworked just like the teachers and don’t have the time or energy to support their kids educational needs on top the emotional and physical ones. This is the consequences of a capitalist system that devalues an educated populace.

[@thetonishow]

It’s wild to think that a mother who stays at home with the child isn’t more hands on with the learning than someone who works outside the home. But on another note a lot of SAHM look even more tired and stressed than the moms who are in the workforce. It just speaks volumes…

[@alexiacerwinskipierce8114]

I think these days, parents are so overwhelmed just trying to make ends meet that the kids end up suffering the consequences too. I know as a parent myself I wish I could spend more time working with my kids on educational activities. I have seen the vast difference between my first born and my younger 3 children. Probably why the older child in most families tend to have the highest intelligence. So much boils down to how much time a parent has to spend with their kid.

[@kat4782]

Hi, I'm 13 gen alpha. I just wanted to say that during covid our teachers weren't teaching us anything. Covid happened during 4th grade for me and everything they taught was reviewing stuff we already learned. My generation is missing a huge chunk of education, but people aren't trying to make up for it and instead are just trying to ignore it. I definitely think this affected some students more than others, but it's a problem for everyone regardless. Edit: Some people have been saying that I am not part of Gen Alpha. From everything I've seen and read Gen Alpha starts with people born in 2010 (the year I'm born). There is even a video imuRgency made where he agreed with this. So by most people's standards, I am the oldest of Gen Alpha

[@Hwgt888]

Then get off tik tok and teach yourself. There are KZbin videos for everything. That’s how you’re taught in college anyway. Prepare for this being the best you’ll ever have, kid.

[@looney_tunes10]

i'm 13 too, but i disagree. but i think it's time we stop blaming everything on covid. we're the same age, went through covid at the same time, but respectfully, it was almost four years ago, and we need to move along. i understand it was a struggle, but we got to move on. but other than that i for sure agree

[@katalystkatapatheticalyssa5987]

Thank you for your input and awareness about your situation. I do blame COVID not just because it interrupted your education, but it brought out the worst in people. They're too busy arguing what you should/shouldn't be taught to actually teach. School boards, insane parents, etc... they don't face the consequences. You do. Good luck.

[@angelicRem]

this is so true, im almost out of highschool now but covid hit when i was in eighth grade. i literally was not taught anything either when we were online. in ninth grade i was taught online, thankfully, but the teachers didnt really do a very good job compared to learning in person. im an entire year behind in math because i learned nothing from ninth grade math, absolutely nothing. i hope that this generation of school kids can eventually catch up but i fear what itll be like in fifteen years when all the covid affected kids are finally in the real world and out of school, especially the younger grades, i cant imagine how 2-3 years of a pandemic will impact the development of all the 4-8 year olds that were dealing with it

[@kat4782]

@@looney_tunes10 No offense but based on your grammar alone I'd say you were one of the people more affected by this. I agree that some stuff blamed on Covid shouldn't be, but it is undeniable that we were not taught properly for a year and a half. Maybe your school did it differently or handled it better, but my schools and most others didn't. Also, a worldwide pandemic that killed millions and had us shut down practically everything is bound to have an effect on the world well over 4 years later. I agree that we need to move on, but that does not mean we can ignore the damage that it caused.

[@daydream1066]

I am gen Z but older (23) even when I was in school I was always picked by my classmates to read out loud. Because I was the only one in my class that could read well enough and loud enough. This was because my mom made me read aloud EVERY night with her when I was little. Also I’m a huge bookworm too lol. Anytime my classmates would read aloud I notice they struggle and are so, so painfully slow. So I was glad to be chosen to read aloud because everyone else drove me nuts lol 😂

[@promisemochi]

i went back to school pre-pandemic and as a 25 year old with 18 year olds the difference was startling. professors would ask students to do something and they'd flat out argue. something as simple as "let's all move the desks in a circle" would turn into a debate. there were students who made it their mission to waste as much class time arguing and picking fights with the professors over stupid things. i've never seen that level of disrespect before and it was shocking. i felt so bad for the professors because you could tell they just felt hopeless.

[@psychedelicyeti6053]

Some kids test the teachers to "earn" their respect. Some just waste time because they don't want to learn. Others try to get in trouble on purpose to remove themselves from class (going through personal thing unrelated to school). There's just so many reasons why students fight the teachers. I barely saw this happening when I was in elementary - high school, but it doesn't mean it didn't happen in other classes. I remember hearing about a student throwing a chair at the teacher 😳 I graduated in 2008

[@promisemochi]

@@psychedelicyeti6053 to me i think the shocking thing was this is at a college level. at a university. in middle school or high school i can kind of see it being just disrespectful teens pushing boundaries. but at university? you're paying to be there. you don't have to be there. you don't have to pay that tutition. it's all your responsibility to pay and to show up and do the work. so seeing college aged students talk back, start arguments, etc. with professors was super alarming. i had art history one year and there was this girl who always wanted to fight the professor. she was super into conspiracy theories and would try to constantly argue about even the smallest of things. i've seen students fight with the professor over reading assignments. it was wild.

[@BellaAnderson-o11o1o]

I knew a handful of people who were combative towards teachers. I never hung around them much, but they opened up to me. Some students struggle with looking stupid in front of the class, and they don't want to be bullied by other students, so during class they'll try to avoid doing work whenever possible, saying no to any assignment, being combative, wasting the teacher's and everyone's time, trying to be condescending to put the teacher and students down in order to look smart and keep their pride and dignity, while actually hiding their insecurities of feeling inept. Some teachers will get angry and fed up with th student's bad attitude, and will try to discipline the student, which then might make the student even more combative in return.

[@spacedinosaur8733]

@@promisemochi My instructor at college day one said, "Consider this your first job. You are paying yourself to learn."

[@spacedinosaur8733]

@@BellaAnderson-o11o1o So you just roll-over belly up and do nothing. That never helps dealing with abusive people.

[@LP-zc4gy]

“Sold a Story” is a good podcast that talks about this! Basically, a certain set of people in education thought structured reading instruction was boring so they came up with this unscientific method to teach kids how to read including just guessing how to say the word from the first letter. They basically thought kids would just “pick up how to read”. It’s tragic.

[@spacedinosaur8733]

yep, the "Whole Language method" Ivory tower intellectuals have been doing this for a while. H. Beam Piper brings it up in his book Null-ABC from like 1953. There's some reaction these days that holds scientists responsible for war. Take it one step further: What happens if "book-learnin'" is held responsible ...? And then they did the same thing with Math later, making it so incomprehensible that parents had no understanding to help their kids with homework.

[@kwallacetube681]

I was going to recommend this one! It's excellent. Kind of hard to blame teachers with how underfunded and overcrowded schools are. They were told this was the most effective method and if a child appears to be reading, aren't they? A bunch of parents didn't realize their kids couldn't read until they were helping teach their kids during the pandemic.

[@mistress.villaina7591]

this is one thing that has bipartisan support to get rid of

[@crnkmnky]

Ah, I'm not the first one to mention "Sold a Story" on here. 😸

[@crnkmnky]

​@@spacedinosaur8733 Yeah, reading _and_ math education have both picked up methods that make zero sense to Gen X & Y. At least from what I've seen on social media? I guess the math uses base-ten number blocks or something?

[@Jabari-vm6jq]

As a "middle aged" Millennial, I don't think media illiteracy is a generational problem. I think it's an American cultural problem. Across the board, Americans as a whole lag behind in media literacy compared to the rest of the developed world. This has ALWAYS been the case btw.

[@justine7143]

1000% correct!

[@arstotzkamilitary4822]

False but good attempt.

[@vikkidonn]

@@arstotzkamilitary4822actually within the first 3-5 years after the US became an official country thousands of word scholars and leaders wrote about the almost immediate lack of education or educational interest. From there the rift has grown to the point most people have not a single clue how the country, world, or even local environments work. Outside of an individuals active interests they are simply put functionally illiterate.

[@KoreaMojo]

Resource nations are often BETTER informed and more politically hands on than "developed" nations.

[@gene8447]

​@@arstotzkamilitary4822coming from the guy using a "papers, please." Pfp I'm not surprised you'd think you were capable of media literacy.

[@13thfridays]

It's really refreshing to see this talked about. My younger brother is currently in the 8th grade, and ever since elementary school he had problems keeping up in class. He's not a bad kid! He just needs more time to learn. The school district has had many different conferences with my parents while he was still in elementary school, discussing his education and ways to help him. My mom and I have never understood why they would never hold him back. Every time my mom mentioned it, they always talked about how "they don't hold students back anymore, it doesn't benefit them". I will never understand this? He keeps being pushed through the system, with immense amounts of pressure to perform well despite being at a grave disadvantage. He has expressed to both my mom and I how he feels like he's being belittled by his teachers in school, and treated as less than everyone else, yet they just keep pushing him through. It's like they're not even giving him a chance to succeed. It's been really frustrating for him. I'm an older gen z who has already graduated high school and is currently in college. I can definitely say the only reason why I ever got good grades was because I was good at test taking, I don't even know if I can call the material "educational". Nothing I learned in middle/high school ever really stuck with me. It's all a terribly outdated curriculum.

[@catandrobbyflores]

I remember I got held back and I just stopped trying after a while because I knew they wouldn't hold me back a second time. Thankfully I got into programs that helped me through school but I shudder to think about what would have happened if I never had those chances. This is really bad if the next generation can't even read a basic book like Harry Potter or something.

[@scythxr25]

I'm only a year older than your brother and I can say they 100% should start holding people back or focus on helping people who maybe have a harder time understanding. I consider myself smarter than most kids mainly because a lot of school is just memory, and the ability to learn quickly. In most of my classes I help other students who have a harder time learning since the teachers don't really help. If they do help, sometimes they don't help them understand, they just give them the answer. For example, I'm in geometry honors (which is a 10th grade class) as a freshman. I not only ace my tests, but also am the first to get my work done. There are two people next to me (one is a freshman as well and one is a sophomore) that I usually help since they ask for it. I will say It is honestly amazing to see someone who couldn't even do -7 - 5, now be able not only fully understand the assignment and do their work, but also get 100s on the test just because someone actually took the time and guided them through it.

[@becreative2420]

I'm the parent of a 2nd year college student. My kid went to a classical education charter school (Texas) and it was tough. The work load was high and homework took a significant amount of time each day. Parents had to be involved. They were learning Latin, were required to write essays, and read several age appropriate books by the 5th grade. He graduated from this school (remember this is a free charter school, not a private school) with a 4.25 GPA and was eligible to attend any in-state university of his choice. Opportunities are out there, parents must make it a priority to ensure a good education so these kids become successful adults.

[@tiffnym]

I'm an elementary school teacher and the other week my principal and I had a tiff about holding back students. I expressed that students who are passed on when they aren't ready is a disservice to the student. They will become frustrated, getting even further behind or become a problem for the teacher and distract others who want to learn. He proceeds to tell me that he doesn't believe in holding kids back beyond 1st grade because it will psychologically damage the child! I was DONE! I told my students that I will NOT approve for them to move forward if they aren't ready, but I cannot stop my principal or the parents from giving the greenlight to pass them on. Some of us teachers really are trying!

[@maC2much459]

Your parents should have asked the principal to have your brother tested. For all you know he may have a learning disability which once identified can be given additional assistance.

[@MNcoquicoqui]

Why kids cannot read? One answer: LACK OF PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT As a GenX with a very UNEDUCATED MOTHER, who couldn't for the life of her, take me to a bookstore and get me into reading. It was my own curiosity that got me into reading. I read alot and my "safe place" was, you guessed it, the school library. When i became a school tutor, i began to see the politics for what they were. TEACHERS WERE NOT ALLOWED TO FAIL STUDENTS!!!! IF THEY DID, THEIR CONTRACTS WOULD NOT BE RENEWED. I saw this myself. Kids getting 0, 20%, 40%.....teachers were forced to pass them at 70% Those kids parents would avoid all parent/teacher meetings, calls and emails. So why does schools force teachers to pass flunking students? One answer: FUNDING. Your school needs to be performing at a passing rate to get state funding, especially if you work at a Title 1 school. NO PASSING RATE, NO FUNDING. So basically teachers are being asked and FORCED TO FAKE STUDENT RECORDS BY GIVING FLUNKING STUDENTS PASSING MARKS. This is not discussed enough. Teacher’s wouldn't pass flunking kids on purpose. They are told by administration to do it or else.

[@gustavus0013]

It’s not just ipads honestly. These kids do not know how to be BORED!. Unstructured play is somewhat non existent these days. It’s like these parents are sooo afraid of letting their kids be upset and bored that they think “not doing anything” equates to dilly dallying.

[@folasadeosibodu7119]

The school are terrible. I had niece and nephew mom always at work and never spent time with them and their school was amazing and they learned to read early they excelled in school and their mom is still a work a holic that doesn’t spend time with them and they are doing excellent

[@Violet_33]

I’m a reading teacher for middle schoolers and everyday I’m more and more concerned at how these kids are going to make it through life. Parents expect teachers to do everything and won’t help at all; most of the kids I work with are children of immigrants, like I am, or immigrants themselves. Many of the parents have kids teach them English. The difference is that my mom always took me to the library and made reading/learning a priority outside of school. She also didn’t let me speak English at home so I could really learn our native language. I didn’t realize how lucky I was to have that until now. These kids need so much help.

[@piccalillipit9211]

Well their parents are millennials, what do you expect...?

[@JCcreates927]

I was a reading teacher at a junior high school in 1999 and all my children were from parents born here, sad sad situation for them all.

[@laattardo]

​@@piccalillipit9211this started with Genx parents. I'm Genx, I can tell you that our parents taught us prior to going to school our basics. The alphabet at bare minimum and most could read kids books before grade K. I don't know why my peers thought that the teachers could and/or should do it all but some did and now it seems that it is a default mind set that parents cannot and should not be teaching their own children. Standardized education was pushed by the Rockefeller family at the turn of the last century and it has proven to be utterly useless within less than a hundred years.

[@yassine8935]

​@@piccalillipit9211??? How the hell are parents in-between working 2 sometime 3 jobs going to be able to give good well-rounded secondary education outside of public school when they are over worked and unpaid ? Its foolish to think these parents can be fully there for these kids when the parents and teachers are overworked and underpaid .

[@Violet_33]

@@piccalillipit9211 I was specifically talking about parents who don’t think they have to or don’t want to go the extra mile for their kids, which can be parents of any generation. Let’s not blame millennials as a whole.

[@elkuko8686]

I agree with the illiteracy problem. I found out recently my 2nd grader has basically been a teacher's assistant since kindergarden, according to her teacher. She's a few grades ahead from what i was told so she just helps her classmates understand the current topics. So much so, that quite a few kids from her k-garden have been with her every year because they do better academically with her around. Extremely proud of her for that because she enjoys just helping but worried for the kids. Education is important.

[@solarflarearmor2081]

Your daughter gives me hope for the generations that will precede me!

[@stitchingbear4003]

Just make sure to ask your daughter if it's stressing her out. That's a lot to put on a young child.

[@elkuko8686]

@stitchingbear4003 I hear you there! That was my first question I asked her lol. She genuinely enjoys it, but she knows to take breaks if it does stress her out.

[@lookouthill11]

It’s becoming extremely clear which parents are or are not involved with their kids education. And another sad effect I’ve seen is the social ramifications in their friend groups. When the mental/emotional maturity gap grows wider, friendships dissolve as the kids can’t really relate to one another anymore.

[@melissadavis4981]

My 10 year old nephew made a comic the other day and it was crazy how bad the grammar and punctuation was... HOWEVER, I straight up told him that it needed a lot of work and he sat there and listened to every single correction I made and WHY and he was so happy afterward. He was then asking me if we could take it to a publisher, it was super cool actually. They're willing to learn I think.

[@bullseye_freuka]

Awh, that's quite a wholesome story. Of course they're willing to learn, it's the parents who don't want to teach

[@HomeEcSewing]

Long before the pandemic, I gave all my students unlimited chances to revise their work and was available to them during class, during lunch, and for 2 hours after school. My students didn't care that extra help was available. They just complained and complained that their first grade wasn't an A. Revise work? How DARE I ask them to do that. And, the parents always backed up that attitude.

[@lizzielopdop]

They are dying to learn!!

[@melonsauce1474]

​@@bullseye_freukaNot the school system focusing on testing and not actually invoking interests? Students are learning to take tests not to learn.

[@TheBuilderPro2024]

@@HomeEcSewing If I were one of your students, I'd definitely need the help. There is no way I'm gonna miss *dozens* of opportunities that'll get an A in the process.

[@mvelez5002]

As a teacher and parent I can honestly say there are several factors to blame. I definitely blame “no child left behind”. These kids know they’re getting pushed through no matter what. So why read? Why do HW? Why learn? Education is so focused on passing whatever the standardized test of the moment is that as teachers that’s all the curriculum basically pushes on us. Parents, well as parents I encourage you to ask and demand more of education because these are your kids and you want them to strive. Read to them! I’ve always read with my kids and now even when I get a break I encourage my students to read, read, read. You can tell I’m a older millennial teacher raised on Reading Rainbow.

[@rainbomg]

Semi-unrelated but do you listen to Levar Burton’s podcast? It’s great. (I was born in 84)

[@AngryPug76]

As a teacher you should know most “No Child Left Behind” Bush Sr. era laws haven’t been in effect for decades. And they were based on standardized testing, not school grades or pass rates. The last ones fell away back when I was still a teacher over 15 years ago. While it was part of the path that’s led us here it was only a couple of bricks in a very long road made out of speed bumps and has nothing to do with most of today’s problems. Many of today’s problems are due to an extreme over corrections of NCLB. For example No Child Left Behind required all new licensed teachers to be “highly qualified” with very specific requirements for education majors and continuing education (most of which was of course pointless window dressing). Today college educations and teacher licensing isn’t required in many states due to extreme teacher shortages. In my state anyone who can pass a drug screen and background check can have a classroom.

[@laattardo]

​@@AngryPug76it should also be noted that it was a bipartisan bill that passed in congress prior to Bush signing it into law.

[@yassine8935]

​@@AngryPug76exactly if this was the case summerschool wouldn't still be a thing .

[@lillyCfields]

​@@AngryPug76 No child left behind act was Clinton. I remember him pushing that act and got it passed.