" I am threadbare of everyone blaming COVID . "
I don’t have kids. I don’t work in a school. I don’t follow educational trends. But evenIhave seen the viral TikToks where teachers sound the same warning: school kids these days can’t read at the level they’re meant to, they say. Teacher@qbthedon’s viral TikTok,which asked"Why don’t y’all know that your kids aren’t performing on their grade level?", has earned 5.2 million views as of the time of writing, for instance.
Fellow teacher@finallyaneddsaid, “I’ve never seen anything like it,” adding, “They can’t write a sentence. They don’t know what state they live in. They don’t know what region of the country they’re in.” The teacher also pointed out that the attention span of the students she teaches seems to have dropped compared to previous years, to the extent that “they can’t even attend to a three-minute video clip.”
That sounded wild to me, butRedditors doubled downon the idea: the video above was posted to ar/TikTokCringe, with site useru/Cyberdragofinaleasking “Is the situation that bad?”. In response,u/bigbluewhalessaid, “10-year educator. It’s so much worse than you think. Picture giving a whole room of 7th graders a text and they all start acting out because more than half of them can’t read.”
Another educator,u/Godbye18000, wrote: “I think in my class of 38 Grade 5 students, only two were at reading level. And we tested every three months. Many of them can’t read most words and simply guess from context clues. Give them a brand new word, and they can’t sound it out.”
A 2023 New York Times articleon the topic found that “Math,readingandhistoryscores from the past three years show that students learned far less during the pandemic than was typical in previous years.” They also said “most parents remain ill-informed about how far behind their children are,” but suggested the damages may not be permanent.
It all sounded so extreme to me. So, I thoughtI’d ask teachers from the BuzzFeed Communityto share whether or not they thought the TikToks about kids being less able to read, pay attention, or socialise after COVID were true — especially as we get further away from pandemic lockdowns. Here’s what they said:
“It isn’t great. I teach 7th grade ELA [English Language Arts], and I’ve definitely seen a drop in everything during the years I’ve been teaching. Maturity levels are at an all-time low. Behaviour is getting worse because parents don’t discipline their children and get angry when the school tries to.”
" So , yeah . It ’s a bit of a hot mess in good order now . "
— melrsm1979
“I work with four and five-year-olds, and we use the Read Write Inc phonics scheme. Not all of the children who leave our class achieve their early learning goals, but we’re consistently gaining a 100% pass rate on the year one phonics screening tests.”
" Our genuine business organisation is attention span . We ’re lucky if they can model still and concentrate for a full minute and engagement is such that we have to go over thing more than we used to . This lack of attention passing water into their social and emotional development as well with them finding it difficult to form lasting bond certificate with their match and develop imaginative maneuver .
We do all we can but perpetually palpate like it ’s an increasingly uphill struggle . "
— ruthruthruth
“Substitute teacher. Yes, it’s true. Kids are able to answer the questions once they are read to them, but not to read them on their own. I’ve encountered this up to in 4th grade. Started subbing last year.”
— brennab443c3b68b
“Current high school teacher here. On benchmarks, my incoming students (in 9th grade) average a 3rd or 4th grade reading level. In the span of a year, we can sometimes get them up two or three grade levels, but one of the biggest issues we’re facing is chronic absences. I have kids who miss 90+ days out of 180 school days per year. I’d say our average is probably 40-50 missed school days per year.”
— pettifogger
“I’m honestly torn. I teach 7th and 8th grade gifted English classes, so it’s hard for me to gauge students who aren’t high-achieving. That being said, the calibre of students coming into my class is dramatically different than even five years ago. The cheating is off the charts because everything is so easily accessible and they simply can’t be bothered.”
" It ’s unvoiced to give targeted feedback all the time when you a ) have upwards of 120 scholar , b ) the authorship is so defective it take everlastingly to grade , c ) they do n’t seem at your feedback anyway because they do n’t think it ’s important , d ) due dates are now suggestion rather than mandatory … I could go on and on . They are just forever bored and disengaged and it ’s really frustrating . "
— nattygan
“I think it’s really mixed, but social skills have definitely taken a hit since the pandemic. I see kids ignore each other just to play on their tablets or computers or beg to go on the computers during class. I see kids who can’t problem-solve social situations on their own and require adult intervention for everything. And yet, on the other hand, I’ve started to see a bit of a comeback with certain things.”
" I see fry in untried mark enjoying craft and making puppets and dolls . I think it also depends on the parents — do they shove their youngster in front of a cover all the time or do they take the time to play and interact with their child ? Trust me , teacher in younger years know which type of parent is which … "
— skipnees
“I teach middle school and say yes and no. Firstly, I am tired of everyone blaming COVID. Kids were behind before COVID and during COVID, they were home with their parents — not loose in the wild. Secondly, the reading (and writing) expected of kids today is not developmentally appropriate, so when people say the kids can’t read or are illiterate, one of the problems is with how we are assessing them. Thirdly, literacy is low, but let’s be honest — this is nothing new.”
" Whatisnew are the factor leading to a want of development regarding literacy : attention spans , projection screen time , lack of exposure to books in early puerility years , lack of societal engagement with toddlers and babe , lack of movement / overwhelming empathy and entitlement . "
— nisugar
“Not a teacher, but I like gossiping with them because I have three kids in public schools. An interesting observation I’ve heard from teachers in my area is that there is hardly a ‘middle’ anymore. You used to ‘teach to the middle,’ which meant teaching at the level of the B/C-average students. But things have shifted so that most students are either in the A/B group, or D/F group. There’s no longer the middle core like there used to be.”
" Do you concord with that ? "
— crock up
“I’m a former high school teacher. There are numerous things I can speak to, but let’s talk about attention span. Remember in school when we would see a TV in the room and we would all get excited because it was going to be an easy day and all we had to do was watch a movie or documentary? Even the worst students at the time could pay attention to a TV.”
" As a teacher , I could barely get my students to watch a five - moment YouTube clip that would supplement my lesson before they would start to fidget , start talk to each other , or take out their speech sound . They ’re used to getting their selective information through short - form videos . If the information is not provide within 20 to 30 seconds , one minute top , then they will lose all attention . I do n’t want to blame the child too much on that end . I charge parents who park them in front of a lozenge or speech sound since they were two , as well as the companies who have a go at it bloody well how habit-forming their devices are . "
— degobrah
“Yes, it’s that bad. I teach 9th grade, and my students are not only borderline illiterate at the start of the year, but they get angry and defiant when asked to do anything that requires real thought. If I hand them a blank essay outline, it’ll be two seconds before a kid raises their hand to say, ‘What do I put for the topic sentence?'”
" If I tell them that they ’re hypothesise to write a sentence that usher in the topic of their paragraph , they say , ' Well I do n’t experience how to do that . What do I publish ? ' We ’ll go back and onward like that for a while because they ’d rather seek to get me to spell the judgment of conviction for them than maintain the effort it takes to do it themselves . The writing issues halt from their terrible indication skills . I ’ll require my students to translate a passage and answer a question about it , and they wo n’t even sample to get through the first paragraph before saying they do n’t get it . "
— mushydolphin43
“I teach at the college level, but this is something I started to see about five years ago that’s continued to worsen. It’s not just reading, it’s information literacy in general. It started with students emailing me to ask questions they could easily search online (not things related to the course material, but simple facts). Now it’s basic reading comprehension, like assigning a reading I assigned with no problems in previous years and suddenly getting emails saying they don’t understand it so can’t do their work.”
" At this point at least a third if not more of my written assignment do in are clearly from AI . I do n’t have a problem with explain recital to scholarly person or even using AI to aid with writing — the problem is they ’re never developing or practising the skills to do those things themselves , which creates a deficiency of comprehension and vital thinking acquirement . As others have said , I can stress to take clip out of my curriculum to review those things , but it ’s not guess to be part of my family and carry clock time by from the more advanced cloth they ’re supposed to be learning . It ’s also not really something you may instruct and carry students to pick up in a class period if they have n’t been practise their reading / writing / critical cerebration acquisition for years in grade shoal . "
— ah1758
Thanks to the teachers of theBuzzFeed Communitywho took the time to respond to the post!
take note : Submissions have been edited for distance and/or clarity .
