After a brief exchange with a teenage Battlefield teammate, one Redditor wondered whether young people could actually read. Their question landed in r/Teachers and quickly drew hundreds of reactions.
Redditor u/dr0ne6 said the incident happened during a game of Battlefield. While playing, a younger teammate asked how to say a word on the screen. The Redditor asked him to spell it, and the teen spelled out the word "grenade."
A Battlefield moment turned into a bigger question
u/dr0ne6 said what could be argued to be an insult, even if they hadn't meant it that way. "Shocked, I said, 'oh, so you don’t know how to read.' The teen replied that he knew how to read but had never seen the word before.
The poster questioned how that could be true; after all, they argued, Battlefield featured grenades constantly. They also wondered whether recognizing words without decoding them counted as reading at all. "If he can spell out the word, he knows what the letters are but doesn’t know what sounds they make?" they asked.
Because of that exchange in the game, they turned to teachers for context. They admitted they had no kids and little contact with teens. Still, u/dr0ne6 wanted to know if this experience reflected a growing trend among younger generations.
Teachers and parents weighed in on literacy gaps
The replies came quickly, and many pointed to systemic issues in the education system. Several educators said phonics instruction had declined for years. As a result, students often memorize words instead of learning how to sound them out.
One commenter, u/Glittering-Mirror602, wrote, "60% of teens in the US are not reading at grade level."
Meanwhile, u/Neddyrow described the classroom impact. "It’s very frustrating as a biology teacher," they wrote, explaining that state tests measured reading ability more than science knowledge. Their own child scored higher than many students simply because he was an avid reader.
Others added perspective. u/avirtue1 noted that true 12th-grade reading meant handling technical or scholarly texts, which many adults rarely encountered. "Reading at an 8th grade level will get you through most periodicals," they said.
Parents also shared daily struggles. u/hopping_otter_ears admitted their child disliked reading practice but slowly improved with repetition and encouragement. "I keep promising him that it will stop being difficult with more practice. He complains because reading is still work for him, but I'm seeing a lot of progress in the number of words he no longer has to sound out, and the decrease in times I have to say 'don't guess, sound it out!' on new words."
The discussion spilled onto X as well. @WriteToRebel noted, "There’s a line in New Girl that’s like 'I’m not convinced I know how to read, I’ve just memorized a lot of words' and it turns out that this was basically educational policy for over a decade."
Later, u/dr0ne6 edited their post to clarify several points. They acknowledged the teen likely spoke English fluently and apologized for sounding dismissive. They also said they had not considered dyslexia. "I will try to do better," OP wrote.
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