Right underneath yesterday’s headline, “Babies watch lot of YouTube,” on the daily Drudge Report news roundup, was the headline, “Gen Z arriving to college unable to even read.”
In the
article, One shocked professor described young adults showing up to class,
unable to read a single sentence:
“It’s not
even an inability to critically think,” Jessica Hooten Wilson, a professor of
great books and humanities at Pepperdine University told Fortune.
“It’s an inability to read sentences . . .
“I feel like
I am tap dancing and having to read things aloud because there’s no way that
anyone read it the night before,” admitted Wilson, adding that she’s taught at
five institutions during her 22-year tenure, and more selective ones like
Pepperdine tend to have better-prepared students. “Even when you read it in
class with them, there’s so much they can’t process about the very words that
are on the page.”
*****
Last month
was the nationally circulated news story of how a “concerned middle school teacher took to
social media to explain the lack of reading and problem-solving skills in her
teen students,” according to a piece in the New York Post.
“I don’t
understand how these kids ended up at this point,” a Dallas, Texas, teacher
named Ms. L said about her eighth-grade students in a now-viral TikTok video.
“I teach
eighth-grade history and I have 110-ish students — two of them are reading at
grade level right now. Eighteen of them are at a kindergarten level, 55 of
those students are between a second- and fourth-grade level,” she continued.
“It’s typical of what I’ve seen lately from students.”
“This
baffled educator couldn’t believe that her 13- and 14-year-old students lacked
such basic skills,” reported the Post.
“They cannot
apply inference; they cannot process questions that are longer than a sentence.
They cannot connect cause and effect. They can’t track multistep ideas…,” Ms. L
explained. “It’s scaring me a little.”
And a lack
of cognitive skills isn’t just in teens, as one commenter under Ms. L’s video
pointed out: “I’m a senior in high school, and everyone around me who’s my age
is at this level of cognitive decline as well, so I hate to say it but it isn’t
just the little kids. It’s multigenerational now…”.
From a study by Richard Jordan:
"Our
minds are constantly bombarded day in and day out with regard to what is the
authority today in our lives. Who's going to
run us, what's going to run us, what's going to control us, where are we going
to get our viewpoints from and what are they going to be?
"Jesus
Christ gives what I believe is the premier definition of inspiration. In
Matthew 4:4 the Lord's talking. He answered Satan and said, 'It is written, Man
shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the
mouth of God.'
"People,
where did the words in the Book come from?! They didn't come out of the mouth
of the preacher. They didn't simply come from the pen of the writer. They came
out of the mouth of God.
"What
does it mean to be 'God-breathed'? That means God spoke the w-o-r-d-s. God
chose the words. God reached down into the library and the vocabulary of some
men and He selected w-o-r-d-s out of this vast library of their understanding.
"He
picked out just the words He wanted and He caused them to be written down in a
Book. He caused them to be collected together in a book and that book, we call
the Bible.
"You
know what the word 'Bible' means? It means 'book.' Chrysostam was the first one
to call the Book 'ta biblia'; the Book, the Bible.
"They're
the words God desired to be written down. Therefore, in Hebrews 4: [12]
For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged
sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the
joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
[13]
Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things
are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.
"It's living and powerful; dynamic and energetic. And sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even . . .'
"To
divide a thing asunder is to take it and filet it. You ever fileted a catfish?
You lay the thing open. The Word of God is able to lay the subject open. That's
the reason it says it's a 'discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.'
"You
notice how he's talking about how the Word of God is powerful; that
the Word of God does this? In verse 13 he then says, 'All things are open
before the eyes of HIM with whom we have to do.'
"You
notice how he's talking about the Word of God and then all of a sudden it's
HIM? He takes it and personifies it, like instead of talking about the Book,
he's talking about SOMEBODY?! He's talking about God.
"God
sees everything. In one breath, the writer's talking about the Word of God
being able to open up any issue and in the next breath he's talking about
everything being open before God. You know why that is? God's design when He
wrote that Word, people, is that when you face that Book, you're facing God
Himself!
John 1
begins: [1] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God.
[2]
The same was in the beginning with God.
"In
Revelation 19 He comes back and He has a name written on His vesture and the
name is what? The Word of God.
"I
mean, folks, when you face the Word of God you're facing, literally, the Lord
Jesus Christ. You're facing Almighty God. His design, His purpose in having the
Word of God is to take the Word of God and vest in it the authority of His
speaking; of what He had to say, and when you approach that Book you're not
just reading a daily devotional book to make you feel better.
"You're not just listening to sermonettes out of it to live sweet little nice lives that make everybody happy and get everybody's bills paid and keep the economy going. That isn't what this is all about.
"This is the God of heaven, the
Creator of the universe, talking. You know, in my house, when daddy talks, you
know what the kids do? They know when dad sits down and talks they better sit
down and shut up."