Ads skipped

Teachers, is the gen alpha literacy crisis really that bad?

81K views · Jul 3, 2026 · People & Blogs

UnderSparked

248K subscribers

Comments · 683

@demo2823 · 2 months ago
If you're still actively raising your kids, they still end up doing good in school. If you're still leaving them to the system to be sorted out, well, the system will fail them worse than before.
433
@YackeyTownPride · 2 months ago
I am a SPED teacher in a Title I school. I just banned all tech from my class. I so t teach with PowerPoint, I don’t have them write with their Chromebooks, I even got rid of my SMART board. They don’t need it. What they need is a break from tech. We read about a topic, talk about it, write about, and so a hands-on activity. We built solar ovens, we raced cars down a track and made data sheets, we dissected owl pellets, we took a “road trip” around our state and looked at natural resources under microscopes (plants, rocks, feathers, etc.). I have been told by kids and parents that my class is their favorite. My caseload reduced by 25% because my kids closed their learning gaps. They no longer qualify for SPED. I love my job and can’t wait to get back to my classroom. I have been in the game for a long time. I have former students who are parents now and they are leading mostly good lives. Teaching is hard but I will give it my all. I have been in administration and it was miserable. We cannot help every kid all the time, but we can help a few.
394
@TheDixieDerg · 2 months ago (edited)
As someone who is in Gen z I graduated high school a few years ago and I can confirm that I was allowed to just not do any homework ever. Even if I got a 0 for not doing it, it didn't matter due to the grading system. I had a 0 on all homework and still got C in the class.
145
@grumpyrhonda6709 · 2 months ago
I see parents pushing prams around and the parents are on the phone, constantly.  Their baby/toddler looks at the parent and all they see is the back of a phone.
67
@n4b1k1 · 2 months ago (edited)
OMG, that first one is my Godson to a T!  He "reads" but doesn't understand what he reads.  He's just reading a list of words.  He can't problem solve his way out of a paper bag.  He has no sense of responsibilty.  "Sorry" is a magic incantation to get people off his back.  He also has the stare.  I've been calling it his "sick cow" imitation.  I thought it was just him. I thought that the kids who would visit me were unusually uneducated, so this is so scary.
32
@WolfytheKitsune · 2 months ago
I am 15 and I never had any of these types of kids in my class. At the school I go to, everyone is at least capable of advanced math and literacy and the teachers do a great job at ensuring we are constantly locked in. This video and comment section makes me feel very grateful for my school.
13
@TrailerFab · 2 months ago
Back when Dubya signed the No Child Left Behind Act, I knew we were fucked and still saying it.
32
@pyritepaladin5647 · 2 months ago
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu0_eFbLABc&t=469">7:49</a> the problem with this is children cant just Learn Discipline. when you list off addictive things people need to learn to live with, those are all age-restricted. thats because children fundamentally do not have the emotional regulation or judgement to put away something that makes them happy
30
@martlettoo · 2 months ago (edited)
I'm a writer, and I have had arguments online with MULTIPLE people who 100% believe AI can write better than I or any other human being can or ever has, and that picking sentences from a list of generated sentences is infinitely better than I could ever do, because it can write sentences "I could never even think of". Like, yeah bro, because they're such BAD sentences I'd never think of them. These people have zero clue that they are nothing more than clueless editors for a machine, not writers. They, without shame, stole everyone's stuff and have the audacity to inform us they are now superior writers, and this is what kids are literally growing up thinking. Like, they all want to write a book, but they don't read???? They all think they will become rich writing AI books when anyone can do the same, so why pay them? And every single one believes they are "expressing themselves" by doing this. They cannot comprehend what they don't comprehend, and they flat out don't want to, because, fundamentally  they are all intellectually and creatively lazy. And that superceeds anything else, aka why they never wrote a single thing before AI, yet claim they need it because they must be allowed to express themselves (and somehow every writer was stopping them from doing so before). They actually do not believe people can have a passion or creative drive that is great enough to actually think or work hard or write or draw the real way, but they nonetheless feel extremely entitled to the results of such. It's actually pathetic, and so infuriating a time to live in.
65
@AstronautLoveTriangle · 2 months ago
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu0_eFbLABc&t=2184">36:24</a> when schools get funding for better test scores, gaming the system consists of narrowly focusing on the material that will be on the test. If schools got funding for worse test scores, gaming the system would consist of teaching the kids nothing.
11
@DragonArbock · 2 months ago
We need to go back to shaming people for being stupid. We need the stigma of holding students back and it being an actual social punishment. They will not be better if there's no pressure or reason to be better.
6
@The_Cheese_Man890 · 2 months ago
I have messy handwriting, but it's not because of screens. It's because I'm left-handed and was never properly taught how to write left-handed.
26