American high school seniors scored their lowest in reading and math in over twenty years, with the gap widening between top and bottom performers. The speaker blames pandemic disruptions, excessive smartphone use that shortens attention spans, teacher shortages forcing unqualified instructors into classrooms, and reduced academic rigor.
A shocking report on America's children. High school students are now falling behind in both math and reading. America's high school seniors have the worst math and reading scores in more than 2 decades. The results are in and they do not look pretty. American high school students are at an all-time low with reading and math skills. This is very alarming. Both public and private school students are testing out lower than they have in decades. They rate students collectively by what they call an achievement gap. Your top performing students are holding ground, they're holding their own, where not so top, lower performing students are falling way behind. And this presents a great inequality for job opportunities down the road for these students. Some of the big culprits, believed to be the big culprits of this lag in scholastic studies would be COVID-19, the pandemic. During the pandemic, a lot of students found themselves scrolling a lot through their phones. They say it shortens attention span and it kind of takes away from creativity. Um, you're watching other people do things when you yourself could be creating. And a lot of that falls on parents too. I, I believe that's my opinion. If you're allowing your kid to spend 7 to 8 hours a day on, on a cell phone, probably not the best thing to do. I think with anything you have to have a balance. Okay, a little time for social media, a little time for a game here and there, but definitely responsibilities have to come into play. A lot of skills that you use later in life, you learn as an adolescent. You learn responsibility, you learn time management, You learn all that as you're growing up, so that helps you later in life to hold down a job, to have good morals. Another point they made is that a lot of students see school as maybe a secondary option rather than a learning opportunity, and they're taking school too lightly. I can't really say anything about that. When I was in school, I took school way too lightly. Looking back, I wish I would have taken it more serious, but just the mischievous boy in me wanted to skip school and not worry about school, thinking it's not going to affect me later in life. Where now I know it definitely affects you later in life. Thank God for them teachers that I had that went over and beyond. Teachers, in my opinion, nowadays they're not regarded like they used to be. There's a teacher shortage, so you have unqualified teachers teaching, or you might have one teacher teaching 3 different subjects rather than specializing. It's a problem. I guess I can't stress enough, balance, balance, balance. And a lot of it takes discipline. I couldn't pay attention for more than minutes when I was growing up. You got scolded for that. I can't tell you how many times I heard, "Pay attention, boy." And back then, teachers had a whole lot more authority to discipline a child than they do now. Now there's a lot of rules, a lot of laws. I know back when I was a kid, if I got disciplined by my teacher, and when I say disciplined, I've gotten the paddle. Yup. They'd give you a swat, a good swat. I've had my chest pointed on, "You listen here, young man," and blah, blah, blah. But the last thing I wanted to do is go home and tell my ma or dad about it. I'd be in trouble a second time. So I kept that hush-hush. Back in the day, a teacher would assign 30 books to read during a school year. And now they read less than 3 books a year. I don't know if we're getting more relaxed on our standards. But it's kind of scary, the direction it's heading right now, because these young people will be our leaders down the road. I'd like to know what you think about the drop in the abilities of our students these days. What do you think we should do about it? It'd be really interesting to hear different perspectives. Let us know what you think about it. Thanks for listening, and you have a good night or a good morning. Bye-bye.
