do you have any ideas about why so many students are struggling with literacy now? I know that illiteracy and reading comprehension have been issues for years and most americans read at like a 5th grade reading level but Iām curious why it seems to be worse now (pandemic? no child left behind?)
It is everything. Thereās not one answer. I could talk about this forever so instead I set a five minute timer on my phone and wrote a list of as many of the many things that are causing this on a systemic level that I could think of:
Itās parents not reading with their kids (a privilege, but some parents have that privilege to be able to do this and donāt.)
Itās youtube from birth and never being bored.
Itās phasing out phonics for sight words (memorizing without understanding sounds or meaning) in elementary schools in the early aughts.
Itās defunding public libraries that do all the community and youth outreach.
Itās NCLB and mandating standardized tests which center reading short passages as opposed to longform texts so students donāt build up the endurance or comprehension skills.
Itās NCLB preventing schools from holding students back if they lack the literacy skills to move onto the next grade because they canāt be left behind so theyāre passed on.
Itās the chronic underfunding of ESL and Special Ed programs for students who need extra literacy support.
Itās the cultural devaluing of the humanities in favor of stem and business because those make more money which leads to a lot of students to completely disregard reading and writing.ļæ¼
Itās the learning loss from covid.
Itās covid trauma manifesting in a lot of students as learned helplessness, or an inability to āfigure things outā or push through adversity to complete challenging tasks independently, especially reading difficult texts.
Itās covid normalizing cheating and copying.
Itās increasing phone use.
Itās damage to attention span exacerbated by increased phone use that leaves you without an ability to sit and be bored ever without 2-3 forms of constant stimulation.
Itās shortform video becoming the predominant form of social media content as opposed to anything text-based.
Itās starting to also be generative AI.
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