Brett Cooper (14:48)
Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Now back to the story. I hate to break it to you guys and just continue spiraling in this fear mongering black pill episode, but this young man, this student, he did not just expose what is happening at his he also inadvertently exposed what is happening all across America. And you might Say, Brett, we don't need this to be exposed. We already know that the education system is just abysmal and terrible. That's why we need to destroy it and rebuild it. Well, a lot of people don't know that. They don't get it. And so this video has been very helpful in bringing people along on this journey. So take Philadelphia, for example. This is where the school is located, obviously. And in an article published actually today in the Philadelphia Citizen, they wrote this. This is how they started the article. A majority of the Philadelphia students receiving diplomas cannot read or do math at grade level. In 2025, barely one quarter of 11th graders are proficient in math and only about a third in reading. Yet thousands of students are told that they are ready for life beyond high school. And so then, obviously, we have to ask the question, what happens when these students graduate, when they are passed and shot out into the real world? Because illiteracy reduces workforce productivity, it restricts earning potential, it also increases welfare costs. So now it is becoming a greater burden on our society, on our country. And in fact, a 2020 Gallup study found that the United States could lose up to $2.2 trillion annually due to low adult literacy rates. So this impacts everything. It's not just about one individual's life, their future family. It impacts all of us, the taxpayer burden. It impacts the growth of our country, our ability to flourish and continue innovating and growing. All of that stems back to literacy and a proficient education. And now, I know that we have been talking about Philadelphia specifically, but we do need to expand this to the rest of the country because across the board, things are not looking greater, it is just grim. And across the board, senior reading and math scores have dropped to their lowest in two decades. This is in America, lowest proficiency rate in two decades. This headline from the Guardian reads, these results are sobering US High school seniors. Reading and math scores plummet. Now, what is interesting when I was looking at all of these new numbers and all these new articles about this fact, is that the experts do not immediately cite Covid as the start of this problem, which, honestly, Covid has been the rightful scapegoat for a lot of issues over the last five, six years or so, mental health, you know, education, socialization, all of that. And obviously, Covid, the lockdown specifically, let's be clear here, it was not the virus, the response to the virus. It was the lockdowns. They did have an extreme negative impact on all of our lives, the lives of young people. But these problems go way back Way beyond Covid and just blaming them on Covid and using that as a scapegoat is honestly dishonest. And most of the data here shows that scores have been on the decline since 2015. Some of it even shows a decline since the 90s in this country. And two interesting things happened in the last 20, 30 years or so. So by 2015, most teenagers had a smartphone that they were bringing into class with them. And starting in 2014, schools rapidly rolled out Screen based learning. Like this was so crazy to me. I did, you know, one year in public high school. I think that that was, gosh, 2015, 2016. I remember still filling out Scantrons for my standardized tests. I was writing essays by hand every single day, submitting them. I had one online class where I would type it in, but everything in person was handwritten. There was very minimal screen based learning today. I saw TikTok recently. Young people do not even know what a Scantron is. They have tablets, they have laptops, they are writing everything online. Obviously they are using AI, they have Grammarly to update their stuff, spelling and their grammar. Everything is happening digitally. There are so many different studies, reports that talk about how when you are cognitively trying to understand a subject, retain information. Writing by hand is so much more beneficial for actually retaining information versus just typing on a screen. So all of this is happening at once. On top of that, a recent study found that 9 to 13 year olds with rising levels of social media exposure performed poorer on reading, memory and vocabulary tests compared with their peers who used little to no social media. So if you need any more, any more encouragement to keep your children off of social media, to not give them devices, let it be this. It's not just mental health, it's not just socialization, it is also their academics. Shocking. I know that social media would have that impact. Where experts do think that Covid stepped in and played a role is in regards to how much time students are actually spending in the classroom these days. One article reads. Students are spending less time learning, says Thomas Kane, an education economist at Harvard. And when they are present, instruction is less efficient because teachers are constantly reteaching material. Another professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Education said that easy access to information online and the use of online assignments may also be leading some students to treat in person school attendance as optional. In their minds. They tell their parents, look, all my assignments are online. I can do them even if I am not at school. And I wonder if maybe some of this is happening at the Prep Charter school in Philadelphia because their attendance is also abysmal and under the average rate for the state. Just saying. So now let's just put all these pieces together. It gets worse here because now let's look at the response from these administrators, from the government and from the schools. Now, considering these absolutely abysmal proficiency rates across the board, you would think, or maybe just hope, if you are a positive, joyful person, you would hope that these school districts are actively trying to help the students learn. Maybe they are suggesting overhauling the system. They are going to broadly ban phones like so many schools are doing. What? They're going to try anything to help bring these students up to a proficiency level. But no, they are actually doing something that unfortunately has become very common in American culture and something that across the board, I think is really harming our extraordinary abilities, our innovation, our confidence, all of the things. They're lowering the standards to allow people to pass rather than encouraging people to rise to the standards. They're just saying, oh, we'll just make it easier on you instead. So listen to this from that same Philadelphia Citizen article. This is in regards to those thousands of students graduating being shot out into the workforce. So they're graduating not because academic achievement has improved. It's because the system has changed what it means to graduate. Instead of passing keystone exams measuring basic reading and math skills, students can graduate by submitting evidence from a state approved list. In practice, that often means completing short, low rigor online credential programs. One of the most popular, a two hour online video about ladder safety. So you don't know how to do algebra, you can't read a sentence about a lazy dog not wanting to get off the couch. But oh, you watched a two hour video like an OSHA inspired video about ladder safety and okay, Philadelphia is going to allow you to graduate. Goodbye. You did it. 92.3% graduation rate. Woo. This is retarded. Like objectively, that is retarded. Now they go on and they say this is intended to be an alternative for students who panic at taking tests or pursuing training or a career in the trades. This has become the default to cover over the district's horrific track record of underperformance and lack of accountability. This is what I mean where I think that this is harming American culture at large because we are catering to the lowest common denominator. If you are falling behind, if you can't read, if you cannot do math, if you panic at taking tests, we will bring everybody else down to cater to you. We will literally dump our society down to make sure that on paper you pass. And why do they want you to pass? So that they can keep making money. So that they can keep lining their pockets. That is the only thing they care about. And this is not just happening in high school proficiency. I mean, think about the American Academy of Pediatrics. I'm thinking about this a lot now that I have a child of my own. And I have a little app that sends me, you know, monthly developmental milestones that my son should be reaching, like he should be starting to crawl at this point, doing this with his hands, you know, his eyes are developing at this point. Point. Those developmental milestones have been slowly increasing over the last 20 years because for whatever reasons, there are a lot of speculations about what is causing this, but young babies are not reaching those milestones as quickly as they once did. So rather than thinking, why is this happening? What can we as doctors, as speech pathologists, whatever it is, how can we help these young children and these families? They're saying, oh, don't worry, we'll just move the milestones up. Don't feel bad about your child not crawling yet, being behind whatever it is. We don't want you to feel uncomfortable. We'll just move them ahead rather than, than actually helping. And it's the same thing that is happening with these high school students. And so back to this story. Obviously, I kind of hinted at this already when I was ranting, but after they pass all of these students, they allow them to do their two hour video on ladder safety. They have the gall to ask us for more money. So specifically in regards to Philadelphia, the Philadelphia school district's budget has increased 78% since 2016. They spend $9,000 more per student than the rest of the entire district, state. And the results are abysmal. I don't know why people have not realized that or why they are choosing to ignore it, but more money per student does not equal better outcomes. Now, student enrollment is also plummeting. It has decreased 12% over the last few years. And yet somehow the district has been able to hire more and more school administrators. It has actually increased 56%, while, interestingly, teacher employment has only increased 4%. The student enrollment is declining, proficiency is plummeting. Nobody is passing. I mean, they're passing them. And their response is not to hire more teachers, change the curricula, do something, it's to hire more administrators. Because they are truly going to fix the system. I mean, make it make sense. This is not a student based, student focused system. It is not about the students at all. Again, it is just about lining their pockets. And this system will continue to have a dire ripple effect on our society for decades and decades, even generations to come. Because students who cannot read and comprehend a simple sentence, who are graduating because they're watching two hour videos about ladders, they become illiterate, unproductive, unemployable adults. Adults who then become stuck in a cycle of poverty that then increases the welfare burden on the rest of the country. Then we have these job openings that need to be filled by intelligent adults. Now we're importing them from other countries. Now that our country becomes more and more foreign by the day, we have a lack of stable families which are often tied back to literacy rates. And again, the only people who benefit from this mess, honestly, mess is too light of a word from this this exploitative, chaotic cycle, are the school district employees who continue to rake in more and more money at the expense of our children, our society and our country. That is what this viral TikTok just exposed. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. 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