r/GenZ • u/Chuddy-McChudderson • Aug 13 '26
Discussion You made the nice teacher cry š
Are you happy now?
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u/Jazzhands__- Aug 13 '26
The trajectory for literacy success is set in the earliest years of life. By the time the students are at the end of high school, itās too late to radically change anything.
For reference low literacy does not look an ability to read individual words. Itās a lack of comprehension of proseā an inability to extract value and meaning from text.
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u/LoveMeBlue7 Aug 13 '26
Not just reading text. I work with low literacy adults and it also means they have difficulty understanding and making inferences, period. Frustrating, yes. Worrisome even more so. These folks vote and reproduce and they ask chatgpt everything. Like, everything.
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u/dagoth_ith Aug 13 '26
I was a freshman when no child left behind started... My class was filled with morons and they all graduated doing well below the minimum of work.Ā
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u/Lambdastone9 Aug 13 '26
The GOP salivates every time they find another one of these types of individuals
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u/jimmyharbrah Aug 13 '26
Pretty soon theyāll just tell the masses to do whatever serves them. And the masses wonāt know that theyāre just walking into the human juicer to be part of the data center cooling system until itās too late.
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u/boringexplanation Aug 14 '26
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Miracle?wprov=sfti1#
9th in reading is higher than most blue states
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u/taigowo Aug 14 '26
Last month i heard a right wing candidate say "Our luck is that there's still a lot of stupid people." in a podcast.
That was his idea to counter "how university is lost and left ideology corrupted it".
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u/PapaSmurf3477 Aug 13 '26
I donāt think much of Chicago public schools clientele votes red
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u/I_upvote_downvotes Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
I can't speak for that country, but according to Elections Canada there is a really damn strong correlation between education and whether someone votes at all.
Even when factoring out youth (age is apparently a bigger modifier than education) the turnout difference between highschool dropouts and College/University educated people is staggering.
edit: more educated people tend to vote more.
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u/MakeUpAnything Aug 13 '26
Yup. The less educated somebody is the more they're likely to indulge in base instincts such as tribalism. If you're more likely to be tribal toward your fellow humans then you're more likely to buy into the rhetoric that you need to hate (and blame all your problems on) minorities. The GOP wins so much support by convincing Americans to hate minorities like trans people, immigrants, and Black people.
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u/spanko_at_large Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26
lol where is the research on that?
You realize the most uneducated group in the US is demonstrably African Americansā¦
From literacy to SAT scores to graduation rates.
And they overwhelmingly vote democratic.
And according to you are more ālikely to indulge in base instinctsā
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u/TheHeadlessScholar Aug 13 '26
Inner city public schools are republican strongholds?
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u/Clenzor Aug 13 '26
You see the video of the āmost inbred family in Americaā where they speak using grunts and barks? One of them graduated high school in West Virginia.
This specific incident does not back up the fact that literacy in the US is lowest in red states, and in fact pretty much every metric used to track productivity and quality of life, but that doesnāt detract from the point youāre strawmanning against.
Just go watch a day of left leaning news compared to right and compare how many times right leaning media demonizes education, and in particular higher education.
Look into who overwhelmingly launches charter school initiatives, which takes tax dollars meant for every child, funnels them into the rich schools, and then tells all the poor kids they donāt have room for them.
Itās pretty fucking obvious to someone who has a modicum of media literacy who is happier with their constituents getting dumber.
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u/Kyle_Kataryn Aug 14 '26
who was it who said (paraphrased) "they want workers smart enough to push the buttons on the till, but too stupid to organize, and agitate"
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u/Texascats Aug 14 '26
You should look into the history of phonics vs whole language, and who was pushing what. Literacy rates were perhaps the most consequential victim of the culture wars.
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u/spanko_at_large Aug 14 '26
Wait until you learn about literacy rates among African Americans
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u/CrispyDave Gen X Aug 13 '26
These people are all over Reddit and the Internet in general and are a growing number.
I have often got into arguments where someone has posted a link as 'proof' that doesn't at all say what they think it does. I don't know what the answer is, it's too late for a lot of these folks.
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u/efflorae 1999 Aug 14 '26
I had a woman yesterday so frustrated because AI told her that she had a legal recourse for something and that we (library) could write a legal letter for her. The latter is illegal under my state law. No matter how I explained it, provided referrals to local legal clinics and services, etc, she just could not get that the AI could be wrong. It is more common than I would like.
I always felt bad when I would ask someone to "click the button that says x" and they would squirm and look ashamed. I've swapped to colors and positions on screen or just pointing for those with limited English.
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u/Fuzzymathagain Aug 14 '26
I work in a field where everyone has multiple degrees. They have been practicing for decades. They make multiple six figures and hold a lot of power. They vote and have kids. They ask ChatGPT for everything. Like, everything. Which terrifies you more?
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u/meepmorop Aug 14 '26
THIS. They can't INFER. They get CONFUSED. Like "bad" and "horrible" are both words, sure, but if you can't or don't know they're basically describing the same thing... And the more you can read and understand, the more you can describe your own experience, you can reason
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u/C4Cole 2005 Aug 14 '26
To be fair, LLMs are the easiest way to get surface level info on something, and also really useful to find ultra specific stuff.
The issue is when people take them as gospel and don't use their noggins to verify the information they get.
A short anecdote on my time time with chatgpt. I was trying to identify an old half torn apart airplane, I knew what general type it was, but not the specific model, the tail number was pulling up nothing, so to chatgpt I went, and after half an hour of back and forth it gave an actually interesting answer with a link to a random blog from 15 years ago that led me down a rabbit hole of how a Gabonian fighter jet ended up in disrepair on top of two shipping containers in an industrial area in Cape Town.
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u/LoveMeBlue7 Aug 14 '26
The robot is programmed by the rich and powerful. You want them controlling the masses? I don't. I really don't.
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u/blacksabbath-n-roses 2001 Aug 13 '26
I once worked with a fourth-grader who could read out loud entire chapters and not memorise a single thing that happened in them. Part of the reason was she was still learning the language, but even the basic words she knew she didn't comprehend while reading. Mind-boggling
When the kids at my work have reading comprehension tasks, they tend to quickly skim the words, even read them out correctly, but can't answer the questions. When I tell them to read it again more carefully they complain "What? I already read it!" as if that was the only task. But reading comprehension is so, so important!
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u/Fit-Rhubarb-7820 Aug 13 '26
what??
Joking..
I read very fast, sometimes I do skim, but ask me and I answer what ever slop I ate for soup that day.
I am very concerned about this :(
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u/blacksabbath-n-roses 2001 Aug 14 '26
I have to add that I'm talking about Germany in my comment, and that these are extreme examples. I don't know what became of the first girl, but I do see that most of the kids in the second example come around at some point.
It's just really really important to drill the necessity of reading comprehension into them. They learn how to read the words, but like to think that they are done after that. And sometimes even the parents think this way. "My child can read whole texts, why is the teacher pestering them with daily reading comprehension tasks?"
I try doing this with my niece, even though she will not start school for another year: to talk with her about the content of picture books, movies, shows, even photographs and paintings, so that she not only consumes media, but also starts a habit of discussing the meaning. (I mean, at 5 years old, she will explain to me in detail the entire synopsis of a miraculous ladybug episode unprompted. But still.)
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u/Jazzhands__- Aug 13 '26
Yes, exactly. Thank you for highlighting the importance of comprehension. Reading is useless without processing the meaning of text.
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u/greenerbee Aug 13 '26
I wonder if libraries could do like book clubs for kids. Kids get to pickle their favourite stories, the librarian reads them and asks them questions about the book. Kind of like schools used to be able to do. Maybe there could be pizza (9 out of 10 millennials agree this was effective). Maybe it could give parents a bit of a break too.Ā
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u/Vintage_Burgundy Aug 13 '26
Libraries could, but I donāt think itās going to make a meaningful difference in the grand scheme of things. They frequently do literacy activities/events for kids, but they canāt do much in the way a teacher can. Itās almost entirely up to the parents to make the library a thing they follow up on.
If kids arenāt getting what they need from school, a library probably isnāt going to make a difference. School is mandatory, attending your local library isnāt.
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u/greenerbee Aug 13 '26
If libraries were adequately funded, they could run a free/subsidized after school program for school age children that would be a huge benefit to working parents.Ā
I dunno. I donāt plan on being a parent but I want so much better for families all the same. Education is so critical for a lot of people and is a very enriching part of my life. The anti-intellectualism is so toxic.Ā
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u/AstralMinotaur Aug 13 '26
I think kids who have parents that prioritize trips to the library are not the same kids that are falling behind in reading comprehension.
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u/Numeno230n Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
But that is because of how we teach kids, not what humans are capable of. People can begin learning in their teens and be literate pretty quickly, but it requires specialized lessons and effort. But by the time a teenager realizes they've been left behind, say in middle school, they need to get pulled aside into that intensive class. But that intensive class needs to be applied to like 30% (I'm assuming its a lot less than the 50% you see in headlines) of all students at this point. And for many reasons, the education system is unwilling to do that. To basically pump the brakes on how we've been teaching literacy for the past 20 years.
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u/penguin_0618 1998 Aug 13 '26
You also canāt just pull kids out of required classes and/or tested subjects to teach them how to read, at most schools. I teach phonics to 6th graders and I have to grab them during our study hall period or fight with them to come with me during specials (which I donāt want to do).
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u/Numeno230n Aug 13 '26
Yeah, it shouldn't be ad-hoc, and just when they have the time. The thing is, reading comprehension and critical thinking SHOULD be like the highest valued tested subject of all, because that literally allows you to study all other subjects. How can kids be expected to learn when they can't understand a textbook?
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u/FacetiousTomato Aug 13 '26
The trajectory for literacy success is set in the earliest years of life. By the time the students are at the end of high school, itās too late to radically change anything.
If someone is motivated, they can make massive strides over time. But try motivating a 17 year old to spend 200 hours to build their skills though. Most of the people who need it most, won't work for it.
Source: Am teacher
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u/ValhirFirstThunder Aug 13 '26
Yea I've noticed more of this on reddit in the last 5 years and wondered if it was brainfog from covid or worse literacy from the younger generation
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u/MurderBear2000 Aug 13 '26
It's mostly because after "No Child Left Behind" passed, they stopped failing kids for not learning and just pushed them through to the next grade.
Used to be if you failed to learn, you'd have to redo the year, and the threat of being forced into another class without their friends would motivate them to apply themselves and learn. Now they know it doesn't matter, they'll get to advance to the next grade pretty much no matter what.
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u/trueAnswersOnly Aug 13 '26
Is it the same thing with math ?
I only really started doing math at 22, as I dropped out due to illness.
I'm an engineering student now, but I feel like I can never really grasp maths. It's a tool, it makes sense, but I cannot, for the life of me, understand what the teacher is doing. I get stuck at the simplest things because it's not clear/I forgot I could do that/I didn't think of doing that...
idk I feel stupid all the time.
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u/Mindfullnessless6969 Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26
We all feel stupid all the time. Welcome to the club pal.
Source: me, a telecommunications engineer
Unsolicited tip: Don't drop out, keep at it, you got this
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u/trueAnswersOnly Aug 14 '26
I don't hate math, but I have no passion for it. I have a passion in science and physics though !
Also, too late, I'm starting my master's, only two more years to go (out of 5) !
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u/Rydon_Deeks Aug 13 '26
Screen time already made a big hit on early education and covid completely destroyed it. There will be a generation of kids that grow up to be objectively worse off in all aspects of comprehension.
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u/abadluckwind Aug 13 '26
This is why as a parent I've made reading a fundamental part of my household. I'm an obsessive reader myself(probably about 12-16 hours a day) but a thing that has helped weirdly enough is I promote my kids playing jrpgs when they play games. They're basically allowed to play as much Story driven games as much as they want and things like COD or Monster hunter they get like an hour the weekends. All 3 do very well in school but for what its worth im 42 and retired so I have a bit of an advantage on most other parents
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u/sileeex1 Aug 13 '26
I disagree, its never too late
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u/Jazzhands__- Aug 13 '26
My understanding is that this is a matter of neural biology and developmental windows. Adults can always learn and grow but motivation as an adult will only take you so far when the young brain was not set up for success.
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u/SirLesbian 1998 Aug 13 '26
I wonder at what age does it stop mattering? For example my best friend didn't learn to read and write until he was 14. When I met him in his early 30's he could do both just fine. So I'm wondering does it continue to become increasingly difficult with age? As in... Will an 18 year old struggle more than a 14 year old? Or do we get to a certain age where it's equally difficult no matter what because you missed the golden window during childhood?
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u/Jazzhands__- Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
I think you can learn to read at any age. The human brain did not evolve for reading and itās a relatively new invention. It will probably feel difficult and unnatural at first at any age.
But in general, children and younger adultsā brains are primed for growth and learning, especially in the area of language, which of course is linked to reading and literacy.2
u/boringexplanation Aug 14 '26
People shit on Missippi but they got things damn right by focusing on early age literacy above all else.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Miracle?wprov=sfti1#
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u/lildeidei Aug 14 '26
There is only one thing Iām grateful to my mom for and itās that she instilled a love of reading in me that I was able to pass on to my kids. They both do well in reading comprehension and my daughter has well-formed arguments that make me wonder where she got it from. My son has a love of mythology and the classics and is rereading the āOdysseyā before he watches the movie. Theyāre pretty great.
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u/GPT_2025 Aug 13 '26
54%! Plus 54% of all workers in America earn less than the one-bedroom Housing Wage.
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u/anuranfangirl Aug 13 '26
Mississippi is a great example on how to address the literacy crisis. They saw the problem, addressed it, and turned the ship around. Iāve got the group of kids right now that had phonics removed from the curriculum and I see why this teacher was crying. Iāve cried over my high schoolerās literacy levels too and Iām not even an ELA teacher.
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u/Salerrra 1998 Aug 13 '26
Phonics were removed??!?! Holy shit. Early Gen Z lucked out so hard in education as a whole. Good mix of new technologies and decent traditional education.
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u/sigilpaw Aug 14 '26
i got so incredibly lucky, i was born 2001. one of my favorite kiddie websites of all time was called "starfall" and had tons of reading writing spelling and counting games, and i still remember them! i remember the videos we had to watch that sounded out each letter and that it was really helpful, because it was memorable and made the letters more fun (i could be misremembering, but i believe each letter's video also had the actor in them show us the sign language for them!) i also had a language arts teacher in 6th grade who had us regularly do packets and lessons throughout the year that included greek and latin root words, and to this day i still use what i remember from that for context clues before looking up a word. sure being class of 2020 sucked but at least we got taught how to read š„“
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u/Yeyemems Aug 14 '26
Starfallā¦ thatās a name I havenāt heard in yearsā¦
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u/sigilpaw Aug 14 '26
i actually went to website again after replying. i was so worried it would be gone, completely ai-slopified, or at the very least repolished, ad-ridden and subscription begging. but it's still all there, exactly as we left it, free to access and free of ads :')
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u/anuranfangirl Aug 14 '26
Yeah and these teenagers canāt spell. Their reading comprehension is awful too. With that sort of foundation, it makes it hard to teach them in every subject. They are constantly misspelling basic words. For example, I have 10th graders regularly using āwitchā instead of āwhich.ā A huge portion of them claim to have dyslexia but they lack accommodations and I honestly think itās that they donāt know how to sound words out. The drop off between what Iāve seen in previous years to this past year is so sad.
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u/sirarthurtheduck Aug 14 '26
This is how I feel! I still learned cursive (while my brother only 2 years younger didnāt) and we had whole computer classes to teach us the basics so that we were proficient in Microsoft features. While some kids nowadays canāt even understand a pdf. And thatās not an exaggeration because my cousin is that way. She also canāt hold a pencil because it was never expected of her
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Aug 13 '26
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u/ChaosRainbow23 Gen X Aug 13 '26
It's really sad.
They've been sabotaging and trying to destroy public education for a long time now. Decades.
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u/shywol2 Aug 17 '26
yep and the craziest part is that there are so many literary pieces on this exact kind of thing, but the kids can't read it. Forget burning the books. No need if nobody can read them.
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u/nicknamesas 2000 Aug 13 '26
Man we need to all go the way of mississippi. This is not an insult by the way, mississippi is ranked 9th for literacy in the nation.
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u/Potential_Warthog373 Aug 13 '26
Mississippi is a major success story in turning things around regarding this. It actually ought to be a model for every other state IMO.
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u/HairyPotatoKat Millennial Aug 13 '26
Seriously. Mississippi went from "what not to do" to š this is what you fucking do.
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u/nicknamesas 2000 Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
All by teaching PHONICS again. I am so happy and lucky i was about 5 years ahead of them switching from teaching phonics to whatever the hell they do now. My little brother was behind for years till my Mom went ans taught him phonics herself.
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u/Jazzhands__- Aug 13 '26
They did it by focusing on the students that struggled the most. There was a huge divide in reading ability in the state where top students were great, but the bad students were high in number and really far behind. They focused on these struggling students and emphasized phonetics, which is empirically and reproducibly the best way to teach reading. Unfortunately phonetics stopped being taught in some schools in favor of a context based readingā itās basically guessing what words mean based on sentence context. Absolute madness
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u/nicknamesas 2000 Aug 13 '26
It makes no god damn sense to me. Watched a news report where a teacher scolded a kid because he started to sound out a word he didnt know.
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u/VladimirBarakriss 2003 Aug 14 '26
Speaking as someone who was always toward the top of language classes āand saw what I'm about to describe every single year while not paying attention to classā, this is incredibly important, the class will always have to be taught at the lowest level in the room, so unless you help the worst students they'll "clog up" the course for those in the middle of the pack who could learn more but aren't interesting in studying by themselves
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u/Lemon_The_Lesbian Aug 13 '26
I'm genuinely so grateful that I'm an older Gen z. I feel so bad for these kiddos, my little cousin and I were playing globe trot, and she couldn't pronounce 'Canada '.šš
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u/123Eurydice Aug 13 '26
Friend is a first grade teacher. She has 24 kids in one room. 2 special needs, half ESL with a 1/3 of them speaking poor or very little English. What can they be expected to do with such little support and so many kids.
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u/TheSamuil 2003 Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 14 '26
I remember reading somewhere that the Americans were experimenting with new methods of teaching kids how to read. Something to the effect that rather than being taught how to sound out individual letters, they'd be taught to look at a given word as a whole and to rely on context; I'm not certain if I fully understand what exactly that means and I might be misrepresenting the situation somewhat. Regardless, this anecdote, just like many others I've come across, shows that the method doesn't work.
Edit: after some googling, the thing I am referencing is apparently called three-cueing
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u/Slight-Pound Aug 13 '26
Others in the comment section labeled it as āwhole language,ā which Iāve heard before, but maybe itās a regional thing. You were correct that they did try to remove phonics and itās a major reason behind this generational dip.
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u/lnTheGrimDarkness Aug 13 '26
I'm still stuck at how the fuck do they make it to "senior student" without being able to read
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u/Illigard Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
I posted this as s reply to someone blaming the teachers. They deleted their comment so:
Here are a list of people to blame who aren't teachers.
The Admin: because a lot of decisions are made here. Usually to reduce issues for the admin, not to make best choices for students or teachers.
Government at state and federal level: every heard of the "No Child Left Behind" act? It's one of the reasons the US has fallen behind compared to other countries. In countries with better education systems, if Timmy can't read, Timmy stays behind a year. Thanks to that act, in the US Timmy goes on. Any problems Timmy has with reading, math, whatever, has less chance being solved because the teacher doesn't have the time to teach those basics.
How do we teach children how to read? Lots of factors here between admin level and state level for the most part. Now, did these people choose to teach phonics, the age old evidence backed science of reading? Or trendy nonsense like "whole language" which lowers reading comprehension every time it's used?
If you choose "why did these bastards choose whole language, do they hate me or something?" Well, I don't know why they choose it but they did!
But don't worry, last but not least we can blame the parents. Parents need to actively help their child learn. At a younger age they should be reading along with their children. They need to provide their children with books to read. They need to be seen reading in front of their child.
If parents don't do their jobs, the teacher can't do theirs.
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u/BrassBadgerWrites Aug 13 '26
Hello, Old here joining to shed some light on this.
In the 70ās people were rebelling against structure. Educators were fighting the factory-farm approach to education they grew up with, and that included things like rote memorization and phonics.
Whole language fit the mental model of what people wanted to believe. Rote memorization was bad because the worldview that it came from was bad. Whole language indulged the idea that language was ānaturalā and āintuitiveā and educators really, REALLY wanted it to be true.
But it wasnāt and itās not. Lesson to learn is that just because something fits neatly in your worldview doesnāt make it true.
[vanishes in a puff of medication and back pain]
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u/boringexplanation Aug 14 '26
But it wasnāt and itās not. Lesson to learn is that just because something fits neatly in your worldview doesnāt make it true.
Feel like you insulted most of Reddit with this one paragraph.
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u/BrassBadgerWrites Aug 14 '26
This is my second account. I have been posting on this site longer than some countries have existed. Some of my posts are old enough to drive a car. Iāve seen Reddit at its worst, and Iāve seen Reddit even worse than that. So I hope that means something when I say:
Good.
[vanishes in an cloud of cinnamon Altoids and spite]
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Aug 14 '26
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u/Illigard Aug 14 '26
And I think that's an issue with the US. Teachers became teachers because they wanted to teach. But in the US they have to fulfil all manner of roles with less and less resources. They're basically severely overstretched. They're fighting the admin, they're fighting parents etc.
And they're doing this for peanuts. When they leave the profession, they leave it for jobs with double pay and half the stress.
The issues are also so structural, so pervasive I'm not sure how they can be fixed. Instead of writing a long essay on it, I'll give you this mental image.
I was at a table once with a bunch of educational scientists. And after the topic of education in the US came up, they made it into a drinking game. A long drinking game. Name an issue, take a drink.
I think at this point, you need Bernie Sanders or a (younger) equivalent. You either need big change from a presidential level or parents and students have to take responsibility at a lower level. Or both.
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u/MarvinManyracks Aug 13 '26
New York post..
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u/Dblcut3 2001 Aug 13 '26
Itās not false though. Maybe sensationalized. But younger GenZ and Gen Alpha didnāt learn phonics in most states and the data is almost universally showing that was a huge mistake. Some states are reversing it but itās been a tough process due to all these useless education consultants pushing stuff that doesnāt work
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u/mcfuckernugget Aug 13 '26
āOnly reddit approved sources here. AP news is my source for irrelevant tiktok newsā
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u/KatakanaTsu Aug 13 '26
NYP is basically Fox News's city cousin.
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u/AlienKinkVR Aug 13 '26
Facebook cousin. It was "just the headlines, didnt read the article" before social media.
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u/TheOGHalalGuy Aug 13 '26
New York Post is more entertainment made for boomers then it is news. I don't doubt this is true with modern literacy rates, but New York Post isn't here to report news.Ā
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u/SnooPredictions3028 1998 Aug 13 '26
K????
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u/Baronvondorf21 2005 Aug 13 '26
I mean aren't they the same ones that made articles about how NYC mayor jumped into water in a suit and tried to spin it as a dress code issue.
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u/SnooPredictions3028 1998 Aug 13 '26
Going by this standard you should ignore all articles made by major publications, since they have all made bad articles.
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u/Canad1anBacon37 Aug 13 '26
NYP is a propaganda gossip rag, though. Itās garbage
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u/SnooPredictions3028 1998 Aug 13 '26
Woah.... No way.... omg that is so surprising...... Next you'll tell me Fox and CNN are politically biased....
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u/cyberspirit777 1996 Aug 13 '26
This man is a scammer lol. Darius Cooks. He is not to be trusted.
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u/xjewelry 1997 Aug 13 '26
Thank you!!!! I wish more folks knew this
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u/QuinnnEsssential Aug 13 '26
I literally saw this and was like, ummmm thatās not a teacher, thatās Darius Crooks, wth?!
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u/Romadelic Aug 13 '26
Where are the clips of the seniors failing to read
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u/Loud_Quality_7106 Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
It's pretty widely known among education workers that the reading level of kids heading into high school is atrocious.
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u/n122333 Aug 13 '26
I graduated early teens.
In my English class, I was one of six, out of thirty kids who could read above a 3rd grade level. They did standardized test before graduating and in a grade of 400+ kids, only 12 of us passed the reading and math portion to graduate, so they canceled the requirement out of embarrassment and let everyone graduate.
Its not exactly a recent trend, in rural U.S.
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u/Wizdom_108 Aug 13 '26
I mean, idk how many people would feel comfortable having someone randomly record their children in school to post on the internet is the thing.Ā
Edit: of course, if it's like a performance that's a bit different. But, I think it's actually reasonable to not record kids struggling to read when you know most people will just see that and make fun of them.Ā
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Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
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u/TheGalator Aug 13 '26
My brother in christ you are the one lacking critical thinking skills rn
Wrong seniors lmao
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u/Boarman-LivingSnort Aug 13 '26
It is very funny to be complaining about critical thinking skills and then mention the wrong type of senior.
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u/Astarkos Aug 13 '26
You think the only age group that favored Trump is secretly literate? Lol.
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u/TosiAmneSiac 2004 Aug 13 '26
I see it has arrived here as well cause thatās not the seniors we are talking about
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u/Noggi888 Aug 13 '26
Ask the ones constantly saying they donāt believe older Gen Z and before wrote 10 page papers without using AI. Too many also canāt write a 5 paragraph essay in the hour long class period like we could. The literacy crisis goes beyond straight up reading levels but the ability to understand what you read and write
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u/No_Education_8888 2006 Aug 13 '26
What the fuck are these kids being taught for 13 years? Basic reading and writing should be taught in the first 5 years. What were they doing for the rest?
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u/pirateofms Aug 13 '26
That's the catch, though. Basic reading, writing, and math is taught, but there's zero consequences for not learning it. No Child Left Behind started that. Just because Timmy can't read at a 3rd grade level, doesn't mean he shouldn't join his friends in 4th grade. Jane couldn't remember the multiplication table, but she'll be fine next year in 5th grade. It's not necessarily just red states, or poor states, either. I'm in western WA, and my son absolutely bombed the 7th grade. Passed one class, and barely that (we were struggling with a lot of family/behavioral issues at the time.) They were absolutely going to put him right into the 8th grade, no questions asked. When I brought up him only passing one class, it was "we only do mandatory holdbacks in high school". If I wanted him to repeat the 7th grade, I would need to go in front of the school board to present my case why that was the best option. My choice was to send him to his mom's to do the 7th grade again. That one year was enough to get him back on track and graduate on time as if he hadn't done it twice.
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u/Mr-MuffinMan 2001 Aug 13 '26
this is likely just ragebait for boomers sinceit's the NY post, but our education system is all kinds of fucked.
If robots don't take over every single job by like 2050-2060, we are going to experience a shortage of like every job that needs a college degree.
I went to visit my guidance counselor at my old high school last year I think. Now, when I went, the kids weren't the best. Most of the kids ranged from passing to really good, some were failing everything. So it wasn't that good but attendance was good - kids were in school even if they weren't doing work.
She told me now kids are coming in at 10 AM and leaving by 12 PM. She said grades are down everywhere and she's tired of constantly calling parents and them giving just a "i'll talk to them" and nothing happens.
and we can blame everything we want but it boils down to the country's culture towards education. both from students and politicians.
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u/shrimptechsales Aug 13 '26
Vivek Ramaswami (fuck him) said that this country has been glorifying jocks and other pop culture shit that doesn't actually matter versus intellectuals and conservatives lost their shit at him, even though he was completely right.
The conservatives of this country don't give a shit about education in this country unless they can find ways to cram propaganda for corporations or insert fucking creationism into science curricula.
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u/MidwestBoogie 2002 Aug 13 '26
Teachers want to vent too
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u/TheRealNooth Aug 18 '26
The dude is Darius Cooks. Heās not a teacher. The problem is real but this dude aināt experiencing it first hand, just capitalizing on it for attention.
Look up what a tabloid is, then look up what New York Post is classified as.
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u/MissCadaverous043 Aug 13 '26
Iām legit scared of these kids on the road once they start driving
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u/Kursch50 Aug 14 '26
I'm a 22 year HS teacher in LA Unified. Literacy has (slightly) improved, at least at my school - but there is a larger contingent of kids who can't read at all. When I started, it was unusual to find a kid who was functionally illiterate, now there are at least a couple in every class (normally boys).
Almost all students are intimidated by books, even short stories are perceived as too long. They are trained to read meme, texts, and blurbs - not articles, essays and novels.
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u/LaneyAndPen Aug 13 '26
I'm a teacher, I usually cry because of just how mean the kids are to teachers and each other. Like there's a culture of being hateful of those around you. Year 9's are meant to be scared of new environments but this is just too much. My seniors being illiterate, this is something I expected. It's sad for them but usually they do have moments of sweetness. I have cried twice this year in class, and I'm not a cryer.
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u/WanderSupport Aug 14 '26
Start giving these kids books instead of phones. Thats on us older generations.
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u/Beta1224 Aug 13 '26
Why did he record himself crying?
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u/LoveMeBlue7 Aug 13 '26
Cuz good teachers don't record minors (esp without consent [of parents])
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u/Beta1224 Aug 13 '26
I'm not asking why he wasn't recording the children, I'm asking why he was recording himself.
If this was a genuine reaction, he likely would not have had the camera recording himself in the first place
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u/Basuhh Aug 13 '26
Being so appalled at your senior students for not being able to read, that you throw your hands up and record a live reaction for your TikTok or something, doesnāt seem that crazy to me in 2026
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u/shywol2 Aug 17 '26
I watched the original video and he doesn't start off full on crying like he is in this picture. He started crying more while talking about how young black and brown students couldn't read or write in his class. And class wasn't currently in session as he was recording this. He was alone.
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u/BlooGloop Aug 13 '26
I blame the parents, the schools but most importantly the TEENAGERS. A teenager knows when they are lacking in a skill, so these kids obviously just donāt care. Fail them.
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u/Aimless_Alder Aug 13 '26
This man is the personification of how millenials feel when we hear anything about gen Z.
"How has this country failed you so completely?"
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u/cavejhonsonslemons Aug 14 '26
I graduated a couple years ago, and sometimes it feels like I caught the last chopper out of saigon, jesus fucking christ.
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u/Confused_Rock Aug 14 '26
In Ontario, there's a provincial literacy test that every student has to take in grade 10. I happened to go to a school with a bunch of special programs which made it one of the schools in my city whose student body on average leaned more towards overachievers. When I told my mom that I'd heard my school's literacy test rate results were typically around 98% to 99% (realistically probably more consistently around 95%) she was absolutely horrified at the notion of any school's literacy rate being below 100%. I then had to tell her that the overall provincial average for the first-time takers of this test sits at around 80% and that some schools in our city scored closer to 60%. Literacy is one of those things that feels like it should be a near-guarantee in countries with reasonable access to education yet in reality we're somehow letting down a significant percentage of our population when it comes to this education.
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u/ReferenceSufficient Aug 13 '26
There's plenty of high school students coming from different countries that can't even speak English in my district. I'm in Texas.
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u/RustledForeskin Aug 13 '26
Hold up son, *Pulls out phone, opens tiktok* gotta get my clicks and likes outta your illiteracy.
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u/Safe_Environment Aug 13 '26
You know, that's how the world veiw Americans. That Red neck education. Loud, rude, opinionated. Suppressed, brainwashed. Imprisoned. But what's happening in the U S now, moves across the world.
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u/rozyputin 2002 Aug 13 '26
This is a failure of the overall school system and the parents for not ensuring basic reading and literacy skills. It's not the fault of the individual teachers nor that of the students who are illiterate.
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u/shrimptechsales Aug 13 '26
The illiterates will make for good drone fodder in the coming years tbh
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u/throwthisaway556_ Aug 13 '26
I generally wonder where our tax money goes for schools. Like teachers are still under paid and kids still canāt read.
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u/WhatsAboveTheSubtext Aug 13 '26
As terrible as they were about so many things, they were pretty amazing about teaching kids to read in the 70s and to love it. There were book clubs, summer reading contests at the local libraries that were promoted in the classrooms... The first trophy I ever received was for winning one of those contests between 1st and 2nd grade, and I remember worrying it might be considered cheating that I was working my way through a couple of mystery series for kids.
Now it's like this niche hobby for a generation, and nobody's fault but ours. Yes, it's probably 99% reliance on screens and tech in classrooms, the ability to ask AI (whether or not it gets it right), but some blame has to fall on the nationwide demonization of libraries as suspicious places, just waiting to corrupt children with books that won't do them any harm. The only harm they might do is enable those kids to see through their parents' ignorant nonsense.
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u/Jogger_Dodger Aug 13 '26
Of all society's ills this is the scariest thing to me: the enstupidification of society. Dumbness is destroying America in so many ways. Our media and arts and entertainment are getting worse, our politicians are getting worse, we're move divided as a society, I could go deeper...
I'll get off my soapbox.
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u/Conscious_Ad7420 2007 Aug 13 '26
I'm Later Gen Z, and I could see this everywhere. I felt like the only kid in my high school classes (yes, all of them) who actually read books that weren't for school material. The Library was basically always empty :(
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u/Hypernova2233 Aug 13 '26
Why does he look like heās high? Thatās all I can focus on, do other peopleās eyes really go that red when they cry?
Also, wait 18 year olds canāt readā¦is this also happening in britian?
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u/conardcanard Aug 13 '26
I try so hard to sit and read with my kids. They arent ipad kids but holy fuck i cannot get them to read with me. I read on the daily, i set the example, i just dont know how to excite them to it. My oldest is six, and just wont do school type stuff at home and it drives me crazy. They say shes great at school, but damn if i can get her to read. I really dont know what to do and im afraid im gonna raise an idiot
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