[Futile]. R3ADING IZ 4 N3RDS

Knock Knock? Who's there? Me! And I have an even funnier joke about how we can't read.

Part 3 of the series.

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In my very descriptive bio, it reads that I am painfully unfunny, which is true. I am painfully unfunny, but it's me or some misogynist, bigoted, white man, so count your blessings. I would like to say that I'm the funniest person I know, so I think I could talk about why everyone else's pain is a lot more chronic.  

"No Child Left Behind" was an act made in 2002 that pretty much states that any child who fails a class no longer automatically gets held back in school, and instead, a parent gets to decide whether that child repeats that grade. Which sounds bad in theory and in practice. No parent wants their kid to fall behind, so they sign the paper and allow them to go ahead in school, telling the kid to focus, only to have the kid repeat the same mistakes they did in prior years.

I'm one of many children who were a product of the "No Child Left Behind" act; the only difference is that I was able to get out of that situation. For the first years of my life, I taught myself the fundamentals: reading, writing, and arithmetic, but there's only so much a child can teach themselves. Math teaches you critical thinking and emotion regulation. Reading and comprehension. You can know how to read without being able to comprehend exactly what was read. Writing to be understood. Your writing has a lot to do with your speech. If you cannot write your thoughts out, you cannot say them either. So in the 3rd grade, I had the intelligence of a first grader; it took until I was in the 5th grade to be fully caught up with my grade. I'm so fortunate to have guardians who cared so much about my academics to give me the resources to catch up, so people have these resources and don't use them, and some have none at all. Looking back on my youth and even now, I know that if I had been held back, I would be better in school. I wouldn't feel so far behind because I went to school, I understood what I was taught, and every day I hate myself for still being so far behind. 

Again, I am one of many who are victims of this act. Though I want to talk about resources among the youth. 

Talking about American corruption is one of many things I love to do, but this in particular is the most blatantly obvious example of one. With the act, it is depleting the standards of education in America. If people are illiterate, it's easier to skew narratives, make false claims, and inslave them in their own minds. If the children cannot effectively analyze a piece of text, can we promise that they will be able to question the media that they consume in the future? Of course not. That is exactly the point. And we are fed mediocre media that flanderizes school with "jokes" that say we don't need it. 

"We can make elephant toothpaste for science class! I know the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell! For English class, we literally speak it. Why do we need it? Math? Easy! I know 2+2! School is so useless!" And people laugh and agree! You might think that I'm stretching this too far, but I have seen firsthand that the youth are unappreciative of school and what it really teaches you. It's not about how the "mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell" is trial and error. It's seeing how the world exists around you, how we should move with nature, and stop murdering it. It's seeing a problem and trying to find solutions. It's not about knowing how to speak English, but rather being able to interpret text, understanding why something is being said at that exact point in time, why things are the way they are. Math isn't just formulas; it's finding patterns, slowing down and taking things step-by-step, and thinking critically. When people stop seeing the value in these things, people stop caring, and once people stop caring, they turn to find easier alternatives to completing the tasks they should know how to do. You know who they chose to take these skills away from us? AI, but I'm not going to talk about it right now. 

Let us, instead, talk about the importance of being literate. I don't want to be a pessimistic adult and say that the children are stupid because of their phones, but they are. Truly, they are. I have about three words before my sister shuts me out of the conversation, taking my words at face value without considering why something is being said. Words have meaning, connotations, descriptors, and feelings. Words are alive because they are said by the living. They have tones, moods, and emotions. When Lady Macbeth said, "Unsex me here and fill me from crown to toe too full of direst cruelty," it was meant to feel. To be unseen. To not experience the life that is woman is she. It requires a level of time and patience to understand something that we no longer care to try. I have the context and the quote for both my cousin and my sister, both thirteen. My sister gave me an answer, speaking about sex in having sex, assuming that she was assaulted by him, when that was not the context I gave her, and my cousin decided not to give an answer because she "hates wordplay." Which only furthered my point. 

The lack of understanding of verbal irony, the dismissiveness towards wordplay, the depletion of creativity in sentence structure and diction--this is all a product of illiteracy. Reading without understanding. Which, in turn, puts the humor of this generation in a spectacle. 

Do we remember when we gaslit each other into finding that video of a piece of bread falling over the funniest thing in the world? Saying we wouldn't understand because it's "ironic" while there is nothing ironic about it. The punchline, the delivery, it was just a piece of bread falling over, what's so funny about that? Nothing. It's mundane, it's juvenile. It's simply unfunny. 

Everyone, at least on my feed, were distrought at the idea that bots take up 51% of the internet, but the sad part is the fact that you really don't know. Do you know why? Because people truly are just unfunny now. It's all mediocre internet references that will be forgotten in the next week, it's overused stickers, it's shitty reality television. There's no punchline. There's no creativity, and when a creative emerges from the swarm, they are cattled and consumed until they are the skeletons in the gallery of "who was". 

My solution to this problem could be the same tired idea, which is to pick up a book, but what other solutions could I possibly give? Engage in media that is longer than 10 seconds? Respect your teachers? Stop using AI? My original point was that bots are taking over the internet, but I got too caught up in talking about how the new generation can't read, but being able to read is so human. It's purely human. Animals can create, plants can produce, but humans? Humans can write; we can read. 

Take away that, and what are we now?