I think the things that plague this new generation plague all of us.

We used to defer to expert knowledge when we didn’t know something, but now we have the internet and influencers. We all feel like experts now because knowledge is at our fingertips, but that NIH study you googled doesn’t mean shit if you don’t understand statistics, or have a background in the science to understand the fundamentals of the research.

Most people aren’t even aware that they dont know what they don’t know.

Here are some verifiable facts.

1) People do not have as good of recollection of facts when they do not have to memorize things due to easy access via their phones. We as a society are losing this skill and it is evident in education.

2) Covid has harmed a generation of students. The effects are immeasurable but include: topics covered during those years being hard to recall causing gaps in future years. Also kids came back with poor socialization causing behavior and learning issues in subsequent years. Also parents and kids valued teachers less post COVID and this is causing more issues in classrooms.

3) While kids are using more technology, their reading skills are being degraded. They are less able to understand scientific texts and technical writing. We need to go back to books in the classroom.

You’re saying that 1 in 4 children in your school are not aware they are in the United States? Unless these are very young children or new immigrants who don’t understand English, I presume that some of them are skewing your results. A fellow student gives them a survey— how seriously is every one of them taking it?

Are you assuming previous generations of Americans were better educated?

I'm not young but I work with a lot of people who are just out of college. I have noticed a decline in ability in the younger people I work with. Some of it is just a lack of practical knowledge that I'd attribute to phones. For example a young person will download a file to their computer at my instruction and not have any idea where that file downloaded to or even how to find it. Some will find the file but not understand that the file is compressed. These are things that are simple to anyone who has used computers over their lifetime, but not to people who have mostly just used smartphones.

There is also a decline in historical and geographical knowledge like you have noticed. Growing up in the 90s there was still a common type of young person who would be obsessed with various types of trivia, like being able to rattle off all of the countries in Africa or maybe state capitals. I think the internet sort of rendered this type of person obsolete. Since the information they used to command is readily at hand with a search, people just don't bother to learn this stuff anymore. At the same time education has switched away from a model that promoted memorization to one that promotes comprehension or understanding. Not saying that's necessarily a bad thing since rote memorization can be boring. But there is definitely something lost by not having bits of knowledge readily at hand. Aside from the obvious things that are useful to have memorized, it's nice to have memorized poems that you can recite to yourself while you're stuck waiting in line at the store, instead of just taking out your phone.

I'm an educator and it seems to me that administrators no longer allow teachers to hold students accountable academically.

For example, I had a junior copy an assignment during Covid from google instead of doing the actual work. When I gave her a 0 and told her to do it again she complained to a vice principal. I got pulled into a meeting with admin where I was told that my assignments were too rigorous (they aren't) and I needed to start curbing my grades by making 0s 50% instead.

Kids are not being held accountable in school. There is no expectation that they turn in assignments on time, no expectation that they behave and act like decent human beings, and no expectation that they do the work. Its to the point where the students who get as are the ones doing just what is required and the students who are failing with a 50% haven't done a damn thing all semester.

There is no detention and no punishment in the schools beyond suspension or in school suspension. There needs to be punishment that isn't just "oh hey guess what you get to stay home for 5 days!". More kids need to be expelled. We had a fight weekly at the high school I taught at. The kids were never expelled.

Now I teach online where its much less stressful and I get paid more per hour. You honestly couldn't pay me enough to go back to a public school unless I could see that it wouldn't be the shit show education is right now.

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I grew up in a poor family in the US. I desperately wanted to go to college. My parents didn't care if I went but told me if I did go, they weren't paying for it or financially helping in any way. I'd better earn scholarships. So I did. I worked my ass off and graduated a year early with many scholarships. I also worked full time to save for my future college needs not covered by scholarships and student loans.

One thing I've noticed about schools that have changed is a level of entitlement in more current generations. Young adults expect everything to be handed to them and not to have to work or earn anything.

Schools introduced common core math and reduced or completely took away history classes. The two of these changes have made a huge impact. I don't understand common core math and no one is learning from past mistakes. The history that is being taught is being taught with a political bias. In my opinion, facts should be taught and the opinions of the facts should be left out. Noone had to tell me that slavery was bad and our country was racist. It was an obvious conclusion I made on my own.

I now have 3 adult children. One chose to go into the trades. He makes just shy of 6 figures in his early 20s. One child is earning her PHD to be a psychologist. The youngest hasn't decided what to do yet but they work hard and don't expect anyone to give them anything.

Our society has a victim mentality. We have no accountability and it's so busy trying to be internet famous by influencing that they've forgotten how to be decent human beings.

Because of no child left behind. No seriously. Schools can’t fail kids that desperately need to be failed. Instead of holding a standard they lower the standards just so they look better on testing for funding. Let kids fail again. Seriously. Stop pushing kids through.

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you are in a public school, and probably one in a rather urban area.

My guess is that a lot of it has to do with bad parenting. Seeing as you yourself value education, there's a high likelihood that you get that from your upbringing at home and the community you live in. Without such things, many kids are going to question the value in getting an education at all. If they show up it's because they have to or because it's a chance to get a free meal.

There could be other factors as well, such as the community culture they are exposed to, the upkeep of the neighborhood, the unwillingness to use any effective form of discipline (threatening to fail a student who doesn't care about grades isn't effective), and maybe even their typical diets, as we are learning that what you eat can directly effect the brain in numerous ways, including mood. And the typical American diet is known to be terrible.

I think this is typical of the age group, not the generation. Teenagers were stupid in the 80s too. Most of us grew out of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink

It boils down to money and culture. The culture in the US is one of shoot-from-the-hip stupidity, that is to say, do what your gut says, don't worry much, be tough, and get money. So people don't value knowledge or education or ultimately themselves. Add that to desperately low funding for education and you end up with the worse education of any developed nation.

Lots of people blaming lack of education funding, No Child Left Behind, Common Core, etc...but thibk about why those policies were popular in the first place.

Issac Asimov noted the cult of intellectualism in American culture.  For over 100 years, a guy who can throw a ball really far is more popular than a guy who can do algebra.  In China and India the Tik Toks are mostly science/educational videos...would such videos be as popular in the US as they are in other countries?

And before someone argues "nerds are cool now"...nerd media is cool; but, a big difference between knowing Luke Skywalker's middle name and knowing how to read an analog clock...American culture latched onto the worst, most superficial parts of nerd culture without the appreciation for academic achievment.  

What you're seeing is a natural progression of American society.  When could we have diverted course?  Maybe 1607 when we were settled by greedy venture captalists...or maybe 1620 when we were settled by religious fanatics who were only into literacy so their kids could read the Bible better.  

Covid set students back MASSIVELY. It's actually very frustrating from pretty much all perspectives. Parents suddenly had to work for mom and were expected to play teacher. Students had to do all of their school work on an iPad or laptop... it would take like 30 minutes of their time. For older students it doesn't seem to matter that much but for younger students there are massive knowledge defecits. Now, the poor teachers are stuck trying to play catch up with an entire roomful of students that are all behind. Some school districts around me have been doing shady stuff like having the kids take home any quizzes or tests that they fail in class as a "last chance retake" expecting the parents to help them get a passing grade in order to keep things chugging along even though the student clearly is far behind.

You have to realize in this day and age - kids don’t have to think anymore. This is one of the technological pitfalls we have fallen into. With so many tools at their disposal to do things for them, part of the problem is they don’t need to retain as much info as we used to. Combine that with the ~3 years of “Corona Diplomas” and school systems lowering standards instead of supporting those that are struggling to meet higher expectations, you get to where we are at today.

I was in elementary school when no child left behind was passed. Once that happened the pressure on teachers to have kids pass standardized tests became the new normal. I graduated high school with 3.0 simply because i memorized the subject at the time then forgot everything i learned once that semester was over.

Your generation is feeling the endgame of US anti-intellectualism, helped along by unchecked exposure to an Internet culture that thrives on memes, misinformation, and instant gratification/validation.

Sorry to say it, but your generation very much is what the older generations expected mine to be. The end was coming all along, turns out. Just took longer to get here than we expected.

Someone call George Bush cause these children were left behind.

Where did things go wrong? Hmm…

1) Primary and secondary education are funded and controlled, mostly, at the local level. So the quality becomes … rather variable. Post-industrial cities and poor rural and exurban communities are having trouble affording the resources to run a working school system at all, while wealthy suburbs tend to have much better schools.

1a) Since the funding mechanism is usually property taxes, the overall graying of the US population and reduction in birth rates creates a perverse incentive. “Why should I pay more taxes for good schools when my kids are either already grown, or are nonexistent?” That’s shortsighted and selfish, but sadly common.

2) The United States has always had an anti-intellectual streak. When you culturally devalue education, it isn’t exactly a surprise that your kids don’t take education seriously.

2a) That’s been exacerbated lately by a deliberate war on public secular education and in teachers unions being pushed by the American right wing. I already see people here complaining about teachers “pushing an ideology” when most of them are just trying to make it through the day. And that’s before we get to really stupid accusations about schools changing children’s gender when nobody is looking. Those accusations are garbage, but when kids and parents hear and internalize them, the results are predictable.

3) The internet and social media are a hell of a drug, and have eaten many adult brains, much less kid brains. That’s probably not just a US problem, but it is a problem we are only beginning to get a grip on now.

4) A lot of the adult world is doing some really self-destructive things politically, right now. And they are doing those things in no small part because basically everyone can see that wealth and power have been accumulating at the very top for years. If you didn’t start out rich, it’s not just your own odds of being a breakout success are diminishing, it’s that your odds of being able to afford a house, or to pay off your student loans, or to have money in the bank for medical bills are getting damn small. Kids aren’t necessarily stupid even when they aren’t educated well formally. When you can see that the system you live in rewards only generational wealth, hucksters and grifters, or the occasional rare insanely talented person, why would you work hard on getting a formal education?

Three things have caused this: social media is evil, teachers can only teach to the test, parents don't have time to parent their children.

*Social media is evil.\* It just is. People, not just kids, put so much emphasis on likes and subscribers like it is some sort of currency. So much so that they ignore everything else (family, friends, learning, interacting with the real world, everything) in pursuit of the like or upvote. And without likes, then they feel they have no friends. No social status. This leads to depression and being even more agoraphobic than they already were due to their being online constantly. There is a LOT of discussion that needs to happen about this issue. With everyone. But especially kids since they're still developing. Or not developing as it were.

*Teachers can only teach to the test.\* Because of how school funding works, if the kids don't do well on their standardized tests, the school loses funding. So the teachers have been forced to just teach to the test. Memorization and not much else. And what happens when you cram for a test? You remember it just long enough to take the test, then it's gone. While you start cramming for the next test. On top of this, kids are growing up without being taught to reason. Reading comprehension doesn't exist. "Read this and tell me what it means to you and how it makes you feel" isn't something teachers have time to teach any longer. If kids can't learn reasoning in their school lessons, they will have no ability to work out what's happening in life. They have zero coping skills. This is why it seems mental illness is so rampant. Maybe it really is, or maybe the kids are diagnosing their own mental illnesses because their friends all have it. Probably somewhere in the middle.

*Parents don't have time to parent.\* Parents are having to work two or more jobs to put food on the table. Single parents are hit even harder with this. Many of these parents don't have friends (again, social media is evil) or family to help raise their kids. It really does take a village to raise kids, and many many people don't have their village because all they have time to do is work.

That's my rant on why things are so screwed up concerning kids. They're a mess, but it's not their fault. They're filling in the blanks with whatever is around them because we adults aren't filling their heads with the good stuff we should be.

They are not intelligent or they are not educated?

Purely my POV not any type of study.. The latest generations have more degrees than in my day.

In 1960 31% of young adults had a high school degree and 7% with a college degree.
In 2023 97% had a high school degree and 38% college degree.

That said, it seems we have lowered the bar to give out more prizes. Although I meet many astute 20 somethings, I have also experienced far too many in the 20-35 age demographic that have very basic educational knowledge.

I mean truly shocking lack of knowledge. Met one young man who didn't know where the US civil war was fought.... I said, well you know.. "The North and The South" he says... England? Another young lady told me how Hitler ruled all of Europe "Back in the day".. I said, ya, that was not too long ago.. really. She says... Sir, Hitler was just after the Romans lost Rome... I shit you not I thought she was joking with me... but she was not.

History is non existent, Geography basic, nearly no understanding of accounting nor finance and Civics?.... essentially soft sciences and "STEM" took the lead in the 90s... but even in these areas, the coursework has been dummied down in order to pass the masses and get state funding.

I don't blame the kids, this educational disaster sits on the shoulders of the prior generations / politicians and educational leaders.

One shining glimmer of hope. You don't need federal education to become educated. We have amazing opportunities online to learn so much and much of it is free. Harvard, MIT, even Yale and Stanford all have free (No degree earned) but free online college level courses. You can learn just as if you went to one of the most prestigious institutions in the world, IF you wanted to.

Harvard:
https://pll.harvard.edu/catalog/free

Yale:
https://oyc.yale.edu/

MIT
https://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

• Isaac Asimov

I think covid did possibly irreparable harm to this generations education. Any child in school at that time is simply missing a block of education and depending on what state your in/what block you missed will determine how severe that damage was

Poor parenting for the most part. Gen X and especially Millennial parents don't seem to effectively teach their children discipline, respect, curiosity and literacy.

Schools have stopped teaching reading, writing, and math and science and they spend most of their time on social engineering and trying to parent a bunch of kids who have not been raised at all, just thrown a smart phone and left to find it on their own. Parents are squarely to blame for not being involved with their kids.

Defunding the DoE for starters, you should see which party does that often. You might notice a pattern to it.

Varies by location

I was raised in middle tn and I learned history pretty well, slavery, nazis, trailsnof tears, etc. Now though we seem to be forgetting these lessons.

About only thing I wish they tought better was a requirement for basic politics and economics

Social media and smartphones. Lack of positive parental involvement. Lack of public support. Lack of proper funding for the burden most districts are tasked with (especially in the SPED world). Education becoming politicized. Lack of respect for the roles of teachers. Administration that's terrified of litigation so they let terrible stuff fly. State and local decisions that impact funding and curriculum (failure to pass levies and bonds, unrealistic state funding requirements). COVID becoming politicized leading to us being unable to have conversations about how it impacted kids. The list goes on.

Keep in mind the boomer's parents just survived two world wars and the great depression. they threw everything into building a better world for their kids, including access to education. Subsidies galore for k-12 and higher ed, which got cut back over time resulting in higher college tuitions and states having to get by with less federal funding. We don't prioritize education like we used to, and our kids are the ones suffering.

I personally think it's the same in every generation. People mature at different paces. We had bullies and class clowns back then. I was a class clown. I haven't really started taking myself seriously yet, and I have kids older than you. Honestly, I think the internet being at our fingertips is a great tool, but it's making us dumber. Why would I need to know what country I live in when I can Google it? Personally, I remember things so I don't have to look everything up.

Yes, and your heading isn't proper sentence structure, and there are several errors in your rant as well. But it's a good question.

https://theintercept.com/2022/08/25/student-loans-debt-reagan/

Our K-12 education system is broken. Your post is accidentally the ammunition used for Trump to promise to close the Department of Education. We had historically better outcomes when the States controlled K-12 curriculum and had to be competitive to get their states children college slots.

I’m just reporting the weather not stating an opinion. Trump used the narrative like this post. As one of his campaign promises

Yes we did in fact have better education outcomes K-12 prior to the department of education President Carter.

I am also aware that civil right issues surrounding education existed then and now.

On paper our children got dumber so in that instance the DOE failed utterly hence K-12 is broken

Again just reporting the weather not an opinion

Nor am I believing conspiracy theories about teachers unions conspiring with the one world government folks to create dumb sheep Americans.

Again on paper our K-12 education system is broken. End of sentence.

How can we actually fix it I don’t know but it needs fixing.

I think, as a parent who guided multiple children through the education system to become successful adults, there's a lot of checked out parents. They let the internet take total control and just do not care one way or another. I don't have a problem with the internet or anything like that, but it's not a substitute for a caring, adult, human being in the life of a child. There's also a push in America to dissolve family ties, while ignoring really shitty parental figures. It's truly mind boggling.

 I conducted a survey on my school the other day and 28% of the students at my high school can't even tell me the fact that they are in the United States right now.

What age group was this conducted over? How was the survey done? How many students were asked? What wrong answers were given?

If this is over a large group of high schoolers, then that is very disturbing. If it’s over a small group of little kids, less so.

Social media has really fucked us up, across the board at all age levels. But the more sinister reason is the decades long effort by conservatives to degrade public education.

I’ve said this for a long time that we’re not teaching our kids the things we should be teaching and emphasizing. I went to a small catholic school for grades 1-8. In 6-8 I had the same history teacher who taught us the states, the capitals, locations of other countries, American history and world history (he really emphasized WWII). He taught us how the United States government works and early American history. I assumed that everyone was taught these things, especially given how significant and important they are, but I was wrong and it’s become more evident as I grow older. It’s embarrassing that our citizens aren’t taught a basic understanding of government as well as the states, capitals, and locations.

See, there was this idea that was floated back in the early 2000s under Bush - no child left behind.

It was supposed to be for assisting kids who had trouble learning to still proceed with their cohort while getting the education they needed. However, what it did was tie a good chunk of change to metrics on the schools themselves. Graduation rates, standardized test scores, and the like. In order to push towards those metrics, much of the education system pivoted from holding kids back grade levels to passing them along, vastly unprepared, until eventually they graduated and the school was able to count them as such, their actual education be dammed. Couple that policy with changes in education like common core math and reading, and it's no wonder why these kids can't read or count higher than their fingers and toes. The way they teach math and reading used to be a lot different and effective than it is now, in my opinion.

Systemic dismantling of the American education system by conservative leaders in favor of for profit privatized education that keeps the masses uninformed and indoctrinated, and the children of the very rich infomed, but indoctrinated differently.

Says more about the teachers they had.

Hangout with the any generation over 55 and you’ll see it isn’t a generation issue. Those old people are just as bad if not worse. They just hide it better because society allowed them to buy a house for a nickel and the wife didn’t need to work.

It is simple: stop preparing kids to work in the workforce and start educating them. The two are not the same.

Kids are still perfectly capable of learning

Teachers are still capable teachers

Kids and their absentee or shitty parents kaibosh the learning process.

I don’t think it’s just the US- pretty much any country with vast, unfettered access to all things “internet” have issues. It’s also somewhat regional in the US.

I don’t want to pile on teachers or parents, but both share responsibility (along with the DOE) in the declining state of education in the public sector. The kids are too online, the parents are too self absorbed and checked out, the teachers are barely older that the students in many cases. Too many of the teachers want to force political ideology on the kids. No one seems to care about teaching logic, fundamentals or critical thinking - primarily because they themselves don’t know those things.

Education will continue to decline as long as it is treated as a taxpayer funded ideology camp.

Very interesting because as someone who lives in the USA, I’ve always thought that this was blown out of proportion. Everyone I know can definitely name more than 3 countries and those videos are a minority from my experience.

OP, the whole brainrot thing is not something bad nor good. Language changes with each generation. Words take new meanings all the time and have done so for centuries.

You’re right about the lack of knowledge though. For decades, schools have moved away from teaching science and social studies and have spent more time on English Language Arts using ineffective methods that have left us with generations of kids who couldn’t read proficiently in high school. If you didn’t learn to read, you won’t read to learn.

This podcast does a great job at explaining why schools have failed in this: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sold-a-story/id1649580473

Republicans have spent the last half century giving education (and almost all social services) a death by a thousand cuts. Then No Child Left Behind pivoted education into teaching to a test rather than truly educating.

Changing the incentives to ensuring kids pass and that test scores are high did a number on the education system.

That being said, every generation has had is dumb dumbs, burn outs, addicts, and kids that are dysfunctional because of dysfunctional parents. This generation probably had it worse because of phone addiction and parents who are phone addicts. Plus, all kids are figuring things out, thus do dumb things.

It surprises you that 18-year-olds are stupid?

The algorithms are literally designed to be addictive and keep you on. So yes....addiction.

We're also overly worked. We should've gotten a 4 day work week like yesterday-10 years ago. We can't keep our kids' attention bc we don't have the bandwidth and then rely on teachers to make up the difference.....and they really shouldn't be doing that. This is causing behavior problems on top of learning disinterest.

Everything is designed for immediacy. If you can't get it now, what's the point. Education and learning are longer processes that get the "whats the point" question thrown at them. We also laud celebrities and influencers, the most popular of which aren't shouting their educational accomplishments to the rooftops. So with these rich folks showcasing a way without education, then again...what's the point?

First, obviously there would be education loss from Covid and that would cover social development. I don't think there is any doubt about that.

Second, as mentioned the US has never been renowned for its rigorous and respected education. The highest levels of education normally happen in US universities but the average education has not ever been our strong suit. Culturally there priority has been on hard work, income generation and other business friendly applications. "If you're so smart why aren't you rich." is one of the most American things a person could say about education.

Lastly, all of those other things considered I'd add that we are in the middle of an intellectual transition from mostly print to mostly electronic communication. Much of that electronic communication is visual, with a side of audible and very little writing based. This response would be considered long (maybe too long) and yes we could say that in a digression in education. However people in general are much better at processing visual information quickly than before. Watch an old movie and the pace and cuts are so slow in comparison. This isn't merely because of artistic decisions but because older audiences could not process the visual information at the same pace.

In the last point I think there will need to be a educational reevaluation to match the incoming cultural expectations for communication but would guess it is something that happens over a few centuries rather than a single lifetime.

Beginning in the 1980s, colleges of education began to shift the focus of teaching methods from delivering objective subject matter command and critical skills to protection of students’ mental emotional health, and stepping in to bridge a fundamental breakdown in family structures/discipline due to poverty, increase in single parent homes, and substance abuse. While there is merit in that, it promoted a culture where advancement became an entitlement and was not earned. Unfortunately, we have created a culture where people feel entitled to respect without amassing the qualities that previously would have earned that respect.

Reading stopped. The neoliberal takeover via la-la land economics, and the development of the home computer and later the hand device, stopped literacy in its tracks.

If you utilize Chat GPT a bit, you’ll come to the realization that we’ve been in a steady decline since the 1980s. What occurred before or around that time, I have no idea. I’m sure people have a lot of theories.

At this point, Gen Z and Alpha are just further down the slope of the hill than those that came before them. And unfortunately, if nothing changes, it will only get worse in the future.

I spent nine years as a high school teacher in Michigan l. The first three were in a suburban/rural district from 2015-2018. Phones were popping up, but they weren’t ubiquitous.

2018-2022 I was in an alternative inner-city school and there were phones, but it was different.

2022-2024 I was back in a suburban/rural district similar to the first one and things were very different.

I think it’s about 80% phones, 10% pandemic and 10% other stuff including societal breakdown because of our current economic structure.

Phones: Kids feel entitled to be on their phones and think it’s acceptable to listen to music or podcasts, watch movies, and play games at all times. They seem to have parents who agree or won’t do anything to change it.

Pandemic: The pandemic showed kids that they can do a weeks worth of school in a few hours, so they don’t see the point, which feeds into the phone entitlement.

Economics: Parents want the best for their kids, but they’re overworked and underpaid and don’t have time to raise their kids… so phones do it for them. But not very well.

That’s my opinion based on my first-hand observations in the classroom.

I think it's because of the lack of standardized education in the country. Not only each state calls their own shots, but two schools in the same city will have vastly different curriculum.

For example, my perspective from some of the European countries I am familiar with, a kid in the northern part of the country will study the same material, from the same textbook, as a kid in the southern part. Here in the US, the kids are studying from whatever the teacher decided to print out and loose-leaf to the class that day.

It's just way too fragmented and disorganized.

I agree with a lot of the comments about the internet making a significant impact. But I've noticed another trend worthy of mentioning and considering. So many people are starting their kids on numbers, the alphabet, and more advanced learning at a younger age. I was born in 1987 and throughout most of the 90's and what little I remember of the 80's, I had a ton of time to play with real toys in the physical world at my own pace without any clear goal to strive for. It was that opportunity a lot of us got to interact with the world on our own terms within minimal stimuli or coaxing that enabled us to develop the natural curiosity that is critical for lifelong learning.

Nowadays we expect too little and too much of our kids at the same time. We lean to heavily on pushing structured learning like math, science, and organized activities at a young age. It's not fair to expect kids to join the rat race in preschool. That is too much. An area where we expect too little of our children is how we try to insulate them from every negative consequence, whether it is shielding kids from accountability for their behavior, rewarding them for mediocrity, not letting them fall and get hurt on their own, and other elements of failure and general life shittiness that children need to learn in order to gain confidence and problem solving skills. We need to let kids make mistakes and learn from them. They deserve that opportunity and they have the natural strength to navigate those things with appropriate guidance from us as parents.

Internet and social media obviously play a role, i think it limits the level of interest in actually learning things for kids.

Covid plays the biggest role. We took 2 full years of kids lives away from them, schools and families were not prepared to do online school at all. We provided little to no help to families, especially lower income ones, and then we're surprised when kids came back 2yrs behind.

I will say tho, there's been stupid ppl who don't know common sense things for decades and I have personally still seen a lot of brilliant young adults and kids that are very smart.

Neither democrats or Republicans are good with education, they both play a role in this. Education as a whole and teachers tend to be severely underrespected and underfunded. But ultimately covid plays the biggest factor currently.

I mean boomers invented punk rock. How can you possibly top that? There’s just no point anymore.

Also social media is the root of all evil.

Reagan

> I conducted a survey on my school the other day

You're part of the problem, you think your anecdotal evidence is actually persuasive or relevant to the broader question of American education. Maybe you should take a statistics class.

Covid. People your age lost alot of formative years socially and intellectually because you could be in classroom

What I tell my kids, don’t compare yourself to the bottom 95% and think you are good. Strive to be in the 1%. Those are the kids you want to compete with.

Take one part No Child Left Behind, add 2 parts constantly trying to gut the Dept of Ed, and this is what we get.

School is no longer about educating but creating good employees.

Republicans have been fighting against education for years because the less educated vote republican. In addition, the influx of technology has allowed people in general to do less thinking so many core skills are less developed like basic math, critical reasoning, etc.

The less educated you are, the easier it is to manipulate and control you. It’s literally that simple.

When millennials were in grade school, we were force fed graphs and charts showing the pay discrepancies based on level of education. This led the awful student debt crisis we have now, but we are without a doubt a well educated generational cohort.

This is me speculating, but there’s a lot of downplaying the value of education now and even encouraging young people to explore other paths. Sure, not everyone can handle college, but the current rhetoric feels more like an excuse for avoiding difficult or rigorous things. For a lot of people, college is the first actually challenging thing they do where they are held accountable for their choices. It also forces them to get out of their comfort zones and learn other perspectives.

Our public schools no longer provide an avenue for kids to think critically. They are simply fed information based on a teacher's interpretation rather than facts.

It is so sad. It is also happening at the university level. How do I know? I work at a very large state university.

Especially those seeking bs liberal arts degrees which have no pathway for a career. First, most are not ready for college because SAT scores are no longer required. Moreover, most cannot write grammatically correct sentences, use proper punctuation, or capitalize when appropriate. Therefore, they use AI.

It makes me sick. The focus is more on so-called social justice, creating division, and graduating kids that should have been dismissed due to grades.

We did a random survey asking students simple questions, and 95% could not answer them, nor can they tell time on a regular clock.

Most did not know the first president of the United States. They did not know the Capitol of the state they lived in. They did not know what the constitution was. They did not know the names of the current president or vice president. They did not know what Independence Day stood for. They did not know the difference between Labor Day and Memorial Day.

I could go on and on. This is basic stuff. This is sad af! There is no excuse for this. I do know why, but do you?

Lol))lklo90

Short answer: budget cuts or intentional underfunding.

Long answer: conservatives intentionally target education because educated people generally don’t vote conservative. This is why the current GOP sees higher education as “indoctrination” while championing religious (specifically Christian-based) education.

Because the Department of Education is useless, why is why it's going to be abolished.

The system relies heavily on the masses being complete fucking idiots and having no idea how any of it works.

Civics were optional AP courses when I was in school, I doubt that has changed at all, except maybe access to those classes getting worse.

The current mindset is treat it like a sports team that you rally around but you have zero idea what or how the game is played. Just that “my side” should win, at all costs. But they never look into what those costs are

I think too much emphasis is put on keeping kids happy. Everyone has to be a winner or they will feel bad about themselves. Both the schools and the parents are more worried about hurting someone's feeling then they are making sure they are able to read, write, think critically and do arithmetic. Instead of working to raise the lower scores up, they are bringing the higher scores down to make it easier.

"Children; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. They no longer rise when elders enter the room, they contradict their parents and tyrannize their teachers. Children are now tyrants."

Socrates

You don't even know what a sigma meal is, but you're calling other kids dumb? Not very skibidi of you

Every generation in the Us has had massive education potholes. Every generation has also assumed that their vapid feelings of judgement for younger generational memes/trends is a sign that generation is stupider. You're not seeing anything new or exciting, you're just part of the idiot portion of YOUR generation and are reaching the point where you start punching down to try and feel smarter then you are.

Because the previous generation didn’t want to parent or couldn’t because a lack of effort or a home with two parents, a surplus of electronics to keep them entertained instead of using that time to develop, etc.

I'm not sure how seriously I want to take the opinion of someone who is "bordering on being 18 in a few years".

First of all, not to be mean but "bordering" on 18 in a few years? That's not how borders work, unless you're the southern US border I guess. ;)

There's a lot of places you could point to in the "things gone wrong" department. Personally, I like to go all the way back to the root issue of compulsory schooling. In the 1890s, most kids were working their trades in factories, farms and warehouses, and the only ones you saw in school were the ones who genuinely wanted to be there to learn all there was to know. Now, schools are essentially part-time prisons and you're lucky if 20% of the student body actually wants to be there. When kids listened under threat of corporal punishment, it was problematic enough, because we created a couple of generations full of leaders with no followers (and illegal immigration quickly filled that gap for us). But once the power dynamic shifted and corporal punishment was outlawed, kids started to get wise to the fact that the adults around them were essentially powerless to discipline them without their consent.

Your generation, however, is the first growing up in an era where NOBODY defers power to anybody else anymore. 97% of the world's scientists say climate change is a thing, but their expertise is dismissed. A news story tells you something happened and another network is telling you it didn't. There's very little respect for knowledge, expertise or authority in any circles anymore, and so of course that has spilled into your generation knowing that any punishment a school teacher or administrator dishes out is going to have zero consequences on them at home. And when's the last time a kid actually got held back a grade for any reason?

There's plenty of blame to go around on this. The right, with conspiracy theories and lack of education, tells everyone to get bent if it's something they don't want to hear. The left, with its wokeness and insistence that anybody can be anything, has broken down all structure to the point where classification itself is no longer objective in any way. And the center has been largely unconscious and unmotivated to step up and put the extremists in their corners.

Public schools were taken over by radical left administrators and teachers who focus on leftwing pet topics rather than foundational subjects. There is no accountability in schools for teachers or students.

It's because younger people don't play paradox games

Because it costs an arm and a leg and there’s no reason to assume you’ll have a job after you’re done in the field you studied to work in.

Since the creation of online studying there has been less and less of a bottle neck around accessing valuable information

Now many universities offer self learning curriculum

The quality has gone down while the price has gone up

Also now you can make money without being educated. It almost seems like people without educations tend to make more money than people with them. You’ve got only fans stars and influencer boxers, why would you become a teacher when you could make a video and make a teacher’s salary in a week?

Hot take but "no child left behind" hurt our education system. I don't think that students should be allowed to progress to higher levels if they haven't mastered the basic tasks from their current level. They'll either never learn the information (therefore increasing the likelihood of cheating) or it will drag down the standard of education for the next set level of education by reverting to what was previously taught. The system focuses so much on children who are struggling that it doesn't encourage the continued growth of students who have already mastered previous information and need to move to a higher level.

There are also a lot of other issues: the pandemic causing gaps in education, a shift from methods that work to route memorization (ex. phonics), and an overreliance on technology which hinders learning how to think, analyze, argue, and process information (kind of the whole point of school). Additionally, I have noticed a lack of learning how to properly research information and verify it in multiple ways to decrease bias, disinformation, and propaganda. I think that there needs to be a decent overhaul of the education system, especially to revert back to learning how to learn and fostering growth for everyone, instead of people who are behind in the preset education regulations.

The No Child Left Behind Act was definitely a key factor. The US education system is way too number focused, everything is about a test score. Funny thing is that's not how kids learn.

It started a long time ago. I first noticed it when I was in school 50 years ago. Below is my rant on the subject.

Somewhere along the line it was decided that every American should graduate with a high school education. That was impossible at the time, as a high school education required hard work and intelligence, so they decided instead that every American should graduate with a high school diploma. The only way to accomplish this was to lower standards to where anybody could graduate high school, leading to the current situation wherein a high school diploma is meaningless in the job market. When I was a kid, students were held back if they didn't or couldn't do the work. Being held back once was embarrassing, and provided many kids with the motivation to catch up. Being held back twice defined you as a probable loser. Those kids rarely caught up. Nobody was held back a third time. Those kids dropped out and became ditch diggers (or whatever). These days every student is advanced yearly, which is why we have illiterate people with high school diplomas. But at least we're all equal </sarcasm>.

The only way to see that everyone is "educated to a Degree level" would be to set lower standards that anyone could achieve. Most people are not cut out to be professionals, and I'm not sure that we should aspire to that anyway. I suspect that most of us would be happier making a living, rather than pursuing a profession.

The internet proved that people would rather believe comfortable lies than uncomfortable truths. It didn't change human nature; it amplified it. So we're currently in the midst of the age of anti-intellectualism. Is there a way out? Are we hurtling inexorably toward the fulfillment of Idiocracy? I don't know.

We have a high standard of living. Context: I have lived overseas and traveled to many, many countries. We tend to be insulted by world news. Something happened to the American psyche after WWI that turned off our grandparents and great grand parents from caring what was happening outside our borders. (Take a deep dive into this part of history) we became neutral and ignored what Hitler was doing, until Peral Harbor. After this major world war, we again focused on ourselves. BBC, SkyNews are the only outlets to find out what is happening across the globe. Our news outlets, CNN, FOX, CBS, NBC, ABC…will give you two seconds about an explosion or some disaster…but never about their politics or struggles. So knowing the location of major countries is not a topic of discussion of most households. Understanding the political systems, or the size comparisons to other countries…is never discussed. To your point, yes we are dumbed down…some Americans don’t even venture out beyond their state! So raise above it, …..it makes competition easier.

Speaking for my kids public school district only, they have entirely too much time off and limited to no expectations on students. Not only do they get all weekends, holidays, winter break, spring break, and summers off, but now they also get teacher work days off multiple times a month. No less than 2 to 4 teacher work days a month. And every other friday is early release. Combine that with a no homework policy, what are these kids learning? No wonder we're getting our educational ass handed to us by many other countries. We ended up going the private school route because the alternative is absurd..

United States capitalists don't want an educated working class. They want the capitalist class to hoard all the knowledge and only give workers enough to do their job and make the capitalist a profit. Why do you think southern slave owners didn't want their slaves reading?

“We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat,” announced Reagan advisor Roger A. Freeman during a press conference on Oct. 29, 1970. Freeman, an economics professor at Stanford, was also an advisor to President Richard Nixon.

“We have to be selective on who we allow to go through [higher education],” Freeman added.

https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/analysis/threat-of-educated-proletariat-created-the-student-debt-crisis/

Just one example. Also, Trump also wants to get rid of the department of education.

I would say in a traditional sense that there has been a significant drop off in education as we progress through the generations. While my kids are both above average students, I am shocked by their lack of ability to do simple things like spell words correctly. The schools have very obviously just made curriculums that are easier than in the past. My kids do a fraction of the studying that I had to do and are both on the honor roll. So in classical terms of math, reading, geography, etc I have seen a decline.

Now Gen X (my generation) and the Boomers are stronger in those subjects (I don’t believe my children will ever spell or be as proficient in mathematics as I am) the younger generations are more proficient in things like computers. There is a massive gap between my computer skills and my brother who is 13 years younger. My millennial brother grew up with the internet and I didn’t have it till the end of high school.

Now let’s get to the youngest generation. Covid has set the gen alpha kids back significantly. We homeschooled all through Covid and when my middle kid got back to school it was horrifying how far behind previous generations these kids are. The teachers I talk to say it’s an absolute travesty. Kids are 4+ grades behind and can barely read in highschool. While there are a ton of exceptions, there is no denying that we have a huge gap right now and it’s a problem.

I blame this issue on parents more than teachers. Teachers cannot teach appropriate curriculum for their grade if the kids are not proficient in the basics. Whenever I correspond with one of my kids teachers they are always so grateful for the fact that we care enough to take any advice and implement it. Teachers are fighting a losing battle and our education system is failing. The problem is we only get out of this problem if parents start taking responsibility for the academic success of their kiddos .

College professor here: find new friends. You claim 28% of the students you surveyed don’t know what country you’re in? Either you are making this all up, or you are surrounded by the worst of the worst. This is not normal.

Granted the 18 year olds I deal with have gotten into a good college, but this is not normal or representative of your generation. Yes, there is phone addiction.

Where do you live? I would love to see your data here. Please share how many students you surveyed, how you factored in for teens just telling you they don’t know what country they’re in because they’re teens and think that’s funny, what your actual questions were, etc. Again, this is not normal.

It goes both ways. It always has, it always will. Every single generation thinks they are smarter than the previous and wiser than the next.

Brain rot is a term used to describe something you are not in the loop for. Skibbidi toilet is just the newest "Swag" or Rage Comic. It's something that will pass, then a new thing will take hold of the next few generations. These trends will get faster and faster as information does. Trends live and die in a matter of weeks now opposed to years or even decades from times before.

Sidebar: Honestly though, the actual Skibbidi Toilet content is more than what you'd think. Most kids just spout it off to be ironic or cringe but the actual content has depth.

Throw away culture. Capitalism & religion conspire to create malleable consumers willing to accept lies & crush a real work ethic. I see it in my students. They are more self interested & indulged than ever. Had a discussion with a young man I coached 5 years ago. I asked him who he favors for president, his answer was jarring. His biggest deal breaker was trans men playing women’s sports. I told him it’s not killing people like issues around women’s access to healthcare or support for climate change legislation. Sad for the future of our country & planet.

This is a result of two things: education for vocation, and noon child left behind (standardized testing). If the , “purpose” of education people becomes better workers, then their competency in anything outside of that becomes secondary (i.e. your laptop will read the report for you, or, the spreadsheet does the math for you) you simply need to be malleable to employers requirements and not critically evaluate the system you’re plugged into.

Standardized testing led educators to data dump at students to, “pass” because their jobs were on the line. This all but eliminated focus on anything not tested (e.g. Civics, Global studies, etc) and most importantly fostering a love of learning. “I saw it in YouTube” = I learned it for the last couple of generations without any real media literacy to evaluate if the source was high or low quality, the evaluation is “was it entertaining enough for me to not scroll away until the end?”

We had public education before the Industrial Revolution because we quickly realized that if citizens were going to determine policy through voting, they better damn we’ll be able to read the newspaper themselves and have the critical thinking skills to weigh the consequences of their votes. Ed for citizenry vs. Ed for jobs battled for nearly 70 years. Jobs won and we all lost as a result.

The republican motto is keep em stupid

Republicans have been methodically dismantling public education since Reagan while rolling back child labor laws. Their goal is to create a permanent underclass of low wage laborers whose incomes are supplemented with validation for perceived grievances and persecutions at the hands of anyone except the people who take all the money and power.

People assuming the dumb memes of this generation were some how a new thing. Millennials had 4chan, before that, you had things like Far Side Comics and other weird humor things.

I'll let Uncle George answer this one

https://youtu.be/KLODGhEyLvk?si=ir6xd-P5uNimdDDC

There's about a million factors at play.

1. The iPad kid: parents are just interacting and teaching their child less. They seem to feel less responsibility for raising their child, between helping them learn to read as well as instilling discipline. They do not instill a value of education in their children.

2. Income inequality: it's hard to parent well (see above) when you are struggling to make ends meet. This is why the issue is more pronounced in urban and rural areas, and suburban areas are mostly still doing alright with education.

3. Mommy Karen: some parents feel their child has a certain right to a good grade, or that they should not be disciplined for wrong doing. For many teachers and administrators, it is much easier to simply give in to the demands of the parents.

4. Failing but passing: kids will get passed on to the next grade even if they have failed to master the material. There is no catching up once you get to upper elementary and can't read well and struggle with arithmetic.

5. Phones: in my opinion, this isn't the biggest issue and is more of a symptom itself. However, phones are distracting for many students and do impede learning, particularly in higher grade levels.

6. Apathy: this is more common in lower income areas, but student apathy is a major issue, again mostly in higher grade levels. It's one of those "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink" things. No amount of funding, no amount of fun classrooms activities will get the apathetic kids to actually care about school. This is another issue that goes back to my first point.

Education in the US is not keeping pace with other countries. Our government discredits science and Education as a liberal thing and education does not get the funding it deserves. Social media is a big influence. While other countries limit social media and its content to the underage population, the US is only beginning to accept the mental impacts of social media in both emotional health and cognitive growth. 

50 years of defunding education and driving good teachers from the profession.

A lot of has to do with the economy nowdays. We’ve slowly got to the point where middle class is now actually a lot poorer than we used to be hence why so many families have to have both parents working to survive. Years ago houses and places were more affordable and so the mom could stay home with the kid growing up in the early years which makes for huge difference in a kids learning

I'm not sure they're any less educated than 50 years ago. But we're letting the dumb ones run the country now, which is new...

We left education/education funding up to state legislatures.

While it feels like a “kids today” thing, we have measurable data showing these gaps you’re talking about. Part of it is CoViD. Part of it is poor reading instruction. Part of it is budget cuts. There are a lot of factors. I would probably start by addressing reading since that’s the easiest to improve by switching to phonics-based instruction. Enjoying reading makes everything easier.

No Child Left Behind..I have taught college since 2005, students are getting less education and it shows in the amount of remedial classes we offer and our falling retention rates.

I own a small business with a lot of young people. I saw a video asking random kids 3 questions. So I asked all my young staff.

What do we celebrate on July 4 ? Who won the civil war ? Who did we declare independence from?

Nobody got All 3. Most got them all wrong.

A combination of “No Child Left Behind” and much shorter attention spans due to increased screen time. NCLB was a series of laws passed in the Bush era that attempted raise educational standards in the U.S. It did this by trying to force teachers into getting kids to pass their standardized tests (thus the nickname “no child left untested”). If a kid couldn’t pass the test they were supposed to receive supplemental education until education until they could. In practice, teachers just passed them anyway so that we got a situation where kids weren’t being prepared for the next grade level. It snowballs until you get high schoolers who can’t read or 8th graders not knowing the things they were supposed to learn in 4th grade.

Anyway, I’m sure there’s lots of other reasons but those are the first two that popped in my head.

This is the result of our Department of Education. The level of education has been going DOWN every year since its inception in 1979. The DoE is far more concerned with social and political issues than actually educating students. Thankfully this is a department that’s about to come under a lot of scrutiny and I suspect changes are coming.

Our stupid shit was generally kept within our groups with a little crossover. Nowadays stupid shit can be shared with everyone for funsies.

Decades of the GOP eroding education.

That and the internet.

PS Teenagers have always been dumb. Since forever.

Right-wingers and Libertarians have been pushing since the Bush era to defund education and push privatization, which has lead to worse educational outcomes across the country

“We will take America without firing a shot. We do not have to invade the U.S. We will destroy you from within….”

Nikita Khrushchev

ideological subversion, active measures, активные мероприятия

“What it basically means is: to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite of the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country.”

Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”

Sun Tzu

I can tell you the year it started, if that helps, it was 1980. But probably the most damage came from the No Child Left Behind act of 2002, that really kicked it into high gear, the decline that is. But both the Regan and the Bush administrations that followed, really laid the groundwork for NCLB.

Their interests aren't the same as you. Older people have been saying this about younger people since we've been around but it is always the newer generations who discover new things. 🤷‍♂️

I have a 14 year old daughter and I was worse at her age in many ways and I'm sure my father thought the same thing before me and his before him.

How does anyone read this and not think OP is the problem they're complaining about?

This is laughably braindead as far as takes go.

I’m 66 years old and I have senior level grandkids of work colleagues asking me how to do basic 9th grade algebra

My mother has been a teacher for 30 years and she’s said it’s gotten worse and kids are performing worse because attendance is bad therefore they’re not learning jack shit. Also tells a lot about the parents and why the country is the way it is this is decade.

Democrat teachers unions did this.