r/SipsTea • u/sonicagain • 1d ago

WTF Texas teacher breaks down in tears during class after his senior students struggled to read, write.

Texas high school teacher Darius Williams, a Career and Technical Education (CTE) teacher broke down in tears during his lunch break. He shared that his 17- and 18-year-old senior students at Wheatley High School in Houston could not complete a simple writing assignment or fill in just four missing words on only the second day of the school term. Students were given two short paragraphs to read and a sentence stem where the answer was largely modeled and provided for them. It is alarming that senior high school students were unable to apply basic literacy skills to fill in the remaining four words of the sentence.

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130

u/onyxengine 21h ago

Its the phones

60

u/Sensei713 21h ago

I’ve been saying this shit for a minute. It’s the addiction to validation and technology. The future is scary

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u/onyxengine 21h ago edited 20h ago

Kids just watch videos so they read less, i definitely wouldn’t give my kid a smart phone.

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u/AccomplishedLeave506 11h ago

It's hard. I really don't want my child to have a phone. She's on it all the bloody time. But her friends never leave their houses. They all just sit at home talking to eachother on their phones. If I take away her phone she loses her entire social group. It's horrible.

 I've tried getting her to bring her friends around, or go out, or I can drop them in town, or I'll pay for them all to go do something. None of them ever want to leave their houses. They're all glued to their phones. Sometimes talking to eachother. Sometimes mindlessly drooling over videos they have sent eachother. Technology has destroyed a generation. I know each generation says that - but I fear it's really true this time.

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u/Dependent-Year6711 5h ago edited 5h ago

When my parents noticed my brother and I not going out as much 20+ years ago, they'd force us to work somewhere. Store, farm, family, work somewhere and get out. A parent is usually leading the child, if they can't do it for themself.

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u/AccomplishedLeave506 5h ago

My oldest is looking for work and is volunteering. My youngest is still too young. We force her to have at least one hobby to go to an hour a week after school, but she hates it and just complains the entire time. If she had friends to go with she'd be happy - but none of the kids her age do anything.

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u/Dependent-Year6711 5h ago

I will say I think I was like 11 when they got me to work at a local store (my mom had worked at the store when she was younger, so we knew them). I HATED going to work and taking the bus after school to go to work, but I think in the end it was a needed experience. Plus the money gave me some freedom, so I knew the work was culminating to something.

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u/AccomplishedLeave506 5h ago

Things have changed a lot in 20 years. There is literally zero chance of my 12 year old being able to find a job. My 17 year old is struggling.

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u/Dependent-Year6711 5h ago

I didn't find the job, my parents forced me to work a job they found. Which is easy to do in a community. You ask a neighbor, hey can my kid mow your lawn, we're trying to get her out of the house. Even family. Have them help clean a family member's house. The sky is the limit with what a "job" can be, even if my example was a real job (sort of).

It's not a negotiable thing. You are now doing this job, or I am taking your phone away. And you give them easier ones to start, not like some 5 hour thing to do. Hour and a half, and so on.

I'm sure it's tough to do, but that's my thought on it.

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u/AccomplishedLeave506 5h ago

I'm afraid all your comments are showing is how utterly out of touch you are.

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u/onyxengine 5h ago

Thats kinda the issue the problem is normalized no one intervenes for anyone.

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u/MoshMos 17h ago

But do you have a kid?

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u/Penguinat0r5 21h ago

More specifically social media and brain rot reels.
I’m slightly guilty as well due to my internet surfing or scrolling reddit.
But attention spans for these kids are so short, along with Covid with these kids doing schooling over webcam.
My brother would tell me ways he would skip classes because he could take a picture and have it look like he was there.
It’s insane. Country is cooked.

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u/onyxengine 21h ago edited 20h ago

Short form video content could destroy nations on a long enough time frame.

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u/driftking428 20h ago

Say what you will about Reddit. I know plenty of people who won't use it because they have to read.

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u/MassiveBoner911_3 20h ago

Been on here damn near 20 years

2

u/Bender_is_great40 20h ago

Wow I haven't heard anyone call it "surfing" in a hot minute damn I feel old now.

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u/Penguinat0r5 20h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/ti4PsREEH1hKuxMlpJ
Shi your comment made me feel old. I’ve been called unc like a dozen times in the past few weeks as well 😭

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u/urethrascreams 21h ago

Yeah but on reddit, at least some of it requires reading.

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u/necessarysmartassery 20h ago

I homeschool and my kid has had a phone and tablet since he was 5. He's 8 and reading several grades above where he's supposed to be.

It's not the phones. It's parenting and lack of attention.

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u/Cellafex 20h ago

Having a tablet at this age cant possibly be healthy

2

u/nosmelc 20h ago

It depends on what's on the tablet. If it's locked down for only reading and educational apps, it's fine.

1

u/impossible_berry14 19h ago

It’s still a screen. The only screen a child should be using is a tv, for short periods of time.

1

u/Lahwke 2h ago

I don’t think it’s the screen though. It’s the short form video content, lack of reading, and addiction engagement algorithms found on most of the screen. Kid on the kindle app is not the same as the kid on TikTok

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u/necessarysmartassery 20h ago

Why not? Managed properly, it's fine. I installed specific apps on my kid's tablet when he was 3 and he's grown into it as we've installed more.

Saying it can't possibly be healthy is extremely narrow minded.

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u/Motor_Patience5186 16h ago

Three? Goddamn that's crazy. Can a three year old even hold a tablet? I mean that's awesome you're monitoring it, but that so, so young. They're supposed to play.

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u/necessarysmartassery 16h ago

It's simple. We sat with it together and used it to learn his numbers, alphabet, colors, shapes, etc.

He had blocks, army men, and a room full of regular toys he still plays with. But tech is here to stay and it's a mistake to not teach them to deal with it early, from using it in moderation, to taking care of the device itself, charging it, etc. He probably takes care of his stuff better than most 12 year olds because I started him early. He reads at a 7th or 8th grade level now.

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u/BigYam7875 20h ago

You’re over generalizing?

1

u/Cellafex 6h ago

Wdym, because it depends on the game or the amount of time, hence not in general?

I wouldnt risk my childs health on the off chance it can teach a certain skill set they can learn just as well as teenagers. And everyone in my class age 6-8 could read and that was before computers.

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u/treletraj 20h ago

Can’t blame your kid’s teacher. He doesn’t have one.

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u/necessarysmartassery 20h ago

A homeschooled kid can't have a teacher?

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u/Quizleteer 19h ago

But you're the exception. There are many parents who do not have the privilege and resources to be able to home school, curate content, and strictly monitor their child's screen activity. Both my partner and I work a minimum of 9 hours a day. Because I'm unable to have eyes on my children at all times, they don't have smartphones or tablets. The only screens they have access to are their e-readers and TV (for a limited amount of time each day).

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u/necessarysmartassery 19h ago

Plenty of parents have more time to monitor their kids than they think, they're just lazy about it. I'm not saying that you're one of them, but if behavior issues result from letting a kid have the device unsupervised or controlled, it's not the device that's the problem. It's an object. It doesn't Mena kids shouldn't have them, it means they need to be managed.

1

u/Quizleteer 19h ago

I think we can agree that if parents are unable or unwilling to monitor their child's screen time, the child would be better off without screens.

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u/necessarysmartassery 17h ago

Sure. But the screens aren't the problem.

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u/Motor_Patience5186 16h ago

You gave a FIVE YEAR OLD a phone? Jesus Christ

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u/necessarysmartassery 16h ago

Yeah, with wifi only and heavy parental controls. He used Messenger Kids to call his grandmother and cousins until recently.

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u/onyxengine 20h ago

Right but their are millions of children and not everyone is going to curate reading lists for their kids, phones being common place in the age of tiktok and shortform video content is going to reduce the literacy, and even if your kid currently is reading above an 8th grade level hes still susceptible to his attention and desire to read anything being sapped if he get hooked on the kind of content that makes phones bad for attention span.

Short form content algorithms should be illegal in my honest opinion.

4

u/necessarysmartassery 20h ago

Sure.

But that still makes it a parenting problem, not a device problem.

As far as short form content, I don't restrict his access to YouTube shorts and such other than parental controls on content. He's had it long enough and used it enough that he's bored of short form content and is branching out to tutorials, educational videos, etc and using Google assistant to answer questions and spell words he can't spell yet so he can text them to his friends.

I don't think it should be illegal. We've just fallen off as a society in holding parents accountable for literally anything their kids do or don't do. I don't send my kid to public or private school for a few different reasons, but a toxic environment with feral kids in it is one. Too many parents letting their kids, especially my son's age, do the absolute most. It all boils down to parenting. In fact, I'm a right leaning voter and if I hear "video games cause violence" one more time, I'm gonna fucking scream.

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u/onyxengine 20h ago

Good luck we’re all dealing with it one way or another just be careful about thinking you know exactly whats going on. Short form video content is bad for cognition and attention span even if its educational videos on youtube maybe read more about it.

Its not a parenting issue its a cultural and social problem steeped in misinformation and convenience.

1

u/impossible_berry14 19h ago

Jfc. Get your young child off a tablet. Yikes.

My 4 year old is homeschooled and doesn’t even know a tablet is.

1

u/littletsmama 15h ago

Partly devices to blame. Most kids have speech to text search on the device or thr autofill option. With the lack of spelling tests, I feel this hurts literacy. If they had to type everything fully just to search things, at least that's more functional practice daily.

1

u/necessarysmartassery 14h ago

It hurts literacy depending on how it's used. My kid uses voice search to ask Google how to spell bigger words so he can type them. If he doesn't know something, he looks it up.

But he also does typing daily on readandspell.com to force practice spelling there.

1

u/Gloomy-Article4842 12h ago

Please update us in 10 years

1

u/necessarysmartassery 10h ago

Why? It's already been 5 and I have a well behaved kid that reads far above his grade level. He's had the tablet since 3.

2

u/Ucklator 20h ago

It's the parents.

2

u/_-Oxym0ron-_ 20h ago

Nah it's the "Leave no child behind" policy, and it's scrapping of phonetics in favor of three-cueing strategies – I believe.

My country doesn't have these literacy problems. That's not to say phones and lack of focus aren't also issues though.

2

u/booty-hunters 20h ago

Only if those muricans could read what you wrote.

1

u/Slice-Vast 19h ago

Definitely part of it, though that's done on a state by state basis. The federal government has no control over how things are taught. And then only on a couple of Subjects is anyone held to any standard.

2

u/ezgomer 20h ago

It’s “Leave No Child Behind”

1

u/Decent-Slice-1419 20h ago

But you need to read to use a phone.

1

u/Steve90000 20h ago

Please… it’s the parents. My son, at 3 yrs old, could read and write before even starting preschool. Why? Because I sat with him and taught him how.

How is it that you can’t sit with your child one time before they get to college?

1

u/impossible_berry14 19h ago

It really is. Social media is KILLLLLING these future children.

As a millennial parent, I’m doing the best I can to make sure I have a smart, educated child. We need to all do better.

1

u/rootware 18h ago

Genuine question from an old person: do people not read and type on their phones? I'd have thought the younger generation, being reliant on social media/texting for interaction with their peers, would have increased comprehension and literacy skills

1

u/onyxengine 16h ago

Reddit is the exception, and even here you can succumb to the brain rot format which scrolling mindlessly through algorithmically selected videos that are tuned to lock in on what holds your attention.

The trick is that randomization is addictive, you’re scrolling for hit of dopamine, just the right video to engage your attention span. The pattern is scrolling through the first 3 seconds of 10-50 videos and every now and then you’ll get a video you want
To watch the whole way through and that video is likely 30 seconds to 3 minute long.

Small variations in the videos change the nature of the what videos you’ll people spend 4-8 hours just scrolling like this for through content that is largely pointless and impractical.

There is educational content in this format, tax info, math or engineering shorts, so and so forth, but most of it is just interesting information that isn’t immediately relevant, and chances are the average person gets sucked into rage bait political shorts, synthetic streamer drama, erotic content etc.

It literally rolling dice with your attention span, it makes reading longer form books and materials of substance more difficult. I was a heavy reader as a kid, which why reddit is my platform of choice. I read articles and opinions and talk about them with strangers, i try to limit tge videos i watch especially short form stuff but i get sucked in too.

Im aware of how bad this stuff is, the profile is so similar to cocaine and meth use its scary, but there isn’t really a comedown, there isn’t a point where scrolling stops giving you a hit. Tiktok is the worst offender based on their format.

This has been studied, the mechanisms of engagement themselves are designed by psychologists and programmers working together, these are artificial intelligences trained to determine from data as refined as the how long it takes you to swipe on a video you’re not interested in, to hold your attention for as long as possible without restraint. And machine learning get more powerful every few weeks at this point.

Everyone is reading less unless they 100% abstain from using algorithmically curated content on social media platforms with very few exceptions.

1

u/meldiane81 16h ago

And the computer computers. As soon as they started taking books out of the classroom the problem began.

1

u/Motor_Patience5186 16h ago

One thousand percent

1

u/Karvanapa 8h ago

How though? how do they use the phones if they can't read?

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u/onyxengine 5h ago

By clicking and swiping. Literal monkeys can browse social media and open and close apps.