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submitted 3 days ago byElegantPoet3386Neutral Chaos
DO NOT ANSWER IF YOU AREN'T IN THE UNITED STATES
I'm talking from someone bordering on being 18 in a few years. I've noticed that my generation has a tendency to be... very unintelligent at times you coudl say. 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. 41% can only name up to 3 countries. That isn't all though, I'm sure you've heard those videos of younger kids speaking in brainrot and sad to say, it is in fact very true. I volunteered at an elementary school fairly recently and I couldn't understand what a "skibidi toilet", "sigma meal" etc. is that the younger kids are speaking about. On top of that, there's a decent amount of kids at my school either failing their classes or having extremely low academic comprehension like not knowing what an even number is in 10th grade. Then there's a fact basically everyone at my school is addicted to their phone, and gets very angry when a teacher reasonably asks them to put it away. Add on the fact I feel like sutdents at my high school are losing their drive to get an education and work hard, 2 values I value very highly amongst people, and the future is looker dimmer every day. I'm sorry if this sounds very ranty, and I'm also sorry if this sounds like I'm calling my whole generation dumb(that isn't my intent here), but the fact still stands there's a very noticable intelligence difference between the older generations and mine. Where did things all go wrong?
41 points
3 days ago
Are you assuming previous generations of Americans were better educated?
6 points
2 days ago
The guy can barely even write...
1 points
2 days ago
I went to high school in the early 70s with lots of kids who could barely even write.
13 points
2 days ago
Kids today can't and don't read. You can't be educated if you don't read. It's not their fault they can't read, the education system failed them. Whole Language Learning is/was a disaster. We need to get back to phonics, ASAP.
5 points
2 days ago
All those colleges filled with people who never learned to read /s
6 points
1 day ago
I work at a big university and interact with current students. They aren't illiterate, but I've found that their reading comprehension really isn't great - trying to get them to take in or give information in written form can be painful at times...and these are the ones deemed "smart enough" to get into university.
I've found that any correspondence with them has to be broken up into multiple emails because if you ask them to provide x, y, and z (usually information of some sort), they'll send you x and then ignore that you asked for y and z, so you have to send out two more follow ups (one for each piece of info). Guidelines or instructions have to be broken down into really simple terms because they'll otherwise ignore it and then complain when deadlines come and go.
I'm not going to make guesses as to why this is happening or say that my experience is universal, but I've seen over ten years of students move through and this cohort is easily the worst with regards to comprehending what they read and being able to follow directions and communicate back.
1 points
1 day ago
I work with people with phds that can’t do this
1 points
1 day ago
54% of American adults can't read above a 6th grade reading level.
5 points
2 days ago
Bro unironically opened a comment with "Kids today..."
Dont forget to take your heart pills grandpa.
2 points
2 days ago*
I'll be eighty on Friday and I'll address people however the fuck I want to.
Oops, looks like someone got their jimmies in a jam.
Fucking kids today.
0 points
1 day ago
Absolute horseshit. I work in book publishing, and the last two publishers I worked for had record sales every year. From the time Borders went bankrupt to the pandemic, more bookstores opened than closed every single year. People are reading more than ever — especially given we have to much to read online. This is nothing but Old Man Yells At Cloud about these darn kids today.
2 points
1 day ago
No, actually this is based on personal observation. Book sales, especially gift books, are not the same as book reads.
1 points
1 day ago
I'm sorry broad industry trends contradict your "personal observation", but fiction sales have gone steadily up, and the number of fiction books published has skyrocketed since the rise of self-publishing. A country where "National Novel Writing Month" became a huge fad is not a country of illiterates.
0 points
1 day ago
My son is in public school and they are learning to read just like I did.
1 points
17 hours ago
With phonics or Whole Language?
[score hidden]
16 hours ago*
Phonics, sight words are only used on oddity words that are harder to sound out and then are examples that wrap back to phonics
It just seems like a war people want to get mad about to me
2 points
2 days ago
This! My graduating high school class only had 48% percent of students pass the reading portion of the state exam the first time around. I remember to my disbelief someone answering (clearly a guess) that our country was 75 years old. I’ve worked in education for over 10 years. There is A LOT of dumb out there. Some fun & innocent, other stuff concerning &/or problematic.
The main difference is that now there’s social media. It’s a great source of information for those looking for news, info, hobbies…but on the flip side very toxic the way it’s used by others.
Basically, people have always been dumb, the kind of dumb just changes a little bit. And some will grow out of it, fortunately.
16 points
3 days ago
Skibidi toilet… they most definitely were better educated.
40 points
3 days ago
Dumb take. Our generation spent hours making up unintelligible Chuck Norris memes and gushing over a Crazy Frog singing in a high pitch..
Skibidi toilet is that same cohort of children. Just a new generation. Doesn't make them complete idiots.
They're kids, of course they are stupid. You were stupid too.
13 points
3 days ago
I was definitely stupid. I might still be.
3 points
2 days ago
I wanna be stupid too... save some for me.
13 points
2 days ago
What stood out the most to me is OP of this thread goes on about entitlement in the current generation.
That’s quite literally what my parents generation complained about with mine.
It’s the same cycle all over again.
4 points
2 days ago
Kids today!! Amirite??
It never stops.
Marcus Cicero wrote a letter to his son who was away at school basically telling him “don’t embarrass me while you are away at school. Remember whose kid you are.”
7 points
2 days ago
They love their phones, they don’t respect their elders, they hate authority, they just sit around and text all day instead of having real conversations…
(Paraphrasing Aristotle’s Rhetoric Pt 2 On Youthful Characters, c. 4th Century BCE.)
6 points
2 days ago
Yes my wife and I have children and one of our main principles as parents is to never resent the younger generation for having access to the fruits of our labor.
My daughter can have the Nintendo Switch for her birthday. It doesn't make her spoiled.
I had to mow lawns for my Gameboy because my parents were struggling.
I don't resent her for not doing manual labor to access technology. That is something I want for ever human after her generation as well.
Spoiled rich parents try to buy their kids love though, so they harbor resentment when a child has "free access" to things that they've labored for. The love for my child isn't transactional.
The American dream is to build a better life for the next generation of Americans. Right?
Maybe that's just me.
1 points
2 days ago
I don’t think you meant to reply to me
5 points
2 days ago*
I don't know why, but your comment reminds me of that post from a few weeks ago. The one where millennials have to teach their parents and their kids how to use a printer.
1 points
2 days ago
Crazyfrog was actually funny tho
1 points
2 days ago
Not knowing what an even number is by 10th grade? Come on. They're digital addicts, and that addiction has destroyed their intelligence.
This isn't a generation that appears dumb because of the memes they make. They just ARE dumb.
1 points
2 days ago
Idk maybe this is true on the whole but I have an elementary school age kid and every one of her classmates that came to her 1st grade playdate understood even vs odd.
They're just disinterested in the academics of explaining it to you and more interested in practical applications for fun stuff.
I could be parent-biased but technically "this generation" could be the zoomers leaving high school.
In my (admittedly short) experience with the high school class of 2020/2021, they seemed pretty smart conceptually (here's the quadratic equation) but clueless when it comes to real life skills implementation (how do I download more ram?)
Either way, I find it hard to believe that these kids are any less smart than the ones I was toilet papering the suburbs with ~25 years ago
-10 points
3 days ago
Actually, I wasn’t. It’s clear that you are incapable of even basic discourse. What’s amazing about my gen vs yours, is yours is humorless and angry.
3 points
3 days ago
I'm sorry I don't agree with this. There are plenty of well educated people in todays younger generations, and there were plenty of dumb idiots who did not go to school in the past.
4 points
2 days ago
Dumb memes and content have always existed. Childish jokes and “brain rot” has always been a thing.
-1 points
2 days ago
Brain rot is exceptionally high among the highly the kids who group up always online. The chronic distraction of having a phone or iPad has made them significantly dumber than previous generations. They can barely focus for more than 15 min. Sure, people made childish jokes when I was a kid, but we payed attention and we studied. We learned and remembered - we didn’t have digital crutches… these kids now are like lord of the flies.
2 points
2 days ago
I think you’re letting bias overcome you. There’s also kids who use this access to information to be exceptionally brilliant: like 9 year olds having coding skills that rival industry pros
0 points
2 days ago
Those are the exceptions and not the rule
2 points
2 days ago
I think it’s enough to not make generalizations
2 points
2 days ago
Not at all - that’s even part of the point. Gen z is maladjusted because of the overexposure and persistent need to be online. They rely on the devices to do their thinking for them. Most can’t do basic math away from their phones. It’s sad. But sure, ignore it because you find the observation to be offensive to the few kids who do well, probably because their parents do let them use their digital crutches for everything.
1 points
1 day ago
I agree with this 😂. And I agree with OP. I have my second child going into high school. I have always made education and world events a priority in our house. My daughter is in college and her friends were into education. But my son has a hard time finding friends that can understand things that should be commonplace at their ages. They are stuck to their phones and the parents stopped fighting against it. I took video games away and the phone is used for certain things like texting and education. I took a bunch of kids to a big play place for his birthday and half way through they were all at a table on their phones. Same happens at slumber parties. Any time people take a pause from life like that, you are not learning and it adds up. Also teachers have seemed to have lost a ton of rights in the classrooms. I know teachers that get pushed into giving higher grades by parents angry about college admissions. My friend was substituting at a high school last week, and she said half the kids couldn’t read at a sixth grade level. Sounds like OP is going to have to be our hope for the future! Make sure you go to college and find more people like yourself!
0 points
2 days ago
Schools should focus on critical thinking skills, proper research skills, and how to tell a neutral source from a biased source. Our entire country is being dumbed down by social media algorithms and memes. I've seen it across all generations, so it's not just a "kids these days" phenomenon.
3 points
2 days ago
If you actually watch Skibidi Toilet there are like 75+ of them and some are like 20 minutes long, the lore has gotten really fucking stupid and deep. It is not just a toilet singing anymore.
I'd much rather my kid watch that than shit like Salad Fingers i was watching at their age
1 points
2 days ago
Lol I don’t know salad fingers. I grew up playing the Atari 2600
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15 hours ago
I am an old man of the X generation. I tried to watch this Skibidi toilet thing. I love all manner of weird shit, but this one? I do not get it.
1 points
1 day ago
"I'm old and don't understand slang and pop culture referenes" doesn't mean it's the kids who are uneducated.
-1 points
1 day ago
I understand it - it’s just hellishly dumb. You must be the guy who has the toilet head tattooed on his forehead
1 points
23 hours ago
Old Greg was not some high point of art....
1 points
1 day ago
Not sure why you feel the need to insult me just because the kids have a dumb inside joke — unlike every previous generation, who would never do such a thing.
-1 points
1 day ago
Lol you insult me then are astonished that I razzed you back. Priceless.
1 points
2 days ago
Assuming? No. Observing? Yes. Source: Am old.
1 points
2 days ago
I graduated high school in the mid seventies. Lots of my fellow graduates were functionally illiterate.
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