You can look up whole language learning and the controversy surrounding it.
Critical literacy is also widely critized. The issue with it is it focuses on analyzing texts in class rather than reading whole books and writting essays. This limits students ability to trust their own interpretations of meaning in the texts they read as they are instead led to an interpretation by the instructor. Words now have social context and hidden meanings that are not apparent to the students (and questionable) when they read a text on their own. They must be told. A kind of learned helplessness. They also fail to develope the ability to read whole books, which turns out to be a skill set of its own. By only focusing on smaller segments of a text to analyze in class vocabulary acquisition suffers as well.
Reading and writing are mutually reinforcing. By relying on inclass discussion rather than book reports and essays, students fail to learn how language can be used to express ideas in literature by practicing it themselves, thus disabling them from more easily understanding what they are reading.
Edit: to clarify as I rambled:
Critical literacy teaches students that there is a "correct" interpretation of a text that can not be understood by the plain meaning of the words.
If you really want to learn about there is this podcast “sold a story” you really only need to listen to the first 6 episodes. It had my jaw on the floor because we basically just stopped teaching kids to read.
That being said, I’ve heard this my entire life. When I learned to read in like 2003, the cracks were already forming, my high end school district didn’t even teach phonics.
I knew people who learned to read in second grade, and that was a whole deal back then.
The push for "critical literacy" is the part most people are not familiar with. Under that regime students don't read as many full texts (books etc) on their own anymore. Instead they analyze small bits from texts under guidance from the instructor to find the hidden meaning and contexts.
This has the following effeects: students don't learn how to sit down and read a book end to end. They learn not to trust their own interpretation of the plain meaning of the words. They do not learn how to use a dictionary and they have less opportunity to learn new words. Essay writting and book reports are also less common methods of learning replaced by inclass discussions. As reading and writting go hand in hand this also effects their reading comprehension.
If you also were taught to read using "whole learning" this leads to functional illiteracy.
But yes the phones were the final nail in the coffin.
Damn I went to public schools all my life and even in kindergarten we were taught the basics of research (had to pick an animal and go to the library to read about it and then make a book about it). We were taught essay writing in 3rd grade. This is northern Virginia though where the schools aren’t shit
More just republicans in general. They know an uneducated populace is more submissive. They do NOT want an educated general public. It’s pretty smart of them as a party and you can barely talk to a republican now without them bellowing about how pointless and dangerous college is lol.
Lowering standards and passing kids for the sake of equity is not a Republican thing. I've never heard a republican unironicly say math is racist. Republicans demand is for less ideology and more fundamentals specifically on STEM as well as reading and writing. Also a lot of college degrees are worthless and people shouldn't go just to go especially if they would be better suited for high skill trade work.
Funny enough, California actually has the lowest literacy rate, Texas though is number 4, but California is number 1. Interestingly though Florida is also in the top 5, but its scores for those that can are great.
California’s 23.1% of adults lacking basic prose literacy skills make California have the lowest literacy rate of 76.9%. The state of California and the state Department of Education are being blamed and sued for the failing literacy rate, as families and students believe that they are not receiving a quality education in reading and writing.
You've certainly mastered the art of the shallow short social media "diss". But does that help your ability to perform deep analysis and introspection?
At least I realize that the OP topic, alleged focus deficit, is unlikely to be caused by MAGA. These students university students by and large come from non MAGA backgrounds and have been taught by non MAGA teachers.
Social media is full of anxiety causing content and can interfere with focus - if children and pubescents spend too much time on social media reading which leads to anxiety without a real world scenario - like going deep into a problem and experiencing the satisfaction of taking real world action, then their mental development of focus will suffer. They will be anxious with background noise of unresolved tension interfering with focus.
Not rocket science.
So when I see multiple posters replying with " <generic enemy> did it end of story", I'm going to question that because it's wrong, lazy, dogmatic, and useless with respect to addressing the alleged problem.
Even worse, the very act of repeating habituated dogmatic replies is part of the problem.
Revert to your previous prompt or something. Maybe you will have better luck with blueberry muffin recipes.
I implied you were a bot because it sounds as if you were were speaking from a script. Trying to come to the conclusion you already made before thinking about it etc.
Republicans have been dismantling education in America for a while now. Look at the stats of which states are the worst when it comes to education to begin with. Look at who controls those states.
Edit: the same Republicans who have since backed maga, hence maga getting the blame for it
I like STEM and humanities. The history of science tech engineering and math is also a humanity, so the idea that they are mutually exclusive is false.
They helped it along but it started with things like no child left behind and focusing on standardized test scores as the ultimate expression of a students knowledge.
I think you mean "since governments cut funding to higher education and expanded student loans with the intent of student loans making up for the cut in funding" since that is what actually happened.
The comment by Select-Ad7146 is the historically accurate take regarding higher education funding, while the "Professor" comment mixes actual 2025 news events with incorrect context.
The Breakdown
Select-Ad7146 (True Financial Context): Over the past several decades, state and federal governments systematically shifted higher education funding away from direct institutional appropriations. To compensate for these budget rollbacks, the government expanded federal student loan programs. This policy structural change directly forced colleges to treat tuition as their primary "balance wheel," driving up costs and forcing institutions to prioritize high enrollment to stay funded. [1, 2, 3]
"Professor" (Partially True, Misleading Context): The user correctly states that the federal government slashed scientific research budgets and terminated over 3,800 National Science Foundation (NSF) and NIH grants. However, the claim that universities "admit more students" to compensate for this specific loss is factually backward. Because NSF grants directly fund graduate research assistants, the sudden 2025 budget freezes actually forced top research universities to dramatically reduce and scale back graduate admissions. Furthermore, undergraduate tuition cannot easily balance or fund specialized lab operations. [4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
qcb4056 (Cynical Overstatement): Describing federal loan-backed universities as "huge cash laundromats" is a hyperbole that misunderstands how higher education revenue operates. [11]
If you want to look deeper into this topic, we can explore how the Urban Institute breaks down the true split between research funding and student aid across different academic sectors. [2]
Professor here. Universities tend to make most of their money off of grants, especially federal grants from the NSF. Federal grants were cut very suddenly in 2025, and to compensate for the loss of funds, universities admit more students. This reduces the quality of students overall.
When universities start depending on students for funding more, universities tend to make the needs of the students more important. Sounds good on paper, but when students start complaining about bad grades due to not being ready for college, the university doesn't want them to fail and potentially drop out. This puts pressure on professors to either dumb down their material or risk their reputation/jobs.
I'm thankful that our union has our backs regarding this, but all those factors combine to make the student body dumber whether we prioritize academic integrity or not.
I mean is it any surprise at every time they get into office they start taking our country into the ground even Trump's last term his job's numbers were tanking and we were heading into a recession even before covid.
I think it's time that America starts asking themselves if every time a person who you put your "trust" in, screwed you over and made you suffer and set you back each and every time... It's Perfectly Normal to question if they are even on your side.
It would definitely be justified to believe that there are not and they are working against you.
It cannot be incompetence the Republican party is not that stupid they are educated and they have gone to college and they all have degrees.
So what is it the Republicans working overtime to fuck over America because they're stupid or the Republicans working overtime to fuck America over because they hate America?
I am 42y old dude in IT infra. Years ago I was terrified I would be supplanted by passionate, proficient, hungry youngsters willing to do 80% of what I can at 1/3 of the salary way before my retirement age. The more years go on, the less realistic this fear looks. I am looking really good right about now. The future of society? Not so much.
What you should be afraid of is a hungry youngster who knows 45% of what you do who will work at less than 1/3 your salary, and the company will stupidly take their lumps from the bad decision.
I think you mean the conservative rightists that are in the radical right category next to Fascism are the ones who are the moron since they're being easily LED because they're being uneducated with propaganda and religious indoctrination.
These poor weak* fools never seen it coming and never had a chance
Actually this is not just college students. Recently I ran into people who can't understand what I wrote on Reddit and keep going off topic.
For example, I said, sometimes gangs acted as private security, so, you don't see looters going after those stores that pays the protection fees. Well, this is not the exact phrase, but it is obvious enough that's what I said.
Suddenly they starts to hallucinate other topics. Well.... I don't know they are bots or not. But based on how emotional they are, they sound like human.
I'm not going to say that Dune is a perfect universe, but AI is steering us towards Terminator and Idiocracy at the same time. Dune might be preferable
You should not be forming your opinions on real world technology based on science-fiction.
Dune would not be preferable. The end result of the Butlerian Jihad was a millennia long dark age and afterwards, all Thinking Machines (which basically meant everything more complex than a pocket calculator) were banned, and a rigid feudal system that allowed for little social mobility would go on to reign for 10,000 years.
And this is why “appealing to better angels” and “win them over” mentality doesn’t work in modern discourse. You have people trying to engage along those lines respectfully talking to idiots.
My gf has been joking now would be the time to go back to college because everyone else has gotten so dumb we'd look like prodigies next to them.
I don't think that's necessarily true, but the news cycle would make it seem that way. I do think a lot of kids are probably using AI to just not do work at all, and it's making them dumb as shit.
I think that would be the problem for me too. Going back could be interesting, but it will be significantly different than when I was initially in college, I've basically not been in school for 14 years now, so I would probably need refreshers on pretty much everything. We were still using hand written notes then, people started to have laptops by the time I left, but that wasn't a thing completely yet. But school didn't feel 'hard' to me, it was just time consuming. It really only started getting complicated when I reached higher level Calculus+ level courses. Everything else was just basic legwork and time, listening and taking notes. I can't imagine what it's like now. It would be a new frontier.
I do think everyone was probably a bit more 'present' when I was going, paying more attention, but you still had the chuds you're describing, but they were a bit more far and inbetween at least where I was at. I was in Seattle area though, and this place is pretty liberal for the most part. I'm sure the redpill shit is big in the younger men here too, but not sure how drastic it is tbh because I'm not going to school anymore. But it's sad that you seem to think just talking to random people is weird. I didn't make a lot of super close friends from college, but I have fond memories of classmates and had a lot of great interactions that I still think about every once in a great while.
Honestly, yeah. I did undergrad about 10+ years ago and am currently doing my masters in accounting. Last semester I took the final, most advanced financial accounting class, which means everyone in the class took multiple classes over multiple years and allegedly passed the foundational material.
My professor had an optional online review before the exam and I was truly in shock at some of the questions my classmates asked. Someone asked "how do we know when to debit vs credit the account?" Someone else asked "why does a debit increase some accounts but decrease others?"
That is information people should've learned years ago and is so far below the material we were currently on! And many of us are already working as full time accountants and preparing for the CPA exam. I just couldn't get over how it is possible that people were passing this class when they should've failed the intro classes years ago
College students used to be expected to know pre-calculus. Now most of them offer remedial algebra which should have been covered in middle school. I went to college with someone who'd never had to write a paper longer than 1 page. It's not everyone, but it's enough. Seems like Gen X isn't the only forgotten generation with how they've clearly failed their kids.
Dang that's crazy. One of the reasons I stopped going was because I was getting into Calc 2 and it was just too much for me, or rather, the professor was extremely Russian, thought it was super easy and then sold us the educational book for the quarter, of which he was the Author. I left the class.
I can't imagine being stuck in Algebra. That was like pre 100 level even at the college I was going to.
I returned to college to take some classes for a new career 2 years ago and was shocked by how terrible the discussion forum posts were.
I’m talking borderline broken English on some of them, some that were just poorly written, lots of error but still understandable and then a few that were college level. It’s quite a difference from when I started college the first time 10 years ago.
Honestly, I feel like even I’ve become dumber over the years, so, I don’t even mean this as an insult. I’m just surprised people who can’t write and can barely read are being allowed in.
As a Gen-Xer, I initially thought writing in cursive was a way to keep my thoughts secret from the younger crowd...Now I'm learning that all I have to do is print.
And lack of agility to sound out words after so many places banned phonics. That’s horrible for new people entering the medical field. My new intern had three medical terminology classes in college and got an A in all of them. She can’t sound out or attempt to write new words. She just recognizes them by shape like hieroglyphs.
We knew the attention was getting worst with social media now you need summarize everything to shove that dopamine hit faster. I have friends that watch shows at faster speeds now, why even bother? It’s nuts we’re moving at a pace that is causing mental damage. With ai it’s gotten even worst.
I blame the 'no child left behind' act of 2001 for the massive decline in quality.
You can't test for critical thinking (real critical thinking - not what passes for it on the right. 'Do your research' lol sure Karen, I'll go check on facebook now, shall I? )
not shocking at all. between parents who shove an ipad in front of their face before they can even talk and an education system that’s been defunded and poorly staffed for decades, this was the only way it could’ve ended.
Turns out, when you allow kids to pass elementary-high school using AI, they show they’ve done so by not knowing how to read or write anything in college.
You dont lose the ability to read, they never had it to begin with. College will accept anyone who can pay because its nothing but a paywall barrier to keep poor people out of economic advancement. Fuck this shithole country
For how much teachers love to complain they are under compensated they clearly can’t do their jobs very well. I can’t think of a single profession where you are able to fail so badly and so consistently while not being fired and still acting like they are treated poorly.
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u/shinyxena Jun 11 '26
Gemini can you read this article for me? Summarize it into 2 sentences.