Yahoo Lifestyle It Wasn't Just The Pandemic — Long-Time Teachers Are Getting Honest About The Real Reasons Why Kids Are Unable To Learn, And It's Truly Terrifying
The education crisis has been a topic of discussion on everyone's minds lately. Whether it's educators making TikToks revealing that children are functionally illiterate, the research showing the multitude of ways screen time negatively impacts academic success, or the oncoming threat of Project 2025's plan to eliminate the Department of Education, the truth is "the kids are 'not' alright." And no one knows that better than teachers...
So recently, when Redditor bowbahdoe asked teachers, "How bad is the 'kids can't read' thing, really?" I knew I had to share some of the most enlightening responses. From parents not reading with children anymore to the phasing out of phonics — here are 17 educators who got honest about the reasons behind the jaw-dropping decline in literacy:
1."I teach in one of the most affluent districts in my state (we are also nationally known for having a strong public education system), and my 7th and 8th-grade students aren't able to read a word aloud if they haven’t seen it before. They don’t know how to sound it out, and when they attempt to, they add unnecessary letters or omit entire syllables to the point where if I weren’t also looking at the word, I wouldn’t even be able to guess what they’re trying to say."
"Regarding reading comprehension, they can regurgitate facts found in a text but cannot draw meaning from it, and when asked to summarize, they can’t determine the main points. Literacy across content areas is a primary focus at my school, so we do a lot of reading to understand the practice and teach many strategies for it, but so far, they aren’t really sticking with the students.
I’ve been teaching the same subject for nine years at the same school, and while I noticed this a little at the start of my career, I have noticed a major increase in this deficit over the last two or three years."
2."COVID didn't cause the problem, but it was like throwing a gas can on the fire. Whatever delay was already occurring got a solid year head start to become even wider and then another year of substantially worsened progress while kids were aging all the same."
"My aunt and uncle have been university professors at a large state university for over three decades. My uncle teaches undergraduate philosophy, and my aunt does later undergraduate and early postgraduate anthropology.
My uncle said that from the early 1980s through roughly the winter of 2021, only a single-digit number of students in his intro classes had to drop the course because they were so behind on reading skills they couldn't engage with the material in any way.
However, from the spring of 2022 to the fall of 2024, he's had about twenty students drop intro courses for the same reason. It used to be that a university student with an elementary school reading level was relatively unheard of, but as of late, he's been getting at least one or two per course. He said that while reading and writing problems were worsening over the past decade, it was more of a linear decrease. Now, It's become exponential."
3."I have three students in middle school who are reading at a first-grade level. The majority of them are at least three grade levels behind. Today, I asked them to read a passage to themselves and tell me the words they didn't know when they were done."
"The state we live in was one of the words they frequently mentioned that they could not recognize.
They are IN middle school."
4."Why do teachers keep getting asked this question? Do people think seasoned veterans with 15 or 20 years of experience are lying all of a sudden?"
"Look: students can’t write sensically. They can’t write LEGIBLY. They can’t analyze a source or a text. Many of them can’t tie their shoes. They can’t sound out words that are not incredibly difficult words, either. They have no clue about history or how it impacts them today. I had a student ask if the Norman invasion happened in Ancient Rome. Their learned helplessness and general fearfulness (but also their nonexistent sense of boundaries) are a major detriment to both their education and future.
It is bad, and personally, I think representatives of K-12 schools and universities should be having talks with Congress and the military. The military will always need enlistment, but it also needs highly educated officers. Even the quality of enlisted is going down fast. I have friends who are officers in the armed forces, and I know people who teach at the Air War College and they’re worried. Everybody who interacts with younger people is worried. EVERYBODY."
5."I’m a high school reading interventionist and co-teacher. It’s just as bad as you think."
"I'm seeing record numbers of kids who need reading intervention. These are just the kids we’ve identified who need help. I like to think we get most of them by high school, but I’m also getting around 10 new high school referrals per year. My school is medium-sized, and we don’t have a lot of kids moving in and out of the district. Out of my general education kids, I’d estimate a max of 50% can read at grade level. They’re just better at 'playing school' and compensating in other ways — or they are fine with low grades as long as they pass and haven’t put out enough red flags to justify an assessment.
Kids can’t read textbooks independently anymore because they have no strategies for figuring out new words. When they come to a content word they haven’t seen or heard before, they will guess a word they know. They can no longer spell, and I have never seen so many kids with illegible handwriting (handwriting is linked to reading ability)."
6."I have high schoolers that can't read questions in their math books. They can scream obscenities and TikTok buzz words, but reading a question in an attempt to figure out how many cookies 10 people have if you give them two cookies each is horrid and incomprehensible."
"It's bad. Every so often, you see a kid that is actually at grade level, and they are nearly regarded as gifted for it — which makes them heavily targeted for bullying as well."
7."The problem as I see it is the curriculum train keeps rolling down the track, whether or not the kids are on board. And since no one is held back anymore, it isn't a problem...for now."
"Also, the curriculum isn't in step with the kids' abilities. For instance, the daily objective for a first-grade class here includes, 'I can use statements, questions, commands, and exclamations. I can organize my writing.' That sounds great until you consider that at the start of the school year a few weeks ago, only four kids in this class could scrawl their names.
Instead of meeting kids where they're at and building on their existing foundations, we subject them to lessons I fear are bewildering and incomprehensible to many."
8."I'd say it's reaching crisis level — a legitimate nationwide crisis. Kids today are stubborn not just about reading and writing but perhaps more disturbingly regarding critical thinking. They can barely articulate basic thoughts and ideas, yet our broken systems and government won’t do a thing until we as a society begin feeling the economic impacts. What happens when we end up with a workforce of fundamentally illiterate people? The ripple effect will be catastrophic when we no longer have educated doctors, lawyers, or teachers."
We should all be seriously alarmed that we have a generation of kids with the entire knowledge of the world in the palm of their hand, yet they're functionally illiterate. And let's be clear — parents are more to blame than teachers or schools.
If your kid is glued to their phone for 14 hours a day but is three to five grade levels behind in reading, seriously — TAKE THEIR PHONE AWAY AND GIVE THEM A BOOK!
9."Ninth-grade English teacher here — I am at a loss for how I will teach my students The Odyssey and Shakespeare this year. They don’t read anything. If they do read, they don’t understand it, and most refuse to try. When it's time for book reports, they just want to use AI to whiz through the writing and move on."
"Most want to watch short clips (they can barely watch full-length movies anymore. Try explaining the hero’s journey to kids who have never seen Star Wars) instead of ever actually reading anything."
10."Well…it’s not great. We teach phonics, but reading is still a struggle in our district. I’m not sure why it’s such a struggle, but I have some ideas — mostly technology and the idea that kids only do schoolwork at school."
"Many of my students get relatively unlimited screen time — and it’s not for academic purposes. Who wants to read a book (especially at lower grades) when you can play a video game or watch a YouTube video or TikTok?
Many families also complain that 'making the student read/write/do math is a struggle/too hard.' Yeah, I know. I do it all day with 20+ of them. And yet…I have to (gently) suggest that they set aside time for their student to do their schoolwork before taking part in a preferred activity (e.g., screen time). I get a lot of shocked reactions. I’ve also heard my share of 'but that’s what they go to school for.'
My other thoughts are based on my particular school/district: not enough people for targeted intervention to support kids who are at least two grade levels behind and no plan for how to support families for whom school attendance is a chronic issue."
11."The following pertains to the United States: We have a culture problem, and I don’t see anyone discussing it. "
"Even when I see people acknowledging that we have a problem, no one ever points out the cultural issues that have been created. Our culture has degraded significantly in terms of what we expect and demand from our youth. I realize it sounds harsh to 'demand' better of them, but we need to. We HAVE to stop accepting kids refusing to do anything they don’t want to do. We have to begin holding our youth to a higher standard. If we do not, the future of our country is not one I want to be a part of. We will have exceptions who excel, but not to the level they would have in an environment full of behavioral excellence and intellectual competition. This means that not only our schools but also our parents and entire communities must treat our youth differently.
The gap between those who excel and those who don’t will only grow. I don't know how this cultural shift could occur, but I know is that if it doesn’t, we are screwed."
12."I taught at an elementary school with about 400 students from 2021-2023. As a behavioral coach and on-call substitute, I was familiar with 95% of the students and could count on one hand the number of kids who could perform at grade level on any given day for any subject."
"Only two students who finished sixth grade and moved to middle school were academically ready. Most couldn't read, form complete sentences, write, or even type."
13."I have had several four-year-olds in general education who can't identify letters other than 'A,' 'B,' and 'C.' In Pre-K, I'm not expecting them to be reading, but I am a bit disappointed that they don't even know the letters of the alphabet."
"I'm also confused about how, considering so much toddler media content revolves around ABCs, colors, shapes, etc. I am more disappointed that I don't have any kids coming in with basic reading skills — four-year-olds can start reading meaningfully. Not encountering ANY kids who have even basic reading skills concerns me.
However, plenty of the kids are still flipping through books in the library center, and almost all are engaged during storytelling — so there is hope!"
14."I have one student who immediately comes to mind. He is ostensibly intelligent and capable but makes egregious reading errors. At 18 years old, he sometimes fails to understand text the first time because he frequently misreads long words as other long words with similar initial letters. He can't seem to break the habits despite actively correcting it by rereading."
"His previous teachers failed him. They taught him ineffective methods, and they cursed him. This capable student will likely have this one small personal failing his whole life due to miseducation. He'll be fine overall, but he's one of my best and not the only one with this problem."
15."It’s the parents, not the curriculums!"
"The culture of reading with students at home has declined. It’s common to enter someone's house and see few to no books. Parents who read to and with their children daily are fundamental to reading proficiency.
I understand people saying, 'It’s the schools’ job to teach them to read,' but we can only do so much if they aren’t exposed to reading at home and don’t practice the skills when they aren’t with us."
16."Several years ago, I was a teaching assistant for a seminar that required weekly readings and a 250-500 word reflection response every week. People's responses were high quality, thought through, and well written without grammar mistakes and incorrect phrasing."
"A year and a half later, I volunteered as a teaching assistant again, but this time, our class was the pandemic kids. All the instructors agreed that it was the worst class they've seen in all the years they've been teaching. The writing was atrocious. I couldn't do anything but laugh in a 'we're screwed' way as I graded. I can't express how horrible it was.
The in-class participation was awful, too. The students were incapable of intelligent commentary and discussion. They couldn't synthesize information, couldn't think critically, and barely participated. Most of these people got into this school based on their GPA and test scores, and I don't understand how it happened. This crisis is only going to get worse."
17."Kindergarten teacher’s take: I think the heart of the issue in the 'bad early education curriculum' discussion is that not all schools across the country still teach young children phonics."
"Many teachers have turned to the 'balanced literacy' approach instead, which lacks systemic, explicit phonics instruction as a tenant of its philosophy. Balanced literacy seems more focused on teaching kids comprehension skills (for standardized tests).
Kids are introduced to phonics concepts with 'balanced literacy' but are not given enough practice with phonics to be able to apply the concepts automatically while reading. In practice, this means that in many schools, students learn to memorize words through exposure to text. However, they still don’t gain mastery over the basic phonics skills (letter symbols/sounds, blending) necessary to decode new/unfamiliar words.
For some kids, just an introduction to phonics is enough for them to learn to read — these are the kids that do well with balanced literacy instruction. But many kids NEED explicit, systemic phonics instruction in order to learn to read, and ALL kids can benefit from it. The very fact that language is made up of individual sounds blended together does not come intuitively to little brains — asking them to connect the little sounds we use to symbols (letters) is a BIG ask indeed!
"We should teach them exactly how to do that in early education programs and elementary school so they can focus on comprehension as they age. A systemic approach is necessary for phonics."
"But 'balanced literacy' makes it difficult/impossible for some students to focus on comprehension when reading text by themselves even as they get older — they are too busy simply trying to sound out the word because they lack phonics skills. It is frustrating for them to try to decode words, so they do not practice reading much. They are labeled as 'poor readers' and may be given support, but by then, they are 'too old' to rehearse letter sounds and blending, so some never really get the phonics instruction/practice that they need.
TL;DR — teach your young kids/students phonics!
If you see an older student/reader struggling, check on their most basic phonics skills and make sure that’s not what’s slowing them down! If they ARE still having trouble with something they 'should' have mastered by their age, take the time to give them the phonics practice they need."
Were you surprised by any of these teachers' stories? Are you an educator who has noticed a steady or sharp decline in literacy and academic success as a whole? Let us know in the comments! (Or if you prefer to stay anonymous, you can use this Google Form).
