It’s tech’ing a toll on tots, tweens and teens.
ChatGPT, artificial intelligence that’s emerging as a useful resource, is “ruining” childhood education, so says a ticked-off teacher, who’s leaving the classroom for good.
“Technology is directly contributing to the literacy decrease we are seeing in this country right now,” huffed Hannah Maria, an outgoing 10th-grade English teacher, in viral TikTok vid, announcing her exit from the profession. Maria’s TikTok account is now private, but footage of her tirade is currently trending on X.
Describing herself as an “older Gen Z,” the 20-something explained that middle and high school students in her district are issued iPads at the beginning of each academic year.
But rather than serving as educational tools for the youngsters, Maria claims the AI-dense devices have become a crutch.
“A lot of these kids don’t know how to read because they’ve had things read to them or they can click a button and have things read out loud to them in seconds,” she griped. “Their attention spans are weaning because everything is high-stimulation and they can just scroll [away from something] in less than a minute. They can’t sit still for very long.”
And what the teacher’s saying adds up.
Damning results from a recent National Assessment of Educational Progress test revealed the lowest level of reading proficiency for early adolescents in 32 years. The findings also highlighted that at least a third of America’s students failed to demonstrate “basic” reading skills expected for their age group.
Analysts from the Seattle Children’s Research Institute, too, found that students ages 13 to 18 tend to spend upwards of six hours scrolling on their devices during the school day, rather than focusing on their studies.
Maria attributes her departure from education, in part, to a lack of intervention from the powers that be.
“Look at the test scores and the statistics and the literacy rates from when students didn’t use technology to now,” she begged the learning authorities, noting that her teenage students throw tantrums when tasked with hand-writing a few paragraphs.
Instead of picking up a pen or pencil, the rising generations prefer tapping ChatGPT to get the simple job done.
“These kids don’t even care,” Maria moaned of children’s aloofness towards reading comprehension, language arts, history and mathematics. Aloofness, she believes, is born out of their imbalanced dependence on technology.
“They don’t care about making a difference in the world,” she continued, emphasizing that many of her pupils are failing in school and in life. “They don’t care about [writing] a resume or cover letter because ChatGPT will do it for them.”
“We’re at the point where I don’t really have faith in some of these kids that I teach,” said a teary Maria, imploring decision makers to make changes in school systems.
“There’s noting wrong with using your budget on textbooks and workbooks,” she assured the higher-ups. “We’ve got to start getting rid of the technology, and bringing back the things that worked.”
“We need to cut off technology from these kids,” said Maria, “probably until they go to college.”
