School Teachers Swap Stories Of High School Students Having No Idea Of The Most Basic Facts

My older daughters are 11, and they don’t like to read. They watch videos, play games, and draw really well—they’re very creative kids—but they don’t read anything other than graphic novels. As someone who used to read literally everything they could get their hands on at their age, I just can’t understand it.

Well, I can understand it, but I can’t accept it. I get it because it’s pretty much the norm around the world now. And high-schoolers struggling with basic knowledge that was a piece of cake for 10YOs decades ago is also part of the world we live in. So today’s story from the user u/SecretaryPresent16 is exactly about this process.

More info: Reddit

The author of the post is a high school counselor, and they also help students with their career counseling and applications

Image credits: vh-studio / Freepik (not the actual photo)

The author says that high schoolers nowadays have a huge lack of basic knowledge

Image credits: SecretaryPresent16

Image credits: eugeneshemyakin9 / Freepik (not the actual photo)

Some of them don’t know their ZIP code or even the state they live in, and some don’t know their parents’ jobs

Image credits: SecretaryPresent16

Image credits: stockking / Freepik (not the actual photo)

Some of the students don’t even know how to check their email, the author says

Image credits: SecretaryPresent16

The counselor took this online in the educators community to ask the teachers’ opinions and a possible explanation of this alarming process

So, the Original Poster (OP) tells us that they work as a high school counselor, and one of the parts of their job is the career counseling portion. Usually, the author helps students with applications if needed, but every year, in their own words, they see how students have a huge lack of something that the OP considers just basic knowledge.

For example, they may not know what their parents’ job is, they may not know their own ZIP code (or even have no idea what that actually is). They’re confused about the counties they live in – and they may not even know what state they are in. Furthermore, someone doesn’t know whether their parents went to college or not, whether any of them were in the military, and, finally, they’re confused about their own date of birth.

The original poster says that they have met students who sincerely admit that they don’t know how to check their email, and this is still an Internet skill, even if someone may consider it quite obsolete today. Of course, the author helps students and explains all these facts and processes to them, but each new case makes them sadly shake their heads.

The author says they’ve already spoken to colleagues online, and many other high school counselors are in a similar situation. Now, they took this online to the teacher community to ask if the educators have encountered manifestations of something similar in the classroom and, of course, to find out what they see as the reasons for this alarming process.

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Perhaps the main problem here is that kids have stopped reading. No, that’s not it. They have stopped reading books. They regularly read texts and posts on social networks on smartphones, but reading books for fun seems to be a thing of the past. Every year, data from a test administered by the National Center for Education Statistics shows that more and more children in the U.S. don’t meet the standards for reading proficiency.

For example, if only 37% of fourth graders were proficient in reading in 2017, then by 2019, this figure had decreased to 35%, and by 2024, it would have decreased by another 5%. Children just don’t want to read.

“I have noticed is that the belief that reading both enlarges and enlivens life itself has largely vanished from the lives of my young students,” Detroit News quotes Jeremy Adams, a high school and college political science teacher.

The reason? Well, most likely, the rapid growth of the Internet and its penetration into literally all spheres of our lives. Children, in general, choose easier and more enjoyable activities, and watching short videos and playing games on the phone are easier and simpler than reading. They don’t think that by doing so, they are reducing their own skills and level of understanding of the world. The parents… well, many parents just don’t care.

Teachers in the comments to the original post gave even more alarming examples. Schoolers simply don’t care about all this information and don’t intend to remember it, and many parents don’t try to show and explain to them the importance of this knowledge.

As a result, we have rapidly deteriorating indicators of school education—and teachers, alas, don’t know what can be done about it. Because the world is changing—and this process cannot be stopped.

Yes, the world is not always changing for the better, and our social and emotional development doesn’t keep up with the speed of technological progress. Where I take a book to have some fun, my kids play mobile games and watch shorts… By the way, how are things with you, our dear readers? Please feel free to share your thoughts about this in the comments below.

People in the comments claim that the modern children, alas, just don’t want to read books and it’s a sad reality

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