Anonymous
Post 06/13/2026 06:01     Subject: Re:My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
Anonymous wrote:Why do these professors feel like they have to pass these students? I fully admit that I know nothing about any pressures involved with being a university professor. But why are they dumbing down the curriculum and the complaining about it rather than failing these students? Maybe a lot of students DO need a year or two of remedial math and English before they are ready for college classes, but they wouldn’t know it because they are still passing. A lot of them are probably still getting B’s.

Maybe I will start a different thread because there have been a few posts on similar topics. But I don’t get this.


I worked at small, expensive private college teaching classes for a year. They( upper admin) don't want kids fail because of tuition dollars. I had lazy students who did not complete the work or turned in super poor quality work. I had to jump through a bunch of hoops to fail a student. It was aggravating. I don't think professors should have to beg kids to come to class or ask for help.

This is the reality for small schools. They need the students for the money and have lowered standards and have implemented handholding to keep collecting their money.

I will say that I did not give out unearned A's and did fail students. I had a master student disput their D-. I was able refute their bogus claims with my copious email receipts. It was pure insanity.
Anonymous
Post 06/12/2026 20:21     Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:My kid tests highly but does not independently read anything and it feels like a test case of “when will this turn into a problem?”


My DS doesn’t either outside of school. Apparently, the school assigned him enough because he’s doing well in college now. So, maybe it will never be a problem.


My DH is incredibly smart. He has a Ph.D. in engineering, excels at work, and reads advanced math, statistics, and coding books for fun every day. But traditional reading has never come easily to him. He wishes he were a stronger reader, but he didn't read as a child. He once told me he'd never read an entire non-textbook cover to cover (what the heck was wrong with his English teachers?!). Going to museums with him can be frustrating because our reading abilities are so different. He's probably around the average American reading level overall. He can decode complex words without difficulty, but he reads very slowly and struggles to maintain focus. Even when reading to our kids, he doesn't stumble over words, he just lacks fluidity and speed. He listens to audiobooks daily on his commute.

In contrast, I'm a lawyer, and reading is one of the skills I value most in myself. My reading ability has benefited me enormously throughout my career and has opened doors that I don't think would have been available to me otherwise.

TLDR- it probably won't be a problem and you can be successful even as a non reader.


Does your DH have dyslexia? Sounds like he might.
Anonymous
Post 06/12/2026 20:12     Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Starts at home, well before school. Parents either invest the time or they don't.


Agree with this. If your kid is not an independent and eager reader by 3rd grade it’s a parenting issue.



I also agree with this. We took our daughter to the book store every Friday and bought her a new book. We would go to the library every week too.

Her grandparents also bought subscriptions to multiple age appropriate magazines.

Her dad and I read, we made it a priority and a source of enjoyment.



I get books from Free Little Libraries and regular libraries constantly, but it’s not as fun as being able to buy something new. Not everyone can.
Anonymous
Post 06/12/2026 19:51     Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Some people love to read, others don’t. It’s really not totally dependent on parenting.

Visual learners tend to love to read, while audio and kinetic learners take in information differently. Different types of learners have different strengths and weaknesses need them all in our society.


This is definitely true but it’s also definitely true that schools are giving up on teaching longer form reading. They can’t afford to buy books, teachers don’t have time to read essays, they say the kids will just not do it and ai it all anyway …. there are lots of reasons but I don’t think any of them are good. When was the last time anyone’s kid read A Scarlet Letter? It’s a good novel and still has relevance for today! Or Grapes of Wrath? Or Invisible Man? When they do read books, the pick the absolutely shortest they can find, like Animal Farm or Grrat Gatsby (both of which I find slightly irritating).
Even in the honors classes—it’s depressing. We almost went to a private HS just for the fact that they read 2-3x as many novels per year.


Heh. My kid read Invisible Man and Great Gatsby last year in AP English, along with a bunch of other novels. He read Animal Farm in 7th grade English. His school is very traditional and low tech. All of the kids end up quite well prepared for college.
Anonymous
Post 06/12/2026 19:48     Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
and for putting sports above academics.
Anonymous
Post 06/12/2026 19:48     Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
This is karma for making fun of Tiger Moms.
Anonymous
Post 06/12/2026 19:45     Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
Get rid of screens, return to textbooks, make kids write the responses in blue books. Need to restore critical thinking skills to America’s students before we lose another generation. Boomers can’t carry the world forever.
Anonymous
Post 06/12/2026 19:32     Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Some people love to read, others don’t. It’s really not totally dependent on parenting.

Visual learners tend to love to read, while audio and kinetic learners take in information differently. Different types of learners have different strengths and weaknesses need them all in our society.


This is definitely true but it’s also definitely true that schools are giving up on teaching longer form reading. They can’t afford to buy books, teachers don’t have time to read essays, they say the kids will just not do it and ai it all anyway …. there are lots of reasons but I don’t think any of them are good. When was the last time anyone’s kid read A Scarlet Letter? It’s a good novel and still has relevance for today! Or Grapes of Wrath? Or Invisible Man? When they do read books, the pick the absolutely shortest they can find, like Animal Farm or Grrat Gatsby (both of which I find slightly irritating).
Even in the honors classes—it’s depressing. We almost went to a private HS just for the fact that they read 2-3x as many novels per year.

+1. We have a big age range in our kids. The amount of reading/number of books read in English class today vs 10 years ago is astoundingly low. Older kids read 8-10 books per year. Youngest kid read only 2 full length books in English this year (HS). It's awful! Older kids had heavy backpacks full of textbooks and novels. Youngest has a laptop and folders of "handouts". Oldest kids read often for pleasure, Youngest has no interest. Despite our reading nightly with all our kids, no TV, etc. We as parents read nightly ourselves. I blame the k-12 school curriculum changes.
Anonymous
Post 06/12/2026 19:30     Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:“The students who cannot read a 20-page article today are the voters who will not be able to read a bill, or the jurors who cannot follow a closing argument, tomorrow.”

They are also the parents and teachers of tomorrow. What happens when the generation of kids who didn’t learn how to read or do math becomes responsible for raising and teaching the next generation?


Society is just going to adapt to it. Lots of read aloud and speech to text instead of writing. You don’t need to read that well for low wage work.


These are upper tier colleges. They aren’t training people for low wage work.
Anonymous
Post 06/12/2026 19:18     Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I was an avid reader but I prefer audiobooks. Wonder if that matters.

Agree re: attention spans.


Listening is a different skill than actual reading.


This.

I'm a lifetime avid reader that has drifted into audiobook territory - my high activity dog gets about 2 hours of walks a day - goodbye reading time, hello audiobooks.

They're certainly enjoyable, but having revisited multiple books I've read in the past its very apparent that quite a bit of the imagination, interpretation and character building once required by the reader is being outsourced to the audiobook narrator. Listening to audiobooks is far more passive entertainment than personally processing and interpreting the work.
Anonymous
Post 06/12/2026 19:04     Subject: Re:My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
Why do these professors feel like they have to pass these students? I fully admit that I know nothing about any pressures involved with being a university professor. But why are they dumbing down the curriculum and the complaining about it rather than failing these students? Maybe a lot of students DO need a year or two of remedial math and English before they are ready for college classes, but they wouldn’t know it because they are still passing. A lot of them are probably still getting B’s.

Maybe I will start a different thread because there have been a few posts on similar topics. But I don’t get this.
Anonymous
Post 06/12/2026 18:59     Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
Anonymous wrote:“The students who cannot read a 20-page article today are the voters who will not be able to read a bill, or the jurors who cannot follow a closing argument, tomorrow.”

They are also the parents and teachers of tomorrow. What happens when the generation of kids who didn’t learn how to read or do math becomes responsible for raising and teaching the next generation?


Society is just going to adapt to it. Lots of read aloud and speech to text instead of writing. You don’t need to read that well for low wage work.
Anonymous
Post 06/12/2026 17:52     Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
There are no textbooks. 📚 There are no reading assignments for history, English, math, and science anymore in elementary and middLe school. Kids should be reading and answering questions for texts in all subjects. It is GONE! They get snippets of paper handed out from TpT websites or a Newsela article. They are handed guided notes to simply fill-in-the blanks. They are not reading for homework. Then when they go to college now—- no one is reading the assignments.
Anonymous
Post 06/12/2026 17:29     Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
Anonymous wrote:I was an avid reader but I prefer audiobooks. Wonder if that matters.

Agree re: attention spans.


Listening is a different skill than actual reading.
Anonymous
Post 06/12/2026 17:26     Subject: My Students Can’t Read: The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
Anonymous wrote:Blame it on No Child Left Behind BS by Bush, teachers pressured to pass everybody (failing forward), administrators changing scores and grades etc.

The public schools have become day care centers and teachers are baby/child sitters.


100% blaming this on educational standards, whether that's No Child Left Behind or Virginia SOLs. Ever since we started "teaching to the test" instead of teaching critical thinking and analysis, education has declined.

That said, if a kid gets out of a DMV high school and can't read, they either have disabilities or horrible parents.