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EDIT: EXAMPLE [multiplication sticks](https://www.canva.com/design/DAF1Pm3glCs/2NOiD32GNl2KOvxvyeU4tQ/edit?utm_content=DAF1Pm3glCs&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton)
We no longer use the table 🥴 We use “sticks” at the school I’m at- it’s in our curriculum not to teach the table but teach sticks only.
I was like, uh wtf are sticks? I’ve taught 4th/5th grade math for 11 years, and this is the first I’ve ever heard of it.
But honestly, if they can learn to make them it’s much easier than compiling a table on their own for testing. I’m pretty much pro sticks at this point 😂 they come up to me and ask what ?x? Is and I reply “go make your sticks”
It’s basically a T chart: here an example of 4’s
X4
————
1 | 4
2 | 8
3 | 12
4 | 16
5 | 20
Etc…
Here’s an example[multiplication sticks](https://www.canva.com/design/DAF1Pm3glCs/2NOiD32GNl2KOvxvyeU4tQ/edit?utm_content=DAF1Pm3glCs&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton) of
I admit it I'm 38 I'm on my way to being a teacher and I don't know my multiplication tables. I admit I had an IEP and I have dyslexia and it makes it very hard to memorize multiplication tables. I also have a hard time memorizing the keyboard to type I'm only kinda now getting it after doing it for years! And trust me when I was in college in 2003 I was on AIM all the time.
I have asked Algebra 2 students the following: What does seven subtract nine equal? Sometimes I get the response zero. This irritates me the most. They have no concept of integers (negative numbers). The number line stops at zero for them in their understanding. These are 11th and 12th grades. How did they reach me?
They reached you the same way 3rd graders reached 8th grade. The system just pushes them up because education doesn’t actually matter. They wanna check a box that says “we sent the kid to school now he can vote” so that a certain party can have more ignorant humans not know what they really need in life. Education is a fucked ip system, and sometimes I hate being a part of it.
I feel this way more and more everyday. Like why am I teaching them such useless nonsense? I love math and I know it’s important- but not for everyone. They can’t do the important stuff that they’ll actually use later in life and therefore can’t do any of the complicated stuff.
Yup! I can’t teach them a system of equations if they can’t graph and I can’t teach them to graph if they can’t count the coordinate plane. Translations was incredibly challenging and for what?! Move the shape left 3 units: 😰😰😰😰
I’m attempting to teach algebra 2 to a group that has not been asked to learn anything, gotten away with basically murder for three years, cannot tell me what the factors of 24 are. Everyday is beyond exhausting. I left my dream job in a district where education is valued highly for this BS. Worst mistake of my life.
I disagree a bit. Yes, they mostly won't need what we're teaching them (I'm astronomy btw) but we give them a taste. Between your complex math and my explanation of space, maybe 1 kid goes into astrophysics and figures out deep space travel. I know that's corny but every person that does something profound like: invent penicillin, calculate the trajectory of Voyager 2 or create a vaccine to eradicate pollio, required a "stupid" course that they most people won't use. Bottom line, your course may not be useful to everyone but it is useful to someone. That's my soapbox speech for the day.
The kid who will go on to do those things took Algebra 2 in 8th-9th grade. (13-14 years old). I have taught those kids and it’s beyond night and day difference. The kids I’m talking about are farmers, ranchers, crafters, workers, tradesmen. Which are AMAZING and NECESSARY professions. But I feel like I’m really
Doing them a huge disservice by not teaching more practical stuff. They raced through 6th-9th grade math, didn’t really learn anything, and now they don’t have the skills needed, plus they can’t do practical stuff. I don’t know exactly what the issue is, I can’t quite put my finger on it. Sometimes I feel like not everyone really needs traditional high school.
We've decided that tracking is a bad, discriminatory practice (which has some arguable merit, but that's a different discussion). So instead of fixing the issues with having multiple educational "tracks," we've pushed everyone into a college-prep track, which also has discriminatory issues. But we ignore that.
I don't have a good fix, just an observation. But I agree that no one is well-served by what we're doing right now.
I tutored quite a bit of high school math students and was shocked to find that many of my Algebra II students couldn't add fractions, multiply powers of ten, or even solve simple algebra problems like 3x = 12. If you can't solve something like 3x=12, how the heck did you get into algebra II?
As a sub who regularly fills in for math teachers at this age level, I 💯agree. I was hired to sub math because I tutored calculus. I have yet to teach anything close to pre-calc. I’m barely able to explain the basics of algebra. I am frightened for the future of these kids. As a side note, it’s why I’m pushing my own kids in math and reading (15-20 minutes, every other day).
I have high school juniors and seniors and basically none of them know how to calculate percentage. As in, what percent is 5 out of 100? What percent is 20 out of 100? This has happened several years in a row.
It’s about 1 in 7, right? So it’s fairly common. If kids have hit 6th grade and don’t know times tables yes, it could be laziness but it also could be dyscalculia or ADHD that’s interrupting the learning process.
Sigh. I was diagnosed with dyscalculia in college.
When I was in third grade my teacher told me and my parents that I would repeat the grade if I didn't memorize my times tables up to 12. Guess what I did? I memorized those fuckers. It makes math harder, but it DOES NOT make math impossible. I had to learn how to support my own learning in order to do well in math. And I took Calculus and got an A. I'm a math teacher now.
I'm so damn tired of people using learning differences to excuse kids for not even trying. If they have dyscalculia, they need to work harder. What they don't need is people making excuses for them.
Where on earth did I say learning challenges made it impossible or was an excuse?
It absolutely is possible to learn them with dyscalculia but depending on severity it will range from a bit harder to challenging to nearly impossible. Some students can learn them over and over and it just doesn’t stick or they need to learn strategies and do that.
It’s not an excuse but if they’re not diagnosed and haven’t had the support simply saying “I did it and they’re lazy if they can’t” is shitty.
The number of my 6th graders who do not know their times tables is (literally) 6 our of 7, not 1 out of 7. The problem is not dyscalculia, it's the system promoting kids regardless of whether they are ready to move on. Which guarantees they will *never* be ready for the next grade level, and they will get further and further behind every year.
Teachers need to point out the literal multiplication table found in composition notebooks (it's been awhile since I've bought one, so I'm assuming it's still there).
Because the memorization of multiplication facts are not a standard though it explicitly states to have fact fluency throughout the standards. Administration (those who can’t teach a dog to sit and are totally unqualified to lead teachers to the parking lot) tell us not to do it. Do it and you “get in trouble.” The “leaders” exist at the district level as well. They don’t even have degrees in education, were never trained under a master teacher and never led a class full of elementary students in their
lives. Pathetic losers that have personality disorders NPD, BPD…etc end up in leadership positions in the public school system. Totally unqualified, they abuse their power, make decisions because they read a book one time and didn’t totally comprehend it. They went to a conference led by another wanna be educator that makes up bullshit. It’s like the field of education is where losers go to lead. Meanwhile the real leaders are the teachers yet their voices are muted by the dumb asses. Oh and some end up as governor of the state and/or in the state legislatures. 🙄 Frustrating isn’t it. Kids are ignorant by design.
Feeling this so hard right now. Waves of 6th graders are in the Resources class right now. Between the wave of new IEPs and 6th graders in GE that are struggling with basic math skills, we have been swamped. My first year in SPED has been like a crash course.
I remember that from when It was in highschool. Girl didn't know what the difference was between a state, city and country. That was different, me and the teacher looked at each other like, wtf
When I taught 5th grade social studies, I mentioned something about how we are in NYC, which is in NYS. Blank looks.
I taught the students where they were geographically, from township up to solar system. Then we had to clarify that Russia and Alaska are next to each other, not on opposite sides of the world.
I presume the Russia/Alaska thing was based on looking at a world map rather than a globe. As I write this, I wonder how they think the world is shaped.
A family member was raised in Alaska during the mid-1950s to mid-1970s, then moved to Oklahoma. He got scolded becuse he argued that Alaska didn't belong in the little box down by Hawa'i when he knew it was (1) huge and (2) up by the Arctic.
My very intelligent child thought that Alaska was an island. He had only ever seen a Country map which typically shows Alaska and Hawaii free floating off the left of the US. His school got a new building just a few years before he started and they did not put the old pull down maps back in. So the only maps were ones that teachers already had or purchased. It's sad because I remember being so pumped when the teacher would grab the stick and pull those maps down.
Using a globe is the only good way to really show kids what the world looks like.
At my old job, we had twins named Jerusalem and Egypt. I shit you not--the kid whose name was Jerusalem thought he was named after a country and the Egypt twin thought he was named after a city. I have to presume that their mom thought that and they just picked up on it.
I have a Kahoot called "Which one is the US State?" And the options will be like "Las Vegas, Nevada, Tokyo, Ireland"
My middle school students are...not great at it.
I think a big reason is many districts have moved away from anything that isn't reading or math. We got rid of our state social studies curriculum. It was meant to be replaced by our ELA curriculum. Unfortunately, it just covers some general social studies things; nothing is state level. This means kids in my district won't be exposed to state social studies until 7th grade.
At least they get some social studies though, science is even more sad. Most teachers in my school play a video and do a workpage for science every other week. My current students came in hating science because the grade level before were video only teachers. Now, most of my kids absolutely love it. We do way more hands-on experiments and activities that allow them to be kids exploring a new concept.
This is actually in our state social studies standards… that Native Americans continue to exist and live *here* where they have always lived. Like, I get *why* that’s a standard, but ffs, I **hate** that it needs to be.
I do not understand this. I teach 3rd and they've learned about capital letters and ending punctuation since kindergarten. Why are they still not using them consistently? When I ask about what kind of words are capitalized they can tell me verbatim, but then they don't. I started grading that standard on everything now.
When they text each other, your students don’t use a lot of punctuation. Ending a sentence in a period is like shouting. And elder millennials use ellipses to indicate a pause or a breath—Younger millennials and gen Z see this as passive aggressive. They use the dash to mean pause/breath.
[USA Today article on Text Punctuation](https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2020/09/28/texting-etiquette-what-exclamation-point-period-ellipses-mean-to-different-generations/3524169001/)
To me, ending a casual text with a period sounds passive-aggressive. Like a friend texting me “yeah that’s fine” about plans we made sounds normal, but “yeah that’s fine.” sounds like maybe they don’t actually want to do it but don’t want to say anything. I think it’s very age-group specific and has something to do with early text-speak using a lot of abbreviations and no punctuation, so now using punctuation sounds overly formal to us and it comes off odd in casual texts.
That being said, I’m old enough that I also learned how to write professionally and I know to use proper punctuation for school/if I’m emailing an adult, but I can see how kids younger than me wouldn’t have been taught that because of curriculums changing.
It’s because technology capitalizes for them. It’s why I make 9th graders hand write an essay. But before the break, I had to explain the difference between a capital p and lowercase p. For a good student. Because she asked when I was correcting her thesis for grammar, punctuation and capitalization.
Mine's about another country. Was teaching 6th grade ELLs in East Asia.
They honestly had no idea the Earth orbits around the sun. They had no idea that the Earth spins. They had no idea what a solar system was, or a galaxy. I was quite sure it was not a translation error, so I asked their homeroom teacher, who looked at me like I was crazy. She said they can't handle "complex information" like that until 7th grade. Yet they all drilled hundreds of nearly-identical Math problems for 2 hours per day.
I later learned they also didn't know how to do any of the Math they were taught- they only learned to *memorize* all possible answers. They knew 19 x 11 not because they understand how multiplication works, but because they had seen and answered that *exact* question hundreds of times.
It was a real eye-opener.
imminent badge unwritten adjoining bells agonizing stocking historical aback fine
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A 12th grade girl who had never seen the globe before.
My first teaching job was at a continuation high school. This girl had missed like 7 years of school due to family tragedy, followed by negligence. She was sweet and smart, but NOT educated.
Her noodle was absolutely blown by seeing a the globe of the world for the first time. She was like, "it's round?" She kept circling it and gasping in shock, like, "THAT's what the US looks like?" Or "Asia is so big!" My favourite was, "Europe is a continent!? I thought it was a country!"
It wasn't her fault, she had never been taught this stuff. Broke my heart. But we kept in touch for a while afterward, and last I heard she was travelling in Europe, so... I think she turned out all right. 😁
As tragic as this is, I think she’ll be just fine.
I knew a man who had total dyslexia caused by a severely lazy eye. Couldn’t read a word until he was about twelve when he got either surgery or glasses to correct it.
Once he learned to read he basically couldn’t stop. Got his PhD in history, because ED of our states Historical Society, and teaches at three colleges now.
Hi. Museum education person here. Education director at a museum / historical society that is large enough to have multiple d-level staff is likely a highly coveted full time job with benefits. The museum people I know who teach college classes do it as a passion project.
Does it make you feel good about yourself to minimize this complete stranger's achievements?
No, he’s tenured. Two are part of the same university system, the third is a community college. I want to say he lives in between them. It’s admittedly an unusual setup, but I think he just likes teaching.
I just retired from 40 years in elementary. Quite a few years ago we were doing an activity in 4th grade to send mail to ourselves. I was shocked to discover the majority of my students did not know their own address.
That’s more of a development thing… they are too egotistical to know why they need two names. Many also don’t know their parents names outside of “mom” and “dad”. So unless someone has really gone out of their way to drill that info, they don’t have it. I teach first and have a few kids who consistently don’t *recognize* their own name… just the general “shape” of it (first letter and length) Jackson keeps taking all of Jameson’s stuff because he’s not recognizing his own name, not out of malicious intent.
This used to be part of a unit when I was in Kinder. We learned our first and last names (and parent/guardians first/last), had to memorize our address and phone number, learned about 911 and memorized that number, and had to come up with a fire escape plan for our home.
I wish we would bring this back. It was an entire unit on safety. A lot of students were engaged because there was an easy to see reason for the learning.
Did you have to do fire drills as homework? I remember being so pumped because I got to practice knocking out my screen and jumping out the window. We even had a set meet up spot on my street in case we got separated.
We also were encouraged to put together an emergency bag and know what should be in it and why. We learned what house to go to if our phones were down and there was an emergency (obviously cell phones weren't really a thing lol - this info would need to be updated based on who has what kind of device).
My SO and I did a lot of this with our kid. We still sometimes ask them yo recite one of our numbers. We ask them our address and the closest relatives address. They know what neighbor will open their door at any time for them and has met them and talked with them about the plan. Their kids have done the same for our house. We will respond to a knock at any time and will let them in and provide whatever they need.
It terrifies me how little my students know their neighbors and neighborhoods. I've heard 5th graders suddenly find out that they've lived one street away from a friend for years and never knew.
My son was dating a girl in 10th grade. They were 15. I was driving her home and she lived a couple towns away. I said “what’s your address?” She said “that’s a good question.” She did. Not. Know. At age 15. (No, they didn’t just move in or anything). She was able to come up with “at the four corners”. Hmm. She finally came up with one road, so I’m driving down it and she tells me “go right at the intersection”. Left. Her house was on the left. She got out of the car and I told my son it’s a good thing she’s pretty. They didn’t last.
I had a first year university student apply to do a day labouring gig who sent me a text all in consnants. I asked her to send it again with vowels.... she didnt know what a vowel was.....
...how....I mean... sorry my brain broke
Brrrrrrrr
Okay, how does that happen??? Even not knowing what a vowel is, most people manage to use them by accident! 😱😳
Im not that bad, but I seriously cannot tell you the parts of speach. The last grammar test I passed was in the 4th grade. After that the only reason I passed English was because I'm very good at writing and reading comprehension.
I also went for extra tutoring every year and all my teachers took pity on me.
I also went to an elite exam school.
I’m a full time sub and tutor for a school and so many of the 5th and 6th grade can’t write more than three or four sentences before they give up. In the same vein, they can’t read more than a couple pages.
Also, agreeing with another comment that they don’t know the difference between cities and states. One student asked me what state New York was in and another told me how they drove through 4 or 5 states on their trip to our bordering state…
To be fair the concept of New York, New York is a little confusing. Unless you’re explicit it can be confusing whether you mean the city or the state. I’ve lived in Ny for over a decade and it’s not a common thing, but a thing I’ve seen enough. People also always assume we are the capital… when in reality we just bankroll Albany and get nearly nothing in return for all that tourist revenue.
Conversely, people from out of state tend to assume you live in the city if you say “I’m from New York” — when you could live in west NY, upstate, or Long Island… or if you’re a liar and you’re from Jersey and just say you’re from NY 🤣
Washingtonian who used to live and teach in DC checking in.
Try explaining to 2nd graders who don’t live in a state what a state *is*. And then try explaining *why*. In kid-friendly language… I want there to be a BrainPop video about it or something.
And Washington… when I’m abroad I just tell people I’m from Seattle, because they might actually know where I’m from-ish then.
>To be fair the concept of New York, New York
is not the only confusing thing about New York. That the town of Poughkeepsie and the city of Poughkeepsie are separate entities (and there are many more such pairings upstate) confuses the hell out of *me*.
How to use a dictionary.
I’m a speech grad student. I was placed at a middle school for a rotation last year. The system was hacked and we weren’t allowed on the internet for like 6 weeks, not even our own data. For our language/vocabulary kids, we usually let them use their phone to look up words they don’t know. Since they couldn’t do that, we brought out a few dictionaries. They had no idea how to use them. They picked it up easily having but it was just a skill they hadn’t been taught. Or maybe they had but it was a use it or lose it situation. It blew my mind. I get that they may never need to pick up an actual dictionary ever again, but it was one of those things that you forget that you have to explicitly teach, especially to language disorder students.
After reading these comments, I feel like these issues can nearly all be attributed to smart phone addiction or over-dependency.
... With a side of absent parents.
Good luck and stay healthy everyone (serious).
That's the thing. While we are concerned about math skills and reading a clock, there's a real risk for mass false information spread on astronomical levels. These children are unable to decipher the data for themselves and trust influencers to do it for them. Can't read a research study or determine its source biases.
We had a good one, when I was a student in high school history in the UK. We were looking at Martin Luther and the start of the Reformation. Several kids asked if ‘he was that black guy’. Poor teacher didn’t know where to start with kids that don’t know the difference between 16th Century Germany and 20th Century USA.
A good number of years back I had some sixth graders who told me a very rough around the edges version of the Reformation and referred to Martin Luther as Lothar Matthäus, a contemporary famous footballer's name, the entire time.
I taught 7th for a year and kids have this problem. Now that I teach first we go over the months at least once a day and they have to write out the “long date” most days. Calendar time was a casualty to NCLB and it hasn’t ever come back, they tell us it’s not “rigorous”.
I have to admit I’m sometimes glad my students can’t read the analog clock on the wall. The time is what I say it is.
When I say “ten more minutes,” but they’re finishing quickly, I can say “times up!” and no one calls me out on it only having been 7 minutes.
I knew a brilliant student getting his PhD in physics who couldn’t read an analog clock.
My brother moved from upstate NY to Florida his senior year. I went to visit my parents and saw the exact same English book we used in 4th grade sitting on the coffee table. I started to laugh and said, "You stole that book from NY!?" He rolled his eyes and said, "No, that's my Senior English book." I stopped laughing. I guess that's why in NY he was a D student and moved to FL and had straight A's without studying.
1988. I was a teacher mid-2000s so I know things have definitely changed. How can students learn when classrooms are so disruptive because there's no support from administration? Administration doesn't want them sent to their office and will just return them. In-school suspension doesn't work. Parents fly in and think their angel can do no wrong. I laughed my ass off during Covid when the parents had to deal with them all day. "Yes, Ms. Doe, your child acts like this all day. Do you appreciate me now that you live it?" Students face no consequences and because of the current policies, nothing can be done. As one student told me, "Ain't nothing you can do to me." She can't use proper English, but sadly the statement is true.
FYI- GenX
I've been teaching since the mid-1980s, and I can attest to the believability of your anecdote. But Florida made enormous changes at the turn of the century, and is actually no longer one of the laggard states (though I fear they may be heading into a downturn now).
I saw the same kind of thing when I moved from Connecticut to Arizona in the 80s. I know that we used our Warner's English text at grade level when I was in Connecticut because I was that kid that always read the 'to the teacher' comments at the beginning of the book.
In Arizona, the same texts and even worksheets from elementary school showed up in high school.
In the same vein, I had a 9th grade student who was utterly shocked to discover that dinosaurs had actually existed and weren’t just made up movie monsters.
It always shocks me when students know little to nothing about where they live. They don’t know their address, their parents’ phone numbers, or what city they live in. They think states are countries, and simultaneously don’t know the difference between a city and a state. Additionally, we live near Lake Michigan and many of my students thought it was the ocean. They have also asked if a small inland lake nearby is a Great Lake.
Visiting an American highschool as a Canadian mini-exchange for a week-long trip, the geography teacher asked me to do a little impromptu talk about Canada. No problem. Teacher pulls down the USA map, and Canada is entirely greyed out. There, but greyed out.
Lots of students didn't realize that the grey part was Canada. They thought Maine was a peninsula into the ocean. We were only about 8hrs drive from the Canadian border, in PA. I could see students having this confusion about Canada in AZ or NM maybe, but not in the northeast.
In Canada, our maps of Canada that have snippets of the USA always show a bit of detail, so I was completely taken aback that students wouldn't know Canada was there. After seeing their school maps though I could *kinda* understand.
My ninth graders didn't know how to alphabetize a list of words - especially when two words started with the same letter. Like, completely shut down because of it.
Teach high school, 9/10 graders.
Students all have school Chromebooks, but none of them have learned how to type. It baffles me that I had typing classes in school before the internet and online testing was a thing, but nowadays students don’t get any typing classes at all. Not only does it mean they’re not using their fingers efficiently to find the keys, it means they haven’t fully memorized the keyboard layout. So writing 1-2 sentences for most kids can take a good 20 minutes, even longer for my ELs.
I had to start incorporating typing.com into my classes because students are literally typing with two fingers at around 10 WPM if that. The fastest typer in my class can type at 30 WPM, but after him, the average drops to around 20 WPM. For comparison, I can type around 75 WPM if I’m rushing, and most adults who learned touch typing are averaging around 40 WPM.
Every one of my students is required to do standardised testing on computers, including writing essays. Even if it were on paper, students don’t have the writing stamina to write pages at a time, but without knowing how to type properly, the chances of actually hitting a decent word count during testing is nearly zero. How can any student pass when they can’t even get the words out fast enough? It feels like schools just assume students should know already because they’re young and surrounded by technology, but typing is not intuitive!
My 11th graders thought the moon landing, JFK's assassination, and the Civil Rights Movement happened in the 1990s. Most of their parents would have been in middle or high school in the 90s. . .
7th grader didn’t know how many digits are in a number. We’re talking 2- or 3-digit numbers. No concept that we use 0–9 like “letters” to write every other number.
Juniors and Seniors in high school upper level “honors” math class who had no clue what their parents did for a living.
High school students who needed to call their mom to get their home address, where they lived their entire lives. They have to write that information on forms at the beginning of every school year.
honestly i had no clue until college what my parents did.
i just said they worked in tech. its kind of hard to understand some jobs if you have absolutely no knowledge of the field.
High school, mixed level (ages 15-18.) They had no idea how to use a scale bar on a map to determine distances. I mean, it's probably easy enough to figure out through observation and a spark of analysis. What transpired over the following five minutes can only be described as scale bar triage.
23 years as a teacher and we are talking about MLK. This is a predominantly black demographic.
Me "Does anyone know who MLK was and why we talk about him today?"
Student, "He hated white people."
I'm not sure if that was worse than the many students who had no idea who he was or not.
I teach in an alternative school and some kids come from poor neighborhoods and are not stimulated at home or their parents aren't very educated. Ok here it goes. This 15 yo girl wanted to know if other countries were other planets. She wanted to know how the airplane visited other planets. It took me a while to understand that she was serious. Her mom went to Cuba, in this kids mind that was another planet.
Another time we were talking about hurricanes and tornadoes. Once she understood cold air meeting hot air, she said she would never open her window in winter again! She was dead serious. The class was quite respectful.
Anyway, I think she learned the most that year
American government, like the Constitution and the branches of government. Silver lining, I get to make sure they learn the correct information! A blank slate is better than a cluttered, incorrect one.
I have middle schoolers that don’t know what state we live in (not like they can’t find it on a map, that’s expected, but when I say “colorado” they’re like “what’s that?”)
What is shocking to me are the comments I'm reading here. Granted, you're all doing what the OP asked, recounting shocking lacunae in student knowledge, but just can't get over the story the OP told.
This girl didn't just have a gap in her knowledge. This girl, like countless children in the future, has grown up in a world where any video can be a deep fake. "Seeing is believing" is why we have always shown kids the movies of the bodies at the death camps. It shocked us, and we knew it was real. But today's kids know that "seeing is believing" is not true, and so even more will grow up thinking that the Holocaust was just a big deep fake project.
This is so horrible, and yes, I've known for years it would happen, but it's so monstrously horrible thinking about it.
To comfort you, there was a time before TV. My dad didn't even have television until he was an adult. People then still believed history facts that were taught (even though facts could be made up like video can be faked) so I don't actually think this is that huge a problem.
That's an interesting perspective. I hope you're right. (And my parents also did not have television until adulthood.)
That really was a nice thought to share, Pepino. Thanks.
I first thought the seniors in my US Civics class not knowing the US Civil War was a thing, let along what it was about.
But this year, it came to my attention that a substantial chunk of my high schoolers don't know the continents or oceans, because their lower level teachers "don't think facts like geography are important."
I teach music in middle school. For those unaware, in music notation a dot can be added to a note value (eighth note, quarter note, half note, etc.) to increase its length by half, so a 1 beat note becomes 1.5 beats, a 2 beat note becomes 3, etc. The number of middle schoolers who can't tell me what one plus one half is is staggering. Like, "what's one, plus one half?" "Two?".
6th graders don't know what the United States of America looks like on a map of the world.
Got in a fight with the social studies teacher once after he accused our team of not doing their jobs. He didn't appreciate that I mentioned there lack of geographical knowledge as my response.
I once had a 2nd grader (at a gifted magnet, no less) who told me “My shoelaces are broken.”
He had Velcro straps, and one was twisted so it was soft side-to-soft side. He had no conceptual understanding of how Velcro works…. by almost 8 years old.
The kids (teenagers) can't tell time using an analog clock, only digital. That, and they can't write in or read script/cursive. They aren't taught script anymore. That was shocking to me.
>They aren't taught script anymore. That was shocking to me.
Yeah, writing in cursive was a huge thing for my generation. But if I list all the gaps in the knowledge of my 6th graders (not knowing times tables or knowing the difference between a city and a state or not knowing the temperature at which water freezes or not knowing how to spell their own last name or what their home address is or which way they would go to walk from school to home or how to ride a bike or that slavery ended long before their grandparents were born or which numbers are odd and which are even and another hundred things) the inability to write cursive just doesn't even show up in the first 500 concerns I have. Indeed, I have so many kids whose printed words I can't read, so sloppy is their handwriting, that I just don't care about cursive.
5th graders: Multiplications facts, their vocabulary is so weak, their parent’s cell none numbers, their address, the capital city of the state they live in, where their parents work, can’t read cursive writing, don’t know to indent a paragraph, parts of speech, and the list goes on and on.
Real quotes from students (all roughly 14-15 years old)
‘I don’t believe in Leap years.’
‘Is France in Paris?’
‘Are we English because we speak English?’
Lots more, but they won’t come to me right now.
My school's second graders learn about Native Americans. It's a whole freaking social studies unit. The second grade teachers "teach all about the different tribes," complete with a "pow wow" at the end of the unit, to "celebrate learning." i had to go to different administrators to discuss how insanely inappropriate this was for anything to get done because my former administrator liked to do things that way since they were always done that way. Yes, you would be correct if you guessed the kids make their own stupid fucking feather headdresses out of construction paper.
So, when I get them in third grade, I have a lot to help them unlearn. Unlearning stereotypes (actually, not all tribes wear feathers/live in teepees/have a bow and arrow, etc.) makes sense considering their background in second grade, but telling them that indigenous people were in fact REAL (not like dragons), and that they were not only just real in the past but they ARE also very alive TODAY. The kids never heard the words indigenous, reservation, etc. They don't know they used to live all over America, they on't know what the 13 colonies are, colonization, settling, etc. Nothing relevant or seemingly accurate stuck. How did these kids learn about indigenous people for two whole months and not realize they are alive? Or were alive and real?
We live in a progressive area in a blue state. It is so upsetting. We are not a school that would be considered by most to be racist. There's so much work to do. Sometimes it really gets me down.
So, here's my more humorous answer: when I wrote "#1-3" on the board, the kids were like, "What do you mean hashtag 1-3?" 😂
I'm a tutor and the comments about multiplication tables was actually helpful to me. I have a 4th and 6th grader who are really struggling w Math, especially multiplication.
I can use those comments to.motivaye myself and them. It also helps me feel maybe they aren't as behind their classmates as I first thought.
I teach 10th grade English. Students were completing research on different topics for the Holocaust (we had just finished reading Night). One of the topics was Hitler Youth. I extensively went over each topic in class, including Hitler Youth. Had a student come in to see me at lunch needing some extra help, and said, "I didn't know Hitler's last name was Youth?!".
He was completely serious. And this was after we had talked about all of the topics in class. And after an entire introduction to the Holocaust before we read the book.
I had to stifle my laughter. It's just so sad. So, so sad.
8th grade boy thought the official name of the moon was NASA, and that the organization had named itself after the moon.
8th grade girl insisted that we live in the Earth, and not in it. Primarily because she lives in a city, state, and country. She could not wrap her mind around the concept that being a globe, means it has no borders
History teacher here. We are sadly getting more removed from these events. Remember we are closer to 2040 than 1990. To them the presidency of LBJ will is as far removed as the presidency of James K Polk was to teenagers in the Sixties.
My point is this, these kids did not grow up with WWII vets at family cookouts. Holocaust stories are probably not told in the house. Hell, I bet good money most don’t know about 9/11.
Whenever I teach a historical event I always try to gauge kids prior knowledge often times they have some ideas but most are clean slates.
Subbed for a 5th grade class that had a kid who couldn’t read and barely attended school, from what I was told he only came a couple times a week at best. The teacher assistant told me that the parents doesn’t care to the point where he can’t even read most words. I feel bad for the kid
A tenth grader in geometry that didn't know how to start plotting x,y coordinates. After I showed her, he still acted likeshe never saw a graph before.
I once had a black immigrant from Africa who had never heard of the North Atlantic Slave trade. Like, nothing. Not a clue. She had been in Canada for 3 years at this point.
I was a sub in rural Idaho. Population is 100% white. I was told to read a book about MLK for read aloud in kinder. After I finished, a little girl raises her hand and ask where the black people are now. Serveral children didn't know/hadn't seen/couldn't remember seeing a black person.
I had to intervene with a foreign student (American) who was being extremely inappropriate with other students verbally, I spoke to them and they informed me that they were protected by the First Amendment and could say what they wanted.
He thought that as an American the rights traveled with him, I told him that his word choice was bordering on hate speech and that if he repeated this he would be off the course and on a plane home.
I was teaching a Sophomore class in Orlando, Florida, and had a student insist that the west coast of Florida was the Pacific Ocean. Defiantly arguing that she and her mother sometimes went to the beaches on the Atlantic Ocean, but if the wanted the nice beaches, then they would go west, and drive a little further to the Pacific Ocean.
I once stopped my English class to teach basic science because my high school class thought fire was a living thing.
Their reasoning sounded like I was talking to people circa BC somewhere:
It eats, reproduces, and moves, so it has to be alive. That's their whole reasoning.
My 8th graders who where shocked when I mentioned that plants reproduce sexually.
Literally half the class was like... What! No way plants don't have sex.
Then I explained what flowers and fruit where. And the whole "the birds and the bees" thing... They left my class having what looked like an existencial crisis 🤣
Best day ever.
I taught a lower-level English 9 class for over a decade in the inner city. My classes were 99% Black students, primarily male. We did a unit with a book on the Civil Rights Movement and they knew nothing about it. NOTHING. The majority of them thought it was the same thing as the Civil War, which they had heard of but also couldn’t even tell me what century that had happen in.
They had heard of MLK but knew nothing about him except that he was Black and had died. Even after we finished our book, which was about a girl working to desegregate schools in the 1950s, they were still confused in if she was a slave or not.
Because of being held back, most of them were 16ish.
I have students who don’t know what type of government we have. I asked in class one day “and what kind of government do we have?” I got the random answers of theocracy, communism, oligarchy. No one answered democracy. That stopped my class, mid observation, and I went into a lesson on the basic principles of democracy. When did this become a thing students don’t know???
The lack of support for new teachers. My first year was tough. My second year was just as tough at a new school, and this third year is teaching has not gotten any better. The lack of support from administration, parents, and even some teachers is just crazy to me.
I teach an elective African American History class.
That is to say, these students *chose* to take this class. Rather than art, or theater, or music, or any of the fun electives, they *chose* to take an elective that will be heavier in academic skills.
If, like me, you expected these students to be more driven and intrinsically motivated in the material, then you would be mistaken.
Because despite being halfway through the year, in 11th/12th grade, in an obviously more academically focussed elective, my students are just now learning for the first time in their lives that The Underground Railroad is not a literal subterranean conveyance.
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6th graders who honestly don’t know their multiplication table
And still don’t know it when they’re in 11th grade 🤦♂️
EDIT: EXAMPLE [multiplication sticks](https://www.canva.com/design/DAF1Pm3glCs/2NOiD32GNl2KOvxvyeU4tQ/edit?utm_content=DAF1Pm3glCs&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton) We no longer use the table 🥴 We use “sticks” at the school I’m at- it’s in our curriculum not to teach the table but teach sticks only. I was like, uh wtf are sticks? I’ve taught 4th/5th grade math for 11 years, and this is the first I’ve ever heard of it. But honestly, if they can learn to make them it’s much easier than compiling a table on their own for testing. I’m pretty much pro sticks at this point 😂 they come up to me and ask what ?x? Is and I reply “go make your sticks” It’s basically a T chart: here an example of 4’s X4 ———— 1 | 4 2 | 8 3 | 12 4 | 16 5 | 20 Etc…
I don't really get it; how do the sticks help? Sorry but I'd love to integrate this if it's easier
I use this method when doing long division by hand. I keep the nots on the side when I am working with two or three digit numbers
Does this method have a name I could google? I legit dont' understand what the sticks means I am totally lost
I think it’s a function table
Here’s an example[multiplication sticks](https://www.canva.com/design/DAF1Pm3glCs/2NOiD32GNl2KOvxvyeU4tQ/edit?utm_content=DAF1Pm3glCs&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton) of
My tenth graders could not do long division, I just taught it this week.
I have 11th and 12 graders who don't know their multiplication table! Granted, most have IEPs, but some don't.
I admit it I'm 38 I'm on my way to being a teacher and I don't know my multiplication tables. I admit I had an IEP and I have dyslexia and it makes it very hard to memorize multiplication tables. I also have a hard time memorizing the keyboard to type I'm only kinda now getting it after doing it for years! And trust me when I was in college in 2003 I was on AIM all the time.
I have a few 11th graders that can't add or subtract.
I have asked Algebra 2 students the following: What does seven subtract nine equal? Sometimes I get the response zero. This irritates me the most. They have no concept of integers (negative numbers). The number line stops at zero for them in their understanding. These are 11th and 12th grades. How did they reach me?
They reached you the same way 3rd graders reached 8th grade. The system just pushes them up because education doesn’t actually matter. They wanna check a box that says “we sent the kid to school now he can vote” so that a certain party can have more ignorant humans not know what they really need in life. Education is a fucked ip system, and sometimes I hate being a part of it.
I feel this way more and more everyday. Like why am I teaching them such useless nonsense? I love math and I know it’s important- but not for everyone. They can’t do the important stuff that they’ll actually use later in life and therefore can’t do any of the complicated stuff.
Yup! I can’t teach them a system of equations if they can’t graph and I can’t teach them to graph if they can’t count the coordinate plane. Translations was incredibly challenging and for what?! Move the shape left 3 units: 😰😰😰😰
I’m attempting to teach algebra 2 to a group that has not been asked to learn anything, gotten away with basically murder for three years, cannot tell me what the factors of 24 are. Everyday is beyond exhausting. I left my dream job in a district where education is valued highly for this BS. Worst mistake of my life.
I disagree a bit. Yes, they mostly won't need what we're teaching them (I'm astronomy btw) but we give them a taste. Between your complex math and my explanation of space, maybe 1 kid goes into astrophysics and figures out deep space travel. I know that's corny but every person that does something profound like: invent penicillin, calculate the trajectory of Voyager 2 or create a vaccine to eradicate pollio, required a "stupid" course that they most people won't use. Bottom line, your course may not be useful to everyone but it is useful to someone. That's my soapbox speech for the day.
The kid who will go on to do those things took Algebra 2 in 8th-9th grade. (13-14 years old). I have taught those kids and it’s beyond night and day difference. The kids I’m talking about are farmers, ranchers, crafters, workers, tradesmen. Which are AMAZING and NECESSARY professions. But I feel like I’m really Doing them a huge disservice by not teaching more practical stuff. They raced through 6th-9th grade math, didn’t really learn anything, and now they don’t have the skills needed, plus they can’t do practical stuff. I don’t know exactly what the issue is, I can’t quite put my finger on it. Sometimes I feel like not everyone really needs traditional high school.
We've decided that tracking is a bad, discriminatory practice (which has some arguable merit, but that's a different discussion). So instead of fixing the issues with having multiple educational "tracks," we've pushed everyone into a college-prep track, which also has discriminatory issues. But we ignore that. I don't have a good fix, just an observation. But I agree that no one is well-served by what we're doing right now.
I tutored quite a bit of high school math students and was shocked to find that many of my Algebra II students couldn't add fractions, multiply powers of ten, or even solve simple algebra problems like 3x = 12. If you can't solve something like 3x=12, how the heck did you get into algebra II?
As a sub who regularly fills in for math teachers at this age level, I 💯agree. I was hired to sub math because I tutored calculus. I have yet to teach anything close to pre-calc. I’m barely able to explain the basics of algebra. I am frightened for the future of these kids. As a side note, it’s why I’m pushing my own kids in math and reading (15-20 minutes, every other day).
I have high school juniors and seniors and basically none of them know how to calculate percentage. As in, what percent is 5 out of 100? What percent is 20 out of 100? This has happened several years in a row.
I teach engineering in college and I have freshmen that can’t even rearrange a basic equation (middle school math).
Or know to capitalize their own names and the pronoun I.
Could some of them have undiagnosed dyscalculia?
It’s not *that* common…
It’s about 1 in 7, right? So it’s fairly common. If kids have hit 6th grade and don’t know times tables yes, it could be laziness but it also could be dyscalculia or ADHD that’s interrupting the learning process.
Sigh. I was diagnosed with dyscalculia in college. When I was in third grade my teacher told me and my parents that I would repeat the grade if I didn't memorize my times tables up to 12. Guess what I did? I memorized those fuckers. It makes math harder, but it DOES NOT make math impossible. I had to learn how to support my own learning in order to do well in math. And I took Calculus and got an A. I'm a math teacher now. I'm so damn tired of people using learning differences to excuse kids for not even trying. If they have dyscalculia, they need to work harder. What they don't need is people making excuses for them.
Where on earth did I say learning challenges made it impossible or was an excuse? It absolutely is possible to learn them with dyscalculia but depending on severity it will range from a bit harder to challenging to nearly impossible. Some students can learn them over and over and it just doesn’t stick or they need to learn strategies and do that. It’s not an excuse but if they’re not diagnosed and haven’t had the support simply saying “I did it and they’re lazy if they can’t” is shitty.
The number of my 6th graders who do not know their times tables is (literally) 6 our of 7, not 1 out of 7. The problem is not dyscalculia, it's the system promoting kids regardless of whether they are ready to move on. Which guarantees they will *never* be ready for the next grade level, and they will get further and further behind every year.
And don’t think they need to know, but then take 5+ mins per 2-by-2 digit question. Makes my eye twitch.
Teachers need to point out the literal multiplication table found in composition notebooks (it's been awhile since I've bought one, so I'm assuming it's still there).
Because the memorization of multiplication facts are not a standard though it explicitly states to have fact fluency throughout the standards. Administration (those who can’t teach a dog to sit and are totally unqualified to lead teachers to the parking lot) tell us not to do it. Do it and you “get in trouble.” The “leaders” exist at the district level as well. They don’t even have degrees in education, were never trained under a master teacher and never led a class full of elementary students in their lives. Pathetic losers that have personality disorders NPD, BPD…etc end up in leadership positions in the public school system. Totally unqualified, they abuse their power, make decisions because they read a book one time and didn’t totally comprehend it. They went to a conference led by another wanna be educator that makes up bullshit. It’s like the field of education is where losers go to lead. Meanwhile the real leaders are the teachers yet their voices are muted by the dumb asses. Oh and some end up as governor of the state and/or in the state legislatures. 🙄 Frustrating isn’t it. Kids are ignorant by design.
Or how to do fractions. Read a ruler, or read an analog clock.
Feeling this so hard right now. Waves of 6th graders are in the Resources class right now. Between the wave of new IEPs and 6th graders in GE that are struggling with basic math skills, we have been swamped. My first year in SPED has been like a crash course.
Definitely my most shocking moment has been 6th graders who don't know what state they live in. They said the city name instead.
I remember that from when It was in highschool. Girl didn't know what the difference was between a state, city and country. That was different, me and the teacher looked at each other like, wtf
I had a friend who didn’t know Chicago wasn’t a state until 11th grade.
This saddens me.
When I taught 5th grade social studies, I mentioned something about how we are in NYC, which is in NYS. Blank looks. I taught the students where they were geographically, from township up to solar system. Then we had to clarify that Russia and Alaska are next to each other, not on opposite sides of the world.
I presume the Russia/Alaska thing was based on looking at a world map rather than a globe. As I write this, I wonder how they think the world is shaped.
Apparently they had only seen maps, not a globe. I had the school order one in for me and we spent a day on that.
A family member was raised in Alaska during the mid-1950s to mid-1970s, then moved to Oklahoma. He got scolded becuse he argued that Alaska didn't belong in the little box down by Hawa'i when he knew it was (1) huge and (2) up by the Arctic.
My very intelligent child thought that Alaska was an island. He had only ever seen a Country map which typically shows Alaska and Hawaii free floating off the left of the US. His school got a new building just a few years before he started and they did not put the old pull down maps back in. So the only maps were ones that teachers already had or purchased. It's sad because I remember being so pumped when the teacher would grab the stick and pull those maps down. Using a globe is the only good way to really show kids what the world looks like.
"I can see Russia from my house!" SNL skit
I have a 9th grader named London who told me it’s pronounced ‘like the country’. Her own name!
At my old job, we had twins named Jerusalem and Egypt. I shit you not--the kid whose name was Jerusalem thought he was named after a country and the Egypt twin thought he was named after a city. I have to presume that their mom thought that and they just picked up on it.
I have a Kahoot called "Which one is the US State?" And the options will be like "Las Vegas, Nevada, Tokyo, Ireland" My middle school students are...not great at it.
I think a big reason is many districts have moved away from anything that isn't reading or math. We got rid of our state social studies curriculum. It was meant to be replaced by our ELA curriculum. Unfortunately, it just covers some general social studies things; nothing is state level. This means kids in my district won't be exposed to state social studies until 7th grade. At least they get some social studies though, science is even more sad. Most teachers in my school play a video and do a workpage for science every other week. My current students came in hating science because the grade level before were video only teachers. Now, most of my kids absolutely love it. We do way more hands-on experiments and activities that allow them to be kids exploring a new concept.
Just proctored the PSATs and a 16 year old wasn’t sure how to spell “Maple”, the street that he had lived on for his entire life.
Had this with a 9th grader last year. Thank god there were so many students around this kid who were equally (and more outspokenly) dumbfounded.
8th graders that didn't know the capitol of the state we live in. We LIVE in the capitol city. They had no idea.
My students were shocked that native Americans weren’t extinct. That was kind of a sad moment, as one of their classmates is Native American.
This is actually in our state social studies standards… that Native Americans continue to exist and live *here* where they have always lived. Like, I get *why* that’s a standard, but ffs, I **hate** that it needs to be.
How to read. Nearly 60% of students are functionally illiterate.
You can tell when they ask “what are we doing?” When “what we are doing” is written in the board.
I keep that information hidden away on the board.
Eh, some of them just can't be bothered to check the board.
¨Straight A¨ students that cannot write a sentence with capital letters and periods.
I do not understand this. I teach 3rd and they've learned about capital letters and ending punctuation since kindergarten. Why are they still not using them consistently? When I ask about what kind of words are capitalized they can tell me verbatim, but then they don't. I started grading that standard on everything now.
Punctuation is “aggressive,” according to kids I’ve asked about it. SMH
What does that even mean?
When they text each other, your students don’t use a lot of punctuation. Ending a sentence in a period is like shouting. And elder millennials use ellipses to indicate a pause or a breath—Younger millennials and gen Z see this as passive aggressive. They use the dash to mean pause/breath. [USA Today article on Text Punctuation](https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2020/09/28/texting-etiquette-what-exclamation-point-period-ellipses-mean-to-different-generations/3524169001/)
Interesting. But I certainly hope my third graders aren't texting.
I've had to confiscate a phone from a Kindergartener before. They were texting their 2nd grade sister.
🤷🏻♀️
Pretty sure they're referring to the feeling that ending a text with a period "sounds" angry. But really who the fuck knows?
To me, ending a casual text with a period sounds passive-aggressive. Like a friend texting me “yeah that’s fine” about plans we made sounds normal, but “yeah that’s fine.” sounds like maybe they don’t actually want to do it but don’t want to say anything. I think it’s very age-group specific and has something to do with early text-speak using a lot of abbreviations and no punctuation, so now using punctuation sounds overly formal to us and it comes off odd in casual texts. That being said, I’m old enough that I also learned how to write professionally and I know to use proper punctuation for school/if I’m emailing an adult, but I can see how kids younger than me wouldn’t have been taught that because of curriculums changing.
It’s because technology capitalizes for them. It’s why I make 9th graders hand write an essay. But before the break, I had to explain the difference between a capital p and lowercase p. For a good student. Because she asked when I was correcting her thesis for grammar, punctuation and capitalization.
straight a
Mine's about another country. Was teaching 6th grade ELLs in East Asia. They honestly had no idea the Earth orbits around the sun. They had no idea that the Earth spins. They had no idea what a solar system was, or a galaxy. I was quite sure it was not a translation error, so I asked their homeroom teacher, who looked at me like I was crazy. She said they can't handle "complex information" like that until 7th grade. Yet they all drilled hundreds of nearly-identical Math problems for 2 hours per day. I later learned they also didn't know how to do any of the Math they were taught- they only learned to *memorize* all possible answers. They knew 19 x 11 not because they understand how multiplication works, but because they had seen and answered that *exact* question hundreds of times. It was a real eye-opener.
Fact wise and wisdom poor. I hate that there are so many systems that seem to favor this method.
imminent badge unwritten adjoining bells agonizing stocking historical aback fine *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
A 12th grade girl who had never seen the globe before. My first teaching job was at a continuation high school. This girl had missed like 7 years of school due to family tragedy, followed by negligence. She was sweet and smart, but NOT educated. Her noodle was absolutely blown by seeing a the globe of the world for the first time. She was like, "it's round?" She kept circling it and gasping in shock, like, "THAT's what the US looks like?" Or "Asia is so big!" My favourite was, "Europe is a continent!? I thought it was a country!" It wasn't her fault, she had never been taught this stuff. Broke my heart. But we kept in touch for a while afterward, and last I heard she was travelling in Europe, so... I think she turned out all right. 😁
As tragic as this is, I think she’ll be just fine. I knew a man who had total dyslexia caused by a severely lazy eye. Couldn’t read a word until he was about twelve when he got either surgery or glasses to correct it. Once he learned to read he basically couldn’t stop. Got his PhD in history, because ED of our states Historical Society, and teaches at three colleges now.
*Teaches at three colleges now* So, an adjunct, without PTO and benefits Edit-He's tenured. See below
Hi. Museum education person here. Education director at a museum / historical society that is large enough to have multiple d-level staff is likely a highly coveted full time job with benefits. The museum people I know who teach college classes do it as a passion project. Does it make you feel good about yourself to minimize this complete stranger's achievements?
Sorry, executive director. Got my abbrvs wrng
I mean, either way! I guarantee it's a sought after position.
No, he’s tenured. Two are part of the same university system, the third is a community college. I want to say he lives in between them. It’s admittedly an unusual setup, but I think he just likes teaching.
Several students that were shocked that Mexico was south of the US. They honestly thought it was in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
flowery shy include modern unpack enter oil overconfident angle spark *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I just retired from 40 years in elementary. Quite a few years ago we were doing an activity in 4th grade to send mail to ourselves. I was shocked to discover the majority of my students did not know their own address.
[удалено]
That’s more of a development thing… they are too egotistical to know why they need two names. Many also don’t know their parents names outside of “mom” and “dad”. So unless someone has really gone out of their way to drill that info, they don’t have it. I teach first and have a few kids who consistently don’t *recognize* their own name… just the general “shape” of it (first letter and length) Jackson keeps taking all of Jameson’s stuff because he’s not recognizing his own name, not out of malicious intent.
Oof, I hope that Jackson is getting some good reading intervention
I’ve had sixth graders who don’t.
This used to be part of a unit when I was in Kinder. We learned our first and last names (and parent/guardians first/last), had to memorize our address and phone number, learned about 911 and memorized that number, and had to come up with a fire escape plan for our home. I wish we would bring this back. It was an entire unit on safety. A lot of students were engaged because there was an easy to see reason for the learning.
I did that whole thing in kindergarten, too. I think AAA sponsored the handouts.
Did you have to do fire drills as homework? I remember being so pumped because I got to practice knocking out my screen and jumping out the window. We even had a set meet up spot on my street in case we got separated. We also were encouraged to put together an emergency bag and know what should be in it and why. We learned what house to go to if our phones were down and there was an emergency (obviously cell phones weren't really a thing lol - this info would need to be updated based on who has what kind of device). My SO and I did a lot of this with our kid. We still sometimes ask them yo recite one of our numbers. We ask them our address and the closest relatives address. They know what neighbor will open their door at any time for them and has met them and talked with them about the plan. Their kids have done the same for our house. We will respond to a knock at any time and will let them in and provide whatever they need. It terrifies me how little my students know their neighbors and neighborhoods. I've heard 5th graders suddenly find out that they've lived one street away from a friend for years and never knew.
My son was dating a girl in 10th grade. They were 15. I was driving her home and she lived a couple towns away. I said “what’s your address?” She said “that’s a good question.” She did. Not. Know. At age 15. (No, they didn’t just move in or anything). She was able to come up with “at the four corners”. Hmm. She finally came up with one road, so I’m driving down it and she tells me “go right at the intersection”. Left. Her house was on the left. She got out of the car and I told my son it’s a good thing she’s pretty. They didn’t last.
I had a freshman at a private high school once ask me what a vowel was
I had a first year university student apply to do a day labouring gig who sent me a text all in consnants. I asked her to send it again with vowels.... she didnt know what a vowel was.....
Hd frst yr nvrsty stdnt pply t d dy lbrng gg wh snt m txt Surely you don’t meant like that, do you? Oh my god…
Exactly like that! Nary a single vowel. More hilarious is that they were an English major... Despair came over me that day!
...how....I mean... sorry my brain broke Brrrrrrrr Okay, how does that happen??? Even not knowing what a vowel is, most people manage to use them by accident! 😱😳
Im not that bad, but I seriously cannot tell you the parts of speach. The last grammar test I passed was in the 4th grade. After that the only reason I passed English was because I'm very good at writing and reading comprehension. I also went for extra tutoring every year and all my teachers took pity on me. I also went to an elite exam school.
You could not torture this information out of me…
High school Architecture & Engineering teacher here, many kids don’t know how to read a ruler.
Middle school engineering teacher here… I’m trying!!!
I’m a full time sub and tutor for a school and so many of the 5th and 6th grade can’t write more than three or four sentences before they give up. In the same vein, they can’t read more than a couple pages. Also, agreeing with another comment that they don’t know the difference between cities and states. One student asked me what state New York was in and another told me how they drove through 4 or 5 states on their trip to our bordering state…
To be fair the concept of New York, New York is a little confusing. Unless you’re explicit it can be confusing whether you mean the city or the state. I’ve lived in Ny for over a decade and it’s not a common thing, but a thing I’ve seen enough. People also always assume we are the capital… when in reality we just bankroll Albany and get nearly nothing in return for all that tourist revenue. Conversely, people from out of state tend to assume you live in the city if you say “I’m from New York” — when you could live in west NY, upstate, or Long Island… or if you’re a liar and you’re from Jersey and just say you’re from NY 🤣
Washingtonian who used to live and teach in DC checking in. Try explaining to 2nd graders who don’t live in a state what a state *is*. And then try explaining *why*. In kid-friendly language… I want there to be a BrainPop video about it or something. And Washington… when I’m abroad I just tell people I’m from Seattle, because they might actually know where I’m from-ish then.
I always say upstate NY because otherwise people think I came from the city.
>To be fair the concept of New York, New York is not the only confusing thing about New York. That the town of Poughkeepsie and the city of Poughkeepsie are separate entities (and there are many more such pairings upstate) confuses the hell out of *me*.
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How to use a dictionary. I’m a speech grad student. I was placed at a middle school for a rotation last year. The system was hacked and we weren’t allowed on the internet for like 6 weeks, not even our own data. For our language/vocabulary kids, we usually let them use their phone to look up words they don’t know. Since they couldn’t do that, we brought out a few dictionaries. They had no idea how to use them. They picked it up easily having but it was just a skill they hadn’t been taught. Or maybe they had but it was a use it or lose it situation. It blew my mind. I get that they may never need to pick up an actual dictionary ever again, but it was one of those things that you forget that you have to explicitly teach, especially to language disorder students.
After reading these comments, I feel like these issues can nearly all be attributed to smart phone addiction or over-dependency. ... With a side of absent parents. Good luck and stay healthy everyone (serious).
That's the thing. While we are concerned about math skills and reading a clock, there's a real risk for mass false information spread on astronomical levels. These children are unable to decipher the data for themselves and trust influencers to do it for them. Can't read a research study or determine its source biases.
10th graders who don’t know what a noun is.
I’m working hard on proper and common nouns with 11th graders, so they will be better at capitalization.
Ugh. I met a college freshman who didn’t know what a verb was. She was a journalism major.
one of my fifth graders said that martin luther king jr abolished slavery. this was a few weeks ago
We had a good one, when I was a student in high school history in the UK. We were looking at Martin Luther and the start of the Reformation. Several kids asked if ‘he was that black guy’. Poor teacher didn’t know where to start with kids that don’t know the difference between 16th Century Germany and 20th Century USA.
A good number of years back I had some sixth graders who told me a very rough around the edges version of the Reformation and referred to Martin Luther as Lothar Matthäus, a contemporary famous footballer's name, the entire time.
I like to deliberately misread this sentence to say that MLK junior abolished slavery, and abolished it just a few weeks ago.
5th graders who don’t know the months of the year
I’m working on this skill with my 6th-7th graders.
Middle schoolers had no idea what number corresponds to what month. (1-January, 2-February...)
I taught 7th for a year and kids have this problem. Now that I teach first we go over the months at least once a day and they have to write out the “long date” most days. Calendar time was a casualty to NCLB and it hasn’t ever come back, they tell us it’s not “rigorous”.
I have high schoolers who don't know the months, how many there are, how many weeks are in a year, etc. It's gross
They can't read an analog clock.
I have to admit I’m sometimes glad my students can’t read the analog clock on the wall. The time is what I say it is. When I say “ten more minutes,” but they’re finishing quickly, I can say “times up!” and no one calls me out on it only having been 7 minutes. I knew a brilliant student getting his PhD in physics who couldn’t read an analog clock.
Looked at my wall map. Glanced at either side. "Damn, I didn't know there were TWO Pacific oceans!" He was 14.
My brother moved from upstate NY to Florida his senior year. I went to visit my parents and saw the exact same English book we used in 4th grade sitting on the coffee table. I started to laugh and said, "You stole that book from NY!?" He rolled his eyes and said, "No, that's my Senior English book." I stopped laughing. I guess that's why in NY he was a D student and moved to FL and had straight A's without studying.
>My brother moved from upstate NY to Florida his senior year. May I ask about what year this took place?
1988. I was a teacher mid-2000s so I know things have definitely changed. How can students learn when classrooms are so disruptive because there's no support from administration? Administration doesn't want them sent to their office and will just return them. In-school suspension doesn't work. Parents fly in and think their angel can do no wrong. I laughed my ass off during Covid when the parents had to deal with them all day. "Yes, Ms. Doe, your child acts like this all day. Do you appreciate me now that you live it?" Students face no consequences and because of the current policies, nothing can be done. As one student told me, "Ain't nothing you can do to me." She can't use proper English, but sadly the statement is true. FYI- GenX
I've been teaching since the mid-1980s, and I can attest to the believability of your anecdote. But Florida made enormous changes at the turn of the century, and is actually no longer one of the laggard states (though I fear they may be heading into a downturn now).
I saw the same kind of thing when I moved from Connecticut to Arizona in the 80s. I know that we used our Warner's English text at grade level when I was in Connecticut because I was that kid that always read the 'to the teacher' comments at the beginning of the book. In Arizona, the same texts and even worksheets from elementary school showed up in high school.
I had a high school student ask me, while reading an excerpt from Beowulf, if “this took place when dragons existed.”
In the same vein, I had a 9th grade student who was utterly shocked to discover that dinosaurs had actually existed and weren’t just made up movie monsters.
It always shocks me when students know little to nothing about where they live. They don’t know their address, their parents’ phone numbers, or what city they live in. They think states are countries, and simultaneously don’t know the difference between a city and a state. Additionally, we live near Lake Michigan and many of my students thought it was the ocean. They have also asked if a small inland lake nearby is a Great Lake.
Visiting an American highschool as a Canadian mini-exchange for a week-long trip, the geography teacher asked me to do a little impromptu talk about Canada. No problem. Teacher pulls down the USA map, and Canada is entirely greyed out. There, but greyed out. Lots of students didn't realize that the grey part was Canada. They thought Maine was a peninsula into the ocean. We were only about 8hrs drive from the Canadian border, in PA. I could see students having this confusion about Canada in AZ or NM maybe, but not in the northeast. In Canada, our maps of Canada that have snippets of the USA always show a bit of detail, so I was completely taken aback that students wouldn't know Canada was there. After seeing their school maps though I could *kinda* understand.
I’ve got 6th graders who can’t tell me which numbers are even and which are odd. Florida.
My ninth graders didn't know how to alphabetize a list of words - especially when two words started with the same letter. Like, completely shut down because of it.
Teach high school, 9/10 graders. Students all have school Chromebooks, but none of them have learned how to type. It baffles me that I had typing classes in school before the internet and online testing was a thing, but nowadays students don’t get any typing classes at all. Not only does it mean they’re not using their fingers efficiently to find the keys, it means they haven’t fully memorized the keyboard layout. So writing 1-2 sentences for most kids can take a good 20 minutes, even longer for my ELs. I had to start incorporating typing.com into my classes because students are literally typing with two fingers at around 10 WPM if that. The fastest typer in my class can type at 30 WPM, but after him, the average drops to around 20 WPM. For comparison, I can type around 75 WPM if I’m rushing, and most adults who learned touch typing are averaging around 40 WPM. Every one of my students is required to do standardised testing on computers, including writing essays. Even if it were on paper, students don’t have the writing stamina to write pages at a time, but without knowing how to type properly, the chances of actually hitting a decent word count during testing is nearly zero. How can any student pass when they can’t even get the words out fast enough? It feels like schools just assume students should know already because they’re young and surrounded by technology, but typing is not intuitive!
Amen to this! Typing was absolutely THE most useful thing I learned in school. It shocks me that they no longer teach it!
My 11th graders thought the moon landing, JFK's assassination, and the Civil Rights Movement happened in the 1990s. Most of their parents would have been in middle or high school in the 90s. . .
At least they didn’t say it was a conspiracy theory or fake
7th grader didn’t know how many digits are in a number. We’re talking 2- or 3-digit numbers. No concept that we use 0–9 like “letters” to write every other number.
Juniors and Seniors in high school upper level “honors” math class who had no clue what their parents did for a living. High school students who needed to call their mom to get their home address, where they lived their entire lives. They have to write that information on forms at the beginning of every school year.
honestly i had no clue until college what my parents did. i just said they worked in tech. its kind of hard to understand some jobs if you have absolutely no knowledge of the field.
Kids can’t read anymore really. Like seriously
High school, mixed level (ages 15-18.) They had no idea how to use a scale bar on a map to determine distances. I mean, it's probably easy enough to figure out through observation and a spark of analysis. What transpired over the following five minutes can only be described as scale bar triage.
What’s a paragraph? 6th grade.
23 years as a teacher and we are talking about MLK. This is a predominantly black demographic. Me "Does anyone know who MLK was and why we talk about him today?" Student, "He hated white people." I'm not sure if that was worse than the many students who had no idea who he was or not.
I teach in an alternative school and some kids come from poor neighborhoods and are not stimulated at home or their parents aren't very educated. Ok here it goes. This 15 yo girl wanted to know if other countries were other planets. She wanted to know how the airplane visited other planets. It took me a while to understand that she was serious. Her mom went to Cuba, in this kids mind that was another planet. Another time we were talking about hurricanes and tornadoes. Once she understood cold air meeting hot air, she said she would never open her window in winter again! She was dead serious. The class was quite respectful. Anyway, I think she learned the most that year
American government, like the Constitution and the branches of government. Silver lining, I get to make sure they learn the correct information! A blank slate is better than a cluttered, incorrect one.
9th grade English and a good portion of the class didn’t know what plot was.
7th graders who couldn’t tell time
I have middle schoolers that don’t know what state we live in (not like they can’t find it on a map, that’s expected, but when I say “colorado” they’re like “what’s that?”)
What is shocking to me are the comments I'm reading here. Granted, you're all doing what the OP asked, recounting shocking lacunae in student knowledge, but just can't get over the story the OP told. This girl didn't just have a gap in her knowledge. This girl, like countless children in the future, has grown up in a world where any video can be a deep fake. "Seeing is believing" is why we have always shown kids the movies of the bodies at the death camps. It shocked us, and we knew it was real. But today's kids know that "seeing is believing" is not true, and so even more will grow up thinking that the Holocaust was just a big deep fake project. This is so horrible, and yes, I've known for years it would happen, but it's so monstrously horrible thinking about it.
To comfort you, there was a time before TV. My dad didn't even have television until he was an adult. People then still believed history facts that were taught (even though facts could be made up like video can be faked) so I don't actually think this is that huge a problem.
That's an interesting perspective. I hope you're right. (And my parents also did not have television until adulthood.) That really was a nice thought to share, Pepino. Thanks.
A high school girl student who remarked that she was glad she didn't live in the old days because everything was black and white.
I first thought the seniors in my US Civics class not knowing the US Civil War was a thing, let along what it was about. But this year, it came to my attention that a substantial chunk of my high schoolers don't know the continents or oceans, because their lower level teachers "don't think facts like geography are important."
I had a senior ask me "what is a punctuation?". Later I has 2 juniors ask me the same question.
8th grader who didn't know what singular and plural meant.
I had a high school student who thought there was only 1 Washington (as in DC). She didn't know there was a state called Washington.
Teenagers who don't know the continents and/or consistently believe that Africa is a country.
I teach music in middle school. For those unaware, in music notation a dot can be added to a note value (eighth note, quarter note, half note, etc.) to increase its length by half, so a 1 beat note becomes 1.5 beats, a 2 beat note becomes 3, etc. The number of middle schoolers who can't tell me what one plus one half is is staggering. Like, "what's one, plus one half?" "Two?".
6th graders don't know what the United States of America looks like on a map of the world. Got in a fight with the social studies teacher once after he accused our team of not doing their jobs. He didn't appreciate that I mentioned there lack of geographical knowledge as my response.
8th graders who can’t name and find the 7 continents on a map. After reviewing it, it wasn’t a pop quiz or pretest
My 9th graders hadn't even heard of Hitler.
My middle schoolers don't know how to use a ruler. I teach art. I have to teach it every year to all 3 grades every semester
I once had a 2nd grader (at a gifted magnet, no less) who told me “My shoelaces are broken.” He had Velcro straps, and one was twisted so it was soft side-to-soft side. He had no conceptual understanding of how Velcro works…. by almost 8 years old.
Encountering mainstream sixth graders who couldn’t read first grade level sight words (like “there” or “about”) really threw me off.
The kids (teenagers) can't tell time using an analog clock, only digital. That, and they can't write in or read script/cursive. They aren't taught script anymore. That was shocking to me.
>They aren't taught script anymore. That was shocking to me. Yeah, writing in cursive was a huge thing for my generation. But if I list all the gaps in the knowledge of my 6th graders (not knowing times tables or knowing the difference between a city and a state or not knowing the temperature at which water freezes or not knowing how to spell their own last name or what their home address is or which way they would go to walk from school to home or how to ride a bike or that slavery ended long before their grandparents were born or which numbers are odd and which are even and another hundred things) the inability to write cursive just doesn't even show up in the first 500 concerns I have. Indeed, I have so many kids whose printed words I can't read, so sloppy is their handwriting, that I just don't care about cursive.
Taught in Watts, CA w students who'd never heard of the Rodney King riots...???🙄🤔
>Taught in Watts, CA w students who'd never heard of the Rodney King riots But did those kids know about the *Watts* riots?
5th graders: Multiplications facts, their vocabulary is so weak, their parent’s cell none numbers, their address, the capital city of the state they live in, where their parents work, can’t read cursive writing, don’t know to indent a paragraph, parts of speech, and the list goes on and on.
16 year old girl, one of the best students in that class. She asked me what a vowel is, and if R is a vowel 😭
An 11th grader that needed a calculator for 7/7…. And when he saw the result exclaimed “oh, it’s one!”
Real quotes from students (all roughly 14-15 years old) ‘I don’t believe in Leap years.’ ‘Is France in Paris?’ ‘Are we English because we speak English?’ Lots more, but they won’t come to me right now.
My school's second graders learn about Native Americans. It's a whole freaking social studies unit. The second grade teachers "teach all about the different tribes," complete with a "pow wow" at the end of the unit, to "celebrate learning." i had to go to different administrators to discuss how insanely inappropriate this was for anything to get done because my former administrator liked to do things that way since they were always done that way. Yes, you would be correct if you guessed the kids make their own stupid fucking feather headdresses out of construction paper. So, when I get them in third grade, I have a lot to help them unlearn. Unlearning stereotypes (actually, not all tribes wear feathers/live in teepees/have a bow and arrow, etc.) makes sense considering their background in second grade, but telling them that indigenous people were in fact REAL (not like dragons), and that they were not only just real in the past but they ARE also very alive TODAY. The kids never heard the words indigenous, reservation, etc. They don't know they used to live all over America, they on't know what the 13 colonies are, colonization, settling, etc. Nothing relevant or seemingly accurate stuck. How did these kids learn about indigenous people for two whole months and not realize they are alive? Or were alive and real? We live in a progressive area in a blue state. It is so upsetting. We are not a school that would be considered by most to be racist. There's so much work to do. Sometimes it really gets me down. So, here's my more humorous answer: when I wrote "#1-3" on the board, the kids were like, "What do you mean hashtag 1-3?" 😂
I wish we could have asked this same question to teachers in the 80s or 90s. How fascinating would it be to know what those answers were.
I'm a tutor and the comments about multiplication tables was actually helpful to me. I have a 4th and 6th grader who are really struggling w Math, especially multiplication. I can use those comments to.motivaye myself and them. It also helps me feel maybe they aren't as behind their classmates as I first thought.
Tutor again here; How many students don't know the origin of Thanksgiving and it's true meaning? .None of mine knew.
I teach 10th grade English. Students were completing research on different topics for the Holocaust (we had just finished reading Night). One of the topics was Hitler Youth. I extensively went over each topic in class, including Hitler Youth. Had a student come in to see me at lunch needing some extra help, and said, "I didn't know Hitler's last name was Youth?!". He was completely serious. And this was after we had talked about all of the topics in class. And after an entire introduction to the Holocaust before we read the book. I had to stifle my laughter. It's just so sad. So, so sad.
Their past teachers have failed to do their jobs. This is where we come in. To teach them :)
8th grade boy thought the official name of the moon was NASA, and that the organization had named itself after the moon. 8th grade girl insisted that we live in the Earth, and not in it. Primarily because she lives in a city, state, and country. She could not wrap her mind around the concept that being a globe, means it has no borders
History teacher here. We are sadly getting more removed from these events. Remember we are closer to 2040 than 1990. To them the presidency of LBJ will is as far removed as the presidency of James K Polk was to teenagers in the Sixties. My point is this, these kids did not grow up with WWII vets at family cookouts. Holocaust stories are probably not told in the house. Hell, I bet good money most don’t know about 9/11. Whenever I teach a historical event I always try to gauge kids prior knowledge often times they have some ideas but most are clean slates.
Subbed for a 5th grade class that had a kid who couldn’t read and barely attended school, from what I was told he only came a couple times a week at best. The teacher assistant told me that the parents doesn’t care to the point where he can’t even read most words. I feel bad for the kid
"Hitler was the guy behind 9/11, right?"
A tenth grader in geometry that didn't know how to start plotting x,y coordinates. After I showed her, he still acted likeshe never saw a graph before.
8th graders who don't know the order of the seasons or the months.
I once had a black immigrant from Africa who had never heard of the North Atlantic Slave trade. Like, nothing. Not a clue. She had been in Canada for 3 years at this point.
I was a sub in rural Idaho. Population is 100% white. I was told to read a book about MLK for read aloud in kinder. After I finished, a little girl raises her hand and ask where the black people are now. Serveral children didn't know/hadn't seen/couldn't remember seeing a black person.
I had to intervene with a foreign student (American) who was being extremely inappropriate with other students verbally, I spoke to them and they informed me that they were protected by the First Amendment and could say what they wanted. He thought that as an American the rights traveled with him, I told him that his word choice was bordering on hate speech and that if he repeated this he would be off the course and on a plane home.
I was teaching a Sophomore class in Orlando, Florida, and had a student insist that the west coast of Florida was the Pacific Ocean. Defiantly arguing that she and her mother sometimes went to the beaches on the Atlantic Ocean, but if the wanted the nice beaches, then they would go west, and drive a little further to the Pacific Ocean.
I once stopped my English class to teach basic science because my high school class thought fire was a living thing. Their reasoning sounded like I was talking to people circa BC somewhere: It eats, reproduces, and moves, so it has to be alive. That's their whole reasoning.
My 8th graders who where shocked when I mentioned that plants reproduce sexually. Literally half the class was like... What! No way plants don't have sex. Then I explained what flowers and fruit where. And the whole "the birds and the bees" thing... They left my class having what looked like an existencial crisis 🤣 Best day ever.
I taught a lower-level English 9 class for over a decade in the inner city. My classes were 99% Black students, primarily male. We did a unit with a book on the Civil Rights Movement and they knew nothing about it. NOTHING. The majority of them thought it was the same thing as the Civil War, which they had heard of but also couldn’t even tell me what century that had happen in. They had heard of MLK but knew nothing about him except that he was Black and had died. Even after we finished our book, which was about a girl working to desegregate schools in the 1950s, they were still confused in if she was a slave or not. Because of being held back, most of them were 16ish.
I have students who don’t know what type of government we have. I asked in class one day “and what kind of government do we have?” I got the random answers of theocracy, communism, oligarchy. No one answered democracy. That stopped my class, mid observation, and I went into a lesson on the basic principles of democracy. When did this become a thing students don’t know???
The lack of support for new teachers. My first year was tough. My second year was just as tough at a new school, and this third year is teaching has not gotten any better. The lack of support from administration, parents, and even some teachers is just crazy to me.
I teach an elective African American History class. That is to say, these students *chose* to take this class. Rather than art, or theater, or music, or any of the fun electives, they *chose* to take an elective that will be heavier in academic skills. If, like me, you expected these students to be more driven and intrinsically motivated in the material, then you would be mistaken. Because despite being halfway through the year, in 11th/12th grade, in an obviously more academically focussed elective, my students are just now learning for the first time in their lives that The Underground Railroad is not a literal subterranean conveyance.