New Problem With 10th Graders This Year Is Terrifying

Former teacher: yeah its worse than what you think... far worse

I got so mad at my 12 year old last night that I ended up describing what weaponized incompetence is to him. Doing it wrong isn't gonna get me to do it for you, you're just gonna redo it.

No child left behind and non-interactive parenting have really done a number on the current crop of students

Learned helplessness

How does this happen? Have people really stopped teaching their kids how to learn? I mean, I remember as a kid when my dad didn't have answers we would go to the library. He taught me how to look things up and pick good sources. The idea that kids no longer know how to think is terrifying. These children will run this country one day!

I was about to say that there's no way this is real, but after having interacted with people under the age of 20 in the last year, I can actually see this being true

My daughter is 13 and regularly comes home baffled by what her classmates don't know. She said recently a 14 year old boy had to be told what omnivore meant. I don't know about the curriculum now but when I was a kid, we learnt herbivore/carnivore/omnivore before we were 10. That's just one example of many, she's come home with similar tales often.

I've told her to be kind, we don't know why these kids might not be as verbose or clever as others. They may not have parents who value education, they may have barriers to learning etc, but it is genuinely concerning.

If it's just kids being lazy and not wanting to do the work, fine. Judge. But mostly I just think if these kids genuinely DON'T know these basics, then they have been failed and the ones who should be on the hook are the adults who let them get to this point and didn't help them.

Before I let my kids use any device (Ipad/Switch) they are to read for 20 minutes from a book and then give me a quick synopsis of what they read.

This isn't a problem that they can't read numbers or know that 2 is after 1.

The problem is the students literally do not think for themselves, they don't try. Like, at all. They HAVE to be told what to do

Will it be amazing or terrible to be 10x smarter than new generations 20 yrs from now?