Bill Dalton: The real reason our kids aren't learning to read

EDITOR'S NOTE: The views and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not of Ottawa News Network.

If you’re a high school senior and reading this (doubtful), consider yourself lucky (questionable), because you are among the few in your class who can read.

It appears that the reading skills of American high school seniors are the worst they have been in three decades, according to a recent article in The New York Times.

I was able to read that article because I graduated from Fennville High School in 1969, back when teachers cared more about teaching than sheltering in place or worrying about whether they might get shot. Back when TV and rock 'n' roll were supposed to rot our brains.

Now it’s social media supposedly rotting our brains as Americans abandon printed text for screen time and video-dominated social media, similar to the Saturday morning cartoons I watched as a kid. (Remember "Beanie and Cecil"? "Rocky & Bullwinkle"? "Fractured Fairy Tales"? If you do, then you probably didn't smoke too much marijuana in the '60s.)

The bad news is that only about a third of today’s 12th-graders are leaving high school with the reading and math skills needed for college, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

It’s convenient to blame the pandemic. But previous testing showed the learning declines, especially for the worst students, began long before the pandemic.

Kids can’t read today because many kids don’t read. And that’s probably because their parents don’t read, either. Screen time is replacing reading time and family time, especially streaming video.

Streaming video is like my Saturday morning cartoons. Moving pictures don’t require too much thought. It’s easier than reading. So that’s why people do it.

The difference is that in my day, we only did it on Saturdays. Now, people stream every day, nearly all day. And they’re always playing with their phones, something like 2,500 swipes a day.

Reading, of course, requires thinking, or at the very least, it should stimulate thinking. But it’s easier to watch than to think. So that’s why people do it.

The scary part (and you know how folks in the media like to scare people) is that many foreign nations are still producing students who do know how to read, do math and think critically.

In the near future, their kids will likely be kicking our butts in just about everything, while American students spend countless hours mastering their Xbox and Game Boy.

But don’t panic yet. Artificial intelligence will save our laziest students, who are increasingly relying on ChatGPT to brainstorm, write papers and do their homework.

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Of course, one has to wonder who will be creating all that A.I. to bail out illiterate Americans, who risk preventable deaths because they can’t read an EXIT sign or the warning labels on drugs.

Could it be the Chinese?

And if you’re counting on our current government to solve the illiteracy crisis (cue the laugh track), you’ve been too busy scrolling through your social media.

The National Center for Education Statistics now has only three full-time workers — it used to have 100 — after the Trump Administration “drained the swamp” and started closing the Department of Education.

So face it. If your kid is one of those who can’t read, it’s not his or her fault, or even their teacher’s.

It’s yours.

— Bill Dalton is a former reporter and editor for The Kansas City Star. His new book “Dalton’s Bend” is available from Amazon for those who can read.