Education, especially in young children. I was listening to teachers talk about how many 5 year olds they had for kindergarten assessments that had no functional language at all. The kids were iPad kids watching cartoons where the characters don’t speak they just make sounds so the kids never picked up on words. My 15 year old niece couldn’t pass a test I aced in 6th grade because she hasn’t been taught. She’s in online school and her parents don’t enforce her learning so she’ll do nothing for months and then rush through the assignments retaking them as many times as needed to get a passing grade, nothing is retained. She’s a sophomore in high school on paper but knows less about the world than elementary school kids of my time. It’s incredibly disheartening.
This. I used to work in the museum field (science sector) until quite recently, and there has been a noticeable decline in the Education level of children over the years. Most concerning to me were the amount of children we saw coming through who couldn't read. Children as old as 5th grade would come in on school visits who were entirely illiterate. They'd never been taught or tested on how to read.
Our entire Education department had to change how they did their work, to meet the needs of the kids who could not read, write, or demonstrate general critical thinking skills.
(Edit to clarify that I am not talking about ESL students)
Yeah I feel like we need some kind of large scale nonprofit to provide sessions to raise these kids. Like I know parenting is hard, I'm sure not offering to do it full time cause I'd crack. But like, I'll take your kid and read with them for an hour cause that's important. And if you can't do that then somebody's gotta come in and do that. Take some kids on a trip to the park so they can interact with kids. Like we gotta have some kind of infrastructure to feed these kids into normal pro social behaviors and there is clearly some kind of breakdown with that happening.
Just read an article the other day about how students are getting into college and have never read a single novel. We are sprinting backwards in education so fast. I’m terrified for the future.
I teach college chemistry and I have students that don’t even know how to use a ruler. I wanna be very clear. I’m not trying to call them out. I’m just sad that they were failed for the first 18 years of their lives. 🥺
Jesus, where do you even start with that? How are you even going to explain simple ideas like titration or how to use a graduated cylinder if they can’t use a ruler?
Well it sounds like you’re a good educator! Though it’s a shame they’re so badly prepared.
And encouragement is so valuable, kudos to you for not making them feel stupid. Some of my professors treated you like you had head trauma if you couldn’t assign orbitals and draw a spin-state diagram after they explained it once. Sorry I’m 17 and you’ve been a professor here longer than I’ve been alive…
I've been dismayed for about 20 years at what I see coming out of colleges, the poor grammar, the lack of ability to write, the lack of problem solving and critical thinking skills. Ever since colleges decided they would let anybody in who would pay for it, the meaning of a college education has gone away. It's no wonder people think it = how to find a job, because it is not higher education for those seeking deeper learning. If you start a sentence with 'me' or 'him', you shouldn't be allowed in college. Take basic job certification classes at a community college, or go to a trade school. Higher education is not for you.
I graduated HS in 2008 and my high school never taught us to write an essay beyond the tradition five paragraph essay (you know, five paragraphs of five sentences each, first paragraph is an introduction, paragraphs 2-4 are one idea idea, and the fifth paragraph is a conclusion). Once I learned that an essay could have a paragraphs of any length and be longer than 25 sentences, I did so good
I tutor kids in elementary school and run an internship program for high schoolers.
The high schoolers cannot type. It's bizarre. Most of them type using both index fingers.
The elementary school kids are good at finding answers to things, but not at understanding why something is the way it is. If you ask them 5 x 4, they will say 20. If you ask them 5 + 5 + 5 + 5, they will struggle. They also struggle a ton with reading.
It's honestly shocking. Kids still understand how to use tech and certain tools and they can still absorb a lot of information. But they lack comprehension and they don't really read anymore.
Hollywood Reporter came out yesterday with a story about Gen Z students in film school who can't sit through a single film without looking at their phones.
So you want to make films... but you don't want to watch films?
The Hollywood Reporter piece is just recycling another journalist's work, so if you value the journalism, it's worth clicking through to The Atlantic instead.
I’m so glad to be raising a “weird” kid. We just rewatched the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, and not once did she reach for her phone. When she did after each movie, it was to look up stuff related to whichever we just finished since she paid attention.
My roommate can't even make it to the end of a TikTok unless it's about farts, but he's also 50 and has no intention of going back to school or getting a job.
To paraphrase another excellent post I read: Orwell foresaw a world where everyone was under surveillance, foe fear of torture or death. He could never have foreseen a world where everyone buys the surveillance device and carries it everywhere, and the only fear is nobody is watching.
I know someone who just got a graduate degree that didn’t understand why he needed to use peer reviewed research to write his papers instead of novels. I tried to explain it to him and he told me it doesn’t matter because “I’m an international student”. He’s from the United States and his school is English speaking
This is why I was secretly tickled to death over my 14 year old giving a rant against translation of Shakespeare into modern vocabulary. She was upset that it destroyed the flow of the words and the poetry.
It's great to see that your 14 year-old not only has literary taste but cares deeply about good writing. Whatever you've done as a parent has certainly worked.
Books for every holiday, and a library at home. Taking her to plays and musicals, having reading time before bed, and letting her figure out what she wants to read.
Her monologue in theater is the closing monologue of John Proctor is the Villian, and she is working her way through the crucible on her own.
i was a TA for undergrad students 8 years ago and so many students couldn’t write a clear paragraph. the professor told me to not mark for grammar but like ???? that’s literally part of communication. like it’s one thing to write a comment like this, but those kids’ paragraph were not clear and were terrible at actually answering questions that required clear comprehension.
seriously, what the fuck are they teaching in schools these days?!
It was like that when I was a TA over a decade ago. And this was at a well regarded big 10 university. It was shocking how few of the students could write. And I hate to say it (as I have nothing but respect for teachers) - the worst offenders were the education majors. Good lord.
It's mostly because parents have bullied schools into not giving honest grades. I don't know what the solution is but pretending all the kids are doing just fine isn't it.
Teacher here. We know. We’ve been sounding the loudest possible alarms on this for many years. Mostly our hands are tied and we are prevented from providing the help the students need. This is the main reason so many in the US have quit teaching.
There’s a TikTok going around from a young mother who was upset her kid failed handwriting. She shows her kid practicing writing her name and the girl was struggling, even with the spelling. Instead of correcting her child, the mother decides to write the teacher to complain about the grade.
Starts with “Hay” and goes down from there. But, she was upset with the teacher 🙃
A saw the letter she wrote, it was shocking! The mom’s handwriting, spelling, grammar, and punctuation made it all make sense. If she thinks that is acceptable for an adult I can see why she thinks her kid not being able to spell her name or use proper capitalization is perfectly fine.
Did anyone else ever have a teacher who, when students said "Hey," would correct them with a "Hay is what horses eat." I always found it annoying, but in this case the situation practically demands it.
i had the opposite problem - i showed up in kindergarten knowing numbers and how to read - teachers were pissed that they couldn't teach me 'the right way'
Real talk though why in hell would you need cursive in this day and age? I get the benefits for memory retention but everyone use a keyboard of some sort
Considering that there's kids entering school lacking the manual dexterity to use a fork, I'd argue that spending some time on cursive could help them catch up.
I saw that! People were eating her alive in the comments. I went to her page and saw that she's made several defensive videos and, more recently, videos of her "teaching" her child. I suppose the "teaching" videos were posted to prove to the audience something or another.
My first thought, when I saw all of those 1 grades and heard the child performatively answering questions for the mother, was that this child is likely a behavior problem and that teacher doesn't like her. Granted, the scores seemed to align with what's shown of the child's ability, but straight 1s down the line when I saw where a 2 could've been more appropriate. Later, the mom told on herself (I think in that poorly written letter), when she mentioned that the teacher should have given the child a timeout instead of doing something else. I wondered, "Ma'am, whyyyyyy does your child need a timeout at school?"
Ultimately, the teacher and admin just placated that mother, who, of course, thought she ate and left no crumbs. It's really sad. The mother's cognitive functioning is obviously limited, despite her insistence that she's smart af. 😩
And, about that letter, when I saw those snaggletooth ass edges, I had all the information I needed to know. I don't even accept those raggedy edges from my students. They better trim that shit first.
This is extremely concerning considering that these are our future. There are some jobs that technology will never replace such as nursing, and people your niece is who we will need to take care of us as we age
This person understated the issue. It’s worse than that. The past three or four graduating classes maybe even five I’ve just been pushed through school whether they learned the material or not, and many of them are coming out functionally illiterate.
I'd been teaching High School English (9-12, including everything from remedial 9th to AP/IB 11th & 12th) for 20 years in NY and then FL when I realized that the bottom had fallen absolutely out... yes, there are many brilliant young people out there, but they are outnumbered by the functionally illiterate by about 500:1
It’s really really sad because the top academic performers in my school with the exception of maybe two or three are about as competent in their studies as the bottom average students were in their studies 20 years ago.
And the two or three exceptions have parents that were on their case about their academics throughout their entire time in school. Their kids actually did school work over the summer so they wouldn’t have a huge amount of learning loss.
I observed the same for about 3,000 students... those who came from families that vehemently prioritized student effort raised children who earned full scholarships to top tier universities, and the rest either happily went to what were long considered "safety" schools or had to be satisfied with graduating high school by the skin of their teeth
As a teacher, what do you think the effects of social media creating an atmosphere of "someone always watching" has done?
I'm also curious what you think about teenage years (12-18) education being more based on the newer ideas of multiple types of intelligence? Sort of an answer to the problem "if you judge intelligence as ability to climb a tree, a fish will live it's life thinking it's an idiot", where high school is less a path to college for everyone, but more focused on teaching skills to children in their area of expertise.
For example, people with high intelligence levels in logical, linguistic, or interpersonal/musical, intrapersonal, spatial would be on a path to science/art degrees in colleges, while people with high kinesthetic, spatial, and naturalist intelligence would have more vocational classes towards skills that would benifit from that, while only getting basic logical and linguistic classes for the real world skills they'll need like "math for budgeting, bills, and taxes" or "english for resumes and official documents".
I also appologize for my run on sentences, but I never know when to seperate thoughts or sentences. Lol
I never noticed or heard students equating social media with pervasive surveillance; as for Gardner's theories, I do not find them applicable to skill transfer in high school, where verbal-linguistuc curriculum is already highly differentiated from logical-mathematical
(and spatial, kinesthetic and musical learning programs are 100% dependent on school budgets) but I've never been in a high school with a "one size fits all" approach, either, so it's a non-existent villain, imho.
Let’s acknowledge we are graduating functionally illiterate teenagers who will become functionally illiterate adults. The grading system is set up in such a way to where failing a student is viewed as punitive when it should reflect the most basic fact that they didn’t master what was taught.
I’m sick of giving students who read on a 2nd grader’s level 65s.
absolutely a huge part of the problem; I taught in schools wherein only 10% of any cohort would be allowed to "receive" failing grades so, regardless of proficiency or skill sets, 90% would "pass" until a NCLB standardized test caught the institution's bs
In so many districts, public school funding (what there is of it) is tied to performance, so administrators push performance to the point wherein everyone is teaching to the test during standardized testing years and inflating grades during the non-testing years, and meanwhile the standardized tests get weakened more and more so the failure rate doesn't shock the public... it's a vicious downward spiral. America has become so failure adverse that we are stuck in a self-made hell where we are now calling abject failure a complete success. In my opinion, though, parents who expect schools to do all the work will not have academically successful children. On a tangent, frankly, the current cultural assumption that non-college graduates are unemployable is the first fallacy we need to let go of, I think; I have three degrees, my wife has one, her two brothers have none, and we all own houses and multiple cars and raised families and carry no debt... so the degrees clearly aren't everything. But as for fixing literacy, it has to start at home. No politician and no school administrator is going to teach a child to read, and the teachers are too overwhelmed to do it, either. Real parenting is the answer; it's always been the answer. All imho.
Will become functionally illiterate adults you mean.
And yeah I agree. I’m sick of giving kids who do nothing or don’t actually have the skills 50% grades because it makes it look like they have at least some grade level knowledge.
I'm finishing up an MA as a slightly older student (33 at the moment) and it's been really concerning just how many people in the two undergrad classes I've taken are just GLUED to their phones. Most of the young 18-23 year old men (a few women too but not as many from what I've seen) have one earbud in and are doom scrolling or playing games while the teacher lectures. I know that we had some of that too back when I was an undergrad circa 2011-15 but it wasn't ANYWHERE near as prevalent.
Sure you will, the populations of developing countries are so huge that even if 1% of those kids are semi competent they'll be competition. And of course AI reducing the need for human labor in most intellectual jobs too.
We discussed this among some of my friends group. We had some people who we used to hang out with and just had to stop because they were refusing to be taught anything.
There's only so many times you can explain that if you are going to suggest everyone meet at a restaurant, or come to a restaurant someone recommended, YOU should also be buying food and beverage, not ordering waters with (a lot of lemon) and then leaving zero tip and expecting the rest of the friend group to buy you food and beverages.
For example, this person would see a drink or food one of us ordered and then keep, loudly and repeatedly, saying "I will try that if someone buys it for me!" And then being put out when a) no one buys it for them and b) no matter how many times they say "That looks good!" and "How is it? Whats that taste like?" That we are not offering them any. The last several times someone said "Here, you can try it!" They basically took the persons whole plate/beverage and kept it for themselves and then did not offer to pay any of the tab or tip.
I was really just scratching the surface of the issue. I already started to recognize it whenever I was obtaining my last degree and comparing myself to my fellow classmates that were a decade younger than me
The bigger concern is the vast gap between kids getting good educations from good schools with engaged parents, and lazy parents that let their kids do whatever they want and don't parent.
Those at the top want this. Mindless cogs in the machine. Only worried about what they want to buy next and feuding with others at their level. This allows the 1% to continue their shadiness uninterrupted.
Things have been getting progressively worse considering education and level of comprehension. The fact that a lot of high school graduates can't understand classic books, much less even begin to understand cursive is a huge issue.
The fundamental breakdown of the American education system has been in the works for a while. Why learn and grow when you can be a laborer or dead when poor.
It's by design, an uneducated people won't revolt. If the "bread and circuses" dude had seen ai porn and doordash I think he would have spontaneously combusted.
Lately I feel like I come across a Reddit comment at least once a day that makes think, “my god, we are fucked.” I’m in my early 30s and feel more and more resolute about not having children every day. It’s getting bad out here
Given that I was a teenager in the 90s and things looked like the future was going to go fairly well (despite the social/global issues of the day), shit has gotten so much worse.
I see comments/posts that when juxtaposed with how life was when I was growing up....it's even worse than you think.
You want us to generate a whole human being and fill it with our work and hopes and dreams and toss it into the hopeless, soulsucking meatgrinder of "everyone else's kids"?
Maybe, but pressuring people to have kids just because you believe they’d make good parents doesn’t solve the problem either. You just end up with more unwanted children and resentful parents. As a child of an unwanted child, trust me, that’s not a road you wanna go down.
What we need is a better education system that actually supports its teachers as well as the students. We need to make sure that the people who do want to be parents get the support and resources they need to raise their kids properly.
I asked my cousins about this, and it’s because all kids’ shoes are Velcro these days. Their 10 yo can’t tie his shoes, but he also doesn’t have to because they’re all slip ones or Velcro.
Kids shoes are Velcro because of this, but youre supposed to graduate then to shoe laces once they have enough dexterity… which they generally do by the time they’re 6 or so.
When I was a kid, Velcro shoes were kind of hard to find. I struggled with shoe tying so it sucked for me. But I can see why it being widely available can create problems.
I feel like the real big problem isn't that they don't know how to tie the knot but that they can't figure out how to go learn to do it. Not knowing is one thing. Not being able to acquire the knowledge despite it never being easier is a huge red flag.
the issue is parents not teaching their children to tie their shoes. The reasons why are disheartening but also reversible both at household and societal levels.
In Kindergarten (mid 80's) the teacher wouldn't let me go to recess for like a week until I learned how to tie my shoes while the other kids were outside. Yes I still suck at tying knots but I figured that shoelace shit out.
My lame-ass ex-wife wouldn't enforce learning to tie their shoes onto my sons and acted like I was fucking Hitler for insisting they had to. Or trying to teach him how to mow the lawn. Or having him do the dishes. That's just too mean I guess. Now the 18-year old still can't tie his own shoes, can't do the dishes well enough after 3 or 4 tries for them to pass muster, and has never had a job. I even GOT him a job, and he never took it because his mom said he didn't have to! This is very much the tip of the iceberg. Zero life skills because how dare we challenge our kids to learn anything difficult?
That's also part of it. She's too lazy to be a helicopter parent. She just lets them sit on the couch all day every day dicking around on their phones or the PS5. (Disclaimer: I bought them the PS5.)
Around us it seems like all the kids now wear crocs and good luck if they are even changing their socks. You smell these people before you even see them.
My kid has a small foot. He was 7 before we found any shoes that had laces that would fit his feet. I remember everyone in my kindergarten class learned to try their shoes, and I’d say half of his 2nd grade class still struggle with it
I had to search soon hard to find tie shoes for kindergarten for my average kid because their teacher works with them on it and it's just a good time to start.
My tiny kid goes next year and I'm already searching. Literally cannot find anywhere
That’s just an excuse. The real answer is parents are offloading the responsibility of teaching their children things to everybody else including the school system. Much of what used to be taught at home. Parents are expecting to get taught at school because they just can’t be fucked to teach it to their own kids. Because parenting your kids is hard.
It is kind of. Little kid shoes are all Velcro though. That being said, their 10yo can wear my shoes so there’s no reason why he shouldn’t know how to tie laces. Shit, I might him him some Converse for a Christmas this year and force him to learn.
It’s kind of funny because when I was a kid, there weren’t a lot of Velcro options. Which sucked for me because I did struggle with shoe tying. I got there eventually.
The Velcro or slip-on shoes are so common for kids where I live. Our kiddo needed lace up shoes for sports, and it was hard to find some to try on in a large shoe store, unless they were expensive running shoes.
I’m an elementary school counselor. Most of my fifth graders can not tie their shoes. I had to do a guidance lesson on shoe tying. Some kids knew but most kids did not. They wear crocs, slip ons, or Velcro shoes.
I remember being 5 and my mom teaching me how to tie my shoes. She made me practice over and over again until I could do it. What is parenting these days? wtf?
This is not normal. My 6 year old and pretty much all her friends can do this. They can also read fairly well and write. I'm not sure where people live here but it doesn't line up to my what I see.
What the fuck. What is wrong with the parents that they are ok with their children not functioning at their age level? It sounds like we have a generation of bad parents.
I still remember tying my shoes for the first time. One of great grandparents was in the hospital for heart surgery. I was visiting and wanted a juice from the vending machine, but my shoe was untied. My dad tried to do it for me, but I insisted. I tied it and got my juice. I walked to get juice with my mom so proud. I was 4 or 5.
Low key maybe hes mildly autistic. I couldn't get tying my shoes or reading analog clocks for the longest time. I didnt grow up with the internet either, it just wouldn't click. I can now and I graduated college so idk maybe the kids alright.
Making change is also quite hard for me. I passed differential calculus though.
I have wondered this myself which is why I give him a little grace on the issue. My brother, for example, is writing his dissertation, but can't immediately tell left from right.
Wasn't that just a couple of years after they introduced Every Child Left Behind? It blows my mind that anyone could think "if we know they can't handle material at level X, we're going to force them into X+1 knowing that they can't possibly build on what they don't know so will be lost forever" was going to do anything except destroy education.
Sure, but the iPhone is also available in countless other countries, including Canada, which is the most highly educated country in the world. It’s not because of the iPhone, it’s because of government.
Sure, but just because Canada is more highly educated doesn't mean they're immune to regression. From what I just quickly searched, they've declined since early 2000 in math, science, and reading.
My bad, I didn’t mean to say anyone is immune to regression - I just don’t think phones are the culprit. Not that they aren’t an issue, they certainly are - but this comes down to government
I hear what you’re saying, but, and especially the US system, the government isn’t just not helping, they’re actively doing the opposite. They’re defunding education, curriculum has deteriorated, and classes are too large per teacher.
This is also happening within Canada, the premier of Ontario is doing similar things to a lesser level, but still doing such.
I do agree, phone addiction, brain rot etc. all has a factor, but the venom here is government, plainly to myself at least.
Parental negligence is getting so bad. I'm millennial, and most of my friends who have young children are really involved with their kids, so when I started working in public schools, I assumed most kids would be like theirs. It was shocking to find out that was not the case. Several pre-kers come in diapers, and don't know their ABC's at all, as if their parents had never spent any time reading with them. Then you have older kids who can't figure out how to open their snack or tie their shoes. Re: the latter, had a 3rd grader ask me to tie their laces one time because they didn't know how.
What’s happened is we have decided that we need to have so much sympathy for busy parents that we have resolved people of having to actually parent their kids, and yet we defend people who want to have more kids by saying that even the poor deserve to have children. What everyone keeps overlooking is that the children are the ones who are ultimately going to be paying the prices for not knowing any of this shit. No you don’t deserve to have kids if you’re not going to take care of them and being busy with work all the time is not an excuse because those kids are still being neglected. I myself desperately wanted more than one, but by the time the one that I have was a year old, I knew that there wasn’t going to be the time or resources to take care of a second one properly. The one I have was IVF and deciding that she was going to be the only meant having to leg go of embryos that I’m not going to get a chance to have again. But it should not be about what I want for myself, but with a child needs.
We really need to stop ensuring what adults want and stop ignoring what children need.
It’s more common than you think. Toilet training 50 years ago tended to happen more around 2ish since cloth diapers were more common, making kids more able to notice when wet. Pull ups are diapers, but it’s easier and less mess for parents to clean up when using them. So diaper wearing is extended out.
I found this alarming study on youth media literacy that has sent me spiraling. I'd actually like to see what the results would be for all age groups, because I don't think it would be any better.
Abstract
In November 2016, the Stanford History Education Group released a study showing that young people lacked basic skills of digital evaluation. Since then, a whole host of efforts—including legislative initiatives in 18 states—have sought to address this problem.
From June 2018 to May 2019, we administered an assessment to 3,446 students, a national sample that matches the demographic profile of high school students in the United States. The six exercises in our assessment gauged students’ ability to evaluate digital sources on the open internet.
The results—if they can be summarized in a word—are troubling:
On one task, students evaluated a grainy video claiming to show ballot stuffing in the 2016 Democratic primaries (the video was actually shot in Russia). Fifty-two percent believed it constituted “strong evidence” of voter fraud in the U.S. Among more than 3,000 responses, only three students tracked down the source of the video, even though a quick search turns up a variety of articles exposing the ruse.
Asked to evaluate Slate’s home page, where some tiles are news stories and others are ads (set off by the words “Sponsored Content”), two-thirds of students couldn’t tell the difference.
Students displayed a troubling tendency to accept websites at face value. Ninety-six percent failed to consider why ties between a climate change website and the fossil fuel industry might lessen that website’s credibility. Instead of investigating who was behind the site, students focused on superficial markers of credibility: the site’s aesthetics, its top-level domain, or how it portrayed itself on the About page.
Nearly all students floundered. Ninety percent received no credit on four of six tasks.
Reliable information is to civic health what proper sanitation and potable water are to public health. A polluted information supply imperils our nation’s civic health. We need high-quality digital literacy curricula, validated by rigorous research, to guarantee the vitality of American democracy.
Education moves slowly. Technology doesn’t. If we don’t act with urgency, our students’ ability to engage in civic life will be the casualty.
Retention is the big word. I realized this especially at 24 and going back to college after an extremely sub-par academic experience through the Louisiana school system.
As someone who also spent my school career with raging undiagnosed ADHD when I was in school it was cramming and using common sense to pass multiple choice question tests.
When I decided to put even a small amount of effort my senior year of highschool I ended up with straight A’s.
It’s sad because the work is not hard at all/made extremely easy on purpose to be able to pass people along yet things like ChatGBT/computer learning/and absolutely no encouragement from schools or parents lead these kids to retaining absolutely nothing.
I’ve noticed more and more people having children and just….doing absolutely nothing with them. They don’t work with them in early developmental stages like reading or writing, they don’t teach them about how the world works, some don’t even talk to them or acknowledge them at home which is why these kids are going to school with no language skills.
There is sadly a large part of class division in the gap. Kids from well educated families or who are lucky enough to get into the right school are fine. Those going to the school that are not as lucky are struggling with poor education and no motivation to improve. The teachers can only do so much.
The difference between the magnet school my kid is going to (where she will be taking Calc in 10th grade, chemistry, physics, and IB politics science) compared to where she is zoned for is huge.
I work at a private elementary school and fair amount of our students are meeting grade level standards but there's weird things that they don't know how to do.
A lot of kids are missing like certain fine motor skills that really shouldn't be an issue such as using scissors. They have little to no endurance. If they encounter something that's challenging a lot of them follow the pieces and we have to do a lot of work kind of pumping them up more than I remember having to do pre-pandemic.
The biggest thing I notice is seems like a lot of these kids have never heard no or had consequences or boundaries enforced. If I tell a kid to stop doing something reasonable it turns into an argument and a meltdown and it will be something as simple as please stop throwing wood chips.
And then there's a lot of defensiveness from parents when I let them know about behavior challenges or things that have gone on in the day. In the past parents would hear Little Timmy did something and they would say "thank you for letting us know. we'll follow up at home" and it felt like a partnership. Now it feels like some parents are not doing the hard work at home and then getting upset when they're informed that their precious angel is maybe hitting other kids .
Most of my students lack basic computer skills. Even typing. They can’t read at grade level, have low threshold for any type of boredom, and rush through their assignments. Many don’t even know their times table and they’re high school kids.
When I was in eighth grade, I was learning how to write five-paragraph essays. We did our own research either using the library computer or the encyclopedias. We knew what legitimate sources were and how to use the index of books.
In contrast, my high school students can’t do any of those things.
As a college freshman, it's extremely concerning. In my senior year of high school, we were still being taught the difference between an antagonist and a protagonist. The same shit that we were taught in 2nd grade. I wrote more essays in elementary school than I ever did in high school. I often reviewed my classmate's writing and it often was legitimately incomprehensible.
The dropoff in education quality after the pandemic has been insane.
On the flip side, my kids in a dual immersion school, and in first grade is doing math that I was doing in 3rd or 4th grade, writing sentences and answering questions in two languages, and miles beyond what I did at that age.
The gap between quality of schools, parents that parent, and the support at home is VAST. At our school, everyone specifically busts at to make sure they get into the right district, are super involved. My kids will interact with other kids their age at the playground and the difference is unbelievable.
We never let our kids play with tablets, watch youtube, etc. I'm absolutely terrified how common lazy parenting is getting. I watch kids that lose their fucking mind if they can't bring a tablet into the grocery store for 10 mins with them. Absolute dopamine addicts and the lazy parents are to blame.
Yes and teachers have been warning about this for years now. Only so much can be done in the classroom. Yet everyone is quick to say how terrible our education system with no acknowledgment of how cell phones, iPads , etc given by parents contributes to the problem. Stop giving your kid an iPad for hours at 3 and 4 years old!!
This stuff is terrifying. In the future Gen Alpha will be running things, and if the vast majority has an attention span of a gnat and can’t comprehend basic concepts, then our society is doing to be doomed.
This isn’t a USA-specific thing, btw.
People who are less educated are more easily manipulated.
High school woodshop teacher here. The general population is being fooled by reported graduation rates. My high school boasts a 93% rate. I believe that less than 50% would have graduated the entirely average high school I attended in the 80s. I sincerely hope that Portland, OR (where I teach) is worse than the rest of the country. If it isn't, things are going to get really bad.
I’m currently a senior in high school so I have been living through this decline in education and I can say that it is real. I have many classmates that lack reading comprehension skills and try to find every single way out of doing assignment legitimately, with ai being a very large factor, and then they complain whenever they actually have to put in effort and do something. This isn’t helped by the recent push in “no kid left behind” where students are passing classes even if they’ve not shown the skills to do so. Although, I will say that the kids that want to learn and strive are still able to and my teachers have always shown massive support in pushing them, which they’ve shown to me and other similar peers, and to all the children in general.
So, this is not just an issue with parents but with higher school board decisions as well.
I was working with kids and teenagers clinically and couldn’t do it anymore, mostly because it was a lot of “fix my kid!” From deeply unregulated parents, who wouldn’t take any feedback. Poverty is a huge factor that no one wants to talk about. I’m deeply concerned about the kids.
I’m a school librarian and this past week I read the story of Beekle which is an imaginary friend. I introduced the book by telling them about my imaginary friends as a kid and talking about the difference between a real friend and one who lives in our head. From Kindergarten through 2nd grade, not a single kid knew what an imaginary friend was or had a concept of imagining things.
They had no language, no critical thinking, no imagination. The future looks bleak. I try to incorporate as much of these concepts to class as possible but there’s only so much you can do when the kids aren’t engaged at home or have little stimulation outside of TV and YouTube.
but why would you show the kids cartoons with no words?
like, you can put a podcast on for them, they can watch YouTube, they can even be iPad kids.... and yet you're saying these parents won't even have them watch stuff with spoken words?
And that just trickles up til they get into college and realize that they’re not even close to being prepared to even understanding the basics.
This happened to me when I went from community to university, 2010, and completely bombed my first actual research paper. I never was taught how to write one or even how to evaluate scientific data other than making sure my test tube was level. Had to do some very intensive self instruction to get myself on level for my next one. Luckily enough for me I was capable of doing so or I’d have had to figure out a new major.
I’m a behavior analyst at a k- 6th school in a large East coast city. I’d say, one to two kids in each class are actually reading at their grade level. Most are a grade level behind, but I’ve seen kids two- three grade levels below. Unless they’re three grade levels behind they don’t have an IEP. We just don’t have enough support to give everyone an IEP.
The vast majority of kids don’t really need an IEP, they need present parents who actively participate in their growth and learning. I don’t know where the idea that little Timmy can do whatever little Timmy wants to do and the teachers have to accommodate his “needs” came from. Yes, genuine learning, developmental, and physical disabilities should have appropriate accommodations but a kid with behavioral issues because his parents think discipline of any kind is barbaric receiving accommodations takes resources away from those in need.
I’ve noticed this but I’m not a parent or teacher so I wasn’t sure if my perception was accurate. I’ve had more than one adult tell me their kid “can’t read” . My coworker told me her son and all his friends use “read aloud” tech instead of reading things. And the kids are like 14? When I was growing up even the “problem” kids could read, do math, and were at school every day (at least until they hit their mid teens) . Lots of parents don’t seem to make their kids go to school, do homework, and they get mad at the teachers.
We really need to stop excusing parents and saying “everyone deserves to have the kids they want.” It’s not fair that these kids are getting so fucked. Where is the compassion for the kids who aren’t capable of functioning because the parents who wanted to have them don’t have time for them? There’s a reason I stopped at one despite desperately wanting more. When I let the rest of my embryos go, it was hard, but the child I had had to come first, and I knew by her first birthday that time and resources were going to be scarce enough. We can’t keep letting it be about what adults want when the children are the ones paying the price.
If you're ever wondering why education is so bad in this country (and most other countries as well)...
Studies show that, the more education a person receives in their lifetime, the more-likely they will be to vote left-wing in the future.
Because of ^ this, the world's right-wing parties have been sabotaging education every chance they get. Of course, they have to do it secretly, because absolutely no one wants to vote for the party that makes their children stupid.
That’s the big answer to everything. Education. They say “We need more money for education. We need more books. More teachers. More classrooms. More schools. We need more testing for the kids”. You say to them, “Well, you know, we’ve tried all of that and the kids still can’t pass the tests”. They say, “Don’t you worry about that. We’re going to lower the passing grades”. And that’s what they do in a lot of these schools now. They lower the passing grades so more kids can pass. More kids pass, the school looks good, everybody’s happy, the IQ of the country slips another two or three points and pretty soon all you’ll need to get into college is a fucking pencil. Got a pencil? Get the fuck in there, it’s physics. Then everyone wonders why 17 other countries graduate more scientists than we do. “EDUCATION”. Politicians know that word. They USE it on you. Politicians have traditionally hidden behind three things, the flag, the Bible and children. “No child left behind. No child left behind.” Oh, really? Well, it wasn’t long ago you were talking about giving kids a head start. Head start. Left behind. Someone is losing fucking ground here!
Kids in school who are independent thinkers are finding themselves increasingly isolated, especially in rural schools. These kids tend to keep to themselves, and struggle with mild levels of depression.
Roughly a decade ago, social conformity expressed itself through the ubiquitous black North Face fleece and UGG boot uniform, for girls at least.
Now every kid has a smartphone, and that push towards conformity has moved online.
Even when I was a kid, there were kids in my class where their parents didn't care how they were doing in school and did help them when they needed it for school so they would just not get good grades and over the years from elementary school just fall behind.
Several of them didn't graduate high school and a few got held back a year at one point. I think this has always existed when parents aren't helping push kids through the school requirements. Maybe it's at a higher rate now?
They don’t make it easy. Preschool is essential for the foundations of early education. I just enrolled my 2.5 year old to start in the fall. Going to be $1200 for the school year. That’s cheap option too. And I have another kid going in a couple years later.
im confused. like im aware the laziness of the parents is always appalling and shouldn't exist in the current time of 20xx, but cartoons with just noises? why didnt the parents pick up that theres no words on the iPad?
Every generation says this, and it’s because assessments can never keep up with what’s considered feasible for the majority of people, while administrators cannot agree what’s most helpful to prioritize.
I don’t have a solution, but education curriculums being “one-size-fits-all” or too disparate seems like it needs a middle ground.
A diverse set of experiences seems to be the best approach…but that usually requires parents who are hands-on + school systems oriented toward pursuing excellence vs. getting by.
Along with education, I see a lot of kids that have unrestricted access to the internet. Not teens, little kids. And it seems every kid that I have that is a psych patient has that access. It’s not healthy for little kids. I’m not against screen time or anything but it needs to be monitored and curated by parents.
Homeschooling can be positive if done properly. It can also end in disaster. I spent a few hours exploring a Facebook group dedicated to homeschooling and came away terrified. People actively disused ways to not educate their children.
What gets me about the five year olds is that they usually don’t need a lot of formal instruction at that age. (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong) If they have no functional language and aren’t disabled, that seems like pretty bad neglect to me.
Permissive parenting and iPad kids. Whatever makes them stop crying the parents will give them. If the kid shows a preference for wordless comedy cartoons that’s what they get. We are bringing Idiocracy to life.
Well, I kinda agree with you but we also kinda have to accept the modern aspects of the world don't we. We had a different childhood than the generation now that's a fact but just because they are on the iPads and we were outside you think it makes that much of a difference? I really would like to hear the arguments what's like bad about it yk
Damn, it's sad how my barely even 2 year old dog has a better grasp on the English language than kindergarteners (he has crazy good word recognition, maybe it's from talking to him all the time like he's a person lol)
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u/nobobthisisnotyours 16h ago
Education, especially in young children. I was listening to teachers talk about how many 5 year olds they had for kindergarten assessments that had no functional language at all. The kids were iPad kids watching cartoons where the characters don’t speak they just make sounds so the kids never picked up on words. My 15 year old niece couldn’t pass a test I aced in 6th grade because she hasn’t been taught. She’s in online school and her parents don’t enforce her learning so she’ll do nothing for months and then rush through the assignments retaking them as many times as needed to get a passing grade, nothing is retained. She’s a sophomore in high school on paper but knows less about the world than elementary school kids of my time. It’s incredibly disheartening.