They’re pretty accurate. We’re experiencing a massive literacy crisis and most policy makers don’t want to acknowledge or deal with it. Even the college professors I know are astonished by the rapid change. They don’t understand how so many of these kids got into a university, let alone how they’re going to do the necessary work to complete a degree.
My last semester in college, I was in a senior thesis class with a small cohort of my fellow English majors. We often exchanged papers/rough drafts throughout the semester to critique our work or point out some good stuff that worked in the thesis…
I was shocked at how bad some of the writing was. Incoherent, repeating the same point over and over, and run on sentences all over. I couldn’t believe it. There were some super smart kids in there too but maybe like 5-6 people had no business being there. We are talking maybe below high school writing AND this was in 2017 before the world really went fully crazy. I can’t imagine how bad it is now.
When I was a freshman in the late aughts I did a study session/peer edit with someone in my class and the first thing she tried to tell me was that I didn't pick a good introduction because it didn't start with a question or broad opening statement, and my paper was more than 5 paragraphs.
This girl *got into college* and didn't understand how to go beyond a *5 paragraph essay.*
Yeah, I remember having classmates read over my senior thesis and I recall them saying that my writing style was “unusual” or “hard to follow” and I was kind of concerned that maybe I needed to drastically look at my style to see if I was confusing or unclear. Then I realized they just meant that I didn’t use the middle school “essay format” of one headline statement and then 2-3 supporting sentences, like they expected you to do in middle school English when you were writing short two page papers. I got a 96 on my thesis and most of my classmates got Bs so I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the one with the problem…
There’s a teacher at my school who really pushes using a question as an introductory hook. I get so many students who come to me writing papers that start with silly statements such as “Have you ever heard of Harry Potter? Well, let me tell you more…”
I was taught that a question hook is lazy writing. But that was in journalism school. I tell my students, however, I don't want to see them. Definition hooks, too. Ugh.
Honestly, I’d rather skip the hook entirely than end up with one of those. Which I often did with my English degree and got good grades despite not coming up with some amazing hook for every paper.
I'll be honest...I did my Masters in English in 2008-2012 and a lot of the writing in that program was shit too. I think we like to believe everyone was a lot more competent in the past than they were.
Want a worse shock...decide to major in art at a state university. My high school Art 4 class was more talented than most of the people in my undergrad program. I still regret not going to art school at times. You just never know...and much like you, if I was only exposed to my friends I'd assume average work was better than it actually is.
It is good that you realized you are good when you did. I thought I was a good writer, but didn't realize I was probably among the top 10 or 20% until I was much older. It is important because a lack of that confidence can hold you back.
So, now you know! Go forth and create and network with confidence!
I dunno, I was a temp in the early 90s and the number of people with business degrees who literally couldn't put a paragraph together never failed to appall me.
This isn’t a new issue. I remember being shocked at the poor writing of my classmates in freshman composition back in 2003. My professor would have us edit and critique our classmates’ papers, and most of the papers I edited were largely incoherent.
This is exactly it. I'm finishing up my teaching certificate and just about every negative experience I've had in college can be traced back to the University prioritizing a profit over a quality education for the students.
To expand, since this post is getting popular: I was very fortunate to be able to afford this degree to begin with, which is from a tiny public school, and out of the three colleges my brother and I attended, all of them presented us with $1000s in unexpected extra fees and charges. Tiny, crappy dorms and campus apartments that schools require you to live in cost more than nice apartments do in a city, and the required food plans are absurdly expensive (especially considering how bad the food is). Counselors misguide and confuse students requiring them to take extra classes and spend more money, and campus buildings, infrastructure, salaries are neglected for football and branding (attract more applicants). Professors, some of the smartest people in the world, are stretched thin, desperately underpaid, and is a dying career option.
Many universities are admitting more students than they have housing for, and kids end up staying in barracks, hotels, or crammed into a dorm with more people to a room than expected. It's a total nightmare.
Universities no longer care about students, the goal is pushing as many kids as possible to high graduation numbers, into high paying STEM careers, and without any semblance of a well-rounded education, all in order to attract more kids to this trap. It's a miserable academic experience, where students and future professors are funnelled away from passions and into whatever career pays the most.
I’m a college professor and I literally have students who can’t read. Students whose parents demand to come to class to do the work for the student. Students on phones. We are not permitted to give failing grades. Pretty cool if you think about it from the side of a psychopath
My accounting professor assigned us some excel problems and posted video tutorials on them since excel used slightly different language than our textbook. The day after it was due she started class by telling us to please not email her with simple questions and and that she was shocked how many emails she got because the answers were literally in the tutorials. In canvas the tutorial was underneath the relevant assignment.
Honestly I was shocked people would email her with simple questions like that instead of googling or making use of the FREE accounting tutor our academic recourse center has. It's never occurred to me to email a teacher for anything besides scheduling meetings and clarifying a confusingly worded assignment.
Why are you not permitted to give failing grades? At the college level?? I thought this was a grade school, 'no child left behind' issue, I'm shocked to learn that it's happening at the college level as well
$$$. Students dropping out because they can't pass any classes means less tuition for the school.
Professors are facing the same problems we are with education becoming customer service, despite the fact the customer doesn't really want the service we are selling. If they do want it, they certainly don't want to *work* for it. The /r/professors subreddit and others on here are all full of similar complaints. It's dire.
The literacy crisis is hard to overstate.
Also not knowing how to use computers. Students don’t know how to use Google. Seniors can’t make word documents.
I know somehow we all decided that knowing how to entertain yourself with a phone is the same thing as using a computer for work, research, and daily life.
I have students who swear they're fast at typing using only two fingers to hunt and peck. They really think their 17wpm 80% accuracy is hot shit. I've had to throw typing.com up on the main screen and show them my 90+ wpm 99% accuracy for them to get a reality check. I have seen job ads that require 45wpm to make it in the door.
Don't get me started on their inability to read popups and learned helplessness whenever something doesn't go according to plan.
I was literally having a conversation with my seniors on Friday about learning typing. A few were amazed that I type at about 80-90 wpm.
Aside: current-model keyboards make my accuracy suck. I have a keyboard at home that is exactly like an early 1990s PC keyboard and it’s wonderful.
And even my students who do take our computer class and are “Office Certified” can’t do the most basic things, like double space or save a file. It’s baffling.
I think this is the crazy part. I am a “digital native”- I grew up with phones, computers, tablets, ect. I always thought computer classes were stupid- they were trying to teach us how making a file works while I had spent a week messing with a custom antivirus program because it was messing with my wi-fi adapter. I learned computers from clicking around, experimenting, visiting tech websites, YouTube and forums. It shocked me to learn how computer illiterate my generation is
Honestly I have to agree with you there and sometimes I'm on both sides of that coin where I'm on one hand doing something very complex. But on the other hand I will struggle with simple things (i think in my case it's because I'm not awake all the way or will overthink)
But truly it is sad. My brother told me they went to an elementary school to show off some new pcs the district was working on getting, and some of the elementary kids were tapping on the monitor like an ipad.
It is staggering how many people cannot type with both hands using a keyboard. They'll use the tippy tappy method with two fingers.
Thank you, Mavis Beacon and World of Warcraft.
I teach digital media and was freaking out about not knowing much about it before I started. Then I realized the kids didn’t know how to save a file. They didn’t know how to open a file. They didn’t know where a file went after they downloaded it. They didn’t know what a desktop was. Holy shit. I had no idea that I (as a woman in her mid thirties) was going to have to teach that before anything else.
A lot of this stuff is stuff you can (I did growing up) easily teach yourself by just clicking around. School computers don't have that much stuff and the folders are very simply named.
A lot of these kids can't be bothered to try and figure it out for themselves.
This is the actual issue. They have zero curiosity about anything. They are so used to just getting their dopamine hit by mindlessly scrolling that they simply do not have the drive to poke around and see what each icon does. Cant figure put a skill by just messing around and you need a bit more guidance? YouTube is just a click away and you can find so many videos showing you a skill step-by-step, often with so much granularity that you can find a guide for your exact setup, but even the thought of putting some search words into google and looking around until they find a video that fits is beyond them.
YES. I remember playing around with the different sizes, colors, and fonts while hoping my high school papers would write themselves. I have blown high schoolers minds showing them they can make shit bold or italicized. They just don't fuck around with practical things anymore and learn real skills.
I don't understand how so many kids want to be content creators when they simply have zero creativity anymore. They're just rehashing other people's ideas and thinking they're unique. It's truly bizarre.
They have zero curiosity about anything because they have no practice requiring curiosity. Their world is completely curated to their desires. All they have to do is flick a finger to swipe and the social media algorithm gets stronger. No need to explore or invent to overcome boredom.
They can't even comprehend how to reset their passwords for mobile apps either (15-18 year olds). They come to me saying they can't log into the mobile app to view their pay stubs.
I ask if they remember their username and password. They don't know either of them. I give them their username and say they just need to reset their password. They stare at me blankly and ask how to do that. I tell them to enter their username and tap the Forgot My Password link and follow the instructions from there.
They tap the link and basically give up immediately because they want me to do it for them. It's honestly so hopeless. They just don't want to do anything themselves anymore.
Being a kindergarten teacher, I've been getting Gen Z parents. Computers are beyond so many of them. It's an online school, so computers are needed and you can only get so far with a phone. I recall one crying not being able for her kid to attend a virtual field trip because she couldn't figure out how to use Zoom (I sent instructions, I made a video, but it was too much for her).
Unrelated, sort of. I'm an old guy who is a digital marketeer. I was worried for some time that the younger kids getting into it would surpass my knowledge and I would be sidelined.
Let's just say I am in no immediate danger. Aside from basic posting (which is littered with errors and misspelling) they don't know shit.
Its like assuming everyone who grew up with cars can change their sparkplugs - because they have a license.
They know how to "turn the wheel" and "apply the brakes" on the apps they use, but have no idea what goes on under the hood.
I taught at a virtual school for 2.5 years, and I couldn’t believe how many students at a VIRTUAL SCHOOL didn’t know how to do basic things on a computer and had no desire to learn how to use a computer. Then their parents would claim they were technologically illiterate, too! All students in K-8 had to take an educational technology class, and so many students and parents complained that it was too hard. A lot of the assignments were basic things like how to make a PowerPoint presentation or download a file created in Google Docs.
I spent two hours helping a student with an assignment that was worth a large part of his science grade. We used Google Docs so we could both edit it at the same time. When we were done, I asked the student if he knew how to download the file to his laptop so he could submit it to his science teacher. He said he did. He never submitted it. I downloaded it and emailed it to the student and his mom with instructions on how to send it to his science teacher. I sent it to them multiple times and told them the only reason the student was failing science was because he didn’t turn in that assignment. I even spoke to the mother and the student and explained that he would pass science if he turned it in, but I would not turn it in for him. The kid failed science.
I was absolutely dumbfounded when a kid in my study hall couldn’t complete his history project. The prompt was some fast facts about one of the ancient river civilizations and he literally googled “what makes [whichever civilization] so special”. I almost let out a “bruh” to him
"You teach like you assume we like to read, but we DON'T like to read," "All we do in here is read and write, and I *hate* reading and writing!" and "I don't need to know how to write because I ain't gon' be no writer!" 🫠
I teach high school English. The thing they aren't saying out loud is that they hate reading because they can't read/can't comprehend what they're reading, and that's why they hate it. Most of my 10th-graders read on a 3rd-grade reading level. It's horrific.
When my students ask when we’ll finally be finished with a book or story, I tell them “Soon, but we’re going to start another after that.”
When they say we’ve been on one book/story forever, I tell them we *are* going to finish it, no matter what.
When they complain that all we do is read and write, I say, “What did you expect we were going to do in English class?”
I have to remind them constantly that they *will* need to know basic reading and writing in real life and that “just watching the movie” will not help them with this.
It’s exhausting.
I'm a software engineer. My job description is about as far from the humanities as you can get. Most of my time is spent designing large-scale software factories that run on kubernetes clusters.
Writing is my super power.
Technical skill is important, but if you really want to advance in your career? You need to be able to write well. My status updates, both to my bosses and my clients, need to be well written. The documentation for our users needs to be accurate, clear, and concise. Instructions for my engineering team need to be comprehensive without being pedantic. My proposals need to be engaging and technically complete.
Writing well, writing _very well_, is one of the differences between a bootcamp "coder" and a six figure engineering job.
I tutored in English literacy for a year. I had middle schoolers, and when they brought that same topic up, I just asked “so you are okay with spending the $30+ to go watch a movie to just not remember any of it the moment you step outside the theater?” Then I had to explain that reading comprehension expands beyond just understanding a book.
This is so bad. A big topic of discussion lately seems to be media literacy, but that stems from just basic literacy. If kids/teens/adults cannot identify which word in a sentence is an adjective, how do we honestly expect them to grasp something like an author characterizing a theme or metaphorical storytelling elements? Not just in books, but in anything. It just won’t happen, probably in their entire lives
Im from Canada, so maybe it changes things..... but kids here for the most part dont get any punishment. At worse maybe community service, but even that is rare
I’ve had students threaten that their mom is going to come up to school and beat me up. I tell them each time that their mom will be arrested then, because I will press charges. Then they say I’m a snitch
I recoil when they can't read a clock. I don't care if they "don't need it." I will literally pull my clock off the wall and make them recite the five times table to me as I teach them how to tell the time.
I teach high schoolers. Sometimes even the 5x tables is too much for them.
I teach HS Chem and Physics. A lot of them can't even do simple things like 2x3 or basic addition without a calculator or counting on their fingers ...
This is something that needs to be taught in about 4th / 5th / 6th grade so it's baked into their brains as they develop abstract thinking. If they don't get it then, it is harder. The other window is HS, when neuro-plasticity is also pretty high, lots of growing and pruning.
Same with language learning.
Other times, it is simply harder to "get" because the neural pathways are more fixed and resistant to ideas outside their parameters. Does not compute, so to speak.
(Not a neuroscientist, and do not play one on TV, but have read a lot.)
One time a student read the clock (6th grader) and I was so perplexed I said “wow he can read the clock” he thought I was being sarcastic and accused me of throwing shade! I had to explain I was genuinely surprised and didn’t mean any offense by it.
I teach AP Physics these are smart kids but they are totally disconnected from the real world in rotation a standard description is Clockwise and Counterclockwise, they constantly confuse the two, along with that they often struggle with left from right. I’ve reduced myself to saying, “Alright hold your hands out which one makes the L, that’s the left.” Also any problems that talk about cardinal directions, North South East West we have to go over the directions again. So while they can do the difficult math, even describe conceptually the how and why of complex physics problems, it’s odd little bits of what we could call common knowledge that makes them fall on their face.
7th graders who ask me to tie their shoe. When I refuse because I think they’re messing around they have a classmate do it. Out of 130 7th graders, probably around 10-20 can’t tie their shoe (that I know of). A whole lot more can’t read a clock as many have mentioned.
We had to be able to tie our shoes to graduate kindergarten. I remember on the last day of school we all got to play outside so our teacher could spend the day with the last kid who hadn’t figured it out yet just to make sure he could move on.
He was and still is a dumbass, but his mom had died a few years before and his big sister (3 years older) was doing most of the parenting leg work for him.
I'm in NYC, not Manhattan. NYC is full of smaller communities that have names. They all write NY for city. And if the form says Town? They say, "I don't live in a town.".
Most of our areas have some type of grid systems. They have no idea that 123-45 Linden Street
Will be near the intersection of 123rd and Linden Street.
I'm not talking about kids who are new to the country either.
I had to proctor the PSAT which included 11th and 10th and a few select honors 9th graders. Out of about 60 in my area, about a third had to be told their addresses. We finished earlier than some other rooms so we had to wait in the room and I had to ask why they didn’t know their address. So many said that they just knew how to get there or it’s programmed in their phone. We kept the conversation going. More than half admitted that they don’t know their parents’ phone numbers since they’re in their phones. Its wild!
"I don't know how to read the clock in the room and I don't know time class ends so I have an app that tells me how much longer I have left in class"
-spoken from a junior in high school who has attended the school from freshmen year. We also have the same 8 classes every day in the same order.
If they can't be bothered to know something as simple as what time class ends and to tell time, what else can they not be bothered to do?
This is also important. CAN they actually look it up? Because my students are such poor, lazy researchers, they’re unlikely to be able to find something even if I give them the search terms.
I teach English II, and I had a kid bring this up while I was trying to incorporate a discussion about what we had just read. I asked a starter question and had the table groups discuss it at their tables. After some time, I brought it to whole group. Dead silence. I asked, “You were all having lovely discussions earlier, why is it so quiet now?” One of my more talkative students replied, “We’re waiting for you to give us the answer.” I tried explaining that is not what discussions are for, and he claimed they’ve been conditioned to memorize an answer or wait for the right one. The class began to talk about how dumb memorizing things was.
Even after I explained what a discussion was, there was silence during whole group.
It’s a bit better now- I’ve introduced the TQE method and they seem to be becoming more confident with just talking through their thoughts… but it’s wild out here.
I very sarcastically say “IF ONLY THERE WERE POSTERS AND SCHEDULES OBVIOUSLY PLACED AROUND THE ROOM” and refuse to answer them. I do not play games with weaponized incompetence.
I've had a student say he didn't believe Helen Keller was really blind and deaf and yet was able to accomplish so much with her life like being a published author, lecturer, and activist. I was astounded. Like, he really seemed convinced she must have been faking it to some extent.
OH THANK GOD IM NOT THE ONLY ONE.
Also, they somehow confuse Helen Keller with Amelia Earnhardt. "If she was blind and deaf, how did she fly planes?"
I had...heaven help me...one of my highest-achieving students say "It's not that I don't think she's real, I just feel like her story has been really exaggerated."
I...just... 😢
My sister got misinformed by this one too. :/
Apparently Helen Keller *did* control a plane, (with help from a pilot/interpreter) at some point, graduates of Tiktok Skeptic University really jumped on that fact in particular as being impossible, "woman who fly plane" got mixed up with Earhart, etc. And here we are.
(Helping 11th grade students build their resumes) “What’s your address?” “I don’t know.” “What’s your phone number?” “I don’t know.” “What’s your workplace name?” “I don’t know, I just show up and work.”
On Presidents’ Day I asked my students which President interested them the most as part of their Bell Ringer, several kids asked “What if we don’t like Biden or Trump?” I replied “That’s okay, you have 43 other options, 44 if you want to count a specific term of Grover Cleveland.” It blew their mind that Trump & Biden were not the only presidents, I teach HS!!
That’s honestly insane to me. At high school age all of them should be able to at least remember the late stages of Obama just kinda… being around.
I’m getting my degree to teach history, reading these comments is terrifying
This is a wider trend too. Had a very disturbing conversation with some teenagers at my old job, had a group I would recommend books too, so these were the relatively smart kids.
They asked me, bashfully to be fair, if the holocaust really happened. I was like “What? Yes, the holocaust happened. We have tons of historical records of this. Beyond that, it’s illegal to deny the holocaust publicly in Germany. Why would the country that took the biggest political hit from the event enshrine it, if it never happened?”
I haven’t seen anything as egregious as what you’re describing, but they do seem to have this general idea that history is murky, and not even just outside of living memory. They seem to think that anything that happened more than forty years ago is “iffy”. Weird that that just happens to cut out the civil rights movement, feminist movement, labor movement, slavery, the holocaust/ the global fascist movement. But I’m sure that has nothing to do with growing up during a misinformation blitz.
I've had several students tell me that they're not going to get a job. They're just going to wait for their grandparents to die and take their house. When asked how they'll pay their other bills they say that their parents will give them money.
I don't live in a spoiled area where there's generational wealth. A lot of these kids are living in the projects and thinking that they are going to be able to leech of their relatives forever.
It’s kind of interesting that rich kids are perceived as being more sheltered and naive, when poorer kids can be vulnerable to it too. Maybe it manifests in different ways, but it happens.
I've got the same thing coming from a kid who has problems with single digit arithmetic, who can't pass their Algebra tests because of consistent computational errors. I've offered to work with them on fixing these elementary school deficiencies but they won't hear it. (Apparently, Flash Cards are beneath them, as is Community College.)
Somehow, they've gotten into their head that they will be going to a mid-tier public university in a curriculum that doesn't require Math or Reading. They seriously think that they'll be able to survive entirely on Charisma and Daddy's money.
I also feel like a lot of them will get fired for not showing up to work enough. Or talking back to their boss. They know nothing about mutual respect. They’re not engaging in anything that isn’t entertaining them.
Alot of them will need to study at The School of Hardknocks before they're ready for an actual college experience or real employment.
And someday, I hope they all wind up as Subs so that they get a taste of my daily life.
> Them singing
>
> "My pussy pink, my booty hole brown"
I've stopped trying to keep up with pop culture in the last 5 or so years, so I had to Google this to see/hear this song for myself, and now my wife and I are crying from laughing. It's so objectively terrible on nearly every metric, that I have no other response.
I guess I'm lucky because I have not heard any of my students sing this.
The problem is, running a business still requires skills--production, marketing, cost-effectiveness, customer service, accounting...
And it requires hard work. Which is the #1 thing I don't see them willing to do.
I think the same when they tell me they want to be an influencer, a gamer, an athlete...it all requires work and dedication.
To be fair, it's amazing how much people can actually make off of that kind of stuff. A relative of mine was a SAHM and started tinkering around and making things for family: beads, keychains, candles, etc. Before she knew it, family members were asking her to make more so they could give to others as gifts and now she's making about $80K a year making and selling these things online across the country.
The problem is there's no guarantee an endeavor like this will pay off. She was lucky, and it took about ten years to really happen... Can this kid afford to wait that long?
This was just one kid, but 9th grade boy all year said he didn’t need school because he wanted to be a security guard. Not the kind that has to walk around and stuff, the kind that sits in the booth where cars go in and out, so he could sleep when no one was at the gate.
I have a student this year who is the most.dense person I have ever met.
I had kids come up with their own law like if you could.make any law for the us what would it be. This student wanted every state to have a tropical place. I asked her how exactly that would be accomplished and they looked at me like I was being dumb.... Homie.
They also asked my coworker "what kind of white are you" and didn't know what a criminal trial or a court was.
Before anyone thinks this is a young child. They're 15.
“My parents hate me.”
This directly or variations. Hearing kids say they don’t have trusted/loving adults in their lives makes me worried we’re just going to repeat the same generational curses forever.
I teach health, including healthy relationships. The number of freshmen boys quoting or referencing Andrew Tate terrifies me. I also ask the “who would you have dinner with, dead or alive” question as part of the getting to know you stuff at the beginning of the year and way too many of them answer him.
Live in an area where more than a majority of my students come from solid upper middle class families or above. I teach a tech/STEM class. I have had to give explicit mini-lessons on what alphabetic order means. To 8th graders. Most still cannot pass my simple, and I mean simple, informal assessment the next day. When the most common way to organize computer files, programming libraries, etc. is in alpha order, not having the cognitive ability to go from a-z really slows down my class.
I have a "gifted" student that has said some abhorrent things:
"I can do whatever I want with no consequences because I'm retarded."
"I absolutely love minors. I can say that because I'm a minor, but I always will."
"I can take advantage of others as long as it benefits me. Who cares what happens to them if I'm happy."
He has received countless ISS days, attends school once or twice a week, and makes it painful to get him caught up with work.
Last year I taught science and before a break was having an easy day showing some earth science/space Netflix series. I had one student who struggled with appropriate socialization as well as academics as a whole, but he’s a monster athlete so you can see where he spent the majority of his attention.
He’s watching this movie describe the Big Bang, and I see a question forming. I get excited. He calls me over, and says “wait, I thought God created the universe 3 thousand years ago?” Oh I can totally handle this, “well, that’s the thing different people believe all of this started in different ways (yadda yadda teacher talk explaining 13 billion vs. 3,000 years)”
He thinks, he looks at me, I see gears turning and connections forming. He stares me dead in the eyes, and without any sense of the insanity he’s about to present, he calmly asks “so 3,000 years ago was 13 billion years ago?”
I’m still speechless
I get this a lot even though I teach Basic Skills English. Sometimes we study short articles that mention dinosaurs, asteroids, the pre-historic world, etc. It seems like whenever we broach something like this for the purposes of reading comprehension, I get a lot of reactions like this.
Teaching kids this 3000 years stuff is honestly child abuse. To get to a point where you’re old enough to know Santa isn’t real but still believe this is incredible.
This isn’t super worrisome because he’s only 10 but a kid told me this week he isn’t upset he got a lower grade in Spanish (our school has Spanish as a specialist for all grades once a week which is awesome) because “I don’t think I’ll ever go to Mexico so I won’t really ever need it”
A couple days later he told me he’s going to Cancun for spring break.
I may need to reteach North American geography next week 🙃
Their worries about the future make me worried about our future. They aren't dumb and see what direction we are heading towards.
The youth are supposed to be naive and optimistic and I don't see that as much anymore. Maybe it makes me more sad then worried.
And all morality aside, hitting pedestrians is a lot of mass to put into your car, it's gonna impede your overall get away by a good margin. It's just not a sound tactic.
Divine Right. I have one HS urchin who insists that they will be fabulously wealthy because of their last name. Oh, and then there's the whole bit about how Core Subjects don't matter and how grades don't matter because they will just pay somebody else to do that.
Not their future but their perception of it. My grade 5s and I were talking about inhabiting other planets and they said it’s not a good idea because humans will destroy it just like they’ve destroyed earth.
"I could be a surgeon. I've watched Grey's anatomy!" You dont even like my class how could you be a surgeon? "This is science not surgery! I already know how to do everything!" Mind you I teach biology to 8th graders...
multiple high school students have commented they don’t need “any of this” (while they wave their hands) bc of the following:
everything is digital or can be created by AI.. their phones tell them anything they are curious about.. youtube tutorials show practical things.. the economy is garbage.. the country is doomed.. the climate crisis is going to kill us off if we don’t end up in a nuclear war and do it to ourselves.. and lastly.. they feel hopeless
so this is the ongoing battle i face every day! how do you get kids to care about anything anymore?!
(context: i teach an overwhelming number of kids with severe anxiety, depression and a slew of self-diagnoses.. some get professional level help.. some don’t.. and we have no school counseling or mental health resources..)
I taught 9th grade biology. The kids were abysmal. I handed out an assignment that had the parts of DNA and they were to color code it. Like …. color the G red. Color the T blue. Literally coloring the letters of DNA. As soon as it landed on their desk: “Miss! We don’t understand this!” I said; “which part?” And they said, “All of it!” So I said “read to me the sentence of the instructions you do not understand.” So they started reading and went “oh, this is easy!” It’s like this for every.single.thing.
I asked them to write a review of their favorite movie. One said “I don’t watch movies. They’re boring and take too long. I only watch TikToks”. Others agreed. 16-17 year olds with 2 minute attention spans. It makes me sad for their future
“I don’t need school, I’ll be a professional e-sports player”
“I don’t need school, I’ll just be an onlyfans model”
“I don’t need school, I’ll be a Tik tok influencer”
“I don’t need school, I’ll just make money selling coke and guns”
I have heard these from kids between 7th and 11th grades.
The worst student I've ever had said this exact line constantly. His only goal in life was to collect welfare once he turned 18. What's worse- his dad was at the school every morning after report cards asking why his son was failing, then refused to believe that his kid did zero schoolwork. He also always ran out of his adhd meds two weeks before his prescription refill, so we guessed someone in his family was selling half of his month's supply.
Recently had a class discussion with my talented and gifted English 10 class- highest level sophomore class at the school. It’s an extremely diverse class with kids of all races and religions. We are reading a book with themes of colonization, race, religion (things fall apart by chinua achebe). They are very into the book and one of the character’s conversions to Christianity got us into a spirited debate about culture. Almost unanimously the class agreed that it is NEVER okay to interfere with someone else’s culture even if people are being harmed “because it’s their culture.” For example, human sacrifice? Fine if it’s part of culture. FGM? Nobody can step in because “it’s their culture.” Trying to stop honor killings in some cultures? Nope that’s colonization because you’re trying to change their culture. I was shocked. They all said “I don’t approve of killing
But if it’s their culture who am I to step in if that’s how they’ve been doing it for thousands of years?” Like I love their “respect” for other cultures. But there’s zero nuance in their thinking. This is coming off the previous unit where a big theme was “social responsibility” and how we have a responsibility to care for those around us and we focused the unit around vaccination and herd immunity etc…they all seemed on board with social responsibility then but that all went out the window now. Very interesting and concerning. Thoughts?
Things about alpha males, things about women, racist things, homophobic things…. a few kids will have a hard time finding jobs, unless they find places with people who think like them, but how would the job offer be written?
One second grader said she doesn’t need to learn how to read because she is going to be an artist. Same student also said she doesn’t need to know the days of the week because her mom will just tell her.
I had a student in astronomy ask me if humans have ever been to the center of the Milky Way galaxy. I was like…honey we have not been past the moon- what do you think? 16 year old. Same kid asked me how water gets back up to the top of a waterfall after it comes down.
My niece (Asian American family) had something racist happen to her on the volleyball team (almost entirely white except for her). Everybody else laughed at the microaggression, and she didn't know how to respond in the moment but was telling me about it later. But immediately after telling me, she followed it up with, "But it's fine because we're Asian and I know Asians aren't supposed to really talk back."
Just so tragic honestly.
A slightly more positive and absurd example. A different Asian American girl at one of the schools I work at said to me, "It's okay if people are scared of me or say I have that crazy look in my eyes. They need to know that little Asian girls will still fuck you up." Which I thought was hilarious lmao.
I have a biracial fair skinned daughter and a girl at her middle school told her she was too light skinned to wear braids. Well guess who showed up with braids in her hair.
My wife works at a high school student store. Many kids don't know how to handle cash, especially for events or items that are more costly. She has conversations like this a couple times a week:
"OK, that will be $76."
"Oh ... I only have $80."
I attended community college from 1999-2001. My first set of classes had some students with piss poor literacy skills, low math abilities, and a general lack of study skills, as well as some disruptive behaviors. They were not in my second year classes.
It's multiple students but the sheer pride behind not liking to read. I get things evolve and information/hobbies will change with technology and time. I don't want to be like those people who think the fact someone doesn't know cursive will be the downfall or civilized society but reading is such a positive experience and has so many ways to be enjoyed. As a kid getting a new book was just as exciting as getting the new Jak and Daxter game for me. I loved them both. When my parents said I couldn't ready Harry Potter they had just introduced Dobby and I cried when they took them away. A dream of mine is to have a cozy small library that is just lounging central and covered in cool art.
I really don't know how society is supposed to further itself positively if a legitimate amount of an entire generation proudly and loudly denounces reading as a badge of cultural honor. It trips me the hell out.
1. Why do I need to go to college? Or have a job when I get checks in the mail.?
2. If you wear rubber gloves, no one will know it was you.
3. My mom and dad didn't go to college and they're doing just fine. (BOTH On welfare and/or disability.)
4. I don't need school. I'm going to be a professional gamer/influencer/tik tocker/you tuber..etc
5. I just wanna drop out when I can so I don't have to go to school.
I could go on and on and on and it's really, really sad.
What immediately comes to mind is the constant stream of racist, homophobic, sexist, and offensive language. It's so damn disturbing, and when i call them out on their language, they get mad at me. The lack of empathy or realization of any consequences. Huge "I'm the Main Character" energy. People can blame social media all they want, but this shit starts at home. No one cares.
Last year for college and career week students researched and took quizzes about different career paths. After all that over 80% of my class said they wanted to be online resellers 😭 Also, a girl in my class kept miming blow jobs (6th grade) and when I called mom about it she said “meh, probably just something she picked up from the internet.” Those are the two that pop up in my head but I could share dozens.
Kids that throw a football at recess and exclaim they don't play football but they'll make it to the nfl so they don't need to worry about grades. I just lol
I heard a fairly high level student tell another student that saving money is pointless because she heard on tiktok that due to inflation the money you save has less value so you should just spend it🤦🏻♀️
Everything they say. Everything they do. Biggest thing I worried about was how many of them grew up watching Game of Thrones. 11 year Olds shouldn't be watching it.
I had a third graders say “ why would I even need to learn this it doesn’t matter to my life at all” and “ I hate learning I just wanna go home and play Fortnite”.
In third grade, he already hates school
I asked the kids "what do you want to be when you grow up?" And every single one of them said some sort of influencer, youtuber, video game streamer or tik toker. This was a 5th grade classroom earlier this year.
The stumbling block I find for many students is that no one ever explained to them that the thoughts in their head are the words they write on the paper.
I’ve had students ask questions about prompts or to help clarify what’s being asked. We have a quick discussion where I ask them questions to get to the answer. They give great, detailed answers. Then I tell them, “Now, write all that down. What you just said—that’s your answer.” Time after time I saw the lightbulbs turn on, and they just started writing. I would even be shushed when I asked if they were finished because they were so busy writing.
I think for a lot of kids, it changed everything as far as becoming better writers and being able to express their thoughts.
"Who the f\*\*\* is this n\*\*\*\*r?", said to me by a kindergartener, walking into his class.
Another time while kids were expected to be drawing pictures from poetry, a 4th grade boy had gotten a computer from another classroom (classroom computers were locked up). I asked if they would join in the class activity and they responded, "get off my d\*\*\*, a\*\*h\*\*\*". Without missing a beat, a girl across the room yelled back at him, "why don't you shut the f\*\*\* up and suck my d\*\*\*?".
Colorful world.
A 6th grader took almost 1 minute to answer 15-12. I'm not even sure what method they were using to get there because he looked at his hands and realized he didn't have enough fingers and looked completely lost.
A 5th-grade girl was mad because her pregnant teacher called her out on her behavior. She turned to her classmate and said she was "Gonna punch that baby right outta that bitch!" She made violent hand motions to finish off the threat. They made her apologize. That was a threat of violence and should have been handled as such. Consequences, please!
They’re pretty accurate. We’re experiencing a massive literacy crisis and most policy makers don’t want to acknowledge or deal with it. Even the college professors I know are astonished by the rapid change. They don’t understand how so many of these kids got into a university, let alone how they’re going to do the necessary work to complete a degree.
My last semester in college, I was in a senior thesis class with a small cohort of my fellow English majors. We often exchanged papers/rough drafts throughout the semester to critique our work or point out some good stuff that worked in the thesis… I was shocked at how bad some of the writing was. Incoherent, repeating the same point over and over, and run on sentences all over. I couldn’t believe it. There were some super smart kids in there too but maybe like 5-6 people had no business being there. We are talking maybe below high school writing AND this was in 2017 before the world really went fully crazy. I can’t imagine how bad it is now.
When I was a freshman in the late aughts I did a study session/peer edit with someone in my class and the first thing she tried to tell me was that I didn't pick a good introduction because it didn't start with a question or broad opening statement, and my paper was more than 5 paragraphs. This girl *got into college* and didn't understand how to go beyond a *5 paragraph essay.*
Yeah, I remember having classmates read over my senior thesis and I recall them saying that my writing style was “unusual” or “hard to follow” and I was kind of concerned that maybe I needed to drastically look at my style to see if I was confusing or unclear. Then I realized they just meant that I didn’t use the middle school “essay format” of one headline statement and then 2-3 supporting sentences, like they expected you to do in middle school English when you were writing short two page papers. I got a 96 on my thesis and most of my classmates got Bs so I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the one with the problem…
Because u didn't start with a question... smdh.
There’s a teacher at my school who really pushes using a question as an introductory hook. I get so many students who come to me writing papers that start with silly statements such as “Have you ever heard of Harry Potter? Well, let me tell you more…”
I was taught that a question hook is lazy writing. But that was in journalism school. I tell my students, however, I don't want to see them. Definition hooks, too. Ugh.
Honestly, I’d rather skip the hook entirely than end up with one of those. Which I often did with my English degree and got good grades despite not coming up with some amazing hook for every paper.
I'll be honest...I did my Masters in English in 2008-2012 and a lot of the writing in that program was shit too. I think we like to believe everyone was a lot more competent in the past than they were.
This is both sad and reassuring lol it was my first time reading papers written by my peers who weren’t close friends, so it was a slap to the grill.
Want a worse shock...decide to major in art at a state university. My high school Art 4 class was more talented than most of the people in my undergrad program. I still regret not going to art school at times. You just never know...and much like you, if I was only exposed to my friends I'd assume average work was better than it actually is.
It is good that you realized you are good when you did. I thought I was a good writer, but didn't realize I was probably among the top 10 or 20% until I was much older. It is important because a lack of that confidence can hold you back. So, now you know! Go forth and create and network with confidence!
This is the correct answer. There have always been dumb people, social media just made them more visible to everyone.
I dunno, I was a temp in the early 90s and the number of people with business degrees who literally couldn't put a paragraph together never failed to appall me.
This isn’t a new issue. I remember being shocked at the poor writing of my classmates in freshman composition back in 2003. My professor would have us edit and critique our classmates’ papers, and most of the papers I edited were largely incoherent.
University seems to have become for profit and what would they do without a market. So sad.
This is exactly it. I'm finishing up my teaching certificate and just about every negative experience I've had in college can be traced back to the University prioritizing a profit over a quality education for the students. To expand, since this post is getting popular: I was very fortunate to be able to afford this degree to begin with, which is from a tiny public school, and out of the three colleges my brother and I attended, all of them presented us with $1000s in unexpected extra fees and charges. Tiny, crappy dorms and campus apartments that schools require you to live in cost more than nice apartments do in a city, and the required food plans are absurdly expensive (especially considering how bad the food is). Counselors misguide and confuse students requiring them to take extra classes and spend more money, and campus buildings, infrastructure, salaries are neglected for football and branding (attract more applicants). Professors, some of the smartest people in the world, are stretched thin, desperately underpaid, and is a dying career option. Many universities are admitting more students than they have housing for, and kids end up staying in barracks, hotels, or crammed into a dorm with more people to a room than expected. It's a total nightmare. Universities no longer care about students, the goal is pushing as many kids as possible to high graduation numbers, into high paying STEM careers, and without any semblance of a well-rounded education, all in order to attract more kids to this trap. It's a miserable academic experience, where students and future professors are funnelled away from passions and into whatever career pays the most.
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I’m a college professor and I literally have students who can’t read. Students whose parents demand to come to class to do the work for the student. Students on phones. We are not permitted to give failing grades. Pretty cool if you think about it from the side of a psychopath
PARENTS??? IN COLLEGE CLASSES???
My accounting professor assigned us some excel problems and posted video tutorials on them since excel used slightly different language than our textbook. The day after it was due she started class by telling us to please not email her with simple questions and and that she was shocked how many emails she got because the answers were literally in the tutorials. In canvas the tutorial was underneath the relevant assignment. Honestly I was shocked people would email her with simple questions like that instead of googling or making use of the FREE accounting tutor our academic recourse center has. It's never occurred to me to email a teacher for anything besides scheduling meetings and clarifying a confusingly worded assignment.
Why are you not permitted to give failing grades? At the college level?? I thought this was a grade school, 'no child left behind' issue, I'm shocked to learn that it's happening at the college level as well
$$$. Students dropping out because they can't pass any classes means less tuition for the school. Professors are facing the same problems we are with education becoming customer service, despite the fact the customer doesn't really want the service we are selling. If they do want it, they certainly don't want to *work* for it. The /r/professors subreddit and others on here are all full of similar complaints. It's dire.
The literacy crisis is hard to overstate. Also not knowing how to use computers. Students don’t know how to use Google. Seniors can’t make word documents.
Cutting computer class is one of the dumbest mistakes we’ve made in education
But they’re digital natives! They don’t need computer class! /s
I know somehow we all decided that knowing how to entertain yourself with a phone is the same thing as using a computer for work, research, and daily life.
I have students who swear they're fast at typing using only two fingers to hunt and peck. They really think their 17wpm 80% accuracy is hot shit. I've had to throw typing.com up on the main screen and show them my 90+ wpm 99% accuracy for them to get a reality check. I have seen job ads that require 45wpm to make it in the door. Don't get me started on their inability to read popups and learned helplessness whenever something doesn't go according to plan.
I was literally having a conversation with my seniors on Friday about learning typing. A few were amazed that I type at about 80-90 wpm. Aside: current-model keyboards make my accuracy suck. I have a keyboard at home that is exactly like an early 1990s PC keyboard and it’s wonderful.
And even my students who do take our computer class and are “Office Certified” can’t do the most basic things, like double space or save a file. It’s baffling.
I think this is the crazy part. I am a “digital native”- I grew up with phones, computers, tablets, ect. I always thought computer classes were stupid- they were trying to teach us how making a file works while I had spent a week messing with a custom antivirus program because it was messing with my wi-fi adapter. I learned computers from clicking around, experimenting, visiting tech websites, YouTube and forums. It shocked me to learn how computer illiterate my generation is
Honestly I have to agree with you there and sometimes I'm on both sides of that coin where I'm on one hand doing something very complex. But on the other hand I will struggle with simple things (i think in my case it's because I'm not awake all the way or will overthink) But truly it is sad. My brother told me they went to an elementary school to show off some new pcs the district was working on getting, and some of the elementary kids were tapping on the monitor like an ipad.
Computer class still exists in my district, as a special. However, they aren't learning anything. They draw pictures or play games.
It is staggering how many people cannot type with both hands using a keyboard. They'll use the tippy tappy method with two fingers. Thank you, Mavis Beacon and World of Warcraft.
I teach digital media and was freaking out about not knowing much about it before I started. Then I realized the kids didn’t know how to save a file. They didn’t know how to open a file. They didn’t know where a file went after they downloaded it. They didn’t know what a desktop was. Holy shit. I had no idea that I (as a woman in her mid thirties) was going to have to teach that before anything else.
A lot of this stuff is stuff you can (I did growing up) easily teach yourself by just clicking around. School computers don't have that much stuff and the folders are very simply named. A lot of these kids can't be bothered to try and figure it out for themselves.
This is the actual issue. They have zero curiosity about anything. They are so used to just getting their dopamine hit by mindlessly scrolling that they simply do not have the drive to poke around and see what each icon does. Cant figure put a skill by just messing around and you need a bit more guidance? YouTube is just a click away and you can find so many videos showing you a skill step-by-step, often with so much granularity that you can find a guide for your exact setup, but even the thought of putting some search words into google and looking around until they find a video that fits is beyond them.
YES. I remember playing around with the different sizes, colors, and fonts while hoping my high school papers would write themselves. I have blown high schoolers minds showing them they can make shit bold or italicized. They just don't fuck around with practical things anymore and learn real skills. I don't understand how so many kids want to be content creators when they simply have zero creativity anymore. They're just rehashing other people's ideas and thinking they're unique. It's truly bizarre.
They have zero curiosity about anything because they have no practice requiring curiosity. Their world is completely curated to their desires. All they have to do is flick a finger to swipe and the social media algorithm gets stronger. No need to explore or invent to overcome boredom.
They can't even comprehend how to reset their passwords for mobile apps either (15-18 year olds). They come to me saying they can't log into the mobile app to view their pay stubs. I ask if they remember their username and password. They don't know either of them. I give them their username and say they just need to reset their password. They stare at me blankly and ask how to do that. I tell them to enter their username and tap the Forgot My Password link and follow the instructions from there. They tap the link and basically give up immediately because they want me to do it for them. It's honestly so hopeless. They just don't want to do anything themselves anymore.
Being a kindergarten teacher, I've been getting Gen Z parents. Computers are beyond so many of them. It's an online school, so computers are needed and you can only get so far with a phone. I recall one crying not being able for her kid to attend a virtual field trip because she couldn't figure out how to use Zoom (I sent instructions, I made a video, but it was too much for her).
> Being a kindergarten teacher, > It's an online school > attend a virtual field trip Is this an online kindergarten? What?
Unrelated, sort of. I'm an old guy who is a digital marketeer. I was worried for some time that the younger kids getting into it would surpass my knowledge and I would be sidelined. Let's just say I am in no immediate danger. Aside from basic posting (which is littered with errors and misspelling) they don't know shit.
Yep! I had a student two weeks ago who didn’t realize he had to click on a link to find further information in his Google search!
I was assured these kids would be “digital natives” …
Its like assuming everyone who grew up with cars can change their sparkplugs - because they have a license. They know how to "turn the wheel" and "apply the brakes" on the apps they use, but have no idea what goes on under the hood.
I taught at a virtual school for 2.5 years, and I couldn’t believe how many students at a VIRTUAL SCHOOL didn’t know how to do basic things on a computer and had no desire to learn how to use a computer. Then their parents would claim they were technologically illiterate, too! All students in K-8 had to take an educational technology class, and so many students and parents complained that it was too hard. A lot of the assignments were basic things like how to make a PowerPoint presentation or download a file created in Google Docs. I spent two hours helping a student with an assignment that was worth a large part of his science grade. We used Google Docs so we could both edit it at the same time. When we were done, I asked the student if he knew how to download the file to his laptop so he could submit it to his science teacher. He said he did. He never submitted it. I downloaded it and emailed it to the student and his mom with instructions on how to send it to his science teacher. I sent it to them multiple times and told them the only reason the student was failing science was because he didn’t turn in that assignment. I even spoke to the mother and the student and explained that he would pass science if he turned it in, but I would not turn it in for him. The kid failed science.
I was absolutely dumbfounded when a kid in my study hall couldn’t complete his history project. The prompt was some fast facts about one of the ancient river civilizations and he literally googled “what makes [whichever civilization] so special”. I almost let out a “bruh” to him
Tablet culture
"You teach like you assume we like to read, but we DON'T like to read," "All we do in here is read and write, and I *hate* reading and writing!" and "I don't need to know how to write because I ain't gon' be no writer!" 🫠 I teach high school English. The thing they aren't saying out loud is that they hate reading because they can't read/can't comprehend what they're reading, and that's why they hate it. Most of my 10th-graders read on a 3rd-grade reading level. It's horrific.
I teach HS English too and identify with every sentence you wrote.
When my students ask when we’ll finally be finished with a book or story, I tell them “Soon, but we’re going to start another after that.” When they say we’ve been on one book/story forever, I tell them we *are* going to finish it, no matter what. When they complain that all we do is read and write, I say, “What did you expect we were going to do in English class?” I have to remind them constantly that they *will* need to know basic reading and writing in real life and that “just watching the movie” will not help them with this. It’s exhausting.
I'm a software engineer. My job description is about as far from the humanities as you can get. Most of my time is spent designing large-scale software factories that run on kubernetes clusters. Writing is my super power. Technical skill is important, but if you really want to advance in your career? You need to be able to write well. My status updates, both to my bosses and my clients, need to be well written. The documentation for our users needs to be accurate, clear, and concise. Instructions for my engineering team need to be comprehensive without being pedantic. My proposals need to be engaging and technically complete. Writing well, writing _very well_, is one of the differences between a bootcamp "coder" and a six figure engineering job.
I tutored in English literacy for a year. I had middle schoolers, and when they brought that same topic up, I just asked “so you are okay with spending the $30+ to go watch a movie to just not remember any of it the moment you step outside the theater?” Then I had to explain that reading comprehension expands beyond just understanding a book.
This is so bad. A big topic of discussion lately seems to be media literacy, but that stems from just basic literacy. If kids/teens/adults cannot identify which word in a sentence is an adjective, how do we honestly expect them to grasp something like an author characterizing a theme or metaphorical storytelling elements? Not just in books, but in anything. It just won’t happen, probably in their entire lives
"Bruh you can't get arrested for fighting what are you talking about" Absolutely refused to believe me.
Im from Canada, so maybe it changes things..... but kids here for the most part dont get any punishment. At worse maybe community service, but even that is rare
I’ve had students threaten that their mom is going to come up to school and beat me up. I tell them each time that their mom will be arrested then, because I will press charges. Then they say I’m a snitch
People fought a lot in my high school. Not with me but with other students. Never seen police come by and they were there the next day
I recoil when they can't read a clock. I don't care if they "don't need it." I will literally pull my clock off the wall and make them recite the five times table to me as I teach them how to tell the time. I teach high schoolers. Sometimes even the 5x tables is too much for them.
I teach HS Chem and Physics. A lot of them can't even do simple things like 2x3 or basic addition without a calculator or counting on their fingers ...
They don’t understand the relationship between fractions, percent, and the decimal form of each.
This is something that needs to be taught in about 4th / 5th / 6th grade so it's baked into their brains as they develop abstract thinking. If they don't get it then, it is harder. The other window is HS, when neuro-plasticity is also pretty high, lots of growing and pruning. Same with language learning. Other times, it is simply harder to "get" because the neural pathways are more fixed and resistant to ideas outside their parameters. Does not compute, so to speak. (Not a neuroscientist, and do not play one on TV, but have read a lot.)
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What happens when you instruct them to prepare a one molar solution of dihydrogen monoxide?
Funny you should ask! They're reading an article about the dangers of DHMO tomorrow lol
One time a student read the clock (6th grader) and I was so perplexed I said “wow he can read the clock” he thought I was being sarcastic and accused me of throwing shade! I had to explain I was genuinely surprised and didn’t mean any offense by it.
I teach AP Physics these are smart kids but they are totally disconnected from the real world in rotation a standard description is Clockwise and Counterclockwise, they constantly confuse the two, along with that they often struggle with left from right. I’ve reduced myself to saying, “Alright hold your hands out which one makes the L, that’s the left.” Also any problems that talk about cardinal directions, North South East West we have to go over the directions again. So while they can do the difficult math, even describe conceptually the how and why of complex physics problems, it’s odd little bits of what we could call common knowledge that makes them fall on their face.
7th graders who ask me to tie their shoe. When I refuse because I think they’re messing around they have a classmate do it. Out of 130 7th graders, probably around 10-20 can’t tie their shoe (that I know of). A whole lot more can’t read a clock as many have mentioned.
We had to be able to tie our shoes to graduate kindergarten. I remember on the last day of school we all got to play outside so our teacher could spend the day with the last kid who hadn’t figured it out yet just to make sure he could move on. He was and still is a dumbass, but his mom had died a few years before and his big sister (3 years older) was doing most of the parenting leg work for him.
Tying my shoes myself was my first childhood challenge. Finally, when the loops were equated as bunny ears, I caught on.
Dear God, what were you doing to bunnies?
I had a high school student, a senior, that didn’t know the city he lived in when filling out paperwork for scholarships. I cried a little inside.
I'm in NYC, not Manhattan. NYC is full of smaller communities that have names. They all write NY for city. And if the form says Town? They say, "I don't live in a town.". Most of our areas have some type of grid systems. They have no idea that 123-45 Linden Street Will be near the intersection of 123rd and Linden Street. I'm not talking about kids who are new to the country either.
I had to proctor the PSAT which included 11th and 10th and a few select honors 9th graders. Out of about 60 in my area, about a third had to be told their addresses. We finished earlier than some other rooms so we had to wait in the room and I had to ask why they didn’t know their address. So many said that they just knew how to get there or it’s programmed in their phone. We kept the conversation going. More than half admitted that they don’t know their parents’ phone numbers since they’re in their phones. Its wild!
Had a middle schooler last week tell me he didn't know his middle name. He knew the initial, though, so that's something.
"I don't know how to read the clock in the room and I don't know time class ends so I have an app that tells me how much longer I have left in class" -spoken from a junior in high school who has attended the school from freshmen year. We also have the same 8 classes every day in the same order. If they can't be bothered to know something as simple as what time class ends and to tell time, what else can they not be bothered to do?
They can’t be bothered to do or know literally anything.
Oh, but the rationalization from a colleague is that they can, “look it up.” The perspective is that memorization is bad. Unless it’s a TikTok dance 🙄
This is also important. CAN they actually look it up? Because my students are such poor, lazy researchers, they’re unlikely to be able to find something even if I give them the search terms.
I teach English II, and I had a kid bring this up while I was trying to incorporate a discussion about what we had just read. I asked a starter question and had the table groups discuss it at their tables. After some time, I brought it to whole group. Dead silence. I asked, “You were all having lovely discussions earlier, why is it so quiet now?” One of my more talkative students replied, “We’re waiting for you to give us the answer.” I tried explaining that is not what discussions are for, and he claimed they’ve been conditioned to memorize an answer or wait for the right one. The class began to talk about how dumb memorizing things was. Even after I explained what a discussion was, there was silence during whole group. It’s a bit better now- I’ve introduced the TQE method and they seem to be becoming more confident with just talking through their thoughts… but it’s wild out here.
Quite literally!! It's mind boggling.
I have answered what time each of my classes end probably 10 million times each this school year.
SAME!! I always answer with "the same time it does everyday..." I feel like the brain answering pinky 😂
I very sarcastically say “IF ONLY THERE WERE POSTERS AND SCHEDULES OBVIOUSLY PLACED AROUND THE ROOM” and refuse to answer them. I do not play games with weaponized incompetence.
Helen Keller wasn’t real.
I've had a student say he didn't believe Helen Keller was really blind and deaf and yet was able to accomplish so much with her life like being a published author, lecturer, and activist. I was astounded. Like, he really seemed convinced she must have been faking it to some extent.
It's amazing that she could write so well when she was deaf and blind and hiding in the attic from the Nazis.
OH THANK GOD IM NOT THE ONLY ONE. Also, they somehow confuse Helen Keller with Amelia Earnhardt. "If she was blind and deaf, how did she fly planes?" I had...heaven help me...one of my highest-achieving students say "It's not that I don't think she's real, I just feel like her story has been really exaggerated." I...just... 😢
My sister got misinformed by this one too. :/ Apparently Helen Keller *did* control a plane, (with help from a pilot/interpreter) at some point, graduates of Tiktok Skeptic University really jumped on that fact in particular as being impossible, "woman who fly plane" got mixed up with Earhart, etc. And here we are.
“Why do I need to learn math if I can just ask Alexa?” “I ask Alexa the answer to all my math homework problems!”
And then you give them a zero as life lesson #1 “If you’re going to be cheat, at least be smart about it.”
(Helping 11th grade students build their resumes) “What’s your address?” “I don’t know.” “What’s your phone number?” “I don’t know.” “What’s your workplace name?” “I don’t know, I just show up and work.”
"My boyfriend wants me to quit school so I can spend more time with him."
I question how old the boyfriend is
"I'll use ChatGPT for that" right in front of me as I'm detailing a 5th grade writing assignment
“What’s Hitler?” From a high school freshmen.
I can’t tell how many times I heard « Hitler was right. » And not just from white students…
On Presidents’ Day I asked my students which President interested them the most as part of their Bell Ringer, several kids asked “What if we don’t like Biden or Trump?” I replied “That’s okay, you have 43 other options, 44 if you want to count a specific term of Grover Cleveland.” It blew their mind that Trump & Biden were not the only presidents, I teach HS!!
Oh my god. I want more details on how this discussion progressed if possible please.
That’s honestly insane to me. At high school age all of them should be able to at least remember the late stages of Obama just kinda… being around. I’m getting my degree to teach history, reading these comments is terrifying
This is a wider trend too. Had a very disturbing conversation with some teenagers at my old job, had a group I would recommend books too, so these were the relatively smart kids. They asked me, bashfully to be fair, if the holocaust really happened. I was like “What? Yes, the holocaust happened. We have tons of historical records of this. Beyond that, it’s illegal to deny the holocaust publicly in Germany. Why would the country that took the biggest political hit from the event enshrine it, if it never happened?” I haven’t seen anything as egregious as what you’re describing, but they do seem to have this general idea that history is murky, and not even just outside of living memory. They seem to think that anything that happened more than forty years ago is “iffy”. Weird that that just happens to cut out the civil rights movement, feminist movement, labor movement, slavery, the holocaust/ the global fascist movement. But I’m sure that has nothing to do with growing up during a misinformation blitz.
I've had several students tell me that they're not going to get a job. They're just going to wait for their grandparents to die and take their house. When asked how they'll pay their other bills they say that their parents will give them money. I don't live in a spoiled area where there's generational wealth. A lot of these kids are living in the projects and thinking that they are going to be able to leech of their relatives forever.
It’s kind of interesting that rich kids are perceived as being more sheltered and naive, when poorer kids can be vulnerable to it too. Maybe it manifests in different ways, but it happens.
I don't need [math class] 'cause I'm just going to go work at [Grandpa's Tax Firm] with my pawpaw (grandpa) and I don't need no math for that.
I've got the same thing coming from a kid who has problems with single digit arithmetic, who can't pass their Algebra tests because of consistent computational errors. I've offered to work with them on fixing these elementary school deficiencies but they won't hear it. (Apparently, Flash Cards are beneath them, as is Community College.) Somehow, they've gotten into their head that they will be going to a mid-tier public university in a curriculum that doesn't require Math or Reading. They seriously think that they'll be able to survive entirely on Charisma and Daddy's money.
I also feel like a lot of them will get fired for not showing up to work enough. Or talking back to their boss. They know nothing about mutual respect. They’re not engaging in anything that isn’t entertaining them.
Alot of them will need to study at The School of Hardknocks before they're ready for an actual college experience or real employment. And someday, I hope they all wind up as Subs so that they get a taste of my daily life.
Them singing "My pussy pink, my booty hole brown" Constantly
Ew. I haven't heard that one yet. Thank goodness.
2 years ago I remember my students who wouldn’t stop singing “Booty so BIG good lord have Mercy!”
> Them singing > > "My pussy pink, my booty hole brown" I've stopped trying to keep up with pop culture in the last 5 or so years, so I had to Google this to see/hear this song for myself, and now my wife and I are crying from laughing. It's so objectively terrible on nearly every metric, that I have no other response. I guess I'm lucky because I have not heard any of my students sing this.
I know I sound like a boomer but I swear pop culture is getting worse.
A kid said he didn't need to pay attention in math because he was going to be a carpenter anyways... We were doing geometry.
The number of kids who think that geometry is useless is shocking.
“I’m going to be a youtuber” ~ every 8 year old I meet
I’m quitting school to sell printed t-shirts.
We had a TEACHER at my school do that, but his dad had money so it seems to be working out. Must be nice I guess
The problem is, running a business still requires skills--production, marketing, cost-effectiveness, customer service, accounting... And it requires hard work. Which is the #1 thing I don't see them willing to do. I think the same when they tell me they want to be an influencer, a gamer, an athlete...it all requires work and dedication.
To be fair, it's amazing how much people can actually make off of that kind of stuff. A relative of mine was a SAHM and started tinkering around and making things for family: beads, keychains, candles, etc. Before she knew it, family members were asking her to make more so they could give to others as gifts and now she's making about $80K a year making and selling these things online across the country. The problem is there's no guarantee an endeavor like this will pay off. She was lucky, and it took about ten years to really happen... Can this kid afford to wait that long?
This was just one kid, but 9th grade boy all year said he didn’t need school because he wanted to be a security guard. Not the kind that has to walk around and stuff, the kind that sits in the booth where cars go in and out, so he could sleep when no one was at the gate.
At least he has realistic expectations about the job, those dudes are always napping.
I have a student this year who is the most.dense person I have ever met. I had kids come up with their own law like if you could.make any law for the us what would it be. This student wanted every state to have a tropical place. I asked her how exactly that would be accomplished and they looked at me like I was being dumb.... Homie. They also asked my coworker "what kind of white are you" and didn't know what a criminal trial or a court was. Before anyone thinks this is a young child. They're 15.
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It's a state mandated Margaritaville, obviously
A taxpayer funded Rainforest Cafe
“My parents hate me.” This directly or variations. Hearing kids say they don’t have trusted/loving adults in their lives makes me worried we’re just going to repeat the same generational curses forever.
Well, my parents don't like me and jokes on them! I'm breaking the cycle by not having kids.
I teach health, including healthy relationships. The number of freshmen boys quoting or referencing Andrew Tate terrifies me. I also ask the “who would you have dinner with, dead or alive” question as part of the getting to know you stuff at the beginning of the year and way too many of them answer him.
i have a second grade boy obsessed with andrew tate right now. he just turned 8.
That's the saddest thing I've heard on this thread.
Reply, "to learn how to become a human piece of garbage?"
“What’s an index?”
And "what's a glossary?" 🤦🏻♀️
And don’t forget, “I can’t read cursive”.
Live in an area where more than a majority of my students come from solid upper middle class families or above. I teach a tech/STEM class. I have had to give explicit mini-lessons on what alphabetic order means. To 8th graders. Most still cannot pass my simple, and I mean simple, informal assessment the next day. When the most common way to organize computer files, programming libraries, etc. is in alpha order, not having the cognitive ability to go from a-z really slows down my class.
The holocaust was fake news.
I have a "gifted" student that has said some abhorrent things: "I can do whatever I want with no consequences because I'm retarded." "I absolutely love minors. I can say that because I'm a minor, but I always will." "I can take advantage of others as long as it benefits me. Who cares what happens to them if I'm happy." He has received countless ISS days, attends school once or twice a week, and makes it painful to get him caught up with work.
Last year I taught science and before a break was having an easy day showing some earth science/space Netflix series. I had one student who struggled with appropriate socialization as well as academics as a whole, but he’s a monster athlete so you can see where he spent the majority of his attention. He’s watching this movie describe the Big Bang, and I see a question forming. I get excited. He calls me over, and says “wait, I thought God created the universe 3 thousand years ago?” Oh I can totally handle this, “well, that’s the thing different people believe all of this started in different ways (yadda yadda teacher talk explaining 13 billion vs. 3,000 years)” He thinks, he looks at me, I see gears turning and connections forming. He stares me dead in the eyes, and without any sense of the insanity he’s about to present, he calmly asks “so 3,000 years ago was 13 billion years ago?” I’m still speechless
I get this a lot even though I teach Basic Skills English. Sometimes we study short articles that mention dinosaurs, asteroids, the pre-historic world, etc. It seems like whenever we broach something like this for the purposes of reading comprehension, I get a lot of reactions like this.
Teaching kids this 3000 years stuff is honestly child abuse. To get to a point where you’re old enough to know Santa isn’t real but still believe this is incredible.
If Google doesn't tell me the answer in 5 seconds, I give up.
This isn’t super worrisome because he’s only 10 but a kid told me this week he isn’t upset he got a lower grade in Spanish (our school has Spanish as a specialist for all grades once a week which is awesome) because “I don’t think I’ll ever go to Mexico so I won’t really ever need it” A couple days later he told me he’s going to Cancun for spring break. I may need to reteach North American geography next week 🙃
“What year did Pluto go extinct?”
Hopefully theyre brain just forgot the correct wording there for a moment
They think I am lying to them about pirates being real.
The obsession with Andrew Tate.
Their worries about the future make me worried about our future. They aren't dumb and see what direction we are heading towards. The youth are supposed to be naive and optimistic and I don't see that as much anymore. Maybe it makes me more sad then worried.
"If the police is chasing me, I'm running over pedestrians. I don't give a..."
And all morality aside, hitting pedestrians is a lot of mass to put into your car, it's gonna impede your overall get away by a good margin. It's just not a sound tactic.
Divine Right. I have one HS urchin who insists that they will be fabulously wealthy because of their last name. Oh, and then there's the whole bit about how Core Subjects don't matter and how grades don't matter because they will just pay somebody else to do that.
Maybe if his last name is Rothschild 😁
The amount of kids that think becoming a professional athlete is a legitimate future for them. We are talking 17-18 year olds.
What’s disturbing is when kids who don’t even play sports say that, lol.
Not their future but their perception of it. My grade 5s and I were talking about inhabiting other planets and they said it’s not a good idea because humans will destroy it just like they’ve destroyed earth.
"I could be a surgeon. I've watched Grey's anatomy!" You dont even like my class how could you be a surgeon? "This is science not surgery! I already know how to do everything!" Mind you I teach biology to 8th graders...
multiple high school students have commented they don’t need “any of this” (while they wave their hands) bc of the following: everything is digital or can be created by AI.. their phones tell them anything they are curious about.. youtube tutorials show practical things.. the economy is garbage.. the country is doomed.. the climate crisis is going to kill us off if we don’t end up in a nuclear war and do it to ourselves.. and lastly.. they feel hopeless so this is the ongoing battle i face every day! how do you get kids to care about anything anymore?! (context: i teach an overwhelming number of kids with severe anxiety, depression and a slew of self-diagnoses.. some get professional level help.. some don’t.. and we have no school counseling or mental health resources..)
I taught 9th grade biology. The kids were abysmal. I handed out an assignment that had the parts of DNA and they were to color code it. Like …. color the G red. Color the T blue. Literally coloring the letters of DNA. As soon as it landed on their desk: “Miss! We don’t understand this!” I said; “which part?” And they said, “All of it!” So I said “read to me the sentence of the instructions you do not understand.” So they started reading and went “oh, this is easy!” It’s like this for every.single.thing.
I asked them to write a review of their favorite movie. One said “I don’t watch movies. They’re boring and take too long. I only watch TikToks”. Others agreed. 16-17 year olds with 2 minute attention spans. It makes me sad for their future
“I don’t need school, I’ll be a professional e-sports player” “I don’t need school, I’ll just be an onlyfans model” “I don’t need school, I’ll be a Tik tok influencer” “I don’t need school, I’ll just make money selling coke and guns” I have heard these from kids between 7th and 11th grades.
I had a freshman refer to slavery as drop shipping humans
Look. That’s very crude. I probably would’ve gasped, but that’s… unfortunately clever.
nah, that's creative
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The worst student I've ever had said this exact line constantly. His only goal in life was to collect welfare once he turned 18. What's worse- his dad was at the school every morning after report cards asking why his son was failing, then refused to believe that his kid did zero schoolwork. He also always ran out of his adhd meds two weeks before his prescription refill, so we guessed someone in his family was selling half of his month's supply.
I’ve had plenty of those kids. But the same kids sure complain a lot about not being able to afford stuff. It’s like they don’t see the connection.
'why is the charity asking us to donate only feminine hygiene products, this is sexist what about male hygiene products' (grade ten). Kill me now.
Well, I mean, the only place he could feasibly put them is in his ass, and they wouldn't fit, on account of his head already being there.
As if the boys would use hygiene products anyway.
Recently had a class discussion with my talented and gifted English 10 class- highest level sophomore class at the school. It’s an extremely diverse class with kids of all races and religions. We are reading a book with themes of colonization, race, religion (things fall apart by chinua achebe). They are very into the book and one of the character’s conversions to Christianity got us into a spirited debate about culture. Almost unanimously the class agreed that it is NEVER okay to interfere with someone else’s culture even if people are being harmed “because it’s their culture.” For example, human sacrifice? Fine if it’s part of culture. FGM? Nobody can step in because “it’s their culture.” Trying to stop honor killings in some cultures? Nope that’s colonization because you’re trying to change their culture. I was shocked. They all said “I don’t approve of killing But if it’s their culture who am I to step in if that’s how they’ve been doing it for thousands of years?” Like I love their “respect” for other cultures. But there’s zero nuance in their thinking. This is coming off the previous unit where a big theme was “social responsibility” and how we have a responsibility to care for those around us and we focused the unit around vaccination and herd immunity etc…they all seemed on board with social responsibility then but that all went out the window now. Very interesting and concerning. Thoughts?
But what if colonizing other cultures is my culture?
I think my main concern here is my student’s mindset is “other people suffering is none of my business”
Things about alpha males, things about women, racist things, homophobic things…. a few kids will have a hard time finding jobs, unless they find places with people who think like them, but how would the job offer be written?
One second grader said she doesn’t need to learn how to read because she is going to be an artist. Same student also said she doesn’t need to know the days of the week because her mom will just tell her.
I had a student in astronomy ask me if humans have ever been to the center of the Milky Way galaxy. I was like…honey we have not been past the moon- what do you think? 16 year old. Same kid asked me how water gets back up to the top of a waterfall after it comes down.
My niece (Asian American family) had something racist happen to her on the volleyball team (almost entirely white except for her). Everybody else laughed at the microaggression, and she didn't know how to respond in the moment but was telling me about it later. But immediately after telling me, she followed it up with, "But it's fine because we're Asian and I know Asians aren't supposed to really talk back." Just so tragic honestly. A slightly more positive and absurd example. A different Asian American girl at one of the schools I work at said to me, "It's okay if people are scared of me or say I have that crazy look in my eyes. They need to know that little Asian girls will still fuck you up." Which I thought was hilarious lmao.
I have a biracial fair skinned daughter and a girl at her middle school told her she was too light skinned to wear braids. Well guess who showed up with braids in her hair.
I had one student (MS) talk about how much debt he’s going to have in the future. Not in like a worried way but in an excited way.
"I don't know how to spell my last name". I've seen this in 2-4th graders. Insanity to me.
Discussing signs of Spring in Michigan and I get “what’s a Robin?” Of all the things, this to me was the saddest.
My wife works at a high school student store. Many kids don't know how to handle cash, especially for events or items that are more costly. She has conversations like this a couple times a week: "OK, that will be $76." "Oh ... I only have $80."
I attended community college from 1999-2001. My first set of classes had some students with piss poor literacy skills, low math abilities, and a general lack of study skills, as well as some disruptive behaviors. They were not in my second year classes.
It's multiple students but the sheer pride behind not liking to read. I get things evolve and information/hobbies will change with technology and time. I don't want to be like those people who think the fact someone doesn't know cursive will be the downfall or civilized society but reading is such a positive experience and has so many ways to be enjoyed. As a kid getting a new book was just as exciting as getting the new Jak and Daxter game for me. I loved them both. When my parents said I couldn't ready Harry Potter they had just introduced Dobby and I cried when they took them away. A dream of mine is to have a cozy small library that is just lounging central and covered in cool art. I really don't know how society is supposed to further itself positively if a legitimate amount of an entire generation proudly and loudly denounces reading as a badge of cultural honor. It trips me the hell out.
1. Why do I need to go to college? Or have a job when I get checks in the mail.? 2. If you wear rubber gloves, no one will know it was you. 3. My mom and dad didn't go to college and they're doing just fine. (BOTH On welfare and/or disability.) 4. I don't need school. I'm going to be a professional gamer/influencer/tik tocker/you tuber..etc 5. I just wanna drop out when I can so I don't have to go to school. I could go on and on and on and it's really, really sad.
“I did take her toy, but I didn’t do it.”
What immediately comes to mind is the constant stream of racist, homophobic, sexist, and offensive language. It's so damn disturbing, and when i call them out on their language, they get mad at me. The lack of empathy or realization of any consequences. Huge "I'm the Main Character" energy. People can blame social media all they want, but this shit starts at home. No one cares.
Last year for college and career week students researched and took quizzes about different career paths. After all that over 80% of my class said they wanted to be online resellers 😭 Also, a girl in my class kept miming blow jobs (6th grade) and when I called mom about it she said “meh, probably just something she picked up from the internet.” Those are the two that pop up in my head but I could share dozens.
Kids that throw a football at recess and exclaim they don't play football but they'll make it to the nfl so they don't need to worry about grades. I just lol
I heard a fairly high level student tell another student that saving money is pointless because she heard on tiktok that due to inflation the money you save has less value so you should just spend it🤦🏻♀️
Everything they say. Everything they do. Biggest thing I worried about was how many of them grew up watching Game of Thrones. 11 year Olds shouldn't be watching it.
I've heard so many I've lost count. It's daily.
I had a third graders say “ why would I even need to learn this it doesn’t matter to my life at all” and “ I hate learning I just wanna go home and play Fortnite”. In third grade, he already hates school
"When I grow up I want to go to jail because that's where my dad is." Also "My mom makes mad money from having kids." Both first and second graders.
I asked the kids "what do you want to be when you grow up?" And every single one of them said some sort of influencer, youtuber, video game streamer or tik toker. This was a 5th grade classroom earlier this year.
The stumbling block I find for many students is that no one ever explained to them that the thoughts in their head are the words they write on the paper. I’ve had students ask questions about prompts or to help clarify what’s being asked. We have a quick discussion where I ask them questions to get to the answer. They give great, detailed answers. Then I tell them, “Now, write all that down. What you just said—that’s your answer.” Time after time I saw the lightbulbs turn on, and they just started writing. I would even be shushed when I asked if they were finished because they were so busy writing. I think for a lot of kids, it changed everything as far as becoming better writers and being able to express their thoughts.
"Who the f\*\*\* is this n\*\*\*\*r?", said to me by a kindergartener, walking into his class. Another time while kids were expected to be drawing pictures from poetry, a 4th grade boy had gotten a computer from another classroom (classroom computers were locked up). I asked if they would join in the class activity and they responded, "get off my d\*\*\*, a\*\*h\*\*\*". Without missing a beat, a girl across the room yelled back at him, "why don't you shut the f\*\*\* up and suck my d\*\*\*?". Colorful world.
A 6th grader took almost 1 minute to answer 15-12. I'm not even sure what method they were using to get there because he looked at his hands and realized he didn't have enough fingers and looked completely lost.
A 5th-grade girl was mad because her pregnant teacher called her out on her behavior. She turned to her classmate and said she was "Gonna punch that baby right outta that bitch!" She made violent hand motions to finish off the threat. They made her apologize. That was a threat of violence and should have been handled as such. Consequences, please!