As a babysitter I can tell you most parents don't read to their kids because when I do it they are confused at first about what I'm doing. They think only your teachers read to you. I feel like we could fix this by reading with your kids. By giving them books that they want to read. I'm teaching my niece to read with comic books and graphic novels. And it's working
"I'm teaching my niece to read with comic books and graphic novels. And it's working" Yasss! Nice to see someone in the comments actually seeing a part of the issue and doing something. Glad to hear its working!
Wow, that’s really sad :( waking up to read with my mom in bed is one of my best childhood memories, super sad kids and parents don’t have that now :( Your niece will be happy to look back on these memories you’re making with her ❤
My nephew is the cusp of gen z and gen alpha and he’s obsessed with reading bc his parents read a ton. If you want your kids to do something you need to lead by example.
This, because many people won’t read cuz they don’t find it a good use of their time, not only just children. And reading is so versatile, anybody can get into it because there’s something for everyone, it also takes them just effort to be willing to give their time
Exactly. My mom always read to me when I was growing up. She was an avid reader growing up too, so I think I got that from her, bc I enjoy reading. I used to read 1,000 page books. I want to make time to do that again! Right now, it’s audio books when I’m going to bed bc my eyes are too tired after work.
Okay so hear me out, as a teacher, one of the reasons I truly think students are struggling is because of lack of parenting, but wait hold up I have an addendum to that. While some people are trash parents because they’re trash people, I know PLENTY of well meaning parents who aren’t parenting and are not present in their children’s lives because they CAN’T. So many parents are busy trying to survive and make ends meet that they work so much that they can not afford to be a parent. Our economy, society, whoever you want to blame has made it so difficult to exist that it’s difficult to be a provider and be a present parent. Who else is going to keep the family from being homeless?
Yeah. I love blaming everything on capitalism because I truly believe it is the root of most of the evil and bad things in this world. But capitalism definitely is at fault here too for how obsessed the power that be are with making sure people are working 24/7 (and then still not be able to live a decent life smh). This leads to parents not being able to just sit down, and read and be with their children. Literally another reason as to why I am going to think long and hard about putting any offsprings on this floating ball.
If you are bringing kids into the world these are the important considerations BEFORE you produce them. Any reasonable adult knows that you need to work to live and to educate your kids so they can succeed in life! It is not an either/or situation. It’s not enough to feed, clothe and house kids, one must give kids survival skills so they can thrive in the present and future when you are no longer around.
@@jujutrini8412 had I not seen things in my profession and lived life and had my own experiences, I would’ve possibly have made the same judgmental comment you just made. Life continues to happen even after you have children, and yes things or events in life will definitely make it an either or situation. Parents sometimes have to work 2 or 3 jobs just to feed their children, or in this case of a student this year: in the beginning everything was okay the student struggles a little but overall was getting it, then the father had a stroke. The dad no longer works and has to be taken care of, the mother is the sole provider now plus caring for her husband therefore helping with homework is difficult to do. And now her place of employment is closing, so you tell me, would you be able to focus on education if you’re wondering where your next meal is going to come from, if you’re going to be able to maintain your house, your car? This and so much more are the story of many students and their families, especially in low income communities. Because we have a free public education and the right to education we often forget that in so many places a good education is a privilege especially when you’re struggling.
Education student here, specifically secondary, one of the first thing we learned is that the "sit and be talked at for an hour" ie traditional education model is NOT IT! Every education teacher I've had has made an intentional effort to make their classes as engaging, both mentally and physically, as possible so we can teach our students like this and they can actually RETAIN the knowledge! That's another thing, teaching to test is just a memory game, students don't actually LEARN how to LEARN! Anecdotally, I can say that teachers are making an effort to move past this way of thinking, but unfortunately we keep putting the most ignorant people on the planet in office and they think "if this number go up then everything good :)". long story short, FUCK THE GOVERNMENT!
Yesss!! I’ve had a similar experience when I was taking an education course and the professor, who’s a veteran teacher, mentioned that teachers are one of the only professions that get told how to do their job by people who have no experience whatsoever in that profession (the people in office).
yea, the teachers unfortunately cant teach at their highest potentials because the SYSTEM they operate in is too stale and rigid. the administrators only care about SAT scores.
Someone else mentioned this but I’m sick of the “gen z can’t read” thing bc in my working experience in customer service I learned that many functioning adults are illiterate 😭 these people were often 45-50+
My experience too. I feel like most of the time it's a refusal to read cause it's the expectation and superiority complex that drives them to believing us service workers are REQUIRED to read to them and explain it to them cause they dont want to expend the energy themselves.
Th crazy thing is that it’s not even Gen Z like do not group me with those kids. They are actually talking about Gen Alpha (2010-2025) they’re the ones that can’t read. But that is on the parents not the kids.
@@Brae2723 I get what you are saying, however, there is a difference between "illiterate" and "not wanting to read things in complete contect". Much of the Generation Z and Generation Alpha has been convinced to read everything in coded and pictured language, as at one time, hieroglyphics were. It just appears odd based on the rest of us learning to at least learn basic language. However (once again), I have seen a good amount of grammatical and syntax errors from individuals in my generation (and I am almost fifty years of age)...
Grad student and English instructor at an MSI here: Honestly the whole “kids can’t read/write today” thing happens every generation like clockwork, and I’m pretty skeptical of IQ as a legitimate measure of anything. But the biggest struggle I see in my students (and in myself TBH) is a difficulty slowing down. It’s like we’re consuming and trying to process so much information so quickly we can’t hold onto anything and sit with it the way we need to for critical thinking and reading. There’s an impatience that comes with it and a tendency to skim and jump around a text rather than reading it in full.
This is not just about reading. The problem is so much larger. This is only a symptom not the actual problem. I think we, as a civilization, all need to come together to seriously question the underlying principles we operate under. The problem is far more entrenched than you would think.
There's actually a recent phenomenon we can point to in the United States, which was the move away from teaching phonetics and teaching children not to sound out words, but to make essentially a guess with context clues. This may be what you're noticing with the skipping around issue. They thought this method was how good readers were reading and learning to read, and found out too late that they were wrong. It was how students who were struggling were reading. And for a long time, we have taught children to read this way, which has created adults who find reading to be a struggle because it's always about being a detective. They can't digest the words because they're guessing at half of what they're reading. It's very true that these kinds of accusations get levied in every generation, but I also don't think we should ignore the ways that we are failing our youth.
I think the school should focus on reading, writing, logic, and math between kindergarten to eighth grade and not overload these kids with so many subjects.
Yes, this problem is definitely not confined to Gen Zers. Over half of ALL adults 16 and over cannot read better than a 5th grader. Only 12% are able to read at a college level. An apartment rental lease is written at a college level. American adults have had poor literacy skills for many decades now. Even back in the 1930s, a large number of children were having serious reading problems. We were teaching kids the wrong way to read. Our educational system has been a huge mess for many decades now. We're not just verbally illiterate. We're scientifically illiterate. We're numerically illiterate. We're culturally illiterate. We're financially illiterate. We're geographically illiterate. We're sexually illiterate. We've been this way for decades. This is ALL adults 16 and over, definitely not confined to Gen Z. Here's the reality. You personally read better than over 90% of ALL adults 16 and over. Over 90% of American adults cannot read as well as you can and they can't speak as well as you can. You're also WAY better informed on current events than over 90% of ALL US adults. Chances are good that you're computer user skills are better than 95% of ALL American adults. 95% of American adults are not as computer and savvy as you are. This is the reality. I have no idea of how you've been able to be among the 5%, but somehow you have.
As a 40 something Gen X’er I concur. Many men in my age group were poor readers. I assisted many of them back in the day with their paperwork. This is not new. I’d believe that the younger generation should be better readers than previous generations because of the desire to participate online which requires READING.
@@jacquelynn2051 I'm a 60 something member of Generation Jones, and I assure you that a LOT of people in my age group are SHITTY readers, especially the men. Back during the 1970s when I was in high school, there were soooooooo many people my age who were barely literate. And there were people much older than me who were the same. And they also had poor math and science skills. And they were also poorly informed on current events. I suspect that this UA-camr doesn't realize how rare and exceptional he is with his literacy skills.
I just turned 33. I read between 10-20 books a month. Almost everyone I know hasn’t read even a chapter of a book in YEARS. No one has any idea what I’m talking about when I bring up current events, everyone has the ‘It doesn’t affect me,’ mentality. People always ask me how to get their children to become readers and my response has always been to read to them. Seems like common sense to me but apparently not. 😅
I work in retail.The amount of Boomers we deal with daily who don't know how to read sales signs and demand that you explain it to them is astounding.These seniors are just mad that their aging fast and projecting.As a Gen Xer with Gen Z kids,I can't stand the hate they get from people who's parents did the same to them.
👆🏾 THIS. Chileee then they turn around and say this is DECEPTIVE WORDING😂 hilarious when their generation was the one that created these marketing tactics 🙃
The amount of adults with grown children and grand children that could not figure out 50% off of $39.99 but look down on younger generations…. How Sway?
One cause for illiteracy in US students is the stupid bickering among educational institutions happening about which reading techniques should be taught to children. In most educator circles I’ve been in, we agree that the science of reading is the best approach, which is a method that focuses on phonics. Others go for the balanced literacy approach, which focuses on learning through context. Lucy Calkins is the founder of that one, and she’s been in controversy for backpedaling on that philosophy and embracing more phonics-based approaches. But the thing is that it’s not teachers who get to make decisions for which approach they get to take in teaching. It’s administration and curriculum coaches and textbook companies, aka people who are not in classrooms and do not have a clear idea of the current needs of students. Teachers are heavily micromanaged, especially in southern states. Due to the rise of “parental rights” in education, there is very little flexibility for teachers in what and how they get to teach. Anyway, all of this is to say that it’s definitely not the students who have the problem. The public education system in America has been under attack, and all of the bureaucracy in the world couldn’t save it. As easy as it may be to blame rowdy kids and their skibidi toilets for not having the attention span to read, we need to face the fact that it’s adults who built a world that’s constantly trying to buy their attention, all while limiting their ability to pick up tools that would help them self-regulate. (Ps: Hivemind)
two things: this is so true, i'm so tired of the blame being pushed onto the kids and teachers when it's not their fault, and also, epic hollow knight pfp!
If parents are silent nothing will get better. I appreciate the teachers that don’t just go along with the pushed techniques and take time to teach the individual child. I have heard many teachers say that they don’t have time to focus on the needs of the child when it comes to the basics. They feel they only have a short amount of time to teach say, the multiplication table for instance. This is a great conversation. Keep speaking up. The parents I know that speak up want safer schools and for teachers to be listened to about class environment etc. Communication is key for a better way.
I honestly hate the over generalization made about any “generation”. I’m a millennial so we’ve been blamed for pretty much everything. These generalizations really hurt people. My kids are gen Z and teens or nearly teen (12-17) and they read daily. We’ve enforced ready because my husband and I read. As 38 and 39 yo adults, my husband and I still read books regularly. Many parents don’t enforce reading. I also really agree with the lack of ability to teach in an overcrowded classroom where you cannot reprimand or punish a student for their poor behavior. My kids have been in classes with 30-50 kids where a select few of kids would throw books at their teacher and never got in trouble and the class never learned anything for 9 whole months. We had to teach the material at home to keep them up to date. Parents don’t parent anymore. They don’t supplement education at home and I completely understand the ones who can’t due to work requirements and such. My kids are in one of the first school districts in the country. My husband and I are products of this system as well. If you aren’t supplementing the education then you might as well not have one. I know kids who were held back because they couldn’t read. That same kid got pushed through high school and graduated so they wouldn’t have to deal with her anymore. She literally eeked by on Ds and a healthy amount of Fs and her teachers had to add points for attendance to her grade just so she could pass. He brother is on the same track (he goes to school with my oldest.) the parents don’t do anything and have admitted to us ( my husband and I) that they failed their kids and how it was too late. But these are their kids. Their kids are not stand ins for everyone else’s kids. Not all kids are like this. So, I hate generalizations. All generations have their quirks and problems. But playing the blame game gets us nowhere. It doesn’t solve the problem, if anything, it only makes it worse.
Making generalizations is the way in which we try to justify not thinking critically or even addressing the issues at hand with nuance and research. If we need to think so critically, we then create an environment for ourselves of burnout, exhaustion, overload that leads people to either give up or just leave it for others to solve. Basically, the structures needed to promote real learning, literacy, and critical thinking are being replaced by basic survival ability, whether it's financial, technological, or mental/physical. The chain effect is leaking into my life as an elder gen Z still in school too and I swear it's saddening to witness but it's reality...
I hate the idea that they’ve failed their kids and that there’s nothing left to do when you’re ALWAYS a parent. If you stop parenting just because you feel it’s too late you forget they still have ENTIRE lives left to learn and grow. My mom still needs her mom and I still need mine. A lot of impactful parenting for me has happened while I’m in college. It’s never too late to fix anything unless the kids are dead. There’s always a chance for change
The generations were never meant to be specific, but they were created to discuss social trends in HISTORY. Sure, that can transfer to the present in certain situations, but it often lends itself to gross (big) and misleading generalizations when we do.
💯 "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." - Isaac Asimov
I’m gonna need my fellow olds to stop finger wagging at the kids for a minute & actually think about what incentive they have to even go to school. Music class & interesting electives are gone, classes are overcrowded, bullying is rampant, busses are 30-90 minutes late every single day, buildings are falling apart & their lunches are provided by the same companies who supply prison meals. Saying “you need this to earn a living someday” isn’t enough. They need a reason to get out of bed TODAY, not 12 years from now.
I agree with you here, but a counter argument that my mom would have at this point is that “you should wake up now so that your future in 12 years is safe”. What do you say to that?
A counter to that is the fact that we don't know if we'll be alive in twelve years You can't worry about that far in the future when we don't know how the next year will be
Bruh did everyone forget of the concept of being grateful? It’s public school. So many people don’t get the opportunity to go. So many people go to school with reslly high temperatures or very low, not having food In their bellies at all. I went through a year of pandemic is not an excuse in my country it lasted more than 2 fucking years, and we were stuck inside all the time, there was no gradual opening. There’s people at wars, my parents have to work to not be homeless it’s not a excuse, seriously
Really annoying how I, a Gen Zer, am supposedly as stupid as a box of rocks, but should also know the secrets of the universe and do everything right on the first try.
Glad to see these issues talked about, though I feel it’s not quite addressed properly. I’ve found these conversations toward younger generations particularly cruel in how our society has been sending children to their disabilities and deaths in how horribly we’ve handled public health measures and the pandemic protections. The world burns down around them and we got people talking about the “decline in intelligence” and it’s hard reading when we have normalized eugenics everywhere. Even basic things like trying to define intelligence come back to the way that intelligence as a concept rooted in eugenics. The issues we’re seeing are the result of poverty and wealth and resource inequality, public health eugenics, and an intentional failure of our society. I feel a lot of people aren’t driving enough at this issue from a disability lens. A lot of it is really just exposing structural failings inherent to schooling as a concept rather than some failure of the students or decline in "intelligence."
I'm so glad you bring this up. They love to blame the millennial crowd for how we've raised our kids as well, but we flat just don't have the same resources across the board than the generations before us. I really hate the constant discourse from the older generations standing on the second floor hollering down to everyone else below after they yanked the stairs up and openly prevented us from being able to achieve a lot of the same success. There is always something to be said for respect and worth ethic, absolutely, but systemically its getting worse and worse and while its been hell for us older folks, Gen Z and Alpha have is SO much freakin harder. I'm so worried for our babies and they are so much stronger and sturdier than we give them credit for. We gotta all work together not beat eachother down.
Just left a long comment about this and I am very glad I saw yours. Just finished taking a disability studies course so my brain is going a million miles a minute thinking about this through a disability lense. Especially as a Black person who grew up going to underfunded schools my whole life, somehow made it into academia and consequently found out I have a neurodevelopmental disability lol.
One of them is talking about 7th graders who are 12/13 which were born 2010/2011. They are cuspers (Zalphas). Just like Zillenials and Xennials they have traits in both generations because trends, behaviors, and society don't change in January 1 of a given year of a given generation. (This naming of generations was always meant as a way to describe societal trends generally from a historical perspective.)
But if you were the favorite, that means that you probably outperformed. When about 15 years ago there would only be one or two people who underperformed. It's super sad tbh.
The hiveminded idea that Gen Z is dumber than previous generations shocks me because growing up as someone on the older edge of the Gen Z spectrum (b. 2000), I've engaged with so many intelligent and insightful peers. I've always felt like the odd one out because so many people I interact with, whether they're a few years older than me or a few years younger, are so articulate, inventive, and well-informed. All of this chatter about Gen Z (or, really the youth) being less intelligent than other generations sounds like ageism, failure to truly engage with them, and/or denial of the systemic issues that may cause young people to present as such. On a side note, the point that one of the teachers made at the start of the video, about how her students prefer raunchy, popular music over the age-appropriate songs she plays in her classroom, reminded me of how popular "Low" was with my first grade class. At the time, no one really knew what it meant, we just enjoyed they way it sounded. It wasn't until many years later that I recognized the explicit nature of the song that my friends and I used to sing on the playground. IDK, kids are going to listen to popular music, and people shouldn't use that to make assumptions about their sexual awareness.
The tv show Abbott Elementary is a really good show and it shines a light on how public schools are treated by districts/states regarding their funding and other programs. It focuses on the teachers and how they aren’t being lazy but they want to help the kids so bad but the district has boundaries set on their budget so the school stays poor
Calling those 8 countries' data "global" is such an incredibly arrogant and euro-centric thing for those researchers to do. Also, there's a very strong connection between declining rates of literacy and IQ (a concept which is problematic at best anyway) in the US and right-wing politicians cutting public school funding, something that really ramped up in the 90s and continues to this day. Like, watch any of the Republican primary debates this year and you'll see all of them saying that teachers and the Department of Education are the enemy and some even going so far as to say it should be entirely abolished.
So as a former teacher I can tell you that seventh graders and fourth graders not being able to read at grade level is a direct result of the pandemic. Teaching is a learned skill that parents did not have. So when you think about kids in 7th and 8th grade now what you need to remember is that these children that were in third, fourth, and fifth grade during the pandemic, a pretty pivotal point in language arts. By third grade you are reading to learn. So during the pandemic these kids were not exposed to skills that would teach them how to become more fluent readers. Because parents, understandably, were fumbling. And learning is cumulative. So when all the kids return back to school after the pandemic, they are suddenly in classrooms with teachers who are not equipped to teach them reading fluency which includes deciphering and understanding text. They are now in classrooms with teachers who are skilled in teaching them how to interpret and reflect text. It's no longer language arts for a 7th or 8th grader, now it's English literature. As far as 4 graders go, I'm sure people look at kindergarten, first, and second grade and think "Oh they're just playing and having fun." But what you may not understand is that that is how children learn, through play. So there are all these very elaborate games that are inculcated with educational concepts which results in children learning. Everybody mad at the public school until the public school is not a part of the equation, and then they get mad again at the public school when they find out they could not do as well as public schools. Not that public schools are perfect, but they are much better than kids sitting at home hoping their parents have the skills and the wherewithal to teach them. This also applies for social emotional and behavioral skills. Public schools are designed to teach children how to function in society both academically socially/behaviorally. That 2 years took a lot out of kids. This is why children who are home-schooled function differently than kids who went to public school. This is why kids at private school function and think differently than kids who go to public school. Everything that human beings do is learned and these kids have missed out on two to three years of learning.
i’m concerned with the lack of nuance in these conversations and people placing blame on the kids when they’re simply products of their environment. this was one of the best takes i’ve seen about this topic
What’s interesting is, I’m a reading tutor and the only requests I get for tutoring are from the parents of kids who CAN already read well. 😩 They want me to help their kids get ahead. I’d really love to help kids catch up but it’s like the interest isn’t there from the parents of kids who actually need it. At least in my experience as a former teacher turned tutor. When I was in the classroom, I simply did not have the time or capacity to fill in every gap for every child. It’s an impossible job for a teacher, so parents have to be intentional about seeking additional help for children outside of school. Especially after that awful 2 year virtual situation. But you’re right about other generations having literacy gaps too.
I was a teacher for a few years and I've heard this from all teachers. The parents we want to show up, answer the phone, respond to an email, text or anything are not the parents who show up. The parents of the child who made a B+ are the ones who show up asking how can their child make an A. As a young teacher I used to provide free tutoring, the school had transportation, but I still couldn't reach some of the kids who needed it the most.
THIS!!!! I was a teacher and I'm changing careers because I cared too much. I can't do it anymore. My "cup" was always empty and it's gotten worse in recent years. The only parents who are active now are the ones of the over-achievers. I said this in my comment but having the advantage of being a previous teacher helps a lot with supplementing my kid at home. We have never bought toys just for entertainment. They're always numbers or colors or letters when she's younger. I've noticed that those kind of toys aren't popular anymore (except for the resurgence of Montessori) in favor of more like, Paw patrol or consumption and media themes. Parents aren't helping their kids at home and the children are getting blamed. Teachers can only do so much if they aren't backed up and especially if the parents can't even acknowledge their kid needs help. You're an awesome person for wanting to help those kids and gosh I kinda miss when schools just told the parents "we are going to tutor your kid" and the parents would support it.
Hive mind. Some of the Gen Z posters complaining about Gen Alpha, probably just aren't cut out for teaching. That one lady was only 22 and says these are the worst kids she's ever experienced and its traumatizing. Like girl, these are the ONLY kids you've experienced as a teacher. I'm a millennial parent and I also coached cheerleading for 1st and 2nd graders so I've seen plenty of kids and their parents. Parents come in all shapes, sizes, creeds, disciplines, etc same as any other demographic. I have seen parents where their kid is their biggest bully and they don't have a handle on their kids. They give their kids whatever they want. Then there are parents whose children don't even talk, and the parents brag its cause they beat them. And everything in between. When I was coaching, it was roughly 50/50. 50% of the kids were wilding out, having trouble focusing and concentrating. And the other 50% were on top of it, paying attention, learning the routines, and even practicing at home on their own. Again, varying levels, that 50/50 is more of a spectrum, but you get the idea.
thank you for saying that woman was only 22. teaching is such an under appreciated and difficult job to do and i believe her story, but you can’t be out here bashing a whole generation off 30 kids. and you only did it for a year or two. that’s only 60 kids 😅
I want to add as a gen Zer from a small European country, there is a massive lack of teachers. Some schools skip lessons like physics because there is no physics teacher. There is also something I find unique to non-English speaking countries, the globalisation aspect. So many of my peers have horrible understanding of their own language because they use English more often than their mother tongue, not only online but to speak with each other. I'm scared to think about how this may start impacting our culture.
That depresses me as English has too many bad habits like not using "che, que", no grammartical gender concept, not using reflexives like se, me, mi, si, or sig, mig, dig. I like Europeans more as they are smarter, even if they can't speak English well. I ask kindly for a code switch as I understand them better.
@@MaoRatto Just because one language has something doesn't mean another one has to too, like we've been fine without the grammatical gender concept Speaking a certain language doesn't make you smarter 😭 Plus you do know England is in Europe 😭?? Like English ppl are also Europeans 😭
@@z3onix Europeans they are, but that's nor here or there. I'm saying in a sense. The lack of uses reflexives constantly and not used to being pro-drop can be a bit of a problem, or having some of the worst orthography ever. Grammatically instead of why do " Europeans may call a chair a he or she, but more like why don't we call them that? " I think of Grammatical gender as a predictable marker for words. Making referring to basic objects easier. I already knew The English folks are Europeans, but I kind of view them as just ancestors that we already diverged from. I view Europe as in central. I hate reading abbreviations in English, but I love reading them in Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian as. WHO KNEW A GRAMMATICAL O/IL/EL can make a warning, but English blindsides over that.
@@z3onix It's pretty clear, have you never heard a Mexican speak Spanish before? I don't need to answer. I am used to dealing with foreigners. I forget about The Brits due to I call them Common Wealth as unlike being from the USA. They had attachment to The Queen herself, but America has to fight and also distances from Britain from the first thirteen colonies and generally Europe looks at America, but American looks at itself. The commonalities of Australia, Canada, and the UK is shared how they sounds and idioms. I don't like how the USA is sort of isolated, but doesn't realize across the pond it's having people with their own lives watching it. Reflexives are fun to use and write as you can be much more direct and emphasize a point. I like the fact most romance tongues have an adjective system that discerns characteristics from subjective opinions or the short hand of using ET/EN/LA/EL for it. As a limited amount of nouns have the characteristic of " Masculine vs Feminine " or "Common vs. Neuter " gender distinction, it gives you an idea how to conjugate every word predictably. The writing of accent marks is... A bless from god himself and having a 26 letter alphabet is beyond insane if you have 44 SOUNDS, but can't even describe 1 SOUND CONSTANTLY OR CONSISTIENTLY. I will dig even worse on English. If got a dialect, it makes spelling even worse. Where fossilized spelling keeps ED, guess what you pronounce it with /ɪ/ instead of /ɛ/. Also why do we need to spell things with silent letters that don't serve a function to hint? A good example. French has Silent letters but they turn into voiced sounds due to grammar. Blanc for the masculine, but the feminine is Blanche. While English ones maybe to discern words like Knight and Night, but circumflexes would be handy on the N and vowels. English shouldn't require manual memorization per EACH words due to no accent marks, mismatched vowels, loaning words left and right, not making a voice vs. voiceless TH in writing, no logic to voicing, or making an effort to be reasonably spelt. Silent letters for silent letter's sake due to 1. Umlaut hints which break due to French and Greek words 2. Scribes being evil with silent letters to teach people Greek or Latin 3. Hyper-corrections...
These conversation should always be based in context! I'm a Gen Z educator in the uk and problems with literacy have existed here for a long time. Upper middle and upper class kids have parents that have the time and energy and resources to read to them, so they may have an 8 year old's reading level when starting school at 5. And for the kids whose parents dont have access to all of that, they may start school at 5 not even knowing the alphabet. These problems have been massively exacerbated by over crowded classes and the pandemic cuz online learning meant some kids didnt have academic support for 2 years, so yeah there is a big difference in the level of a class of second year secondary school students that was in that situation than a class that wasnt. But you know what gets teachers stumped? The whole "kids have no attention span nowadays". Yes, They Do! The kids i teach can learn so fast and they need teachers that let them learn and build skills quickly, and so many teachers look at their students being bored af and dont realise it's cuz their teaching style is old fashioned and boring and changeable. I literally structure my presentations like top text + bottom text memes w a tonne of pictures. Does that make it easier? The content is the same, so no. But the structure is more accessible, so yes. And learning should be accessible, we need to detach from the idea that learning something complicated must feel hard, cuz normally that just means its being taught in an unclear or boring way...
It’s truly not just gen z. So many of those who we would consider “elders “ are lacking and in need of hooked on phonics. The ignorance and lack of education has become a generational curse l. Especially in the black community. The teachers can teach and do all they want. It doesn’t matter if the parents aren’t doing their job to teach their children and make sure they know even the basics. Let’s not forget that in the black culture being smart and educated is looked down upon but that’s only one factor. We also have social media now which is basically the new form of education for everyone. Most people aren’t able to listen past 60 seconds anymore. This truly is an issue not of just gen z but everyone. Knowledge is no longer seen as important. Now it’s just entertainment and whatever is viral.😩
As a high school student who enjoys learning about the systems that govern our world and the motivations and history behind them, I think it's because the education system in the US was never about learning, it was and is about conditioning, control, and making good future workers. It started out as a way to create good workers, people who'd be easy to control, who'd submit to authority, and who, most of all, would be highly profitable. They used bells, tight time schedules, made every one do the same thing at the same time, talked at you, and taught you you better keep up or there'd be consequences, and we still see remnants of that today. add in the fact that schools are funded by their communities based on zoning, and by the government based on test scores, something that keeps certain people poor and others rich, and it's easy to see it was never about teaching the kids. it was about creating cogs, and cogs don't need to be good at thinking or understanding beyond their role. I think the reason it's a hot topic now is because the pandemic and online schooling resulted in the exposure of the American school system's short comings, making the problems that were always there much more apparent. So that's why imo 'gen z and gen alpha can't read' and older people are no better, because that system has been teaching all the kids and adults that are alive today. This is not really on the teachers who are usually well-intentioned and often don't have the resources to do a good job, or the parents who are most often trying their best in their situation, because while yes, they are responsible for teaching the kids, a majority of that responsibility currently rests with the education system, who's goal, I believe, is still to turn out cogs for a capitalist machine, with actually learning being a bonus. Until we make changes to the education system, and maybe our broader societal system, It's unlikely to change. TL; DR: I think the american school system's main goal was never to educate the children, but to make good workers, and so education wasn't the priority. the pandemic exposed that it wasn't doing a bad job of teaching, and it won't change unless we change the system.
Huge agree. I’d also like to add that, in the US at least, we don’t have any emphasis on children being people. Children are possessions who can’t possibly have interests and varied needs the way adults do. Failing to see children as people (or even future adults) makes us less likely to give a shit whether they’re ACTUALLY learning in the first place. As you say, all that matters is that these “possessions” will grow up to replace their “owners” (parents).
Gen X teacher and historian here. I have to say you have an interesting take. I agree with you for the most part, but I'm not as pessimistic of peoples intentions. The system wasn't set up to create minions who could be controlled... not really anyway. Schools didn't become compulsory until the Industrial Revolution. At the time, most of the population of the United States were farmers. The new factory and mining jobs were a boom because people could in earn more money in these jobs, but they needed more and different information in order to do the jobs. Schools provided that. They were also structured the way factory work days are structured so that students were more successful in the factories and less likely to quit under the workplace conditions (you can see this in the generational differences of what kind of jobs are tolerated today). I admit there might have been a few people with less than desirable intentions (like the Daughters of the Confederacyin the early to mid- 20th Century), but there wasn't as much as you seem to think. This system of schooling worked for our society as different industries were born and grew for a long time because they were all a part of that same model. However, as that started to change, schools did not. Combine that with a steady growth of micromanaging of districts, schools, and teachers over time and you have our schools today. Now some parents want to get in on the micromanaging too😕
@@Eniral441 thank you for your perspective as a teacher. I definitely agree that schools haven't changed enough with the times, and micromanaging has not helped at all. do you think schooling has improved from when you were receiving primary education?
I'm so damn tired of this generational divide bullshit. Older generations hating on younger gens has been discussed and parodied/satirized for decades if not centuries. Yet it STILL happens for every single new generation. It's always the same shit too. It can be lighthearted and funny in good faith but that feels rare. The younger generations sow our own kind of discord as well. I think it's a lot more understandable on our side, although I'm on our side of course I think that. But it hurts when every adult figure in your life constantly talks down on your generation, how is that condusive to positive change instead of resentment or acting out? But I know our parents have their own issues, it's complicated. I just wish people of all ages would be more reasonable and respectful towards each other regardless of generation. I've kinda had a weird upbringing of 3 generations: Boomer (parents, real boomers born in early 60's), Gen X (sisters, 80s), and Millennial (internet lol). So I'm 21 but I tend to like older media, NOT a wrong-generationer though (anymore lol). But I feel like I can't connect to my friends about it a lot, and I feel too young to connect to older gens. Like none of my friends give af about Morrowind but I love it 😂
We've all become way too enmeshed in this generational divide. Millennials hating on boomers and gen z. Gen z turning around and doing the exact same thing to millennials and gen alpha. It's peak irony and hypocrisy. Everyone wants to feel like they're the only generation who faced scrutiny and hardships. Everyone wants to feel special or targeted or whatever. I'm so over it. We're still struggling with racism and classism we don't have enough prejudice we want to add more?? We need to get over ourselves fr💀
My personal problem with these types of conversations are " people " use this to discredit or to make someone feel "other". I'm in my thirties so you can call me I'm a millennial but these issues have been going on impoverished areas for a long time. I remember growing up I was illiterate and it was due to some of my parents personal choices and I didn't have a stable environment.The only reason I learned how to read is because of shaming from family members and not being able to navigate the world on my own when I was 10 to 12 years old. so, I needed that survival resource. I think from some of the older generations when they try to give perspective to the younger generation everything is so dismissive and some people feel like they're better than that person who's talking to them. We look at education, vanity and wealth to see if someone's worthy of our presence or attention. The disparaging comments I'm seeing about boomers or millennials to say that somehow Gen z is better is a discredit to the conversation that I saw on your video. I do appreciate your perspective and presentation on this nuance issue, but I also believe like you hinted in your video that this has so many factors to why certain parts of our knowledge are in decline. I think another part is our education system was set up for factory workers it was never meant to be something that was individualized, it was always meant to be for a streamline into learning certain fields. The government's interest in education started with workers streamlining a way to capital and that's what slavery happened and that's why Jim Crow happened it's a lot to do with making money, capital, and political power. I just wanted to leave a comment although it's long I do appreciate your videos. I appreciate and thank you for making this video with different perspectives being very decisive and cutting out things that aren't relevant to the conversation but are integral for our growth. I do love the way you think.
Don’t forget that in the states, disinvestment in the public education system, started to ramp up after integration. Add the increasing higher cost of college education, and you have a nasty recipe. Keeping the massive dumb is deliberate. They overworked the parents so they don’t have any time at home to read to their children, or just decompress. Then they keep taking funding out of public education. There are too many children too teachers, even back in the 90s they were putting 40 children to one teacher. Then we don’t pay those teachers enough money to live, or give them resources to help these children If you are overworked and underpaid who will the energy to invest in the kids?! Even when they want too, it’s hard. Edit to correct grammar, and add capitalism is trash.
Older generations (boomers and beyond) are technologically illiterate and they’re mad and embarrassed about that, especially in a world where technology is the dominant way to communicate now. I’m a millennial and older people are the hardest to teach by far. They don’t retain new information unless they actually try and even then, unless they practice everyday, they fall back into old habits. My mom JUST figured out what ChatGPT is and she is amazed but also scared by it. GenZ is owning this new AI age. They lean in and I admire that about them. I’m just worried that they’ll forget to live and be in the moment instead of being emotionally attached to their devices. Have you seen those school videos of kids’ phones being taken away? I’m truly blessed to be a millennial and grow up with a a healthy balance of experiences with and without technology. I hope the next generation finds that same balance.
Older people always have a harder time learning, cognitive ability decreased as you get older if you don't keep your brain active. Sometimes that decline happens no matter what and is genetic, for example dementia. Their fear comes from confusion. We shouldn't bash the elders or the future
Nothing compared to young illiterates who are now in record to surpass the elderly in internet scams. Internet scams! You know…the field in which they should be exceeding in.
Also i have to respect a generation that hasnt even been geeven a good time to remember and still try their best. With a more uncertain future than ever. I respect that probably most political generation because they bloody have to face it. If bo burnham is probably the face of the facing nihilism, yeah, i cant blame anyone being desperate to change anything, and adress shit.
@@ThatGirlJD Older people can, ok with age its harder to learn, but keeping learning , is still things people can do, i mean however keep the mind engaged, even with games. And old people can be openminded. Really the only thinks old people might be more is not giving a shit ot stubbern. Ther are really cool progressive respectful old people.
Honestly as a Gen Zer, I’m not sure if you can call us technologically literate on the whole. A lot of Gen Zs were raised with touchscreens (I got an iPad when I was like… seven but didn’t get a PC until high school), which tend to have much simpler UIs. Some of this is fine, like, if someone can type faster on a phone than they can a keyboard, then they should be allowed to work on the phone. But some people can’t even navigate Windows File Explorer.
Okay, as a current high school student I'm kinda offended by "gen z not being able to read". Older generations need to stop acting like they're smarter when some of them can't understand using different pronouns (aka basic english) or don't believe in global warming. My generation does have its issues but give us grace we're growing up in chaos. Most of us went through some of our fundamental years in a literal pandemic and it's even worse for gen alpha (I'm scared of them I can't lie). Work with us rather than condemning us, we do need help.
I know it's a big ask but what are some of the things you wish adults would do to help your generation of adolescents and kids? Whether it's parents, teachers, older siblings, random people you interact with.
Whoopi and I are in the same age range, and there's a lot more knowledge to cover than there was when we were in school. Just by virtue of the weight of passing time and things that have happened in that time; not to even mention gains in science, sociology, culture, yadda, yadda, yadda. There's a lot more history than the two semesters we took that we didn't even get through. We didn't have internet. We had 3 channels plus PBS. We had newspapers and libraries, and (of course) bigger cities had more books than county libraries in rural counties. Kids today know _how to obtain_ more information that we were able to access period. And they can do it without spelling correctly, because Google will guess what they meant. What is missing is critical thinking, and it wasn't being taught in the 60s, either, because, frankly, people are more difficult to deal with when they can extrapolate.
Literally just had this conversation with my mom 2 days ago. It's unfortunate and I keep thinking is there a way to fix this. There are things as simple as reading with your kids and I know parents who didn't want to do that. And now look at their kid. It's so sad
Can confirm. I’ve been working as a tutor in several different K-12 schools for the past few years. I had one student who was in third grade, and I was reading with him… and I asked him does your mom know that you struggle with reading? He sighed, and answered “yes.” Then I followed up with, does she read to you? He sighed and answered, “no.” I’m 31 years old. So that would make me a younger millennial. And I know there are no quick fixes, and every student is different with their own set of challenges. But I think many parents overlook the fundamental importance of reading to your child. I never struggled with reading, in fact, I sought it out because it was something I was good at and something that I liked. But my parents read to me when I was younger. I remember that. And I think for me that also made a big difference. I think the reason why a lot of people are calling out gen z is not because they’re the only people who can’t do reading comprehension… but the number of kids who don’t even understand the fundamental mechanics of reading is so startlingly high. Like yeah a lot of boomers can’t do reading comprehension, but most understand the fundamental mechanics of reading… and I also think that the issue has been exacerbated by the fact that we were in a pandemic. It’s just all really sad. But also, a friend I have, who is a teacher said part of the problem is that, reading isn’t a necessity to accessing information, as much as it has been in the past. Because most of what you want to know, there’s a video you can find on the Internet about it. That means that you don’t have to read to get information necessarily. Literacy, however, is still greatly important, but it can often be overlooked in your fundamental years…when you have access to so many other different types of resources. You don’t necessarily have to read. He also said another problem is that parents kind of run the school system now. Like he’s pretty much not allowed to fail a kid without permission from the parents. So students lacking in fundamental skills get pushed through the system, even though they’re not ready. Right now I tutor at a middle school. I have six graders who I have to walk them through every sentence because they can’t read. Students that honestly should’ve been held back, but aren’t anymore. It’s really sad. But we’re doing the best we can to support them. To get them reading and doing basic math. Because even in this age of technology, those are necessary survival skills.
@@courtneyjames5495I spend so much time reading and typing in the comment section on UA-cam that I assumed kids must reading more now than ever. Sure, they can watch a video to access information, but how about processing that information and having a meaningful discussion through written dialogue. It doesn’t seem that hard to merge technology with literacy skills in a fun way. We just need more creative thinking.
Love how we are talking about how chronically online people are nowadays on a UA-cam video. But personally I think the whole system is failing us. Teachers are overwhelmed. New tv shows and movies for kids have been heavily dumbed down. It’s even more difficult to care for a child because of how much more expensive life is. The environment is getting so much worse kids don’t have many outside places to go. We just went through a major epidemic where young kids had to face death scares. It just makes sense kids aren’t doing well. But idk I’m a young adult who does spend too much time on the internet
I find it interesting that despite similar rates of technology usage and access, this declining trend in intelligence and literacy are besieging the west but not China, and I think ultimately this comes down to western capitalist nations cutting and deprioritizing education and access to education for their populations. The fact is America doesn’t want an intelligent populace, it wants a consumer base, because most innovation and labor were sent overseas once again because capitalists would rather sacrifice collective good in order to pay lower wages, than keep jobs domestic but pay livable wages, and the government then subsidizes those decisions and continue to cut funding for social/public services ie EDUCATION.
No child left behind made education more about testing and not actual learning. I spent most of the year teaching how I thought they should learn and the last month on how to pass the test. Absences became tied to funding. Suspensions went down, which led to less structure and fewer consequences in the classroom. As we learned during covid, parents do not want their children at home, so suspensions gave parents the incentive to discipline their children, so the child would behave in school. NCLB also rewarded schools with high promotion rates. When i was a teacher, i had a student who came to my class and slept almost everyday. I asked other teachers how they engaged him, because i thought i was doing something wrong. I was told he did the same thing in their class, and they passed him.
11 місяців тому+121
It pisses me off when I hear people blame all this on covid. This issue predates covid.
People blame racism on former President Obama as if he invented it.
11 місяців тому
@@localbrews did you not read my comment? we can't blame this entire issue on covid. IT PREDATES COVID. I don't care what the teachers say. Parents shoulda been sitting with their kids during covid and making sure they know how to read. I don't care to hear any of the excuses cause if you have a kid, you need time for the kid. I first noticed this issue in 8th grade (I graduated highschool this year.) Some middle-older gen z also can't read, understand, theorize, etc. As I said, IT PREDATES COVID.
I was born in 97, so I’m at the oldest end of Gen Z. Both of my parents are teachers and I grew up with them teaching high school and middle school. I worked in the school system starting from the age of 18 until I was 25, now I’m a nanny. The idea that being unable to read, lacking discipline, and being hyper sexual is something unique to Genzie is wild. I went to school with millennials and grew up in a household of teachers who worked with millennials… I promise you all of those issues were equally as prevalent in that generation. Social media makes it easier for this to be a national conversation from the perspective of teachers directly but I promise you if millennials teachers had access to the current landscape of social media you would’ve been seeing the same shit.
I'm trying to lower my screen time. It's legit making me dumber. I'm not giving up my audiobooks though. They're a life saver. The kids aren't alright and neither are the adults. We all need to make room for physical spaces and real life connection. I'm not gonna sucked into the 2024 election media circus next year because I 1) don't live in a swing state and 2) want to focus on local elections and issues in my neighborhood more. Hopefully we can give these kids and ourselves a better chance than they have now.
I can't imagine not being able to read properly, my mum taught me to read and I was reading full books before I started school, I was the only 5yr old that could fully read in my whole school, parents are not continuing education at home anymore and there certainly isn't any discipline anymore.
I’m Jamaican and we start school as soon as you’re potty trained, so by time o was 3yrs old I was reading and writing in school. But I do understand the difference with the lack of books. Back in the islands education is free but parents get a booklist at every grade level for your child. This only is provided by the government if you below the poverty levels. Even then there’s an outreach program to past teachers and students within your local community that your child can go pick up those books on a loan system. Parents providing the books that support their children education puts power and responsibility into those parents hands so they can actively see and read the curriculum of their children. Books are openly shared especially in-between family members as it helps with the cost of education.
I'm so glad this video didn't boil it down to a purely generation issue. I can't believe people think that the generations that needed sesame street and were latch key kids in a generation of evolving media is shocked that newest generation is having literacy issue. "Like baby boomers, gen x babes, so did you!" People raising gen alpha (which spans 3 generations as Gen X, millennials and older gen Z are all involved) don't see parking a kid in front of a device as bad as they grew up parked in front of tvs and computers. A lot of them don't realize/heavily underestimate how much less protections there are online than with tv. Not only that so many of them lack free 3rd spaces to take their kids too, don't/can't take the time to read to their kids, and are too far away from/unaware of communities to help them. So many of them were already lacking media literacy and reading comprehension which was further wittled away by overexposure to uncritical consumption of online content. The amount of times I had to slowly point and read aloud instructions to grown adults multiple times at my job to still have them look at me in confusion would make people cry.
People not watching Reading Rainbow and spending time in Libraries is a problem imo. Parents need to be able to lean on something because we do have to work so much and not be tutoring our kids up from behind, but putting them on technology damages their attention spans. We need to be able to go to that "third place" where kids are safe and entertained while we study or work from home or whatever, or kids have aftercare or a community group. St. Louis City and County libraries both have a lot. Idk parents can't be the teachers bc we are busy and aren't qualified but we need to be able to support the teachers some type of way by keeping our kids productive
As always, you hit the figurative nail on the head! US educational systems have been failing society for decades. Its obviously passed a certain threshold to where its impacting us at a more rapid pace.
When I started seeing teachers come out saying kids can’t read my first thought was “hell, their parents haven’t read a book that wasn’t required for school either.” Kids will often imitate what they see their parents and other adults they’re around do. Whenever my little niece sees me reading she wants to read along with me and get her own books. When a child sees their parents always looking at a smartphone that’s what they’re going to want to do too. It really shows that it’s important to have kids with people whose traits you’d want your kids to have. If your child’s father never read a book don’t be surprised when your kid doesn’t either.
THANK YOU for getting the info right on the No Child Left Behind Act. So many people think it was about letting kids pass through the system without learning the material. That was NOT part of that act. That was an action that school/district admin made with NCLB as the excuse. It was the opposite of what the Act was about. That being said, the means of implementing that act were horrible. It assumed all schools and all students were the same and had the same problems. It added more micromanaging by people who hadn't been in a public school classroom since they graduated high school themselves and knew nothing about teaching. It also forced districts to teach to the middle. The district I was in was forced to divert funds from their enrichment programs and gifted and talented programs to their already well-developed and robust special education departments (Title 1 is usually part of this department) , thus closing all the others. I was seeing super smart kids falling below grade level in some cases because their needs were not being addressed as they were forced to fit in the round whole in the middle (square peg in round whole). Special needs students with severe learning difficulties and needs were required to take the same tests as other students. I was seeing schools with large special education student bodies and schools with large ESL student bodies (we were in an area with a lot of refugees) fail. When a school failed, parents got a letter telling them that their school was failing and they could choose to send their kids to a different school. Sure, some of those schools truly failed their students, but mostly, that wasn't the case. The impression was that the school and teachers weren't good or weren't doing their jobs, even if they actually were. One of the best schools I've seen failed because of the ESL thing, and tests were only given in English. This false impression may have kicked off or really contributed to the situation schools are facing with parents today. PS. There is more to it on the black and brown issues and impoverished areas, but you covered that.
HIVE MIND BABY 😛🤘🏾 23:06 i was waiting on someone with the right verbiage to tackle this conversation because it’s too many points/opinions that ALL information is being convoluted. So glad Herb can pinpoint it all and deliver it perfectly. S/o to you Herb, love you much 🫶🏾
I’m on the early end of gen z I’m almost a millennial. I have a great passion for reading but I’m really bad at math. And I’ll admit in high school that other than reading comprehension I don’t have very good critical thinking or problem solving skills but I did well in school because basically the only thing needed is memorizing things (except for equations in math)
I think most people see "this generation can't read" in different light, some talk about a skill itself, other talk about ability to understand and analyze text on a deeper level, to see the context clues, to understand irony and doublespeak in a written text. And if you look at current fandom discussions and fan theories, people can't read for sh\t, that's true. While rarely observed outside fandom spaces, people do resolve to mark their text with /jk or /sarc and other tone tags to give it clarity.
Thank you so much for this. It has really been pissing me off to see other 20-somethings enter the workforce and act brand new/like there’s something inherently worse about the younger kids and it can all be blamed on ipads and tiktok :/ are y’all not embarrassed??? Or did you just sit back and accept when older people said the same shit about you lmao
A part of me feels like people fear the very change that they need. I imagine that if you're a teacher responsible for educating these kids within the traditional framework, you're probably pulling your hair out, because this framework simply isn't compatible with the way these kids think and process information. I also have gen Z and gen Alpha nieces and nephews, so I feel a lot of the complaints that people express on the internet about them, but there is still a part of me that is happy that they can't really function in the world that we've created. The reality is, these kids inherited this place, and its trash, I think we can all admit that. I feel like if they can't function in this world as it is, then we have no choice but to make something better, if we wanna survive as a species. Who is more capable of making a better society than the ones who legit can't cope with or function in the one we have? I know its more nuanced than that but Idk man.... i'm really optimistic about these kids, and I often make the same argument that Herby raised at the end of this video... illiterate doesn't mean dumb. In fact, the 7 wonders of the world, and many other things that we marvel at and view as the pinnacles of human ingenuity were built by folks who couldn't, or simply did not read or write. So we'll be alright...maybe lol.
One thing I think that's super important to the "lack of attention span" sentiment (that I feel a lot as a college student in this day and age) is that for current working age/post-secondary age people you are FORCED into a schedule of 24/7 attentiveness and skimming just to survive. I feel like I have no time to read the amount that I did as a kid because I no longer have 4+ hour breaks in my days, at least most of the time, and when I do it just makes me feel as if I am being wasteful of time that could be more 'productive.' As supported by the facts (as you say), people work more for greater profits of the company at no increase in pay relative to past years and the effect is felt even further now. I feel that as much as attention spans are pulled away by the digital world, it is also sort of a hypervigilance baked into us because capitalist economy wants to squeeze out all effort from you until none is left for things like reading, or spending time educating yourself, or anything that takes longer than 5 minutes. Everyone's living 5 minute break to 5 minute break but I think some of that is an issue of the employers and standards of production expected these days, similar to how everyone needs to have a degree now, not just a high school diploma.
Guys, some of these kids aren’t even apart of gen z, their gen alpha. Gen z’s are people who are in like the 7th or 8th grade now and above. Just wanted to say that
Ahh Critiquemasss! Homegworl is working overtime! notifications on for you Has been draggin my ass out of SAD I kid you not. You & your work are appreciated Herby and ima express that EVERY time! 🙆🏽♀️💜 (NO…) 😆 (The spirit of da chin! 💀🤣) (IQ) You heard about the lead pipes now being changed across the states?! 🤦🏽♀️ Not you attempting rap on the 50th anniversary of hip hop 😆 HIVE MIND 💜
I’m so perplexed; I really thought people’s literary maturation, and ability to comprehend written info was only increasing. It’s wasn’t too long ago that I remember seeing other first graders reading 500 page epics, with subtle themes of growing up, finding community, etc. I’m so curious if that wasn’t the experience of others? A part of also wonders if a lack of bilingual education is contributing to this. Spanish language clases in the US often focus so much on technical writing, that by the time your in AP Spanish, the kind of reading you’re doing is so at odds with you’ve done in past classes. Whereas heritage Spanish speaks are able to take a text in English or Spanish, and analysis the things to so well…. Idk just my two cents
I have a lot of feelings about this topic because of my identities + background as well as recently having finished a disability studies course. I'm going to try not to be too wordy. I agree with everything you've said about capitalism and underfunded schools, as well as environmental racism impacting the quality of education for students. BIPOC students from poor and working class families disproportionately so. You started to hit on this a bit at the beginning and end, but my alarm bells start ringing any time discussions about IQ scores, standardized testing, literacy, and intelligence are brought up. These things have such a disturbing history intertwined with ableism, racial-pseudoscience, and eugenics. Standardized tests and IQ tests are not neutral measurement tools. I think we should really start being critical about this the notion of intelligence and "IQ". Who is measuring? Who gets to determine who is smart and who is not? Why and by what standards? We'd be surprised at how much of this is connected to ableism and justifications for stripping people of their rights and humanity. I was recently reading the book "Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life" by Margaret Price and there was a section about a person who scored an 80 on their IQ test while institutionalized despite having a successful college career and teaching graduate-level courses for a few years. They say often say people who score under an 85 on IQ tests wouldn't even benefit from formal education. This is probably connected to the history of disabled people not being allowed to access formal education in the U.S. Lastly, I want to caution us about how we discuss attention spans and encourage us to rethink if traditional models of educating people are even helpful in the first place. Thinking about the ways that we can make education and learning more accessible instead of forcing children and young adults to conform to traditional classroom spaces seems like the way to go. Ultimately I think the problem is that this society does not promote or reward the development of critical thinking skills and literacy on how to navigate information and resources. The education system wasn't set up to model that. The panic about "lower IQ skills" seems like BS to me. Concerns about underfunding schools, environmental racism, ableism, and eugenics making learning/knowledge less accessible seems to be the real issue here.
Millennial here! I KNEW there was more to this topic that wasn’t being discussed enough!! THANK you for bringing it up!!! Take my upvote 😂 and def subscribing, you’re awesome!!
Schools went from teaching phonics to teaching “sight words” where I live. Now, that seems fine on its face: teaching youngsters to recognize words by sight. But, it’s not. Neglecting a very fundamental skill in favor of a shortcut as a means to an end never works over the long term. All fine. I can offset that with some simple 1:1 time and a little old fashioned Gen-X, “My teachers taught me this way,” stick-to-it-iveness. Right? Wrong. Over the course of COVID, I did that with my kid in kindergarten. The teacher became furious when he would start sounding words out, versus just writing memorized shapes that comprised a word. He failed timed tests because he didn’t remember the shape that made the word, but he knew the sound that accompanied the letter, that BUILT the word. School didn’t fail my kid. It literally actively sabotaged him. My kids are able to read very well (they read novels for fun like I used to). But, knowing the “education” system worked to make one dumber by eliminating fundamentals of language (phonics) is infuriating and causes me to wonder in what other ways we’re eschewing what works for what’s easy.
I know the younger gen Zs r a bit out there but do understand that gen Z is 1995-2010 meaning the last of them r in 8th grade so all of this stuff abt elementary school kids is in fact all gen Alpha and maybe a small selection of Z. Either way this doesnt apply to the majority (at least from wut i see outside of American education) theres just as much literate and educated people as any other generation, and trust me there is a lot of illiterate older folks aswell.
School funding is linked to the local taxes (mostly property taxes, I believe). We get neighboring districts and even neighboring states with big contrasts in education quality, and people will choose housing, even move, based on the school districting. There’s some voices out there that will say the poor communities get additional funding. Maybe the funding should be more federal than it is to make it more equal
I'm really glad you asked like, by what metrics are we basing intelligence? Most standards of intelligence are regressive and inherently ableist anyway. But with all this technology and information coming at us so fast, we're prioritizing certain forms of learning over traditional types. Like spelling for example. Obviously, spelling and grammar are important skills to have at a base line, but with autocorrect many of us whole adults don't even retain a lot of those skills as well as we did as kids because we simply don't have to retain that info for most of our day to day communication. And that function has been around since 1993. Yet most people born after 93 have the ability to take in and retain information, as well as articulate it, so much faster than we did even 5-10 yrs ago. What we used to have to learn by reading lengthy articles or books, we can now get in a succinct manner via videos and posts. Yes that can be dangerous because of misinformation, but we also have a much easier time researching and fact checking, and are more compelled to than when our news and info came from reading your local newspaper or a magazine article. I really do think that we have a horrible education problem, and that we do have an issue with overconsumption and overstimulation of/by technology. Obviously we need more support and funding for schools and teachers. But I disagree with the trending idea that it's just all the fault of over permissive millennial parents shoving ipads in kids faces instead of parenting. Like you pointed out, its a much bigger issue than that.
as a millennial teacher... there's so much to unpack here. thank you for shedding light on the NCLB side of this because it is real. I teach in Detroit and there are just systemic issues even in the best schools with parent and student engagement and well qualified teachers. GENERATIONS have been left behind and have trauma surrounding education. not to mention the economic hardships folks have... i see people lamenting kids not reading and parents not reading to their kids in these very comments and while that is sad, i cannot expect someone who works 2-3 jobs to have the time to read their child a story each night. it unfortunately is a privilege to have that time. i hate that so much! but it is the reality of late-stage capitalism.
Mam I understand what you aresaying, to sòme it is hard but for those mommas who sit home or bring a man in the house all types hours or days in front of your/ their kids , they have time for man but no time for child no excuse there or sympathy from me. You can give man 10 minutes but not 10 minutes of math or reading to child
personally, with the lack of funds in public school, rampant bullying, food insecurity and domestic violence/child abuse, im not surpised were getting dumber. why would we be able to focus with empty stomachs, thinking about our home situation and what were coming home to that night and how bad it might be, and NOT ALL PARENTS CAN HELP KIDS WITH THEIR HOMEWORK, SO DONT MAKE THAT A BIG PART OF THEIR GRADE. i was fucked over so bad because i couldnt focus well in school, then i got home and asked my drug abusing parents for help and my father wouldnt care and my mother would apologize that she didnt know how to help me because SHE DROPPED OUT FOR THE SAME REASON, SCHOOL WAS TOO DIFFICULT AND SHE WAS TOO STRESSED TO CARE ABOUT EDUCATION WITH HOW POOR HER FAMILY WERE. sorry for the all caps it just pisses me off so bad that they try to blame us for having a hard time with learning, maybe if classes were smaller and i wouldve had more one-on-one time with the teachers i wouldve been okay, but with one fkn teacher and 30-40 students per class also trying to get their help, i just couldnt keep up and burnt out. i think thats whats going on with a lot of kids, they feel like nothing they feel matters. only whatever grades they get matter. when i came out of the mental hospital and told my principal i needed some days to chill out after being forced into staying there and he got pissy with me because "youve already missed too much school" LIKE FUCK YOU TREAT ME LIKE A PERSON AND NOT A MACHINE
Hearing gen z constantly get singled out is so annoying as a 24 year old. Y’all make fun of us for shaking our hips on TikTok but I literally remember millennials eating tide pods,swallowing cinnamon, and setting themselves on fire as challenges. And your earrings look so bomb on you btw EDIT: YALL ALSO HAD CHALLENGES CHOKING EACH OTHER UNTIL YALL PASSED OUT!!!
Millennials be doing Ice Bucket challenge for a good cause to cure cancer, something that never been done with older and new, I say this so we Gen Z need to get our shit together
@@MaejorArray Gen Xer here, we are indeed ghost on these subjects. I have to admit that we feel superior because we remember cursive writing and were respectful to our elders. While we commodified childhood so we can stay children forever. We feel we are a perfect amalgamation of young/old or past/future so since we're perfect we sidelined ourselves, you're welcome 😉
Maybe it’s because some people feel as if learning about things, especially fabricated things (for example: History) wasn’t as useful anymore. As a student who constantly tuned out, daydreamed, and slept through lessons, I definitely could’ve benefited from paying attention in class, buuut that’s how I felt at the time. Other than in a disciplinary way, for some reason I didn’t feel the importance of acquiring education, for some reason. I feel a GREAT movie that goes along with this topic is Freedom Writers.
Sameee tho I enjoyed history bc it was fascinating to see where they come from but learning history outside of that curated shit white folks try to push is definitely eye opening and makes u understand why things aren’t as “great” as they could be. Mostly countries were fighting over resources and trying to justify it by nationalism sentiment and it worked in most countries but there will always be people questioning the status quo conflict comes up then same old same old and we are now just dealing how pointless it really is
Hivemind! I’m really glad you’ve posted this video- I was just talking to my wife about this yesterday (she’s a teaching and learning librarian at a college). We’re both late millennials and so suffer from some of the stuff Gen Z is dealing with to an extent. I greatly think that a huge part of the problem is a lack of holistic and individualized education. People learn better when they get to choose the things they want to learn about, this is crucial to helping students learn to do research. For younger kids, we really need to dedicate time to connecting their interests to their education. If they love cars, why not investigate the physics of how they work and the history of why we have them? If they love the ocean, why not look into the kinds of stories people tell about sailing or what kinds of factors you need to account for to SCUBA dive (effects of pressure on blood composition, teamwork, etc)? Idk, this is somewhat of a pipe dream b/c I have little hope we’ll be able to dedicate individualized time like that to kids (it definitely didn’t happen for me). I have a nibling I get to see somewhat regularly so I’m hoping I can help expand horizons for one child, at least.
I believe social media is what happened to gen z and what will happen to gen alpha. We grew up in the fast and digitized, we know and we're engaging with each other the most out of history. You as an average person have consumed the most information of any generation before but the least of any generation to come. So the reference is 2 generations back and one generation ahead. As an only gen z in the house as my two other siblings are millenials, i know much more than they do in terms of information, but they beat me at applying it. It's safe to say that if we find a common point we can make incredible changes.
Hive mind Wonderful video, awesome editing and great accurate critique. 1. Let imagine when we were taught how to learn before we were taught to follow... 2. The curriculum hasn't changed but the world has so how can we expect better results...
I think a portion of the decreased attention span is that neruodiverse kids are not contantly forced to mask. Not the majority, but a portion. When i was in primary school in the early/mid 2010s i was always told that i was stupid or needed to try harder to focus when in reality i had undiagnosed adhd and autism. Every time my parents brought it up to my doctor or teachers i would be told that girls cant have adhd or autism and i just have to have more discipline. This just caused me to be so focused on masking and looking like i was focused so teachers wouldnt get mad at me for fidgeting, i didint learn any of the information when masking though. Now many kids dont have to hide their struggles as much, which is good, but the current school system is built upon sitting still for hours at a time and spitting out information that you likely dont really understand. It could really use a revamp and of course more funding to get acomodations for special needs. Edit: for context i went to school and live in western canada
You literally hit the nail on the head, every single point is right on. “Fairness” is not equity!! To create equity we as a nation MUST lift up our black and brown districts *with funding* or the disparity gap will just become wider and wider.
Different times, different economies and different technologies yield different results. No generation is identical. Next gen is going to be upset at all the other gens and so forth. We were just as cringe and stupid when we were younger.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the general lack of critical thinking skills. I think, with the rise of social media and being fed what to think, we are losing that skill en mass. Myself included. We rely on the people who actually do the work to tell us how we should feel about any given topic. And critical thinking helps us creatively think about all sorts of topics! Not just literature, but physics and math and history, all disciplines. My New Year’s resolution for 2023 was to read 1 book a month, and I have far surpassed that at this point. I genuinely feel so much smarter and am able to retain so much more information. I also am so better prepared to critically think about the content I consume and how much I am willing to allow that content to effect me. I even willingly wrote an essay just for myself just because I felt like it! I truly think Gen Z and Gen Alpha will be world changers and I am so excited to see it happen, I truly hope we all get our shit together though
i subscribed 30 seconds in bc you are ADORABLE 🥰 you have this perfect balance of seeming fun and wacky but also sounding very educated and eloquent and I absolutely love it
the vocabulary.....the cadence....the comedic timing.....honey you were born to perform and present. if I check your channel and find that you do stand up I'll cry. I feel like you would be on a whole new level with crowdwork asfhshfjdjd
considering the state of the school system I think we would all be better off as a country if every curriculum lesson plan was ran through a deepfake filter of you teaching it 🤣 it would be so much easier to pay attention and you'd be a billionaire, maybe president. remember me when you get your bag
Hey now, speak for yourself, I taught myself to read at 3 years old. But I will say, as an '89 Millennial, basically the whole time I was in public school, I remember being somewhat dismayed at how much trouble my contemporaries had with reading, especially reading out loud.(though obviously at least part of the latter was just nerves) and I know plenty of older people who have trouble reading as well. How well one reads really just is a function of how much one reads. That being said, there has long been a concern that overreliance on reading degrades the natural capacity for memorization, so perhaps it's all just a matter of tradeoffs. Also, great singing voice lol, I hope you do that often.
@crishnaholmes7730 they were encouraging and they were readers themselves, so there were always books around, as well as fresh newspapers. I would say yes, they were helpful, and I was very lucky in that regard.
Everything you said in this video is true. people, think they are above other people and need to hear a different perspective alot of kids in special classes are doing way better then the ones that were in general education honestly when i was in it my teachers told me i was ahead of them the stuff they were teaching i already knew it they really need to upgrade they textbooks the state dont want them to teach what really happened to our ancestors especially in history they been tryna erase it along with other stuff.
I think there may be a small bit of truth to the teachers coming out saying these things but I also think it’s nowhere near a new issue and having tiktok and twitter just makes it easier for us to complain about. Never mind the fact I’ve seen 30+ year olds with piss poor reading comprehension. I think there is something to say about how we’ve shifted away from reading as much culturally but my other biggest gripe is that teachers seem to act like just calling it out is enough or them “doing their part” and almost putting blame on the younger generation. News flash, as older generations it’s our job to TEACH the younger generation. I’m not going to touch the behavior issues because that is something that ranges from complex to also shitty parents who are too afraid to reprimand their child for fear of turning into their own parents.
The thing is, most of the teachers who are calling these behaviors out are Gen Z themselves lol. So it doesn't truly make sense that the "younger" end of Gen Z can't read or write. Or that they are, to a certain extent, disrespectful and unable to gauge when they should state their opinion and when they shouldn't (even if they don't want to lie).
I just assumed it's because education in the US had funding being cut possibly decades in the making. this is just the fruit of that labor [that's the answer I go to]
I’m a young millennial as is my partner (both born 1995), and she’s a teacher at a predominantly Hispanic high school in a fairly poor farming community in Texas. I have heard absolute horror stories about the administration and how what she has to teach to prepare kids for the standardized tests directly contradicts what they’d have to be learning in order to adequately prepare them for university level essay writing- something I can also individually confirm cause she’s explained to me the ins and outs and I also have an English degree so we have the shared traumatic understanding of monstrous university English essays. It’s so bleak.
I’m currently 13 and when I tell you these other students cannot READ i’m not lying. In my classes whenever the teacher asks a student that isn’t me to read something they look at the teacher and sit there in complete silence and stare. Which is why whenever we have to read something in my class I always get chosen or I always ask to read bcs if u ask them to read they’ll look at u like you’re stupid. When I was younger (4-6) years old my grandma bought me lots of books, (dr seuss, fancy nancy, etc.) and by the time I got to 3rd-4th grade I had a 8th grade reading level. Now I’m in 8th and I have a college reading level. I think it’s sad that these parents don’t take time and educate their kids because there should be no reason your child can say every curse word in the book but ask them to read their mouth is shut with cement.
11:17 In my state they were recently talking about substituting the state test for other things because of how bad the graduation rates have gotten. I was never an academic student in fact I was horrible and I graduated High School with something called a Local Diploma (look it up) and for the state test since I had an iep at the time instead of needing to get a 65 or higher to graduate I needed to get a 55 or higher. The only test I scored above 65 was History everything else was in the 60's while math was 56. As for college Its been a very complicated transition and when the lockdowns happened I was able to fair better than other students who relied on in person learning because I was enrolled in an online school 2 months earlier for the spring 2020 semester. Its just been really lonely because I don't really have anyone to talk to on there
Honestly there are good and bad people in each Generation, but I feel like Millennials is like the middle child that have to deal with the Entitlement of Boomer & Gen-Z, they both entitled in a different way
Its probably because the mindset, i went through that shit, you have too. Is way too easy to fall into. Which that really is. Like it takes effort breaking cycles there. And its not that, ok millenials are human too. Some dont do that shit, some do
Now the few children that I knew went through “no child left behind “ didn’t work. The kids were just passed over to the next grade. It was meant to help or catch a learning problem. The school never received that extra help to do that job.
There’s a lot of people who can read fundamentals , buts the comprehension skills. Look at our politicians, they can string words together and can’t rubbed a dollar outta the sentence.
At this point u have to pay for ur education to get a decent one. I’m paying for Montessori currently and it’s heal expensive and I’d be surprised if we can afford it next year but it had been amazing and my son loves learning and it would have helped now I’m freaking out where to go next and honestly I have no hope that it get better then what he has. I’ll be as much help as I can be but I think paying for tutoring is probably gonna be my second best bet if he struggles
you can't call genz stupid without calling out system its an attack and i don't find any of these teachers sincere they making seem like oh just some bad parent but their tons of influences and to put it on the child the parent is insane and then they changed everything to sight words so of course they can't read but they won't tell you that and then im seeing people using this to pity teachers and teacher online in general are mad when people dont respect them totally disregarding peoples experiences pulling the its so hard and these kids are monsters this that and third your just enabling the system by quitting and complaining and doing absolutely nothing
As a babysitter I can tell you most parents don't read to their kids because when I do it they are confused at first about what I'm doing. They think only your teachers read to you. I feel like we could fix this by reading with your kids. By giving them books that they want to read. I'm teaching my niece to read with comic books and graphic novels. And it's working
"I'm teaching my niece to read with comic books and graphic novels. And it's working" Yasss! Nice to see someone in the comments actually seeing a part of the issue and doing something. Glad to hear its working!
Wow, that’s really sad :( waking up to read with my mom in bed is one of my best childhood memories, super sad kids and parents don’t have that now :(
Your niece will be happy to look back on these memories you’re making with her ❤
My nephew is the cusp of gen z and gen alpha and he’s obsessed with reading bc his parents read a ton. If you want your kids to do something you need to lead by example.
This, because many people won’t read cuz they don’t find it a good use of their time, not only just children. And reading is so versatile, anybody can get into it because there’s something for everyone, it also takes them just effort to be willing to give their time
Exactly. My mom always read to me when I was growing up. She was an avid reader growing up too, so I think I got that from her, bc I enjoy reading. I used to read 1,000 page books. I want to make time to do that again! Right now, it’s audio books when I’m going to bed bc my eyes are too tired after work.
If the children can’t read, whose fault is that?! It’s their parents fault, and whatever generation they came from. 🤷🏾♀️
THANK YOU!
You are not wrong my guy. They know it to be true and refuse to see it. Because "Wah wah, we like S***n, WAH!"
yeah bro people act like this is the only generation where kids cant read what about like 100 years ago many kids and old people cant read
Why do you think it's the parents' fault?
@@MargaritaMagdalenawho’s the one responsible for the kids?
Okay so hear me out, as a teacher, one of the reasons I truly think students are struggling is because of lack of parenting, but wait hold up I have an addendum to that. While some people are trash parents because they’re trash people, I know PLENTY of well meaning parents who aren’t parenting and are not present in their children’s lives because they CAN’T. So many parents are busy trying to survive and make ends meet that they work so much that they can not afford to be a parent. Our economy, society, whoever you want to blame has made it so difficult to exist that it’s difficult to be a provider and be a present parent. Who else is going to keep the family from being homeless?
Yeah. I love blaming everything on capitalism because I truly believe it is the root of most of the evil and bad things in this world. But capitalism definitely is at fault here too for how obsessed the power that be are with making sure people are working 24/7 (and then still not be able to live a decent life smh). This leads to parents not being able to just sit down, and read and be with their children. Literally another reason as to why I am going to think long and hard about putting any offsprings on this floating ball.
A fellow teacher co-signing this!
If you are bringing kids into the world these are the important considerations BEFORE you produce them. Any reasonable adult knows that you need to work to live and to educate your kids so they can succeed in life! It is not an either/or situation. It’s not enough to feed, clothe and house kids, one must give kids survival skills so they can thrive in the present and future when you are no longer around.
people need to stop having kids then stupid choices people make that effect 18+ years of their lives 😩
@@jujutrini8412 had I not seen things in my profession and lived life and had my own experiences, I would’ve possibly have made the same judgmental comment you just made. Life continues to happen even after you have children, and yes things or events in life will definitely make it an either or situation. Parents sometimes have to work 2 or 3 jobs just to feed their children, or in this case of a student this year: in the beginning everything was okay the student struggles a little but overall was getting it, then the father had a stroke. The dad no longer works and has to be taken care of, the mother is the sole provider now plus caring for her husband therefore helping with homework is difficult to do. And now her place of employment is closing, so you tell me, would you be able to focus on education if you’re wondering where your next meal is going to come from, if you’re going to be able to maintain your house, your car? This and so much more are the story of many students and their families, especially in low income communities. Because we have a free public education and the right to education we often forget that in so many places a good education is a privilege especially when you’re struggling.
Education student here, specifically secondary, one of the first thing we learned is that the "sit and be talked at for an hour" ie traditional education model is NOT IT! Every education teacher I've had has made an intentional effort to make their classes as engaging, both mentally and physically, as possible so we can teach our students like this and they can actually RETAIN the knowledge! That's another thing, teaching to test is just a memory game, students don't actually LEARN how to LEARN! Anecdotally, I can say that teachers are making an effort to move past this way of thinking, but unfortunately we keep putting the most ignorant people on the planet in office and they think "if this number go up then everything good :)". long story short, FUCK THE GOVERNMENT!
Yesss!! I’ve had a similar experience when I was taking an education course and the professor, who’s a veteran teacher, mentioned that teachers are one of the only professions that get told how to do their job by people who have no experience whatsoever in that profession (the people in office).
yea, the teachers unfortunately cant teach at their highest potentials because the SYSTEM they operate in is too stale and rigid. the administrators only care about SAT scores.
you put it perfectly
@@natesamadhi33They don't even care about the SAT and ACT scores that much anymore. It's about all the other mandated testing.
I think even in older TV shows some kids would complain about how boring the "sit and be talked at for an hour" was! 😆
Someone else mentioned this but I’m sick of the “gen z can’t read” thing bc in my working experience in customer service I learned that many functioning adults are illiterate 😭 these people were often 45-50+
My experience too. I feel like most of the time it's a refusal to read cause it's the expectation and superiority complex that drives them to believing us service workers are REQUIRED to read to them and explain it to them cause they dont want to expend the energy themselves.
Th crazy thing is that it’s not even Gen Z like do not group me with those kids. They are actually talking about Gen Alpha (2010-2025) they’re the ones that can’t read. But that is on the parents not the kids.
I saw it too. They talk about it, but the majority still dont give a shit. THEY KNOW! And they don't f**king care. Wtf
@@Brae2723
I get what you are saying, however, there is a difference between "illiterate" and "not wanting to read things in complete contect".
Much of the Generation Z and Generation Alpha has been convinced to read everything in coded and pictured language, as at one time, hieroglyphics were.
It just appears odd based on the rest of us learning to at least learn basic language.
However (once again), I have seen a good amount of grammatical and syntax errors from individuals in my generation (and I am almost fifty years of age)...
@@Brae2723Gen Z and Gen Alpha aren’t that different tho tbh.
Grad student and English instructor at an MSI here: Honestly the whole “kids can’t read/write today” thing happens every generation like clockwork, and I’m pretty skeptical of IQ as a legitimate measure of anything. But the biggest struggle I see in my students (and in myself TBH) is a difficulty slowing down. It’s like we’re consuming and trying to process so much information so quickly we can’t hold onto anything and sit with it the way we need to for critical thinking and reading. There’s an impatience that comes with it and a tendency to skim and jump around a text rather than reading it in full.
This is not just about reading. The problem is so much larger. This is only a symptom not the actual problem. I think we, as a civilization, all need to come together to seriously question the underlying principles we operate under. The problem is far more entrenched than you would think.
There's actually a recent phenomenon we can point to in the United States, which was the move away from teaching phonetics and teaching children not to sound out words, but to make essentially a guess with context clues. This may be what you're noticing with the skipping around issue. They thought this method was how good readers were reading and learning to read, and found out too late that they were wrong. It was how students who were struggling were reading. And for a long time, we have taught children to read this way, which has created adults who find reading to be a struggle because it's always about being a detective. They can't digest the words because they're guessing at half of what they're reading. It's very true that these kinds of accusations get levied in every generation, but I also don't think we should ignore the ways that we are failing our youth.
I think the school should focus on reading, writing, logic, and math between kindergarten to eighth grade and not overload these kids with so many subjects.
😂😂😂😂👏👏👏👏 it's blacks baby that's whos dragging down the average
Great response @@TheOwlQueen
Yes, this problem is definitely not confined to Gen Zers. Over half of ALL adults 16 and over cannot read better than a 5th grader. Only 12% are able to read at a college level. An apartment rental lease is written at a college level. American adults have had poor literacy skills for many decades now.
Even back in the 1930s, a large number of children were having serious reading problems. We were teaching kids the wrong way to read. Our educational system has been a huge mess for many decades now.
We're not just verbally illiterate.
We're scientifically illiterate.
We're numerically illiterate.
We're culturally illiterate.
We're financially illiterate.
We're geographically illiterate.
We're sexually illiterate.
We've been this way for decades. This is ALL adults 16 and over, definitely not confined to Gen Z.
Here's the reality. You personally read better than over 90% of ALL adults 16 and over. Over 90% of American adults cannot read as well as you can and they can't speak as well as you can. You're also WAY better informed on current events than over 90% of ALL US adults. Chances are good that you're computer user skills are better than 95% of ALL American adults. 95% of American adults are not as computer and savvy as you are.
This is the reality. I have no idea of how you've been able to be among the 5%, but somehow you have.
THIS THIS THIS!!!!
As a 40 something Gen X’er I concur. Many men in my age group were poor readers. I assisted many of them back in the day with their paperwork. This is not new. I’d believe that the younger generation should be better readers than previous generations because of the desire to participate online which requires READING.
ok but wdym sexually illiterate
@@jacquelynn2051 I'm a 60 something member of Generation Jones, and I assure you that a LOT of people in my age group are SHITTY readers, especially the men.
Back during the 1970s when I was in high school, there were soooooooo many people my age who were barely literate. And there were people much older than me who were the same.
And they also had poor math and science skills. And they were also poorly informed on current events.
I suspect that this UA-camr doesn't realize how rare and exceptional he is with his literacy skills.
I just turned 33. I read between 10-20 books a month. Almost everyone I know hasn’t read even a chapter of a book in YEARS. No one has any idea what I’m talking about when I bring up current events, everyone has the ‘It doesn’t affect me,’ mentality. People always ask me how to get their children to become readers and my response has always been to read to them. Seems like common sense to me but apparently not. 😅
I work in retail.The amount of Boomers we deal with daily who don't know how to read sales signs and demand that you explain it to them is astounding.These seniors are just mad that their aging fast and projecting.As a Gen Xer with Gen Z kids,I can't stand the hate they get from people who's parents did the same to them.
👆🏾 THIS. Chileee then they turn around and say this is DECEPTIVE WORDING😂 hilarious when their generation was the one that created these marketing tactics 🙃
They still are stuck in the past thinking they can get what they want bc of the “customer is always right” mentality 😂
The amount of adults with grown children and grand children that could not figure out 50% off of $39.99 but look down on younger generations…. How Sway?
Gen Z will be snatching edges ten years from now when their in their 30's.😏
@@markigirl2757As it should be.
One cause for illiteracy in US students is the stupid bickering among educational institutions happening about which reading techniques should be taught to children. In most educator circles I’ve been in, we agree that the science of reading is the best approach, which is a method that focuses on phonics. Others go for the balanced literacy approach, which focuses on learning through context. Lucy Calkins is the founder of that one, and she’s been in controversy for backpedaling on that philosophy and embracing more phonics-based approaches.
But the thing is that it’s not teachers who get to make decisions for which approach they get to take in teaching. It’s administration and curriculum coaches and textbook companies, aka people who are not in classrooms and do not have a clear idea of the current needs of students. Teachers are heavily micromanaged, especially in southern states. Due to the rise of “parental rights” in education, there is very little flexibility for teachers in what and how they get to teach.
Anyway, all of this is to say that it’s definitely not the students who have the problem. The public education system in America has been under attack, and all of the bureaucracy in the world couldn’t save it. As easy as it may be to blame rowdy kids and their skibidi toilets for not having the attention span to read, we need to face the fact that it’s adults who built a world that’s constantly trying to buy their attention, all while limiting their ability to pick up tools that would help them self-regulate.
(Ps: Hivemind)
My brother says thank you
two things: this is so true, i'm so tired of the blame being pushed onto the kids and teachers when it's not their fault, and also, epic hollow knight pfp!
If parents are silent nothing will get better. I appreciate the teachers that don’t just go along with the pushed techniques and take time to teach the individual child. I have heard many teachers say that they don’t have time to focus on the needs of the child when it comes to the basics. They feel they only have a short amount of time to teach say, the multiplication table for instance.
This is a great conversation. Keep speaking up. The parents I know that speak up want safer schools and for teachers to be listened to about class environment etc.
Communication is key for a better way.
I honestly hate the over generalization made about any “generation”. I’m a millennial so we’ve been blamed for pretty much everything. These generalizations really hurt people. My kids are gen Z and teens or nearly teen (12-17) and they read daily. We’ve enforced ready because my husband and I read. As 38 and 39 yo adults, my husband and I still read books regularly. Many parents don’t enforce reading.
I also really agree with the lack of ability to teach in an overcrowded classroom where you cannot reprimand or punish a student for their poor behavior. My kids have been in classes with 30-50 kids where a select few of kids would throw books at their teacher and never got in trouble and the class never learned anything for 9 whole months. We had to teach the material at home to keep them up to date.
Parents don’t parent anymore. They don’t supplement education at home and I completely understand the ones who can’t due to work requirements and such. My kids are in one of the first school districts in the country. My husband and I are products of this system as well. If you aren’t supplementing the education then you might as well not have one. I know kids who were held back because they couldn’t read. That same kid got pushed through high school and graduated so they wouldn’t have to deal with her anymore. She literally eeked by on Ds and a healthy amount of Fs and her teachers had to add points for attendance to her grade just so she could pass. He brother is on the same track (he goes to school with my oldest.) the parents don’t do anything and have admitted to us ( my husband and I) that they failed their kids and how it was too late. But these are their kids. Their kids are not stand ins for everyone else’s kids. Not all kids are like this.
So, I hate generalizations. All generations have their quirks and problems. But playing the blame game gets us nowhere. It doesn’t solve the problem, if anything, it only makes it worse.
Making generalizations is the way in which we try to justify not thinking critically or even addressing the issues at hand with nuance and research. If we need to think so critically, we then create an environment for ourselves of burnout, exhaustion, overload that leads people to either give up or just leave it for others to solve.
Basically, the structures needed to promote real learning, literacy, and critical thinking are being replaced by basic survival ability, whether it's financial, technological, or mental/physical. The chain effect is leaking into my life as an elder gen Z still in school too and I swear it's saddening to witness but it's reality...
I hate the idea that they’ve failed their kids and that there’s nothing left to do when you’re ALWAYS a parent. If you stop parenting just because you feel it’s too late you forget they still have ENTIRE lives left to learn and grow. My mom still needs her mom and I still need mine. A lot of impactful parenting for me has happened while I’m in college. It’s never too late to fix anything unless the kids are dead. There’s always a chance for change
The generations were never meant to be specific, but they were created to discuss social trends in HISTORY. Sure, that can transfer to the present in certain situations, but it often lends itself to gross (big) and misleading generalizations when we do.
Anti-intellectualism. And blame-shifting, but mostly anti-intellectualism at all levels of society.
💯
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." - Isaac Asimov
I’m gonna need my fellow olds to stop finger wagging at the kids for a minute & actually think about what incentive they have to even go to school. Music class & interesting electives are gone, classes are overcrowded, bullying is rampant, busses are 30-90 minutes late every single day, buildings are falling apart & their lunches are provided by the same companies who supply prison meals. Saying “you need this to earn a living someday” isn’t enough. They need a reason to get out of bed TODAY, not 12 years from now.
I agree with you here, but a counter argument that my mom would have at this point is that “you should wake up now so that your future in 12 years is safe”. What do you say to that?
A counter to that is the fact that we don't know if we'll be alive in twelve years
You can't worry about that far in the future when we don't know how the next year will be
@@nacligang well maybe it would be better if we started fixing all our shit!!!!
personalized teaching and more funding to special-needs programs also probably would help.
Bruh did everyone forget of the concept of being grateful? It’s public school. So many people don’t get the opportunity to go. So many people go to school with reslly high temperatures or very low, not having food In their bellies at all. I went through a year of pandemic is not an excuse in my country it lasted more than 2 fucking years, and we were stuck inside all the time, there was no gradual opening. There’s people at wars, my parents have to work to not be homeless it’s not a excuse, seriously
Really annoying how I, a Gen Zer, am supposedly as stupid as a box of rocks, but should also know the secrets of the universe and do everything right on the first try.
I think Einstein put it best:
Education is not the learning of many facts, but the training of the mind to think.
Oh, and hive mind :3
Glad to see these issues talked about, though I feel it’s not quite addressed properly. I’ve found these conversations toward younger generations particularly cruel in how our society has been sending children to their disabilities and deaths in how horribly we’ve handled public health measures and the pandemic protections. The world burns down around them and we got people talking about the “decline in intelligence” and it’s hard reading when we have normalized eugenics everywhere.
Even basic things like trying to define intelligence come back to the way that intelligence as a concept rooted in eugenics.
The issues we’re seeing are the result of poverty and wealth and resource inequality, public health eugenics, and an intentional failure of our society.
I feel a lot of people aren’t driving enough at this issue from a disability lens.
A lot of it is really just exposing structural failings inherent to schooling as a concept rather than some failure of the students or decline in "intelligence."
I'm so glad you bring this up. They love to blame the millennial crowd for how we've raised our kids as well, but we flat just don't have the same resources across the board than the generations before us. I really hate the constant discourse from the older generations standing on the second floor hollering down to everyone else below after they yanked the stairs up and openly prevented us from being able to achieve a lot of the same success. There is always something to be said for respect and worth ethic, absolutely, but systemically its getting worse and worse and while its been hell for us older folks, Gen Z and Alpha have is SO much freakin harder. I'm so worried for our babies and they are so much stronger and sturdier than we give them credit for. We gotta all work together not beat eachother down.
Hive mind. Kisses
you're so real for this
It has been talk about by ppl like Jordan Peterson like years ago XD
Just left a long comment about this and I am very glad I saw yours. Just finished taking a disability studies course so my brain is going a million miles a minute thinking about this through a disability lense. Especially as a Black person who grew up going to underfunded schools my whole life, somehow made it into academia and consequently found out I have a neurodevelopmental disability lol.
Why is everyone saying “gen z” when these teachers are complaining about gen ALPHA🗿?
because both younger gen z and older gen alpha are school-aged, with the oldest of gen alpha being like 10-12 depending on where you look/who you ask
Kinda random but I’m 17 and I literally feel like I’m stuck in the middle in terms of old and young gen-z ppl
@@jennah5990I'm there between millennians and gen z, good luck with the sandwich of generetions
One of them is talking about 7th graders who are 12/13 which were born 2010/2011. They are cuspers (Zalphas). Just like Zillenials and Xennials they have traits in both generations because trends, behaviors, and society don't change in January 1 of a given year of a given generation. (This naming of generations was always meant as a way to describe societal trends generally from a historical perspective.)
@@jennah5990same lol
I just came here to say WHO can’t read?! Cause baby I was the teachers favorite during popcorn reading 😂
But if you were the favorite, that means that you probably outperformed. When about 15 years ago there would only be one or two people who underperformed. It's super sad tbh.
If you work in retail or with the public, you know damn well it’s not just the kids…. 😬
The hiveminded idea that Gen Z is dumber than previous generations shocks me because growing up as someone on the older edge of the Gen Z spectrum (b. 2000), I've engaged with so many intelligent and insightful peers. I've always felt like the odd one out because so many people I interact with, whether they're a few years older than me or a few years younger, are so articulate, inventive, and well-informed. All of this chatter about Gen Z (or, really the youth) being less intelligent than other generations sounds like ageism, failure to truly engage with them, and/or denial of the systemic issues that may cause young people to present as such.
On a side note, the point that one of the teachers made at the start of the video, about how her students prefer raunchy, popular music over the age-appropriate songs she plays in her classroom, reminded me of how popular "Low" was with my first grade class. At the time, no one really knew what it meant, we just enjoyed they way it sounded. It wasn't until many years later that I recognized the explicit nature of the song that my friends and I used to sing on the playground. IDK, kids are going to listen to popular music, and people shouldn't use that to make assumptions about their sexual awareness.
as someone who's also gen z (b. september '02) , i agree with everything you said as this is a similar reality for me as well .
The tv show Abbott Elementary is a really good show and it shines a light on how public schools are treated by districts/states regarding their funding and other programs. It focuses on the teachers and how they aren’t being lazy but they want to help the kids so bad but the district has boundaries set on their budget so the school stays poor
Calling those 8 countries' data "global" is such an incredibly arrogant and euro-centric thing for those researchers to do. Also, there's a very strong connection between declining rates of literacy and IQ (a concept which is problematic at best anyway) in the US and right-wing politicians cutting public school funding, something that really ramped up in the 90s and continues to this day. Like, watch any of the Republican primary debates this year and you'll see all of them saying that teachers and the Department of Education are the enemy and some even going so far as to say it should be entirely abolished.
Right because they are way too comfortable banning educational content and twisting it up.
So as a former teacher I can tell you that seventh graders and fourth graders not being able to read at grade level is a direct result of the pandemic.
Teaching is a learned skill that parents did not have. So when you think about kids in 7th and 8th grade now what you need to remember is that these children that were in third, fourth, and fifth grade during the pandemic, a pretty pivotal point in language arts. By third grade you are reading to learn. So during the pandemic these kids were not exposed to skills that would teach them how to become more fluent readers. Because parents, understandably, were fumbling. And learning is cumulative. So when all the kids return back to school after the pandemic, they are suddenly in classrooms with teachers who are not equipped to teach them reading fluency which includes deciphering and understanding text. They are now in classrooms with teachers who are skilled in teaching them how to interpret and reflect text. It's no longer language arts for a 7th or 8th grader, now it's English literature.
As far as 4 graders go, I'm sure people look at kindergarten, first, and second grade and think "Oh they're just playing and having fun." But what you may not understand is that that is how children learn, through play. So there are all these very elaborate games that are inculcated with educational concepts which results in children learning.
Everybody mad at the public school until the public school is not a part of the equation, and then they get mad again at the public school when they find out they could not do as well as public schools. Not that public schools are perfect, but they are much better than kids sitting at home hoping their parents have the skills and the wherewithal to teach them.
This also applies for social emotional and behavioral skills. Public schools are designed to teach children how to function in society both academically socially/behaviorally. That 2 years took a lot out of kids. This is why children who are home-schooled function differently than kids who went to public school. This is why kids at private school function and think differently than kids who go to public school. Everything that human beings do is learned and these kids have missed out on two to three years of learning.
i’m concerned with the lack of nuance in these conversations and people placing blame on the kids when they’re simply products of their environment. this was one of the best takes i’ve seen about this topic
it really shows their hypocrisy because their lack of depth and nuance puts them in the same boat they’re trying to put gen z in 🥴
Dont get me started with teachers making rage-baiting content 🥲 !!! or conservatives co-opting it as a way to blame the ‘left’ or something 😅
What’s interesting is, I’m a reading tutor and the only requests I get for tutoring are from the parents of kids who CAN already read well. 😩 They want me to help their kids get ahead. I’d really love to help kids catch up but it’s like the interest isn’t there from the parents of kids who actually need it. At least in my experience as a former teacher turned tutor.
When I was in the classroom, I simply did not have the time or capacity to fill in every gap for every child. It’s an impossible job for a teacher, so parents have to be intentional about seeking additional help for children outside of school. Especially after that awful 2 year virtual situation.
But you’re right about other generations having literacy gaps too.
I was a teacher for a few years and I've heard this from all teachers. The parents we want to show up, answer the phone, respond to an email, text or anything are not the parents who show up. The parents of the child who made a B+ are the ones who show up asking how can their child make an A. As a young teacher I used to provide free tutoring, the school had transportation, but I still couldn't reach some of the kids who needed it the most.
THIS!!!! I was a teacher and I'm changing careers because I cared too much. I can't do it anymore. My "cup" was always empty and it's gotten worse in recent years. The only parents who are active now are the ones of the over-achievers. I said this in my comment but having the advantage of being a previous teacher helps a lot with supplementing my kid at home. We have never bought toys just for entertainment. They're always numbers or colors or letters when she's younger. I've noticed that those kind of toys aren't popular anymore (except for the resurgence of Montessori) in favor of more like, Paw patrol or consumption and media themes.
Parents aren't helping their kids at home and the children are getting blamed. Teachers can only do so much if they aren't backed up and especially if the parents can't even acknowledge their kid needs help. You're an awesome person for wanting to help those kids and gosh I kinda miss when schools just told the parents "we are going to tutor your kid" and the parents would support it.
Hive mind.
Some of the Gen Z posters complaining about Gen Alpha, probably just aren't cut out for teaching. That one lady was only 22 and says these are the worst kids she's ever experienced and its traumatizing. Like girl, these are the ONLY kids you've experienced as a teacher.
I'm a millennial parent and I also coached cheerleading for 1st and 2nd graders so I've seen plenty of kids and their parents. Parents come in all shapes, sizes, creeds, disciplines, etc same as any other demographic. I have seen parents where their kid is their biggest bully and they don't have a handle on their kids. They give their kids whatever they want. Then there are parents whose children don't even talk, and the parents brag its cause they beat them. And everything in between.
When I was coaching, it was roughly 50/50. 50% of the kids were wilding out, having trouble focusing and concentrating. And the other 50% were on top of it, paying attention, learning the routines, and even practicing at home on their own. Again, varying levels, that 50/50 is more of a spectrum, but you get the idea.
I think this may be the case as well. I know many younger teachers who are having trouble adapting to their new environment.
thank you for saying that woman was only 22. teaching is such an under appreciated and difficult job to do and i believe her story, but you can’t be out here bashing a whole generation off 30 kids. and you only did it for a year or two. that’s only 60 kids 😅
@@nichellekmalvous6688 I have said the same thing. I really have.
I want to add as a gen Zer from a small European country, there is a massive lack of teachers. Some schools skip lessons like physics because there is no physics teacher. There is also something I find unique to non-English speaking countries, the globalisation aspect. So many of my peers have horrible understanding of their own language because they use English more often than their mother tongue, not only online but to speak with each other. I'm scared to think about how this may start impacting our culture.
That depresses me as English has too many bad habits like not using "che, que", no grammartical gender concept, not using reflexives like se, me, mi, si, or sig, mig, dig. I like Europeans more as they are smarter, even if they can't speak English well. I ask kindly for a code switch as I understand them better.
@@MaoRatto Just because one language has something doesn't mean another one has to too, like we've been fine without the grammatical gender concept
Speaking a certain language doesn't make you smarter 😭
Plus you do know England is in Europe 😭?? Like English ppl are also Europeans 😭
@@MaoRatto Also what language where you talking about in your comment? Is it a romance language?
@@z3onix Europeans they are, but that's nor here or there. I'm saying in a sense. The lack of uses reflexives constantly and not used to being pro-drop can be a bit of a problem, or having some of the worst orthography ever. Grammatically instead of why do " Europeans may call a chair a he or she, but more like why don't we call them that? " I think of Grammatical gender as a predictable marker for words. Making referring to basic objects easier. I already knew The English folks are Europeans, but I kind of view them as just ancestors that we already diverged from. I view Europe as in central. I hate reading abbreviations in English, but I love reading them in Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian as. WHO KNEW A GRAMMATICAL O/IL/EL can make a warning, but English blindsides over that.
@@z3onix It's pretty clear, have you never heard a Mexican speak Spanish before? I don't need to answer. I am used to dealing with foreigners. I forget about The Brits due to I call them Common Wealth as unlike being from the USA. They had attachment to The Queen herself, but America has to fight and also distances from Britain from the first thirteen colonies and generally Europe looks at America, but American looks at itself. The commonalities of Australia, Canada, and the UK is shared how they sounds and idioms.
I don't like how the USA is sort of isolated, but doesn't realize across the pond it's having people with their own lives watching it.
Reflexives are fun to use and write as you can be much more direct and emphasize a point. I like the fact most romance tongues have an adjective system that discerns characteristics from subjective opinions or the short hand of using ET/EN/LA/EL for it. As a limited amount of nouns have the characteristic of " Masculine vs Feminine " or "Common vs. Neuter " gender distinction, it gives you an idea how to conjugate every word predictably. The writing of accent marks is... A bless from god himself and having a 26 letter alphabet is beyond insane if you have 44 SOUNDS, but can't even describe 1 SOUND CONSTANTLY OR CONSISTIENTLY.
I will dig even worse on English. If got a dialect, it makes spelling even worse. Where fossilized spelling keeps ED, guess what you pronounce it with /ɪ/ instead of /ɛ/. Also why do we need to spell things with silent letters that don't serve a function to hint?
A good example.
French has Silent letters but they turn into voiced sounds due to grammar.
Blanc for the masculine, but the feminine is Blanche. While English ones maybe to discern words like Knight and Night, but circumflexes would be handy on the N and vowels.
English shouldn't require manual memorization per EACH words due to no accent marks, mismatched vowels, loaning words left and right, not making a voice vs. voiceless TH in writing, no logic to voicing, or making an effort to be reasonably spelt.
Silent letters for silent letter's sake due to 1. Umlaut hints which break due to French and Greek words 2. Scribes being evil with silent letters to teach people Greek or Latin 3. Hyper-corrections...
These conversation should always be based in context! I'm a Gen Z educator in the uk and problems with literacy have existed here for a long time. Upper middle and upper class kids have parents that have the time and energy and resources to read to them, so they may have an 8 year old's reading level when starting school at 5. And for the kids whose parents dont have access to all of that, they may start school at 5 not even knowing the alphabet. These problems have been massively exacerbated by over crowded classes and the pandemic cuz online learning meant some kids didnt have academic support for 2 years, so yeah there is a big difference in the level of a class of second year secondary school students that was in that situation than a class that wasnt. But you know what gets teachers stumped? The whole "kids have no attention span nowadays". Yes, They Do! The kids i teach can learn so fast and they need teachers that let them learn and build skills quickly, and so many teachers look at their students being bored af and dont realise it's cuz their teaching style is old fashioned and boring and changeable. I literally structure my presentations like top text + bottom text memes w a tonne of pictures. Does that make it easier? The content is the same, so no. But the structure is more accessible, so yes. And learning should be accessible, we need to detach from the idea that learning something complicated must feel hard, cuz normally that just means its being taught in an unclear or boring way...
It’s truly not just gen z. So many of those who we would consider “elders “ are lacking and in need of hooked on phonics. The ignorance and lack of education has become a generational curse l. Especially in the black community. The teachers can teach and do all they want. It doesn’t matter if the parents aren’t doing their job to teach their children and make sure they know even the basics. Let’s not forget that in the black culture being smart and educated is looked down upon but that’s only one factor. We also have social media now which is basically the new form of education for everyone. Most people aren’t able to listen past 60 seconds anymore. This truly is an issue not of just gen z but everyone. Knowledge is no longer seen as important. Now it’s just entertainment and whatever is viral.😩
As a high school student who enjoys learning about the systems that govern our world and the motivations and history behind them, I think it's because the education system in the US was never about learning, it was and is about conditioning, control, and making good future workers.
It started out as a way to create good workers, people who'd be easy to control, who'd submit to authority, and who, most of all, would be highly profitable. They used bells, tight time schedules, made every one do the same thing at the same time, talked at you, and taught you you better keep up or there'd be consequences, and we still see remnants of that today. add in the fact that schools are funded by their communities based on zoning, and by the government based on test scores, something that keeps certain people poor and others rich, and it's easy to see it was never about teaching the kids. it was about creating cogs, and cogs don't need to be good at thinking or understanding beyond their role. I think the reason it's a hot topic now is because the pandemic and online schooling resulted in the exposure of the American school system's short comings, making the problems that were always there much more apparent.
So that's why imo 'gen z and gen alpha can't read' and older people are no better, because that system has been teaching all the kids and adults that are alive today. This is not really on the teachers who are usually well-intentioned and often don't have the resources to do a good job, or the parents who are most often trying their best in their situation, because while yes, they are responsible for teaching the kids, a majority of that responsibility currently rests with the education system, who's goal, I believe, is still to turn out cogs for a capitalist machine, with actually learning being a bonus. Until we make changes to the education system, and maybe our broader societal system, It's unlikely to change.
TL; DR: I think the american school system's main goal was never to educate the children, but to make good workers, and so education wasn't the priority. the pandemic exposed that it wasn't doing a bad job of teaching, and it won't change unless we change the system.
Huge agree. I’d also like to add that, in the US at least, we don’t have any emphasis on children being people. Children are possessions who can’t possibly have interests and varied needs the way adults do. Failing to see children as people (or even future adults) makes us less likely to give a shit whether they’re ACTUALLY learning in the first place. As you say, all that matters is that these “possessions” will grow up to replace their “owners” (parents).
THIS THIS THIS
Gen X teacher and historian here. I have to say you have an interesting take. I agree with you for the most part, but I'm not as pessimistic of peoples intentions. The system wasn't set up to create minions who could be controlled... not really anyway. Schools didn't become compulsory until the Industrial Revolution. At the time, most of the population of the United States were farmers. The new factory and mining jobs were a boom because people could in earn more money in these jobs, but they needed more and different information in order to do the jobs. Schools provided that. They were also structured the way factory work days are structured so that students were more successful in the factories and less likely to quit under the workplace conditions (you can see this in the generational differences of what kind of jobs are tolerated today). I admit there might have been a few people with less than desirable intentions (like the Daughters of the Confederacyin the early to mid- 20th Century), but there wasn't as much as you seem to think. This system of schooling worked for our society as different industries were born and grew for a long time because they were all a part of that same model. However, as that started to change, schools did not. Combine that with a steady growth of micromanaging of districts, schools, and teachers over time and you have our schools today. Now some parents want to get in on the micromanaging too😕
@@Eniral441 thank you for your perspective as a teacher. I definitely agree that schools haven't changed enough with the times, and micromanaging has not helped at all. do you think schooling has improved from when you were receiving primary education?
@@OffOnATangent180 fr. with the way some treat kids, it's as if they think they're of a different species and become more human the older they get.
I'm so damn tired of this generational divide bullshit. Older generations hating on younger gens has been discussed and parodied/satirized for decades if not centuries. Yet it STILL happens for every single new generation. It's always the same shit too. It can be lighthearted and funny in good faith but that feels rare.
The younger generations sow our own kind of discord as well. I think it's a lot more understandable on our side, although I'm on our side of course I think that. But it hurts when every adult figure in your life constantly talks down on your generation, how is that condusive to positive change instead of resentment or acting out? But I know our parents have their own issues, it's complicated.
I just wish people of all ages would be more reasonable and respectful towards each other regardless of generation. I've kinda had a weird upbringing of 3 generations: Boomer (parents, real boomers born in early 60's), Gen X (sisters, 80s), and Millennial (internet lol). So I'm 21 but I tend to like older media, NOT a wrong-generationer though (anymore lol).
But I feel like I can't connect to my friends about it a lot, and I feel too young to connect to older gens. Like none of my friends give af about Morrowind but I love it 😂
I honestly agree with this so much!
We've all become way too enmeshed in this generational divide. Millennials hating on boomers and gen z. Gen z turning around and doing the exact same thing to millennials and gen alpha. It's peak irony and hypocrisy. Everyone wants to feel like they're the only generation who faced scrutiny and hardships. Everyone wants to feel special or targeted or whatever. I'm so over it. We're still struggling with racism and classism we don't have enough prejudice we want to add more?? We need to get over ourselves fr💀
" Most people are not reading to comprehend. They are skimming to be sensationalized."
This is reminding me to read Stolen Focus on this very topic.
My personal problem with these types of conversations are " people " use this to discredit or to make someone feel "other". I'm in my thirties so you can call me I'm a millennial but these issues have been going on impoverished areas for a long time. I remember growing up I was illiterate and it was due to some of my parents personal choices and I didn't have a stable environment.The only reason I learned how to read is because of shaming from family members and not being able to navigate the world on my own when I was 10 to 12 years old. so, I needed that survival resource. I think from some of the older generations when they try to give perspective to the younger generation everything is so dismissive and some people feel like they're better than that person who's talking to them. We look at education, vanity and wealth to see if someone's worthy of our presence or attention. The disparaging comments I'm seeing about boomers or millennials to say that somehow Gen z is better is a discredit to the conversation that I saw on your video. I do appreciate your perspective and presentation on this nuance issue, but I also believe like you hinted in your video that this has so many factors to why certain parts of our knowledge are in decline. I think another part is our education system was set up for factory workers it was never meant to be something that was individualized, it was always meant to be for a streamline into learning certain fields. The government's interest in education started with workers streamlining a way to capital and that's what slavery happened and that's why Jim Crow happened it's a lot to do with making money, capital, and political power. I just wanted to leave a comment although it's long I do appreciate your videos. I appreciate and thank you for making this video with different perspectives being very decisive and cutting out things that aren't relevant to the conversation but are integral for our growth. I do love the way you think.
Don’t forget that in the states, disinvestment in the public education system, started to ramp up after integration. Add the increasing higher cost of college education, and you have a nasty recipe.
Keeping the massive dumb is deliberate. They overworked the parents so they don’t have any time at home to read to their children, or just decompress. Then they keep taking funding out of public education. There are too many children too teachers, even back in the 90s they were putting 40 children to one teacher. Then we don’t pay those teachers enough money to live, or give them resources to help these children
If you are overworked and underpaid who will the energy to invest in the kids?! Even when they want too, it’s hard.
Edit to correct grammar, and add capitalism is trash.
Older generations (boomers and beyond) are technologically illiterate and they’re mad and embarrassed about that, especially in a world where technology is the dominant way to communicate now. I’m a millennial and older people are the hardest to teach by far. They don’t retain new information unless they actually try and even then, unless they practice everyday, they fall back into old habits. My mom JUST figured out what ChatGPT is and she is amazed but also scared by it. GenZ is owning this new AI age. They lean in and I admire that about them. I’m just worried that they’ll forget to live and be in the moment instead of being emotionally attached to their devices. Have you seen those school videos of kids’ phones being taken away? I’m truly blessed to be a millennial and grow up with a a healthy balance of experiences with and without technology. I hope the next generation finds that same balance.
Older people always have a harder time learning, cognitive ability decreased as you get older if you don't keep your brain active. Sometimes that decline happens no matter what and is genetic, for example dementia. Their fear comes from confusion. We shouldn't bash the elders or the future
Nothing compared to young illiterates who are now in record to surpass the elderly in internet scams. Internet scams! You know…the field in which they should be exceeding in.
Also i have to respect a generation that hasnt even been geeven a good time to remember and still try their best. With a more uncertain future than ever.
I respect that probably most political generation because they bloody have to face it. If bo burnham is probably the face of the facing nihilism, yeah, i cant blame anyone being desperate to change anything, and adress shit.
@@ThatGirlJD Older people can, ok with age its harder to learn, but keeping learning , is still things people can do, i mean however keep the mind engaged, even with games. And old people can be openminded.
Really the only thinks old people might be more is not giving a shit ot stubbern. Ther are really cool progressive respectful old people.
Honestly as a Gen Zer, I’m not sure if you can call us technologically literate on the whole. A lot of Gen Zs were raised with touchscreens (I got an iPad when I was like… seven but didn’t get a PC until high school), which tend to have much simpler UIs. Some of this is fine, like, if someone can type faster on a phone than they can a keyboard, then they should be allowed to work on the phone. But some people can’t even navigate Windows File Explorer.
Okay, as a current high school student I'm kinda offended by "gen z not being able to read". Older generations need to stop acting like they're smarter when some of them can't understand using different pronouns (aka basic english) or don't believe in global warming. My generation does have its issues but give us grace we're growing up in chaos. Most of us went through some of our fundamental years in a literal pandemic and it's even worse for gen alpha (I'm scared of them I can't lie). Work with us rather than condemning us, we do need help.
Wow! This is the most profound, evolving statement that I’ve read all day.
💯⬆️💯⬆️
I know it's a big ask but what are some of the things you wish adults would do to help your generation of adolescents and kids? Whether it's parents, teachers, older siblings, random people you interact with.
Bro came in with the perfect grammar
Research shows milennials are the highest educated, yet worst paid. Beyond the illiteracy, the U.S. is 73rd, last time i checked, in numeracy.
Whoopi and I are in the same age range, and there's a lot more knowledge to cover than there was when we were in school. Just by virtue of the weight of passing time and things that have happened in that time; not to even mention gains in science, sociology, culture, yadda, yadda, yadda. There's a lot more history than the two semesters we took that we didn't even get through. We didn't have internet. We had 3 channels plus PBS. We had newspapers and libraries, and (of course) bigger cities had more books than county libraries in rural counties.
Kids today know _how to obtain_ more information that we were able to access period.
And they can do it without spelling correctly, because Google will guess what they meant.
What is missing is critical thinking, and it wasn't being taught in the 60s, either, because, frankly, people are more difficult to deal with when they can extrapolate.
Literally just had this conversation with my mom 2 days ago. It's unfortunate and I keep thinking is there a way to fix this. There are things as simple as reading with your kids and I know parents who didn't want to do that. And now look at their kid. It's so sad
Can confirm. I’ve been working as a tutor in several different K-12 schools for the past few years. I had one student who was in third grade, and I was reading with him… and I asked him does your mom know that you struggle with reading? He sighed, and answered “yes.” Then I followed up with, does she read to you? He sighed and answered, “no.” I’m 31 years old. So that would make me a younger millennial. And I know there are no quick fixes, and every student is different with their own set of challenges. But I think many parents overlook the fundamental importance of reading to your child. I never struggled with reading, in fact, I sought it out because it was something I was good at and something that I liked. But my parents read to me when I was younger. I remember that. And I think for me that also made a big difference. I think the reason why a lot of people are calling out gen z is not because they’re the only people who can’t do reading comprehension… but the number of kids who don’t even understand the fundamental mechanics of reading is so startlingly high. Like yeah a lot of boomers can’t do reading comprehension, but most understand the fundamental mechanics of reading… and I also think that the issue has been exacerbated by the fact that we were in a pandemic. It’s just all really sad. But also, a friend I have, who is a teacher said part of the problem is that, reading isn’t a necessity to accessing information, as much as it has been in the past. Because most of what you want to know, there’s a video you can find on the Internet about it. That means that you don’t have to read to get information necessarily. Literacy, however, is still greatly important, but it can often be overlooked in your fundamental years…when you have access to so many other different types of resources. You don’t necessarily have to read. He also said another problem is that parents kind of run the school system now. Like he’s pretty much not allowed to fail a kid without permission from the parents. So students lacking in fundamental skills get pushed through the system, even though they’re not ready. Right now I tutor at a middle school. I have six graders who I have to walk them through every sentence because they can’t read. Students that honestly should’ve been held back, but aren’t anymore. It’s really sad. But we’re doing the best we can to support them. To get them reading and doing basic math. Because even in this age of technology, those are necessary survival skills.
@@courtneyjames5495I spend so much time reading and typing in the comment section on UA-cam that I assumed kids must reading more now than ever. Sure, they can watch a video to access information, but how about processing that information and having a meaningful discussion through written dialogue. It doesn’t seem that hard to merge technology with literacy skills in a fun way. We just need more creative thinking.
Love how we are talking about how chronically online people are nowadays on a UA-cam video. But personally I think the whole system is failing us. Teachers are overwhelmed. New tv shows and movies for kids have been heavily dumbed down. It’s even more difficult to care for a child because of how much more expensive life is. The environment is getting so much worse kids don’t have many outside places to go. We just went through a major epidemic where young kids had to face death scares. It just makes sense kids aren’t doing well. But idk I’m a young adult who does spend too much time on the internet
I find it interesting that despite similar rates of technology usage and access, this declining trend in intelligence and literacy are besieging the west but not China, and I think ultimately this comes down to western capitalist nations cutting and deprioritizing education and access to education for their populations. The fact is America doesn’t want an intelligent populace, it wants a consumer base, because most innovation and labor were sent overseas once again because capitalists would rather sacrifice collective good in order to pay lower wages, than keep jobs domestic but pay livable wages, and the government then subsidizes those decisions and continue to cut funding for social/public services ie EDUCATION.
YES! it's systemic. it's capitalism. it's all a part of the plan, and some are just now seeing it
Yikes, you fell for the CCP propaganda hard.
No child left behind made education more about testing and not actual learning. I spent most of the year teaching how I thought they should learn and the last month on how to pass the test.
Absences became tied to funding. Suspensions went down, which led to less structure and fewer consequences in the classroom. As we learned during covid, parents do not want their children at home, so suspensions gave parents the incentive to discipline their children, so the child would behave in school.
NCLB also rewarded schools with high promotion rates. When i was a teacher, i had a student who came to my class and slept almost everyday. I asked other teachers how they engaged him, because i thought i was doing something wrong. I was told he did the same thing in their class, and they passed him.
It pisses me off when I hear people blame all this on covid. This issue predates covid.
fr. Covid just exposed the cracks
People blame racism on former President Obama as if he invented it.
@@localbrews did you not read my comment? we can't blame this entire issue on covid. IT PREDATES COVID. I don't care what the teachers say. Parents shoulda been sitting with their kids during covid and making sure they know how to read. I don't care to hear any of the excuses cause if you have a kid, you need time for the kid. I first noticed this issue in 8th grade (I graduated highschool this year.) Some middle-older gen z also can't read, understand, theorize, etc. As I said, IT PREDATES COVID.
@@localbrewsall these issues existed pre covid. The pandemic just sped it up and shined a light on these issues.
I was born in 97, so I’m at the oldest end of Gen Z. Both of my parents are teachers and I grew up with them teaching high school and middle school. I worked in the school system starting from the age of 18 until I was 25, now I’m a nanny. The idea that being unable to read, lacking discipline, and being hyper sexual is something unique to Genzie is wild. I went to school with millennials and grew up in a household of teachers who worked with millennials… I promise you all of those issues were equally as prevalent in that generation. Social media makes it easier for this to be a national conversation from the perspective of teachers directly but I promise you if millennials teachers had access to the current landscape of social media you would’ve been seeing the same shit.
I'm trying to lower my screen time. It's legit making me dumber. I'm not giving up my audiobooks though. They're a life saver. The kids aren't alright and neither are the adults. We all need to make room for physical spaces and real life connection. I'm not gonna sucked into the 2024 election media circus next year because I 1) don't live in a swing state and 2) want to focus on local elections and issues in my neighborhood more. Hopefully we can give these kids and ourselves a better chance than they have now.
I can't imagine not being able to read properly, my mum taught me to read and I was reading full books before I started school, I was the only 5yr old that could fully read in my whole school, parents are not continuing education at home anymore and there certainly isn't any discipline anymore.
There is a cascading effect here. If gen Z is reading poorly, then we should question the quality of the Gen Y/Gen X parenting and teaching style.
I’m Jamaican and we start school as soon as you’re potty trained, so by time o was 3yrs old I was reading and writing in school. But I do understand the difference with the lack of books. Back in the islands education is free but parents get a booklist at every grade level for your child. This only is provided by the government if you below the poverty levels. Even then there’s an outreach program to past teachers and students within your local community that your child can go pick up those books on a loan system.
Parents providing the books that support their children education puts power and responsibility into those parents hands so they can actively see and read the curriculum of their children. Books are openly shared especially in-between family members as it helps with the cost of education.
I'm so glad this video didn't boil it down to a purely generation issue. I can't believe people think that the generations that needed sesame street and were latch key kids in a generation of evolving media is shocked that newest generation is having literacy issue. "Like baby boomers, gen x babes, so did you!" People raising gen alpha (which spans 3 generations as Gen X, millennials and older gen Z are all involved) don't see parking a kid in front of a device as bad as they grew up parked in front of tvs and computers. A lot of them don't realize/heavily underestimate how much less protections there are online than with tv. Not only that so many of them lack free 3rd spaces to take their kids too, don't/can't take the time to read to their kids, and are too far away from/unaware of communities to help them. So many of them were already lacking media literacy and reading comprehension which was further wittled away by overexposure to uncritical consumption of online content. The amount of times I had to slowly point and read aloud instructions to grown adults multiple times at my job to still have them look at me in confusion would make people cry.
People not watching Reading Rainbow and spending time in Libraries is a problem imo.
Parents need to be able to lean on something because we do have to work so much and not be tutoring our kids up from behind, but putting them on technology damages their attention spans. We need to be able to go to that "third place" where kids are safe and entertained while we study or work from home or whatever, or kids have aftercare or a community group. St. Louis City and County libraries both have a lot. Idk parents can't be the teachers bc we are busy and aren't qualified but we need to be able to support the teachers some type of way by keeping our kids productive
As always, you hit the figurative nail on the head! US educational systems have been failing society for decades. Its obviously passed a certain threshold to where its impacting us at a more rapid pace.
When I started seeing teachers come out saying kids can’t read my first thought was “hell, their parents haven’t read a book that wasn’t required for school either.” Kids will often imitate what they see their parents and other adults they’re around do. Whenever my little niece sees me reading she wants to read along with me and get her own books. When a child sees their parents always looking at a smartphone that’s what they’re going to want to do too. It really shows that it’s important to have kids with people whose traits you’d want your kids to have. If your child’s father never read a book don’t be surprised when your kid doesn’t either.
THANK YOU for getting the info right on the No Child Left Behind Act. So many people think it was about letting kids pass through the system without learning the material. That was NOT part of that act. That was an action that school/district admin made with NCLB as the excuse. It was the opposite of what the Act was about.
That being said, the means of implementing that act were horrible. It assumed all schools and all students were the same and had the same problems. It added more micromanaging by people who hadn't been in a public school classroom since they graduated high school themselves and knew nothing about teaching. It also forced districts to teach to the middle. The district I was in was forced to divert funds from their enrichment programs and gifted and talented programs to their already well-developed and robust special education departments (Title 1 is usually part of this department) , thus closing all the others. I was seeing super smart kids falling below grade level in some cases because their needs were not being addressed as they were forced to fit in the round whole in the middle (square peg in round whole). Special needs students with severe learning difficulties and needs were required to take the same tests as other students. I was seeing schools with large special education student bodies and schools with large ESL student bodies (we were in an area with a lot of refugees) fail. When a school failed, parents got a letter telling them that their school was failing and they could choose to send their kids to a different school. Sure, some of those schools truly failed their students, but mostly, that wasn't the case. The impression was that the school and teachers weren't good or weren't doing their jobs, even if they actually were. One of the best schools I've seen failed because of the ESL thing, and tests were only given in English. This false impression may have kicked off or really contributed to the situation schools are facing with parents today.
PS. There is more to it on the black and brown issues and impoverished areas, but you covered that.
HIVE MIND BABY 😛🤘🏾 23:06 i was waiting on someone with the right verbiage to tackle this conversation because it’s too many points/opinions that ALL information is being convoluted. So glad Herb can pinpoint it all and deliver it perfectly. S/o to you Herb, love you much 🫶🏾
I’m on the early end of gen z I’m almost a millennial. I have a great passion for reading but I’m really bad at math. And I’ll admit in high school that other than reading comprehension I don’t have very good critical thinking or problem solving skills but I did well in school because basically the only thing needed is memorizing things (except for equations in math)
I think most people see "this generation can't read" in different light, some talk about a skill itself, other talk about ability to understand and analyze text on a deeper level, to see the context clues, to understand irony and doublespeak in a written text. And if you look at current fandom discussions and fan theories, people can't read for sh\t, that's true. While rarely observed outside fandom spaces, people do resolve to mark their text with /jk or /sarc and other tone tags to give it clarity.
Thank you so much for this. It has really been pissing me off to see other 20-somethings enter the workforce and act brand new/like there’s something inherently worse about the younger kids and it can all be blamed on ipads and tiktok :/
are y’all not embarrassed??? Or did you just sit back and accept when older people said the same shit about you lmao
A part of me feels like people fear the very change that they need. I imagine that if you're a teacher responsible for educating these kids within the traditional framework, you're probably pulling your hair out, because this framework simply isn't compatible with the way these kids think and process information. I also have gen Z and gen Alpha nieces and nephews, so I feel a lot of the complaints that people express on the internet about them, but there is still a part of me that is happy that they can't really function in the world that we've created. The reality is, these kids inherited this place, and its trash, I think we can all admit that. I feel like if they can't function in this world as it is, then we have no choice but to make something better, if we wanna survive as a species. Who is more capable of making a better society than the ones who legit can't cope with or function in the one we have?
I know its more nuanced than that but Idk man.... i'm really optimistic about these kids, and I often make the same argument that Herby raised at the end of this video... illiterate doesn't mean dumb. In fact, the 7 wonders of the world, and many other things that we marvel at and view as the pinnacles of human ingenuity were built by folks who couldn't, or simply did not read or write. So we'll be alright...maybe lol.
Change is painful. Even if it's beneficial!
One thing I think that's super important to the "lack of attention span" sentiment (that I feel a lot as a college student in this day and age) is that for current working age/post-secondary age people you are FORCED into a schedule of 24/7 attentiveness and skimming just to survive. I feel like I have no time to read the amount that I did as a kid because I no longer have 4+ hour breaks in my days, at least most of the time, and when I do it just makes me feel as if I am being wasteful of time that could be more 'productive.' As supported by the facts (as you say), people work more for greater profits of the company at no increase in pay relative to past years and the effect is felt even further now. I feel that as much as attention spans are pulled away by the digital world, it is also sort of a hypervigilance baked into us because capitalist economy wants to squeeze out all effort from you until none is left for things like reading, or spending time educating yourself, or anything that takes longer than 5 minutes. Everyone's living 5 minute break to 5 minute break but I think some of that is an issue of the employers and standards of production expected these days, similar to how everyone needs to have a degree now, not just a high school diploma.
Guys, some of these kids aren’t even apart of gen z, their gen alpha. Gen z’s are people who are in like the 7th or 8th grade now and above. Just wanted to say that
soooo, Gen Z are born in 2010 or before?
@@DaACTUALLYREALReddie 1997-2012
Ahh Critiquemasss! Homegworl is working overtime! notifications on for you Has been draggin my ass out of SAD I kid you not. You & your work are appreciated Herby and ima express that EVERY time! 🙆🏽♀️💜
(NO…) 😆
(The spirit of da chin! 💀🤣)
(IQ)
You heard about the lead pipes now being changed across the states?! 🤦🏽♀️
Not you attempting rap on the 50th anniversary of hip hop 😆
HIVE MIND 💜
I’m so perplexed; I really thought people’s literary maturation, and ability to comprehend written info was only increasing. It’s wasn’t too long ago that I remember seeing other first graders reading 500 page epics, with subtle themes of growing up, finding community, etc. I’m so curious if that wasn’t the experience of others?
A part of also wonders if a lack of bilingual education is contributing to this. Spanish language clases in the US often focus so much on technical writing, that by the time your in AP Spanish, the kind of reading you’re doing is so at odds with you’ve done in past classes.
Whereas heritage Spanish speaks are able to take a text in English or Spanish, and analysis the things to so well…. Idk just my two cents
Hivemind! New subby here 🙋🏽♀️ Love your content and your personality 🫶 Keep up the good work 🙌
I have a lot of feelings about this topic because of my identities + background as well as recently having finished a disability studies course. I'm going to try not to be too wordy. I agree with everything you've said about capitalism and underfunded schools, as well as environmental racism impacting the quality of education for students. BIPOC students from poor and working class families disproportionately so.
You started to hit on this a bit at the beginning and end, but my alarm bells start ringing any time discussions about IQ scores, standardized testing, literacy, and intelligence are brought up. These things have such a disturbing history intertwined with ableism, racial-pseudoscience, and eugenics. Standardized tests and IQ tests are not neutral measurement tools.
I think we should really start being critical about this the notion of intelligence and "IQ". Who is measuring? Who gets to determine who is smart and who is not? Why and by what standards? We'd be surprised at how much of this is connected to ableism and justifications for stripping people of their rights and humanity. I was recently reading the book "Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life" by Margaret Price and there was a section about a person who scored an 80 on their IQ test while institutionalized despite having a successful college career and teaching graduate-level courses for a few years. They say often say people who score under an 85 on IQ tests wouldn't even benefit from formal education. This is probably connected to the history of disabled people not being allowed to access formal education in the U.S.
Lastly, I want to caution us about how we discuss attention spans and encourage us to rethink if traditional models of educating people are even helpful in the first place. Thinking about the ways that we can make education and learning more accessible instead of forcing children and young adults to conform to traditional classroom spaces seems like the way to go. Ultimately I think the problem is that this society does not promote or reward the development of critical thinking skills and literacy on how to navigate information and resources. The education system wasn't set up to model that. The panic about "lower IQ skills" seems like BS to me. Concerns about underfunding schools, environmental racism, ableism, and eugenics making learning/knowledge less accessible seems to be the real issue here.
Millennial here! I KNEW there was more to this topic that wasn’t being discussed enough!! THANK you for bringing it up!!! Take my upvote 😂 and def subscribing, you’re awesome!!
Gen Z isn't dumb, they're YOUNG
Same with Gen Alpha, that generation is literally full of children under 12.
Schools went from teaching phonics to teaching “sight words” where I live.
Now, that seems fine on its face: teaching youngsters to recognize words by sight. But, it’s not. Neglecting a very fundamental skill in favor of a shortcut as a means to an end never works over the long term.
All fine. I can offset that with some simple 1:1 time and a little old fashioned Gen-X, “My teachers taught me this way,” stick-to-it-iveness. Right?
Wrong.
Over the course of COVID, I did that with my kid in kindergarten. The teacher became furious when he would start sounding words out, versus just writing memorized shapes that comprised a word. He failed timed tests because he didn’t remember the shape that made the word, but he knew the sound that accompanied the letter, that BUILT the word.
School didn’t fail my kid. It literally actively sabotaged him. My kids are able to read very well (they read novels for fun like I used to). But, knowing the “education” system worked to make one dumber by eliminating fundamentals of language (phonics) is infuriating and causes me to wonder in what other ways we’re eschewing what works for what’s easy.
I know the younger gen Zs r a bit out there but do understand that gen Z is 1995-2010 meaning the last of them r in 8th grade so all of this stuff abt elementary school kids is in fact all gen Alpha and maybe a small selection of Z. Either way this doesnt apply to the majority (at least from wut i see outside of American education) theres just as much literate and educated people as any other generation, and trust me there is a lot of illiterate older folks aswell.
School funding is linked to the local taxes (mostly property taxes, I believe). We get neighboring districts and even neighboring states with big contrasts in education quality, and people will choose housing, even move, based on the school districting. There’s some voices out there that will say the poor communities get additional funding. Maybe the funding should be more federal than it is to make it more equal
I think we need to find new ways to measure knowledge.
I'm really glad you asked like, by what metrics are we basing intelligence? Most standards of intelligence are regressive and inherently ableist anyway. But with all this technology and information coming at us so fast, we're prioritizing certain forms of learning over traditional types. Like spelling for example. Obviously, spelling and grammar are important skills to have at a base line, but with autocorrect many of us whole adults don't even retain a lot of those skills as well as we did as kids because we simply don't have to retain that info for most of our day to day communication. And that function has been around since 1993. Yet most people born after 93 have the ability to take in and retain information, as well as articulate it, so much faster than we did even 5-10 yrs ago. What we used to have to learn by reading lengthy articles or books, we can now get in a succinct manner via videos and posts. Yes that can be dangerous because of misinformation, but we also have a much easier time researching and fact checking, and are more compelled to than when our news and info came from reading your local newspaper or a magazine article. I really do think that we have a horrible education problem, and that we do have an issue with overconsumption and overstimulation of/by technology. Obviously we need more support and funding for schools and teachers. But I disagree with the trending idea that it's just all the fault of over permissive millennial parents shoving ipads in kids faces instead of parenting. Like you pointed out, its a much bigger issue than that.
as a millennial teacher... there's so much to unpack here. thank you for shedding light on the NCLB side of this because it is real. I teach in Detroit and there are just systemic issues even in the best schools with parent and student engagement and well qualified teachers. GENERATIONS have been left behind and have trauma surrounding education. not to mention the economic hardships folks have... i see people lamenting kids not reading and parents not reading to their kids in these very comments and while that is sad, i cannot expect someone who works 2-3 jobs to have the time to read their child a story each night. it unfortunately is a privilege to have that time. i hate that so much! but it is the reality of late-stage capitalism.
Mam I understand what you aresaying, to sòme it is hard but for those mommas who sit home or bring a man in the house all types hours or days in front of your/ their kids , they have time for man but no time for child no excuse there or sympathy from me. You can give man 10 minutes but not 10 minutes of math or reading to child
oh my god 5 mins in and i can tell i struck gold SO GLAD ur channel popped up for me
personally, with the lack of funds in public school, rampant bullying, food insecurity and domestic violence/child abuse, im not surpised were getting dumber. why would we be able to focus with empty stomachs, thinking about our home situation and what were coming home to that night and how bad it might be, and NOT ALL PARENTS CAN HELP KIDS WITH THEIR HOMEWORK, SO DONT MAKE THAT A BIG PART OF THEIR GRADE. i was fucked over so bad because i couldnt focus well in school, then i got home and asked my drug abusing parents for help and my father wouldnt care and my mother would apologize that she didnt know how to help me because SHE DROPPED OUT FOR THE SAME REASON, SCHOOL WAS TOO DIFFICULT AND SHE WAS TOO STRESSED TO CARE ABOUT EDUCATION WITH HOW POOR HER FAMILY WERE. sorry for the all caps it just pisses me off so bad that they try to blame us for having a hard time with learning, maybe if classes were smaller and i wouldve had more one-on-one time with the teachers i wouldve been okay, but with one fkn teacher and 30-40 students per class also trying to get their help, i just couldnt keep up and burnt out. i think thats whats going on with a lot of kids, they feel like nothing they feel matters. only whatever grades they get matter. when i came out of the mental hospital and told my principal i needed some days to chill out after being forced into staying there and he got pissy with me because "youve already missed too much school" LIKE FUCK YOU TREAT ME LIKE A PERSON AND NOT A MACHINE
Hearing gen z constantly get singled out is so annoying as a 24 year old. Y’all make fun of us for shaking our hips on TikTok but I literally remember millennials eating tide pods,swallowing cinnamon, and setting themselves on fire as challenges. And your earrings look so bomb on you btw
EDIT: YALL ALSO HAD CHALLENGES CHOKING EACH OTHER UNTIL YALL PASSED OUT!!!
That was older Gen Z 😂, the millennials always have they shit together as a whole, As a older Gen Z, I can attest this
Those earrings, I agree
Some millennials maybe, but mostly it was the Gen Z generation who injusted pods
Millennials be doing Ice Bucket challenge for a good cause to cure cancer, something that never been done with older and new, I say this so we Gen Z need to get our shit together
@@MaejorArray Gen Xer here, we are indeed ghost on these subjects. I have to admit that we feel superior because we remember cursive writing and were respectful to our elders. While we commodified childhood so we can stay children forever. We feel we are a perfect amalgamation of young/old or past/future so since we're perfect we sidelined ourselves, you're welcome 😉
Mmk, hive mind.
This is the most entertaining presentation on this subject. Loved it!
Maybe it’s because some people feel as if learning about things, especially fabricated things (for example: History) wasn’t as useful anymore. As a student who constantly tuned out, daydreamed, and slept through lessons, I definitely could’ve benefited from paying attention in class, buuut that’s how I felt at the time. Other than in a disciplinary way, for some reason I didn’t feel the importance of acquiring education, for some reason. I feel a GREAT movie that goes along with this topic is Freedom Writers.
Sameee tho I enjoyed history bc it was fascinating to see where they come from but learning history outside of that curated shit white folks try to push is definitely eye opening and makes u understand why things aren’t as “great” as they could be. Mostly countries were fighting over resources and trying to justify it by nationalism sentiment and it worked in most countries but there will always be people questioning the status quo conflict comes up then same old same old and we are now just dealing how pointless it really is
Hivemind! I’m really glad you’ve posted this video- I was just talking to my wife about this yesterday (she’s a teaching and learning librarian at a college).
We’re both late millennials and so suffer from some of the stuff Gen Z is dealing with to an extent. I greatly think that a huge part of the problem is a lack of holistic and individualized education. People learn better when they get to choose the things they want to learn about, this is crucial to helping students learn to do research.
For younger kids, we really need to dedicate time to connecting their interests to their education. If they love cars, why not investigate the physics of how they work and the history of why we have them? If they love the ocean, why not look into the kinds of stories people tell about sailing or what kinds of factors you need to account for to SCUBA dive (effects of pressure on blood composition, teamwork, etc)?
Idk, this is somewhat of a pipe dream b/c I have little hope we’ll be able to dedicate individualized time like that to kids (it definitely didn’t happen for me). I have a nibling I get to see somewhat regularly so I’m hoping I can help expand horizons for one child, at least.
I believe social media is what happened to gen z and what will happen to gen alpha. We grew up in the fast and digitized, we know and we're engaging with each other the most out of history. You as an average person have consumed the most information of any generation before but the least of any generation to come. So the reference is 2 generations back and one generation ahead. As an only gen z in the house as my two other siblings are millenials, i know much more than they do in terms of information, but they beat me at applying it. It's safe to say that if we find a common point we can make incredible changes.
Hive mind
Wonderful video, awesome editing and great accurate critique.
1. Let imagine when we were taught how to learn before we were taught to follow...
2. The curriculum hasn't changed but the world has so how can we expect better results...
I think a portion of the decreased attention span is that neruodiverse kids are not contantly forced to mask. Not the majority, but a portion. When i was in primary school in the early/mid 2010s i was always told that i was stupid or needed to try harder to focus when in reality i had undiagnosed adhd and autism. Every time my parents brought it up to my doctor or teachers i would be told that girls cant have adhd or autism and i just have to have more discipline. This just caused me to be so focused on masking and looking like i was focused so teachers wouldnt get mad at me for fidgeting, i didint learn any of the information when masking though. Now many kids dont have to hide their struggles as much, which is good, but the current school system is built upon sitting still for hours at a time and spitting out information that you likely dont really understand.
It could really use a revamp and of course more funding to get acomodations for special needs.
Edit: for context i went to school and live in western canada
You literally hit the nail on the head, every single point is right on. “Fairness” is not equity!! To create equity we as a nation MUST lift up our black and brown districts *with funding* or the disparity gap will just become wider and wider.
Different times, different economies and different technologies yield different results. No generation is identical. Next gen is going to be upset at all the other gens and so forth. We were just as cringe and stupid when we were younger.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the general lack of critical thinking skills. I think, with the rise of social media and being fed what to think, we are losing that skill en mass. Myself included. We rely on the people who actually do the work to tell us how we should feel about any given topic. And critical thinking helps us creatively think about all sorts of topics! Not just literature, but physics and math and history, all disciplines.
My New Year’s resolution for 2023 was to read 1 book a month, and I have far surpassed that at this point. I genuinely feel so much smarter and am able to retain so much more information. I also am so better prepared to critically think about the content I consume and how much I am willing to allow that content to effect me. I even willingly wrote an essay just for myself just because I felt like it!
I truly think Gen Z and Gen Alpha will be world changers and I am so excited to see it happen, I truly hope we all get our shit together though
I'm praying we get our stuff together
i subscribed 30 seconds in bc you are ADORABLE 🥰 you have this perfect balance of seeming fun and wacky but also sounding very educated and eloquent and I absolutely love it
the vocabulary.....the cadence....the comedic timing.....honey you were born to perform and present. if I check your channel and find that you do stand up I'll cry. I feel like you would be on a whole new level with crowdwork asfhshfjdjd
considering the state of the school system I think we would all be better off as a country if every curriculum lesson plan was ran through a deepfake filter of you teaching it 🤣 it would be so much easier to pay attention and you'd be a billionaire, maybe president. remember me when you get your bag
So glad I found you when you did an episode with Khadija Mbowe! I've been subscribed since and absolutely love you and your channel!
I'm so glad that's you're pushing put alot of content for yourself and becoming a full time creator. I'm so proud 💘💘
THANK YOU for ma This video to many people think that this gen z and alpha problem when they’re own parents can’t even read
me and my fellow gen z friends are in an elevated book club where we get 🍃 and read books. its so fun and i love it 🤭
i feel so seen out of all the videos roasting gen z like thank u 🖤💫
Hey now, speak for yourself, I taught myself to read at 3 years old. But I will say, as an '89 Millennial, basically the whole time I was in public school, I remember being somewhat dismayed at how much trouble my contemporaries had with reading, especially reading out loud.(though obviously at least part of the latter was just nerves) and I know plenty of older people who have trouble reading as well.
How well one reads really just is a function of how much one reads.
That being said, there has long been a concern that overreliance on reading degrades the natural capacity for memorization, so perhaps it's all just a matter of tradeoffs.
Also, great singing voice lol, I hope you do that often.
We’re your parents helpful
@crishnaholmes7730 they were encouraging and they were readers themselves, so there were always books around, as well as fresh newspapers. I would say yes, they were helpful, and I was very lucky in that regard.
Everything you said in this video is true. people, think they are above other people and need to hear a different perspective alot of kids in special classes are doing way better then the ones that were in general education honestly when i was in it my teachers told me i was ahead of them the stuff they were teaching i already knew it they really need to upgrade they textbooks the state dont want them to teach what really happened to our ancestors especially in history they been tryna erase it along with other stuff.
I think there may be a small bit of truth to the teachers coming out saying these things but I also think it’s nowhere near a new issue and having tiktok and twitter just makes it easier for us to complain about. Never mind the fact I’ve seen 30+ year olds with piss poor reading comprehension. I think there is something to say about how we’ve shifted away from reading as much culturally but my other biggest gripe is that teachers seem to act like just calling it out is enough or them “doing their part” and almost putting blame on the younger generation. News flash, as older generations it’s our job to TEACH the younger generation. I’m not going to touch the behavior issues because that is something that ranges from complex to also shitty parents who are too afraid to reprimand their child for fear of turning into their own parents.
The thing is, most of the teachers who are calling these behaviors out are Gen Z themselves lol. So it doesn't truly make sense that the "younger" end of Gen Z can't read or write. Or that they are, to a certain extent, disrespectful and unable to gauge when they should state their opinion and when they shouldn't (even if they don't want to lie).
I just assumed it's because education in the US had funding being cut possibly decades in the making. this is just the fruit of that labor [that's the answer I go to]
I’m a young millennial as is my partner (both born 1995), and she’s a teacher at a predominantly Hispanic high school in a fairly poor farming community in Texas. I have heard absolute horror stories about the administration and how what she has to teach to prepare kids for the standardized tests directly contradicts what they’d have to be learning in order to adequately prepare them for university level essay writing- something I can also individually confirm cause she’s explained to me the ins and outs and I also have an English degree so we have the shared traumatic understanding of monstrous university English essays. It’s so bleak.
I’m currently 13 and when I tell you these other students cannot READ i’m not lying. In my classes whenever the teacher asks a student that isn’t me to read something they look at the teacher and sit there in complete silence and stare. Which is why whenever we have to read something in my class I always get chosen or I always ask to read bcs if u ask them to read they’ll look at u like you’re stupid. When I was younger (4-6) years old my grandma bought me lots of books, (dr seuss, fancy nancy, etc.) and by the time I got to 3rd-4th grade I had a 8th grade reading level. Now I’m in 8th and I have a college reading level. I think it’s sad that these parents don’t take time and educate their kids because there should be no reason your child can say every curse word in the book but ask them to read their mouth is shut with cement.
It's not really Gen Z is more of gen Alpha they younger children
It's both, specifically the latter half of Gen Z though.
11:17 In my state they were recently talking about substituting the state test for other things because of how bad the graduation rates have gotten.
I was never an academic student in fact I was horrible and I graduated High School with something called a Local Diploma (look it up) and for the state test since I had an iep at the time instead of needing to get a 65 or higher to graduate I needed to get a 55 or higher.
The only test I scored above 65 was History everything else was in the 60's while math was 56.
As for college Its been a very complicated transition and when the lockdowns happened I was able to fair better than other students who relied on in person learning because I was enrolled in an online school 2 months earlier for the spring 2020 semester. Its just been really lonely because I don't really have anyone to talk to on there
Honestly there are good and bad people in each Generation, but I feel like Millennials is like the middle child that have to deal with the Entitlement of Boomer & Gen-Z, they both entitled in a different way
Millennials are also EXTREMELY entitled. don't plant that on gen z, we're just as much struggling with boomers blaming us for everything too.
Its probably because the mindset, i went through that shit, you have too. Is way too easy to fall into. Which that really is. Like it takes effort breaking cycles there. And its not that, ok millenials are human too. Some dont do that shit, some do
Now the few children that I knew went through “no child left behind “ didn’t work. The kids were just passed over to the next grade. It was meant to help or catch a learning problem. The school never received that extra help to do that job.
There’s a lot of people who can read fundamentals , buts the comprehension skills. Look at our politicians, they can string words together and can’t rubbed a dollar outta the sentence.
At this point u have to pay for ur education to get a decent one. I’m paying for Montessori currently and it’s heal expensive and I’d be surprised if we can afford it next year but it had been amazing and my son loves learning and it would have helped now I’m freaking out where to go next and honestly I have no hope that it get better then what he has. I’ll be as much help as I can be but I think paying for tutoring is probably gonna be my second best bet if he struggles
you can't call genz stupid without calling out system its an attack and i don't find any of these teachers sincere they making seem like oh just some bad parent but their tons of influences and to put it on the child the parent is insane and then they changed everything to sight words so of course they can't read but they won't tell you that and then im seeing people using this to pity teachers and teacher online in general are mad when people dont respect them totally disregarding peoples experiences pulling the its so hard and these kids are monsters this that and third your just enabling the system by quitting and complaining and doing absolutely nothing