The North Park Student Newspaper Since 2023
Kids these days can’t read anymore
OPINION/EDITORIALS
Hirman Inayat
6/11/20262 min read
Pop quiz! Pronounce approach out loud, pretty easy, right? How about phenomenon, still too easy? Okay, let’s turn the heat up, try pronouncing archaic, or indict, getting harder now, isn’t it? Or perhaps not, what would I know about proper pronunciation, what would anyone know about proper pronunciation, it hardly matters when I can have audiobooks read things out for me, or listen to things instead of saying them out loud myself, amirite folks? Our entire school is currently going through a stagnation (try explaining what that means) period, all thanks to technology and its wonders. Children are losing the ability to pronounce words properly, or read a simple sentence out loud in class without having to ask how “adhere” or "extraordinary" is pronounced.
The Canadian Children’s Literacy Foundation talks about how “Nearly 14% of Canadian Grade 10 students do not have the baseline level of reading skills needed to navigate in our society.” in 2025 alone. So many kids struggle with their reading comprehension skills, kids from my own grade can’t read out loud in class, understand proper punctuation, or what “big words” mean. Along with this fall in literacy rates, actual understanding of words that aren’t “buzz words” has become so rare. I could say the word pretentious and get teased, ridiculed, or mocked for using such fancy speech for no reason. Teenagers don’t understand or know anything past “lock in, bruh,” “nah fr ts bs” or something just as absurd along those lines.
Many students struggle to meet provincial reading, and writing standards. It has become an ongoing issue in today's time. The decrease in literacy rates has just been getting worse and worse over the years as well, EQAO being a prime example for this argument. “64% met the provincial standard in writing, down one percent from 2022–2023.” Although it might not seem as significant, as it is only two percent, the bigger concern should remain on why it’s dropping instead of increasing. The mathematics portion of the exams were seen to increase instead, opposite to the literacy rates.
Mathematics has and perhaps always will be favoured throughout the majority of households, seeing as it’s what's considered more important in getting into a good school, acquiring a good job, living a good life. Though many ignore the fact that there is no point in any of that if you can’t hold a proper conversation with your client, or boss, or whoever that isn’t just an assemblage of filler words.
Words are important, they always will be important. They’re considered a key moment in your life, when you learn to pronounce and say “mama,” or “dada,” or maybe “uncle Rick,” to catch your parents off guard. It’s very necessary to differentiate “your,” “you’re,” and “yore,” or even “two,” “to,” and “too.” Words are used to communicate, to express and convey whatever emotion you feel. Not to sound old, but we are losing our way as a society by leaving it behind, before we know it, we might live in a utopia where everyone communicates through their mind, or AI slaves. I implore everyone to pick up a book, and consider expanding their vocabulary.