Yves here. It’s so common as to be a cliche that older generations bemoan how their successors are lax in self-discipline, or morals, or are somehow pampered. But foisting significant amounts of parenting off on devices by handing young kids iPads and letting them amuse themselves is already producing large-scale harm, in terms of deficiencies in key skills. More and more children are way behind in their reading level. Some cannot read at all. There is also evidence of cognitive harm that may not be reversible, such as inability to concentrate and need for undue stimulation.
A video below gives provides more detail on the damage being done. The new sightings include a collapse in children engaging with stories, which has serious implications for development of empathy and even decision-making. Kids also consume and casually discuss sexual content, and in disgusting ways to boot. And if that has not yet persuaded you, consider this statement from the latest video:
Across every measure we have, the more kids use tech at school, the more their learning goes down. Our children is are the first generation in the last century to be cognitively worse than we are. And that’s just a nice way of saying dumber than we are. On every single cognitive measure, they perform worse than we do. Attention, memory, memory span, creative thinking, divergent thinking, critical thinking, they’re lower across the general IQ. Now, this is fine if generations were always up and down, you’d say, “Cool, things come and go.” But we have been on a steady increase for over a hundred years. Every generation outperforms their parents.
We covered some of this terrain in an earlier article that showed what teachers were seeing in their classrooms and how frustrated and alarmed they were. A major theme was that many students didn’t see the point of learning since AI could do it for them. Some tidbits from “We Are Watching Critical Thinking Disappear in Real Time” Due to AI Addiction: 40% of Kids Can’t Read, Teachers Quitting in Droves:
The narrator in passing wonders what sort of society is coming, since a minority of children, those of the affluent and above all, the progeny of the tech elite, are being brought in a more traditional way, with no or limited device use until their teens, to acquire fashioned cognitive skills. But what of the rest of the dull eaters? What role if any will be allotted to them?
A conservative colleague said the use of AI to create addiction and device dependency was evil. That is an understatement. These kids rely on ChatGPT not just for information but also to make choices, and for many, that seems to extend to every aspect of their lives. Sam Altman makes clear in video clips below that this extreme loss of independence, of personal autonomy, is deliberate..
This widespread abuse is far worse than what the Sacklers and other opioid peddlers did to mainly working class pain victims, or what the British did to China in the Opium Wars. At least with opioid addiction, it is possible for the victims to recover even if the withdrawal process is painful. The evidence is mounting that even for adults, regular use of AI diminishes reasoning skills and attention spans.
And from the top of the video:
Narrator: A fourth grader asked their teacher, “Why do I need to learn how to read if AI can read for me?”
Right now, 40% of fourth graders can’t read. We’re witnessing the collapse of the American education system.
Teacher 1: I teach 8th grade history and I have 110ish students. Two of them are reading on grade level right now. 18 of them are at a kindergarten level. 55 of those students are between a second and fourth grade level.
We were doing guided notes. Supposed to be a real easy day. It was review. They wrote down “Maryland was founded as a safe haven for Catholics.” It was on the board. They wrote it down and before we moved on, I call in a student and I ask, “Hey, where were the Catholics one more time?”
And these students, what they do is they look at me and then they look at their notes and then they look at the board. They look back at their notes and some of them never answered me.
They never figured out the answer. It was wild.
And I kept giving them hints like rephrasing the question and saying like, “It’s in your notes. We just wrote it down. We just wrote it down. Where are the Catholics? It’s on the board.”
And they never got it. They can’t read their own notes. Not and I don’t mean their handwriting. I mean like they can’t they can’t make heads or tails of it on the page.
These kids have a frightening ability for information to go from their eyes to their hands and not pass through the brain at all. What do we do, y’all? That ship is sailing across the ocean and there is no one at the wheel.
Narrator: What she described is terrifying. The information goes through their eyes down through their hands without passing through their brains.
But this isn’t an isolated incident. This is nationwide. I looked up the actual numbers. Only 23% of fourth graders can read at a proficient level. Just 23%.
Then we have the eighth graders. Only 26% are reading proficiently. After all the reforms, adding technology into the classrooms, and debating about funding, we’re now at 40%. We didn’t get better. We made it worse.
The new video below provides more evidence of the decline in reading competence and discusses another impact of childhood device addiction, which is lack of interest in stories. That may not seem like a big deal because like fish not recognizing that they are swimming in water, we so routinely organize our understanding around stories that it is hard for us to appreciate how foundational they are. For instance, juries decide not by scientifically weighing the evidence presented by each side but by putting together a shared account of what they think actually happened and what that means in terms of a verdict. If you encounter unexpected friction with a friend or co-worker, you are likely to try to put together different theories as to why they reacted the way they did
Stories are similarly essential to moral instruction. Think of Greek myths, the Bible (in particular the Parables and the lessons from the sufferings of saints), the key incidents in the life of Mohammed and the Buddha.
The instructors below add to the list of why storytelling is critical to what we regard as normal social functioning: the development of empathy. Stories help children see situations from multiple vantages and put themselves in the shoes of otehrs.
The discussion below describes how hearing stories from parents, whether in routine conversations or bedtime reading, and later reading fiction or watching typical television shows or movie, is rapidly falling by the wayside and what that portends. It also has a section on a school where all teaching is done by AI and how that it working out (not except for profits of the operator).
Originally published by Marissa Van
Teacher 1: I did not realize how bad the iPad kid epidemic was until yesterday.
Teacher 2: Hey, I just subbed a fifth grade class and as someone with a lot of experience in the classroom and a lot of experience in reading. I just want you to know we should be really afraid about the future of our society.
ABC 7 presenter: A heads up for parents. Kids are falling farther behind on test scores and more kids are failing to show up for school according to figures out this morning.
NBC News clip of AI school spokesperson: We have no teachers at our schools. Can you believe that? The educators are a suite of AI powered apps that gify lessons, monitor progress.
Narrator Marissa Van: So, it’s the middle of the school year and we are again seeing a trend in teachers quitting their jobs midyear.
And I can’t blame them. Teachers are some of the most overworked, underpaid, and burnt out professionals out there.
And I definitely know that I’m not the only person that’s genuinely concerned for this next generation of children who are being raised on technology, 10-second Tik Tok videos, iPads, Coco Melon, AI generated slop content. We are just now witnessing the consequences of raising an entire generation on iPads and social media. And it is not looking good.
Today we are going to be talking about a myriad of things. the effect of technology on children’s development. How it’s affecting their performance in the classroom. Why teachers are throwing in the towel and completely leaving a career they once loved. The very real fact that the government is defunding public education and trying to push parents to homeschool their kids. And the fact that we are seeing the concerning trend that test scores in math and reading are dropping across all grade levels.
Clarice Burkett: I did not realize how bad the iPad kid epidemic was until yesterday. We’ve all heard of the issues with these kids that are being raised on iPads and the parents blaming teachers and not being hands-on in their academics. But when I tell you I was absolutely flabbergasted at the interaction that I had with a child yesterday, I just have no words for it.
I’m a bartender at a resort and this family came up to the bar to order their food. One of the kids who’s about 8 or 9 years old asked what flavor of Dip and Dots we had. So, I handed her a menu.
This way, she could read the flavors and I was going to continue helping the rest of the party. When I tell you that I handed her the menu and she looks at me dead in the eyes and goes, “I can’t read.” I was left absolutely speechless for a few seconds. You’re going to tell me around second, third grade, she can’t read. I truthfully did not believe what I was hearing and that’s just frightening.
Narrator: Someone commented, “Teachers are screaming this from the rooftops and nobody is listening.”
[Reading post from a teacher]: Subbed for a class of second graders, majority didn’t know how to read. One little girl said, “I don’t read. I just play YouTube on my iPad,” when I asked if she read at home.
[Reading a second post from a teacher]: Kids can’t tell time either, unless it’s digital.
Teacher 3: Kids are always asking me, “What time is it?” These are middle schoolers and high schoolers, and there’s a clock in the room, but they don’t know how to read it. Like, what?
Narrator: So, just in case you missed that, these middle schoolers and high schoolers don’t know how to read an analog clock. Let that sink in.
Someone commented, “So, teach them?” And someone else responded, “They were supposed to learn this in elementary school.”
[Reading another comment}: They didn’t stop teaching it either. My second grader brought this home today and it’s a worksheet. It’s a picture of a clock showing 7:30 and the student has to write what time it is.
Narrator: So, to reiterate, they’re still teaching it, but these kids aren’t learning it. Or rather, they don’t want to learn it because their iPad will tell them the time instead.
Teacher 4: These brain rot phrases are driving me insane. Skippy ribb toilet, whatever they be talking about, I don’t know.
It’s annoying. And they literally do it all day long. If I hear 67 one more time, I’m going to scream. I really want to cuss. Can I cuss? I don’t know what’s with the touching. Like they cannot stop touching each other, hugging and hitting and like just constantly putting their hands on each other and they be digging in their nose. I can’t take it. And this is fourth grade. They’re doing this.
They cannot stand the idea of silence.
They are humming. They are drumming.
They are tapping. They are making noises aloud. They cannot stand silence. That wasn’t me. No, I wasn’t. No, I didn’t.
And I’m looking right at you, ma’am.
Sir, I saw you. I watched you before I told you to stop. The gaslighting is ridiculous. Why do you have out scissors and glue and we’re doing a math lesson that has nothing to do with you cutting or gluing anything down? You would really think that these kids are driven by motor. Like the lack of self-control is at an all-time high. There is no way that my entire class has ADHD. And if that’s the case, somebody need to get together and do some real serious studying because something ain’t right.
But I love my job. I love teaching. I love working with kids. I enjoy what I do. I really and truly do. But like I said, these kids, they don’t make it easy. They making us work for that little check, and I do mean little.
Narrator: So, I felt like a boomer when I looked up a lot of this brain rot content kids are consuming. I don’t have any young kids in my family, so I didn’t know the slang and kind of the things that were popular on social media with them. And I’ve heard about Skiib, and I still don’t really understand what it is, but I did come across some very concerning things that kids are consuming online.
Male speaker on TikTok: I need to show you how Ballerina Cappuccina took me from Bluey to an AI video that depicts the worst thing I can imagine on a kid’s feed. And somehow I’m still shocked despite this being day 10 of these tests. Like always, I wiped this iPad. It’s my third time doing it.
And I created a YouTube account and tried it on kids videos. So, I use the regular YouTube app, not the YouTube Kids app, because regular YouTube is 15 times more popular for kids. And when I would go back and forth between short and long form videos, the shorts were fine. I was getting mainstream arts and crafts videos with no harmful AI videos.
Then I searched for Ballerina Cappuccino and that was all it took. If you don’t know about Italian brain rot, it’s very popular for kids. And after just watching three of those shorts, I went back to the homepage and the first video was fine. But then the second video was a cat video. Like instant I I literally cannot tell you or show you what’s in this video.
I’ll show little snippets that are not the graphic part, but there is a scene depicting the worst type of act towards a woman. Yeah, it’s really bad. And it’s wrapped in this sort of AI cat package.
And from here on out, the next 20 shorts were noticeably worse than before I had searched for anything brain rot related. I try to focus on algorithms and AI videos. I stay away from parenting advice because I don’t have kids. But I could not help but think about those Italian brain rot toys and how cultivating a kid’s interest in this is a Trojan horse for other more harmful AI videos because the YouTube algorithm doesn’t know the difference.
Narrator [reading a written comment on the discussion above]: This is Elsagate all over again, but with the method of content creation with unlimited capacity. Terrifying.
[Reading a second comment]: People saying we millennials and gen Z had our own version of brain rot, but this is just so much worse than those.
[Reading a third comment]: Human development doctor here. DO NOT LET YOUR KIDS ON PHONES/INTERNET.
[Reading a fourth comment]: Unmodderated iPad time for kids is straight up neglect.
[Reading a fifth comment}: The fact that it was AI SA so quickly is chilling.
[Reading a sixth comment]: The internet is not for kids and I will die on that hill.
Narrator: So naturally, I went down a rabbit hole and started looking into this Italian brain rot AI content and it was very concerning what was showing up on the screen. I was seeing violent acts towards women, content that is way too mature for any child, and even weapons featured in these videos. It was disgusting.
What’s even more sinister and makes my stomach drop, is the fact that there are adults out there that are creating this content for kids to consume. And I hesitate to give out parenting advice because I’m not a parent myself, but if you have a child, what is the reason that they need to have a smartphone, especially at such a young age, or an iPad?
And if they do, please make sure you have parental controls and safeguards in place. Even that isn’t foolproof. Kids know how to get around that, too. But monitor them because just like that guy in that clip showed, even with the completely wiped iPad, as soon as he typed in one brain rot phrase, the content got very dark, very mature, not okay for children’s eyes, and all it took was that one search to take him down a dark rabbit hole of content that kids should not be watching.
Teacher 2: Hey, I just subbed a fifth grade class. And as someone with a lot of experience in the classroom and a lot of experience in reading, I just want you to know we should be really afraid about the future of our society. Do you know that every single kid thinks they’re going to be a content creator?
And when you ask them what their hobbies are, it’s all video games and addictive things that they think are hobbies.
Hobbies are not that. Hobbies are not addictive things. Hobbies are the things that brought you joy before you were five or six years old. So maybe it was soccer, maybe it was animals, maybe it was going outside. But these kids don’t know those things about themselves.
Quite frankly, I don’t even think they know when they have to go to the bathroom. I don’t even think they know when they’re hungry. They just want to get back onto their devices ASAP. And I’m not blaming their parents. I mean, as a society,
Narrator [injecting]: And I’m just going to come out and say it, I do blame the parents, at least partially. There are things I do understand that are not within parents’ control, such as technology and how much that’s advanced over the years and public schools getting defunded, right?
There are things that are not in their control, but there are also things that are in their control, such as reading to their kids, teaching them right from wrong. Spending time with them and actually talking to them, not just sitting and staring at your phone while you’re in your child’s presence. There are so many things parents can do to raise healthy, stable kids that will flourish in society.
Teacher 2: As a society, I think we should have had better parameters and better education about this 15 years ago, but we didn’t, and here we are. So, here’s what you need to do. You need to set parameters with your child today. This is life or death. What job do you think they’re going to get if they can’t put their phone down for five minutes? What job do you think they’re going to get if they can’t even write their name legibly?
What job do you think they’re going to get if they can’t spell the word caring and they’re 11 years old?
Not everyone’s going to be a content creator. Not everyone is going to make it and get advertising.
Narrator: Just the fact that they all want to be content creators is already concerning in and of itself. Of course, when all you do is scroll on your phone all day, when the only example of someone who is successful and wealthy is an influencer, that’s who they’re going to want to aspire to be.
And then they have no other marketable skills in the workforce because they didn’t pay attention in school and all they did was scroll on their phones. And for a society to thrive and be successful, we have to have people in all professions. We can’t just have all doctors or all lawyers. We need to have people in varying professions.
Teacher 2: Here’s what your kids need. They need communication skills. They need to be able to listen to their own bodies and know when they need to go to the bathroom. They need to be able to control themselves. They need to be able to go to bed on time, which nobody is doing. This is the most sleepd deprived, emotional intelligence deprived, affection-deprived generation ever.
Wake up and really care, please, because it is not fair to them. Do you know how many board games I own now trying to reconquer my children’s childhood? I’m telling you, the time is now. And honestly, I don’t even feel comfortable saying it on the internet. What types of disgusting smexual things these kids say at 11 years old? Really? You didn’t know that 11 year-olds are now over smexalized more than any other generation? They are.
Okay. I’ve I’ve been offended and grossed out by children more in the last two years than the previous 15 years combined. It’s terrifying. They know too much. They’re exposed to too much. And if you don’t want a government that makes the the government control your children’s phone, then you do it. You should really care because those things on the phones are addictive. All of it’s addictive.
Teacher 5: I am a firstear high school English teacher. This is definitely going to be my first and last year teaching. I was made very quickly aware of the fact that this is not the profession for me.
It is absolutely astonishing and scary how your kids are 14, 15 years old and still do not have the proper reading skills. And I’m not talking about the ESC kids, the 504s, the uh the IEP kids. I’m talking about your everyday regular JoeSchmo from Cococomo kid who does not know how to read and write at the level that they should. And the problem is is that they don’t care to learn how to do those things correctly.
Narrator: And I have a comment here from one of you guys from a previous video that says, “I had a 10-year-old neighbor kid ask me what a yard sale sign said. I was reading Harry Potter when I was 10.”
And I think the fact that a lot of kids can’t read is the most genuinely concerning part of all of this. Obviously, the fact that they have unlimited access to the internet and are on social media at way too early of an age is scary as well.
But if kids can’t read, how are you going to survive in the world as an adult? How are you going to read articles, get employment, understand the worlds around you? It is just absolutely mind-blowing and makes me so nervous for what we are going to see with these kids when they grow up in the next 20, 30 years. I feel like a boomer, but I really don’t know if there’s hope for this next generation.
How do you come back from that? I don’t think there’s a way back if a 10-year-old can’t even read the words “yard sale”.
Woman speaker: I have a sister that was born in 2012, which by the way, didn’t know that was possible. thought 2012 was for Coney, but she’s a generation after Gen Z.
They’re called generation Alpha.
[laughter] I don’t like the tone of that. But I was I was trying to connect with her. I was like, “So, girl, like, what’s cool on the Disney Channel these days?” She looks me dead in the eye and goes, “I don’t watch plot-based media.”
Narrator: Oh, someone commented, “Plot-based media is literally how children learn empathy.”
[Reading another comment]: Kids are genuinely not engaged with storytelling anymore, which is about as horrifying as it sounds. One of the oldest human creative pursuits, and kids are just not doing it.
[Reading third comment]: I’m scared of Gen Alpha, and not in a good, funny way. I am genuinely worried for whatever comes to and from them for the next couple decades.
[Reading fourth comment]: As if plot-based media was a trend and not a crucial and enduring social tool that we developed tens of thousands of years ago.
[Reading fifth comment]:This is actually the problem. They’re not watching content produced by people who know how to read and write.
Narrator: The little girl literally looks at her and essentially says, “I’m too old and too good to watch all that crap on PBS Kids and Disney Channel. I just scroll on TikTok.”
According to Aspire early education, storytelling plays a vital role by promoting creativity, enhancing language development, and building emotional intelligence in young children. Through stories, children are introduced to new vocabulary, different perspectives, and important life lessons.
Stories, even ones for children, often involve characters facing challenges, making choices, and experiencing different emotions. This offers children the opportunity to empathize with these fictional characters and share another’s perspective. This helps nurture their emotional intelligence, enabling them to navigate their own feelings from a young age.
So, this little girl who apparently doesn’t watch plot-based media is missing out on a very important child development tool, which is storytelling.
So, these kids essentially are going to grow up with very low or no emotional intelligence at all. They’re not putting themselves in the shoes of fictional characters, following them throughout their story, throughout their life.
They’re not seeing how these characters actions affect the people around them.
They’re not seeing these characters go through trials and tribulations and they’re not experiencing these emotions that these characters feel throughout different points in their life when something good or something bad happens to them.
At surface level, programs and books for kids can just look like entertainment, but it’s actually teaching them vitally important life skills. Stories also encourage problem solving. They frequently portray characters facing challenges that requires them to overcome obstacles or solve problems.
By engaging with these stories, children develop critical and creative thinking skills as they navigate how the characters may solve these problems. This process helps develop their own problem solving skills and how different decisions can affect the outcome of the plot.
And we can only predict that this is going to get worse as generative AI is taking over with chatbt and Claude and all the chat bots and encouraging kids to not think for themselves and just have the AI spit out the answer for them.
And surprise surprise, student test scores are also dropping in almost all subjects across the board. And they are absent from school more than they have been in years past. A heads up for parents. Kids are falling farther behind on test scores and more kids are failing to show up for school.
[ABC News]: According to figures out this morning, a new report card is out for American students and it’s not good news. The National Assessment of Education Progress shows fourth and eighth grade students are fairing even worse in math and reading than in recent years.
[National Parents Union Speaker on ABC]: It’s a call to action as parents and families to hold our districts and our school systems accountable for making sure that we get our kids back on track.
[ABC News]: Compared to 2019, average reading scores are down five points. And in math, fourth graders are down 3%, eighth graders sliding 8%.
[Harvard Center for Education Policy & Research speaker]: I don’t think this is a season of us giving up hope. It’s a season of us coming together in community in our learning communities to make sure that our students are making progress.
[ABC News]: Experts say the results show reading is a greater challenge than math. The score declines appear to be driven by lower performing students falling farther behind while top performing students are showing some recovery since the pandemic. The message to parents, get involved.
[National Parents Union Speaker on ABC]: Trust your gut. Ask for more information. And if you need to seek outside help, do it immediately.
[ABC News]: One big issue, students not showing up for class. 12% of eighth graders missed at least 5 days of school per month.
[Male speaker on Tiktok]: Across every measure we have, the more kids use tech at school, the more their learning goes down. Our children is are the first generation in the last century to be cognitively worse than we are. And that’s just a nice way of saying dumber than we are. On every single cognitive measure, they perform worse than we do. Attention, memory, memory span, creative thinking, divergent thinking, critical thinking, they’re lower across the general IQ. Now, this is fine if generations were always up and down, you’d say, “Cool, things come and go.” But we have been on a steady increase for over a hundred years. Every generation outperforms their parents.
And that’s what we want. Every generation wants their kids to be healthier, happier, smarter than they are. We are the first generation in history where trend is now reversed.
Narrator: Someone commented, “Having worked in a technology-free residential alternative education program for nearly 10 years, I 100% agree and will forever advocate for removing cell phones and personal computers and tablets from schools.
“There was an astronomical difference in social skills, emotional regulation, and test scores after being without tech for 6 months. Let’s not get started on how the adjustment period went for these students.
“The first month of no technology was like watching an addict detox. It’s ruined Gen Z and is presently destroying Gen Alpha.”
Narrator: And something else that I found interesting, but not surprising, is the fact that people who work at Google, Meta, and these big tech giants are choosing to send their kids to Waldorf schools, which are schools that have pretty much tech-free environments.
CNBC]:In most public and private schools across the nation, Chromebooks, iPads, or Windows devices are everywhere.
But things look very different at the private Sacramento Waldorf school in California, where technology isn’t used at all through 8th grade and is scarce even in high school.
[Waldorf student 1]: Instead of just turning to my phone to answer a question to ask a teacher for help or to ask a friend.
[Waldorf student 2]: I just never really knew what it was like to play video games as opposed to running around and having fun outside.
[Waldorf student 3]: We don’t have that many screens here, but I can still use a screen really well. You don’t have to be on the screen all the time know how to use it well.
[Waldorf teacher in class]: Here. So, I would whip stitch this on.
[Same Waldorf teacher to camera]:I find that even in my own experience, in my own life, that when I’m using a device, it divides me from those who are around me. So, I find that the community experience of being in a classroom without those devices that comes only from one-on-one human interaction, and the screen tends to divide that.
[Student entering]: Good morning.
[Waldorf teacher]: Morning, Nicole.
[CNBC narrator]: Celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, the Waldorf teaching philosophy is used at more than a thousand institutions in 91 countries, including 136 schools here in the US.
The screen policy differs at each Waldorf school, but it’s known for its holistic instructional style, which promotes artistic expression, experiential learning, and yes, limited technology use.
For students at the Sacramento Waldorf School, screen time is highly discouraged at home, too. The lower school parent handbook recommends no media at home through fifth grade and limited access accompanied by clearly defined family policies and monitoring for older children, stating none is the optimal condition for young children and less is better than more. In high school, computer use at Sacramento Waldorf School is restricted to just six desktops in one small lab and 20 MacBook Air laptops used in just a few classes.
Mobile devices can be brought by high schoolers who all sign a pledge to limit use to outside the classroom only. Tech in schools is big business expected to hit 43 billion this year with 46% of that growth happening in K through 12.
So, Apple, Google, and Microsoft may not be thrilled to know the Waldorf approach represents a growing trend in Silicon Valley, where low tech education is becoming increasingly popular among parents who are apprehensive of the devices they themselves helped to invent.
The private Waldorf School of the Peninsula, which has campuses in Los Altos and Mountain View, is highly sought after. 3/4 of the students parents there have a strong high-tech connection.
In fact, many big names in tech like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs gained notoriety for the [music] strict bounds they placed on device usage in their homes. Gates reportedly didn’t let his kids get phones until age 14, and Jobs didn’t let his kids use iPads.
The tuition at Waldorf schools varies by grade and location. High school tuition at the Waldorf School of the Peninsula is more than $35,000 and elementary school starts just under $26,000. In Sacramento, high school is over 1$9,000 and elementary starts just under $13,000.
Narrator: And this comment says it all. “Steve Jobs goes by the slogan, “The dealer never consumes.”
Again, I’m not surprised that these people that have created and invented these addictive technologies and apps are sending their kids to a private school that has heavy restrictions on technology use. But the sad thing is the tuition at these schools per year is very expensive. I believe they were in the five digits.
And so only the most affluent families are going to be able to afford to send their kids to these schools. But working families don’t have that luxury of sending their kids to a private school or charter school, which costs 5 figures a year. They send their kids to public school because it’s the only option.
But that option is looking bleaker and bleaker every year with student test scores dropping, teachers quitting at alarming rates, and public school getting defunded as we speak.
That brings me to another comment from one of you guys on a previous video. “Everything is 100% true. I’m a teacher of 20 years and it is rough. It doesn’t help when our country is dismantling the Department of Education. States are oblivious to the real issues and keep pushing nonsense to schools and so forth.
I wanted to ask if you saw the news video about a California school going all AI. The only teachers they have on campus, I believe, are to assist where and when is needed, but students learn from AI teachers.
[NBC Morning News]: This probably isn’t what comes to mind when you think of an [music] average school day. Kids breathing fire. Find a spot for our foot. climbing a rock wall and even learning the art of grilling.
But for students at the Alpha School in Austin, Texas, this is no field day.
Here, K through 12th graders are proudly cutting classes, spending just 2 hours a day learning math, science, reading, and writing. All with the help of an AI tutor, and without a single teacher.
[Woman in NBC video]: Morning launch time.
Narrator: I already don’t like this and I’m skeptical. How can the student possibly learn enough in 2 hours compared to a full day of school? And the fact that they don’t have a teacher and are learning specifically from an AI chatbot. Yeah, does not sound good.
[NBC Morning News]: Mackenzie Price is the co-founder of Alpha School in its 2-hour learning program.
[NBC Morning News interviewer]: This is a school without teachers.
[Mackenzie Price]: We have no teachers at our schools. We have no teachers at our schools. Can you believe that?
[NBC Morning News]: The educators are a suite of AI powered apps that gamify lessons, monitor progress, and with the help of eyetracking, keep tabs on students attention span.
[NBC Morning News interviewer]: Who’s teaching you?
[Student]: I think the app is teaching me, but I’m also teaching myself.
Narrator: So, they learn on an app, but they also think that they are teaching themselves and they’re only maybe five or 6 years old and don’t know anything about the world yet. Does not sound promising.
[NBC Morning News]: All as adult guides, many of which have never been teachers. look on without interfering with their robot counterparts.
[NBC Morning News interviewer]: Are you comfortable having guides in the classroom that don’t necessarily know the core curriculum?
[Mackenzie Price]: It’s okay that our guides aren’t experts in physics or math or whatever they’re doing. They are experts in their students.
Narrator: It’s okay that they’re not experts in science or math, but they are experts in their students.
What the heck does that even mean? Then what is the purpose of teachers having to go to school for years in order to get their teaching credential? I am appalled that any parent would want to send their child to the school that has no teachers. What?
[NBC Morning News interviewer]: It almost sounds like the guides here are told you’re here to lead the kids to AI.
[Mackenzie Price]: Our guides are not allowed to teach.
They are coaching students to become selfdriven learners.
[NBC Morning News]: Price says the AI tutor personalizes lessons for each student, allowing them to learn class material in half the time, and according to data from Alpha, score in the 90th percentile on standardized tests in most grade levels.
[Person at whiteboard in class]: This one’s a little unusual.
[NBC Morning News]: It all comes as students nationwide grapple with AI’s role. While some critics say it’s too soon to know if the text’s having a positive effect in classrooms.
Narrator: That’s not suspicious at all. According to their very own data that is probably biased, the students score in the 90th percentile on standardized tests. I would like to see some independent third-party unbiased sources that are evaluating these students and how they’re doing on their standardized tests.
[NBC Morning News]: One study found generative AI tutors can sometimes inhibit learning if students become too reliant on the tool.
[NBC Morning News interviewer]: How do you make sure that the AI that is teaching kids is doing what it’s supposed to be doing?
[Mackenzie Price]: We have a lot of guard rails in place to make sure that kids are not dealing with some of the issues that come with what we hear about with AI.
[NBC Morning News]: Still, at Alpha, where tuition costs $40,000 a year, academics are just the beginning.
[Mackenzie Price]: This is called our check chart.
[NBC Morning News]: Each student must complete a long list of tasks before they can level up, including things like run a mile without stopping, solve a Rubik’s cube, and even independently put together a piece of IKEA furniture. All in an effort to teach life skills and promote passion projects.
[Student]: Welcome to the Alpha School Airbnb.
[NBC Morning News]: Like this group of sixth graders who are running a real Airbnb.
[NBC Morning News interviewer]: But how old are you?
[Student 2]: I’m I’m 11.
[NBC Morning News interviewer]: You’re 11?
And how much money did you guys make with this Airbnb?
[Student 2]: We have over $10,000 of confirmed bookings
[NBC Morning News]: And over at Alpha High School….
[NBC Morning News interviewer]: You made an app.
[NBC Morning News]: 16-year-olds Ellen Sloan are getting ready to pitch an AI enabled app that gives dating advice.
[Female talking to app]: I want to ask my crush out to prom in front of all of her friends. Is that a good idea?
[App]:It really depends on her personality.
[NBC Morning News interviewer]: So, you’ve been learning from AI and now you’re building your own AI?
[Female student]: Yes.
[NBC Morning News]: A full circle experiment putting these AI [music] academics in a class of their own.
[NBC Morning News interviewer facing camera]: Yeah. A lot to take in there. Uh, and as a parent, I was a little sketched out seeing those little kids locked into their laptops with their headphones on.
We used to have sustained silent reading back in the day. This is way beyond that because these are are gamified interactive apps. So, the kids are given full attention. And Price says they only do that for 2 hours a day. They break those up into these 20-minute intervals.
The rest of the day is spent in those workshops collaborating with others, learning life skills. Actually, on the day we visited, some of the high school students were going through this rejection workshop where they would pitch strangers on the street their passion projects. Uh, AI, not so great at teaching how to get rejected, but something we humans are still pretty good at, I guess.
Narrator: So, they’re learning how to exercise, solve a Rubik’s cube, put together IKEA furniture, and cooking, which are all things that they can just learn at home with their family. We can take a look at the comments.
[Reading comment]: When they said, “Don’t worry. Artificial intelligence won’t take jobs.” They meant their jobs, not yours.
[Reading comment 2]: Sounds like a Black Mirror episode.
[Reading comment 3]: Unlimited screen time and babysitters with S40K a year tuition. What could go wrong?
[Reading comment 4]: Smart kids with no social and emotional skills. As a teacher, that scares me.
Narrator: I also found this CNN article interesting about Alpha School. Apparently, they have applied for charter school status, and it’s been rejected by several states, including Arkansas, North Carolina, Utah, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
The Pennsylvania Department of Education, in denying its application, pointed to the lack of teachers and concern about the model being largely untested.
And the story also features a parent who sent two of her daughters to Alpha school.
She said it was a chance for her older daughter, who was autistic, to reach new academic heights. She liked that her students could learn at their own pace and they would have specialized lessons.
But the parent said she almost immediately noticed a change in both her daughters after they started at alpha.
Although on paper they met their academic targets, their attitude shifted from curiosity about knowledge to an extreme focus on metrics. Several parents apparently expressed their concern with how the daily driven metrics seem to supersede learning. Some children were staying up late into the night or logging extra hours on their apps to boost their metrics, sometimes leading to anxiety and tears. And after their second year, the parent decided to withdraw her daughters and enroll them in public school, where she says she discovered that the girls had fallen behind. She said that they were doing what the school wanted them to do, but in the end, it really wasn’t out of joy.
And she said at the end of their time at Alpha, her children had turned zombie-like. This school has got to be absolutely terrible for kids learning.
And here this person comes in who has no knowledge of education and tries to profit off of AI and charge parents $40,000 a year for an AI chatbot to teach their kids reading and math.
I really agree with that comment that this is starting to feel like a Black Mirror episode.
And I feel like I can’t say it enough times. I sound like a broken record, but I am concerned for this next generation and what is to come. But I’m very curious to hear from all of you, especially teachers and parents. Please share your experiences down below in the comments. I would love to know what you are doing to help your kids through this schooling system, to help your kids in this changing landscape of technology, and really what actionable steps can we take to make sure our kids don’t have unfettered access to the internet and to make sure that they’re learning in school and their test scores are going up and they’re able to read at a proficient level.
