You're forgetting brain damage from ongoing Covid infections. I'm seeing this at work from people that 5 years ago had perfectly decent attention spans and critical thinking skills.

I would guess that letting COVID run wild in our schools contributes to a huge amount of brain fog and other challenges as well. The pandemic and its impacts aren't gone just because politicians wished it away.

Is this sustainable? NO! I've tripled my workload. Teachers are caught up in this industrial mandate to constantly do more with less, too. In crucial ways, we're all in this together - but teachers still have immense power over student' lives, so I'm carrying the load as long as I can 🤷🏻‍♀️

My kids are 8 and 12 and we already worry about this. It feels to me like a bone-deep level of burnout—as in, when everyone says, "aren't we all a little ND?" it's because we are *all* overstimulated and undersupported. (Plus, Covid shreds the nervous system, but that's still "controversial.")

Per relative who’s a long-time elem teacher: while covid made everything worse, the shift was happening prior. Admin deciding to pass kids on even if they couldn’t meet reading standards, parents (in wealthy district) prioritizing extracurriculars, phones & social media poisoning attention.

And I don't know if the answer is: everyone is too traumatized to do work and we need to reinvent society. Or if it's more like: generations are losing their cognitive abilities and willpower due to destructive technologies. Or: we all have post-viral brain damage. Or: all of the above.

Admin are continually pressuring us to make the course "more accessible," by which they mean "devastatingly easy to complete," but it's not about access. Many students refuse to read or write in any capacity that isn't tech-aided, no matter how simple the assignment, no matter how process-based.

At this point, our intro comp/first-year English course has been so heavily revised, it no longer includes a novel, or "extended reading" of any kind, no "specialized" or "historical" reading, mostly in-class assignments, no research essay...and we are still seeing a 40-50% rate of AI misconduct.

It's only a matter of time before humanities departments will be forced to accept AI-authored assignments, as part of revised university policy to cooperate with these billionaires. It's already happening, and our response needs to be decisive. Because our students' ability to *think* is at stake.