Improving the weak—and weakening—reading skills of American students has been a hot topic in the edu-sphere for many years. The utter collapse of student reading skills over the past decade, which predates the absurd and deeply damaging switch to thoroughly ineffective online learning while we lost our collective minds during the Covid-19 scamdemic, has led many to focus on how to best help elementary and middle school students because illiteracy starts young—and persists throughout a despairing lifetime.

However, I worry a great deal more about the failure of many high school students to transition to the more challenging reading skills they will need for college and professional careers. Life is, when you drill down a bit, actually just one big reading test, and colleges and employers are finding a increasing number of young people are incapable of engaging with challenging texts or readily extracting key information as needed. Higher education has responded to this crisis by dropping many reading requirements across the curriculum because they need their seats filled and tuition checks rolling in; businesses have responded by firing (or simply not hiring) those who cannot keep up. Either way, the crisis in reading skills is silently and inexorably ruining a great many lives.

When a student reaches the high school level, reading comprehension will depend upon two factors: a continued attention to vocabulary development and developing a broad base of generalized background knowledge to connect the student to what is being read. If you do not know what the words mean, it is an obvious problem; however, having little or no framework of general knowledge about the topic being considered makes understanding nearly impossible.

We often speak about the need to teach “critical thinking” in our nation’s schools, but thinking is almost totally dependent on a base of ready knowledge—which fewer and fewer students possess because their school curriculum is now so painfully dumbed down. The vast blanks spaces in the minds of so many students, which are directly attributable to the tragically low expectations for learning and retaining content knowledge at the majority of our elementary and middle schools are, moreover, made even worse because rote memorization is considered contrary to the spirit of “free” (read: undemanding) inquiry, ensuring that the words on the page will be virtually meaningless and a student’s brain will remain unformed mush.

A while back I purchased the reading textbook I was using in 5th grade back in 1969 as a used book from Amazon, and I was astonished to find that the material was so entertaining and challenging. The stories were set on the American frontier, the South American pampas, a Viking village, and Thomas Jefferson’s home in Monticello and coupled with selections from Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot—and even the Book of Job. Speaking as an educator, it was enough to drive me crazy when I consider the thoroughgoing ignorance of history and our world culture that is now commonplace among high school graduates—and often leaves them staring uncomprehendingly at even modestly challenging readings.

The sad stamp that said “DISCARD” in the front (my copy used to occupy a place of pride at a Christian university’s teacher training library) explains all one needs to know about why stupidity reigns supreme in America today.

Reading skills, of course, begin at home with parental encouragement that builds upon the natural curiosity of a child. Unfortunately, many overworked or absent parents are not available to build that critical cognitive bridge to a lifetime of learning with their children, and the depressingly out-of-control daycare centers that today masquerade as elementary and middle schools do parents and children no favors. One student that I recently tutored described her typical school day thusly: “The teachers yell at us all day, and then we go home.” Given those circumstances, which are the normal abnormal in so many American schools, it is little wonder that it is estimated 21% of American adults today are illiterate, which is nearly double the rate of 150 years ago despite the hundreds of billions of dollars we spend on our public schools every year, and this certainly does not account for those who are technically “literate” but still unprepared for college or career. This downward trend in reading skills helps to create steady employment for welfare state bureaucrats and prison guards—but this robs us as a nation and people in every other way imaginable.

Insisting on more rigorous academic standards in our K-12 schools and committing to grading systems that accurately reflect learning outcomes is completely alien to school systems that have spent decades handing out passing grades to everyone to mask the awful truth of just how poorly our children are being prepared for happy and productive adult lives. Whether this deception is driven by a misguided commitment to so-called “social justice” that cheats those students with the most pressing academic needs or is simply a cowardly strategy to make it easier for teachers and administrators to clock in the years toward their pensions with a minimum of fuss, the failures of our K-12 schools harm our children by celebrating meager accomplishments and allowing dreams to die.

I always felt terrible when I had to flunk my college freshmen who had received wonderful grades all through their years in public school. I know the collision of fantasy and reality was both abrupt and painful when these students had to come face to face with their college essays covered in red ink. I understood just how unfair it was that they should not learn the truth about their crushingly inadequate academic preparation until it was too late to save themselves, but such is the reality of the public school scam: a paycheck protection program that has been created by teacher unions, facilitated by elected officials who prefer to pretend all is well, and committed to secrecy regarding the unpleasant facts about teaching and learning in America today.