15+ Teachers Share Why Gen Alpha is Struggling With Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic

Author image for Emmy Pratt
Emmy Pratt • Senior Editor
Nov 1, 2026 3:15 PM EST

Teachers are between a rock and a hard place when half their class is multiple grade levels behind and shows no interest in catching up. It doesn't help that many parents would rather blame the teacher for their child's shortcomings than admit their perfect angel isn't a great student because they spend 50% of their waking hours scrolling on their phone.

It's no secret that many kids are getting left behind in the education system. When I was a kid, America was all about not leaving kids behind in this setting (when I was a kid, I thought that policy was about parents not leaving their kids behind at the grocery store), but now that it's been 20 years since that initiative, it seems like it might have been a mistake. I understand why teachers and parents don't want a 16-year-old still in a 5th-grade classroom, even if that's where he belongs educationally. But many kids have been promoted when they shouldn't have been, and it has hurt them in the long run.

Schools have a major incentive to pass students, even when they don't deserve to move on to the next grade. They don't want their school's graduation rate to be low. If only 60% of high school seniors graduate, the school looks bad and gets less state funding. Long gone are the days of the 19-year-old high school sophomores. If a kid doesn't complete the work required in 10th grade, he's passed along to 11th grade, just like his peers who did the work. 

When kids face no consequences for not doing their work, teachers have very little they can do to motivate them to come to class and complete it. Some kids are genuinely motivated and want good grades to get into college, but they're not the ones who make teachers' lives miserable. Kids who don't care whether they pass or fail need external motivation to get their work done if they're not getting it from their parents. If a kid actually thinks he'll be held back and unable to graduate with his friends, he might become more inclined to do C-grade work instead of F-grade work. 

I feel bad for teachers who are thrust into this system without any real way to fix it. They can't hold their students to a high standard because they get in trouble for giving the grades their students deserve. They are forced to hold their students' hands through everything, even if a student will be going to college in a couple of years. When a professor has 300 students in their lecture, they can't give every kid unique special treatment. 

Gen Alpha is not just behind because they are getting passed from grade to grade without any regard for whether they're prepared. They are behind because of a whole host of reasons. The teachers in this story each have their own explanations for why Gen Alpha is like that, and I am convinced they know this generation better than anyone. 

Advertisement
  • A friendly teacher walking among small school children on the lesson explaining and helping
    via Getty Images (Unsplash+)

    A teacher working with students.

    Stock photography for depiction only.

  • Teachers, has Gen Alpha really speed run past reading, writing, and arithmetic straight into brainrot, or are we exaggerating? What's actually happening in classrooms?

    AllTheNope You Need High school teacher for 20 years. Short answer: yes. Long answer: parents aren't parenting and instead of running in the woods and getting lost or playing a pick up game on a street and learning basic survival skills - kids are scrolling. Brain rot and lack of parenting has made these kids genuinely stupid. I don't like the use the word in general but it applies here. Kids are getting downright stupid.
    via u/curious-aurelius
  • JackWhitesGhost As a teacher of 12 years I feel like I can say the literacy crisis is real. If you are a parent of young children the number one thing you can do to help your kids is to read to them. Read them picture books until they're old enough to hear chapter books. Do not quit reading to them until they prefer to read on their own. My middle school students who are the most put together are the ones who will read for pleasure. If you can instill that passion for reading in your kids they w
    via u/JackWhitesGhost
  • saor-alba-gu-brath I always tell parents to read to their kids but honestly the reason they don't is because the parents also hate reading. When I was a private tutor, the daughter told mom she would read more if mom helped her, to which mom replied, "I hate reading. I buy you books; it's your responsibility to read." Then it made a lot of sense to me why their kid sucked at English. If your parents constantly complain about reading, you probably wouldn't want to do it either.
    via u/saor-alba-gu-brath
  • My parents could barely speak English but even before I was born, they agreed to foster a habit for reading. They did this by showing me picture books, ensuring I made friends with other readers, and allowing me to read in almost any environment. Money was tight, but not for books. I was taken to the library every 3 weeks and taught to look up words in the dictionary. My dad would sit me down and read the English newspaper with me, after which we would choose five words and learn what they meant
    via u/saor-alba-gu-brath
  • phlsphr Maybe. Last year it seemed like it was like pulling teeth to get many kids to do what they were supposed to do (learn and then practice the concepts with the homework). This year, however, I'm attempting a kind of different approach. I was in the Navy for 22 years, somewhat recently retired. Something that I knew from the Navy is that one of the best ways to motivate individuals is to make them proud of working as an important part of a team, and to feel like they could trust and rely on
    via u/phlsphr
  • So I started using that approach in the classroom. I started off the school year with what I felt are important norms to establish with regards to the culture of the classroom and how the students (hopefully) end up feeling about each other. • I told them that they are there because they deserve the education. This is meant to make them feel like they have value because they deserve it, and that the material they are learning has value, even if they don't see it now.
    via u/phlsphr
  • I told them that we are a team. I try to provide as much time as possible during class to work on practice/homework as possible, and I encourage them to work together on the practice/homework. I move around the room while they're doing this and help answer questions and joke with them (to get to know their personalities better, and to help establish the feelings that I am approachable). If I am asked for help with something that I've already helped other students with, then I'll call one of thos
    via u/phlsphr
  • I promised each class that if all of the students in that class have all homework complete each Monday (meaning all homework for that marking period), I bring donuts. This is useful for a couple of reasons. Some students don't have the support at home to have breakfast and end up coming to school hungry, but may be too embarrassed to say anything. I was one of those kids when I was younger. Those students tend to be the ones that most often do not do their homework and earn poor grades. I can't
    via u/phlsphr
  • others who might need help, helping to make those often-underprivileged students feel more value, while doing what I can to provide something that makes their life feel far better (food!). I promise all of my students that if everyone in the class earns a C or above for each marking period, they get pizza. I already require all work to be shown on practice work, so students can't get away with faking good grades by copying. They could copy the work from another student, but it means they are sti
    via u/phlsphr
  • So far, this approach has worked incredibly well. My students have been amazing, and seem to genuinely enjoy being in class together and take pride in their collective successes. They seem less shy about asking questions, because other students also care that the people who don't quite get the concepts yet get to learn it. I already enforce a strict "no insults/teasing/bu ying" culture, but this also helps those who would normally feel afraid that they will be teased for not understanding someth
    via u/phlsphr
  • So I don't know if I'm just super lucky and have exceptional kids this year, and/or this approach is working. But I love my students, and honestly I think my students last year may have done better if I had taken this approach last year. Last year was my first year teaching public schools, and it felt like I was drinking from a firehose just to keep up, so it may have been me not being as good of a teacher as I would have liked.
    via u/phlsphr
  • Southernbeekeeper I've been saying this as a primary school teacher on reddit for about 6 years (I no longer teach so take this how you will). The difference I have seen is entirely class based. Rich parents in my neck of the woods have their kids doing all sorts after school and limit screen time, a lot of them have kids in academies attached to premier league football clubs or gymnastics clubs etc. The poor kids have none of that and also no real aspirations they spend all their time on tablet
    via u/Southernbeekeeper
  • The difference is only seen really in immigrant kids who face a lot of pressure to do well in the first generation. What I saw in my time teaching is that wealthy kids had tutors and while often suffering anxiety (made worse by helicopter parents) and things did well socially and academically while poor kids just didn't. They had issues too but this was more inline with ADHD and extreme behaviour that often was down to trauma or being dysregulated. My take from this has been that the big class d
    via u/Southernbeekeeper
  • faerie03 Yesterday we read a very short story in class, out loud. Their assignment was to write a short summary of the story in their own words. When it was time to write the summary, I gave them a couple of ideas to get them started then let them finish on their own. The majority did not finish in the 20 minutes we gave them, and many of them kept saying (loudly), "but what is the story about? I wasn't listening!" Then refused to read the (very short) story on their own. I teach 10th graders an
    via u/faerie03
  • plyswthsquirrels Teacher of over 15 years in NYC. There are still very bright students who do amazing. The issue is the middle and bottom have dropped out. The problem, in NYC at least, is we stopped teaching phonics. The city has now realized they got conned by teaching this whole word instruction and is putting the interventions in place to help but for a lot it's too little too late.
    via u/plyswthsquirrels
  • I was also just having this conversation with some friends. We have demonized memorization or being able to memorize facts and dates as not being intelligent. This is because of Bloom's Taxonomy and calling it level 1 questioning. Having kids memorize words, vocab, times tables, or key facts in history class isn't considered good teaching anymore. I'm not saying school should be only kids memorizing things but it is a step in understanding and building our minds. I feel like we're trying to buil
    via u/plyswthsquirrels
  • 408wij From the perspective of K-8 US math education, starting about 2010 there was a shift from procedural understanding (following a recipe) toward conceptual understanding (why does this work). On top of this, there is a demand for students to verbalize their reasoning. On paper, this sounds good: students should really know what they're doing. In practice, tried-and-true procedural skills--everything from memorizing multiplication tables to cross multiplying to compare fractions--went out th
    via u/408wij
  • that have followed are manifold. Foremost, students aren't getting the cycles in solving problems because applying some new conceptual technique and providing verbal responses is time consuming. Thus, they no longer master the procedural side. On top of that, the conceptual techniques are explained poorly or resonate with only a fraction of students; thus, conceptual understanding actually decreases with most students. Etc. Etc. The bottom line is that we're now living in the worst of all worlds
    via u/408wij
  • aegis_526 A couple of weeks ago a 12 year old I teach asked me how to spell the word "help". When I asked him how he texts his friends, he told me he just sends voice notes. No part of this child's life outside of school involves reading or writing and he doesn't seem to think it should.
    via u/aegis_526
  • karnstan I recently changed schools from one where a Chromebook was handed out to each kid in year 6 to one where we barely use computers at all. The kids here are calmer, more social and know a lot more about their subjects. This is of course completely anecdotal and I don't know if it's correlation or causation, but I know what I think.
    via u/karnstan
  • CovertFlobert European high school teacher here: The rise of Al has turned the rift between the clever and the clueless into a gaping chasm. There's still plenty of brilliant minds in my classrooms, but those who five years prior would have barely scraped by are now hopelessly lost, to the point where I have to read the exam instructions out loud because they cannot comprehend them. In Upper Secondary. For middle class young adults.
    via u/CovertFlobert
  • AzdajaAquillina Teacher for a decade. Overall, yes. It is not drastic, but it is noticable. Mostly they do not care about consequences. By middle school they know they are passing no matter what. Unless the parents care and are involved, the kids largely do not care about grades. My current school passes everyone. I cannot give Os and the kids know it.
    via u/AzdajaAquillina
  • There is also a noticable lack of independence. Again, not drastic... Most of my kids are happy little rule followers. They do not think deeply about classwork. They put down absolute gibberish answers. They have little awareness of what they know and do not know. They are readily entertained and are fairly nice to each other. And there is so little curiosity about academic subjects that it...is a bit annoying. This is my second year in which I do have a single reader in the bunch. Not a single
    via u/AzdajaAquillina
  • FeloniousDrunk101 Not a monolith. Plenty of kids are into Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, and I'm talking about the books here. Schools are definitely teaching the right stuff in some elementary schools, but most of the difference, as always, can be found in the students whose parents are helping reinforce positive learning behaviors and skills at home.
    via u/FeloniousDrunk101
  • Albeg2 There's a whole lot of focus on kids, but what about adults. The second you're not doing something, the phones are out. Just sit on a train or cafe and watch. Everyone is dulling themselves with tech. If it was alcol we would all say the world's gone mad. It's just a quieter more depressing form of dysfunction. Give any generation Roblox and we ain't reading.
    via u/Albeg2
  • bluenervana as a behavioral therapist, I work with an 11-year-old who has a personal iPad and then one for school. He can barely spell the word, please or good. We just got to spelling the words; where and mother correctly. His attention span is almost shot completely. When asked to write three sentences, the grammar is atrocious and he never has a tantrum, but it's pretty close. I have to remind myself that this is a completely different generation than mine, (millennials) we were writing essay
    via u/bluenervana
  • MattieB12 It's not what is happening in classrooms it's what is happening at home!
    via u/MattieB12

Want More? Follow Us and Add Us as a Preferred Source on Google.

Tags

ask reddit school elementary school kids teaching middle school teachers askreddit teacher generations gen z high school gen alpha
Scroll Down For The Next Article