While politicians and tech executives wring their hands over how to govern the rapid rise of artificial intelligence, a far more fundamental crisis is unfolding quietly in America’s classrooms.

According to recent data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, nearly a third of high school seniors cannot read well enough to extract basic details from a written page.

As a former professor and college dean, I find this trajectory deeply alarming: we are fast-tracking a future where we lead the world in advanced technology such as A.I., yet raise a generation incapable of critically reading the world around them.

I read about the assessment in a newsletter published by the National Society of Scholars, an organization I have belonged to since I was a professor and administrator at the University of Illinois. What the assessment found is beyond disturbing. In fact, it is almost criminal, and one of the main culprits is the nation’s leftist teachers’ unions whose members seem more intent on indoctrinating students with socialism and critical race theory than teaching the basics of “readin’, writin’, and ‘arithmetic.”

The study found that 32 percent of American high school seniors scored below ‘basic,’ meaning they could not find and read details in a text to help them understand its meaning. The average reading score for the nation at 12th grade was three points lower than in 2019 and 10 points lower than the first reading assessment in 1992.

In other words, one can extrapolate from that study that one-third of America’s 12th graders are functionally illiterate.

Meanwhile, we are gnashing our teeth over A.I. Who cares if our children are illiterate?

Not only is literacy declining, but the percentage of students who read for fun is down. Based on data gathered in 2025, only 14 percent of 13-year-olds report reading for fun daily, down from 27 percent in 2012 and 53 percent in 1983. Escaping reality in the pages of a book has largely been replaced by doomscrolling on social media.

Even colleges and universities are not spared from the literacy crisis, the NSA newsletter reported. Many institutions offer remedial classes during freshman year to help these students catch up. The University of California, Berkeley reports that students can’t read more than five pages per day per course, and professors must scale back even more for certain classes.

American students can no longer read a book in its entirety and extrapolate large concepts, much less small ones.

Ivy League colleges are no better off. While many factors contribute to this phenomenon in higher education, the cracks in a solid foundation of reading and language comprehension appear long before college. Think of jam-packed extracurricular and job schedules that take time away from classes and classwork, political and social indoctrination by leftist professors, and grade inflation that takes accountability off students to read and understand concepts, etc.

Throughout my decades in higher education and journalism, I watched student success hinge on a single, indispensable foundation: the ability to read deeply, process critically, and express ideas clearly.

Today, that foundation is crumbling. With a third of high school seniors now scoring below basic literacy levels, our educational system has traded the core disciplines of reading, writing, and arithmetic for ideological distractions and pedagogical fads.

If we keep churning out functionally illiterate graduates while pushing the boundaries of A.I., we will soon find ourselves with extraordinary tools—and no one capable of evaluating whether they tell the truth.

It should greatly concern us that many American high school seniors cannot read a paragraph aloud and explain what it means and yet still go on to college and receive A’s.

Something must be done to stop American students’ spiral into illiteracy and win them back to loving literature. But what, if any, current efforts exist to address the literacy crisis?

According to the Department of Education, the Trump administration is now making literacy a priority across its grantmaking, research agenda, and technical assistance efforts. The administration plans to support Secretary of Education Linda McMahon’s literacy priority through existing grant funding, which it proposed last May.

Now, the Department of Education is focusing its efforts “on proven approaches grounded in the Science of Reading,” which strongly emphasizes phonics over whole language instruction. (Both Mississippi and  Massachusetts have taken steps to improve literacy instruction through the Science of Reading and Phonics.)

Additionally, the Department of Education notes that the Trump administration is “directing federal dollars toward strategies proven to help children read – and giving states the tools, flexibility, and support to rebuild strong literacy outcomes.”

Leading the world in artificial intelligence while educating an increasingly illiterate populace creates a severe economic and societal mismatch.

During my years at the University of Illinois, I witnessed an alarming loss of critical thinking in academia. A.I. tools generate summaries, write drafts, and process vast quantities of information. However, evaluating whether an A.I.’s output is accurate, biased, or logical requires high-level textual comprehension and analytical reasoning.

An illiterate or semi-literate population cannot effectively audit intelligent systems’ output, leaving them highly vulnerable to manipulation.

Then there is the question of economic stratification. The A.I. economy will reward those who possess high-level synthesis skills, technical literacy, and deep domain knowledge. If a third of high school graduates cannot extract basic details from a written page, society will split into a small elite class that directs A.I. systems and a large demographic incapable of competing in a cognitively demanding workforce.

A self-governing republic like America depends on an informed citizenry that can read primary sources, understand legislation, and evaluate public policy. Generative tech mixed with widespread illiteracy undermines the foundational prerequisites of democracy.

So, what is going on?

From a higher-education perspective, I see traditional education being replaced by pedagogical drift & didactic fads. For over two decades, many K–12 public school systems abandoned explicit, evidence-based phonics instruction in favor of “balanced literacy” and whole-language models. These approaches encouraged students to guess words from context clues or illustrations rather than decode actual print.

As I suggested earlier, curricular and ideological distractions are also a problem. As instructional time and administrative focus shifted toward vague social theories, political activism, and virtue signaling, core academics took a backseat. Our K-12 schools have prioritized ideological agendas over content knowledge and basic skill acquisition. As a result, academic standards have inevitably suffered.

Some of the most glaring issues I saw while working in academia were the proliferation of smartphones, short-form video algorithms, and constant digital immersion, which have shortened attention spans and drastically reduced adolescents’ habit of deep, sustained reading.

Studies show that deep reading, active note-taking, and interactive multimedia support moderate-to-high information retention. Experts call these deliberate, engaged methods “controlled consumption.” By contrast, “passive consumption” is associated with much lower retention. Examples include audiobooks, continuous video streaming, and live lectures.

So what can we do and where do we go from here?

First, we need a return to the “science of reading.” States must mandate structured literacy grounded in cognitive science—explicit instruction in phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary development, and text comprehension.

Classrooms that have returned to phonics-based systematic instruction are already showing measurable recovery in early literacy scores.

Second, we need curriculum transparency and academic first principles. School boards and state departments of education must restore academic rigor to the core mission of K–12 schooling. Curricula should be anchored in core knowledge, history, literature, and fundamental mathematics rather than dubious socio-political ideologies such as Critical Race Theory and the discredited 1619 Project.

Third, we need to institute merit-based accountability and remediation. Eliminate “social promotion” policies that pass functionally illiterate students from one grade to the next. Universities and community colleges must also maintain rigorous entry standards rather than lowering expectations or replacing traditional coursework with non-credit remedial holding pens.

Let’s face it. A.I. technology is no substitute for foundational human cognition. Without an immediate, non-partisan return to rigorous, evidence-based instruction in reading and writing, technological progress will only widen the divide between those who control the A.I. tools and those they manage or govern.

According to the NAS newsletter, “literacy is the key to the land of opportunity.”

Amen to that.

Humans without critical thinking skills and who cannot comprehend the written word will be little more than dependent pawns controlled by an uncompromising A.I. master race of technology oligarchs.

I don’t know about you, but that is not the “Brave New A.I. World” I want to live in.

–30–

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