42 Times Teachers Shared Why They Are Seriously Worried For Younger Generation

The college I went to added two levels of remedial courses that didn't previously exist for math

Previously students wouldve been entirely rejected from the program if they couldn't meet the entry level math requirement, now they're deferred to what's effectively a "remedical year". They wouldn't be doing this is there were enough incoming students with sufficient knowledge.

As a teacher of 13 years in middle school reading/language arts, short answer is yes.

A LOT of things have gone into this not just covid. Kids aren't forced to read to alleviate boredom or learn like previous generations. Smart phones and tablets from a young age have eroded attention spans and boredom tolerance. I can't compete w tiktok or YouTube and shouldn't be expected to.

Parents can't or don't want to be involved in their kids education, don't value it bc they got picked on/weren't smart but turned out ok/teachers are indoctrination kids.

All of the standards/skills that used to be in 2nd grade have been pushed into K. K is no longer socialization and fine motor skills w phonics exposure, it's expecting them to be full reading by mid year which isn't developmentally appropriate. Until a few years ago elementary wasnt teaching phonics so kids dont have tools to decode unfamiliar words and they definitely dont care enough to look it up. Things we did regularly like weekly vocab, themed units have gone away entirely.

If you took a middle/high level reading test you might not pass; the reading snippets sometimes require background knowledge students might not have, I don't always agree w the answers and I have a masters. Curriculum is usually written by one of the major publishers, is absolutely trash that everyone hates, but has to be followed due to state mandates for "high quality materials of instruction". Novels are usually only used in advanced classes in favor of articles and snippets.

It used to be we'd have several sections of honors/advanced classes; now we're lucky to fill 2 sections in a grade level. We have kids in high school working on phonics and they just get passed along through middle school bc of metrics and some old study in the name of equity.

I'm sure there's more but it's summer and this post is eating my pool time.

Yesterday I bought something with cash, and not only could the cashier not calculate the change, she had to ask her older coworker which coins were which.

I teach high school (from freshman to seniors).

Obviously it depends from kid to kid, but as a general trend, it's pretty bad. Even just getting them to read a set of directions can be like pulling teeth.

"What do I do next?"

"What did you just do?"

(describes step 4)

"Alright, then what does step 5 say?"

"I don't know."

"Well... read it?"

(they try and read it)

"I still don't get it."

God forbid I ask them to read a section of a textbook or an article longer than two paragraphs. Even with guiding questions, it's a real struggle for them.

Similarly, but not nearly as talked about, I've noticed a trend as a science teacher that kids have no *spatial* skills as well. Like, I'm asking 18 years olds to make a free swinging pendulum and it takes them 2 hours to figure it out (I don't necessarily want to just tell them *how* because the struggle is their brains actually starting to learn these skills). I ask 15/16 year olds to make a ramp for a ball giving them boxes and cardboard and it's a big struggle.

Young children aren't playing with or building with blocks or toys they hold in their hands, many things that you used to have to open or close yourself are automatized (doors to buildings, vans, etc) and it's stunting their ability to not only visualize things and problem solve in a 3D manner, but instinctually understand things like momentum and forces (e.g. when a sliding door didn't close all the way, they don't have the instinct to push it *faster*. They just keep pushing it confused why it won't close).

I’m not a teacher but I can see what other people in my college humanities class post. We’re absolutely doomed. 22 y/o with the hand writing of a 3rd grader. 

ETA: I have bad handwriting, and what I’m seeing is absolutely atrocious. Paired with sentences like “I like dogs bcause they are dogs” type sentences. .

I am a high school math teacher, this comment will probably be buried under all the "not a teacher, but yes" comments.

When solving anything with call and response...
Me: "and what is 1× __" or "what is 0 × __"
Class: *crickets*
Me: *sigh* "you all have calculators..."
Class: *4 kids pick up the calculator, ask again what I want to know from them, and plug it in. The rest exist in their mental voids.*

They struggle to pass Algebra because they dont have their multiplication tables memorized. They dont know number families. They need to legitimately work hard at GCF/LCM. They can't mentally add and subtract numbers. They can't even fathom long division. Half their parents dont see the value in an education, the other half are too busy on their phones and social media to be any sort of a role model.

Granted, I teach outside of a major city on the east coast in a very transient neighborhood, students come from multiple run down areas to live in ours briefly. The amount of halfway houses in my district is actually insane.

On the other hand, I tutor a 6th grader weekly in a suburb closer to where I live and she gives me so much hope for society. She has a drive to learn, loves long division, can reduce fractions mentally, and all the things my high schoolers mentally quit over. She struggles with spelling and reading, but has made huge strides over the past 2 years and is ahead, again, of many of my high school students.

Parents need to step up. Don't buy them phones or tablets. Read with them. Encourage them to spent large amounts of time outdoors playing. Study and practice mental math with them. Or, guaranteed, they are going to be dumber than you.

I personally know many parents who are not teaching their grade school kids and lower how to read or do anything.

The system has many ways to hide it.  Grade inflation, grade bracketing, "rounding up", pushing them through, fudging the numbers, etc.  Some of these are motivated by trying to meet funding requirements, some by avoiding liabilty created by legislative requirements and hyper-litigious parents.

A friend of mine who homeschooled most of his children sent his youngest to the public high school at which I work, per his child's wishes.  He was surprised that over her freshman year she read one book in class, while her homeschool cohort read 14.

You guys have to understand that it’s not just the reading and writing. The reading and writing is just mentioned to much because it’s a definitive, objective metric.

As a teacher I can also tell you that they’re also terrible people that don’t know how to treat others whatsoever.

My wife works at a bookstore/coffee shop and they hire highschool kids during the summer. She keeps telling me about this highschool kid who cannot make change, with a computer. Like, the computer tells him the correct change, he just can't count it..

Not a teacher but I hire high schoolers at my place of work. I'm seeing kids use "here" instead of "hear" or something and it's absolutely insane. 
It used to be limited to your/you're and there/their/they're. Now it seems like no homonyms are safe.

Kids can’t even handle movie day. That’s how cooked their attention span is.

Im a tutor and the things I see are concerning. One of the biggest concerns is that high-school students cannot understand poetry. Figurative language makes no sense to them. They do not know how to think critically.

I'm a professor and teach intro economics at a mid-tier university. I would estimate the percentage of students who can multiply 17 by 3 in their heads to be about 15%. I once had a student argue that you can't make a number bigger by dividing it with another number (a decimal below 1) because "that's not how math works". I also teach a (upper level) data analysis class, and a student once asked me "What do you mean by right-click?".

Above all, the tragic part is the apathy. Most students don't even care enough to try and cheat.

I had to rework a unit in which the whole path of the lesson was geared toward them eventually writing a review of their favourite book, after chatting about their favourite book and doing a reading activity about someone else's favourite book.

Problem was, they couldn't even get past the chatting stage. They didn't know any books. So I switched it to films. They didn't even know any films. All they knew was tiktokers and youtubers. At least they knew Doraemon and a handful of cartoons, so I made it write about the best TV programme you've ever seen  

One of them started his essay with "the best programme I've seen is news." .

As a Gen Z (I'm 26), we had to spend a whole class period in high school learning how to tell time on a clock and doing elementary worksheets because most students in the class didn't know how... I can only assume it's gotten worse since then, unfortunately 😬.

Yes. As an education para, these kids have regressed so much. And they don’t want to learn or to be there. Their parents don’t hold any accountability, and don’t push their kids to learn or to study.

I hate to say it, but I feel like the phones and social media has a lot to do with it. It’s literally rotting their brains. Along with COVID and home classrooms of course. Society and learning slid back so much.

I teach middle school. They can't tell time. They don't know the names or values of coins. Very few know their times tables. If presented with a problem like 20-18, they need to write it down.

Of course they're not all like that, but after 27 years of teaching, the percentage of helpless students is MUCH higher than it used to be.

The assumption that kids can use a computer needs to be forgotten. Kids are growing up with iPads and no family desktop, so I’ve got 13 year olds turning up to class with a shiny new laptop and they don’t know how to create files, save to specific locations, drag and drop, transfer files to another drive or set out a word document.

Having a Gen Alpha kid, I can definitely say the issue is real. We think it's to do with how the learning process has changed so much from when we were little. The kids aren't taught to memorize their basic math tables (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) which is the foundation for all the other math concepts. I remember having to make our own flash cards in elementary as part of the learning so that for an entire school year we were focused on a particular math type. After seeing my youngest's school lessons over the years, the curriculum tries to cover all the maths all at once, introducing algebra and other concepts so that unfortunately the basics are glossed over instead of being focused on. And all of the other subjects are all over the place too. My school system had vocabulary all the way up through high school with a new word/definition list every week and a quiz every Friday. We learned the parts of speech, how to diagram sentences, synonyms, homonyms and all that. I had an in-law who was a teacher and a darn good one at that, but she was talking to me about the learning program they were introducing and it was more about keeping the kids' interest than really filling their minds with information. I understand wanting to keep the kids' focus but for some stuff you just have to sit down and write stuff out multiple times and ways instead of having dance time.

I will also add that the teachers are also burdened with the administrative side of things, always having to be focused on numbers instead of being able to relax and work with each of their kids. Since the administration pressures the teachers to keep test scores up and to pass every kid, the teachers tend to just do what they can to make sure that happens, again forcing them to artificially bump a kid up when they're not actually ready.